Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good Part 24

Every injustice is an encroachment upon our person,--to retrench the least of our rights, is to diminish our moral person, is, at least, so far as that retrenchment goes, to abase us to the condition of a thing.

The greatest of all injustices, because it comprises all others, is slavery. Slavery is the subjecting of all the faculties of one man to the profit of another man. The slave develops his intelligence a little only in the interest of another,--it is not for the purpose of enlightening him, but to render him more useful, that some exercise of mind is allowed him. The slave has not the liberty of his movements; he is attached to the soil, is sold with it, or he is chained to the person of a master. The slave should have no affection, he has no family, no wife, no children,--he has a female and little ones. His activity does not belong to him, for the product of his labor is another's. But, that nothing may be wanting to slavery, it is necessary to go farther,--in the slave must be destroyed the inborn sentiment of liberty, in him must be extinguished all idea of right; for, as long as this idea subsists, slavery is uncertain, and to an odious power may respond the terrible right of insurrection, that last resort of the oppressed against the abuse of force.[236]

Justice, respect for the person in every thing that const.i.tutes the person, is the first duty of man towards his fellow-man. Is this duty the only one?

When we have respected the person of others, when we have neither restrained their liberty, nor smothered their intelligence, nor maltreated their body, nor outraged their family, nor injured their goods, are we able to say that we have fulfilled the whole law in regard to them? One who is unfortunate is suffering before us. Is our conscience satisfied, if we are able to bear witness to ourselves that we have not contributed to his sufferings? No; something tells that it is still good to give him bread, succor, consolation.

There is here an important distinction to be made. If you have remained hard and insensible at the sight of another's misery, conscience cries out against you; and yet this man who is suffering, who, perhaps, is ready to die, has not the least right over the least part of your fortune, were it immense; and, if he used violence for the purpose of wresting from you a single penny, he would commit a crime. We here meet a new order of duties that do not correspond to rights. Man may resort to force in order to make his rights respected; he cannot impose on another any sacrifice whatever. Justice respects or restores; charity gives, and gives freely.

Charity takes from us something in order to give it to our fellow-men.

If it goes so far as to inspire us to renounce our dearest interests, it is called devotedness.

It certainly cannot be said that to be charitable is not obligatory. But this obligation must not be regarded as precise, as inflexible as the obligation to be just. Charity is a sacrifice; and who can find the rule of sacrifice, the formula of self-renunciation? For justice, the formula is clear,--to respect the rights of another. But charity knows neither rule nor limit. It transcends all obligation. Its beauty is precisely in its liberty.

But it must be acknowledged that charity also has its dangers. It tends to subst.i.tute its own action for the action of him whom it wishes to help; it somewhat effaces his personality, and makes itself in some sort his providence,--a formidable part for a mortal! In order to be useful to others, one imposes himself on them, and runs the risk of violating their natural rights. Love, in giving itself, enslaves. Doubtless it is not interdicted us to act upon another. We can always do it through pet.i.tion and exhortation. We can also do it by threatening, when we see one of our fellows engaged in a criminal or senseless action. We have even the right to employ force when pa.s.sion carries away liberty and makes the person disappear. So we may, we even ought to prevent by force the suicide of one of our fellow-men. The legitimate power of charity is measured by the more or less liberty and reason possessed by him to whom it is applied. What delicacy, then, is necessary in the exercise of this perilous virtue! How can we estimate with sufficient certainty the degree of liberty still possessed by one of our fellow-men to know how far we may subst.i.tute ourselves for him in the guiding of his destiny?

And when, in order to a.s.sist a feeble soul, we take possession of it, who is sufficiently sure of himself not to go farther, not to pa.s.s from the person governed to the love of domination itself? Charity is often the commencement and the excuse, and always the pretext of usurpation.

In order to have the right of abandoning one's self to the emotions of charity, it is necessary to be fortified against one's self by a long exercise of justice.

To respect the rights of others and do good to men, to be at once just and charitable,--such are social ethics in the two elements that const.i.tute them.

We speak of social ethics, and we do not yet know what society is. Let us look around us:--everywhere society exists, and where it is not, man is not man. Society is a universal fact which must have universal foundations.

Let us avoid at first the question of the origin of society.[237] The philosophy of the last century delighted in such questions too much. How can we demand light from the regions of darkness, and the explanation of reality from an hypothesis? Why go back to a pretended primitive state in order to account for a present state which may be studied in itself in its unquestionable characters? Why seek what may have been in the germ that which may be perceived, that which it is the question to understand, completed and perfect? Moreover, there is great peril in starting with the question of the origin of society. Has such or such an origin been found? Actual society is arranged according to the type of the primitive society that has been dreamed of, and political society is delivered up to the mercy of historical romances. This one imagines that the primitive state is violence, and he sets out from that in order to authorize the right of the strongest, and to consecrate despotism. That one thinks that he has found in the family the first form of society, and he compares government to the father of a family, and subjects to children; society in his eyes is a minor that must be held in tutelage in the hands of the paternal power, which in the origin is absolute, and consequently, must remain so. Or has one thrown himself to the extreme of the opposite opinion, and into the hypothesis of an agreement, of a contract that expresses the will of all or of the greatest number? He delivers up to the mobile will of the crowd the eternal laws of justice and the inalienable rights of the person. Finally, are powerful religious inst.i.tutions found in the cradle of society? It is hence concluded, that power belongs of right to priesthoods, which have the secret of the designs of G.o.d, and represent his sovereign authority.

Thus a vicious method in philosophy leads to a deplorable political system,--the commencement is made in hypothesis, and the termination is in anarchy or tyranny.

True politics do not depend on more or less well directed historical researches into the profound night of a past forever vanished, and of which no vestige subsists: they rest on the knowledge of human nature.

Wherever society is, wherever it was, it has for its foundations:--1st, The need that we have of our fellow-creatures, and the social instincts that man bears in himself; 2d, The permanent and indestructible idea and sentiment of justice and right.

Man, feeble and powerless when he is alone, profoundly feels the need that he has of the succor of his fellow-creatures in order to develop his faculties, to embellish his life, and even to preserve it.[238]

Without reflection, without convention, he claims the hand, the experience, the love of those whom he sees made like himself. The instinct of society is in the first cry of the child that calls for the mother's help without knowing that it has a mother, and in the eagerness of the mother to respond to the cries of the child. It is in the feelings for others that nature has put in us--pity, sympathy, benevolence. It is in the attraction of the s.e.xes, in their union, in the love of parents for their children, and in the ties of every kind that these first ties engender. If Providence has attached so much sadness to solitude, so much charm to society, it is because society is indispensable for the preservation of man and for his happiness, for his intellect and moral development.

But if need and instinct begin society, it is justice that completes it.

In the presence of another man, without any external law, without any compact,[239] it is sufficient that I know that he is a man, that is to say, that he is intelligent and free, in order to know that he has rights, and to know that I ought to respect his rights as he ought to respect mine. As he is no freer than I am, nor I than he, we recognize towards each other equal rights and equal duties. If he abuses his force to violate the equality of our rights, I know that I have the right to defend myself and make myself respected; and if a third party is found between us, without any personal interest in the quarrel, he knows that it is his right and his duty to use force in order to protect the feeble, and even to make the oppressor expiate his injustice by a chastis.e.m.e.nt. Therein is already seen entire society with its essential principles,--justice, liberty, equality, government, and punishment.

Justice is the guaranty of liberty. True liberty does not consist in doing what we will, but in doing what we have a right to do. Liberty of pa.s.sion and caprice would have for its consequence the enslavement of the weakest to the strongest, and the enslavement of the strongest themselves to their unbridled desires. Man is truly free in the interior of his consciousness only in resisting pa.s.sion and obeying justice; therein also is the type of true social liberty. Nothing is falser than the opinion that society diminishes our mutual liberty; far from that, it secures it, develops it: what it suppresses is not liberty; it is its opposite, pa.s.sion. Society no more injures liberty than justice, for society is nothing else than the very idea of justice realized.

In securing liberty, justice secures equality also. If men are unequal in physical force and intelligence, they are equal in so far as they are free beings, and consequently equally worthy of respect. All men, when they bear the sacred character of the moral person, are to be respected, by the same t.i.tle, and in the same degree.[240]

The limit of liberty is in liberty itself; the limit of right is in duty. Liberty is to be respected, but provided it injure not the liberty of an other. I ought to let you do what you please, but on the condition that nothing which you do will injure my liberty. For then, in virtue of my right of liberty, I should regard myself as obligated to repress the aberrations of your will, in order to protect my own and that of others.

Society guaranties the liberty of each one, and if one citizen attacks that of another, he is arrested in the name of liberty. For example, religious liberty is sacred; you may, in the secret of consciousness, invent for yourself the most extravagant superst.i.tion; but if you wish publicly to inculcate an immoral wors.h.i.+p, you threaten the liberty and reason of your citizens: such preaching is interdicted.

From the necessity of repressing springs the necessity of a const.i.tuted repressive force.

Rigorously, this force is in us; for if I am unjustly attacked, I have the right to defend myself. But, in the first place, I may not be the strongest; in the second place, no one is an impartial judge in his own cause, and what I regard or give out as an act of legitimate defence may be an act of violence and oppression.

So the protection of the rights of each one demands an impartial and disinterested force, that may be superior to all particular forces.

This disinterested party, armed with the power necessary to secure and defend the liberty of all, is called government.

The right of government expresses the rights of all and each. It is the right of personal defence transferred to a public force, to the profit of common liberty.

Government is not, then, a power distinct from and independent of society; it draws from society its whole force. It is not what it has seemed to two opposite schools of publicists,--to those who sacrifice society to government,--to those who consider government as the enemy of society. If government did not represent society, it would be only a material, illegitimate, and soon powerless force; and without government, society would be a war of all against all. Society makes the moral power of government, as government makes the security of society. Pascal is wrong[241] when he says, that not being able to make what is just powerful, men have made what is powerful just. Government, in principle at least, is precisely what Pascal desired,--justice armed with force.

It is a sad and false political system that places society and government, authority and liberty, in opposition to each other, by making them come from two different sources, by presenting them as two contrary principles. I often hear the principle of authority spoken of as a principle apart, independent, deriving from itself its force and legitimacy, and consequently made to rule. No error is deeper and more dangerous. Thereby it is thought to confirm the principle of authority; far from that, from it is taken away its solidest foundation.

Authority--that is to say, legitimate and moral authority--is nothing else than justice, and justice is nothing else than the respect of liberty; so that there is not therein two different and contrary opinions, but one and the same principle, of equal certainty and equal grandeur, under all its forms and in all its applications.

Authority, it is said, comes from G.o.d: doubtless; but whence comes liberty, whence comes humanity? To G.o.d must be referred every thing that is excellent on the earth; and nothing is more excellent than liberty.

Reason, which in man commands liberty, commands it according to its nature; and the first law that reason imposes on liberty is that of self-respect.

Authority is so much the stronger as its true t.i.tle is better understood; and obedience is the easiest when, instead of degrading, it honors; when, instead of resembling servitude, it is at once the condition and guaranty of liberty.

The mission, the end of government, is to make justice, the protector of the common liberty, reign. Whence it follows, that as long as the liberty of one citizen does not injure the liberty of another, it escapes all repression. So government cannot be severe against falsehood, intemperance, imprudence, levity, avarice, egoism, except when these vices become prejudicial to others. Moreover, it is not necessary to confine government within too narrow limits. Government, which represents society, is also a moral person; it has a heart like the individual; it has generosity, goodness, charity. There are legitimate, and even universally admired facts, that are not explained, if the function of government is reduced to the protection of rights alone.[242] Government owes to the citizens, in a certain measure, to guard their well-being, to develop their intelligence, to fortify their morality, for the interest of society, and even for the interest of humanity. Hence sometimes for government the formidable right of using force in order to do good to men. But we are here touching upon that delicate point where charity inclines to despotism. Too much intelligence and wisdom, therefore, cannot be demanded in the employment of a power perhaps necessary, but dangerous.

Now, on what condition is government exercised? Is an act of its own will sufficient for it in order to employ to its own liking under all circ.u.mstances, as it shall understand them, the power that has been confided to it? Government must have been thus exercised in early society, and in the infancy of the art of governing. But the power, exercised by men, may go astray in different ways, either through weakness or through excess of force. It must, then, have a rule superior to itself, a public and known rule, that may be a lesson for the citizens, and for the government a rein and support: that rule is called law.

Universal and absolute law is natural justice, which cannot be written, but speaks to the reason and heart of all. Written laws are the formulas wherein it is sought to express, with the least possible imperfection, what natural justice requires in such or such determined circ.u.mstances.

If laws propose to express in each thing natural justice, which is universal and absolute justice, one of the necessary conditions of a good law is the universality of its character. It is necessary to examine in an abstract and general manner what is required by justice in such or such a case, to the end that this case being presented may be judged according to the rule laid down, without regard to circ.u.mstances, place, time, or person.

The collection of those rules or laws that govern the social relations of individuals is called positive right. Positive right rests wholly on natural right, which at once serves as its foundation, measure, and limit. The supreme law of every positive law is that it be not opposed to natural law: no law can impose on us a false duty, nor deprive us of a true right.

The sanction of law is punishment. We have already seen that the right to punish springs from the idea of demerit.[243] In the universal order, to G.o.d alone it belongs to apply a punishment to all faults, whatever they may be. In the social order, government is invested with the right to punish only for the purpose of protecting liberty by imposing a just reparation on those who violate it. Every fault that is not contrary to justice, and does not strike at liberty, escapes, then, social retribution. Neither is the right to punish the right of avenging one's self. To render evil for evil, to demand an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, is the barbarous form of a justice without light; for the evil that I do you will not take away the evil that you have done me. It is not the pain felt by the victim that demands a corresponding pain; it is violated justice that imposes on the culpable man the expiation of suffering. Such is the morality of penalty. The principle of penalty is not the reparation of damage caused. If I have caused you damage without intending it, I pay you an indemnity; that is not a penalty, for I am not culpable; whilst if I have committed a crime, in spite of the material indemnity for the evil that I have done, I owe a reparation to justice by a proper suffering, and in that truly consists the penalty.

What is the exact proportion of chastis.e.m.e.nts and crimes? This question cannot receive an absolute solution. What is here immutable, is that the act opposed to justice merits a punishment, and that the more unjust the act is, the severer ought to be the punishment. But by the side of the right to punish is the duty of correcting. To the culprit must be left the possibility of repairing his crime. The culpable man is still a man; he is not a thing of which we ought to rid ourselves as soon as it becomes injurious, a stone that falls on our heads, that we throw into a gulf that it may wound no more. Man is a rational being, capable of comprehending good and evil, of repenting, and of being one day reconciled with order. These truths have given birth to works that honor the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth.

The conception of houses of correction reminds one of those early times of Christianity when punishment consisted in an expiation that permitted the culprit to return through repentance to the ranks of the just. Here intervenes, as we have just indicated, the principle of charity, which is very different from the principle of justice. To punish is just, to ameliorate is charitable. In what measure ought those two principles to be united? Nothing is more delicate, more difficult to determine. It is certain that justice ought to govern. In undertaking the amendment of the culprit, government usurps, with a very generous usurpation, the rights of religion; but it ought not to go so far as to forget its proper function and its rigorous duty.

Let us pause on the threshold of politics, properly so called. Nothing in them but these principles is fixed and invariable; all else is relative. The const.i.tutions of states have something absolute by their relation to the inviolable rights which they ought to guarantee; but they also have a relative side by the variable forms with which they are clothed, according to times, places, manners, history. The supreme rule of which philosophy reminds politics, is that politics ought, in consulting all circ.u.mstances, to seek always those social forms and inst.i.tutions that best realize those eternal principles. Yes, they are eternal; because they are drawn from no arbitrary hypothesis, because they rest on the immutable nature of man, on the all-powerful instincts of the heart, on the indestructible notion of justice, and the sublime idea of charity, on the consciousness of person, liberty, and equality, on duty and right, on merit and demerit. Such are the foundations of all true society, worthy of the beautiful name of human society, that is to say, formed of free and rational beings; and such are the maxims that ought to direct every government worthy of its mission, which knows that it is not dealing with beasts but with men, which respects them and loves them.

Thank G.o.d, French society has always marched by the light of this immortal idea, and the dynasty that has been at its head for some centuries has always guided it in these generous ways. It was Louis le Gros, who, in the Middle Age, emanc.i.p.ated the communes; it was Philippe le Bel who inst.i.tuted parliaments--an independent and gratuitous justice; it was Henri IV. who began religious liberty; it was Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. who, while they undertook to give to France her natural frontiers, and almost succeeded in it, labored to unite more and more all parts of the nation, to put a regular administration in the place of feudal anarchy, and to reduce the great va.s.sals to a simple aristocracy, from day to day deprived of every privilege but that of serving the common country in the first rank. It was a king of France who, comprehending the new wants, and a.s.sociating himself with the progress of the times, attempted to subst.i.tute for that very real, but confused and formless representative government, that was called the a.s.semblies of the n.o.bility, the clergy, and the _tiers etat_, the true representative government that is proper for great civilized nations,--a glorious and unfortunate attempt that, if royalty had then been served by a Richelieu, a Mazarin, or a Colbert, might have terminated in a necessary reform, that, through the fault of every one, ended in a revolution full of excess, violence, and crime, redeemed and covered by an incomparable courage, a sincere patriotism, and the most brilliant triumphs. Finally, it was the brother of Louis XVI. who, enlightened and not discouraged by the misfortunes of his family, spontaneously gave to France that liberal and wise const.i.tution of which our fathers had dreamed, about which Montesquieu had written, which, loyally adhered to, and necessarily developed, is admirably fitted for the present time, and sufficient for a long future. We are fortunate in finding in the Charter the principles that we have just explained, that contain our views and our hopes for France and humanity.[244]

FOOTNOTES:

[233] See the _Republic_, book iv., vol. ix., of our translation.

[234] On our princ.i.p.al duties towards ourselves, and on that error, too much accredited in the eighteenth century, of reducing ethics to our duties towards others, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lectures on the ethics of Helvetius and Saint-Lambert, lecture vi., p. 235: "To define virtue an habitual disposition to contribute to the happiness of others, is to concentrate virtue into a single one of its applications, is to suppress its general and essential character. Therein is the fundamental vice of the ethics of the eighteenth century. Those ethics are an exaggerated reaction against the somewhat mystical ethics of the preceding age, which, rightly occupied with perfecting the internal man, often fell into asceticism, which is not only useless to others, but is contrary to well-ordered human life. Through fear of asceticism, the philosophy of the eighteenth century forgot the care of internal perfection, and only considered the virtues useful to society. That was retrenching many virtues, and the best ones. I take, for example, dominion over self. How make a virtue of it, when virtue is defined a _disposition to contribute to the happiness of others_? Will it be said that dominion over self is useful to others? But that is not always true; often this dominion is exercised in the solitude of the soul over internal and wholly personal movements; and there it is most painful and most sublime. Were we in a desert, it would still be for us a duty to resist our pa.s.sions, to command ourselves, and to govern our life as it becomes a rational and free being. Beneficence is an adorable virtue, but it is neither the whole of virtue, nor its most difficult employment. What auxiliaries we have when the question is to do good to our fellow-creatures,--pity, sympathy, natural benevolence! But to resist pride and envy, to combat in the depths of the soul a natural desire legitimate in itself, often culpable in its excesses, to suffer and struggle in silence, is the hardest task of a virtuous man. I add that the virtues useful to others have their surest guaranty in those personal virtues that the eighteenth century misconceived. What are goodness, generosity, and beneficence without dominion over self, without the form of soul attached to the religious observance of duty? They are, perhaps, only the emotions of a beautiful nature placed in fortunate circ.u.mstances. Take away these circ.u.mstances, and, perhaps, the effects will disappear or be diminished. But when a man, who knows himself to be a rational and free being, comprehends that it is his duty to remain faithful to liberty and reason, when he applies himself to govern himself, and pursue, without cessation, the perfection of his nature through all circ.u.mstances, you may rely upon that man; he will know how, in case of need, to be useful to others, because there is no true perfection for him without justice and charity. From the care of internal perfection you may draw all the useful virtues, but the reciprocal is not always true. One may be beneficent without being virtuous; one is not virtuous without being beneficent."

[235] On the true foundation of property see the preceding lecture.

[236] Voluntary servitude is little better than servitude imposed by force. See 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 4, p. 240: "Had another the desire to serve us as a slave, without conditions and without limits, to be for us a thing for our use, a pure instrument, a staff, a vase, and had we also the desire to make use of him in this manner, and to let him serve us in the same way, this reciprocity of desires would authorize for neither of us this absolute sacrifice, because desire can never be the t.i.tle of a right, because there is something in us that is above all desires, partic.i.p.ated or not partic.i.p.ated, to wit, duty and right,--justice. To justice it belongs to be the rule of our desires, and not to our desires to be the rule of justice. Should entire humanity forget its dignity, should it consent to its own degradation, should it extend the hand to slavery, tyranny would be none the more legitimate; eternal justice would protest against a contract, which, were it supported by desires, reciprocal desires most authentically expressed and converted into solemn laws, is none the less void of all right, because, as Bossuet very truly said, there is no right against right, no contracts, no conventions, no human laws against the law of laws, against natural law."

[237] On the danger of seeking at first the origin of human knowledge, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture on Hobbes, p. 261: "Hobbes is not the only one who took the question of the origin of societies as the starting-point of political science. Nearly all the publicists of the eighteenth century, Montesquieu excepted, proceed in the same manner.

Rousseau imagines at first a primitive state in which man being no longer savage without being yet civilized, lived happy and free under the dominion of the laws of nature. This golden age of humanity disappearing carries with it all the rights of the individual, who enters naked and disarmed into what we call the social state. But order cannot reign in a state without laws, and since natural laws perished in the s.h.i.+pwreck of primitive manners, new ones must be created. Society is formed by aid of a contract whose principle is the abandonment by each and all of their individual force and rights to the profit of the community, of the state, the instrument of all forces, the depository of all rights. The state, for Hobbes, will be a man, a monarch, a king; for Rousseau, the state is the collection itself of citizens, who by turns are considered as subjects and governors, so that instead of the despotism of one over all, we have the despotism of all over each. Law is not the more or less happy, more or less faithful expression of natural justice; it is the expression of the general will. This general will is alone free; particular wills are not free. The general will has all rights, and particular wills have only the rights that it confers on them, or rather lends them. Force, in _The Citizen_ is the foundation of society, of order, of laws, of the rights and duties which laws alone inst.i.tute. In the _Contrat Social_, the general will plays the same part, fulfils the same function. Moreover, the general will scarcely differs in itself from force. In fact, the general will is number, that is to say, force still. Thus, on both sides, tyranny under different forms. One may here observe the power of method. If Hobbes, if Rousseau especially had at first studied the idea of right in itself, with the certain characters without which we are not able to conceive it, they would have infallibly recognized that if there are rights derived from positive laws, and particularly from conventions and contracts, there are rights derived from no contract, since contracts take them for principles and rules; from no convention, since they serve as the foundation to all conventions in order that these conventions may be reputed just;--rights that society consecrates and develops, but does not make,--rights not subject to the caprices of general or particular will, belonging essentially to human nature, and like it, inviolable and sacred."

[238] 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 265: "What!" somewhere says Montesquieu, "man is everywhere in society, and it is asked whether man was born for society! What is this fact that is reproduced in all the vicissitudes of the life of humanity, except a law of humanity? The universal and permanent fact of society attests the principle of sociability. This principle s.h.i.+nes forth in all our inclinations, in our sentiments, in our beliefs. It is true that we love society for the advantages that it brings; but it is none the less true, that we also love it for its own sake, that we seek it independently of all calculation. Solitude saddens us; it is not less deadly to the life of the moral being, than a perfect vacuum is to the life of the physical being. Without society what would become of sympathy, which is one of the most powerful principles of our soul, which establishes between men a community of sentiments, by which each lives in all and all live in each? Who would be blind enough not to see in that an energetic call of human nature for society? And the attraction of the s.e.xes, their union, the love of parents for children,--do they not found a sort of natural society, that is increased and developed by the power of the same causes which produced it? Divided by interest, united by sentiment, men respect each other in the name of justice. Let us add that they love each other in virtue of natural charity. In the sight of justice, equal in right, charity inspires us to consider ourselves as brethren, and to give each other succor and consolation. Wonderful thing! G.o.d has not left to our wisdom, nor even to experience, the care of forming and preserving society,--he has willed that sociability should be a law of our nature, and a law so imperative that no tendency to isolation, no egoism, no distaste even, can prevail against it. All the power of the spirit of system was necessary in order to make Hobbes say that society is an accident, as an incredible degree of melancholy to wring from Rousseau the extravagant expression that society is an evil."

[239] 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 283: "We do not hold from a compact our quality as man, and the dignity and rights attached to it; or, rather, there is an immortal compact which is nowhere written, which makes itself felt by every uncorrupted conscience, that compact which binds together all beings intelligent, free, and subject to misfortune, by the sacred ties of a common respect and a common charity.... Laws promulgate duties, but do not give birth to them; they could not violate duties without being unjust, and ceasing to merit the beautiful name of laws--that is to say, decisions of the public authority worthy of appearing obligatory to the conscience of all. Nevertheless, although laws have no other virtue than that of declaring what exists before them, we often found on them right and justice, to the great detriment of justice itself, and the sentiment of right. Time and habit despoil reason of its natural rights in order to transfer it to law. What then happens? We either obey it, even when it is unjust, which is not a very great evil, but we do not think of reforming it little by little, having no superior principle that enables us to judge it,--or we continually change it, in an invincible impotence of founding any thing, by not knowing the immutable basis on which written law must rest. In either case, all progress is impossible, because the laws are not related to their true principle, which is reason, conscience, sovereign and absolute justice."