JB/014/424/001

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Long before this period the mind of Mr Bentham had been
taken possession of by the Ulitarian principle. At a very early age
he had been annoyed beyond measure - & scarcely less annoyed than
disgusted, - by what he then called "Ciceronian trash"
"I had not completed my 13' year" to use his own words, "when at
at Queen's College Oxford the task
"was imposed on him me not indeed by his my academical instructors
but by a not less irresistible authority the task
of rendering into Latin English that work of his Cicero which is known
by the title of The Tusculan Questions or Tusculan Disputations.
Pain he I there learnt was no evil. Virtue was
and is of itself sufficient to confer happiness on any man
who is disposed to possess it on those terms. What benefit
in any shape could be derived from impregnating
the memory with such nonsense? what instruction
from a self-contradictory proposition or any number
of any such propositions? When it happens to a man
to have a pain whether in the head or the great toe
or any intermediary part of the bodily frame is the seat
of it is it in the nature of the case that can he by saying
to himself or to any body else that pain is no evil any
the slightest diminution should be effected in it. drive the pain away - or diminish it at all?

31
To shew how virtue
contributes to happiness
- of use this done ever &
anon by J.B.
32
Would it relieve a man
suffering from gout or stone
to tell him he is happy?

As to virtue to have shewn in how many
different ways or though it were but one way
it contributes as it really does to happiness this would
have been of some use and might have been
made of great use. Accordingly it is an operation
with which Mr. Bentham has been ever & anon
occupying himself. But to say that virtue is of
itself to produce and maintain happiness whatsoever
be a man's condition in other respects what possible
use can there be is merely in giving utterance to a position
so directly in the teeth of universal and constant
experience. To have given a definition to the word virtue
or rather an exposition for by so short a species of document
as that designated by the word disposition definition
no adequate conception can be given this
would have been something and this is what the greatest
happiness principle
will enable a man
to do. But

Identifier: | JB/014/424/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 14.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	014	Main Headings	deontology
Folio number	424a "a" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 424.	Info in main headings field
Image	001	Titles
Category	linking material	Number of Pages	2
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	f13
Penner	sir john bowring	Watermarks	[[watermarks::[partial hall]]]
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	5187
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