ABSTRACT
A fountain of errors and injustices are the false ideas of utility that are formed by legislators. A false idea of utility is one that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for an inconvenience either imaginary or of little consequence, that would take fire from men because it burns or water because of the risk of drowning, that cannot repair evils other than by destroying them. A false idea of utility is that which would impose on a multitude of sensible beings a symmetry and order that makes them brutish and lifeless. It ignores the present that alone affects the multitude through continuity and strength, instead giving strength to distant things, which make only a brief and weak impression unless it is an imagined force, not natural in humanity, and unable to make up for its increased remoteness from the object.
