Bentham, Jeremy, was born in London, Febru- ary 15, 1748. He received his early education at Westminster School; and when yet a boy, being little more than twelve years of age, he went to Owen's Col- lege, Oxford, where he took his master's decree in 1766. He studied law, and was called to the bar in 1772, but devoted himself entirely to study, and be- came an able and voluminous writer on government and legislation. His name is mentioned here in view of his writings on morals, which, however, are less orig- inal and valuable than those on government. In all his writings, utility is the leading and pervading prin- ciple ; and his favorite vehicle for its expression is the phrase, " the greatest happiness of the greatest num- ber," which was first coined by Priestley, though its prominence in politics has been owing to Bentham. "In this phrase," he says, "I saw delineated for the first time a plain as well as a true standard for what- ever is right or wrong, useful, useless, or mischievous in human conduct, whether in the field of morals or politics." Accordingly, the leading principle of his ethical writings is, "that the end of all human actions and morality is happiness. By happiness, Bentham means pleasure and exemption from pain ; and the fundamental principle from which he starts is, that the actions of sentient beings are wholly governed by pleasure and pain. He held that happiness is the 'summum bonum,' in fact, the only thing desirable in itself; that all other things are desirable solely as means to that end ; that therefore the production of the greatest possible amount of happiness is the only fit object of all human exertion." He died in "West- minster, June 6, 1882. See Ethics; Morals.
Bentham, Thomas, bishop of Lichfield and Cov- entry, was born in Yorkshire about 1513. He became a follow of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1513, and distinguished himself in Hebrew. He early sided with the Reforming party, and became prominent as a zealous opponent of the superstitions of popery. ( In the accession of Mary, he disdained to conceal or re- tract his sentiments, anil he was deprived of his fellow- ship in 1558 and compelled to tro abroad. At Zurich and Basle, he preached to the English exiles. Even during the heipht of Mary's persecutions he returned to London to take charge of a Protestant congregation. In the second year of Queen Elizabeth he was raised to the see cf Lichfield and Coventry, and was conse-
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crated in 1559. Had Bentham been supreme, the Eng- lish Reformation would have been far more thorough than it was, and the Christian Church would have avoided much evil. He died Feb. 19, 1578. He trans- lated the Psalms, Ezekiel, and Daniel in the "Bishop's Bible." — Hook, Eccles. Biography, ii, 249.
Bentley, Richard, D. IX, called from his eminence in philological criticism "the British Aristarchus," was born at Wakefield 16G1, and admitted at St. John's College 1676. He accepted the mastership of the grammar-school of Spalding, in Lincolnshire, early in 1632. In 1683 he became private tutor to the son of Dr. Stillingfleet, afterward bishop of Worcester. He accompanied his pupil to Oxford, where he was ad- mitted M.A. At Oxford he had access to the MSS. of the Bodleian Library. At this time he meditated two very laborious undertakings — a complete collec- tion of Fragments of the Greek Poets, and an edition of the three principal Greek lexicographers, Hesychius, Suidas, and the Etymalogicum Magnum, to be printed in parallel columns on the same page. Neither scheme, however, was carried into effect. To the edition of Callimachus, published by Graevius in 1697, Bentley contributed a collection of the fragments of that poet. Bat his reputation for scholarship was established by a performance of a much more confined nature — a dis- sertation on an obscure chronicler named Malala, which was published as an Appendix to Chilmead and Mill's edition of the author in 1691. This showed such an intimate acquaintance with Greek literature, especially the drama, that it drew the eyes of foreign as well as British scholars upon him, and obtained a warm tribute of admiration from the great critics Grsevius and Spanheim to this new and brilliant star of British literature. Bentley was ordained deacon in March, 1690. In 1692, having obtained the first nomination to the Boyle lectureship, he chose for his subject the confutation of atheism, directing his arguments more especially against the system of Hobbes. In these lectures Bentley applied the principles and discoveries of Newton's Principia to the confirmation of natural theology. ."The Principia had been published about six years ; but the sublime discoveries of that work were yet little known, owing not merely to the obsta- cles which oppose the reception of novelty, but to the difficulty of comprehending the proofs whereby they are established. To Bentley belongs, as bishop Monk remarks, the undoubted merit of having been the first to lay open these discoveries in a popular form, and to explain their irresistible force in the proof of a Deity. This constitutes the subject of his seventh and eighth sermons — pieces admirable for the clearness with which the whole question is developed, as well as for the logical precision of their arguments. Among oth- er topics, he shows how contradictor}' to the principles of philosophy is the notion of matter contained in the solar system having been once diffused over a chaotic space, and afterward combined into the large bodies of the sun, planets, and secondaries by the force of mutual gravitation; and he explains that the planets could never have obtained the transverse motion, which causes them to revolve round the sun in orbits nearly circular, from the agency of any cause except the arm of an almighty Creator. From these and other subjects of physical astronomy, as well as from the discoveries of Boyle, the founder of the lecture, re- specting the nature and properties of the atmosphere, a conviction is irresistibly impressed upon the mind of the wisdom and benevolence of the Deity. We are assured that the effect of these discourses was such that atheism was deserted as untenable ground; or, to use his own expression, the atheists were 'silent since that time, and sheltered themselves under de- ism.' " This work gave him great reputation, and in 1692 he was made canon of Worcester by bishop Stil- lingfleet. In 1699 he was appointed master of Trinity College, Cambridge ; and in the following year the