Indeed, his labors in providing substitutes
for what he sought to overthrow are among the most curious, and,
we might add, valuable monuments of human industry and ingenuity.
His proposed reforms were based, too, on a theory of human nature
which differed from that in use among a large number of radicals
in our day in being perfectly sound, that is, in perfect
accordance with observed facts, as far as it went. But it did not
go nearly far enough. It did not embrace the whole of human
nature, or even the greater part of it, and for the simple
reason, which Mr. Mill himself has pointed out in his analysis of
Bentham's character, that its author was almost entirely wanting
in sympathy and imagination. A very large proportion of the
springs of human action were unknown or incomprehensible to him.
The result was that, although he exerted a powerful influence on
English law reform by his exposure of specific abuses, he made
little impression on English sociology, properly so called. This
was in part due to his narrowness of view, and in part to the
absence of an interpreter, none of his followers having attempted
to put his wisdom into readable shape, except Dumont, and he only
partially and in French.
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