第64章 BENTHAM'S LIFE(8)

Then taking up any subdivision,he wrote his remarks upon sheets,which were put aside after being marked with references indicating their place in the final treatise.He never turned to these again.In time he would exhaust the whole subject,and it would then be the duty of his disciples simply to put together the bricks according to the indications placed upon each in order to construct the whole edifice.(56)As,however,the plan would frequently undergo a change,and as each fragment had been written without reference to the others,the task of ultimate combination and adaptation of the ultimate atoms was often very perplexing.Bentham,as we shall see,formed disciples ardent enough to put together these scattered documents as the disciples of Mahomet put together the Koran.Bentham's revelation was possibly less influential than Mahomet's;but the logical framework was far more coherent.

Bentham's mind was for the present distracted.He had naturally returned full of information about Russia.The English ministry were involved in various negotiations with Russia,Sweden,and Denmark,the purpose of which was to thwart the designs of Russia in the East.Bentham wrote three letters to the Public Advertiser,signed Anti-Machiavel,(57)protesting against the warlike policy.Bentham himself believed that the effect was decisive,and that the 'war was given up'in consequence of his arguments.Historians (58)scarcely sanction this belief,which is only worth notice because it led to another belief,oddly characteristic of Bentham.A letter signed 'Partizan'in the Public Advertiser replied to his first two letters.Who was 'Partizan'?

Lord Lansdowne amused himself by informing Bentham that he was no less a personage than George III.Bentham,with even more than his usual simplicity,accepted this hoax as a serious statement.He derived no little comfort from the thought;for to the antipathy thus engendered in the 'best of kings'he attributed the subsequent failure of his Panopticon scheme.(59)

III.THE PANOPTICON.

The crash of the French revolution was now to change the whole course of European politics,and to bring philosophical jurists face to face with a long series of profoundly important problems.Bentham's attitude during the early stages of the revolution and the first war period is significant,and may help to elucidate some characteristics of the Utilitarian movement.