But Bentham was far from being a pessimist.

Though he believes that "we shall never make this world the abode of happiness," he asserts that it may be made a most delightful garden "compared with the savage forest in which men so long have wandered." [Footnote: Works, vol.i.p.

193 seq.] 7.
The book of Malthus was welcomed at the moment by all those who had been thoroughly frightened by the French Revolution and saw in the "modern philosophy," as it was called, a serious danger to society.

[Footnote: Both Hazlitt and Shelley thought that Malthus was playing to the boxes, by sophisms "calculated to lull the oppressors of mankind into a security of everlasting triumph" (Revolt of Islam, Preface).

Bentham refers in his Book of Fallacies (Works, ii.p.