Jeremy Bentham to the fundamental concepts employed in his model of utilitarian decision making. His work is considered to be an early precursor of modern welfare economics. Bentham stated that pleasures and pains can be ranked according to their value or "dimension" such as intensity, duration, certainty of a pleasure or a pain. He was concerned with maxima and minima of pleasures and pains; and they set a precedent for the future employment of the maximisation principle in the economics of the consumer, the firm and the search for an optimum in welfare economics. Bentham advocated "Pauper Management" which involved the creation
Jeremy Bentham came to expressing it was in the form "the good and happiness of the members, that is the majority of the members of any state, is the great standard by which every thing relating to that state must finally be determined". The "greatest happiness principle", or the principle of utility, forms the cornerstone of all Bentham's thought. By "happiness", he understood a predominance of "pleasure" over "pain". He wrote in "The Principles of Morals and Legislation": Bentham was a rare major figure in the history of philosophy to endorse psychological egoism. Bentham was a determined opponent of religion. Crimmins observes: