The Ruins Part 26

Q. Why, then, have philosophers called the savage state the state of perfection?

A. Because, as I have told you, the vulgar have often given the name of philosophers to whimsical geniuses, who, from moroseness, from wounded vanity, or from a disgust to the vices of society, have conceived chimerical ideas of the savage state, in contradiction with their own system of a perfect man.

Q. What is the true meaning of the word philosopher?

A. The word philosopher signifies a lover of wisdom; and as wisdom consists in the practice of the laws of nature, the true philosopher is he who knows those laws, and conforms the whole tenor of his conduct to them.

Q. What is man in the savage state?

A. A brutal, ignorant animal, a wicked and ferocious beast.

Q. Is he happy in that state?

A. No; for he only feels momentary sensations, which are habitually of violent wants which he cannot satisfy, since he is ignorant by nature, and weak by being isolated from his race.

Q. Is he free?

A. No; he is the most abject slave that exists; for his life depends on everything that surrounds him: he is not free to eat when hungry, to rest when tired, to warm himself when cold; he is every instant in danger of peris.h.i.+ng; wherefore nature offers but fortuitous examples of such beings; and we see that all the efforts of the human species, since its origin, sorely tends to emerge from that violent state by the pressing necessity of self-preservation.

Q. But does not this necessity of preservation engender in individuals egotism, that is to say self-love? and is not egotism contrary to the social state?

A. No; for if by egotism you mean a propensity to hurt our neighbor, it is no longer self-love, but the hatred of others. Self-love, taken in its true sense, not only is not contrary to society, but is its firmest support, by the necessity we lie under of not injuring others, lest in return they should injure us.

Thus mans preservation, and the unfolding of his faculties, directed towards this end, teach the true law of nature in the production of the human being; and it is from this essential principle that are derived, are referred, and in its scale are weighed, all ideas of good and evil, of vice and virtue, of just and unjust, of truth or error, of lawful or forbidden, on which is founded the morality of individual, or of social man.

CHAPTER IV.

BASIS OF MORALITY; OF GOOD, OF EVIL, OF SIN, OF CRIME, OF VICE AND OF VIRTUE.

Q. What is good, according to the law of nature?

A. It is everything that tends to preserve and perfect man.

Q. What is evil?

A. That which tends to man's destruction or deterioration.

Q. What is meant by physical good and evil, and by moral good and evil?

A. By the word physical is understood, whatever acts immediately on the body. Health is a physical good; and sickness a physical evil. By moral, is meant what acts by consequences more or less remote. Calumny is a moral evil; a fair reputation is a moral good, because both one and the other occasion towards us, on the part of other men, dispositions and habitudes,* which are useful or hurtful to our preservation, and which attack or favor our means of existence.

* It is from this word habitudes, (reiterated actions,) in Latin mores, that the word moral, and all its family, are derived.

Q. Everything that tends to preserve, or to produce is therefore a good?

A. Yes; and it is for that reason that certain legislators have cla.s.sed among the works agreeable to the divinity, the cultivation of a field and the fecundity of a woman.

Q. Whatever tends to cause death is, therefore, an evil?

A. Yes; and it is for that reason some legislators have extended the idea of evil and of sin even to the killing of animals.

Q. The murdering of a man is, therefore, a crime in the law of nature?

A. Yes, and the greatest that can be committed; for every other evil can be repaired, but murder alone is irreparable.

Q. What is a sin in the law of nature?

A. Whatever tends to disturb the order established by nature for the preservation and perfection of man and of society.

Q. Can intention be a merit or a crime?

A. No, for it is only an idea void of reality: but it is a commencement of sin and evil, by the impulse it gives to action.

Q. What is virtue according to the law of nature?

A. It is the practice of actions useful to the individual and to society.

Q. What is meant by the word individual?

A. It means a man considered separately from every other.

Q. What is vice according to the law of nature?

A. It is the practice of actions prejudicial to the individual and to society.

Q. Have not virtue and vice an object purely spiritual and abstracted from the senses?

A. No; it is always to a physical end that they finally relate, and that end is always to destroy or preserve the body.

Q. Have vice and virtue degrees of strength and intensity?

A. Yes: according to the importance of the faculties, which they attack or which they favor; and according to the number of persons in whom those faculties are favored or injured.

Q. Give me some examples?

A. The action of saving a man's life is more virtuous than that of saving his property; the action of saving the lives of ten men, than that of saving only the life of one, and an action useful to the whole human race is more virtuous than an action that is only useful to one single nation.

Q. How does the law of nature prescribe the practice of good and virtue, and forbid that of evil and vice?

A. By the advantages resulting from the practice of good and virtue for the preservation of our body, and by the losses which result to our existence from the practice of evil and vice.

Q. Its precepts are then in action?

A. Yes: they are action itself, considered in its present effect and in its future consequences.