it not sporting with philosophy to demand of it any other character than
that of truth? Do men complain that modern chemistry has not sufficient
character, because it limits itself to studying facts in their
relations, and also in their differences, and because it does not end at
a single substance? The only true philosophy that is proper for a
century returned from all exaggerations, is a picture of human nature
whose first merit is fidelity, which must offer all the traits of the
original in their right proportion and real harmony. The unity of the
doctrine that we profess is in that of the human soul, whence we have
drawn it. Is it not one and the same being that perceives the good, that
knows that he is obligated to fulfil it, that knows that he is free in
fulfilling it, that loves the good, and judges that the fulfilment or
violation of the good justly brings after it reward or punishment,
happiness or misery? We draw, then, a true unity from the intimate
relation between all the facts that, as we have seen, imply and sustain
each other. But by what right is the unity of a doctrine placed in
allowing in it only a single principle? Such a unity is possible only
in those regions of mathematical abstraction, where one is not disturbed
by what is, where one retrenches at will from the object that he is
studying, in order to simplify it continually, where every thing is
reduced to pure notions. In the reality all is determined, and
consequently, all is complex. A science of facts is not a series of
equations. In it must be found again the life that is in things, life
with its harmony doubtless, but also with its richness and
diversity.[232]
FOOTNOTES:
[216] On indignation, see lecture 11.
[217] On remorse, see lecture 11.
[218] See the _Gorgias_, with the _Argument_, vol. iii. of our
translation.
[219] Lectures 1 and 6.
[220] Lectures 2, 3, and 6.
[221] 1st part, lecture 2.
[222] Lecture 2.
[223] 1st part, lecture 3. See also vol. v. of the 1st Series, lecture
8.
[224] 1st Series, vol. v., lecture 7.
[225] See, for the entire development of the theory of liberty, 1st
Series, vol. iii., lecture 1, _Locke_, p. 71; lecture 3, _Condillac_, p.
116, 149, etc.; vol. iv., lecture 23, _Reid_, p. 541-574; 2d Series,
vol. iii., _Examination of the System of Locke_, lecture 25.
[226] Lecture 12.
[227] See 1st Series, vol. iv., Lecture on Smith and on the true
principle of political economy, p. 278-302.
[228] Le crime fait la honte et non pas l'echafaud.
[229] See lecture 16, _God, the Principle of the Idea of the Good_.
[230] See lecture 16.
[231] On Jacobi, see Tennemann's _Manual of the History of Philosophy_,
vol. iii., p. 318, etc.
[232] On this important question of method, see lecture 12.
LECTURE XV.
PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS.
Application of the preceding principles.--General formula of
interest,--to obey reason.--Rule for judging whether an action
is or is not conformed to reason,--to elevate the motive of this
action into a maxim of universal legislation.--Individual
ethics. It is not towards the individual, but towards the moral
person that one is obligated. Principle of all individual
duties,--to respect and develop the moral person.--Social
ethics,--duties of justice and duties of charity.--Civil
society. Government. Law. The right to punish.
We know that there is moral good and that there is moral evil: we know
that this distinction between good and evil engenders an obligation, a
law, duty; but we do not yet know what our duties are. The general
principle of ethics is laid down; it must be followed at least into its
most important applications.
If duty is only truth become obligatory, and if truth is known only by
reason, to obey the law of duty, is to obey reason.
But to obey reason is a precept very vague and very abstract:--how can
we be sure that our action is conformed or is not conformed to reason?
The character of reason being, as we have said, its universality,
action, in order to be conformed to reason, must possess something
universal; and as it is the motive itself of the action that gives it
its morality, it is also the motive that must, if the action is good,
reflect the character of reason. By what sign, then, do you recognize
that an action is conformed to reason, that it is good? By the sign that
the motive of this action being generalized, appears to you a maxim of
universal legislation, which reason imposes upon all intelligent and
free beings. If you are not able thus to generalize the motive of an
action, and if it is the opposite motive that appears to you a universal
maxim, your action, being opposed to this maxim, is thereby proved to be
contrary to reason and duty,--it is bad. If neither the motive of your
action nor the motive of the opposite action can be erected into a
universal law, the action is neither good nor bad, it is indifferent.
Such is the ingenious measure that Kant has applied to the morality of
actions. It makes known with the last degree of clearness where duty is
and where it is not, as the severe and naked form of syllogism, being
applied to reasoning, brings out in the precisest manner its error or
its truth.
To obey reason,--such is duty in itself, the duty superior to all other
duties, giving to all others their foundation, and being itself founded
only on the essential relation between liberty and reason.
It may be said that there is only a single duty, that of obeying reason.
But man having different relations, this single and general duty is
determined by these different relations, and divided into a
corresponding number of particular duties.
Of all the beings that we know, there is not one with whom we are more
constantly in relation than with ourselves. The actions of which man is
at once the author and the object, have rules as well as other actions.
Hence that first class of duties which are called the duties of man
towards himself.
At first sight, it is strange that man should have duties towards
himself. Man, being free, belongs to himself. What is most to me is
myself:--this is the first property and the foundation of all other
properties. Now, is it not the essence of property to be at the free
disposition of the proprietor, and consequently, am I not able to do
with myself what I please?
No; from the fact that man is free, from the fact that he belongs only
to himself, it must not be concluded that he has over himself all power.
On the contrary, indeed, from the fact alone that he is endowed with
liberty, as well as intelligence, I conclude that he can no more
degrade his liberty than his intelligence, without transgressing. It is
a culpable use of liberty to abdicate it. We have said that liberty is
not only sacred to others, but is so to itself. To subject it to the
yoke of passion, instead of increasing it under the liberal discipline
of duty, is to abase in us what deserves our respect as much as the
respect of others. Man is not a thing; it has not, then, been permitted
him to treat himself as a thing.
If I have duties towards myself, it is not towards myself as an
individual, it is towards the liberty and intelligence that make me a
free moral person. It is necessary to distinguish closely in us what is
peculiar to us from what pertains to humanity. Each one of us contains
in himself human nature with all its essential elements; and, in
addition, all these elements are in him in a certain manner that is not
the same in two different men. These particularities make the
individual, but not the person; and the person alone in us is to be
respected and held as sacred, because it alone represents humanity.
Every thing that does not concern the moral person is indifferent. In
these limits I may consult my tastes, even my fancies to a certain
extent, because in them there is nothing absolute, because in them good
and evil are in no way involved. But as soon as an act touches the moral
person, my liberty is subjected to its law, to reason, which does not
allow liberty to be turned against itself. For example, if through
caprice, or melancholy, or any other motive, I condemn myself to an
abstinence too prolonged, if I impose on myself vigils protracted and
beyond my strength; if I absolutely renounce all pleasure, and, by these
excessive privations, endanger my health, my life, my reason, these are
no longer indifferent actions. Sickness, death, madness, may become
crimes, if we voluntarily bring them upon ourselves.
I have not established this obligation of self-respect imposed on the
moral person, therefore I cannot destroy it. Is self-respect founded on
one of those arbitrary conventions that cease to exist when the two
contracting parties freely renounce them? Are the two contracting
parties here _me_ and myself? By no means; one of the contracting
parties is not _me_, to wit, humanity, the moral person. And there is
here neither convention nor contract. By the fact alone that the moral
person is in us, we are obligated towards it, without convention of any
sort, without contract that can be cancelled, and by the very nature of
things. Hence it comes that obligation is absolute.
Respect of the moral person in us is the general principle whence are
derived all individual duties. We will cite some of them.
The most important, that which governs all others, is the duty of
remaining master of one's self. One may lose possession of himself in
two ways, either by allowing himself to be carried away, or by allowing
himself to be overcome, by yielding to enervating passions or to
overwhelming passions, to anger or to melancholy. On either hand there
is equal weakness. And I do not speak of the consequences of those vices
for society and ourselves,--certainly they are very injurious; but they
are much worse than that, they are already bad in themselves, because in
themselves they give a blow to moral dignity, because they diminish
liberty and disturb intelligence.
Prudence is an eminent virtue. I speak of that noble prudence that is
the moderation in all things, the foresight, the fitness, that preserve
at once from negligence and that rashness which adorns itself with the
name of heroism, as cowardice and selfishness sometimes usurp the name
of prudence. Heroism, without being premeditated, ought always to be
rational. One may be a hero at intervals; but, in every-day life, it is
sufficient to be a wise man. We must ourselves hold the reins of our
life, and not prepare difficulties for ourselves by carelessness or
bravado, nor create for ourselves useless perils. Doubtless we must know
how to dare, but still prudence is, if not the principle, at least the
rule of courage; for true courage is not a blind transport, it is before
all coolness and self possession in danger. Prudence also teaches
temperance; it keeps the soul in that state of moderation without which
man is incapable of recognizing and practising justice. This is the
reason why the ancients said that prudence is the mother and guardian of
all the virtues. Prudence is the government of liberty by reason, as
imprudence is liberty escaped from reason:--on the one side, order, the
legitimate subordination of our faculties to each other; on the other,
anarchy and revolt.[233]
Veracity is also a great virtue. Falsehood, by breaking the natural
alliance between man and truth, deprives him of that which makes his
dignity. This is the reason why there is no graver insult than giving
the lie, and why the most honored virtues are sincerity and frankness.
One may degrade the moral person by wounding it in its instruments. For
this reason the body is to man the object of imperative duties. The body
may become an obstacle or a means. If you refuse it what sustains and
strengthens it, or if you demand too much from it by exciting it beyond
measure, you exhaust it, and by abusing it, deprive yourself of it. It
is worse still if you pamper it, if you grant every thing to its
unbridled desires, if you make yourself its slave. It is being
unfaithful to the soul to enfeeble its servant; it is being much more
unfaithful to it still, to enslave it to its servant.
But it is not enough to respect the moral person, it is necessary to
perfect it; it is necessary to labor to return the soul to God better
than we received it; and it can become so only by a constant and
courageous exercise. Everywhere in nature, all things are spontaneously
developed, without willing it, and without knowing it. With man, if the
will slumbers, the other faculties degenerate into languor and inertion;
or, carried away by the blind impulse of passion, they are precipitated
and go astray. It is by the government and education of himself that man
is great.
Man must, before every thing else, occupy himself with his
intelligence. It is in fact our intelligence that alone can give us a
clear sight of the true and the good, that guides liberty by showing it
the legitimate object of its efforts. No one can give himself another
mind than the one that he has received, but he may train and strengthen
it as well as the body, by putting it to a task of some kind, by rousing
it when it is drowsy, by restraining it when it is carried away, by
continually proposing to it new objects,--for it is only by continually
enriching it that it does not grow poor. Sloth benumbs and enervates the
mind; regular work excites and strengthens it, and work is always in our
power.
There is an education of liberty as well as our other faculties. It is
sometimes in subduing the body, sometimes in governing our intelligence,
especially in resisting our passions, that we learn to be free. We
encounter opposition at each step,--the only question is not to shun it.
In this constant struggle liberty is formed and augmented, until it
becomes a habit.
Finally, there is a culture of sensibility itself. Fortunate are those
who have received from nature the sacred fire of enthusiasm! They ought
religiously to preserve it. But there is no soul that does not conceal
some fortunate vein of it. It is necessary to watch it and pursue, to
avoid what restrains it, to seek what favors it, and, by an assiduous
culture, draw from it, little by little, some treasures. If we cannot
give ourselves sensibility, we can at least develop what we have. We can
do this by giving ourselves up to it, by seizing all the occasions of
giving ourselves up to it, by calling to its aid intelligence itself;
for, the more we know of the beautiful and the good, the more we love
it. Sentiment thereby only borrows from intelligence what it returns
with usury. Intelligence in its turn finds, in the heart, a rampart
against sophism. Noble, sentiments, nourished and developed, preserve
from those sad systems that please certain spirits so much only because
their hearts are so small.
Man would still have duties, should he cease to be in relation with
other men.[234] As long as he preserves any intelligence and any
liberty, the idea of the good dwells in him, and with it duty. Were we
cast upon a desert island, duty would follow us thither. It would be
beyond belief strange that it should be in the power of certain
external circumstances to affranchise an intelligent and free being from
all obligation towards his liberty and his intelligence. In the deepest
solitude he is always and consciously under the empire of a law attached
to the person itself, which, by obligating him to keep continual watch
over himself, makes at once his torment and his grandeur.
If the moral person is sacred to me, it is not because it is in me, it
is because it is the moral person; it is in itself respectable; it will
be so, then, wherever we meet it.
It is in you as in me, and for the same reason. In relation to me it
imposes on me a duty; in you it becomes the foundation of a right, and
thereby imposes on me a new duty in relation to you.
I owe to you truth as I owe it to myself; for truth is the law of your
reason as of mine. Without doubt there ought to be measure in the
communication of truth,--all are not capable of it at the same moment
and in the same degree; it is necessary to portion it out to them in
order that they may be able to receive it; but, in fine, the truth is
the proper good of the intelligence; and it is for me a strict duty to
respect the development of your mind, not to arrest, and even to favor
its progress towards truth.
I ought also to respect your liberty. I have not even always the right
to hinder you from committing a fault. Liberty is so sacred that, even
when it goes astray, it still deserves, up to a certain point, to be
managed. We are often wrong in wishing to prevent too much the evil that
God himself permits. Souls may be corrupted by an attempt to purify
them.
I ought to respect you in your affections, which make part of yourself;
and of all the affections there are none more holy than those of the
family. There is in us a need of expanding ourselves beyond ourselves,
yet without dispelling ourselves, of establishing ourselves in some
souls by a regular and consecrated affection,--to this need the family
responds. The love of men is something of the general good. The family
is still almost the individual, and not merely the individual,--it only
requires us to love as much as ourselves what is almost ourselves. It
attaches one to the other, by the sweetest and strongest of all
ties--father, mother, child; it gives to this sure succor in the love of
its parents--to these hope, joy, new life, in their child. To violate
the conjugal or paternal right, is to violate the person in what is
perhaps its most sacred possession.
I ought to respect your body, inasmuch as it belongs to you, inasmuch as
it is the necessary instrument of your person. I have neither the right
to kill you, nor to wound you, unless I am attacked and threatened; then
my violated liberty is armed with a new right, the right of defence and
even constraint.
I owe respect to your goods, for they are the product of your labor; I
owe respect to your labor, which is your liberty itself in exercise;
and, if your goods come from an inheritance, I still owe respect to the
free will that has transmitted them to you.[235]
Respect for the rights of others is called justice; every violation of a
right is an injustice.
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 constitutes 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 substitute 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
petition 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 passion 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 substitute ourselves for him in the guiding of his destiny?
And when, in order to assist a feeble soul, we take possession of it,
who is sufficiently sure of himself not to go farther, not to pass 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
constitute 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.