ay, of Bentham's
theory of man and man's life, I chanced to call it a more beggarly one
than Mahomet's. I am bound to say, now when it is once uttered, that
such is my deliberate opinion. Not that one would mean offence against
the man Jeremy Bentham, or those who respect and believe him. Bentham
himself, and even the creed of Bentham, seems to me comparatively worthy
of praise. It is a determinate _being_ what all the world, in a cowardly
half-and-half manner, was tending to be. Let us have the crisis; we
shall either have death or the cure. I call this gross, steam-engine
Utilitarianism an approach towards new Faith. It was a laying-down
of cant; a saying to oneself: "Well then, this world is a dead iron
machine, the god of it Gravitation and selfish Hunger; let us see what,
by checking and balancing, and good adjustment of tooth and pinion,
can be made of it!" Benthamism has something complete, manful, in such
fearless committal of itself to what it finds true; you may call it
Heroic, though a Heroism with its _eyes_ put out! It is the culminating
point, and fearless ultimatum, of what lay in the half-and-half state,
pervading man's whole existence in that Eighteenth Century. It seems to
me, all deniers of Godhood, and all lip-believers of it, are bound to
be Benthamites, if they have courage and honesty. Benthamism is an
_eyeless_ Heroism: the Human Species, like a hapless blinded Samson
grinding in the Philistine Mill, clasps convulsively the pillars of
its Mill; brings huge ruin down, but ultimately deliverance withal. Of
Bentham I meant to say no harm.

But this I do say, and would wish all men to know and lay to heart,
that he who discerns nothing but Mechanism in the Universe has in the
fatalest way missed the secret of the Universe altogether. That all
Godhood should vanish out of men's conception of this Universe seems to
me precisely the most brutal error,--I will not disparage Heathenism by
calling it a Heathen error,--that men could fall into. It is not true;
it is false at the very heart of it. A man who thinks so will think
_wrong_ about all things in the world; this original sin will vitiate
all other conclusions he can form. One might call it the most lamentable
of Delusions,--not forgetting Witchcraft itself! Witchcraft worshipped
at least a living Devil; but this worships a dead iron Devil; no God,
not even a Devil! Whatsoever is noble, divine, inspired, drops
thereby out of life. There remains every