Page:Works of Jeremy Bentham - 1843 - Volume 1.djvu/31



The general reader is so accustomed to find subjects connected with politics and legislation, treated as the mere topics of passing criticism, that he is not to see them dealt with as matter of elaborate reasoning and accurate analysis. Whoever reads the Works of Bentham should, however, take the task on hand with the condition, not of bestowing on them a mere casual perusal, but of studying them: and it is only in some of his lighter works, or in occasional passages of his more important ones, that those who adopt the former alternative, will find either instruction or amusement. He addressed himself to those who were prepared to bestow on the sciences of Government and Legislation the same rigid intellectual labour, without which no man ever expects to become a proficient in Mathematics or Natural Philosophy. It was his ambition to lay the foundation and to build the superstructure of a new system, by which the departments of thought, which had too long been the playthings of party spirit, passion, and prejudice, should be subjected to the rules of rigid philosophical inquiry; and those who do not come to the perusal of his Works, with minds prepared to follow him through a rigid and systematic train of reasoning, cannot be said to receive him in the capacity in which he presents himself to their notice. Mistaking the method in which the author professes to teach his doctrines, cursory readers have complained of his reiteration of truisms; and they would find the same character in the axioms of Euclid, if they perused them with the same spirit. They have complained that passages are obscure, intricate, and aimless; and they would find the same defect in the Demonstrations of Geometry, if they were hurriedly to read isolated portions of them. The Author's aim was not to plead the cause of opinions unadmitted, or to render received doctrines more pleasing by ornament and illustration, but to demonstrate. It is only as a demonstrator that be can fairly be appreciated. And those who would kudge of the legitimacy of his conclu-