discernment. Obligation is always immediate and manifest. In vain
passion and desire combat it; in vain the reasoning that passion trains
for its attendance, like a docile slave, tries to smother it under a
mass of sophisms: the instinct of conscience, a cry of the soul, an
intuition of reason, different from reasoning, is sufficient to repel
all sophisms, and make obligation appear.
However pressing may be the solicitations of interest, we may always
enter into contest and arrangement with it. There are a thousand ways of
being happy. You assure me that, by conducting myself in such a manner,
I shall arrive at fortune. Yes, but I love repose more than fortune, and
with happiness alone in view, activity is not better than sloth. Nothing
is more difficult than to advise any one in regard to his interest,
nothing is easier than to advise him in regard to honor.
After all, in practice, the useful is resolved into the agreeable, that
is to say, into pleasure. Now, in regard to pleasure, every thing
depends on humor and temperament. When there is neither good nor evil in
itself, there are no pleasures more or less noble, more or less
elevated; there are only pleasures that are more or less agreeable to
us. Every thing depends on the nature of each one. This is the reason
why interest is so capricious. Each one understands it as it pleases
him, because each one is the judge of what pleases him. One is more
moved by pleasures of the senses; another by pleasures of mind and
heart. To the latter, the passion of glory takes the place of pleasures
of the senses; to the former, the pleasure of dominion appears much
superior to that of glory. Each man has his own passions, each man,
then, has his own way of understanding his interest; and even my
interest of to-day is not my interest of to-morrow. The revolutions of
health, age, and events greatly modify our tastes, our humors. We are
ourselves perpetually changing, and with us change our desires and our
interests.
It is not so with obligation. It exists not, or it is absolute. The idea
of obligation implies that of something inflexible. That alone is a duty
from which one cannot be loosed under any pretext, and is, by the same
title, a duty for all. There is one thing before which all the caprices
of my mind, of my imagination, of my sensibility must disappear,--the
idea of the good with the obligation which it involves. To this supreme
command I can oppose neither my humor, nor circumstances, nor even
difficulties. This law admits of no delay, no accommodation, no excuse.
When it speaks, be it to you or me, in whatever place, under whatever
circumstance, in whatever disposition we may be, it only remains for us
to obey. We are able not to obey, for we are free; but every
disobedience to the law appears to ourselves a fault more or less grave,
a bad use of our liberty. And the violated law has its immediate penal
sanction in the remorse that it inflicts upon us.
The only penalty that is brought upon us by the counsels of prudence,
comprehended more or less well, followed more or less well, is, in the
final account, more or less happiness or unhappiness. Now I pray you, am
I obligated to be happy? Can obligation depend upon happiness, that is
to say, on a thing that it is equally impossible for me to always seek
and obtain at will? If I am obligated, it must be in my power to fulfil
the obligation imposed. But my liberty has but little power over my
happiness, which depends upon a thousand circumstances independent of
me, whilst it is all in all in regard to virtue, for virtue is only an
employment of liberty. Moreover, happiness is in itself, morally,
neither better nor worse than unhappiness. If I understand my interest
badly, I am punished for it by regret, not by remorse. Unhappiness can
overwhelm me; it does not disgrace me, if it is not the consequence of
some vice of the soul.
Not that I would renew stoicism and say to suffering, Thou art no evil.
No, I earnestly advise man to escape suffering as much as he can, to
understand well his interest, to shun unhappiness and seek happiness. I
only wish to establish that happiness is one thing and virtue another,
that man necessarily aspires after happiness, but that he is only
obligated to virtue, and that consequently, by the side of and above
interest well understood is a moral law, that is to say, as
consciousness attests, and the whole human race avows, an imperative
prescription of which one cannot voluntarily divest himself without
crime and shame.
4th. If interest does not account for the idea of duty, by a necessary
consequence, it does not more account for that of right; for duty and
right reciprocally suppose each other.
Might and right must not be confounded. A being might have immense
power, that of the whirlwind, of the thunderbolt, that of one of the
forces of nature; if liberty is not joined to it, it is only a fearful
and terrible thing, it is not a person,--it may inspire, in the highest
degree, fear and hope,--it has no right to respect; one has no duties
towards it.
Duty and right are brothers. Their common mother is liberty.
They are born at the same time, are developed and perish together. It
might even be said that duty and right make one, and are the same being,
having a face on two different sides. What, in fact, is my right to your
respect, except the duty you have to respect me, because I am a free
being? But you are yourself a free being, and the foundation of my right
and your duty becomes for you the foundation of an equal right, and in
me of an equal duty.[195]
I say equal with the exactest equality, for liberty, and liberty alone,
is equal to itself. All the rest is diverse; by all the rest men differ;
for resemblance implies difference. As there are no two leaves that are
the same, there are no two men absolutely the same in body, senses,
mind, heart. But it is impossible to conceive of difference between the
free will of one man and the free will of another. I am free or I am not
free. If I am free, I am free as much as you, and you are as much as I.
There is not in this more or less. One is a moral person as much as, and
by the same title as another moral person. Volition, which is the seat
of liberty, is the same in all men. It may have in its service different
instruments, powers different, and consequently unequal, whether
material or spiritual. But the powers of which will disposes are not
it,[196] for it does not dispose of them in an absolute manner. The only
free power is that of will, but that is essentially so. If will
recognizes laws, these laws are not motives, springs that move it,--they
are ideal laws, that of justice, for example; will recognizes this law,
and at the same time it has the consciousness of the ability to fulfil
it or to break it, doing the one only with the consciousness of the
ability to do the other, and reciprocally. Therein is the type of
liberty, and at the same time of true equality; every thing else is
false. It is not true that men have the right to be equally rich,
beautiful, robust, to enjoy equally, in a word, to be equally fortunate;
for they originally and necessarily differ in all those points of their
nature that correspond to pleasure, to riches, to good fortune. God has
made us with powers unequal in regard to all these things. Here equality
is against nature and eternal order; for diversity and difference, as
well as harmony, are the law of creation. To dream of such an equality
is a strange mistake, a deplorable error. False equality is the idol of
ill-formed minds and hearts, of disquiet and ambitious egoism. True
equality accepts without shame all the exterior inequalities that God
has made, and that it is not in the power of man not only to efface, but
even to modify. Noble liberty has nothing to settle with the furies of
pride and envy. As it does not aspire to domination, so, and by virtue
of the same principle, it does not more aspire to a chimerical equality
of mind, of beauty, of fortune, of enjoyments. Moreover, such an
equality, were it possible, would be of little value in its own eyes; it
asks something much greater than pleasure, fortune, rank, to wit,
respect. Respect, an equal respect of the sacred right of being free in
every thing that constitutes the person, that person which is truly man;
this is what liberty and with it true equality claim, or rather
imperatively demand. Respect must not be confounded with homage. I
render homage to genius and beauty. I respect humanity alone, and by
that I mean all free natures, for every thing that is not free in man is
foreign to him. Man is therefore the equal of man precisely in every
thing that makes him man, and the reign of true equality exacts on the
part of all only the same respect for what each one possesses equally in
himself, both young and old, both ugly and beautiful, both rich and
poor, both the man of genius and the mediocre man, both woman and man,
whatever has consciousness of being a person and not a thing. The equal
respect of common liberty is the principle at once of duty and right; it
is the virtue of each and the security of all; by an admirable
agreement, it is dignity among men, and accordingly peace on earth. Such
is the great and holy image of liberty and equality, which has made the
hearts of our fathers beat, and the hearts of all virtuous and
enlightened men, of all true friends of humanity. Such is the ideal that
true philosophy pursues across the ages, from the generous dreams of
Plato to the solid conceptions of Montesquieu, from the first free
legislation of the smallest city of Greece to our declaration of rights,
and the immortal works of the constituent Assembly.
The philosophy of sensation starts with a principle that condemns it to
consequences as disastrous as those of the principle of liberty are
beneficent. By confounding will with desire, it justifies passion, which
is desire in all its force--passion, which is precisely the opposite of
liberty. It accordingly unchains all the desires and all the passions,
it gives full rein to imagination and the heart; it renders each man
much less happy on account of what he possesses, than miserable on
account of what he lacks; it makes him regard his neighbors with an eye
of envy and contempt, and continually pushes society towards anarchy or
tyranny. Whither, in fact, would you have interest lead in the train of
desire? My desire is certainly to be the most fortunate possible. My
interest is to seek to be so by all means, whatever they may be, under
the single reserve that they be not contrary to their end. If I am born
the first of men, the richest, the most beautiful, the most powerful,
etc., I shall do every thing to preserve the advantages I have received.
If fate has given me birth in a rank little elevated, with a moderate
fortune, limited talents, and immense desires--for it cannot too often
be repeated, desire of every kind aspires after the infinite--I shall do
every thing to rise above the crowd, in order to increase my power, my
fortune, my joys. Unfortunate on account of my position in this world,
in order to change it, I dream of, and call for revolutions, it is true,
without enthusiasm and political fanaticism, for interest alone does not
produce these noble follies, but under the sharp goad of vanity and
ambition. Thereby, then, I arrive at fortune and power; interest, then,
claims security, as before it invoked agitation. The need of security
brings me back from anarchy to the need of order, provided order be to
my profit; and I become a tyrant, if I can, or the gilt servant of a
tyrant. Against anarchy and tyranny, those two scourges of liberty, the
only rampart is the universal sentiment of right, founded on the firm
distinction between good and evil, the just and the useful, the honest
and the agreeable, virtue and interest, will and desire, sensation and
conscience.
5. Let us again signalize one of the necessary consequences of the
doctrine of interest.
A free being, in possession of the sacred rule of justice, cannot
violate it, knowing that he should and may follow it, without
immediately recognizing that he merits punishment. The idea of
punishment is not an artificial idea, borrowed from the profound
calculations of legislators; legislations rest upon the natural idea of
punishment. This idea, corresponding to that of liberty and justice, is
necessarily wanting where the former two do not exist. Does he who
obeys, and fatally obeys his desires, by the attraction of pleasure and
happiness, supposing that, without any other motive than that of
interest, he does an act conformed, externally at least, to the rule of
justice, merit any thing by doing such an action? Not the least in the
world. Conscience attributes to him no merit, and no one owes him thanks
or recompense, for he only thinks of himself. On the other hand, if he
injures others in wishing to serve himself, he does not feel culpable,
and no one can say to him that he has merited punishment. A free being
who wills what he does, who has a law, and can conform to it, or break
it, is alone responsible for his acts. But what responsibility can there
be in the absence of liberty and a recognized and accepted rule of
justice? The man of sensation and desire tends to his own good under the
law of interest, as the stone is drawn towards the centre of the earth
under the law of gravitation, as the needle points to the pole. Man may
err in the pursuit of his interest. In this case, what is to be done!
As it seems, to put him again in the right way. Instead of that, he is
punished. And for what, I pray you? For being deceived. But error merits
advice, not punishment. Punishment has, in the system of interest, no
more the sanction of moral sense than recompense. Punishment is only an
act of personal defence on the part of society; it is an example which
it gives, in order to inspire a salutary terror. These motives are
excellent, if it be added that this punishment is just in itself, that
it is merited, and that it is legitimately applied to the action
committed. Omit that, and the other motives lose their authority, and
there remains only an exercise of force, destitute of all morality. Then
the culprit is not punished; he is smitten, or even put to death, as the
animal that injures instead of serving is put to death without scruple.
The condemned does not bow his head to the wholesome reparation due to
justice, but to the weight of irons or the stroke of the axe. The
chastisement is not a legitimate satisfaction, an expiation which,
comprehended by the culprit, reconciles him in his own eyes with the
order that he has violated. It is a storm that he could not escape; it
is the thunder-bolt that falls upon him; it is a force more powerful
than his own, which compasses and overthrows him. The appearance of
public chastisements acts, without doubt, upon the imagination of
peoples; but it does not enlighten their reason and speak to their
conscience; it intimidates them, perhaps; it does not soften them. So
recompense is only an additional attraction, added to all the others.
As, properly speaking, there is no merit, recompense is simply an
advantage that one desires, that is striven for and obtained without
attaching to it any moral idea. Thus is degraded and effaced the great
institution, natural and divine, of the recompense of virtue by
happiness, and of reparation for a fault by proportionate
suffering.[197]
We may then draw the conclusion, without fear of its being contradicted
either by analysis or dialectics, that the doctrine of interest is
incompatible with the most certain facts, with the strongest convictions
of humanity. Let us add, that this doctrine is not less incompatible
with the hope of another world, where the principle of justice will be
better realized than in this.
I will not seek whether the sensualistic metaphysics can arrive at an
infinite being, author of the universe and man. I am well persuaded that
it cannot. For every proof of the existence of God supposes in the human
mind principles of which sensation renders no account,--for example, the
universal and necessary principle of causality, without which I should
have no need of seeking, no power of finding the cause of whatever
exists.[198] All that I wish to establish here is, that in the system of
interest, man, not possessing any truly moral attribute, has no right to
put in God that of which he finds no trace either in the world or in
himself. The God of the ethics of interest must be analogous to the man
of these same ethics. How could they attribute to him the justice and
the love--I mean disinterested love--of which they cannot have the least
idea? The God that they can admit loves himself, and loves only himself.
And reciprocally, not considering him as the supreme principle of
charity and justice, we can neither love nor honor him, and the only
worship that we can render him, is that of the fear with which his
omnipotence inspires us.
What holy hope could we then found upon such a God? And we who have some
time grovelled upon this earth, thinking only of ourselves, seeking only
pleasure and a pitiable happiness, what sufferings nobly borne for
justice, what generous efforts to maintain and develop the dignity of
our soul, what virtuous affections for other souls, can we offer to the
Father of humanity as titles to his merciful justice? The principle that
most persuades the human race of the immortality of the soul is still
the necessary principle of merit and demerit, which, not finding here
below its exact satisfaction, and yet under the necessity of finding it,
inspires us to call upon God for its satisfaction, who has not put in
our hearts the law of justice to violate it himself in regard to
us.[199] Now, we have just seen that the ethics of interest destroy the
principle of merit and demerit, both in this world, and above all, in
the world to come. Accordingly, there is no regard beyond this
world,--no recourse to an all-powerful judge, wholly just and wholly
good, against the sports of fortune and the imperfections of human
justice. Every thing is completed for man between birth and death, in
spite of the instincts and presentiments of his heart, and even the
principles of his reason.
The disciples of Helvetius will, perhaps, claim the glory of having
freed humanity from the fears and hopes that turn it aside from its true
interests. It is a service which mankind will appreciate. But since they
confine our whole destiny to this world, let us demand of them what lot
so worthy of envy they have in reserve for us here, what social order
they charge with our good fortune, what politics, in fine, are derived
from their ethics.[200]
You already know. We have demonstrated that the philosophy of sensation
knows neither true liberty nor true right. What, in fact, is will for
this philosophy? It is desire. What, then, is right? The power of
satisfying desires. On this score, man is not free, and right is might.
Once more, nothing pertains less to man than desire. Desire comes of
need which man does not make, which he submits to. He submits in the
same way to desire. To reduce will to desire is to annihilate liberty;
it is worse still, it is to put it where it is not; it is to create a
mendacious liberty that becomes an instrument of crime and misery. To
call man to such a liberty is to open his soul to infinite desires,
which it is impossible for him to satisfy. Desire is in its nature
without limits, and our power is very limited. If we were alone in this
world, we should even then be much troubled to satisfy our desires. But
we press against each other with immense desires, and limited, diverse,
and unequal powers. When right is the force that is in each of us,
equality of rights is a chimera,--all rights are unequal, since all
forces are unequal and can never cease to be so. It is, therefore,
necessary to renounce equality as well as liberty; or if one invents a
false equality as well as a false liberty, he puts humanity in pursuit
of a phantom.
Such are the social elements that the ethics of interest give to
politics. From such elements I defy all the politics of the school of
sensation and interest to produce a single day of liberty and happiness
for the human race.
When right is might, the natural state of men among themselves, is war.
All desiring the same things, they are all necessarily enemies; and in
this war, woe to the feeble, to the feeble in body and the feeble in
mind! The stronger are the masters by perfect right. Since right is
might, the feeble may complain of nature that has not made them strong,
and not complain of the strong man who uses his right in oppressing
them. The feeble then call deception to their aid; and it is in this
strife between cunning and force that humanity combats with itself.
Yes, if there are only needs, desires, passions, interests, with
different forces pitted against each other, war, a war sometimes
declared and bloody, sometimes silent and full of meannesses, is in the
nature of things. No social art can change this nature,--it may be more
or less covered; it always reappears, overcomes and rends the veil with
which a mendacious legislation envelops it. Dream, then, of liberty for
beings that are not free, of equality between beings that are
essentially different, of respect for rights where there is no right,
and of the establishment of justice on an indestructible foundation of
inimical passions! From such a foundation can spring only endless
troubles or oppression, or rather all these evils together in a
necessary circle.
This fatal circle can be broken only by the aid of principles which all
the metamorphoses of sensation do not engender, and for which interest
cannot account, which none the less subsist to the honor and for the
safety of humanity. These principles are those that time has little by
little drawn from Christianity in order to give them for the guidance of
modern societies. You will find them written in the glorious declaration
of rights that forever broke the monarchy of Louis XV., and prepared the
constitutional monarchy. They are in the charter that governs us, in our
laws, in our institutions, in our manners, in the air that we breathe.
They serve at once as foundations for our society and the new philosophy
necessary to a new order.[201]
Perhaps you will ask me how, in the eighteenth century, so many
distinguished, so many honest souls could let themselves be seduced by a
system that must have been revolting to all their sentiments. I will
answer by reminding you that the eighteenth century was an immoderate
reaction against the faults into which had sadly fallen the old age of a
great century and a great king, that is to say, the revocation of the
edict of Nantes, the persecution of all free and elevated philosophy, a
narrow and suspicious devotion, and intolerance, with its usual
companion, hypocrisy. These excesses must have produced opposite
excesses. Mme. de Maintenon opened the route to Mme. de Pompadour. After
the mode of devotion comes that of license; it takes every thing by
storm. It descends from the court to the nobility, to the clergy even,
and accordingly to the people. It carried away the best spirits, even
genius itself. It put a foreign philosophy in the place of the national
philosophy, culpable, persecuted as it had been, for not being
irreconcilable with Christianity. A disciple of Locke, whom Locke had
discarded, Condillac, took the place of Descartes, as the author of
_Candide_ and _la Pucelle_ had taken the place of Corneille and Bossuet,
as Boucher and Vanloo had taken the place of Lesueur and Poussin. The
ethics of pleasure and interest were the necessary ethics of that epoch.
It must not be supposed from this that all souls were corrupt. Men, says
M. Royer-Collard, are neither as good nor as bad as their
principles[202]. No stoic has been as austere as stoicism, no epicurean
as enervated as epicureanism. Human weakness practically baffles
virtuous theories; in return, thank God, the instinct of the heart
condemns to inconsistency the honest man who errs in bad theories.
Accordingly, in the eighteenth century, the most generous and most
disinterested sentiments often shone forth under the reign of the
philosophy of sensation and the ethics of interest. But it is none the
less true, that the philosophy of sensation is false, and the ethics of
interest destructive of all morality.