Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good Part 20

While making, then, every reservation in regard to what is true in the system that founds ethics on the will of G.o.d, we must show what there is in this system, as it is presented to us, false, arbitrary, and incompatible with ethics themselves.[213]

In the first place, it does not pertain to the will, whatever it may be, to inst.i.tute the good, any more than it belongs to it to inst.i.tute the true and the beautiful. I have no idea of the will of G.o.d except by my own, to be sure with the differences that separate what is finite from what is infinite. Now, I cannot by my will found the least truth.

Is it because my will is limited? No; were it armed with infinite power, it would, in this respect, be equally impotent. Such is the nature of my will that, in doing a thing, it is conscious of the power to do the opposite; and that is not an accidental character of the will, it is its fundamental character; if, then, it is supposed that truth, or that first part of it which is called justice, has been established as it is by an act of volition, human or Divine, it must be acknowledged that another act might have established it otherwise, and made what is now just unjust, and what is unjust just. But such mobility is contrary to the nature of justice and truth. In fact, moral truths are as absolute as metaphysical truths. G.o.d cannot make effects exist without a cause, phenomena without a substance; neither can he make it evil to respect his word, to love truth, to repress one's pa.s.sions. The principles of ethics are immutable axioms like those of geometry. Of moral laws especially must be said what Montesquieu said of all laws in general,--they are necessary relations that are derived from the nature of things.

Let us suppose that the good and the just are derived from the divine will; on the divine will obligation will also rest. But can any will whatever be the foundation of obligation? The divine will is the will of an omnipotent being, and I am a feeble being. This relation of a feeble being to an omnipotent being, does not contain in itself any moral idea. One may be forced to obey the stronger, but he is not obligated to do it. The sovereign orders of the will of G.o.d, if his will could for a moment be separated from his other attributes, would not contain the least ray of justice; and, consequently, there would not descend into my soul the least shade of obligation.

One will exclaim,--It is not the arbitrary will of G.o.d that makes the foundation of obligation and justice; it is his just will. Very well.

Every thing changes then. It is not the pure will of G.o.d that obligates us, it is the motive itself that determines his will, that is to say, the justice pa.s.sed into his will. The distinction between the just and the unjust is not then the work of his will.

One of two things. Either we found ethics on the will of G.o.d alone, and then the distinction between good and evil, just and unjust, is gratuitous, and moral obligation does not exist; or you give authority to the will of G.o.d by justice, which, in your hypothesis, must have received from the will of G.o.d its authority, which is a _pet.i.tio principii_.

Another _pet.i.tio principii_ still more evident. In the first place, you are compelled, in order legitimately to draw justice from the will of G.o.d, to suppose that this will is just, or I defy any one to show that this will alone can ever form the basis of justice. Moreover, evidently you cannot comprehend what a just will of G.o.d is, if you do not already possess the idea of justice. This idea, then, does not come from that of the will of G.o.d.

On the one hand, you may have, and you do have, the idea of justice, without understanding the will of G.o.d; on the other, you cannot conceive the justice of the divine will, without having conceived justice elsewhere.

Are not these reasons sufficient, I pray you, to conclude that the sole will of G.o.d is not for us the principle of the idea of the good?

And now, behold the natural consummation of the ethical system that we are examining:--the just and the unjust are what it has pleased G.o.d to declare such, by attaching to them the rewards and punishments of another life. The divine will manifests itself here only by an arbitrary order; it adds to this order promises and threats.

But to what human faculty are addressed the promise and threat of the chastis.e.m.e.nts and the rewards of another life? To the same one that in this life fears pain and seeks pleasure, shuns unhappiness and desires happiness, that is to say, to sensibility animated by imagination, that is to say, again, to what is most changing in each of us and most different in the human species. The joys and sufferings of another life excite in us the two most vivid but most mobile pa.s.sions, hope and fear.

Every thing influences our fears and hopes,--aye, health, the pa.s.sing cloud, a ray of the sun, a cup of coffee, a thousand causes of this kind. I have known men, even philosophers, who on certain days hoped more, and other days less. And such a basis some would give to ethics!

Then it is doing nothing else than proposing for human conduct an interested motive. The calculation which I obey is purer, if you will; the happiness that one makes me hope for is greater; but I see in that no justice that obligates me, no virtue and no vice in me, who know or do not know how to make this calculation, not having a head as strong as that of Pascal,[214] who yield to or resist those fears and hopes according to the deposition of my sensibility and my imagination, over which I have no power. Finally, the pains and pleasures of the future life are inst.i.tuted on the ground of punishments and rewards. Now, none but actions in themselves good or bad can be rewarded and punished. If already there is in itself no good, no law that in conscience we are obligated to follow, there is neither merit nor demerit; recompense is not then recompense, nor penalty penalty, since they are such only on the condition of being the complement and the sanction of the idea of the good. Where this idea does not pre-exist, there remain, instead of recompense and penalty, only the attraction of pleasure and the fear of suffering, added to a prescription deprived in itself of morality. In that we come back to the punishments of earth invented for the purpose of frightening popular imagination, and supported solely on the decrees of legislators, on an abstraction of good and evil, of justice and injustice, of merit and demerit. It is the worst human justice that is found thus transported into heaven. We shall see that the human soul has foundation somewhat solider.[215]

These different systems, false or incomplete, having been rejected, we arrive at the doctrine that is to our eyes perfect truth, because it admits only certain facts, neglects none, and maintains for all of them their character and rank.

FOOTNOTES:

[203] _Mordre_--to bite, is the main root of _remords_--remorse.

[204] See 1st part, lecture 5, _On Mysticism_, and 2d part, lecture 6, _On the Sentiment of the Beautiful_. See, also, 1st Series, vol. iv., detailed refutation of the Theories of Hutcheson and Smith.

[205] We do not grow weary of citing M. Royer-Collard. He has marked the defects of the ethics of sentiment in a lively and powerful pa.s.sage, from which we borrow some traits. _Oeuvres de Reid_, vol. iii., p.

410, 411: "The perception of the moral qualities of human actions is accompanied by an emotion of the soul that is called _sentiment_.

Sentiment is a support of nature that invites us to good by the attraction of the n.o.blest joys of which man is capable, and turns us from evil by the contempt, the aversion, the horror with which it inspires us. It is a fact that by the contemplation of a beautiful action or a n.o.ble character, at the same time that we perceive these qualities of the action and the character (perception, which is a judgment), we feel for the person a love mingled with respect, and sometimes an admiration that is full of tenderness. A bad action, a loose and perfidious character, excite a contrary perception and sentiment. The internal approbation of conscience and remorse are sentiments attached to the perception of the moral qualities of our own actions.... I do not weaken the part of sentiment; yet it is not true that ethics are wholly in sentiment; if we maintain this, we annihilate moral distinctions.... Let ethics be wholly in sentiment, and nothing is in itself good, nothing is in itself evil; good and evil are relative; the qualities of human actions are precisely such as each one feels them to be. Change sentiment, and you change every thing; the same action is at once good, indifferent, and bad, according to the affection of the spectator. Silence sentiment, and actions are only physical phenomena; obligation is resolved into inclinations, virtue into pleasure, honesty into utility. Such are the ethics of Epicurus: _Dii meliora piis_!"

[206] In this formula is recognized the system of Bentham, who, for some time, had numerous partisans in England, and even in France.

[207] See lecture 12.

[208] 1st Series, vol. iv., p. 174: "If the good is that alone which must be the most useful to the greatest number, where can the good be found, and who can discern it? In order to know whether such an action, which I propose to myself to do, is good or bad, I must be sure, in spite of its visible and direct utility in the present moment, that it will not become injurious in a future that I do not yet know. I must seek whether, useful to mine and those that surround me, it will not have counter-strokes disastrous to the human race, of which I must think before all. It is important that I should know whether the money that I am tempted to give this unfortunate who needs it, could not be otherwise more usefully employed, in fact, the rule is here the greatest good of the greatest number. In order to follow it, what calculations are imposed on me? In the obscurity of the future, in the uncertainty of the somewhat remote consequences of every action, the surest way is to do nothing that is not related to myself, and the last result of a prudence so refined is indifference and egoism. Supposing you have received a deposit from an opulent neighbor, who is old and sick, a sum of which he has no need, and without which your numerous family runs the risk of dying with famine. He calls on you for this sum,--what will you do? The greatest number is on your side, and the greatest utility also; for this sum is insignificant for your rich neighbor, whilst it will save your family from misery, and perhaps from death. Father of a family, I should like much to know in the name of what principle you would hesitate to retain the sum which is necessary to you? Intrepid reasoner, placed in the alternative of killing this sick old man, or of letting your wife and children die of hunger, in all honesty of conscience you ought to kill him. You have the right, it is even your duty to sacrifice the less advantage of a single person to much the greater advantage of a greater number; and since this principle is the expression of true justice, you are only its minister in doing what you do. A vanquis.h.i.+ng enemy or a furious people threaten destruction to a whole city, if there be not delivered up to them the head of such a man, who is, nevertheless, innocent. In the name of the greatest good of the greatest number, this man will be immolated without scruple. It might even be maintained that innocent to the last, he has ceased to be so, since he is an obstacle to the public good. It having once been declared that justice is the interest of the greatest number, the only question is to know where this interest is. Now, here, doubt is impossible, therefore, it is perfectly just to offer innocence as a holocaust to public safety. This consequence must be accepted, or the principle rejected."

[209] See lecture 15, _Private and Public Ethics_.

[210] Plato, _Republic_, vol. ix. and x. of our translation.

[211] Lecture 16.

[212] Lectures 4 and 7.

[213] This polemic is not new. The school of St. Thomas engaged in it early against the theory of Occam, which was quite similar to that which we combat. See our _Sketch of a General History of Philosophy_, 2d Series, vol. ii., lect. 9, _On Scholasticism_. Here are two decisive pa.s.sages from St. Thomas, 1st book of the _Summation against the Gentiles_, chap. lx.x.xvii: "Per praedicta autem excluditur error dicentiam omnia procedere a Deo secundum simplicem voluntatem, ut de nullo oporteat rationem reddere, nisi quia Deus vult. Quod etiam divinae Scripturae contrariatur, quae Deum perhibet secundum ordinem sapientiae suae omnia fecisse, secundum illud Psalm ciii.: omnia in sapientia fecisti."

_Ibid._, book ii., chap. xxiv.: "Per hoc autem excluditur quorundam error qui dicebant omnia ex simplica divina voluntate dependere aliqua ratione."

[214] See the famous calculus applied to the immortality of the soul, _Des Pensees de Pascal_, vol. i. of the 4th Series, p. 229-235 and p.

289-296.

[215] Lecture 16.

LECTURE XIV.

TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.

Description of the different facts that compose the moral phenomena.--a.n.a.lysis of each of these facts:--1st, Judgment and idea of the good. That this judgment is absolute. Relation between the true and the good.--2d, Obligation. Refutation of the doctrine of Kant that draws the idea of the good from obligation instead of founding obligation on the idea of the good.--3d, Liberty, and the moral notions attached to the notion of liberty.--4th, Principle of merit and demerit. Punishments and rewards.--5th, Moral sentiments.--Harmony of all these facts in nature and science.

Philosophic criticism is not confined to discerning the errors of systems; it especially consists in recognizing and disengaging the truths mixed with these errors. The truths scattered in different systems compose the whole truth which each of these almost always expresses on a single side. So, the systems that we have just run over and refuted deliver up to us, in some sort, divided and opposed to each other, all the essential elements of human morality. The only question is to collect them, in order to restore the entire moral phenomenon. The history of philosophy, thus understood, prepares the way for or confirms psychological a.n.a.lysis, as psychological a.n.a.lysis receives from the history of philosophy its light. Let us, then, interrogate ourselves in presence of human actions, and faithfully collect, without altering them by any preconceived system, the ideas and the sentiments of every kind that the spectacle of these actions produce in us.

There are actions that are agreeable or disagreeable to us, that procure us advantages or injure us, in a word, that are, in one way or another, directly or indirectly, addressed to our interest. We are rejoiced with actions that are useful to us, and shun those that may injure us. We seek earnestly and with the greatest effort what seems to us our interest.

This is an incontestable fact. Here is another fact that is not less incontestable.

There are actions that have no relation to us, that, consequently, we cannot estimate and judge on the ground of our interest, that we nevertheless qualify as good or bad.

Suppose that before your eyes a man, strong and armed, falls upon another man, feeble and disarmed, whom he maltreats and kills, in order to take away his purse. Such an action does not reach you in any way, and, notwithstanding, it fills you with indignation.[216] You do every thing in your power that this murderer may be arrested and delivered up to justice; you demand that he shall be punished, and if he is punished in one way or another, you think that it is just; your indignation is appeased only after a chastis.e.m.e.nt proportioned to the crime committed has been inflicted on the culprit. I repeat that in this you neither hope nor fear any thing for yourself. Were you placed in an inaccessible fortress, from the top of which you might witness this scene of murder, you would feel these sentiments none the less.

This is only a rude picture of what takes place in you at the sight of a crime. Apply now a little reflection and a.n.a.lysis to the different traits of which this picture is composed, without destroying their nature, and you will have a complete philosophic theory.

What is it that first strikes you in what you have experienced? It is doubtless the indignation, the instinctive horror that you have felt.

There is, then, in the soul a power of raising indignation that is foreign to all personal interests! There are, then, in us sentiments of which we are not the end! There is an antipathy, an aversion, a horror, that are not related to what injures us, but to acts whose remotest influence cannot reach us, that we detest for the sole reason that we judge them to be bad!

Yes, we judge them to be bad. A judgment is enveloped under the sentiments that we have just mentioned. In fact, in the midst of the indignation that transports you, let one tell you that all this generous anger pertains to your particular organization, and that, after all, the action that takes place is indifferent,--you revolt against such an explanation, you exclaim that the action is bad in itself; you not only express a sentiment, you p.r.o.nounce a judgment. The next day after the action, when the feelings that agitated your soul have been quieted, you none the less still judge that the action was bad; you judge thus six months after, you judge thus always and everywhere; and it is because you judge that this action is in itself bad, that you bear this other judgment, that it should not have been done.

This double judgment is at the foundation of sentiment; otherwise sentiment would be without reason. If the action is not bad in itself, if he who has done it was not obligated not to do it, the indignation that we experience is only a physical emotion, an excitement of the senses, of the imagination, of the heart,--a phenomenon dest.i.tute of every moral character, like the trouble that visits us before some frightful scene of nature. You cannot rationally feel indignation for the author of an indifferent action. Every sentiment of disinterested anger against the author of an action supposes in him who feels it, this double conviction:--1st, That the action is in itself bad; 2d, That it should not have been done.

This sentiment also supposes that the author of this action has himself a consciousness of the evil that he has done, and of the obligation that he has violated; for without this he would have acted like a brutal and blind force, not like an intelligent and moral force, and we should have felt towards him no more indignation than towards a rock that falls on our head, towards a torrent that sweeps us away into an abyss.

Indignation equally supposes in him who is the object of it an other character still, to wit, that he is free,--that he could do or not do what he has done. It is evident that the agent must be free in order to be responsible.

You desire that the murderer may be arrested and delivered up to justice, you desire that he may be punished; when he has been arrested, delivered up to justice, and punished, you are satisfied. What does that mean? Is it a capricious movement of the imagination and heart? No. Calm or indignant, at the moment of the crime or a long time after, without any spirit of personal vengeance, since you are not the least interested in this affair, you none the less declare that the murderer ought to be punished. If, instead of receiving a punishment, the culpable man makes his crime a stepping-stone to fortune, you still declare that, far from deserving prosperity, he deserves to suffer in reparation of his fault; you protest against lot, and appeal to a superior justice. This judgment philosophers have called the judgment of merit and demerit. I suppose, in the mind of man, the idea of a supreme law that attaches happiness to virtue, unhappiness to crime. Omit the idea of this law, and the judgment of merit and demerit is without foundation. Omit this judgment, and indignation against prosperous crime and the neglect of virtue is an unintelligible, even an impossible sentiment, and never, at the sight of crime, would you think of demanding the chastis.e.m.e.nt of a criminal.

All the parts of the moral phenomenon are connected together; all are equally certain parts,--destroy one, and you completely overturn the whole phenomenon. The most common observation bears witness to all these facts, and the least subtle logic easily discovers their connection. It is necessary to renounce even sentiment, or it must be avowed that sentiment covers a judgment, the judgment of the essential distinction between good and evil, that this distinction involves an obligation, that this obligation is applied to an intelligent and free agent; in fine, it must be observed that the distinction between merit and demerit, that corresponds to the distinction between good and evil, contains the principle of the natural harmony between virtue and happiness.

What have we done thus far? We have done as the physicist or chemist does, who submits a composite body to a.n.a.lysis and reduces it to its simple elements. The only difference here is that the phenomenon to which our a.n.a.lysis is applied is in us, instead of being out of us.

Besides, the processes employed are exactly the same; there is in them neither system nor hypothesis; there are only experience and the most immediate induction.

In order to render experience more certain, we may vary it. Instead of examining what takes place in us when we are spectators of bad or good actions in another, let us interrogate our own consciousness when we are doing well or ill. In this case, the different elements of the moral phenomenon are still more striking, and their order appears more distinctly.