Charles de Secondat
baron de Montesquieu

Form WORKS by Jeremy Bentham

That before any such surface as a circular one had any existence, all its radii were equal is, in his creed, as in Montesquieu�s, a fundamental article. That fluxions and equations should have had their origin in so impure a source as matter, is to an ardent-minded mathematician an idea no more to be endured than, by certain religionists it is, that moral evil should have no other source than physical ; or, by the sentimental poet, the sentimental orator, or the hypocritical politician, it is that sympathy (whether for the individual or the particular class of the community-political body he belongs to, the nation at large, or the human race) should have so unhonoured a parent or so despicable an antagonist as self-regard, either in his own pure bosom or that of any of his friends.   ( Vol. VIII, p. 163 )

BENTHAM'S THEORY OF FICTIONS, Charles Kay Ogden, p. xcvi
New York : Harcourt, Brace, and Co.
London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.
1932

From BARON D�HOLBACH, 1935 by William Hardy Wickwar

It was perhaps Montesquieu who first focussed French attention on the power of the state as educator, and the influence of law on the spirit of a people. The lessons he taught had been driven home with still greater force and no little onesidedness by Helvétius, to whom education and legislation were synonymous ; and this undoubtedly constitutes his strongest claim to the remembrance and gratitude of posterity. And they had laid the foundations of a new powerful tradition, still further reinforce by Beccaria, and soon to stimulate the ethological writings of Bentham and Mill. No aspect of utilitarianism [?] has been so fruitful of reform.

( London : Allen & Unwin 1935 )
New York : Augustus M. Kelley 1968, p. 169.