Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good Part 21

Suppose that a dying friend has confided to me a more or less important deposit, charging me to remit it after his death to a person whom he has designated to me alone, and who himself knows not what has been done in his favor. He who confided to me the deposit dies, and carries with him his secret; he for whom the deposit has been made to me has no knowledge of it; if, then, I wish to appropriate this deposit to myself, no one will ever be able to suspect me. In this case what should I do? It is difficult to imagine circ.u.mstances more favorable for crime. If I consult only interest, I ought not to hesitate to return the deposit. If I hesitate, in the system of interest, I am senseless, and I revolt against the law of my nature. Doubt alone, in the impunity that is a.s.sured me, would betray in me a principle different from interest.

But naturally I do not doubt, I believe with the most entire certainty, that the deposit confided to me does not belong to me, that it has been confided to me to be remitted to another, and that to this other it belongs. Take away interest, and I should not even think of returning this deposit,--it is interest alone that tempts me. It tempts me, it does not bear me away without resistance. Hence the struggle between interest and duty,--a struggle filled with troubles, opposite resolutions, by turns taken and abandoned; it energetically attests the presence of a principle of action different from interest and quite as powerful.

Duty succ.u.mbs, interest triumphs over it. I retain the deposit that has been confided to me, and apply it to my own wants, and to the wants of my family; it makes me rich, and in appearance happy; but I internally suffer with that bitter and secret suffering that is called remorse.[217] The fact is certain; it has been a thousand times described; all languages contain the word, and there is no one who, in some degree, has not experienced the thing, that sharp gnawing at the heart which is caused by every fault, great or small, as long as it has not been expiated. This painful recollection follows me in the midst of pleasures and prosperity. The applauses of the crowd are not able to silence this inexorable witness. Only a long habit of sin and crime, an acc.u.mulation of oft-repeated faults, can compa.s.s this sentiment, at once avenging and expiatory. When it is stifled, every resource is lost, and an end is made of the soul's life; as long as it endures, the sacred fire is not wholly extinguished.

Remorse is a suffering of a particular character. In remorse I do not suffer on account of such an impression made upon my senses, nor on account of the thwarting of my natural pa.s.sions, nor on account of the injury done or threatened to my interest, nor by the disquietude of my hopes and the agony of my fears: no, I suffer without any external cause, yet I suffer in the most cruel manner. I suffer for the sole reason that I have a consciousness of having committed a bad action which I knew I was obligated not to commit, which I was able not to commit, which leaves behind it a chastis.e.m.e.nt that I know to be deserved. No exact a.n.a.lysis can take away from remorse, without destroying it, a single one of these elements. Remorse contains the idea of good and evil, of an obligatory law, of liberty, of merit and demerit. All these ideas were already in the struggle between good and evil; they reappear in remorse. In vain interest counselled me to appropriate the deposit that had been confided to me; something said to me, and still says to me, that to appropriate it is to do evil, is to commit an injustice; I judged, and judge, thus, not such a day, but always, not under such a circ.u.mstance, but under all circ.u.mstances. In vain I say to myself that the person to whom I ought to remit this deposit has no need of it, and that it is necessary to me; I judge that a deposit must be respected without regard to persons, and the obligation that is imposed on me appears inviolable and absolute. Having taken upon myself this obligation, I believe by this fact alone that I have the power to fulfil it: this is not all; I am directly conscious of this power, I know with the most certain knowledge that I am able to keep this deposit or to remit it to the lawful owner; and it is precisely because I am conscious of this power that I judge that I have deserved punishment for not having made the use of it for which it was given me. It is, in fine, because I have a lively consciousness of all that, that I experience this sentiment of indignation against myself, this suffering of remorse which expresses in itself the moral phenomenon entire.

According to the rules of the experimental method, let us take an opposite course; let us suppose that, in spite of the suggestions of interest, in spite of the pressing goad of misery, in order to be faithful to pledged faith, I send the deposit to the person that had been designated to me; instead of the painful scene that just now pa.s.sed in consciousness, there pa.s.ses another quite as real, but very different. I know that I have done well; I know that I have not obeyed a chimera, an artificial and mendacious law, but a law true, universal, obligatory upon all intelligent and free beings. I know that I have made a good use of my liberty; I have of this liberty, by the very use that I have made of it, a sentiment more distinct, more energetic, and, in some sort, triumphant. Every opinion would accuse me in vain, I appeal from it to a better justice, and this justice is already declared in me by sentiments that press upon each other in my soul. I respect myself, esteem myself, and believe that I have a right to the esteem of others; I have the sentiment of my dignity; I feel for myself only sentiments of affection opposed to that species of horror for myself with which I was just now inspired. Instead of remorse, I feel an incomparable joy that no one can deprive me of, that, were every thing else wanting to me, would console and support me. This sentiment of pleasure is as penetrating, as profound as was the remorse. It expresses the satisfaction of all the generous principles of human nature, as remorse represented their revolt. It testifies by the internal happiness that it gives me to the sublime accord between happiness and virtue, whilst remorse is the first link in that fatal chain, that chain of iron and adamant, which, according to Plato,[218] binds pain to transgression, trouble to pa.s.sion, misery to faithlessness, vice, and crime.

Moral sentiment is the echo of all the moral judgments and entire moral life. It is so striking that it has been regarded by a somewhat superficial philosophy as sufficient to found entire ethics; and, nevertheless, we have just seen that this admirable sentiment would not exist without the different judgments that we have just enumerated; it is their consequence, but not their principle; it supplies, but does not const.i.tute them; it does not take their place, but sums them up.

Now that we are in possession of all the elements of human morality, we proceed to take these elements one by one, and submit them to a detailed a.n.a.lysis.

That which is most apparent in the complex phenomenon that we are studying is sentiment; but its foundation is judgment.

The judgment of good and evil is the principle of all that follows it; but this judgment rests only on the const.i.tution itself of human nature, like the judgment of the true and the judgment of the beautiful. As well as these two judgments,[219] that of the good is a simple, primitive, indecomposable judgment.

Like them, again, it is not arbitrary. We cannot but fear this judgment in presence of certain acts; and, in fearing it, we know that it does not make good or evil, but declares it. The reality of moral distinctions is revealed by this judgment, but it is independent of it, as beauty is independent of the eye that perceives it, as universal and necessary truths are independent of the reason that discovers them.[220]

Good and evil are real characters of human actions, although these characters might not be seen with our eyes nor touched with our hands.

The moral qualities of an action are none the less real for not being confounded with the material qualities of this action. This is the reason why actions materially identical may be morally very different. A homicide is always a homicide; nevertheless, it is often a crime, it is also often a legitimate action, for example, when it is not done for the sake of vengeance, nor for the sake of interest, in a strict case of self-defence.

It is not the spilling of blood that makes the crime, it is the spilling of innocent blood. Innocence and crime, good and evil, do not reside in such or such an external circ.u.mstance determined one for all. Reason recognizes them with certainty under the most different appearances, in circ.u.mstances sometimes the same and sometimes dissimilar.

Good and evil almost always appear to us connected with particular actions; but it is not on account of what is particular in them that these actions are good or bad. So when I declare that the death of Socrates is unjust, and that the devotion of Leonidas is admirable, it is the unjust death of a wise man that I condemn, and the devotion of a hero that I admire. It is not important whether this hero be called Leonidas or d'a.s.sas, whether the immolated sage be called Socrates or Bailly.

The judgment of the good is at first applied to particular actions, and it gives birth to general principles which in course serve us as rules for judging all actions of the same kind. As after having judged that such a particular phenomenon has such a particular cause, we elevate ourselves to the general principle that every phenomenon has its cause;[221] so we erect into a general rule the moral judgment that we have borne in regard to a particular fact. Thus, at first we admire the death of Leonidas, thence we elevate ourselves to the principle that it is good to die for one's country. We already possess the principle in its first application to Leonidas; otherwise, this particular application would not have been legitimate, it would not have been even possible; but we possess it implicitly; as soon as it is disengaged, it appears to us under its universal and pure form, and we apply it to all a.n.a.logous cases.

Ethics have their axioms like other sciences; and these axioms are rightly called in all languages moral truths.

It is good not to violate one's oath, and in this is also involved a truth. In fact, an oath is founded in the truth of things,--its good is only derived. Moral truths considered in themselves have no less certainty than mathematical truths. The idea of a deposit being given, I ask whether the idea of faithfully keeping it is not necessarily attached to it, as to the idea of a triangle is attached the idea that its three angles are equal to two right angles. You may withhold a deposit; but, in withholding it, do not believe that you change the nature of things, nor that you make it possible for a deposit ever to become property. These two ideas exclude each other. You have only a false semblance of property; and all the efforts of pa.s.sion, all the sophisms of interest will not reverse the essential differences. This is the reason why moral truth is so troublesome,--it is because, like all truth, it is what it is, and does not bend to any caprice. Always the same and always present, in spite of all our efforts, it inexorably condemns, with a voice always heard, but not always listened to, the sensible and the culpable will which thinks to hinder it from being by denying it, or rather by pretending to deny it.

Moral truths are distinguished from other truths by the singular character that, as soon as we perceive them, they appear to us as the rule of our conduct. If it is true that a deposit is made to be remitted to its legitimate possessor, it is necessary to remit it to him. To the necessity of believing is here added the necessity of practising.

The necessity of practising is obligation. Moral truths, in the eyes of reason necessary, are to the will obligatory.

Moral obligation, like the moral truth that is its foundation, is absolute. As necessary truths are not more or less necessary,[222] so obligation is not more or less obligatory. There are degrees of importance between different obligations; but there are no degrees in the same obligation. We are not somewhat obligated, almost obligated; we are either wholly obligated, or not at all.

If obligation is absolute, it is immutable and universal. For, if the obligation of to-day were not the obligation of to-morrow, if what is obligatory for me were not so for you, obligation would differ from itself, would be relative and contingent.

This fact of absolute, immutable, universal obligation is so certain and so manifest, in spite of all the efforts of the doctrine of interest to obscure it, that one of the profoundest moralists of modern philosophy, particularly struck with this fact, has regarded it as the principle of the whole of ethics. By separating duty from interest which ruins it, and from sentiment which enervates it, Kant restored to ethics their true character. He elevated himself very high in the century of Helvetius, in elevating himself to the holy law of duty; but he still did not ascend high enough, he did not reach the reason itself of duty.

The good for Kant is what is obligatory. But logically, whence comes the obligation of performing an action, if not from the intrinsic goodness of this act? Is it not because that, in the order of reason, it is absolutely impossible to regard a deposit as a property, that we cannot appropriate it to ourselves without a crime? If one action must be performed, and another action must not, it is because there is apparently an essential difference between these two acts. To found the good on obligation, instead of founding obligation on the good, is, therefore, to take the effect for the cause, is to draw the principle from the consequence.

If I ask an honest man who, in spite of the suggestions of misery, has respected the deposit that was intrusted to him, why he respected it, he will answer me,--because it was my duty. If I persist, and ask why it was his duty, he will very rightly answer,--because it was just, because it was good. That point having been reached, all answers are stopped; but questions also are stopped. No one allows a duty to be imposed upon him without rendering to himself a reason for it; but as soon as it is recognized that this duty is imposed upon us because it is just, the mind is satisfied; for it reaches a principle beyond which it has nothing more to seek, justice being its own principle. First truths carry with them their reason for being. Now, justice, the essential distinction between good and evil in the relations of men among themselves, is the primary truth of ethics.

Justice is not a consequence, since we cannot ascend to another more elevated principle; and duty is not, rigorously speaking, a principle, since it supposes a principle above it, that explains and authorizes it, to wit, justice.

Moral truth no more becomes relative and subjective, to take for a moment the language of Kant, in appearing to us obligatory, than truth becomes relative and subjective in appearing to us necessary; for in the very nature of truth and the good must be sought the reason of necessity and obligation. But if we stop at obligation and necessity, as Kant did, in ethics as well as in metaphysics, without knowing it, and even against our intention, we destroy, or at least weaken truth and the good.[223]

Obligation has its foundation in the necessary distinction between good and evil; and is itself the foundation of liberty. If man has duties, he must possess the faculty of fulfilling them, of resisting desire, pa.s.sion, and interest, in order to obey law. He ought to be free, therefore he is free, or human nature is in contradiction with itself.

The direct certainty of obligation implies the corresponding certainty of liberty.

This proof of liberty is doubtless good; but Kant is deceived in supposing it the only legitimate proof. It is very strange that he should have preferred the authority of reasoning to that of consciousness, as if the former had no need of being confirmed by the latter; as if, after all, my liberty ought not to be a fact for me.[224]

Empiricism must be greatly feared to distrust the testimony of consciousness; and, after such a distrust, one must be very credulous to have a boundless faith in reasoning. We do not believe in our liberty as we believe in the movement of the earth. The profoundest persuasion that we have of it comes from the continual experience that we carry with ourselves.

Is it true that in presence of an act to be done I am able to will or not to will to do it? In that lies the whole question of liberty.

Let us clearly distinguish between the power of doing and the power of willing. The will has, without doubt, in its service and under its empire, the most of our faculties; but that empire, which is real, is very limited. I will to move my arm, and I am often able to do it,--in that resides, as it were, the physical power of will; but I am not always able to move my arm, if the muscles are paralyzed, if the obstacle to be overcome is too strong, &c.; the execution does not always depend on me; but what always depends on me is the resolution itself. The external effects may be hindered, my resolution itself can never be hindered. In its own domain, will is sovereign.

And I am conscious of this sovereign power of the will. I feel in myself, before its determination, the force that can determine itself in such a manner or in such another. At the same time that I will this or that, I am equally conscious of the power to will the opposite; I am conscious of being master of my resolution, of the ability to arrest it, continue it, repress it. When the voluntary act ceases, the consciousness of the power does not cease,--it remains with the power itself, which is superior to all its manifestations. Liberty is therefore the essential and always-subsisting attribute of will.[225]

The will, we have seen,[226] is neither desire nor pa.s.sion,--it is exactly the opposite. Liberty of will is not, then, the license of desires and pa.s.sions. Man is a slave in desire and pa.s.sion, he is free only in will. That they may not elsewhere be confounded, liberty and anarchy must not be confounded in psychology. Pa.s.sions abandoning themselves to their caprices, is anarchy. Pa.s.sions concentrated upon a dominant pa.s.sion, is tyranny. Liberty consists in the struggle of will against this tyranny and this anarchy. But this combat must have an aim, and this aim is the duty of obeying reason, which is our true sovereign, and justice, which reason reveals to us and prescribes for us. The duty of obeying reason is the law of will, and will is never more itself than when it submits to its law. We do not possess ourselves, as long as to the domination of desire, of pa.s.sion, of interest, reason does not oppose the counterpoise of justice. Reason and justice free us from the yoke of pa.s.sions, without imposing upon us another yoke. For, once more, to obey them, is not to abdicate liberty, but to save it, to apply it to its legitimate use.

It is in liberty, and in the agreement of liberty with reason and justice, that man belongs to himself, to speak properly. He is a person only because he is a free being enlightened by reason.

What distinguishes a person from a simple thing, is especially the difference between liberty and its opposite. A thing is that which is not free, consequently that which does not belong to itself, that which has no self, which has only a numerical individuality, a perfect effigy of true individuality, which is that of person.

A thing, not belonging to itself, belongs to the first person that takes possession of it and puts his mark on it.

A thing is not responsible for the movements which it has not willed, of which it is even ignorant. Person alone is responsible, for it is intelligent and free; and it is responsible for the use of its intelligence and freedom.

A thing has no dignity; dignity is only attached to person.

A thing has no value by itself; it has only that which person confers on it. It is purely an instrument whose whole value consists in the use that the person using it derives from it.[227]

Obligation implies liberty; where liberty is not, duty is wanting, and with duty right is wanting also.

It is because there is in me a being worthy of respect, that I have the duty of respecting it, and the right to make it respected by you. My duty is the exact measure of my right. The one is in direct ratio with the other. If I had no sacred duty to respect what makes my person, that is to say, my intelligence and my liberty, I should not have the right to defend it against your injuries. But as my person is inviolable and sacred in itself, it follows that, considered in relation to me, it imposes on me a duty, and, considered in relation to you, it confers on me a right.

I am not myself permitted to degrade the person that I am by abandoning myself to pa.s.sion, to vice and crime, and I am not permitted to let it be degraded by you.

The person is inviolable; and it alone is inviolable.

It is inviolable not only in the intimate sanctuary of consciousness, but in all its legitimate manifestations, in its acts, in the product of its acts, even in the instruments that it makes its own by using them.

Therein is the foundation of the sanct.i.ty of property. The first property is the person. All other properties are derived from that.

Think of it well. It is not property in itself that has rights, it is the proprietor, it is the person that stamps upon it, with its own character, its right and its t.i.tle.

The person cannot cease to belong to itself, without degrading itself,--it is to itself inalienable. The person has no right over itself; it cannot treat itself as a thing, cannot sell itself, cannot destroy itself, cannot in any way abolish its free will and its liberty, which are its const.i.tuent elements.

Why has the child already some rights? Because it will be a free being.

Why have the old man, returned to infancy, and the insane man still some rights? Because they have been free beings. We even respect liberty in its first glimmerings or its last vestiges. Why, on the other hand, have the insane man and the imbecile old man no longer all their rights?

Because they have lost liberty. Why do we enchain the furious madman?

Because he has lost knowledge and liberty. Why is slavery an abominable inst.i.tution? Because it is an outrage upon what const.i.tutes humanity.

This is the reason why, in fine, certain extreme devotions are sometimes sublime faults, and no one is permitted to offer them, much less to demand them. There is no legitimate devotion against the very essence of right, against liberty, against justice, against the dignity of the human person.

We have not been able to speak of liberty, without indicating a certain number of moral notions of the highest importance which it contains and explains; but we could not pursue this development without encroaching upon the domain of private and public ethics and antic.i.p.ating the following lecture.