for humans has long been recognized. Forms of hedonism were put forward by Aristippus and Epicurus; Aristotle argued that eudaimonia is the highest human good; and Augustine wrote that "all men agree in desiring the last end, which is happiness." Happiness was also explored in depth by Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologica. Meanwhile, in medieval India, the 8th Century Indian philosopher Śāntideva was one of the earliest proponents of utilitarianism, writing that we ought "to stop all the present and future pain and suffering of all sentient beings, and to bring about all present and future pleasure and happiness." Different varieties of consequentialism also existed in the ancient and medieval world, like the state consequentialism of Mohism or the political philosophy of Niccolò Machiavelli. Mohist consequentialism advocated communitarian moral goods, including political stability, population growth, and wealth, but did not support the utilitarian notion of maximizing individual happiness. 18th century Utilitarianism as a distinct ethical position only emerged in the 18th century, and although it is usually thought to have begun with Jeremy Bentham, there were earlier writers who presented theories that were strikingly similar. Hutcheson Francis Hutcheson first introduced a key utilitarian phrase in An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725): when choosing the most moral action, the amount of virtue in a particular action is proportionate to the number of people such brings happiness to. In the same way, moral evil, or vice, is proportionate to the number of people made to suffer. The best action is the one that procures the greatest happiness of the greatest numbers—and the worst is the one that causes the most misery. In the first three editions of the book, Hutcheson included various mathematical algorithms "to compute the Morality of any Actions." In doing so, he pre-figured the hedonic calculus of Bentham. John Gay Some claim that John Gay developed the first systematic theory of utilitarian ethics. In Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or Morality (1731), Gay argues that: This pursuit of happiness is given a theological basis: Hume In An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), David Hume writes: Paley Gay's theological utilitarianism was developed and popularized by William Paley. It has been claimed that Paley was not a very original thinker and that the philosophies in his treatise on ethics is "an assemblage of ideas developed by others and is presented