deductive solely; that is, we see the necessity of the two sub-forms
of the practical activity, which, being the object of the subject and
therefore in every way analogous to the activity of the subject, that
is, to the theoretical, must have a duplication of forms answering
to the duplication of the theoretical activity into æsthetic and
logical, and cannot posit the universal practical without positing the
individual that shall be its vehicle. This deduction, although in every
way correct and rigorous, cannot be convincing, save when it is also
demonstrated that it responds to fact as revealed by observation, that
is, when deduction is also induction, as the speculative method demands.
[Sidenote: _The two forms as a fact of consciousness._]
Leaving, therefore, on this occasion also, the deductive proof to the
complete development of the theory, we shall begin by appealing to
observation of self, in order that every one may verify in himself
the existence of the two different forms of volitional acts, termed
by us economic and ethic. The economic activity is that which wills
and effects only what corresponds to the conditions of fact in which
a man finds himself; the ethical activity is that which, although
it correspond to these conditions, also refers to something that
transcends them. To the first correspond what are called individual
ends, to the second universal ends; the one gives rise to the judgment
concerning the greater or less coherence of the action taken in itself,
the other to that concerning its greater or less coherence in respect
to the universal end, which transcends the individual.
[Sidenote: _The economic form._]
If we wish to recognize only the moral form of activity, we soon
perceive that it draws with it the other, from which it is distinct;
for our action, although universal in its meaning, cannot but be
something concrete and individually determined. What is put in practice
is not morality in universal, but always a determinate moral volition:
as Hegel remarked in a different connection, we do not eat fruit in
general, but cherries, pears, plums, or, these cherries, these pears,
these plums; we hasten to comfort in this or that way an individual,
made in this or that way, who finds himself in this or that state of
misfortune; we do justice at this or that point of time and space to
individual beings on a definite matter. If a good action be not solely
our individual pleasure, it must become so: otherwise, how could we
carry it out? Thus, by closer examination, we realize that our action
always obeys a rational law, even when its moral law is suppressed, so
that, when every inclination that transcends the individual has been
set aside, we do not on that account remain the prey of caprice. We
shall desire only our own will, we shall follow only our own individual
inclination; but, even so, it is necessary to will this will and this
inclination coherently, not to undulate between two or more volitions
at the same time. And if we succeed in really obtaining our desire,
if, while the moral conscience is for a moment suspended within us,
we abandon ourselves to the execution of a project of vengeance and
attain to it in spite of many obstacles, thus executing a masterpiece
of ability, a practical masterpiece; even when, in this case, _populus
non plaudit,_ we for our part certainly _nos nobis plaudimus,_ and feel
most satisfied, at least so long as lasts the suspension of the moral
consciousness; for we have done what we willed to do, we have tasted,
though but for a little while, the pleasure of the gods. Whereas if,
although we follow our desire, we do something different from it, or
mingle several mutually exclusive desires with one, and having decided
not to drink wine, for example, in order to obey the advice of the
doctor and to remain in good health, we yet yield to the wish to drink
it, that pleasure is, so to say, poisoned by preoccupation, the taste
is at the same time distaste, unless we succeed in forgetting for some
moments the advice of the doctor, or think that very possibly he does
not know what he is saying. We continually apply the same criterion
to the incidents of life; actions and individuals, of whom we cannot
morally approve, drag from us sometimes cries of admiration for the
ability with which they have conducted themselves, for the firmness
that they display, worthy (as is said) of a better cause. The Epicurean
Farinata, who raised himself erect on his red-hot bed, or the impious
Capaneus who cursed Jove beneath the rain of punishing fire, obtain
from us that esteem which we refuse to those sad souls who lived
without infamy and without praise. Art has celebrated in tragedies and
poems the strong characters of great criminals, but it has turned to
ridicule in comedies little criminals, the violent who show themselves
timid, the astute who let themselves be cheated.
[Sidenote: _The ethical form._]
As we cannot fail to recognize this form of the practical activity,
quite individual, hedonistic, utilitarian, and economic, and the
importance that it possesses, joined to or separated from morality,
as the case may be, and the special practical judgments that have
their origin in it (the judgment of convenience, whether it be called
utilitarian or economic), so it would be impossible not to recognize
the moral form. Yes, the volitional act satisfies us as individuals
occupying a definite point of time and space, but if it fail to
satisfy us at the same time as beings transcending time and space,
our satisfaction will be ephemeral and will rapidly be changed into
dissatisfaction. To one desire succeeds another, and to this another,
and so on to infinity; but the one is different from the other, and
the new either condemns the old or is by it condemned. If we succeed
in arranging our pleasures in series and classes, and in subordinating
and connecting them, certainly there will be some gain; but the gain
will not have been a true one on this occasion either. We shall at
the most be able to guide our life according to some plan, and for a
certain time that has not the exactitude of the moment; instead of the
instantaneous will to which succeeds a different will, we shall have
general ends for which we shall work. We shall propose, for instance,
to do certain work and to abstain from doing certain other work, in
order to marry a loved one, to win a seat in Parliament, or to obtain
literary fame. But those ends are also merely contingent (they are
general, not universal), and consequently cannot assuage our thirst.
When we all have attained to them, we shall experience _le déboire_
that _la cueillaison d'un rêve au cœur qui l'a cueilli_ always leaves
behind. The company of the fair beloved will weary, the political
ambition realized will leave the soul empty, literary fame will seem
the shadow of vanity. Perhaps too, we shall change our side, like
the sick man who cannot rest on his bed of feathers, and begin to
follow other ends; the lover deluded with matrimony will turn to other
loves; the ambitious man, weary of political life, will think of new
ambitions, or of that of not having any, and of retiring to so-called
domestic peace; the seeker for literary fame will long for ease,
silence, and forgetting. But in vain: dissatisfaction persists. And it
will always persist, and pallid Care will always sit behind us, on the
croup of our horse, if we are not able to tear from the contingent its
character of contingent, breaking its spell, and bringing ourselves to
a full stop in that _progressus ad infinitum_ from thing to thing, from
pleasure to pleasure, to which it impels us, if we be not able to place
the eternal in the contingent, the universal in the individual, duty
in desire. Then only do we acquire that internal peace, which is not
in the future, but in the present, because eternity is in the moment,
for him who knows how to place it there. Our actions will always be
new, because reality always places new problems before us, but if we
accomplish them with lofty souls, and with purity of heart, seeking in
them that which surpasses them, we shall on every occasion possess the
Whole. Such is the character of the moral action, which satisfies us,
not as individuals, but as men, and as individuals only in so far as
we are men; and in so far as we are men, only by means of individual
satisfaction.
[Sidenote: _Impossibility of eliminating it._]
Those men in whom the moral consciousness is wanting, or is confused
and intermittent, make us fearful--fearful for ourselves, obliged to be
on our guard against them and to ward off their snares and injuries,
and fearful for them, for if they have not already fallen the prey to
the most terrible torments, they certainly will do so. They are like
people dancing unconsciously upon ground that has been mined; the
conscious spectator trembles for them, they do not; but if by chance
they escape the danger, they will be retrospectively horrified when
they look back. The inebriation evaporates and the clear outlines of
reality reappear, but that which restores form to those outlines is
the eternal, not the contingent, morality, not desire. We see this take
place in an intense form in what are called _conversions,_ followed by
the intention of leaving the world and its false joys and retiring to a
cloister; or, without metaphor, of becoming regenerated, of beginning
a new life with new ideal presuppositions. But intensive conversions
are catastrophes which occur, like popular revolutions, when continuous
evolution is impeded. The wise man is converted and renewed at every
moment, without the solemnity of a conversion, and with the _memorare
novissima_ he retains in the contingent, his contact with the eternal.
He knows that he must love things and creatures one by one, each in
its individuality, for he who does not love thus is neither good nor
bad, not even being a man. He will wish for literary fame, political
power, matrimony, according to his aptitudes and to the conditions in
which he finds himself; but he will wish for all these things without
wishing for them; he will wish for them, not for themselves, but for
that which they contain of universal and constant; he will love them
in God, ready to abandon them immediately their ideal content shall
have left them; he will seriously desire them with all ardour for
themselves, but only when their self is also "his other self." No
thing, no creature possesses unconditioned value, which belongs only to
that which is neither thing nor creature. The value of our individual
life is conditioned for each of us, and we must guarantee and defend
it as vehicle of the universal, and we must be ready to throw it
away, as a useless and pernicious thing, when it does not serve this
end, or rebels. But the value of every being dear to us is not less
conditioned, and Jesus said with reason, when preparing himself for
his divine mission, that he had come to separate men from their wives,
their sons, their friends, and from their native land. That separation
in union, that union in separation, is the moral activity, individual
and universal.
[Sidenote: _Confirmed by facts._]
Thus it happens that art, which has celebrated strong characters, able
men and affairs well conducted, has also celebrated, and with greater
liveliness, those strong men who have placed their strength at the
service of that other strength which surpasses them and makes them
eternal. For this reason, no embittered soul, no sceptic and pessimist
remains long firm in his negation of all moral light; such negations
are indeed as a rule true _amantium irae. _ The singer of the lesser
Brutus who had thus ferociously imprecated:
Foolish Virtue, hollow mists and fields
Of restless ghosts
Are thy schools, and Repentance turns her back upon
thee,...
is the same who, on witnessing a slight act of generosity, exclaims
with emotion:
Fair Virtue, when my spirit becomes aware of thee,
It exults, as at a joyous event....
The coldest and most self-contained philosophers, when they speak of
it, find themselves sometimes impelled to adopt a poetic tone, and
Aristotle will say of Justice that it is "a more wonderful thing than
Hesperus or the Morning Star,"[1] and Emmanuel Kant will compose an
apostrophe to Duty, and will write at the end of the _Critique of
Practical Reason_: "Two things fill the soul with ever new and ever
increasing veneration and admiration the more often and the longer
reflection is occupied with them: _the starry heaven_ above me, and
_the moral law_ within me." And even the great mass of rhetoric that
has for its object virtue or the moral law is a homage rendered to this
supreme force of life, reality of reality.
The impossibility of suppressing the economic or the moral form of the
activity in our practical consciousness, the continual appeal that the
one makes to the other, the revolving of our practical judgment about
the two aspects, both of them necessary, of the useful and the honest,
energy and goodness, pleasure and duty, explain why the Psychology
and the Description of practical life have constituted the two kinds
of types and classes, of economic and of moral men, of economic and
of moral institutions. Such rough and approximate distinctions have
however at bottom, in this as in other cases, an intimate and rigorous
distinction, which every one will find evident in himself, if he look
inward upon himself and fix his gaze persistently on the universal
forms of the spirit that acts within him.
[1] _Eth. Nicom._1. v. c. i, 1129 b.
II
CRITIQUE OF THE NEGATIONS OF THE ETHICAL FORM
[Sidenote: _Exclusion of materialistic and of intellectualistic
criticisms._]
The distinction of the two forms, well known to the inner
consciousness, will appear more clearly when we examine the reasons
for which the one or the other of them has been denied. We say the one
or the other, because we have now freed ourselves from the obligation
of refuting the theses that have their origin in presuppositions,
both materialistic and intellectualiste, and therefore deny the moral
and economic activities, either because they do not admit the concept
of spiritual activity itself, or because they do not admit the more
special conception of practical activity. The greater number of
those who deny morality are nothing but mechanicists, empiricists,
materialists, and positivists, to whose brains not only do economy and
morality appear inconceivable, but also art and science and, in short,
every spiritual value. They ask: Where is this moral principle of which
you discourse? Point it out to us with your finger. But they also ask:
Where are the categories or the pure concept? Where is the æsthetic
synthesis and the pure intuition? Where is the _a priori_ of perception
and of history? Where are all these fine things you talk of as though
they existed, and that we neither see nor touch?--And for our part, we
can henceforth let them say what they will, only praying in our hearts
that God may illuminate them and make them discover (at least when they
are near to death and the dense veil of their bodies has become more
thin) that if the universals were _things_ that it was possible to
perceive as we do individual things, they would not be universals.
[Sidenote: _The two possible negations._]
When the double assumption of a spiritual activity and of a practical
form of it has been admitted, it is not possible to do otherwise
than either to deny the economic for the moral form, or the moral
for the economic. What might seem to be a third possibility, that of
denying the two forms, is reducible to the first, because, when the
distinction of the terms has been suppressed, there remains nothing
but the practical activity considered in general, which coincides with
the individual and economic activity. We shall begin then with the
examination of the negation of morality for economy, which is the
thesis of _utilitarianism._ Those same materialists have recourse to
utilitarianism when they wish to present some sort of a Philosophy
of the practical, but with what little right they avail themselves
of such aid, is clear from what has already been said: the useful is
always value and teleology, and materialism, in all its sub-forms and
varieties, is incapable of positing the smallest concept of value and
finality.
[Sidenote: _The thesis of utilitarianism against the existence of moral
acts._]
Utilitarianism affirms that no other volition exists save that
which answers to the merely individual determination, or, as it is
also expressed, to the pleasure of the individual, understanding
by pleasure, not the generic pleasure that also accompanies moral
satisfaction in the individual, but that which is exclusively
individual. Actions, therefore, as it says, are what concern it, not
their motives, that is, the motive of the individuality of the act
abstractly conceived, not that of the spirit become concrete in it;
thus, not killing for fear of punishment and not killing because
repugnant to one's own conscience, become the same thing. They are the
consequences of different conditions, but in both cases of the same
motive, which is personal convenience. And as there does not exist
a pleasure that cannot be and is not substituted for a different
pleasure, so there is not an action, however moral it be called, that
cannot be interrupted and changed, when different conditions present
themselves. Every action, every man has his price: it is all a matter
of discovering what that price is. He who seems to place the glory
of his country above all other aspirations, although he cannot, for
example, be corrupted by money, by vanity, or by pleasure, will yet
always have in him some weak point that a more expert corrupter will
discover or be able to discover; and when the discovery has been made
and the suitable transaction proposed, the glory of his country will be
abandoned, because it has been well compensated for by something else.
This way of looking upon human actions has appeared to be concrete,
exact, rational; and the utilitarian theory, if it have often been
called _hedonistic,_ and sometimes even _æsthetic_ (understanding by
æsthetic, individual pleasure), is also wont to be decorated with the
name of ethical or practical _rationalism, rational morality._
[Sidenote: _Difficulties arising from the presence of these._]
All would go very well, and the practical activity would in this way be
entirely explained and unified, if we did not at every moment of life
run against the distinction between mere pleasure and duty, between
the useful and the honest action, and if there did not arise in our
conscience an invincible distinction between the things that have a
price and those that have none, and if an abyss did not differentiate
among apparently similar actions that which has a merely utilitarian
from that which has a moral motive. The utilitarians even (who,
although bad philosophers, are men, and as such carry at the bottom of
their souls a far better philosophy than they profess in books and in
the schools) are not able to suppress that distinction in themselves
and to deny all recognition to the power of morality, to which, as men,
they submit at every moment. How then are they to behave? How are they
to explain the genesis of that distinction which, by the premises that
they have posited, cannot be other than illusion? What is there that
gives effective existence to the fallacious category of morality, side
by side with the veracious one of utility?
[Sidenote: _Attempt to explain them as quantitative distinctions._]
There have been several attempts to solve that hard resisting term
of morality. The first, which was logically bound to present itself,
was that of considering facts called moral as nothing but empirical
groups of utilitarian facts, and of explaining the false category as
an hypostasis of those empirical groups, arbitrarily reduced to a
rigorous and philosophical concept. Banking, usury, commerce, industry,
agriculture, and labour are empirically distinguished, yet are all
economic facts. Courage, prudence, temperance, chastity, justice,
modesty are empirically distinguished, yet are all moral facts. Why
not unite the two series, and recognize the unity and continuity of
nature by the insertion among them of other types and terms? Morality
is also utility, but the utility of the _greater number_; interest is
interest, but _well understood_; pleasure is pleasure, but pleasure of
_greater duration and quantity,_ preferred to another less intense, or
more fugitive; egoism, egoism of family, of race, of human race, egoism
of _species,_ altruism; eudemonism, but _social_ eudemonism, enjoyment,
but enjoyment of _sympathy,_ utility, but utility of conforming, not
to one's own individual judgment, but to that of _public opinion._
Thus are moral facts included in utilitarian, in the same way as the
number a hundred thousand is not less a number than two or three and
the others inferior to it, because it is composed of three and of two
and of other numbers less than itself. Cæsar Borgia murders his brother
and thus gets rid of a rival both in love and in politics, that is, he
seeks his advantage; but Giordano Bruno also seeks his own advantage,
and nothing else, when he allows himself to be burned in order to
assert his philosophy, because, for one constituted as he, with that
demoniacal fury of his for philosophical truth, the pyre must have
seemed a very miserable and negligible thing, just as his brother's
blood seemed to Cæsar Borgia. Call the one of these actions utility
of a complexity of ten and the other utility of a complexity of a
hundred, or give to the complexity a hundred the name of morality, of
well-understood self-interest, of sympathy, of altruism, and so on, and
to the complexity of ten that of utility, of individual interest, of
egoism: the two actions will not thus have been declared of a different
nature.
[Sidenote: _Critique._]
But the fact is that they have already been declared of a _different
nature_ by the utilitarians themselves. No one, indeed, will have been
deceived with the ingenious phraseology excogitated: _well-understood_
interest is no longer mere self-interest; the egoism of _species_ is
not egoism, _durable_ pleasure is not mere pleasure. The difference
between the one term and the other is not quantitative, and even where
a _greater_ quantity is talked of, a _greater_ duration, a _greater_
number, arithmetical definitions are not posited, but symbols pointing
to qualitative differences. There is a difference, not of complexity
but of nature, between the action of Cæsar Borgia and that of Giordano
Bruno; there is no common measure between baseness and moral elevation
as there is between undulating plains and mountains. The two series, of
empirical utilitarian concepts and of empirical moral concepts, are not
only irreducible to a single series, but remain obstinately distinct
and irreducible. All that can be done, and has been done, is to unify
them verbally; and in this the utilitarians have shown themselves as
bold as it was possible to be in so miserable an enterprise. But the
identity or similarity of words does not suffice to cancel the profound
distinctions of things.
[Sidenote: _Attempt to explain them as facts either extraneous to the
practical or irrational and stupid._]