The foregoing quotation may serve to indicate briefly the situation, in politics and philosophy, at the time when Bentham, 'the patriarch of the English Utilitarians,' appeared upon the scene. Mr. Stephen's sketch of his life and doctrines, which occupies the latter half of the book's first volume, is eminently instructive and often amusing. He excels in tracing the continuity of ideas, and in showing how they converge upon the point of view that is gradually reached by some writer of superior force and activity, who rejects, alters, or uses them in the process of working out the doctrines of some new school. It was the spread of philanthropy, of a conscientious fellow-feeling for those classes of society who suffered from neglect and misrule, that fostered the movement towards political and social reform. This feeling was represented in Bentham's celebrated formula, originally invented by Hutcheson, about 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number'; and the criterion of utility was laid down as having the widest possible application to all sorts and conditions of men. Self-help, individualism, _laisser-faire_, the economic view that each should be left free to pursue his own interests, were principles intended to operate for the removal of abuses and the destruction of unfair privileges: they were promulgated for the relief of humanity at large, although the system which was built up on them came afterwards to be denounced as narrow, selfish, and materialistic. These ideas were undoubtedly congenial to the habits and character of Englishmen, who, like free men everywhere, had a traditional distrust of strong and active government, preferring King Log, on the whole, to King Stork. Inequalities and incomprehensible laws were to be seen in the course of Nature no less than in the English Constitution; and in either case a man might rely upon his wits and energy to deal with them. It might be that the defects in human government could only be remedied by employing the forces of government to cure them; but if you began to set going the administrative engine there was no saying where it might stop. Bentham held all government to be an evil, though he differed from the modern anarchist in holding it to be a necessary evil; yet he needed a strong scientific administration for the purpose of rooting out inveterate abuses. And this was the dilemma that confronted him. He worked out his solution of the problem by laying out a whole system of morals and a science of politics, with Utility as their base and standard, which has profoundly influenced all subsequent legislation, and led eventually to much more extensive theories regarding the sphere and duties of government than he himself would have advocated or approved.