makes Laws of Nature. Another says he has a sense on purpose and it is this sense that pronounces what is right and what is wrong. This is the way that Lord Shaftesbury, Dr Hutchinson (sic), and the triumvirate of Doctors lately slaughter'd, not to say butcher'd, by Dr Priestley, make Laws of Nature. Bentham avait donc lu et apprécié les remarques de Priestley sur Reid, Oswald et Beattie. Dans les Traités, le principe de sympathie et d'antipathie s'appelle aussi principe « arbitraire». Faut-il voir dans cette dénomination un souvenir de Priestley reprochant à Reid d'avoir, en réfutant le scepticisme de Hume, introduit lui-même un scepticisme universel, « denying all the connections which had before been supposed to subsist between the several phaenomena, powers, and operations of the mind, and substituting such a number of independent, arbitrary, instinctive principles, that the very enumeration of them is really tiresome»?

131. Introduction, chap. II, § XII; Bowring, vol. I, p. 8.

132. Introduction, chap. I, § xIv; Bowring, vol. I, p. 3. -Les mots ipsedixitisme, sentimentalisme, ne se trouvent pas dans l'Introduction; mais ils se rencontrent dans les manuscrits de la même époque, sinon les mots eux-mêmes, du moins les expressions voisines ipse dixit, et l'adjectif sentimental. L'adjectif sentimental est alors un néologisme à la mode. V. George Campbell, The Philosophy of Rhetoric, 1776, vol. I, p. 179: The term, I own is rather modern, but is nevertheless convenient, as it fills a vacant room, and doth not, like most of our newf angled words, justle out older and worthier occupants, to the no small detriment of the language. C'est en 1776, dans son École de la Médisance, que Sheridan bafoue l'« homme de sentiment », dont la morale est tout entière en professions de foi, une hypocrisie, une « surface ». Les moralistes de l'utilité cherchent à constituer une morale qui, fondée sur la base réelle de l'intérêt, ne soit pas la morale de Joseph Surface.

133. Pannomial fragments; Bowring, vol. III, p. 224.

134. L'expression, devenue classique, ne se rencontre pas dans l'Introduction de 1780-1789. Elle est employée dans le Discours Préliminaire des Traités de Législation (p. XXV) de Dumont.

135. Des réflexions relatives à la méthode apparaissent pour la première fois (Mss. Brit. Mus. 37, 537, f. 327), dans une lettre consacrée à des questions de chimie et d'électricité, et écrite en 1774 : « A factitious nomenclature when not too far fetched, is of considerable use in the Sciences for the purposes of Brevity and Precision, of Brevity, by substituting a word or two in the place of a whole sentence. Of Precision, by cutting off verbal varieties in the description of the same thing.

136. Introduction, chap. IV; Bowring, vol. I, pp. 15-17.

137. Introduction, chap. III; Bowring, vol. I, pp. 14-5.

138. N'y a-t-il pas quelque confusion dans cette énumération d'éléments?

Maupertuis, malgré le reproche que lui adresse Bentham à ce propos, n'avait-il pas raison d'éliminer l'élément proximité? L'élément proximité ne semble, effectivement, accroître la valeur d'un plaisir que dans la mesure où il cause un accroissement de certitude.

139. V. Appendice II. Mss. Univ. Coll. n° 69 (Legislation, Crit. Jur. Crim. Preparatory Principles). Dans le long fragment intitulé Crit. Jurisp. Crim., p. 72: Observe that the number expressing the Certainty and Propinquity of a pleasure must be a fraction. The limit on the side of menace the maximum being but an unit. One crime to another is as the sum of the values of the pains of each to the sum of the values of the pains of the other. One pleasure in a society is to another

as idecp to IDECP. C and c, P and p are always fractions. A Pain or Pleasure loses in certainty, upon the single account of its being distant. But this is in a fixed ratio, the same for all pains and pleasures. Pour désigner l'extension, Bentham a hésité entre le signe e (: extension) et le signe n ( number).

140. Introd., chap. IV, § vi; Bowring, vol. I, p. 16.

141. Introd., chap. V; Bowring, vol. I, p. 17 sqq.

142. Introd., chap. V, § xxxII; Bowring, vol. I, pp. 20-1. 143. Introd., chap. V, § 1; Bowring, vol. I, p. 17.

144. Ibid.

145. Introd., chap. VIII, § Ix; Bowring, vol. I, p. 40 sqq. 146. Introd., chap. X; Bowring, vol. I, p. 46 sqq.

147. On Man, Part I, chap. III, sect. I, Prop. LXXX, Cor. 5. When words have acquired any considerable power of exciting pleasant or painful vibrations in the nervous system, by being often associated with such things as do this, they may transfer a part of these pleasures and pains upon indifferent things, by being at other times often associated with such. This is one of the principal sources of the several factitious pleasures and pains of human life. Thus, to give an instance from childhood, the words sweet, good, pretty, fine, etc., on the one hand, and the words bad, ugly, frightful, etc., on the other, being applied by the nurse and attendants in the young child's hearing almost promiscuously, and without those restrictions that are observed in correct speaking, the one to all the pleasures, the other to all the pains of the several senses, must by association raise up general pleasant and painful vibrations, in which no one part can be distinguished above the rest; and, when applied by farther associations to objects of a neutral kind, they must transfer a general pleasure or pain upon them. 148. Introd., chap. X, § XIII; Bowring, vol. I, p. 49.

149. Ibid. Cf. Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part. VII, sect. II: The ingenious sophistry of his (Mandeville's) reasoning is here, as upon many other occasions, covered by the ambiguity of language. There

are some of our passions which have no other names except those which mark the disagreable and offensive degree. The spectator is more apt to take notice of them in this degree than in any other.

150. Nomography. Bowring, vol. III, p. 273.

151. Traités, Code Pénal, Partie Iv, chap. III. de 1789; Bowring, vol. I, p. IV.

Introduction, préface

1

Cf.

152. Table of the Springs of Action; Bowring, vol. I, p. 205. Pannomial fragments, Bowring, vol. III, p. 212; Art of Packing Special Juries, Bowring, vol. V, p. 71, etc. Traités, Code Civil, Partie I, chap. VI.

CHAPITRE II

LA PHILOSOPHIE JURIDIQUE DE BENTHAM

1. Blackstone I Comm. 4. The science thus committed to his charge, to be cultivated, methodized, and explained in a course of academic lectures, is that of the laws and constitution of our own country; a species of knowledge, in which the gentlemen of England have been more remarkably deficient that those of all Europe besides. Cf. la lettre de Blackstone à lord Shelburne, du 27 déc. 1761. Il est curieux de remarquer que Blackstone et Bentham en viennent à définir leur objet presque en termes identiques. V. Blackstone I Comm. 32: If practice be the whole he is taught, practice must also be the whole he will ever know if he be uninstructed in the elements and first principles upon which the rule of practice is founded, the least variation from established precedents will totally distract and bewilder him: ita lex scripta est is the utmost his knowledge will arrive at : he must never aspire to form, and seldom expect to comprehend, any arguments drawn a priori, from the spirit of the laws and the natural foundations of justice et Bentham, Fragment on Government, Introd., (Bowring. vol. I, p 229), discutant Blackstone : « His professed object was to explain to us what the laws of England were. « Ita lex scripta est» was the only motto which he stood engaged to Keep in view. 2. Bowring, vol. I, p. 249; vol. X, p 45.

3. Bentham se donne pour l'adversaire acharné de Blackstone, l' « antiBlackstone », depuis le moment où il écrit le Fragment on Government, jusqu'au moment où, en 1828, quatre ans avant sa mort, nous le trouvons encore occuper à réfuter Blackstone. Le titre de cet ouvrage projeté, qui ne fut jamais achevé, c'est « A familiar view of Blackstone; or say Blackstone familiarized ; or else Blackstone and Law familiarized ». Et voici le

début de l'introduction: This paper has for its object or end in view, the giving to the people of England and its dependencies in as few words as possible a conception as clear as possible of the state of the law as it is, in England. On considering how this can be done, it has been found that by no other means could any conception be given of law as it is, so clear, if at all, as by means of law as it ought to be. Bentham projette de commencer cet écrit par une allégorie, le récit d'un rêve. Il s'est endormi dans le Lecture Room de l'Université de Londres; et quatre femmes lui apparaissent: Astraea, déesse de la justice, à sa droite Félicia, qui, en se fondant sur le principe du plus grand bonheur, enseigne la loi telle qu'elle doit être, à sa gauche, Gubernia, qui enseigne la loi telle qu'elle est, et Dolosa, qui enseigne ce que la loi n'est pas, et cependant prétend être dans un cas donné. << I observed, continue Bentham, that the seat of the Professor Blackstone was part of it under one of them [Gubernia and Dolosa], part of it under the other, but he appeared a great favourite with both and that without interruption of amity he seemed to be in the possession of both on the footing of joint tenancy ». Suit un dialogue auquel prennent part les quatre femmes et Blackstone (Mss. Univ. Coll. n° 31). — V. d'autre part (Mss. Univ. Coll. n° 73) la lettre imaginaire d'un Country Gentleman qui a acheté les Commentaires pour apprendre le droit et qui dit ses déceptions: « I am a Country Gentleman. I wish to have some acquaintance with the Laws under which I live. I hear from all quarters of there being a book by the help of which I may compass it with a pleasure which can only be surpassed by the solidity of the instruction... the work being peculiarly calculated for the instruction of such persons as have no more than that share of preliminary knowledge which I flatter myself to possess. It contains not indeed, I am told, the whole law: for of this there are but four volumes and of that there are four hundred; but that so much as it does contain may be depended upon for true. I purchase it. — Et voici comment se termine la lettre : « In conclusion, if it be true that the use of language is, not to furnish terms for a man to shelter himself under, while he causes others to go astray, but to imprint ideas on the minds of those to whom it is addressed, conformable to the truth of things; we may venture to establish it as an universal and inviolable rule, for those who mean to give the reality, without contenting themselves with the delusive shadow of right instruction, never to give the Law without the Equity which controuls it, nor the Common Law without the Statute which has altered it, nor the Letter without the Practice which modifies it into effect.

4. Fragment on Government, Préface. Bowring, vol. I, p. 229.

5. Ibid. Bowring, vol. I, p. 237. - Cf. Introd., chap. XVI, 44, LVII.

6. Traité des Délits et des Peines, § IV.

7. Traités. Vue générale d'un Corps complet de Législation, chap. I. (Bowring, vol. III, p. 158).