ored to make a practical application of the principles discovered by the eighteenth century to the problems of the nineteenth century. The English philosophy of the nineteenth century therefore, in its chief representatives, bears the stamp of radicalism and empiricism. Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, pronounced adherents of the radical enlightenment, produced a profound impression on the first decades of the century. John Stuart Mill afterwards undertook on the one hand a consistent development of their principles, and on the other to adapt them to the changed setting of the problem,— namely, that brought about by the romanticism represented by Coleridge and Carlyle and the criticism represented by Hamilton and Whewell.
1. Jeremy Bentham's (1748-1832) most important philosophical writings had appeared already in the eighteenth century (A Fragment on Government, 1776; Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789). But they did not make much of an impression until after the dawn of the new century. Bentham, who, as a private scholar, devoted himself uninterruptedly to his efforts for social and legislative reform, assumed as his chief task the reform of English legislation. He demanded a codification of the laws (he formulated the term codification himself), a reduction in the costs of legal processes, prison reform and an extension of political franchise. Theoretically he assumed the principle of the greatest happiness to the greatest number, previously advocated by Hutcheson, as the fundamental principle of morality. This principle, which to his mind is self-evident, is to govern our judgment of every institution, every action, every quality and every motive. Bentham attacks the so-called natural rights as well as the morality which is
