Greatest Happiness Principle

O. P. Q. in the Morning Chronicle is a clever fellow. He is for the / greatest possible happiness for the greatest possible number, and for the / longest possible time! So am I; so are you, and every one of us, I will / venture to say, round the tea-table. First, however, what does O. P. Q. / mean by the word _happiness_? and, secondly, how does he propose to make / other persons agree in _his_ definition of the term? Don't you see the / ridiculous absurdity of setting up _that_ as a principle or motive of / action, which is, in fact, a necessary and essential instinct of our very / nature -- an inborn and inextinguishable desire? How can creatures / susceptible of pleasure and pain do otherwise than desire happiness? But, / _what_ happiness? That is the question. The American savage, in scalping / his fallen enemy, pursues _his_ happiness naturally and adequately. A / Chickasaw, or Pawnee Bentham, or O. P. Q., would necessarily hope for the / most frequent opportunities possible of scalping the greatest possible / number of savages, for the longest possible time. There is no escaping this / absurdity, unless you come back to a standard of reason and duty, / imperative upon our merely pleasurable sensations. Oh! but, says O. P. Q., / I am for the happiness of _others! _ Of others! Are you, indeed? Well, I / happen to be one of those _others_, and, so far as I can judge from what / you show me of your habits and views, I would rather be excused from your / banquet of happiness. _Your_ mode of happiness would make _me_ miserable. / To go about doing as much _good_ as possible to as many men as possible, / is, indeed, an excellent object for a man to propose to himself; but then, / in order that you may not sacrifice the real good and happiness of others / to your particular views, which may be quite different from your / neighbour's, you must do _that_ good to others which the reason, common to / all, pronounces to be good for all. In this sense your fine maxim is so / very true as to be a mere truism.

So you object, with old Hobbes, that I do good actions _for_ the pleasure / of a good conscience; and so, after all, I am only a refined sensualist! / Heaven bless you, and mend your logic! Don't you see that if conscience, / which is in its nature a consequence, were thus anticipated and made an / antecedent -- a party instead of a judge -- it would dishonour your draft upon / it -- it would not pay on demand? Don't you see that, in truth, the very fact / of acting with this motive properly and logically destroys all claim upon / conscience to give you any pleasure at all?