JB/015/139/001

Click Here To Edit

8

It is indeed a misfortune that men come to the discussion of important
questions predetermined to decide them only in one way. They are pledged
as it were to their own minds that certain practices shall be wrong – &
certain other practices right. But the principle of utility allows of no
such peremptoriness, – & requires that before any practice is condemned that it be shown
to be derogatory to human happiness. Such an investigation suits not the
dogmatical instructor. With the principle of utility therefore he will
have nothing to do. He will have a principle of his own to do his own business.
He will convert his own opinions into a principle for its own support.
I say these things are not right – and he proclaims with a sufficient portion of positiveness ergo, they are not right.

It is plain this setting up of an opinion be as the true
foundation & sufficient reason for itself must put every imaginable
extravagance upon an equal footing with the most salutary persuasion
– nor does it offer any other or better standard of right & wrong
than the violence with which it urges its pretensions, – or the number
of those who agree in them. But if violence be the standard, as there
is no possible way of measuring the intensity of conviction but by its
visible influence on actions, – the opinion of him who knocks down
his opponent is better grounded than that of him who only asserts
its vehemently, – of him who cuts his opponent's throat than of him
who only knocks him down, – & of him who tortures tho' before
he destroys his opponent than of him who either – so that, in truth
the opinions of the Inquisition bid fairest of any yet known for being
the very perfection of truth & right reason – and morality may be graduated by according to the miseries inflicted by persecution. must
be taken as an If numbers decide Idolatry would drive
christianity from the field, – & truth & morality would be in a
state of everlasting vibration between majorities & minorities which
are shifting with all the vicissitudes of human events.

He who, on any other arguments occasion, should say, it is as I say, because I say it is
so would not be thought to have said any great matter: but on the question
concerning the standard of morality, men have written great books wherein from
beginning to end they are employed in saying this and nothing else. What these
books have to depend on for their efficacy, and for their being thought to have done
any thing is, the stock of self-sufficiency in the Writer, and of implicit deference
in the readers: by the help of a proper dose of which one thing may be made to go
down as well as another. Out of this assumption & Transubstantiation does, and if any other thing
could be conceived more absurd than Transubstantiation, that other thing could
so too.

Identifier: | JB/015/139/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 15.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	015	Main Headings	deontology
Folio number	139	Info in main headings field
Image	001	Titles
Category	linking material	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	f8
Penner	sir john bowring	Watermarks	[[watermarks::t[?] cusson]]
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	5355
Box Contents