ETHICS that real rights could only be conferred by positive law; and his greatest scorn was directed to the idea that natural rights could not be overridden ‘Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts’ (B ii 501) If there is no natural law and no natural rights, then no class of actions can be ruled out in advance of the consideration of the consequences of such an action in a particular case This difference between Bentham and previous moralists is highly significant, as can be easily illustrated Aristotle, Aquinas, and almost all Christian moralists believed that adultery was always wrong Not so for Bentham: the consequences foreseen by a particular adulterer must be taken into account before making a moral judgement A believer in natural law, told that some Herod or Nero has killed 5,000 citizens guilty of no crime, will say without further ado, ‘That was a wicked act’ A thoroughgoing consequentialist, before making such a judgement, must ask further questions What were the consequences of the massacre? What did the monarch foresee? What would have happened if he had allowed the 5,000 to live? Modifications of Utilitarianism John Stuart Mill was, like Bentham, a consequentialist But in other ways he toned down aspects of Bentham’s teaching that had been found most offensive In his treatise Utilitarianism, written in his late fifties, he acknowledges that many people have thought that the idea that life has no higher end than pleasure was a doctrine worthy only of swine He replies that it is foolish to deny that humans have faculties that are higher than the ones they share with animals This allows us to make distinctions between different pleasures not only in quantity but also in quality ‘It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the fact that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others’ (U 258) How then we grade the different kinds of pleasure? ‘Of two pleasures’, Mill tells us, ‘if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.’ Armed with this distinction a utilitarian can put a distance between himself and the swine Few humans would wish to be changed into a lower animal even if 225