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A Law is a [form of words] declaration of one having power predicting a portion
of happiness or unhappiness as about consecutive
upon to ensue from a certain mode of conduct.
The description of the conduct in question is the
directory part of the Law: the specification description of
the happiness or unhappiness in question
is the Sanction.
added to the announcement
of the connection
between them
The expectation or anticipation in Idea of the
happiness or unhappiness of the is the motive for
obeying the Law: va.u: that motive which the
Law [itself] affords
of the accomplishment
of the production
depends upon the desperation
of a multitude
of persons to
do their respective
parts towards the
it.
The actual accomplishment of the production
Under every law the party to whom it is addressed
has the option given him: whether he will
assume that conduct follow the direction which the law means
he should assume, and waste the happiness
which might accrue to him from his assuming
the opposite conduct might afford him: or
by assuming that happiness runs counter to
the direction of the Law
Men have tormented
themselves to find out
how it should be, that
Because a man can better bear to lose remain without that
which as yet he has not, than to lose what he has got already.
I have seen a book where there has been much distress to find
out — — — —
The answer is that . . .
not
Locke & Puffendorf have been turned over in vain: and at last
the conclusion has been that it was because
When there is an inconvenience
in the opposite
rule to believe that of obedience
to the Law, men
do not obey the only thing men
ever speak of under
that name when they come upon
the subject of Jurisprudence
I say on the contrary that the very essence of
a Law is that obedience to it is a matter
of choice, the proof is, that there never was
that Law under which this has not
been exerted, exercised + + by the embracing
sometimes of one
side of the alternative
and sometimes of the
other sometimes now in the way of obedience [in conformity to the
Law] at another time now of disobedience
and the grand problem is, how it may be disposed
to throw itself on one side rather than the other.
A quvibore
lose its nature
Where is the good of saying, that a Law would
be no Law if it left any room for choice to
operate?
When I have said this
& have said no more
perhaps then What they
themselves [these writers]
measure but
INTROD. Obligation. [BR][ ]
Moralists of a certain stamp have been
fond of dissembling the existence of this
option, & of using the same terms to express
the tendency a law has to produce or stop a certain
event, that natural causes have to produce
their's: well intentioned but ineffective as if I could tie a man's hands
behind him by talking of a rape: or [as if
I could] take away a man's his power & cut my
throat by saying that he had none.
have not chance to
see any option in
the case
as if I could make
a thing to be otherwise
than it is, by resolving
not to look at it
as if I would take
away a man's power
to cut my throat by
saying that he had
none
Hence all that jargon about the obligation
of the Law & its coercive power about
a man's being bound, & his being obliged: about
the cases where a man can do a thing
& where he cannot: notable language to use language notably adapted to
where the very complaint misfortune is that he is
doing it all the while.
while the very case
that puts them upon
using it is,
that it is a doing
The way to be taken to other things that are not as he
would wish them to be, is not to keep saying [ shut our
eyes and] say) that they are otherwise
but to see them as they are
about necessity, a
term by which men
have chosen to denote as well
that state of things
[on which] whereas a certain
thing is always in
a certain nature
whether we could
have it so or no,
and that in which
we could have a
thing is to be always
in a certain something
but it is not.
How many volumes have their not wasted in
ringing the changes upon their the word obligation &
those it conjugates
I write the chapter upon obligation, expressly
for the sake of saying giving notice that I would
have nothing more to do with it — I should
have been as glad of it as any one — it would
have saved words in a thousand instances,
& given an [and of] to the discourse fluency opposite to that
air of shiftiness which sets dwells upon the words state
of him who deserts deviates from the track of ordinary
expression — But I might still speak of
a man as being bound by the Law when where I conceived the motive
for his obedience [of its making] was to be stronger
than that for his disobedience of his finding.
deception steal
upon them
had them acting into
the regions of nonsense
& confusion
are again mystery
where there is none
as a like the battered jade
that has which having been used
to dredge one in a
certain track
on it's rider
in the old course
whether he will or
no
Words Terms which, when the sense they are used in
is announced do no more learn, than any
other words which are applied to a one should apply/begin at a given time to to a
begin on the sudden set of ideas after having all along little
then applied them to their opposite: with
great care caution such as could never be kept up
for any constancy for any length of time to keep the charge in
in remembrance mind, there would be neither good nor harm done
but sometimes it will creep out of mind: & then
the old set of ideas will come in, all
opposition, at the call of the [old] names to which
from their birth they have been associated: &
then welcome confusion, self contradiction & [dismay]
[interminable] dispute.
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Identifier: | JB/063/045/002 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 63.
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063 |
law in general |
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045 |
introduction obligation |
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text sheet |
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recto |
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jeremy bentham |
[[watermarks::[gr with crown motif] [lion with vryheyt motif]]] |
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