man, is, as distinguished from the social or gregarious man. Out of this psychology a system of what we may call natural ethics would evolve itself. To a creature made up of sensations the law of self-preservation and of self-enjoyment must be the most authoritative of all commands. Such a being must necessarily pursue its own gratification; for pleasure is sweet and attractive, pain is hateful and repulsive, to all the organised creation. Hence, whatever confers pleasure on the individual will be passionately run after and approved of, whatever inflicts pain will be anxiously shunned and condemned. "Nature," says Jeremy Bentham, "has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pleasure and pain. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do." Whether, and in what sense, pleasure and pain may be said to be the two sovereign masters of mankind in a state of society, I shall not at present stop to inquire: but it is certain that they must be the only two governing principles of man, viewed as a mere sensational being, and considered as he is in himself and out of all relation to his fellows. His ethics, in such a case, could scarcely be called selfish, for selfishness implies not only an exclusive regard to one's self, but a disregard to the claims of others. But there are no others at present in the case, and therefore their claims cannot be disregarded; but in so far as an exclusive regard to one's self is concerned, the natural ethics which arise out
