their philosophy on politics--especially on foreign politics, on law, on
social life, has been upon the whole beneficial. Nevertheless, they will
never have justice done to them, for they do not agree either with the
better feeling of the multitude or with the idealism of more refined
thinkers. Without Bentham, a great word in the history of philosophy would
have remained unspoken. Yet to this day it is rare to hear his name
received with any mark of respect such as would be freely granted to the
ambiguous memory of some father of the Church. The odium which attached to
him when alive has not been removed by his death. For he shocked his
contemporaries by egotism and want of taste; and this generation which has
reaped the benefit of his labours has inherited the feeling of the last.
He was before his own age, and is hardly remembered in this.

While acknowledging the benefits which the greatest happiness principle has
conferred upon mankind, the time appears to have arrived, not for denying
its claims, but for criticizing them and comparing them with other
principles which equally claim to lie at the foundation of ethics. Any one
who adds a general principle to knowledge has been a benefactor to the
world. But there is a danger that, in his first enthusiasm, he may not
recognize the proportions or limitations to which his truth is subjected;
he does not see how far he has given birth to a truism, or how that which
is a truth to him is a truism to the rest of the world; or may degenerate
in the next generation. He believes that to be the whole which is only a
part,--to be the necessary foundation which is really only a valuable
aspect of the truth. The systems of all philosophers require the criticism
of 'the morrow,' when the heat of imagination which forged them has cooled,
and they are seen in the temperate light of day. All of them have
contributed to enrich the mind of the civilized world; none of them occupy
that supreme or exclusive place which their authors would have assigned to
them.