Laziness and vice were prevalent.A gentleman commoner of Queen's was president of a 'hellfire club,'and brutal horseplay was still practised upon the weaker lads.Bentham,still a schoolboy in age,continued his schoolboy course.
He wrote Latin verses,and one of his experiments,an ode upon the death of George II,was sent to Johnson,who called it 'a very pretty performance for a young man.'He also had to go through the form of disputation in the schools.Queen's College had some reputation at this time for teaching logic.(9)Bentham was set to read Watt's Logic (1725),Sanderson's Compendium artis Logicae,(1615),and Rowning's Compendious System of Natural Philosophy (1735-42).
Some traces of these studies remained in his mind.
In 1763Bentham took his B.A.degree,and returned to his home.lt is significant that when robbed of all his money at Oxford he did not confide in his father.He Was paying by a morbid reserve for the attempts made to force him into premature activity.He accepted the career imposed by his father's wishes,and in November 1763began to eat his dinners in Lincoln's Inn.He returned,however,to Oxford in December to hear Blackstone's lectures.
These lectures were then a novelty at an English university.The Vinerian professorship had been founded in 1758in consequence of the success of a course voluntarily given by Blackstone;and his lectures contained the substance of the famous Commentaries,first published 1765-1769.They had a great effect upon Bentham.He says that he 'immediately detected Blackstone's fallacy respecting natural rights,'thought other doctrines illogical,and was so much occupied by these reflections as to be unable to take notes.Bentham's dissatisfaction with Blackstone had not yet made him an opponent of the constituted order.He was present at some of the proceedings against Wilkes,and was perfectly bewitched by Lord Mansfield's 'Grimgibber'that is,taken in by his pompous verbiage.(10)In 1765his father married Mrs Abbot,the mother of Charles Abbot,afterwards Lord Colchester.Bentham's dislike of his step-mother increased the distance between him and his father.He took his M.A.degree in 1766and in 1767finally left Oxford for London to begin,as his father fondly hoped,a fight towards the woolsack.The lad's diffidence and extreme youth had indeed prevented him from forming the usual connections which his father anticipated as the result of a college life.His career as a barrister was short and grievously disappointing to the parental hopes.His father,like the Elder Fairford in Redgauntlet,had 'a cause or two at nurse'for the son.The son's first thought was to 'put them to death.'A brief was given to him in a suit,upon which ?50depended.He advised that the suit should be dropped and the money saved.Other experiences only increased his repugnance to his profession.(11)A singularly strong impression had been made upon him by the Memoirs of Teresa Constantia Phipps,in which there is an account of vexatious legal proceedings as to the heroine's marriage.He appears to have first read this book in 1759.Then,he says,the 'Demon of Chicane appeared to me in all his hideousness.
I vowed war against him.My vow has been accomplished!'(12)Bentham thus went to the bar as a 'bear to the stake.'He diverged in more than one direction.
He studied chemistry under Fordyce (1736-1802),and hankered after physical science.He was long afterwards (1788)member of a club to which Sir Joseph Banks,John Hunter,R.L.Edgeworth,and other men of scientific reputation belonged.(13)But he had drifted into a course of speculation,which,though more germane to legal studies,was equally fatal to professional success.
The father despaired,and he was considered to be a 'lost child.'
II.FIRST WRITINGS
Though lost to the bar,he had really found himself.He had taken the line prescribed by his idiosyncrasy.His father's injudicious forcing had increased his shyness at the bar,and he was like an owl in daylight.But no one,as we shall see,was less diffident in speculation.Self-confidence in a philosopher is often the private credit which he opens with his imagination to compensate for his incapacity in the rough struggles of active life.Bentham shrank from the world in which he was easily browbeaten to the study in which he could reign supreme.He had not the strong passions which prompt commonplace ambition,and cared little for the prizes for which most men will sacrifice their lives.Nor,on the other hand,can he be credited with that ardent philanthropy or vehement indignation which prompts to an internecine struggle with actual wrongdoers.He had not the ardour which led Howard to devote a life to destroy abuses,or that which turned Swift's blood to gall in the struggle against triumphant corruption.He was thoroughly amiable,but of kindly rather than energetic affections.He,therefore,desired reform,but so far from regarding the ruling classes with rancour,took their part against the democrats.'I was a great reformist,'he says,'but never suspected that the "people in power"were against reform.I supposed they only wanted to know what was good in order to embrace it.'(14)The most real of pleasures for him lay in speculating upon the general principles by which the 'people in power'should be guided.To construct a general chart for legislation,to hunt down sophistries,to explode mere noisy rhetoric,to classify and arrange and re-classify until his whole intellectual wealth was neatly arranged in proper pigeon-holes,was a delight for its own sake.