The other principle, Sympathy and Antipathy, means the unreasoning approbation or disapprobation of the individual mind, where fancy, caprice, accidental liking or disliking, may mix with a regard to human happiness. This is properly the negation of a principle. What we expect to find in a principle is some _external_ consideration, warranting and guiding our sentiments of approbation and disapprobation; a basis that all are agreed upon.
It is under this head that Bentham rapidly surveys and dismisses all the current theories of Right and Wrong. They consist all of them, he says, in so many contrivances for avoiding an appeal to any external standard, and for requiring us to accept the author's sentiment or opinion as a reason for itself. The dictates of this principle, however, will often unintentionally coincide with utility; for what more natural ground of hatred to a practice can there be than its mischievous tendency? The things that men suffer by, they will be disposed to hate. Still, it is not constant in its operation; for people may ascribe the suffering to the wrong cause. The principle is most liable to err on the side of severity; differences of taste and of opinion are sufficient grounds for quarrel and resentment. It will err on the side of lenity, when a mischief is remote and imperceptible.
The author reserves a distinct handling for the Theological principle; alleging that it falls under one or other of the three foregoing. The Will of God must mean his will as revealed in the sacred writings, which, as the labours of divines testify, themselves stand in need of interpretation. What is meant, in fact, is the _presumptive_ will of God; that is, what is presumed to be his will on account of its conformity with another principle. We are pretty sure that what is right is conformable to his will, but then this requires us first to know what is right. The usual mode of knowing God's pleasure (he remarks) is to observe what is our own pleasure, and pronounce that to be his.
Chapter III.--ON FOUR SANCTIONS OR SOURCES OF PAIN AND PLEASURE whereby men are stimulated to act right; they are termed, _physical, political, moral_, and _religious_. These are the Sanctions of Right.