Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

Jeremy Bentham

Chapter IV, Footnote #01
Mnemonic doggerel


These circumstances have since been denominated elements or dimensions of value in a pleasure or a pain.

Not long after the publication of the first edition, the following memoriter verses were framed, in the view of lodging more effectually, in the memory, these points, on which the whole fabric of morals and legislation may be seen to rest.

Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure
Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure.
Such pleasures seek if private be thy end:
If it be public, wide let them extend
Such pains avoid, whichever be thy view:
If pains must come, let them extend to few.


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IPML Chapter 4