When things come to this, that one man, or one nation, devotes itself
to labour, and another man, or another nation, waits on till that
labour is accomplished, in order to devote itself to rapine, we can
see at a glance how much human power is thrown away.
On the one hand, the spoliator has not succeeded as he desired in
getting quit of every kind of labour. Armed robbery exacts efforts,
and sometimes very severe efforts. While the producer devotes his
time to the creation of products fitted to yield satisfactions, the
spoliator employs his time in devising the means of robbing him. But
when the work of violence has been accomplished, or attempted, the
objects calculated to yield satisfaction are neither more nor less
abundant than before. They may minister to the wants of a different
set of people, but not of more wants. Thus all the exertions which
the spoliator has made with a view to spoliation, and the exertions
also which he has failed to make with a view to production, are
entirely lost, if not for him, at least for society.
Nor is this all. In most cases an analogous loss takes place on
the side of the producer. It is not likely that he will wait for
the violence with which he is menaced without taking some [p462]
precaution for his own protection; and all precautions of this
kind—arms, fortifications, munitions, drill—are labour, and labour
lost for ever, not to him who expects security from this labour, but
to mankind at large.
But should the producer, after undergoing this double labour, not
esteem himself able to resist the threatened violence, it is still
worse for society, and power is thrown away on a much greater scale;
for, in that case labour will be given up altogether, no one being
disposed to produce in order to be plundered.
If we regard the manner in which the human faculties are affected on
both sides, the moral consequences of spoliation will be seen to be
no less disastrous.
Providence has designed that man should devote himself to pacific
combats with natural agents, and should reap directly from nature
the fruits of his victory. When he obtains this mastery over natural
agents only by obtaining a mastery over his fellow-creatures, his
mission is changed, and quite another direction is given to his
faculties. It is seen how great the difference is between the
producer and the spoliator, as regards ‹foresight›—foresight which
becomes assimilated in some degree to ‹providence›, for to ‹foresee›
is also to ‹provide against› [‹prévoir› c’est aussi ‹pourvoir›].
The producer sets himself to learn the relation between cause and
effect. For this purpose, he studies the laws of the physical world,
and seeks to make them more and more useful auxiliaries. If he turns
his regards on his fellow-men, it is to foresee their wants, and to
provide for them, on condition of reciprocity.
The spoliator does not study nature. If he turns his regards on his
fellow-men, it is to watch them as the eagle watches his prey, for
the purpose of enfeebling and surprising them.
The same differences are observable in the other faculties, and
extend to men’s ideas.[104] . . . . . .
Spoliation by means of war is not an accidental, isolated, and
transient fact; it is a fact so general and so constant as not to
give place, as regards permanence, to labour itself.
Point me out any country of the world where of two races, conquerors
and conquered, the one does not domineer over the other. Show me
in Europe, in Asia, or among the islands of the sea, a favoured
spot still occupied by the primitive inhabitants. If migrations of
population have spared no country, war has been equally widespread.
Its traces are universal. Apart from rapine and bloodshed, [p463]
public opinion outraged, and faculties and talents perverted, war has
everywhere left other traces behind it, among which we must reckon
slavery and aristocracy. . . . . .
Not only has the march of spoliation kept pace with the creation of
wealth, but the spoliators have seized upon accumulated riches, upon
capital in all its forms; and, in particular, they have fixed their
regards upon capital in the shape of landed property. The last step
was taking possession of man himself. For human powers and faculties
being the instruments of labour, they found it a shorter method to
lay hold of these powers and faculties, than to seize upon their
products. . . . . . .
It is impossible to calculate to what extent these great events
have acted as disturbing causes, and as trammels on the natural
progress of the human race. If we take into account the sacrifice
of industrial power which war occasions, and the extent to which
the diminished results of that power are concentrated in the hands
of a limited number of conquerors, we may form to ourselves an
idea of the causes of the destitution of the masses,—a destitution
which in our days it is impossible to explain on the hypothesis of
liberty. . . . . . .
‹How the warlike spirit is propagated.›
Aggressive nations are subject to reprisals. They often attack
others; sometimes they defend themselves. When they act on the
defensive, they have on their side the feeling of justice, and the
sacredness of the cause in which they are engaged. They may then
exult in their courage, devotion, and patriotism. But, alas! they
carry these same sentiments into their offensive wars—and where is
their patriotism then? . . . . . .
When two races, the one victorious and idle, the other vanquished
and humiliated, occupy the same territory, everything calculated
to awaken desire or arouse popular sympathies falls to the lot of
the conquerors. Theirs are leisure, fêtes, taste for the arts,
wealth, military parade, tournaments, grace, elegance, literature,
poetry. For the conquered race, nothing remains but ruined huts,
squalid garments, the hard hand of labour, or the cold hand of
charity. . . . . . .
The consequence is that the ideas and prejudices of the dominant
race, always associated with military force, come to constitute
public opinion. Men, women, and children, all unite in extolling the
soldier’s life in preference to that of the labourer, in preferring
war to industry, and spoliation to production. The vanquished race
shares the same sentiments, and when, at periods of transition,
it succeeds in getting the better of its oppressors, it shows
[p464] itself disposed to imitate them. What is this imitation but
madness? . . . . . .
‹How war ends.›
Spoliation, like Production, having its source in the human heart,
the laws of the social world would not be harmonious, even to the
limited extent for which I contend, if the latter did not succeed in
the long-run in overcoming the former. . . . . [p465]
XX.
RESPONSIBILITY.
There is a leading idea which runs through the whole of this work,
which pervades and animates every page and every line of it; and that
idea is embodied in the opening words of the Christian Creed,—«I
believe in God».
Yes, if this work differs from those of some other Economists, it is
in this, that the latter appear to say, “We have but little faith
in Providence, for we see that the natural laws lead to an abyss.
And yet we say ‹laissez faire!› merely because we have still less
faith in ourselves, and because we see clearly that all human efforts
designed to arrest the action of these natural laws tend only to
hasten the catastrophe.”
Again, if this work differs from the writings of the Socialists, it
is in this, that the latter say, “We pretend to believe in God, but
in reality we believe only in ourselves; seeing that we have no faith
in the maxim, ‹laissez faire›, and that we all give forth our social
nostrums as infinitely superior to the plans of Providence.”
For my part, I say, ‹laissez faire›; in other words, respect liberty,
and the human initiative,[105] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [p466]
. . . . . ‹Responsibility›, ‹solidarity›; mysterious laws, of which,
apart from Revelation, it is impossible to appreciate the cause,
but the effects and infallible action of which, on the progress of
society, it is given us to appreciate—laws which, for the very reason
that man is sociable, are linked together and act together, although
they appear sometimes to run counter to each other; and which would
require to be viewed in their ‹ensemble›, and in their common action,
if science, with its feeble optics and uncertain steps, were not
reduced to method—that melancholy crutch which constitutes its
strength whilst it reveals its weakness.
* * * * *
‹Nosce te ipsum›—know thyself: this, according to the oracle, is
[p467] the beginning, the middle, and the end of the moral and
political sciences.
As we have elsewhere remarked, in what concerns man or human society,
Harmony can never mean Perfection, but only Improvement. Now
improvement or perfectibility implies always, to a certain extent,
imperfection in the future as well as in the past. If man could ever
find his way into the promised land of ‹absolute Good›, he would no
longer have occasion to use his understanding and his senses—he would
be no longer man.
Evil exists. It is inherent in human infirmity. It manifests itself
in the moral as in the material world; in the masses, as in the
individual; in the whole as in the part. But because the eye may
suffer and be lost, does the physiologist overlook the harmonious
mechanism of that admirable organ? Does he deny the ingenious
structure of the human body, because that body is subject to
pain, to disease, and to death—to such extremity of suffering as
caused Job, in the depth of his despair, “to say to corruption,
Thou art my father; and to the worm, Thou art my mother and my
sister”? In the same way, because the social order will never bring
mankind to the fancied haven of absolute good, is the economist
to refuse to recognise all that is marvellous in the organization
of the social order—an organization prepared with a view to the
constantly-increasing diffusion of knowledge, of morality, and of
happiness?
* * * * *
Strange! that we should deny to economic science the same right to
admire the natural order of things which we concede to physiology.
For, after all, what difference is there between the individual and
the collective being, as regards the harmony displayed by final
causes? The individual, no doubt, comes into existence, grows and
is developed, educates and improves himself as life advances, until
the time comes when his light and life are to be communicated to
others. At that moment everything about him is clothed in the hues
of beauty; all breathes grace and joy; all is expansion, affection,
benevolence, love, and harmony. For a while, his intelligence
continues to be enlarged and confirmed, as if to qualify him to be
the guide of those whom he has just called to tread the crooked paths
of human existence. But soon his beauty fades, his grace disappears,
his senses are blunted, his body becomes feeble, his memory clouded,
his thoughts less bright; his affections even (except in the case
of some choice spirits) get clogged with egotism, and lose that
charm, that freshness, that sincerity and simplicity, that depth and
disinterestedness, which distinguished his [p468] earlier days;—the
poetry of life has fled. In spite of all the ingenious precautions
which nature has taken to retard his dissolution—precautions which
physiology sums up in the phrase ‹vis medicatrix›—he treads back
the path of improvement, and loses, one after another, all his
acquisitions by the way; he goes on from privation to privation,
until he reaches that which is the greatest of all, because it
includes all. The genius of optimism itself can discover nothing
consolatory, nothing harmonious in this slow but unavoidable
decadence—in seeing that being once so proud and so beautiful
descending sadly into the tomb. . . . . . The tomb! . . . . . But
is not that the door of another habitation? . . . . . It is thus,
when science stops short, that religion[106] renews, even for the
individual, in another region, the concordant harmonies which have
been interrupted here.[107]
Despite this fatal ‹dénoûment›, does physiology cease to see in the
human body the most perfect masterpiece which ever proceeded from its
Creator’s hands?
But if the social body is liable to suffering, if it may suffer
even to death, it is not for that reason finally condemned. Let men
say what they will, it has not, in perspective, after having been
elevated to its apogee, an inevitable decline. The crash of empires
even is not the retrogradation of humanity, and the ancient models
of civilisation have only been dissolved in order to make room for a
civilisation still more advanced. Dynasties may be extinguished; the
forms of government may be changed; yet the progress of the human
race may not the less be continued. The fall of States is like the
fall of leaves in autumn. It fertilizes the soil; contributes to
the return of spring; and promises to future generations a richer
vegetation, and more abundant harvests. Nay, even in a purely
national point of view, this theory of necessary decadence is as
false as it is antiquated. In the life of no people can we possibly
perceive any cause of inevitable decline. The analogy which has
so frequently given rise to a comparison between a nation and an
individual, and led men to attribute to the one as to the other an
infancy and an old age, is nothing better than a false metaphor.
A community is being incessantly renewed. Let its institutions be
elastic and flexible, so that in place of coming in collision with
[p469] those new powers to which the human mind gives birth, they
shall be so organized as to admit of this expansion of intellectual
energy and accommodate themselves to it; and we see no reason why
such institutions should not flourish in eternal youth. But whatever
may be thought of the fragility and fall of empires, it must never be
forgotten that society, which in its aggregate represents the human
race, is constituted upon more solid bases. The more we study it,
the more we shall be convinced that it too, like the human body, is
provided with a ‹curative force›, a ‹vis medicatrix›, which delivers
it from the evils which afflict it; and that it carries in its bosom,
moreover, a ‹progressive force›; and is by the latter urged on to
improvements to which we can assign no limits.
If individual evil, then, does not weaken or invalidate physiological
harmony, still less does collective evil weaken or invalidate social
harmony.
But how are we to reconcile the existence of evil with the infinite
goodness of God? I cannot explain what I do not understand.
All I shall say is, that this solution can no more be exacted from
Political Economy than from Anatomy. These sciences, which are alike
sciences of observation, study man as he is, without asking the
Creator to reveal His impenetrable secrets.
Thus, I again repeat, harmony does not correspond with the idea of
absolute perfection, but with that of indefinite improvement. It has
pleased God to attach suffering to our nature, seeing that He has
designed that in us feebleness should be anterior to force, ignorance
to science, want to satisfaction, effort to result, acquisition to
possession, destitution to wealth, error to truth, experience to
foresight. I submit without murmuring to this ordinance, being able,
moreover, to imagine no other combination. But if, by a mechanism
as simple as it is ingenious, He has provided ‹that all men should
approximate to a common level, which is continually rising›, if He
assures them—by the very action of what we denominate evil—both
of the duration and the diffusion of progress, then am I not only
content to bow myself under His bountiful and almighty hand,—I bless
that hand, I worship it, I adore it.
* * * * *
We have seen certain schools arise which have taken advantage of
the insolubility (humanly speaking) of this question to embroil all
others, as if it were given to our finite intelligence to [p470]
comprehend and reconcile things which are infinite. Placing over the
portal of social science this sentence, ‹God cannot desire evil›,
they arrive at the following series of conclusions: “Evil exists in
society; then society is not organized according to the designs of
God. Let us change, and change again, and change continually this
organization. Let us try about, and make experiments, until we have
effaced all trace of suffering from the world. By that sign we shall
know that the kingdom of God has come.”
Nor is this all. These schools have been led to exclude from their
social plans liberty as well as suffering, for liberty implies
the possibility of error, and consequently the possibility of
evil. Addressing their fellow-men, they say, “Allow us to organize
you—don’t you interfere—cease to compare, to judge, to decide
anything by yourselves and for yourselves. We abhor the ‹laissez
faire›; but we ask you to let things alone, and to let us alone.
If we succeed in conducting you to perfect happiness, the infinite
goodness of God will be vindicated.”
Contradiction, inconsistency, presumption,—we ask which is most
apparent in such language?
One sect among others, not very philosophical, but very noisy,
promises to mankind unmixed felicity. Only deliver over to that sect
the government of the human race, and in virtue of certain formulas,
it makes bold to rid men of every painful sensation.
But if you do not accord a blind faith to the promises of that sect,
then, bringing forward that formidable and insoluble problem which
has vexed philosophy since the beginning of the world, they summon
you to reconcile the existence of evil with the infinite goodness of
God. Do you hesitate? they accuse you of impiety.
Fourier rings the changes on this theme till he exhausts all its
combinations.
“‹Either God has not been able› to give us a social code of
attraction, of justice, of truth, and of unity; in which case He has
been unjust in giving us wants without the means of satisfying them.”
“‹Or He has not desired to give it us›; and in that case He has
deliberately persecuted us by creating designedly wants which it is
impossible to satisfy:”
“‹Or He is able, and has not desired›; in which case the principle of
good would rival the principle of evil, having the power to establish
good, and preferring to establish evil:” [p471]
“‹Or He has desired and has not been able›; in which case He is
incapable of governing us, acknowledging and desiring good, but not
having the power to establish it:”
“‹Or He has been neither able nor willing›; in which case the
principle of good is below the principle of evil, etc.:”
“‹Or He has been both able and willing›; in which case the code
exists, and it is for us to promulgate it, etc.”
And Fourier is the prophet of this new revelation. Let us deliver
ourselves up to him and to his disciples: Providence will then be
justified, sensibility will change its nature, and suffering will
disappear from the earth.
But how, I would ask, do these apostles of absolute good, these
hardy logicians, who exclaim continually that “God being perfect,
His work must be perfect also;” and who accuse us of impiety because
we resign ourselves to human imperfection,—how, I say, do these men
not perceive that, on the most favourable hypothesis, they are as
impious as we are? I should like, indeed, that, under the reign of
Messieurs Considérant, Hennequin, etc., no one in the world should
ever lose his mother, or suffer from the toothache,—in which case he
also might chant the litany, ‹Either God has not been able or has
not been willing›; I should like much that evil were to take flight
to the infernal regions, retreating before the broad daylight of the
Socialist revelation—that one of their plans, ‹phalanstère›, ‹crédit
gratuit›, ‹anarchie›, ‹triade›, ‹atelier social›,[108] and so forth,
had the power to rid us of all future evils. But would it annihilate
suffering in the past? The infinite, observe, has no limits; and if
there has existed on the earth since the beginning of the world a
single sufferer, that is enough to render the problem of the infinite
goodness of God insoluble in their point of view.
Let us beware, then, of linking the science of the finite to the
mysteries of the infinite. Let us apply to the one reason and
observation, and leave the other in the domain of revelation and of
faith.
In all respects, and in every aspect, man is imperfect. In this
world, at least, he encounters limits in all directions, and
touches the finite at every point. His force, his intelligence, his
affections, his life, have in them nothing absolute, and belong to
a material mechanism which is subject to fatigue, to decay, and to
death.
Not only is this so, but our imperfection is so great that we cannot
even imagine perfection as existing either in ourselves or in the
external world. Our minds are so much out of proportion to this idea
of perfection that all our efforts to seize it are vain. The oftener
we try to grasp it, the oftener it escapes us, and is lost in [p472]
inextricable contradictions. Show me a perfect man, and you will
show me a man who is exempt from suffering, and who has consequently
neither wants, nor desires, nor sensations, nor sensibility, nor
nerves, nor muscles; who can be ignorant of nothing, and consequently
has neither the faculty of attention, nor judgment, nor reasoning,
nor memory, nor imagination, nor brains; in short, you will show me a
being who does not exist.
Thus, in whatever aspect we regard man, we must regard him as being
subject to suffering. We must admit that evil has entered as one
spring of action into the providential plan; and in place of seeking
by chimerical means to annihilate it, our business is to study the
part which it has to play, and the mission on which it is sent.
When it pleased God to create a being made up of wants, and of
faculties to supply these wants, it was at the same time decreed that
this being should be subject to suffering; for, apart from suffering,
we could form no idea of wants, and, apart from wants, we could form
no idea of utility, or of the use and object of any of our faculties.
All that constitutes our greatness has its root in what constitutes
our weakness.
Urged on by innumerable impulses, and indued with an intelligence
which enlightens our exertions, and enables us to appreciate their
results, we have ‹free will› to guide and direct us.
But free will implies error as possible, and error in its turn
implies suffering as its inevitable effect. I defy any one to tell me
what it is to ‹choose freely›, if it be not to run the risk of making
a bad choice, and what it is to make a bad choice if it be not to
prepare the way for suffering.
And this is, no doubt, the reason why those schools who are content
with nothing less than absolute good are all materialist and
fatalist. They are unable to admit free will. They see that liberty
of acting proceeds from liberty of choosing; that liberty of choosing
supposes the possibility of error; and that the possibility of error
is the possibility of evil. Now, in an artificial society, such as
our ‹organisateurs› invent, evil cannot make its appearance. For that
reason, men must be exempted from the possibility of error; and the
surest means to accomplish that is to deprive them of the faculty of
acting and choosing—in other words, of free will. It has been truly
said that Socialism is despotism incarnate.
In presence of these fooleries, it may be asked, By what right does
the organizer of artificial systems venture to think, act, and
choose, not only for himself, but for every one else? for, after
all [p473] he belongs to the human race, and in that respect is
fallible; and he is so much the more fallible in proportion as he
pretends to extend the range of his science and his will.
No doubt the ‹organisateur› finds this objection radically unfounded,
inasmuch as it confounds him with the rest of mankind. But he who
professes to discover the defects of the Divine workmanship, and has
undertaken to recast it, is more than a man; he is an oracle, and
more than an oracle. . . . .
Socialism has two elements: the frenzy of contradiction, and the
madness of pride!
But when free will, which is the foundation of the whole argument, is
denied, is not this the proper place to demonstrate its existence?
I shall take good care not to enter upon any such demonstration.
Every one feels that his will is free, and that is enough. I feel
this, not vaguely, but a hundred times more intensely than if it
had been demonstrated to me by Aristotle or by Euclid. I feel it
with conscious joy when I have made a choice which does me honour;
with remorse, when I have made a choice which degrades me. I find,
moreover, that all men by their conduct affirm their belief in free
will, although some deny it in their writings.[109] All men compare
motives, deliberate, determine, retract, try to foresee; all give
advice, are indignant at injustice, admire acts of devotion. Then
all acknowledge in themselves and in others the existence of free
will, without which, choice, advice, foresight, morality, virtue,
are impossible. Let us take care how we seek to demonstrate what is
admitted by universal practice. Absolute fatalists are no more to be
found, even at Constantinople, than absolute sceptics are to be met
with at Alexandria. Those who proclaim themselves such may be fools
enough to try to persuade others, but they are powerless to convince
themselves. They prove with much subtlety that they have no will of
their own; but when we see that they act as if they had it, we need
not dispute with them.
* * * * *
Here, then, we are placed in the midst of nature and of our
fellow-men—urged on by impulses, wants, appetites, desires—provided
with various faculties enabling us to operate on man and on
[p474] things—determined to action by our free will—indued with
intelligence, which is perfectible and therefore imperfect, and
which, if it enlightens us, may also deceive us with reference to the
consequences of our actions.
Every human action—giving rise to a series of good or bad
consequences, of which some fall back on the agent, and others affect
his family, his neighbours, his fellow-citizens, and sometimes
mankind at large—every such action causes the vibration of two
chords, the sounds of which are oracular utterances—Responsibility
and Solidarity.
As regards the man who acts, Responsibility is the natural link which
exists between the act and its consequences. It is a complete system
of ‹inevitable› Rewards and Punishments which no man has invented,
which acts with all the regularity of the great natural laws, and
which may, consequently, be regarded as of Divine institution. The
evident object of Responsibility is to restrain the number of hurtful
actions, and increase the number of such as are useful.
This mechanism, which is at once corrective and progressive,
remunerative and retributive, is so simple, so near us, so identified
with our whole being, so perpetually in action, that not only can
we not ignore it, but we see that, like Evil, it is one of those
phenomena without which our whole life would be to us unintelligible.
The book of Genesis tells us that, the first man having been driven
from the terrestrial paradise, because he had learned to distinguish
between good and evil, ‹sciens bonum et malum›, God pronounced this
sentence on him: ‹In laboribus comedes ex terrâ cunctis diebus
vitæ tuæ. Spinas et tribulos germinabit tibi. In sudore vultûs tui
vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de quâ sumptus es: quia
pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.›[110]
Here, then, we have good and evil—or human nature. Here we have acts
and habits producing good or bad consequences—or human nature. Here
we have labour, sweat, thorns, tribulation, and death—or human nature.
Human nature, I say; for to choose, to be mistaken, to suffer, to
rectify our errors—in a word, all the elements which make up the idea
of Responsibility—are so inherent in our sensitive, rational, and
free nature, they are so much of the essence of that nature [p475]
itself, that I defy the most fertile imagination to conceive for man
another mode of existence.
That man might have lived in an Eden, ‹in paradiso voluptatis›,
ignorant of good and evil, we can indeed believe, but we cannot
comprehend it, so profoundly has our nature been transformed.
We find it impossible to separate the idea of ‹life› from that of
sensibility; that of sensibility from that of ‹pleasure› and ‹pain›;
that of pleasure and pain from that of ‹reward› and ‹punishment›;
that of ‹intelligence› from that of ‹liberty› and ‹choice›, and all
these ideas from the idea of Responsibility; for it is the aggregate
of all these ideas which gives us the idea of Being or Existence, so
that when we think upon God, our reason, which tells us that He is
incapable of suffering, remains confounded—so inseparable are our
notions of sensibility and ‹existence›.
It is this undoubtedly which renders ‹Faith› the necessary complement
of our destinies. It is the only bond which is possible between the
creature and the Creator, seeing that God is, and always will be, to
our reason, incomprehensible, ‹Deus absconditus›.
In order to be convinced how hard Responsibility presses us, and
shuts us in on every side, we have only to attend to the most simple
facts.
Fire burns us; the collision of bodies bruises us. If we were not
indued with sensibility, or if our sensibility were not painfully
affected by the approach of fire, and by rude contact with other
bodies, we should be exposed to death every moment.
From earliest infancy to extreme old age, our life is only a long
apprenticeship. By frequently falling, we learn to walk. By rude and
reiterated experiments, we are taught to avoid heat, cold, hunger,
thirst, excess. Do not let us complain of the roughness of this
experience. If it were not so, it would teach us nothing.
The same thing holds in the social order. From the unhappy
consequences of cruelty, of injustice, of fear, of violence, of
deceit, of idleness, we learn to be gentle, just, brave, moderate,
truthful, and industrious. Experience is protracted; it will never
come to an end; but it will never cease to be efficacious.
Man being so constituted, it is impossible that we should not
recognise in responsibility the mainspring to which social progress
is specially confided. It is the crucible in which experience is
elaborated. They, then, who believe in the superiority of times
past, like those who despair of the future, fall into the most
manifest contradiction. Without being aware of it, they extol
error, and calumniate knowledge. It is as if they said, “The more
I have learnt, the less I know. The more clearly I discern what is
[p476] hurtful, the more I shall be exposed to it.” Were humanity
constituted on such a basis as this, it would in a short time cease
to exist.
Man’s starting-point is ignorance and inexperience. The farther we
trace back the chain of time, the more destitute we find men of
that knowledge which is fitted to direct their choice,—of knowledge
which can be acquired only in one of two ways: by reflection or by
experience.
Now it so happens that man’s every action includes, not one
consequence only, but a series of consequences. Sometimes the first
is good, and the others bad; sometimes the first is bad, and the
others good. From one of our determinations there may proceed good
and bad consequences, combined in variable proportions. We may
venture to term ‹vicious› those actions which produce more bad than
good effects, and ‹virtuous› those which produce a greater amount of
good than of evil.
When one of our actions produces a first consequence which we
approve, followed by many other consequences which are hurtful,
so that the aggregate of bad predominates over the aggregate of
good, such an action tends to limit and restrain itself, and to be
abandoned in proportion as we acquire more foresight.
Men naturally perceive the immediate consequences of their actions
before they perceive those consequences which are more remote. Whence
it follows that what we have denominated vicious acts are more
multiplied in times of ignorance. Now the repetition of the same acts
constitutes habit. Ages of ignorance, then, are ages of bad habits.
Consequently, they are ages of bad laws, for acts which are repeated,
habits which are general, constitute manners, upon which laws are
modelled, and of which, so to speak, they are the official expression.
How is this ignorance to be put an end to? How can men be taught to
know the second, the third, and all the subsequent consequences of
their acts and their habits?
The first means is the exercise of that faculty of discerning and
reasoning which Providence has vouchsafed them.
But there is another still more sure and efficacious,—experience.
When the act is once done, the consequences follow inevitably. The
first effect is good; for it is precisely to obtain that result that
the act is done. But the second may inflict suffering, the third
still greater suffering, and so on.
Then men’s eyes are opened, and light begins to appear. That action
is not repeated; we sacrifice the good produced by the first [p477]
and immediate consequence, for fear of the still greater evil which
the subsequent consequences entail. If the act has become a habit,
and if we have not power to give it up, we at least give way to it
with hesitation and repugnance, and after an inward conflict. We do
not recommend it; on the contrary, we blame it, and persuade our
children against it; and we are certainly on the road of progress.
If, on the other hand, the act is one which is useful, but from
which we refrain, because its first, and only known, consequence is
painful, and we are ignorant of the favourable ulterior consequences,
experience teaches us the effects of abstaining from it. A savage,
for instance, has had enough to eat. He does not foresee that he will
be hungry to-morrow. Why should he labour to-day? To work is present
pain—no need of foresight to know that. He therefore continues idle.
But the day passes, another succeeds, and as it brings hunger, he
must then work under the spur of necessity. This is a lesson which,
frequently repeated, cannot fail to develop foresight. By degrees
idleness is regarded in its true light. We brand it; we warn the
young against it. Public opinion is now on the side of industry.
But in order that experience should afford us this lesson, in order
that it should fulfil its mission, develop foresight, explain the
series of consequences which flow from our actions, pave the way
to good habits, and restrain bad ones—in a word, in order that
experience should become an effective instrument of progress and
moral improvement—the law of Responsibility must come into operation.
The bad consequences must make themselves felt, and ‹evil› must for
the moment chastise us.
Undoubtedly it would be better that evil had no existence; and it
might perhaps be so if man was constituted differently from what
he is. But taking man as he is, with his wants, his desires, his
sensibility, his free will, his power of choosing and erring, his
faculty of bringing into play a cause which necessarily entails
consequences which it is not in our power to elude as long as the
cause exists; in such circumstances, the only way of removing the
cause is to enlighten the will, rectify the choice, abandon the
vicious act or the vicious habit; and nothing can effect this but the
law of Responsibility.
We may affirm, then, that man being constituted as he is, evil is
not only necessary but useful. It has a mission, and enters into
the universal harmony. Its mission is to destroy its own cause, to
limit its own operation, to concur in the realization of good, and to
stimulate progress. [p478]
We may elucidate this by some examples which the subject which now
engages us—Political Economy—presents.
‹Frugality.› ‹Prodigality.›
‹Monopolies.›
‹Population.›[111] . . . .