SUMMARY OF PRINCIPLES

ESTABLISHED AND REASONED UPON IN THE FOLLOWING WORK

___________________

The reader who would form a just estimate of the reasonings of
 these volumes cannot perhaps proceed more judiciously than by
 examining for himself the truth of these principles, and the
 support they afford to the various inferences interspersed
 through the work. 

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I.

THE true object of moral and political disquisition, is pleasure or
 happiness.
The primary, or earliest, class of human pleasures is the pleasures 
 of the external senses.
In addition to these, man is susceptible of certain secondary plea-
 suers, as the pleasures of intellectual feeling, the pleasures 
 of sympathy, and the pleasures of self-approbation.
The secondary pleasures are probably more exquisite than the 
 primary:
Or, at least,
The most desirable state of man is that in which he has access 
 to all these sources of pleasure, and is in possession of a 
 happiness the most varied and uninterrupted.
This state is a state of high civilization.

II.

The most desirable condition of the human species is a state of 
 society.
The injustice and violence of men in a state of society produced 
 the demand for government.
Government, as it was forced upon mankind by their vises, so 
 has it commonly been the creature of their ignorance and
 mistake.
Government was intended to suppress injustice, but it offers new 
 occasions and temptations for the commission of it.
By concentrating the force of the community, it gives occasion to 
 wild projects of calamity, to oppression, despotism, war and 
 conquest.
By perpetuating and aggravating the inequality of property, it 
 fosters many injurious passions, and excites men to the 
 practice of robbery and fraud.
Government was intended to suppress injustice, but its effect has 
 been to embody and perpetuate it.

III.

The immediate object of government is security.
The means employed by government is restriction, an abridg-
 ment of individual independence.
The pleasures of self-approbation, together with the right cultiva-
 tion of all our pleasures, require individual independence.
Without independence men cannot become either wise, or useful, 
 or happy.
Consequently, the most desirable state of mankind is that which 
 maintains general security, with the smallest incroachment 
 upon individual independence.

IV.

The true standard of the conduct of one man towards another, is 
 justice.
Justice is a principle which proposes to itself the production of the 
 greatest sum of pleasure or happiness.
Justice requires that I should put myself in the place of an 
 impartial spectator of human concerns, and divest myself 
 of retrospect to my own predilections.
Justice is a rule of the utmost universality, and prescribes a speci-
 fic mode of proceeding, in all affairs by which the happiness 
 of a human being may be affected.

V.

Duty is that mode of action which constitutes the best application 
 of the capacity of the individual to the general advantage.
Right is the claim of the individual to his share of the benefit 
 arising from his neighbors' discharge of their several duties.
The claim of the individual is either to the exertion or the for-
 bearance of his neighbors.
The exertions of men in society should ordinarily be trusted to 
 their discretion; their forbearance, in certain cases, is a 
 point of more pressing necessity, and is the direct province 
 of political superintendence, or government.

VI.

The voluntary actions of men are under the direction of their 
 feelings.
Reason is not an independent principle, and has no tendency to 
 excite us to action; in a practical view, it is merely a com-
 parison and balancing of different feelings.
Reason, though it cannot excite us to action, is calculated to 
 regulate our conduct, according to the comparative worth it 
 ascribes to different excitements.
It is to the improvement of reason therefore that we are to look 
 for the improvement of our social condition.

VII.

Reason depends for its clearness and strength upon the cultiva-
 tion of knowledge.
The extent of our progress in the cultivation of knowledge is 
 unlimited.
Hence it follows,
1. That human inventions, and the modes of social existence, are 
 susceptible of perpetual improvement.
2. That institutions calculated to give perpetuity to any particular 
 mode of thinking, or condition of existence, are pernicious.

VIII.

The pleasures of intellectual feeling, and the pleasures of self-
 approbation, together with the right cultivation of all our 
 pleasures, are connected with soundness of understanding.
Soundness of understanding is inconsistent with prejudice: con-
 sequently, as few falsehoods as possible, either speculative or 
 practical, should be fostered among mankind.
Soundness of understanding is connected with freedom of inquiry; 
 consequently, opinion should, as far as public security will 
 admit, be exempted from restraint.
Soundness of understanding is connected with simplicity of 
 manners, and leisure for intellectual cultivation: conse-
 quently, a distribution of property extremely unequal, is 
 adverse to the most desirable state of man.

Footnotes

¹The defects here alluded to, have been attempted to be rectified in the second edition. It is impossible perhaps so to improve a crude and unequal performance, as to remove every vestige of its original blemish.

²The first conviction of this kind, which the author was far from imagining to be so near, was of a journeyman tallow-chandler, January 8, 1793, who, being shown the regalia at the Tower, was proved to have vented a coarse expression against royalty to the person that exhibited them.

³The principles delivered on this subject in the last chapter of Book III., are more fully developed in the three first chapters of Book IV.