Chapter III: Part 3

There is no liberty without a large measure of license. They are dreamers who hope to enjoy the benefits of the one without incurring the risk, and undergoing the inconveniences, of the other. They, too, are dreamers who believe that license will ever be effectually repressed by penalties, courts of justice, or measures of Police. Two things are certain; the one is, that it is idle to attempt to repress license completely in a free country; the other, that the moral and preventive forces of society itself are alone to be relied upon, both by governments and nations, to enable them to support that license which they cannot suppress. {23} Christianity is the most efficacious, the most popular, and the most approved of these forces. It is efficacious against license for two reasons and in two ways. In principle, Christianity maintains to Authority its right and its rank intact; without humbling it before Liberty, Christianity yet recognises the rights of Liberty, and demands that these should be admitted; in fact Christianity inspires men with a sentiment, with which authority cannot dispense, respect. The absence of respect is the most serious danger to which authority is exposed; authority suffers much more from insult than from attack; it is precisely to the task of systematically insulting and debasing authority, that its most ardent opponents, in our days, address themselves with most passion and with most art. There exist licentious, turbulent, and insolent persons in Christian societies, just as such exist in other societies; but Christian principles and Christian habits make and maintain friends to Order in the great mass of the people as well as in the higher classes, friends to order, who respect order both in law and in morals, men whom licentious and insulting; conduct shock as much as they terrify, and who, equally free, appeal in their own favour to the maxims and the arms of Liberty. {24} History supplies us on this subject with conclusive examples. The nations of Christendom are the only nations to which license has not brought as a final consequence anarchy and despotism,--the only nations which, although they have on different occasions and by salutary reactions experienced the excesses both of power and of liberty, have not succumbed under them morally and politically. Neither the states of Pagan Antiquity nor those of the East, whether Bouddhist or Mussulman, have stood such trials; these have had their days of healthy vigour and even of glory; but when the evils which license or tyranny generated have once come upon them, they have fallen irretrievably, and all their subsequent history has merely been that of a decline more or less rapid, more or less stormy, more or less apathetic.

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It is the honour of the Christian Religion that it has within it that which can cure states of their maladies, as well as individuals of their errors; and that, by the belief which it generates, and the sentiments which it inspires, it has already more than once furnished, sometimes to the friends of Order, and sometimes to the friends of Liberty, a refuge in their reverses, as well as strength to recover lost ground.

It would be as imprudent as ungrateful in these days for the friends of Liberty to ignore this grand fact and its salutary admonishment. They are called to a work much more difficult than any that they have hitherto had to accomplish: their task is no longer merely to search after guarantees for Liberty against the encroachments of pre-existent Power, or the accidental and transient ebullition of License. They have to reconcile the normal and constitutional dominion of Democracy with Liberty, and with the regular action and permanence of Liberty. {26} Until modern times, political liberty, wherever it has existed, has been the result of the simultaneous presence and of the conflict of different forces of society, no one of them strong enough to rule alone, but each too weak to resist efficaciously the attack of the others; at one time the Crown, at another the Aristocracy, at another the Church, each previously powerful and independent, have lived side by side with Democracy when Democracy has had limits and restrictions imposed upon its power and success; but at the present day, there are amongst us no distinct surviving influences which are powerful enough to play a similar part in society and in the government. The Crown, the Aristocracy, and the Church are no longer anything but frail wrecks of the past, or instruments created by the Democracy, and indebted to it for a borrowed force. Is this to be henceforth the permanent condition of human society, or is it only a phase, more or less transitory, of a series of ages and of revolutions, which fresh ages and fresh revolutions will hereafter profoundly modify? Futurity must decide. In any case, it is only under the exclusive dominion of a single force, Democracy, that in these days free institutions can be founded.

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That every dominant force when single is tempted to commit abuses and to become tyrannical, is a truth so much in accordance with the lessons of experience and with the conclusions of reason, that no pains need be taken to insist upon it. Not to speak of the dangerous acclivity upon which Democracy, in common with all other forces, is placed, it has peculiar characteristics which are not of a nature to set the friends of Liberty at their ease. Democracy derives its origin and power from the right of every human will, and from the majority of human wills. Truth and error press so very closely upon each other in this system, that Liberty is placed in a position of great peril. Man's volition is entitled to every respect; but it is not all its law to itself, nor is it in itself essentially a law at all: it is bound to another law, which does not emanate from itself, and which comes to it from a higher source than man, and which it is as unable to abrogate as it was to create. {28} The law paramount is the moral law,--the law laid down by God, to which all wills of men, whatever their number, are bound to submit. Democracy, essentially busied with the wills of men, is always inclined to attribute to them the character and the rights of divine law. Man occupies so much space in this form of government, and has so elevated a position there, that he easily forgets God--easily takes himself for God. The result is a sort of political polytheism, which, unless it appeals to a gross, material arbitrament, and to the majority of human wills, is incapable of arriving at that unity of law and of action, with which no society or government can dispense. I do not say that the individual man, and that numbers of men, are the only principles, but I do say, that they are principles characteristic of Democracy; it is against the absolute dominion of these two principles that Democracy has, in the interest of its own honour and of its own safety, to be incessantly admonished and defended. {29} A royal sage enjoined that he should be saluted every morning with the words, "Remember thou art man." This sublime and prudent admonition is no less needful for Democracy than for Royalty, and it is precisely the salutary service which is rendered to it by Christianity. In Christianity there is a light, a voice, a law, a history, which does not come from man, but which, without offending his dignity, sets him in his proper place. No belief, no institution, exalts man's dignity so highly, and at the same time so effectually represses his arrogance. The more democratic a society is, the more it is important that this double effect shall take place within it. Christianity alone has this virtue.

I am aware of the capital objection made to its empire. "The Physic without the Physicians," exclaimed Rousseau, in a sally against medical men, but the expression shows nevertheless how little he was disposed to forget that it is possible for medicine to be good and salutary. {30} How often have I heard men of intelligence and men in all other respects very worthy of consideration, exclaim, "Let me have Religion without the priests: I am a Christian, but no friend of the clergy." I am far from seeking to leave this difficulty unnoticed, or to elude it. It is a difficulty of the gravest nature, not in essence, but in the actual circumstances and state of opinions at the present day.

As a Protestant it does not concern me. The clergy is not amongst Protestants the object of any such uneasiness. One of the best results, in my opinion, of the Reformation of the 16th century, whether regarded as Lutheran or Calvinistic, as Anglican, or as the work of other Dissidents in religion, is that it strongly cemented the union between the ecclesiastics and the general religious community--between the spiritual and the lay members of the Church. The Reformation produced this effect, first, by authorising the clergy to marry and to enter into the relations which a life of family brings with it; and, secondly, by giving to the laity a share in the government of the Church. {31} The partition was not always judicious or equitable. At one time the clergy, at another the laity, have been transported from their natural places, and injured in their legitimate rights; but the relations between the two classes ceased to present the appearance of either absolutism on the one hand, or of entire subordination on the other; the laity obtained a voice and influence in the affairs of the flock; the priests, although remaining religious pastors and religious magistrates, ceased to be spiritual masters. This organisation has led to the two social institutions combining themselves in a variety of ways. At one time the civil power has invaded the government of the religious society, and deprived the clergy, not merely of empire, but of independence; at another time the two forms of society, the State and the Church, have regulated by treaty the terms of their mutual relations; whereas, in the United States of America, the two forms of society have been entirely separated, and have mutually recovered their independence; {32} elsewhere, as amongst the Quakers and the Moravians, all ecclesiastical authority and orders of priesthood have been abolished, and laymen have lived in the isolation each of his individual conscience, obedient only to its spontaneous impulses. But amidst all this diversity, it is the fundamental characteristic of the churches and of the sects which issued from the Reform of the 16th century, that priests do not in themselves constitute the necessary and sovereign mediators between God and man's soul, nor the sole rulers of religious society. It is particularly by virtue of this principle that the distinction between civil life and religious life has become an efficacious and a consecrated doctrine, and that Liberty has resumed its right and become an active influence in religious society itself.

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But amongst Roman Catholic nations, priests are the objects of a persistent distrust which has been the fruitful source of much calamity to Christianity. History forbids surprise. The Roman Catholic clergy has often presented the spectacle of ambition and passion, of mundane and selfish interests, strangely intermixed with faith and with earnest zeal for the furtherance of their religious mission. Serious ills and grave abuses have resulted therefrom in the relation of Church to State, and of priests to their flocks, and even in the bosom of the Church itself. These are facts almost as undisputed as they are indisputable; in proof of them the testimony, not only of its adversaries, but of the holiest members of the Church of Rome itself, may be invoked. Nothing is more natural, and indeed more inevitable, than that this should have led and should still lead, not only to ill-will towards priests, but to their being regarded as proper subjects for attack. It is not, however, on that account less certain that such an attack is, in our days, and as society is at present constituted, unjust, silly, and inopportune, as injurious to State as to Church, to Liberty as to Religion. There may be injustice and ingratitude to institutions as well as to individuals. {34} From the fall of the Roman Empire, and during the rudest and most sombre ages of modern history, the Catholic clergy, whether as Popes, Bishops, monastic orders, or simple priests, in the midst of their selfish pretensions and ambitious usurpations, displayed and expended treasures of intellect, courage, and perseverance in order to affirm and protect the immaterial and moral interests of humanity. They did not on all occasions accept their mission to its full extent; they did not maintain the Christian Religion in all its breadth, and in all its evangelical disinterestedness; they had their share in the acts of violence, iniquity, and tyranny of the different masters of society for the time being; they often made Liberty pay dearly for the services which they rendered to civilization; but when Liberty has become one of the conquests of that very civilization, the proof as well as the guarantee for its further progress, there is injustice and ingratitude in forgetting what part the Roman Catholic clergy effected towards the constitution of that society, the ultimate result of which has been so glorious.

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The injustice is the greater that it is now inopportune and useless. From the acrimony, the anger, and alarm which characterise the attacks directed at Roman Catholicism and its Priests, we might suppose that the Inquisition was at our gates, that Rome was making a perilous onslaught upon our civil and religious liberties, and that we need to deploy all our force and all our passions to repulse the domination of the Court of Rome and of its army. Was there ever so strange a perversion of facts? For a century past, on which side has been the movement and the aggression? Is it not evidently the spirit of religious and political liberty which has now the initiative, the impulsive, onward movement? The defensive is the natural and enforced situation of the Roman Catholic Church; Romanism is much more menaced, much more attacked by public opinion in these days than our liberties are menaced or attacked by her. The supreme power in the Church of Rome, the Papacy, does indeed maintain, in principle, certain maxims and certain traditions irreconcileable with, the actual state of opinion and society; it continues to condemn authoritatively some of the essential principles of modern civilization. {36} In all earnestness, yet with every feeling of respect, I shall here make at once use of my right, both as a Protestant and as the citizen of a free country, to declare my profound conviction that this systematic persistence, however conscientious and dignified it may be, shows a great want of religious foresight as well as of political prudence. I think that Romanism, without abdication and without renouncing anything that is vitally essential to itself, might assume a position in harmony with the moral and social state in these days, and with the conditions also vitally essential to the existence of such state. I may add, that so long as the government of the Romish Church shall not have accepted and accomplished this work of conciliation--conciliation real and profound--the friends of Liberty will be justified in keeping themselves on the alert, and in maintaining a reserve towards it, as representing, themselves, those moral and liberal principles which it disavows. {37} But let them not attribute to this disavowal a greater importance than it deserves; let them watch the ecclesiastical power which utters it, without alarm; it has in it nothing very menacing, nothing that opposes any effectual barrier to the march of events; Liberalism is not the less victorious in these days, and not the less advancing. Many faults have been committed, and many probably will continue to be committed; as has already been the case, we shall have perhaps many a barrier opposed in our path, many a reactionary movement to endure, but the general onward impulse will nevertheless be the same, and the final result, the conquest of Liberty, religious, civil and political, not the less a certainty.

This is no mere philosophical aspiration. It is already history. There have been many vicissitudes in France, and many a crisis of different kinds during the last hundred years in the struggle between Liberalism and Roman Catholicism; the former has often committed errors, made mistakes, by which Romanism has adroitly profited; but at every reverse Romanism has recognised her own defeat, and accepted some part of its consequences. {38} The Constituent Assembly by the civil organisation of the clergy, the National Convention by its proscriptions, had endeavoured, the one to enslave, the other to abolish the Catholic Church; the great master of the revolution, Napoleon, raised it up again by the Concordat of 1802; but the Concordat at the same time consecrated many of the fundamental principles of the liberal regime, and the Catholic Church of Rome consecrated Napoleon and signed the Concordat, even whilst protesting against some of its consequences. At the Restoration some wished to discuss again the question of the Concordat, and to re-establish the relation between Church and State upon their ancient foundations; but the attempt encountered, in the ranks of the Royalists themselves, a decisive resistance, and totally failed. Under the Government of 1830, Roman Catholicism regained its ground and resumed fresh vigour by both using the name of Liberty and claiming its right. {39} When the Republic again appeared in 1848, Roman Catholicism treated it with as much tenderness as it experienced itself from the Republic. I pause before the actual relations of the Church of Rome to the new Empire; Rome has paid a dear price for all that she has received from the Empire; but even here she showed, and appears disposed still to show, a large measure of patience and resignation. She is right.

One fact particularly arrests my attention in the course of this stormy history. In the midst of her reverses and her concessions, Roman Catholicism has displayed rare and energetic virtues of fidelity and independence. She has opposed to the bloody persecution of Terrorism, the inexhaustible blood of her martyrs, bishops, priests, monks, men and women; that Clergy of France, once so vacillating in faith and so mundane in morals, bore their cross with an indomitable sentiment of Christian honour. {40} The despotism of the Emperor Napoleon encountered in the person of Pope Pius VII., in some Cardinals, and some Bishops, a passive but firm resistance, which neither the power of the Despot, nor the contagious servility of their contemporaries, could surmount. And again, in these days, who can fail to perceive with what activity and devotedness, with what sacrifices and efficacy, Roman Catholicism, by the mere force of its native energy, upholds the cause of its chief and of itself? If civil society had defended its liberties and its dignities as the Church of Rome defends hers, Liberalism in France would be farther advanced on its road and towards its object.

But let not Romanists deceive themselves: one cannot make use of Liberty without being forced to enter into an engagement and compromise with Liberty; one cannot appeal to Liberty without doing homage to her; she lays her hand upon those to whom she lends her aid. The great fact which I before invoked, the work of reconciliation between modern society and Roman Catholicism, is more advanced than those believe who still stand aloof from it and oppose it. {41} This is proved by two facts. In the very bosom of Roman Catholicism, and from amongst its most zealous defenders, that group of liberal Catholics was formed which has played and which continues to play so active a part in struggling for the Liberties of their church, and for the rights of their chief: these are at once the ornaments of then church, and its intellectual sword; and the publication which supports their views, the "Correspondant," is, next to the "Revue des deux Mondes," the periodical which meets with most success and has the greatest circulation. Passing from this brilliant group to the more modest ranks of the Roman Catholic clergy, I ask what is the disposition, the attitude, the conduct of those faithful and humble priests who exercise the Christian ministry in our provinces and in the inferior quarters of our cities; they have not always all the science, all the mental culture, which one might desire; but whilst adhering to Catholic faith and giving the example of Christian lives, they live in the midst of the people; {42} they know it, they understand it; they are aware what the conditions are which permit them to live with and to exercise an influence upon the people; they enter by degrees into its sentiments and its instincts; without premeditation, almost without perceiving it, they become each day more and more men of their time and country, more familiar with the ideas and liberal tendencies of modern society. Thus at the two poles of Roman Catholicism, in its most elevated ranks and in its popular militia, the same result is obtained, in the one case by men of enlightened views and of superior ability, and in the other case by men of good sense and honesty of purpose; and thus in the Roman Church those moral and political principles of 1789 make their way, which form the basis of the new social edifice, of its laws, and of its liberties.

I do not dispute, neither do I attack; I record facts as I observe and appreciate them. And in my opinion, with reference to French institutions,--for I speak only of France,--the essential consequences from these facts, as far as they bear upon the relations of Christianity to Liberty, are as follows.

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I have here not a word to say respecting the Protestant Church in France; the questions which have agitated her for some time past are questions of faith and internal discipline, entirely aloof from any incertitude or differences of opinion as to the rights of conscience or of religious society in their relations to civil society. Protestantism in France, whether orthodox or not, adopts and upholds the largest maxims as to religious liberty, and as to the guarantee for it, in the separation of religious life from civil life. The most zealous Liberals have nothing more in this respect to demand from even the most orthodox Protestants; these are indeed of their church the most urgent in claiming for religious society the right to have its internal autonomy, and to stand independently of the state. It is, on the contrary, Roman Catholics, and the advocates of the essential principles of modern society, who most dispute about the general question of liberty.

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The more I reflect, the more I am convinced that henceforth this question can only be seriously and efficaciously dealt with in one of two ways: the one is by the alliance of Church and State, on conditions which, whilst distinguishing civil life from religious life, shall guarantee to individuals religious liberty in civil society, and to the church itself its internal autonomy in matters of faith and of religious discipline. The other solution is the complete separation of Church and State, and their mutual independence.

That the Church prefers the system of an Alliance with the State to that of the Church's Liberty and isolation from the State, I well understand.

She is right. Alliance with the State is to her a sign of strength, a means of influence, a pledge for her dignity and her stability. The complete separation of the two societies leaves religious institutions, and particularly their clergy, in a fluctuating and precarious situation: a system essentially democratic, it rather places the ecclesiastical magistracy under the opinions and wills of its lay members, than these under the influence of the religious authorities. {45} This system is especially alien to the origin, the fundamental principle, and the Hierarchy, of the Roman Catholic Church; it is impossible for this Church to accept it unless urgently demanded by the interests of moral authority, independence, and liberty. But let not the Roman Catholic Church misapprehend; an alliance of Church with State has also conditions without which a Church would vainly expect any advantage; for the alliance to be serious and effectual, there must be between Church and State a large measure of harmony as to the essential principles of the religious society and of the civil society which the Church and the State respectively represent: if the two societies and those who govern them, do not mutually admit their respective principles, if they disavow each other incessantly, and carry on in the bosom of their alliance, a war, open or secret, all the good effect of such alliance disappears, and the alliance itself is soon compromised. {46} The treaties concluded at different epochs, under the name of Concordats, between Chambers and States in different countries of Christendom, have only been possible and efficacious, because there was a great basis of harmony in the fundamental institutions of the two contracting parties; they differed upon some points; they had reciprocally to make concessions and grant guarantees; but taken altogether they approved of each other and were sincere in supporting each other; peace was the point from which their alliance started, and the dissentiments which existed on each side had no reference to any vital questions. It suffices for us to cast a glance at the history of Catholicism in France, of the Anglican Church in England, of the Lutheran Church in Germany and in Sweden, to acknowledge this truth; and what is occurring and forming matter of negotiation in our days in Italy and in Austria, upon the subject of the relations of the Church with the State, furnishes a further striking confirmation. {47} In an age of liberty, of publicity, and of continual discussion, when it is possible for anything to be thought or said, and for any opinion to be maintained or attacked, it is more than ever indispensable that any treaty between Church and State should be serious and sincere; that is to say, that the two contracting parties should recognise and accept in each other, without equivocation and without subterfuge, the character which each really possesses. This is the only condition upon which an alliance can be real, becoming, and advantageous. In presence of the undisguised movements and the ever recurring and daring ventures of Liberty, a policy of reticence and procrastination, obscure and dim reservations, inconsistent expedients, and secret warfare, is no longer practicable; such policy, far from lending any help, discredits and weakens the power which places its trust in it. {48} As for me, I believe that the Catholic Church, if not without endangering her habits, at least without endangering her essential principles, has it in her power to set herself at peace with the fundamental principles of modern society and of actual civil governments; but should she either not wish or not know how to march towards this object and to obtain it, let her not give way to any illusion; alliance with the State would be rather a source of weakness and of peril to her than an advantage, and she would only eventually be driven to seek a refuge in the system of separation and complete independence.

As for the State, the system which separates the two societies would free it from many a burthen and much embarrassment; but it would cause her other embarrassments, and lead to the loss of many advantages. It is convenient to discourse of the principle of a "Free church in a free country," but after the long alliance which has existed between them, it is easier to proclaim such principle than to apply it: not only is it impossible to divorce Church from State without violently wrenching asunder previous bonds, but more lasting consequences ensue; once disengaged from every connection with the civil power, ministers of religion busy themselves no longer about the interests of civil society; their thoughts are exclusively absorbed by questions of religion and its affairs. {49} Governments have long been accustomed to derive, and derive at the present day, a moral influence of great value from an alliance with the Church: but this influence supposes one condition which is not only especially important in our days, but of capital importance: in the actual state of opinion and of manners, no good results can be politically looked for from the alliance, if the civil power do not abstain from all interference in questions purely religious; the complete independence of the church and of its chiefs, in matters of faith and of religious discipline, is the only condition which can justify their giving their indirect support to the state government, and which can purge their support of all impure motives. {50} The alliance of the two powers could formerly, in a certain degree, co-exist with no inconsiderable confusion in their respective attributes, and a somewhat earnest claim on the part of each to domineer over the other; nothing similar can occur at the present day; neither Church nor State can any longer be the master or the servant of the other. Let neither princes nor priests deceive themselves; their reciprocal independence, and their uncontested empire, each in its own province, can alone give to their alliance the dignity which the alliance requires, if it is to be real, efficacious, and lasting.

Every road leads me to the same point; to every question the facts give me the same answer. Liberty has need of Christianity, Christianity has need of Liberty. As modern society demands to be free, the religion of Christ is its most necessary ally. Christianity and civil society have mutually, I admit it, a grave feeling of disquietude and distrust; but this disquietude and distrust are not natural and inevitable results of principles essential to civil society and religious society, of any compulsory relations existing between them; they spring from the faults which the two institutions have committed towards each other, and from the contest which each has forced upon the other. {51} Liberty alone can effectually combat such sentiments which have become habitual and traditional. To dissipate them entirely, something besides Liberty is requisite; but without Liberty neither religious society nor civil society will obtain their legitimate objects, these objects being peace in their relations to each other, and the moral progress of man, and of the State, whether allied with or independent of the Church.

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Second Meditation.

Christianity And Morality.

Two attempts are now being simultaneously made, of different characters, although, of the same origin and tendency. Seriously minded men, who persist in believing and calling themselves Christians, are labouring to separate Christian morals from Christian dogmas, and although they make Jesus their moral idea of humanity, are stripping him of his miracles and divinity. Others, who declare openly that they are no Christians, endeavour to separate morality in the abstract from religion in the abstract, and place the source of morality, as well as its authority, in human nature, and in it alone. On the one side we find a Christian morality independent of Christian faith; on the other a Morality independent of all religious belief, either natural or revealed: these two doctrines are in our days proclaimed and propagated with ardour.

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I frankly admit that their defenders are sincere in adopting and upholding them, and that they do so in the name of truth alone. In philosophy, as in politics, I believe error and honest intentions to be more general than falsehood and evil design. Moreover, who would discuss convictions, unless himself convinced that they are serious and earnest? Opinions founded on interested or hypocritical motives are not worth the honour of a discussion; they merit only to be attacked and unmasked. In the name of truth alone I combat the two doctrines to which I have alluded, and which some now strive to accredit.

The true cause of this twofold attempt is the incredulity and the scepticism which prevail with regard to religion. Non-Christians are numerous; few Deists are quite sure of their belief and of its efficacy. {54} A necessity for morality is felt to exist; its right to regulate the actions of man is acknowledged; it is in order to preserve to it its integrity and its force that efforts are made to separate it from religion, from all religious creeds, all of which, it is here assumed, are either ruined or tottering. Thus, Independent Morality is, as it were, a raft, offered to the human soul, and to human society, to save their time-worn vessel from being wrecked.

The idea is false, the attempt of evil consequence. They who flatter themselves that they can leave Christian morality standing, after wrenching it from Christian dogmas,--and they who believe it possible to preserve morality, after detaching it from religion,--err alike, for they fail to recognise the essential facts of human nature and of human society.

Both doctrines are derived from an inexact and incomplete observation of these facts. I have already stated in these Meditations what I think of the isolation of Christian morality from Christianity, and the reason why I reject it. {55} At present I apply myself to the idea of independent morality, and in the name of a psychology, pure at once and severe, I affirm that there exists an intimate, legitimate, and necessary union between morality and religion.

A preliminary observation occurs to me. Those who adopt the theory of an independent morality, start from the idea that there is a moral law, strange to and superior to all interested motives, to all selfish passions; these rank duty above, and treat it as independent of, every other motive of action.

I am far from contesting this principle with them, but they forget that it _has_ been, and still _is_, strongly contested: contested by both ancient and modern philosophers. Some have considered the pursuit of happiness, and the satisfaction of individual interests, as the right and legitimate aims of human life. Others have placed the rule of man's conduct, not in personal interests, but in general utility, in the common welfare of all mankind. Others have thought that they could perceive the origin and the guarantee for morals in the sympathy of human sentiments. {56} The moral and obligatory law, or duty, is far from being the recognised and generally accepted basis of morality; systems the most varied have arisen, and are incessantly forming themselves, with respect to the principles of morals, as with respect to other great questions of our nature; and the human understanding fluctuates no less in this corner of the philosophic arena than in the others. Let the moralists of the new school not deceive themselves; in proclaiming morality to be independent of religion, they mean to give it one fixed basis, the same for all, and they believe that they succeed in the attempt. They deceive themselves: morality, thus isolated, remains as much as ever a prey to the disputes of man.

I pass over this grave misconception on the part of the defenders of the system, and I examine the system itself. Let us see if it is the faithful and full expression of human morality, if it contains all the facts which constitute its natural and essential elements.

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These facts I sum up as follows: the distinction between moral good and evil; the obligation of doing good and avoiding evil; the faculty of accomplishing or not this obligation. In brief and philosophic terms the Moral Law, Duty, and Liberty. These are the natural, primitive, and universal facts which constitute human morality; it is by reason and by virtue of these facts that man is a moral being.

I have not here to enter into a discussion of these same facts; I do not occupy myself at this moment with systems which disregard or deny them, in whole or in part; all the three facts, or any one of the three. The partisans of the system of independent morality admit them all, as I do; the question between them and myself is this, whether or not, whilst rendering homage to the true principle of morality, they fully comprehend its signification, and accept its results.

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It is the characteristic and the honour of man that he is not satisfied with merely gathering facts which relate either to himself or to the external world, but that he seeks to know their origin and object, their import and bearing.

In morals, as in physics, statistics are only the point from which science sets out; it is only after having well observed facts, and having verified them, that we have to discuss the questions which they raise, and the further ultimate facts which the facts already ascertained contain and reveal. The fact of human morality, such as I have just described it in its three constituent elements, the Moral Law, Duty, and Liberty, cannot fail to suggest these two questions: Whence proceeds the moral law, and whence is its authority? What is the sense, and what the ultimate result to the moral being himself, of the fulfilment or violation of his duty; that is to say, of the use which he makes of his liberty? No philosophical system can either suppress or elude these questions; they present themselves to the mind of man as soon as he directs his attention to the moral character of man's nature. I propose to consider in succession the three constituent elements of this great truth, so as to determine rightly its source and bearing.

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Moral law has neither been invented by man, nor does it spring from any human convention; man, by acknowledging it, admits that he has not created it, that he cannot abolish or change it. Political and civil laws are diverse and ever varying; they depend in a great measure upon time, place, social circumstances, or human will; when men adopt or reject them, they do so with the feeling that they are the masters of them, to deal with them accordingly as their interests or their fancies suggest.

But when a law presents itself to them in the form of a moral law, they feel that this is not dependent on them, that it takes its source and derives its authority elsewhere than from their own opinion or volition. They may mistake in rendering or in refusing homage to a particular precept of conduct; they may attach to laws a moral value which they do not intrinsically possess, or pass unnoticed the really moral character of another law, and the obligations which it imposes upon them; but wherever they believe that they perceive the character of a moral law, they bow before it as before something which does not emanate from them, and before a power of a different nature from man's.

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The moral law no more belongs to the general mechanism of the world, than to the invention of man; it has none of the characteristics that mark the laws of physical order; none of the results which follow from them; it is by no means inherent in the forms or combinations of matter; it does not govern the relations or movements of bodies; obligatory, and fixed as fate, it addresses itself solely to that intelligent and free being, of whom Pascal said, in his grand language, "If the universe were to crush him, still man would be more noble than that which destroyed him, because he knows that he dies; and of the advantage that the universe has over him, the universe knows nothing." Man does much more than know that he dies; it happens, sometimes, that he encounters death voluntarily--that he chooses to die in obedience to the moral law. It is the law of Liberty.

{61}

What mean these words, Law of Liberty? How does this law, called Duty, come to establish itself in the human mind, and command man's Liberty to respect it?

Some essay to found Duty upon Right, and to derive its authority solely from the independence and dignity of humanity. Man, it is said, feels and knows that he is a free agent; as such it is his right that no human being shall attack his independence or his dignity. He finds in every other human being the same nature, and therefore the same right as he possesses himself. Thus mutual right is derived from individual right, and "Duty is nothing but the right which it is recognised that another possesses." [Footnote 14]

[Footnote 14: La Morale Independante,
a weekly journal, No. 1, 6th August, 1865.]

{62}

There is here a profound mistake, and a strange forgetfulness.

Why, when a man finds himself in relation with his fellow-men, does he attribute to them the same right which he recognises himself as possessing, and which he calls upon them to see and admit there? If this is a prudent calculation, the wisdom which arises from a correct appreciation of his interest, let us have done with it, it is not morality. If, prudence and interest apart, man regards himself as bound to pay, to the independence and personal dignity of his fellow-men, the same respect, and to attribute to them the same right, as he lays claim to for himself; if reciprocity becomes in this manner the fundamental principle of morality, what becomes of the obligation where there is no reciprocity? Will man be bound to respect in others the right which will not be respected in himself? If he is bound to it in all cases, and in spite of everything, then Duty has another source than the mutual respect of persons. If he is, on the other hand, not bound to it in all cases, what becomes of the paramount and absolute character of Duty; in other words, of the moral law? It is no longer anything but law upon condition.

{63}

Not merely the religion of Christ, but all the great doctrines of the world, religious or philosophical, peremptorily refuse to attach this conditional character of reciprocity to the moral law; all maintain that duty is in every case absolute and imperative, independently of the conduct of others. "If ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them. And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same." "Love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil." [Footnote 15]

[Footnote 15: Luke vi. 32, 33, 35.]

"Be ye," say the laws of Menou to the Hindoos, "as the wood of the sandal tree, that perfumes the hatchet which wounds it." If we interrogate Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Kant; in whatever other respect they may disagree, they think upon this fundamental point with the Gospel and the Laws of Menou.

{64}

It is in the confusion of Duty and of Right, and in the inversion of their natural and their true order, that the error resides of those who maintain the Theory of an Independent Morality. Duty is the moral law of men's actions; law intimate, personal. Right, on the other hand, is derived from the application of the moral law to the relations of men. I will not deny myself the great yet melancholy pleasure of citing upon this subject a few words of a person whose mind and life were united to mine, and who, in a modest essay, threw over this important subject a flood of light as vivid as it is pure: "The word Right, brings with it the idea of a relation to something. As every Right is an application of a moral law to the different relations of Society, there exists not a Right of which Society is not the occasion. A Right is only the moral power of an individual over the Liberty of another: a power attributed to him by virtue of the moral law which regulates the relations of men with one another. {65} Duty is the sole basis of Right. Did there exist no duties there would exist no rights. There is no claim of a right which does not affirm a Duty to be its source. Duty applied as a rule to govern the relations of man to man constitutes justice; justice cannot exist without Duty; a thing is neither just, nor unjust, as far as regards the being who has not had the duty prescribed to him of distinguishing between them. Ideas of Right are as essential to men as ideas of duty; for if the idea of Duty is the social bond;--the means of peace and of Union amongst mankind;--the idea of Right constitutes the arms, offensive and defensive, which society gives to men, for reciprocal use. Every man has a consciousness of his own rights, which aids him to keep others in the line of their duty; but rights only so far aid him to do this, as the duty upon which they are founded is known and respected; for with regard to that man who ignores his duty, the man who has a right has absolutely nothing. {66} Right is a moral power producing its effects without the help of physical force; if he who has both right and power must employ the power to enforce his right, it is no longer his right which triumphs, it is his power; his right remains to him to justify the employment of force; but it is not his right which has made his cause triumph. Thus it is that the idea of Duty is the basis of society, and is at the same time the basis of the idea of right, an idea which in its turn contributes also to the stability of society. To found society upon the sole idea of duty, is to deprive society of one of its most powerful means of defence and of development; to strip the tree of the buds which serve to give it at once strength and amplitude. To found society upon the idea of Right without the idea of duty, is to cut away the very roots of the tree." [Footnote 16]

[Footnote 16: "Essai sur les idées de droit et de devoir
considérées comme fondement de la société." It is inserted in
the work entitled, "Conseils de Morale, ou Essais sur
l'homme, les mœurs, les caractères, le monde, les femmes,
l'education, etc. Par Madame Guizot, née de Meulan,"
(2 vols. 8vo, 1828) vol. ii., pp. 147-271.]

{67}

This is not all. Besides the mistake which they commit in considering Duty as a mere consequence of Right, derived from the independence and dignity of man as man, the advocates of the theory of an independent morality forget an entire class of moral elements occupying an important position in our nature; I mean, the instinctive sentiments intimately allied to the Moral Law, sentiments to which the notion of a Right, founded upon the independence and dignity of man's personality, is completely strange. Is it on account of the independence and dignity of man's personality that fathers and mothers regard it as their duty to love their children, to take charge of them, to work for and devote themselves to them? Is it by virtue of this principle, and of the right which flows from it, that children are bound to honour their father and their mother? Man's soul, man's existence, is full of moral relations and moral acts, in which the idea of Right has no part; no part, I mean, in the sense which these theorists of an independent morality attach to it: their system is no more an explanation of Sympathy than of Duty.

{68}

I am touching upon the source of their error. If they make the principle of human morality consist in a Right emanating from man's Liberty and man's intelligence, it is that they see in man only a free and intelligent being. Strange ignorance, and mutilation of man's nature. At the same time that he is a free and intelligent being, man is a being dependent and subject: he is dependent, in the material order, upon a power superior to his own; and subject, in the moral order, to a law which he did not make, which he cannot change, which he is forced to admit even whilst he is free not to obey it; a law from which he cannot withdraw himself without troubling his soul and endangering his future. Morality in a sense is in effect independent; it is essentially independent of man; man, the free agent man, is its subject. Morality is truly the law of Liberty of Action.

{69}

Liberty is not an isolated fact, which exhausts itself by working its own completion, and which, once accomplished, remains without further consequences. To Liberty is attached Responsibility. When the human being, giving effect to his free will, resolves and acts, he feels that he is responsible for his resolution and his act. The Laws of Society declare this to him in express terms, for they punish him if they judge his act to be criminal; not merely because they find his act to be hurtful, but because they find it to be morally culpable: for, were its author pronounced to be mad, or his mind or volition recognised as unsound, the laws of society would acquit him. And if a culprit escape legal punishment, he does not escape from the internal punishment of remorse. Without speaking of penal laws, remorse is at once the proof and the sanction of moral responsibility. Possible it is that all remorse may be lulled to sleep in the mind of the hardened offender; but there are a thousand instances to prove that it may be always reawakened. {70} Neither in good nor in evil is man's nature entirely effaced. Repentance sometimes hides itself in recesses so profound, that to penetrate thither is impossible, except for the soul which feels repentance even when seeking to escape from it.

As Liberty supposes responsibility, so Responsibility supposes an idea of merit or of demerit attaching naturally to the use made of liberty. I set aside here all the questions, in my opinion, ill put and wrongly solved by Theologians, upon this subject of merit or demerit. According to the general sentiment and common sense of all mankind, there is merit for a man in the accomplishment of Moral Law, there is demerit in its violation. It is a fact recognised and proclaimed even in the simplest and most ordinary incidents of human life, as well as in the political organisation of society, and in the problems which concern the eternal future. {71} However the recompense or the punishment may be accelerated or delayed; whatever its nature or its measure; the moral career of a man is not complete, nor the moral order established, until the responsibility inherent in his Liberty has received its complement and arrived at its end in the just appreciation and equitable return made to him for his merits or demerits.

Thus far I have spoken of Independent Morality; I have scrupulously confined myself to studying moral facts as man's nature, and man's nature alone, presents them to us. I have considered and described them as they are in themselves, entirely apart from every other element and every other consideration. Those moral facts are briefly as follows:--

The distinction between moral good and moral evil.

The Moral Law, the duty of doing good and avoiding evil.

Moral Liberty.

Moral Responsibility.

Moral merit and demerit.

{72}

These are, I admit, facts which man recognises in himself as the proper and intimate characteristics of his own nature. But these truths once recognised and determined, what is their import? Are they facts isolated in human nature, as they are in Psychology, or have they anterior causes and necessary consequences! Are they self-sufficing, or do they contain and reveal other truths which form their complement and their sanction? The human mind cannot elude this question.

I have established that the moral law is not of human invention; that it does not exist merely by man's agreement; that it is not one of those laws of fate by which the material world is governed. It is the law of the intellectual world, of the free world; a law superior to that world which, by recognising it as law, recognises itself at the same time both as free and subject. Who is the author of that law? Who imposes it upon man--upon man of whom it is not the work, and whom it governs without enslaving? Who placed it above this world where the present life is passed? {73} Evidently there must be a superior power from which the moral law emanates, and of which it is a revelation. With the good sense which his frivolity and his cynicism made him so oft forget, Voltaire said, speaking of the material world and the order reigning in it:--

"Je ne puis songer
Que cette horloge existe et n'ait point d'horloger."

I cannot think
This clock exists and never had a maker.