UTILITARIANISM, the form of ethical doctrine which teaches that conduct is morally good according as it promotes the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people (Lat. utilis, useful). The term "utilitarian" was noticed by J. S. Mill, in a novel of Galt ; but it was first suggested by Bentham.
It is in a clerical work written against Hobbes, Bishop Cumber land's De Legibus Naturae (pub. in 1672), that we find the begin nings of utilitarianism.
Another clergyman, John Gay, in a dissertation added to Law's translation of Archbishop King's Origin of Evil (pub. in 1731) expanded Cumberland's doctrine. Further advances along the same line of thought were made by Abraham Tucker in his Light of Nature Pursued (pub. 1768-74). Gay and Tucker supplied nearly all the important ideas of Paley's Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (pub. in 1785), in which theological utili tarianism is summarized and comes to a close. Hume's Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (pub. in 1755), though utili tarian is very far from being theological. Hume, taking for granted that benevolence is the supreme virtue, points out that the essence of benevolence is to increase the happiness of others.
Bentham, the founder of political utilitarianism, took up the greatest happiness principle not as an attractive topic of study, but as a criterion to distinguish good laws from bad. Sir John Bowring tells us that when Bentham was casting about for such a criterion "he met with Hume's Essays and found in them what he sought." These opinions are developed in his Principles of Morals and Legislation (pub. in 1789) and in the Deontology (published posthumously in 1834). Philosophically Bentham makes but little advance upon the theological utilitarians. His table of springs of actions shows the same mean-spirited omissions that we notice in his predecessors; he measures the quantity of pleasures by the coarsest and most mechanical tests; and he sets up general pleasure as the criterion of moral goodness. These principles of Bentham were the inspiration of the philo sophic radicals of the early 19th century. From Bentham the leadership in utilitarianism passed to James Mill, who made no characteristic addition to its doctrine, and from him to John Stuart Mill whose essay Utilitarianism (pub. in 1863) sums up
in brief and perfect form the essential principles of his doctrine. The last writer who, though not a political utilitarian, may be regarded as belonging to the school of Mill is Henry Sidgwick, whose elaborate Methods of Ethics (1874) may be regarded as closing this line of thought.
Even before the appearance of Sidgwick's book utilitarianism had entered upon its third or evolutional phase, in which principles borrowed from biological science make their entrance into moral philosophy. The main doctrine of evolutional or biological ethics is stated with admirable clearness in the third chapter of Darwin's Descent of Man (pub. in 1871). The most famous of the sys tematic exponents of evolutional utilitarianism is, of course, Her bert Spencer, in whose Data of Ethics (1879) the facts of morality are viewed in relation with his vast conception of the total process of cosmic evolution. The best feature of the Data of Ethics is its anti-ascetic vindication of pleasure as man's natural guide to what is physiologically healthy and morally good. Leslie Stephen with less brilliance but more attention to scientific method worked out in his Science of Ethics (1882) the conception of morality as a function of the social organism.
BiBuooRAPHY.—Leslie Stephen, English Utilitarianism (1900) ; E. Albee, History of English Utilitarianism; A. Thomsen, David Hume, sein Leben and seine Philosophic (1912) ; A. Stadler, Herbert Spencer (Leipzig, 1913) ; W. L. Davidson; Political Thought in England. The Utilitarians from Bentham to J. S. Mill (1915) ; H. Elliott, Herbert Spencer (1917) ; H. G. Lundin, The Influence of Jeremy Bentham on English Democratic Development, University of Iowa Studies in Social Sciences, vol. vii. (1918-22) ; H. K. Garnier, John Stuart Mill and the Philosophy of Mediation (1919) ; A. Joussain, Exposé critique de la philosophie de Berkeley (1921) ; G. Wallas, Jeremy Bentham (1922); Autobiography of John Stuart Mill, ed. H. Taylor (1924) ; C. W. Hendel, Studies in the Philosophy of David Hume (Princeton, 1925). See also the biographies of MILL, J. S.; HUME, DAVID; SPENCER, HER BERT; and BENTHAM, JEREMY.