An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation is a text by Jeremy Bentham.
XXXVI. First, then, with regard to offences which affects
person and reputation together. When any man, by a mode of treatment
which affects the person, injures the reputation of another, his end
and purpose must have been either his own immediate pleasure, or that
sort of reflected pleasure, which in certain circumstances may be
reaped from the suffering of another. Now the only immediate pleasure
worth regarding, which any one can reap from the person of another,
and which at the same time is capable of affecting the reputation of
the latter, is the pleasure of the sexual appetites. This pleasure,
then, if reaped at all, must have been reaped either against the
consent of the party, or with consent. If with consent, the consent
must have been obtained either freely and fairly both, or freely but
not fairly, or else not even freely; in which case the fairness is out
of the question. If the consent be altogether wanting, the offence is
called rape: if not fairly obtained, seduction simply:
if not freely, it may be called forcible seduction. In any
case, either the offence has gone the length of consummation, or has
stopped short of that period; if it has gone that length, it takes one
or other of the names just mentioned: if not, it may be included alike
in all cases under the denomination of a simple lascivious injury.
Lastly, to take the case where a man injuring you in your
reputation, by proceedings that regard your person, does it for the
sake of that sort of pleasure which will sometimes result from the
contemplation of another's pain. Under these circumstances either the
offence has actually gone the length of a corporal injury, or it has
rested in menacement: in the first case it may be styled a corporal
insult; in the other, it may come under the name of insulting
menacement. And thus we have six genera, or kind of offences,
against person and reputation together; which, when ranged in the
order most commodious for consideration, will stand thus:
1. Corporal insults.
2. Insulting menacement.
3. Seduction.
4. Rape.
5. Forcible seduction.
6. Simple lascivious injuries.
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation