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As he was accustomed to doing, he then answered his own question at considerable length in an essay that, like roughly one-third of the enormous corpus of his works, has never been published. A dead man could be of use to the living, the philosopher reasoned, if his corpse was made available to further the the study of anatomy; and also, in the case of men of exceptional intellect, if the remains were then embalmed and preserved in order to give the dead a physical presence that might inspire future generations of thinkers.

Bentham, who liked giving names to things, decided to call his pickled, stuffed or mounted geniuses ''auto-icons.'' A philosophical materialist who scorned organized religion, he then described how a preserved philosopher might be used in observances by a cult of rationalists.

Last week, 154 years after his death at the age of 84, the philosopher's living admirers and students - it was not clear that there were any disciples - were present in force at University College, London, for the founding of an International Bentham Society. And so, almost precisely as he envisioned, was Jeremy Bentham, in his box in the form of an ''auto-icon.''

It was a distinguished assembly. Even Bentham, a man of soaring vanity, would have been impressed. Two of Britain's most eminent contemporary philosophers, Sir Alfred Ayer and H. L. A. Hart, were there. So were Lords Goff and Butterworth and the vice chancellor of Oxford University, Sir Patrick Neill. University College itself - sometimes thought erroneously to have been founded by Bentham but certainly an example of his far-reaching influence - turned out an impressive array of professors and scholars as it has done on various occasions since 1850 when the Bentham auto-icon came into its keeping.

The new society is designed to promote Bentham. University College is home to a Bentham Club and a Bentham Committee, both situated in Bentham House. The club, the alumni association of the law faculty, sells Bentham neckties to its members that are decorated with silhouettes of the philosopher's straw hat; the committee, which draws sustenance from the Jeremy Bentham Appeal, publishes a Bentham Newsletter that reports on the progress of the Bentham Project -an effort, already 25 years old, to publish the philosopher's collected works. Twelve volumes have been published so far, but these include less than 20 percent of what there is to publish.
 
It Looks Like Jack Benny

The auto-icon, which bears a resemblance to the comedian Jack Benny, looked distantly pleased. In point of fact, the object contains less of the philosopher than he had hoped, for the embalming of his head was not a success and a wax reproduction by a French anatomist had to be substituted. For years the actual head was kept in a case inside Bentham's box. Sometimes, as a photograph taken in 1948 illustrates, it was taken out of the case and exhibited on a plate-like object between the great thinker's feet.

''Now it is kept in the cellar,'' said Sir James Lighthill, the Provost of University College, outside whose office Jeremy Bentham normally resides. ''He encourages me to engage in utilitarian educational projects, which I do,'' Sir James said.

Bentham still wears his original clothes, except for his undershirt, which had to be replaced when the other garments were sent out for dry-cleaning in 1939 while the auto-icon was undergoing restoration and restuffing in the Department of Egyptology. The garments were cleaned again in 1979. When asked, Sir James said he did not know in whose name the clothes went to the cleaners.

William Twining, the Professor of Jurisprudence at University College, said he customarily made points about the interpretation of evidence in his lectures by asking his students to consider a wide variety of possible interpretations of Bentham's wish to be preserved. One of these, he feels, was certainly vanity. ''But he was also making a serious materialistic point about the taboos we attach to death and burial,'' Professor Twining said. ''He was saying, 'This is just a thing.' ''

It was not until the year of Bentham's death that Parliament enacted a law he had advocated making dissection of cadavers for medical purposes lawful. Bentham asked that ''scientific and literary men'' be invited to attend lectures on ''the actions of animal economy'' when he himself was dissected as a demonstration against ''the primitive horror at dissection.'' Among those who came was James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill and a philosopher in his own right.
 
Benthamist vs. Benthamite

Still, wasn't it strange and noteworthy, Professor Twining observed, that it was materialists like Lenin and Bentham who had their physical remains preserved.

The scholars sipped white wine and stood with their backs to the auto-icon as the president of the new society, Professor J. H. Burns, spoke about the significance of Bentham scholarship today. Those in the room were ''Benthamists'' rather than ''Benthamites,'' Professor Burns suggested, casting a theatrical glance at Bentham in his box to underscore the heretical point.

Benthamists, he was saying, honored the philosopher for his dedication to orderly social change and a rational legal system; that is, they were committed to a thorough and systematic discussion of public issues but not to such Benthamite notions as the calculation that human rights might be dispensed with when that served the happiness of the greatest number in society, or his contention that torture was easier to justify on the same utilitarian grounds than imprisonment.

Professor Burns, a historian who served for 18 years as the general editor of the Bentham Project, said that as a Scot he was bound to consider the philosopher ''a peculiarly English character.'' Later, in conversation, he acknowledged that he sometimes disliked Bentham as a man, even though he valued him as a thinker; that this was one of the reasons he gave up the editorship. ''I could live with Mill, but I couldn't live with Bentham,'' he said.

Bentham wrote that there could be a ''Temple of Fame'' and that eventually this ''could be filled with a population of illustrious Auto-Icons.'' But when the party at University College was over, he was left alone in his box.