other. That is his first instinct, and this instinct will never abandon
him. Pleasure may change so far as its object is concerned, and be
diversified in a thousand ways: but whatever form it takes,--physical
pleasure, intellectual pleasure, moral pleasure, it is always pleasure
that man pursues.
The agreeable generalized is the useful; and the greatest possible sum
of pleasure, whatever it may be, no longer concentrated within such or
such an instant, but distributed over a certain extent of duration, is
happiness.[191]
Happiness, like pleasure, is relative to him who experiences it; it is
essentially personal. Ourselves, and ourselves alone we love, in loving
pleasure and happiness.
Interest is that which prompts us to seek in every thing our pleasure
and our happiness.
If happiness is the sole end of life, interest is the sole motive of all
our actions.
Man is only sensible to his interest, but he understands it well or ill.
Much art is necessary in order to be happy. We are not ready to give
ourselves up to all the pleasures that are offered on the highway of
life, without examining whether these pleasures do not conceal many a
pain. Present pleasure is not every thing,--it is necessary to take
thought for the future; it is necessary to know how to renounce joys
that may bring regret, and sacrifice pleasure to happiness, that is to
say, to pleasure still, but pleasure more enduring and less
intoxicating. The pleasures of the body are not the only ones,--there
are other pleasures, those of mind, even those of opinion: the sage
tempers them by each other.
The ethics of interest are nothing else than the ethics of perfected
pleasure, substituting happiness for pleasure, the useful for the
agreeable, prudence for passion. It admits, like the human race, the
words good and evil, virtue and vice, merit and demerit, punishment and
reward, but it explains them in its own way. The good is that which in
the eyes of reason is conformed to our true interest; evil is that which
is contrary to our true interest. Virtue is that wisdom which knows how
to resist the enticement of passions, discerns what is truly useful, and
surely proceeds to happiness. Vice is that aberration of mind and
character that sacrifices happiness to pleasures without duration or
full of dangers. Merit and demerit, punishment and reward, are the
consequences of virtue and vice:--for not knowing how to seek happiness
by the road of wisdom, we are punished by not attaining it. The ethics
of interest do not pretend to destroy any of the duties consecrated by
public opinion; it establishes that all are conformed to our personal
interest, and it is thereby that they are duties. To do good to men is
the surest means of making them do good to us; and it is also the means
of acquiring their esteem, their good will, and their sympathy,--always
agreeable, and often useful. Disinterestedness itself has its
explanation. Doubtless there is no disinterestedness in the vulgar sense
of the word, that is to say, a real sacrifice of self, which is absurd,
but there is the sacrifice of present interest to future interest, of
gross and sensual passion to a nobler and more delicate pleasure.
Sometimes one renders to himself a bad account of the pleasure that he
pursues, and in fault of seeing clearly into his own heart, invents that
chimera of disinterestedness of which human nature is incapable, which
it cannot even comprehend.
It will be conceded that this explanation of the ethics of interest is
not overcharged, that it is faithful.
We go further,--we acknowledge that these ethics are an extreme, but, up
to a certain point, a legitimate reaction against the excessive rigor of
stoical ethics, especially ascetic ethics that smother sensibility
instead of regulating it, and, in order to save the soul from passions,
demands of it a sacrifice of all the passions of nature that resembles a
suicide.
Man was not made to be a sublime slave, like Epictetus, employed in
supporting bad fortune well without trying to surmount it, nor, like the
author of the _Imitation_, the angelic inhabitant of a cloister, calling
for death as a fortunate deliverance, and anticipating it, as far as in
him lies, by continual penitence and in mute adoration. The love of
pleasure, even the passions, have a place among the needs of humanity.
Suppress the passions, and it is true there is no more excess; neither
is there any mainspring of action,--without winds the vessel no longer
proceeds, and soon sinks in the deep. Suppose a being that lacks love
of self, the instinct of preservation, the horror of suffering,
especially the horror of death, who has neither the love of pleasure nor
the love of happiness, in a word, destitute of all personal
interest,--such a being will not long resist the innumerable causes of
destruction that surround and besiege him; he will not remain a day.
Never can a single family, nor the least society be formed or
maintained. He who has made man has not confided the care of his work to
virtue alone, to devotedness and sublime charity,--he has willed that
the duration and development of the race and human society should be
placed upon simpler and surer foundations; and this is the reason why he
has given to man the love of self, the instinct of preservation, the
taste of pleasure and happiness, the passions that animate life, hope
and fear, love, ambition, personal interest, in fine, a powerful,
permanent, universal motive that urges us on to continually ameliorate
our condition upon the earth.
So we do not contest with the ethics of interest the reality of their
principle,--we are convinced that this principle exists, that it has a
right to be. The only question that we raise is the following:--The
principle of interest is true in itself, but are there not other
principles quite as true, quite as real? Man seeks pleasure and
happiness, but are there not in him other needs, other sentiments as
powerful, as vital? The first and universal principle of human life is
the need of the individual to preserve himself; but would this principle
suffice to support human life and society entire and as we behold it?
Just as the existence of the body does not hinder that of the soul, and
reciprocally, so in the ample bosom of humanity and the profound designs
of divine Providence, the principles that differ most do not exclude
each other.
The philosophy of sensation continually appeals to experience. We also
invoke experience; and it is experience that has given us certain facts
mentioned in the preceding lecture, which constitute the primary notions
of common sense. We admit the facts that serve as a foundation for the
system of interest, and reject the system. The facts are true in their
proper bearing,--the system is false in attributing to them an
excessive, limitless bearing; and it is false again in denying other
facts quite as incontestable. A sound philosophy holds for its primary
law to collect all real facts and respect the real differences that also
distinguish them. What it pursues before all, is not unity, but
truth.[192] Now the ethics of interest mutilate truth,--they choose
among facts those that agree with them, and reject all the others, which
are precisely the very facts of morality. Exclusive and intolerant, they
deny what they do not explain,--they form a whole well united, which, as
an artificial work, may have its merit, but is broken to pieces as soon
as it comes to encounter human nature with its grand parts.
We are about to show that the ethics of interest, an offspring of the
philosophy of sensation, are in contradiction with a certain number of
phenomena, which human nature presents to whomsoever interrogates it
without the spirit of system.
1st. We have established, not in the name of a system, but in the name
of the most common experience, that entire humanity believes in the
existence, in each of its members, of a certain force, a certain power
that is called liberty. Because it believes in liberty in the
individual, it desires that this liberty should be respected and
protected in society. Liberty is a fact that the consciousness of each
of us attests to him, which, moreover, is enveloped in all the moral
phenomena that we have signalized, in moral approbation and
disapprobation, in esteem and contempt, in admiration and indignation,
in merit and demerit, in punishment and reward. We ask the philosophy of
sensation and the ethics of interest what they do with this universal
phenomena which all the beliefs of humanity suppose, on which entire
life, private and public, turns.
Every system of ethics, whatever it may be, which contains, I do not say
a rule, but a simple advice, implicitly admits liberty. When the ethics
of interest advise a man to sacrifice the agreeable to the useful, it
apparently admits that man is free to follow or not to follow this
advice. But in philosophy it does not suffice to admit a fact, there
must be the right to admit it. Now, most moralists of interest deny the
liberty of man, and no one has the right to admit it in a system that
derives the entire human soul, all its faculties as well as all its
ideas, from sensation alone and its developments.
When an agreeable sensation, after having charmed our soul, quits it and
vanishes, the soul experiences a sort of suffering, a want, a need,--it
is agitated, disquieted. This disquietude, at first vague and
indecisive, is soon determined; it is borne towards the object that has
pleased us, whose absence makes us suffer. This movement of the soul,
more or less vivid, is desire.
Is there in desire any of the characters of liberty? What is it called
to be free? Each one knows that he is free, when he knows that he is
master of his action, that he can begin it, arrest it, or continue it as
he pleases. We are free, when before acting we have taken the resolution
to act, knowing well that we are able to take the opposite resolution. A
free act is that of which, by the infallible testimony of my
consciousness, I know that I am the cause, for which, therefore, I
regard myself as responsible. God, the world, the body, can produce in
me a thousand movements; these movements may seem to the eyes of an
external observer to be voluntary acts; but any error is impossible to
consciousness,--it distinguishes every movement not voluntary, whatever
it may be, from a voluntary act.
True activity is voluntary and free activity. Desire is just the
opposite. Desire, carried to its culmination, is passion; but language,
as well as consciousness, says that man is passive in passion; and the
more vivid passion is, the more imperative are its movements, the
farther is it from the type of true activity in which the soul possesses
and governs itself.
I am no more free in desire than in the sensation that precedes and
determines it. If an agreeable object is presented to me, am I able not
to be agreeably moved? If it is a painful object, am I able not to be
painfully moved? And so, when this agreeable sensation has disappeared,
if memory and imagination remind me of it, is it in my power not to
suffer from no longer experiencing it, is it in my power not to feel the
need of experiencing it again, and to desire more or less ardently the
object that alone can appease the disquietude and suffering of my soul?
Observe well what takes place within you in desire; you recognize in it
a blind emotion, that, without any deliberation on your part, and
without the intervention of your will, rises or falls, increases or
diminishes. One does not desire, and cease to desire, according to his
will.
Will often combats desire, as it often also yields to it; it is not,
therefore, desire. We do not reproach the sensations that objects
produce, nor even the desires that these sensations engender; we do
reproach ourselves for the consent of the will to these desires, and the
acts that follow, for these acts are in our power.
Desire is so little will, that it often abolishes it, and leads man into
acts that he does not impute to himself, for they are not voluntary. It
is even the refuge of many of the accused; they lay their faults to the
violence of desire and passion, which have not left them masters of
themselves.
If desire were the basis of will, the stronger the desire the freer we
should be. Evidently the contrary is true. As the violence of desire
increases, the dominion of man over himself decreases; and as desire is
weakened and passion extinguished, man repossesses himself.
I do not say that we have no influence over our desires. That two facts
differ, it does not follow that they must be without relation to each
other. By removing certain objects, or even by merely diverting our
thoughts away from the pleasure that they can give us, we are able, to a
certain extent, to turn aside and elude the sensible effects of these
objects, and escape the desire which they might excite in us. One may
also, by surrounding himself with certain objects, in some sort manage
himself, and produce in himself sensations and desires which for that
are not more voluntary than would be the impression made upon us by a
stone with which we should strike ourselves. By yielding to these
desires, we lend them a new force, and we moderate them by a skilful
resistance. One even has some power over the organs of the body, and, by
applying to them an appropriate regimen, he goes so far as to modify
their functions. All this proves that there is in us a power different
from the senses and desire, which, without disposing of them, sometimes
exercises over them an indirect authority.
Will also directs intelligence, although it is not intelligence. To will
and to know are two things essentially different. We do not judge as we
will, but according to the necessary laws of the judgment and the
understanding. The knowledge of truth is not a resolution of the will.
It is not the will that declares, for example, that body is extended,
that it is in space, that every phenomenon has a cause, etc. Yet the
will has much power over intelligence. It is freely and voluntarily that
we work, that we give attention, for a longer or a shorter time, more or
less intense, to certain things; consequently, it is the will that
develops and increases intelligence, as it might let it languish and
become extinguished. It must, then, be avowed that there is in us a
supreme power that presides over all our faculties, over intelligence as
well as sensibility, which is distinguished from them, and is mingled
with them, governs them, or leaves them to their natural development,
making appear, even in its absence, the character that belongs to it,
since the man that is deprived of it avows that he is no longer master
of himself, that he is not himself, so true is it that human personality
resides particularly in that prominent power that is called the
will.[193]
Singular destiny of that power, so often misconceived, and yet so
manifest! Strange confounding of will and desire, wherein the most
opposite schools meet each other, Spinoza, Malebranche, and Condillac,
the philosophy of the seventeenth century, and that of the eighteenth!
One, a despiser of humanity, by an extreme and ill-understood piety,
strips man of his own activity, in order to concentrate it in God; the
other transfers it to nature. In both man is a mere instrument, nothing
else than a mode of God or a product of nature. When desire is once
taken as the type of human activity, there is an end of all liberty and
personality. A philosophy, less systematic, by conforming itself to
facts, carries through common sense to better results. By distinguishing
between the passive phenomenon of desire and the power of freely
determining self, it restores the true activity that characterizes human
personality. The will is the infallible sign and the peculiar power of a
real and effective being; for how could he who should be only a mode of
another being find in his own borrowed being a power capable of willing
and producing acts of which he should feel himself the cause, and the
responsible cause?
If the philosophy of sensation, by setting out from passive phenomena,
cannot explain true activity, voluntary and free activity, we might
regard it as demonstrated that this same philosophy cannot give a true
doctrine of morality, for all ethics suppose liberty. In order to impose
rules of action on a being, it is necessary that this being should be
capable of fulfilling or violating them. What makes the good and evil of
an action is not the action itself, but the intention that has
determined it. Before every equitable tribunal, the crime is in the
intention, and to the intention the punishment is attached. Where, then,
liberty is wanting, where there is nothing but desire and passion, not
even a shade of morality subsists. But we do not wish to reject, by the
previous question, the ethics of sensation. We proceed to examine in
itself the principle that they lay down, and to show that from this
principle can be deduced neither the idea of good and evil, nor any of
the moral ideas that are attached to it.
2d. According to the philosophy of sensation, the good is nothing else
than the useful. By substituting the useful for the agreeable, without
changing the principle, there has been contrived a convenient refuge
against many difficulties; for it will always be possible to distinguish
interest well understood from apparent and vulgar interest. But even
under this somewhat refined form, the doctrine that we are examining
none the less destroys the distinction between good and evil.
If utility is the sole measure of the goodness of actions, I must
consider only one thing when an action is proposed to me to do,--what
advantages can result from it to me?
So I make the supposition that a friend, whose innocence is known to me,
falls into disfavor with a king, or opinion--a mistress more jealous and
imperious than all kings,--and that there is danger in remaining
faithful to him and advantage in separating myself from him; if, on one
side, the danger is certain, and on the other the advantage is
infallible, it is clear that I must either abandon my unfortunate
friend, or renounce the principle of interest--of interest well
understood.
But it will be said to me:--think on the uncertainty of human things;
remember that misfortune may also overtake you, and do not abandon your
friend, through fear that you may one day be abandoned.
I respond that, at first, it is the future that is uncertain, but the
present is certain; if I can reap great and unmistakable advantages from
an action, it would be absurd to sacrifice them to the chance of a
possible misfortune. Besides, according to my supposition, all the
chances of the future are in my favor,--this is the hypothesis that we
have made.
Do not speak to me of public opinion. If personal interest is the only
rational principle, the public reason must be with me. If it were
against me, it would be an objection against the truth of the principle.
For how could a true principle, rationally applied, be revolting to the
public conscience?
Neither oppose to me remorse. What remorse can I feel for having
followed the truth, if the principle of interest is in fact moral truth?
On the contrary, I should feel satisfaction on account of it.
The rewards and punishments of another life remain. But how are we to
believe in another life, in a system that confines human consciousness
within the limits of transformed sensation?
I have, then, no motive to preserve fidelity to a friend. And mankind
nevertheless imposes on me this fidelity; and, if I am wanting in it, I
am dishonored.
If happiness is the highest aim, good and evil are not in the act
itself, but in its happy or unhappy results.
Fontenelle seeing a man led to punishment, said, "There is a man who has
calculated badly." Whence it follows that, if this man, in doing what he
did, could have escaped punishment, he would have calculated well, and
his conduct would have been laudable. The action then becomes good or
ill according to the issue. Every act is of itself indifferent, and it
is lot that qualifies it.
If the honest is only the useful, the genius of calculation is the
highest wisdom; it is even virtue!
But this genius is not within the reach of everybody. It supposes, with
long experience of life, a sure insight, capable of discerning all the
consequences of actions, a head strong and large enough to embrace and
weigh their different chances. The young man, the ignorant, the poor in
mind, are not able to distinguish between the good and the evil, the
honest and the dishonest. And even in supposing the most consummate
prudence, what place remains, in the profound obscurity of human things,
for chance and the unforeseen! In truth, in the system of interest well
understood, there must be great knowledge in order to be an honest man.
Much less is requisite for ordinary virtue, whose motto has always been:
Do what you ought, let come what may.[194] But this principle is
precisely the opposite of the principle of interest. It is necessary to
choose between them. If interest is the only principle avowed by reason,
disinterestedness is a lie and madness, and literally an
incomprehensible monster in well-ordered human nature.
Nevertheless humanity speaks of disinterestedness, and thereby it does
not simply mean that wise selfishness that deprives itself of a pleasure
for a surer, more delicate, or more durable pleasure. No one has ever
believed that it was the nature or the degree of the pleasure sought
that constituted disinterestedness. This name is awarded only to the
sacrifice of an interest, whatever it may be, to a motive free from all
interest. And the human race, not only thus understands
disinterestedness, but it believes that such a disinterestedness exists;
it believes the human soul capable of it. It admires the devotedness of
Regulus, because it does not see what interest could have impelled that
great man to go far from his country to seek, among cruel enemies, a
frightful death, when he might have lived tranquil and even honored in
the midst of his family and his fellow-citizens.
But glory, it will be said, the passion of glory inspired Regulus; it
is, then, interest still that explains the apparent heroism of the old
Roman. Admit, then, that this manner of understanding his interest is
even ridiculously absurd, and that heroes are very unskilful and
inconsistent egoists. Instead of erecting statues, with the deceived
human race, to Regulus, d'Assas, and St. Vincent de Paul, true
philosophy must send them to the Petites-Maisons, that a good regime may
cure them of generosity, charity, and greatness of soul, and restore
them to the sane state, the normal state, the state in which man only
thinks of himself, and knows no other law, no other principle of action
than his interest.
3d. If there is no liberty, if there is no essential distinction between
good and evil, if there is only interest well or ill understood, there
can be no obligation.
It is at first very evident that obligation supposes a being capable of
fulfilling it, that duty is applied only to a free being. Then the
nature of obligation is such, that if we are delinquent in fulfilling
it, we feel ourselves culpable, whilst if, instead of understanding our
interest well, we have understood it ill, there follows only a single
thing, that we are unfortunate. Are, then, being culpable and being
unfortunate the same thing? These are two ideas radically different. You
may advise me to understand my interest well, under penalty of falling
into misfortune; you cannot command me to see clearly in regard to my
interest under penalty of crime.
Imprudence has never been considered a crime. When it is morally
accused, it is much less as being wrong than as attesting vices of the
soul, lightness, presumption, feebleness.