exactly the opposite. Liberty of will is not, then, the license of
desires and passions. Man is a slave in desire and passion, he is free
only in will. That they may not elsewhere be confounded, liberty and
anarchy must not be confounded in psychology. Passions abandoning
themselves to their caprices, is anarchy. Passions concentrated upon a
dominant passion, 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 passion, of interest, reason does not
oppose the counterpoise of justice. Reason and justice free us from the
yoke of passions, 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 passion, 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 sanctity 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 title.
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 constituent 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
institution? Because it is an outrage upon what constitutes 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 anticipating the
following lecture.
We arrive, then, at the last element of the moral phenomenon, the
judgment of merit and demerit.
At the same time that we judge that a man has done a good or bad action,
we bear this other judgment quite as necessary as the former, to wit,
that if this man has acted well he has merited a reward, and if he has
acted ill, he has merited a punishment. It is exactly the same with this
judgment as with that of the good. It may be outwardly expressed in a
more or less lively manner, according as it is mingled with more or less
energetic feelings. Sometimes it will be only a benevolent disposition
towards the virtuous agent, and an unfavorable disposition towards the
culpable agent; sometimes it will be enthusiasm or indignation. In some
cases one will make himself the executor of the judgment that he bears,
he will crown the hero and load the criminal with chains. But when all
your feelings are calmed, when enthusiasm has cooled as well as
indignation, when time and separation have rendered an action almost
indifferent to you, you none the less persist in judging that the author
of this action merits a reward or a punishment, according to the quality
of the action. You decide that you were right in the sentiments that you
felt, and, although they are extinguished, you declare them legitimate.
The judgment of merit and demerit is essentially tied to the judgment of
good and evil. In fact, he who does an action without knowing whether it
is good or bad, has neither merit nor demerit in doing it. It is with
him the same as with those physical agents that accomplish the most
beneficent or the most destructive works, to which we never think of
attributing knowledge and will, consequently accountability. Why are
there no penalties attached to involuntary crimes? Because for that very
reason they are not regarded as crimes. Hence it comes that the question
of premeditation is so grave in all criminal processes. Why is the
child, up to a certain age, subject to none but light punishments?
Because where the idea of the good and liberty are wanting, merit and
demerit are also wanting, which alone authorize reward and punishment.
The author of an injurious but involuntary action is condemned to an
indemnity corresponding to the damage done; he is not condemned to a
punishment properly so called.
Such are the conditions of merit and demerit. When these conditions are
fulfilled, merit and demerit manifest themselves, and involve reward and
punishment.
Merit is the natural right we have to be rewarded; demerit the natural
right that others have to punish us, and, if we may thus speak, the
right that we have to be punished. This expression may seem paradoxical,
nevertheless it is true. A culpable man, who, opening his eyes to the
light of the good, should comprehend the necessity of expiation, not
only by internal repentance, without which all the rest is in vain, but
also by a real and effective suffering, such a culpable man would have
the right to claim the punishment that alone can reconcile him with
order. And such reclamations are not so rare. Do we not every day see
criminals denouncing themselves and offering themselves up to avenge the
public? Others prefer to satisfy justice, and do not have recourse to
the pardon that law places in the hands of the monarch in order to
represent in the state charity and mercy, as tribunals represent in it
justice. This is a manifest proof of the natural and profound roots of
the idea of punishment and reward.
Merit and demerit imperatively claim, like a lawful debt, punishment and
reward; but reward must not be confounded with merit, nor punishment
with demerit; this would be confounding cause and effect, principle and
consequence. Even were reward and punishment not to take place, merit
and demerit would subsist. Punishment and reward satisfy merit and
demerit, but do not constitute them. Suppress all reward and all
punishment and you do not thereby suppress merit and demerit; on the
contrary, suppress merit and demerit, and there are no longer true
punishments and true rewards. Unmerited goods and honors are only
material advantages; reward is essentially moral, and its value is
independent of its form. One of those crowns of oak that the early
Romans decreed to heroism is worth more than all the riches in the
world, when it is the sign of the recognition and the admiration of a
people. To reward is to give in return. He who is rewarded must have
first given something in order to deserve to be rewarded. Reward
accorded to merit is a debt; reward without merit is a charity or a
theft. It is the same with punishment. It is the relation of pain to a
fault,--in this relation, and not in the pain alone, is the truth as
well as the shame of chastisement.
'Tis crime and not the scaffold makes the shame.[228]
There are two things that must be unceasingly repeated, because they are
equally true,--the first is, that the good is good in itself, and ought
to be pursued whatever may be the consequences; the second is, that the
consequences of the good cannot fail to be fortunate. Happiness,
separated from the good, is only a fact to which is attached no moral
idea; but, as an effect of the good, it enters into the moral order and
completes it.
Virtue without happiness, and crime without unhappiness, are a
contradiction, a disorder. If virtue supposes sacrifice, that is to say,
suffering, it is of eternal justice that the sacrifice, generously
accepted and courageously borne, have for a reward the very happiness
that has been sacrificed. So, it is of eternal justice that crime be
punished by the unhappiness of the culpable happiness which it has tried
to obtain by stealth.
Now, when and how is the law fulfilled that attaches pleasure and pain
to good and evil? Most of the time even here below. For order rules in
this world, since the world endures. If order is sometimes disturbed,
and happiness and unhappiness are not always distributed in right
proportion to crime and virtue, still the absolute judgment of the good,
the absolute judgment of obligation, the absolute judgment of merit and
demerit, subsist inviolable and imprescriptible,--we remain convinced
that he who has put in us the sentiment and the idea of order cannot in
that fail himself, and that sooner or later he will re-establish the
sacred harmony between virtue and happiness by the means that to him
belong. But the time has not come to sound these mysterious
prospects.[229] It is sufficient for us, but it was necessary to mark
them, in order to show the nature and the end of moral truth.
We terminate this analysis of the different parts of the complex
phenomenon of morality by recalling that one which is the most apparent
of all, which, however, is only the accompaniment, and, thus to speak,
the echo of all the others--sentiment. Sentiment has for its object to
render sensible to the soul the tie between virtue and happiness. It is
the direct and vital application of the law of merit and demerit. It
precedes and authorizes the punishments and rewards that society
institutes. It is the internal model according to which the imagination,
guided by faith, represents to itself the punishments and rewards of the
divine city. The world that we place beyond this is, in great part, our
own heart transported into heaven. Since it comes thence, it is just
that it should return thither.
We will not dwell upon the different phenomena of sentiment; we have
sufficiently explained them in the last lecture. A few words will
replace them under your eyes.
We cannot witness a good action, whoever may be its author, another or
ourselves, without experiencing a particular pleasure, analogous to that
which is attached to the perception of the beautiful; and we cannot
witness a bad action without feeling a contrary sentiment, also
analogous to that which the sight of an ugly and deformed object excites
in us. This sentiment is profoundly different from agreeable or
disagreeable sensation.
Are we the authors of the good action? We feel a satisfaction that we do
not confound with any other. It is not the triumph of interest nor that
of pride,--it is the pleasure of modest honesty or dignified virtue that
renders justice to itself. Are we the authors of the bad action? We feel
offended conscience groaning within us. Sometimes it is only an
importunate reclamation, sometimes it is a bitter agony. Remorse is a
suffering the more poignant on account of our feeling that it is
deserved.
The spectacle of a good action done by another also has something
delicious to the soul. Sympathy is an echo in us that responds to
whatever is noble and good in others. When interest does not lead us
astray, we naturally put ourselves in the place of him who has done
well. We feel in a certain measure the sentiments that animate him. We
elevate ourselves to the mood of his spirit. Is it not already for the
good man an exquisite reward to make the noble sentiments that animate
him thus pass into the hearts of his fellow-men? The spectacle of a bad
action, instead of sympathy, excites an involuntary antipathy, a painful
and sad sentiment. Without doubt, this sentiment is never acute like
remorse. There is in innocence something serene and placid that tempers
even the sentiment of injustice, even when this injustice falls on us.
We then experience a sort of shame for humanity, we mourn over human
weakness, and, by a melancholy return upon ourselves, we are less moved
to anger than to pity. Sometimes also pity is overcome by a generous
anger, by a disinterested indignation. If, as we have said, it is a
sweet reward to excite a noble sympathy, an enthusiasm almost always
fertile in good actions, it is a cruel punishment to stir up around us
pity, indignation, aversion, and contempt.
Sympathy for a good action is accompanied by benevolence for its author.
He inspires us with an affectionate disposition. Even without knowing
it, we would love to do good to him; we desire that he may be happy,
because we judge that he deserves to be. Antipathy also passes from the
action to the person, and engenders against him a sort of bad will, for
which we do not blame ourselves, because we feel it to be disinterested
and find it legitimate.
Moral satisfaction and remorse, sympathy, benevolence, and their
opposites are sentiments and not judgments; but they are sentiments that
accompany judgments, the judgment of the good, especially that of merit
and demerit. These sentiments have been given us by the sovereign Author
of our moral constitution to aid us in doing good. In their diversity
and mobility, they cannot be the foundations of absolute obligation
which must be equal for all, but they are to it happy auxiliaries, sure
and beneficent witnesses of the harmony between virtue and happiness.
These are the facts as presented by a faithful description, as brought
to light by a detailed analysis.
Without facts all is chimera; without a severe distinction of facts, all
is confusion; but, also, without the knowledge of their relations,
instead of a single vast doctrine, like the total phenomenon that we
have undertaken to embrace, there can be only different systems like the
different parts of this phenomenon, consequently imperfect systems,
systems always at war with each other.
We set out from common sense; for the object of true science is not to
contradict common sense, but to explain it, and for this end we must
commence by recognizing it. We have at first painted in its simplicity,
even in the gross, the phenomenon of morality. Then we have separated
its elements, and carefully marked the characteristic traits of each of
them. It only remains for us to re-collect them all, to seize their
relations, and thus to find again, but more precise and more clear, the
primitive unity that served us as a point of departure.
Beneath all facts analysis has shown us a primitive fact, which vests
only on itself,--the judgment of the good. We do not sacrifice other
facts to that, but we must establish that it is the first both in date
and in importance.
By its close resemblance to the judgment of the true and the beautiful,
the judgment of the good has shown us the affinities of ethics,
metaphysics, and aesthetics.
The good, so essentially united to the true, is distinguished from it in
that it is practical truth. The good is obligatory. These two ideas are
inseparable, but not identical. For obligation rests on the good,--in
this intimate alliance, from the good obligation borrows its universal
and absolute character.
The obligatory good is the moral law. Therein is for us the foundation
of all ethics. Thereby it is that we separate ourselves from the ethics
of interest and the ethics of sentiment. We admit all the facts, but we
do not admit them in the same rank.
To the moral law in the reason of man corresponds liberty in action.
Liberty is deduced from obligation, and moreover it is a fact of an
irresistible evidence.
Man as a being free and subject to obligation, is a moral person. The
idea of person contains several moral notions, among others that of
right. Person alone can have rights.
To all these ideas is added that of merit and demerit, which serves as
their sanction.
Merit and demerit suppose the distinction between good and evil,
obligation and liberty, and give birth to the idea of reward and
punishment.
It is on the condition that the good may be an object of reason, that
ethics can have an immovable basis. We have therefore insisted on the
rational character of the idea of the good, but without misconceiving
the part of sentiment.
We have distinguished that particular sensibility, which is stirred in
us in the train of reason itself, from physical sensibility, which needs
an impression made upon the organs in order to enter into exercise.
All our moral judgments are accompanied by sentiments that respond to
them. The sight of an action which we judge to be good gives us
pleasure,--the consciousness of having performed an obligatory act, and
of having performed it freely, is also a pleasure; the judgment of merit
and demerit makes our hearts beat by taking the form of sympathy and
benevolence.
It must be avowed that the law of duty, although it ought to be
fulfilled for its own sake, would be an ideal almost inaccessible to
human weakness, if to its austere prescriptions were not added some
inspiration of the heart. Sentiment is in some sort a natural grace that
has been given us, either to supply the light of reason that is
sometimes uncertain, or to succor the will wavering in the presence of
an obscure or painful duty. In order to resist the violence of culpable
passions, the aid of generous passions is needed; and when the moral
law exacts the sacrifice of natural sentiments, of the sweetest and most
lively instincts, it is fortunate that it can support itself on other
sentiments, or other instincts which also have their charm and their
force. Truth enlightens the mind; sentiment warms the soul and leads to
action. It is not cold reason that determines a Codrus to devote himself
for his countrymen, a d'Assas to utter, beneath the steel of the enemy,
the generous cry that brings him death and saves the army. Let us guard
ourselves, then, from weakening the authority of sentiment; let us honor
and sustain enthusiasm; it is the source whence spring great and heroic
actions.
And shall interest be entirely banished from our system? No; we
recognize in the human soul a desire for happiness which is the work of
God himself. This desire is a fact,--it must then have its place in a
system founded upon experience. Happiness is one of the ends of human
nature; only it is neither its sole end nor its principal end.
Admirable economy of the moral constitution of man! Its supreme end is
the good, its law is virtue, which often imposes on it suffering, and
thereby it is the most excellent of all things that we know. But this
law is very hard and in contradiction with the instinct of happiness.
Fear nothing,--the beneficent author of our being has placed in our
souls, by the side of the severe law of duty, the sweet and amiable
force of sentiment,--he has, in general, attached happiness to virtue;
and, for the exceptions, for there are exceptions, at the end of the
course he has placed hope.[230]
Our doctrine is now known. Its only pretension is to express faithfully
each fact, to express them all, and to make appear at once their
differences and their harmony.
Beyond that there is nothing new to attempt in ethics. To admit only a
single fact and to sacrifice to that all the rest,--such is the beaten
way. Of all the facts that we have just analyzed, there is not one that
has not in its turn played the part of sole principle. All the great
schools of moral philosophy have each seen only one side of
truth,--fortunate when they have not chosen among the different phases
of the moral phenomenon, in order to found upon them their entire
system, precisely those that are least adapted to that end!
Who could now return to Epicurus, and, against the most manifest facts,
against common sense, against the very idea of all ethics, found duty,
virtue, the good, on the desire of happiness alone? It would be proof of
great blindness and great barrenness. On the other hand, shall we
immolate the need of happiness, the hope of all reward, human or divine,
to the abstract idea of the good? The Stoics have done it,--we know with
what apparent grandeur, with what real impotence. Shall we confine with
Kant the whole of ethics to obligation? That is straitening still more a
system that is already very narrow. Moreover, one may hope to surpass
Kant in extent of views, by a completer knowledge and more faithful
representation of facts; one cannot hope to be more profound in the
point of view that he has chosen. Or, in another order of ideas, shall
we refer to the will of God alone the obligation of virtue, and found
ethics on religion, instead of giving religion to ethics as their
necessary perfection? We still invent nothing new, we only renew the
ethics of the theologians of the Middle Age, or rather of a particular
school which has had for its adversaries the most illustrious doctors.
Finally, shall we reduce all morality to sentiment, to sympathy, to
benevolence? It only remains to follow the footsteps of Hutcheson and
Smith, abandoned by Reid himself, or the footsteps of a celebrated
adversary of Kant, Jacobi.[231]
The time of exclusive theories has gone by; to renew them is to
perpetuate war in philosophy. Each of them, being founded upon a real
fact, rightly refuses the sacrifice of this fact; and it meets in
hostile theories an equal right and an equal resistance. Hence the
perpetual return of the same systems, always at war with each other, and
by turns vanquished and victorious. This strife can cease only by means
of a doctrine that conciliates all systems by comprising all the facts
that give them authority.
It is not the preconceived design of conciliating systems in history
that suggests to us the idea of conciliating facts in reality. It is, on
the contrary, the full possession of all the facts, analogous and
different, that forces us to absolve and condemn all systems on account
of the truth that is in each of them, and on account of the errors that
are mixed with the truth.
It is important to repeat continually, that nothing is so easy as to
arrange a system, by suppressing or altering the facts that embarrass
it. But is it, then, the object of philosophy to produce at any cost a
system, instead of seeking to understand the truth and express it as it
is?