Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters,
_pain_ and _pleasure_. It is for them alone to point out what we ought
to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the
standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and
effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in
all we say, in all we think; every effort we can make to throw off our
subjection will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man
may pretend to abjure their empire; but in reality he will remain
subject to it all the while. The _principle of utility_ recognizes this
subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object
of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of
law. Systems which attempt to question it deal in sounds instead of
sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.
But enough of metaphor and declamation: it is not by such means that
moral science is to be improved.
The principle of utility is the foundation of the present work; it will
be proper, therefore, at the outset to give an explicit and determinate
account of what is meant by it. By the principle of utility is meant
that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever,
according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or
diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question; or,
what is the same thing in other words, to promote or to oppose that
happiness. I say of every action whatsoever; and therefore not only of
every action of a private individual, but of every measure of
government.
By utility is meant that property in any object whereby it tends to
produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness (all this in
the present case comes to the same thing), or (what comes again to the
same thing) to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or
unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered: if that party be
the community in general, then the happiness of the community; if a
particular individual, then the happiness of that individual.
The interest of the community is one of the most general expressions
that can occur in the phraseology of morals: no wonder that the meaning
of it is often lost. When it has a meaning, it is this: The community
is a fictitious _body_, composed of the individual persons who are
considered as constituting, as it were, its _members_. The interest of
the community, then, is what? The sum of the interests of the several
members who compose it.
It is vain to talk of the interest of the community, without
understanding what is the interest of the individual. A thing is said to
promote the interest, or to be _for_ the interest, of an individual,
when it tends to add to the sum total of his pleasures: or, what comes
to the same thing, to diminish the sum total of his pains.
An action, then, may be said to be conformable to the principle of
utility, or for shortness' sake to utility (meaning with respect to the
community at large), when the tendency it has to augment the happiness
of the community is greater than any it has to diminish it.
A measure of government (which is but a particular kind of action,
performed by a particular person or persons) may be said to be
conformable to or dictated by the principle of utility, when in like
manner the tendency which it has to augment the happiness of the
community is greater than any which it has to diminish it.
When an action, or in particular a measure of government, is supposed by
a man to be conformable to the principle of utility, it may be
convenient for the purposes of discourse to imagine a kind of law or
dictate called a law or dictate of utility, and to speak of the action
in question as being conformable to such law or dictate.
A man may be said to be a partisan of the principle of utility, when the
approbation or disapprobation he annexes to any action, or to any
measure, is determined by and proportioned to the tendency which he
conceives it to have to augment or to diminish the happiness of the
community; or in other words, to its conformity or unconformity to the
laws or dictates of utility.
Of an action that is conformable to the principle of utility, one may
always say either that it is one that ought to be done, or at least that
it is not one that ought not to be done. One may say also that it is
right it should be done, at least that it is not wrong it should be
done; that it is a right action, at least that it is not a wrong action.
When thus interpreted, the words _ought_, and _right_ and _wrong_, and
others of that stamp, have a meaning; when otherwise, they have none.