The English Utilitarians

Leslie Stephen was born on November 28, 1832, Kensington Gore, London. He was an author, social commentator, literary critic and the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography. He wrote a published his History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century in two volumes. That led him to investigate more about the utilitarianism, whose theory states that the human action should be guided by the thought of making more people happy. He died on February 22, 1904, in Kensington.

This book is a sequel to my History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century. It gives an overview of the utilitarian theories and their development in Britain, focusing on the work of Jeremy Bentham, James Mill and John Stuart Mill, which were considered as great leaders.

The English Utilitarians were a group of men who influenced the English and the political action for three generations. This book describes some of the aspects of the Utilitarians, such as the intellectual type of their natural congenial, the limitations of view that affected their conception of the problems solved, and their passions and prepossessions in the contemporary state of society and their class position.