John Bowring

Form BENTHAM’S THEORY OF FICTIONS, 1932 by Charles Kay Ogden

Since Bentham himself so clearly indicates the importance which he attached to the Theory of Fictions as an Instrument, it is all the more surprising that his biographers, interpreters, and critics have almost all been content to dismiss it with a contemptuous reference.

From his immediate disciples Bentham could hardly expect much understanding. James Mill had his own ideas of the way in which the linguistic borderlands should be handled,   .   .   .   J. S. Mill further confused the issue by his inconclusive reversion to the nominalist-realist controversy. Bowring was not to be taken seriously as an interlocutor on such subjects, and Dumont was hardly less obtuse when any of the subtler problems of analysis had to be glossed over in the interests of the wider public for whom he so successfully catered.   ( p. xxix )

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However, throughout his life, unless he was writing deliberately with a view to publication, he adopted the unusual practice of starting afresh whenever he resumed the consideration of any subject from a different angle, or any new subdivision of a dichotomous table ; so that instead of removing an ambiguity or polishing a loose sentence he traverses the same ground, often in some detail, with whatever additions are suggested by the new approach. The whole mass of papers, with all their repetitions, was then handed to some editorial collaborator to be prepared for the press. In this way Dumont was able to make a readable synthesis of The Theory of Legislation (much of which, partly in order to prevent his thoughts from running in customary verbal grooves, Bentham had jotted down in French), and J. S. Mill a systematic treatise out of The Rationale of Judicial Evidence. But the material on Linguistic Psychology occupied a peculiar position, and its importance was not obvious to his younger collaborators. Not only was the subject matter somewhat difficult and outside the range of ordinary inquiry, but the entire technological approach was a century ahead of its time. His nephew George Bentham made a very creditable attempt to cope with such parts of the notes on Logic (twelve years after they were written) as could be related to contemporary doctrine, with elaboration’s of his own which evoked generous praise from the old man (Bentham was then in his eightieth year). He dealt briefly with the classificatory notes on Fictions . . . ; but it was no till Bentham had been dead for more than a decade that the MSS. Were printed by Bowring as he found them—though in such a form that their neglect by all subsequent writers is not altogether surprising.   ( p. cli )

New York : Harcourt, Brace, and Co.
London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.
1932