Chapter XII: Appendix: 371 (10)

I say equal with the exactest equality, for liberty, and liberty alone, is equal to itself. All the rest is diverse; by all the rest men differ; for resemblance implies difference. As there are no two leaves that are the same, there are no two men absolutely the same in body, senses, mind, heart. But it is impossible to conceive of difference between the free will of one man and the free will of another. I am free or I am not free. If I am free, I am free as much as you, and you are as much as I. There is not in this more or less. One is a moral person as much as, and by the same title as another moral person. Volition, which is the seat of liberty, is the same in all men. It may have in its service different instruments, powers different, and consequently unequal, whether material or spiritual. But the powers of which will disposes are not it,[196] for it does not dispose of them in an absolute manner. The only free power is that of will, but that is essentially so. If will recognizes laws, these laws are not motives, springs that move it,--they are ideal laws, that of justice, for example; will recognizes this law, and at the same time it has the consciousness of the ability to fulfil it or to break it, doing the one only with the consciousness of the ability to do the other, and reciprocally. Therein is the type of liberty, and at the same time of true equality; every thing else is false. It is not true that men have the right to be equally rich, beautiful, robust, to enjoy equally, in a word, to be equally fortunate; for they originally and necessarily differ in all those points of their nature that correspond to pleasure, to riches, to good fortune. God has made us with powers unequal in regard to all these things. Here equality is against nature and eternal order; for diversity and difference, as well as harmony, are the law of creation. To dream of such an equality is a strange mistake, a deplorable error. False equality is the idol of ill-formed minds and hearts, of disquiet and ambitious egoism. True equality accepts without shame all the exterior inequalities that God has made, and that it is not in the power of man not only to efface, but even to modify. Noble liberty has nothing to settle with the furies of pride and envy. As it does not aspire to domination, so, and by virtue of the same principle, it does not more aspire to a chimerical equality of mind, of beauty, of fortune, of enjoyments. Moreover, such an equality, were it possible, would be of little value in its own eyes; it asks something much greater than pleasure, fortune, rank, to wit, respect. Respect, an equal respect of the sacred right of being free in every thing that constitutes the person, that person which is truly man; this is what liberty and with it true equality claim, or rather imperatively demand. Respect must not be confounded with homage. I render homage to genius and beauty. I respect humanity alone, and by that I mean all free natures, for every thing that is not free in man is foreign to him. Man is therefore the equal of man precisely in every thing that makes him man, and the reign of true equality exacts on the part of all only the same respect for what each one possesses equally in himself, both young and old, both ugly and beautiful, both rich and poor, both the man of genius and the mediocre man, both woman and man, whatever has consciousness of being a person and not a thing. The equal respect of common liberty is the principle at once of duty and right; it is the virtue of each and the security of all; by an admirable agreement, it is dignity among men, and accordingly peace on earth. Such is the great and holy image of liberty and equality, which has made the hearts of our fathers beat, and the hearts of all virtuous and enlightened men, of all true friends of humanity. Such is the ideal that true philosophy pursues across the ages, from the generous dreams of Plato to the solid conceptions of Montesquieu, from the first free legislation of the smallest city of Greece to our declaration of rights, and the immortal works of the constituent Assembly.

The philosophy of sensation starts with a principle that condemns it to consequences as disastrous as those of the principle of liberty are beneficent. By confounding will with desire, it justifies passion, which is desire in all its force--passion, which is precisely the opposite of liberty. It accordingly unchains all the desires and all the passions, it gives full rein to imagination and the heart; it renders each man much less happy on account of what he possesses, than miserable on account of what he lacks; it makes him regard his neighbors with an eye of envy and contempt, and continually pushes society towards anarchy or tyranny. Whither, in fact, would you have interest lead in the train of desire? My desire is certainly to be the most fortunate possible. My interest is to seek to be so by all means, whatever they may be, under the single reserve that they be not contrary to their end. If I am born the first of men, the richest, the most beautiful, the most powerful, etc., I shall do every thing to preserve the advantages I have received. If fate has given me birth in a rank little elevated, with a moderate fortune, limited talents, and immense desires--for it cannot too often be repeated, desire of every kind aspires after the infinite--I shall do every thing to rise above the crowd, in order to increase my power, my fortune, my joys. Unfortunate on account of my position in this world, in order to change it, I dream of, and call for revolutions, it is true, without enthusiasm and political fanaticism, for interest alone does not produce these noble follies, but under the sharp goad of vanity and ambition. Thereby, then, I arrive at fortune and power; interest, then, claims security, as before it invoked agitation. The need of security brings me back from anarchy to the need of order, provided order be to my profit; and I become a tyrant, if I can, or the gilt servant of a tyrant. Against anarchy and tyranny, those two scourges of liberty, the only rampart is the universal sentiment of right, founded on the firm distinction between good and evil, the just and the useful, the honest and the agreeable, virtue and interest, will and desire, sensation and conscience.

5. Let us again signalize one of the necessary consequences of the doctrine of interest.

A free being, in possession of the sacred rule of justice, cannot violate it, knowing that he should and may follow it, without immediately recognizing that he merits punishment. The idea of punishment is not an artificial idea, borrowed from the profound calculations of legislators; legislations rest upon the natural idea of punishment. This idea, corresponding to that of liberty and justice, is necessarily wanting where the former two do not exist. Does he who obeys, and fatally obeys his desires, by the attraction of pleasure and happiness, supposing that, without any other motive than that of interest, he does an act conformed, externally at least, to the rule of justice, merit any thing by doing such an action? Not the least in the world. Conscience attributes to him no merit, and no one owes him thanks or recompense, for he only thinks of himself. On the other hand, if he injures others in wishing to serve himself, he does not feel culpable, and no one can say to him that he has merited punishment. A free being who wills what he does, who has a law, and can conform to it, or break it, is alone responsible for his acts. But what responsibility can there be in the absence of liberty and a recognized and accepted rule of justice? The man of sensation and desire tends to his own good under the law of interest, as the stone is drawn towards the centre of the earth under the law of gravitation, as the needle points to the pole. Man may err in the pursuit of his interest. In this case, what is to be done! As it seems, to put him again in the right way. Instead of that, he is punished. And for what, I pray you? For being deceived. But error merits advice, not punishment. Punishment has, in the system of interest, no more the sanction of moral sense than recompense. Punishment is only an act of personal defence on the part of society; it is an example which it gives, in order to inspire a salutary terror. These motives are excellent, if it be added that this punishment is just in itself, that it is merited, and that it is legitimately applied to the action committed. Omit that, and the other motives lose their authority, and there remains only an exercise of force, destitute of all morality. Then the culprit is not punished; he is smitten, or even put to death, as the animal that injures instead of serving is put to death without scruple. The condemned does not bow his head to the wholesome reparation due to justice, but to the weight of irons or the stroke of the axe. The chastisement is not a legitimate satisfaction, an expiation which, comprehended by the culprit, reconciles him in his own eyes with the order that he has violated. It is a storm that he could not escape; it is the thunder-bolt that falls upon him; it is a force more powerful than his own, which compasses and overthrows him. The appearance of public chastisements acts, without doubt, upon the imagination of peoples; but it does not enlighten their reason and speak to their conscience; it intimidates them, perhaps; it does not soften them. So recompense is only an additional attraction, added to all the others. As, properly speaking, there is no merit, recompense is simply an advantage that one desires, that is striven for and obtained without attaching to it any moral idea. Thus is degraded and effaced the great institution, natural and divine, of the recompense of virtue by happiness, and of reparation for a fault by proportionate suffering.[197]

We may then draw the conclusion, without fear of its being contradicted either by analysis or dialectics, that the doctrine of interest is incompatible with the most certain facts, with the strongest convictions of humanity. Let us add, that this doctrine is not less incompatible with the hope of another world, where the principle of justice will be better realized than in this.

I will not seek whether the sensualistic metaphysics can arrive at an infinite being, author of the universe and man. I am well persuaded that it cannot. For every proof of the existence of God supposes in the human mind principles of which sensation renders no account,--for example, the universal and necessary principle of causality, without which I should have no need of seeking, no power of finding the cause of whatever exists.[198] All that I wish to establish here is, that in the system of interest, man, not possessing any truly moral attribute, has no right to put in God that of which he finds no trace either in the world or in himself. The God of the ethics of interest must be analogous to the man of these same ethics. How could they attribute to him the justice and the love--I mean disinterested love--of which they cannot have the least idea? The God that they can admit loves himself, and loves only himself. And reciprocally, not considering him as the supreme principle of charity and justice, we can neither love nor honor him, and the only worship that we can render him, is that of the fear with which his omnipotence inspires us.

What holy hope could we then found upon such a God? And we who have some time grovelled upon this earth, thinking only of ourselves, seeking only pleasure and a pitiable happiness, what sufferings nobly borne for justice, what generous efforts to maintain and develop the dignity of our soul, what virtuous affections for other souls, can we offer to the Father of humanity as titles to his merciful justice? The principle that most persuades the human race of the immortality of the soul is still the necessary principle of merit and demerit, which, not finding here below its exact satisfaction, and yet under the necessity of finding it, inspires us to call upon God for its satisfaction, who has not put in our hearts the law of justice to violate it himself in regard to us.[199] Now, we have just seen that the ethics of interest destroy the principle of merit and demerit, both in this world, and above all, in the world to come. Accordingly, there is no regard beyond this world,--no recourse to an all-powerful judge, wholly just and wholly good, against the sports of fortune and the imperfections of human justice. Every thing is completed for man between birth and death, in spite of the instincts and presentiments of his heart, and even the principles of his reason.

The disciples of Helvetius will, perhaps, claim the glory of having freed humanity from the fears and hopes that turn it aside from its true interests. It is a service which mankind will appreciate. But since they confine our whole destiny to this world, let us demand of them what lot so worthy of envy they have in reserve for us here, what social order they charge with our good fortune, what politics, in fine, are derived from their ethics.[200]

You already know. We have demonstrated that the philosophy of sensation knows neither true liberty nor true right. What, in fact, is will for this philosophy? It is desire. What, then, is right? The power of satisfying desires. On this score, man is not free, and right is might.

Once more, nothing pertains less to man than desire. Desire comes of need which man does not make, which he submits to. He submits in the same way to desire. To reduce will to desire is to annihilate liberty; it is worse still, it is to put it where it is not; it is to create a mendacious liberty that becomes an instrument of crime and misery. To call man to such a liberty is to open his soul to infinite desires, which it is impossible for him to satisfy. Desire is in its nature without limits, and our power is very limited. If we were alone in this world, we should even then be much troubled to satisfy our desires. But we press against each other with immense desires, and limited, diverse, and unequal powers. When right is the force that is in each of us, equality of rights is a chimera,--all rights are unequal, since all forces are unequal and can never cease to be so. It is, therefore, necessary to renounce equality as well as liberty; or if one invents a false equality as well as a false liberty, he puts humanity in pursuit of a phantom.

Such are the social elements that the ethics of interest give to politics. From such elements I defy all the politics of the school of sensation and interest to produce a single day of liberty and happiness for the human race.

When right is might, the natural state of men among themselves, is war. All desiring the same things, they are all necessarily enemies; and in this war, woe to the feeble, to the feeble in body and the feeble in mind! The stronger are the masters by perfect right. Since right is might, the feeble may complain of nature that has not made them strong, and not complain of the strong man who uses his right in oppressing them. The feeble then call deception to their aid; and it is in this strife between cunning and force that humanity combats with itself.

Yes, if there are only needs, desires, passions, interests, with different forces pitted against each other, war, a war sometimes declared and bloody, sometimes silent and full of meannesses, is in the nature of things. No social art can change this nature,--it may be more or less covered; it always reappears, overcomes and rends the veil with which a mendacious legislation envelops it. Dream, then, of liberty for beings that are not free, of equality between beings that are essentially different, of respect for rights where there is no right, and of the establishment of justice on an indestructible foundation of inimical passions! From such a foundation can spring only endless troubles or oppression, or rather all these evils together in a necessary circle.

This fatal circle can be broken only by the aid of principles which all the metamorphoses of sensation do not engender, and for which interest cannot account, which none the less subsist to the honor and for the safety of humanity. These principles are those that time has little by little drawn from Christianity in order to give them for the guidance of modern societies. You will find them written in the glorious declaration of rights that forever broke the monarchy of Louis XV., and prepared the constitutional monarchy. They are in the charter that governs us, in our laws, in our institutions, in our manners, in the air that we breathe. They serve at once as foundations for our society and the new philosophy necessary to a new order.[201]

Perhaps you will ask me how, in the eighteenth century, so many distinguished, so many honest souls could let themselves be seduced by a system that must have been revolting to all their sentiments. I will answer by reminding you that the eighteenth century was an immoderate reaction against the faults into which had sadly fallen the old age of a great century and a great king, that is to say, the revocation of the edict of Nantes, the persecution of all free and elevated philosophy, a narrow and suspicious devotion, and intolerance, with its usual companion, hypocrisy. These excesses must have produced opposite excesses. Mme. de Maintenon opened the route to Mme. de Pompadour. After the mode of devotion comes that of license; it takes every thing by storm. It descends from the court to the nobility, to the clergy even, and accordingly to the people. It carried away the best spirits, even genius itself. It put a foreign philosophy in the place of the national philosophy, culpable, persecuted as it had been, for not being irreconcilable with Christianity. A disciple of Locke, whom Locke had discarded, Condillac, took the place of Descartes, as the author of _Candide_ and _la Pucelle_ had taken the place of Corneille and Bossuet, as Boucher and Vanloo had taken the place of Lesueur and Poussin. The ethics of pleasure and interest were the necessary ethics of that epoch. It must not be supposed from this that all souls were corrupt. Men, says M. Royer-Collard, are neither as good nor as bad as their principles[202]. No stoic has been as austere as stoicism, no epicurean as enervated as epicureanism. Human weakness practically baffles virtuous theories; in return, thank God, the instinct of the heart condemns to inconsistency the honest man who errs in bad theories. Accordingly, in the eighteenth century, the most generous and most disinterested sentiments often shone forth under the reign of the philosophy of sensation and the ethics of interest. But it is none the less true, that the philosophy of sensation is false, and the ethics of interest destructive of all morality.

I should perhaps make an apology for so long a lecture; but it was necessary to combat seriously a doctrine of morality radically incompatible with that which I would make penetrate your minds and your souls. It was especially necessary for me to strip the ethics of interest of that false appearance of liberty which they usurp in vain. I maintain, on the contrary, that they are the ethics of slaves, and send them back to the time when they ruled. Now, the principle of interest being destroyed, I propose to examine other principles also, less false without doubt, but still defective, exclusive, and incomplete, upon which celebrated systems have pretended to found ethics. I will successively combat these principles taken in themselves, and will then bring them together, reduced to their just value, in a theory large enough to contain all the true elements of morality, in order to express faithfully common sense and entire human consciousness.

FOOTNOTES:

[190] On the ethics of interest, to this lecture may be joined those of vol. iii. of the 1st Series, on the doctrine of Helvetius and St. Lambert.

[191] The word _bonheur_, which has no exact English equivalent, which M. Cousin uses in his ethical discussions in the precise sense of the definition given above, we have sometimes translated happiness, sometimes good fortune, sometimes prosperity, sometimes fortune. When one has in mind the thing, he will not be troubled by the more or less exact word that indicates it:--all language, at best, is only symbolic; it bears the same relation to thought as the forms of nature do to the laws that produce and govern them. The true reader never mistakes the symbol for the thing symbolized, the shadow for the reality.

[192] On the danger of seeking unity before all, see in the 3d Series, _Fragments Philosophiques_, vol. iv., our _Examination of the Lectures of M. Laromeguiere_.

[193] On the difference between desire, intelligence, and will, see the _Examination_, already cited, _of the Lectures of M. Laromeguiere_.

[194] 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 193: "In the doctrine of interest, every man seeks the useful, but he is not sure of attaining it. He may, by dint of prudence and profound combinations, increase in his favor the chances of success; it is impossible that there should not remain some chances against him; he never pursues, then, any thing but a probable result. On the contrary, in the doctrine of duty, I am always sure of obtaining the last end that I propose to myself, moral good. I risk my life to save my fellow; if, through mischance, I miss this end, there is another which does not, which cannot, escape me,--I have aimed at the good, I have been successful. Moral good, being especially in the virtuous intention, is always in my power and within my reach; as to the material good that can result from the action itself, Providence alone disposes of it. Let us felicitate ourselves that Providence has placed our moral destiny in our own hands, by making it depend upon the good and not upon the useful. The will, in order to act in the sad trials of life, has need of being sustained by certainty. Who would be disposed to give his blood for an uncertain end? Success is a complicated problem, that, in order to be solved, exacts all the power of the calculus of probabilities. What labor and what uncertainties does such a calculus involve! Doubt is a very sad preparation for action. But when one proposes before all to do his duty, he acts without any perplexity. Do what you ought, let come what may, is a motto that does not deceive. With such an end, we are sure of never pursuing it in vain."

[195] See the development of the idea of right, lectures 14 and 15.

[196] See lecture 14, Theory of liberty.

[197] See the preceding lecture, and lectures 14 and 15.

[198] 1st part, lecture 1.

[199] See lecture 16.

[200] On the politics that are derived from the philosophy of sensation, see the four lectures that we devoted to the exposition and refutation of the doctrine of Hobbes, vol. iii. of the 1st Series.

[201] These words sufficiently mark the generous epoch in which we pronounce them, without wounding the authority and the applauses of a noble youth, when M. de Chateaubriand covered the Restoration with his own glory, when M. Royer-Collard presided over public instruction, M. Pasquier, M. Laine, M. de Serre over justice and the interior, Marshal St. Cyr over war, and the Duke de Richelieu over foreign affairs, when the Duke de Broglie prepared the true legislation of the press, and M. Decazes, the author of the wise and courageous ordinance of September 5, 1816, was at the head of the councils of the crown; when finally, Louis XVIII. separated himself, like Henry IV., from his oldest servants in order to be the king of the whole nation.

[202] _Oeuvres de Reid_, vol. iv., p. 297: "Men are neither as good nor as bad as their principles; and, as there is no skeptic in the street, so I am sure there is no disinterested spectator of human actions who is not compelled to discern them as just and unjust. Skepticism has no light that does not pale before the splendor of that vivid internal light that lightens the objects of moral perception, as the light of day lightens the objects of sensible perception."

LECTURE XIII.

OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES.

The ethics of sentiment.--The ethics founded on the principle of
the interest of the greatest number.--The ethics founded on the
will of God alone.--The ethics founded on the punishments and
rewards of another life.

Against the ethics of interest, all generous souls take refuge in the ethics of sentiment. The following are some of the facts on which these ethics are supported, and by which they seem to be authorized.

When we have done a good action, is it not certain that we experience a pleasure of a certain nature, which is to us the reward of this action? This pleasure does not come from the senses--it has neither its principle nor its measure in an impression made upon our organs. Neither is it confounded with the joy of satisfied personal interest,--we are not moved in the same manner, in thinking that we have succeeded, and in thinking that we have been honest. The pleasure attached to the testimony of a good conscience is pure; other pleasures are much alloyed. It is durable, whilst the others quickly pass away. Finally, it is always within our reach. Even in the midst of misfortune, man bears in himself a permanent source of exquisite joys, for he always has the power of doing right, whilst success, dependent upon a thousand circumstances of which we are not the masters, can give only an occasional and precarious pleasure.

As virtue has its joys, so crime has its pains. The suffering that follows a fault is the just recompense for the pleasure that we have found in it, and is often born with it. It poisons culpable joys and the successes that are not legitimate. It wounds, rends, bites, thus to speak, and thereby receives its name.[203] To be man, is sufficient to understand this suffering,--it is remorse.

Here are other facts equally incontestable:

I perceive a man whose face bears the marks of distress and misery. There is nothing in this that reaches and injures me; nevertheless, without reflection or calculation, the sight alone of this suffering man makes me suffer. This sentiment is pity, compassion, whose general principle is sympathy.

The sadness of one of my fellow-men inspires me with sadness, and a glad face disposes me to joy:

Ut ridentibus arrident, ita flentibus adflent
Humani vultus.

The joy of others has an echo in our souls, and their sufferings, even their physical sufferings, communicate themselves to us almost physically. Not as exaggerated as it has been supposed was that expression of Mme. de Sevigne to her sick daughter: I have a pain in your breast.

Our soul feels the need of putting itself in unison, and, as it were, in equilibrium with that of others. Hence those electric movements, thus to speak, that run through large assemblies. One receives the counter-stroke of the sentiments of his neighbors,--admiration and enthusiasm are contagious, as well as pleasantry and ridicule. Hence again the sentiment with which the author of a virtuous action inspires us. We feel a pleasure analogous to that which he feels himself. But are we witnesses of a bad action? our souls refuse to participate in the sentiments that animate the culpable man,--they have for him a true aversion, what is called antipathy.

We do not forget a third order of facts that pertain to the preceding, but differ from them.

We not only sympathize with the author of a virtuous action, we wish him well, we voluntarily do good to him, in a certain degree we love him. This love goes as far as enthusiasm when it has for its object a sublime act and a hero. This is the principle of the homages, of the honors that humanity renders to great men. And this sentiment does not pertain solely to others,--we apply it to ourselves by a sort of return that is not egoism. Yes, it may be said that we love ourselves when we have done well. The sentiment that others owe us, if they are just, we accord to ourselves,--that sentiment is benevolence.

On the contrary, do we witness a bad action? We experience for the author of this action antipathy; moreover we wish him evil,--we desire that he should suffer for the fault that he has committed, and in proportion to the gravity of the fault. For this reason great culprits are odious to us, if they do not compensate for their crimes by deep remorse, or by great virtues mingled with their crimes. This sentiment is not malevolence. Malevolence is a personal and interested sentiment, which makes us wish evil to others, because they are an obstacle to us. Hatred does not ask whether such a man is virtuous or vicious, but whether he obstructs us, surpasses us, or injures us. The sentiment of which we are speaking is a sort of hatred, but a generous hatred that neither springs from interest nor envy, but from a shocked conscience. It is turned against us when we do evil, as well as against others.

Moral satisfaction is not sympathy, neither is sympathy, to speak rigorously, benevolence. But these three phenomena have the common character of all being sentiments. They give birth to three different and analogous systems of ethics.

According to certain philosophers, a good action is that which is followed by moral satisfaction, a bad action is that which is followed by remorse. The good or bad character of an action is at first attested to us by the sentiment that accompanies it. Then, this sentiment, with its moral signification, we attribute to other men; for we judge that they do as we do, that in presence of the same actions they feel the same sentiments.

Other philosophers have assigned the same part to sympathy or benevolence.

For these the sign and measure of the good is in the sentiments of affection and benevolence which we feel for a moral agent. Does a man excite in us by such or such an action a more or less vivid disposition to wish him well, a desire to see and even make him happy? we may say that this action is good. If, by a series of actions of the same kind, he makes this disposition and this desire permanent in us, we judge that he is a virtuous man. Does he excite an opposite desire, an opposite disposition? he appears to us a dishonest man.

For the former, the good is that with which we naturally sympathize. Has a man devoted himself to death through love for his country? this heroic action awakens in us, in a certain degree, the same sentiments that inspired him. Bad passions are not thus echoed in our hearts, unless they find us already very corrupt, and have interest for their accomplice; but even then there is something in us that revolts against these passions, and in the most depraved soul subsists a concealed sentiment of sympathy for the good, and antipathy for the evil.

These different systems may be reduced to a single one, which is called the ethics of sentiment.

It is not difficult to show the difference which separates these ethics from those of egoism. Egoism is the exclusive love of self, is the thoughtful and permanent search for our own pleasure and our own well-being.

What is there more opposed to interest than benevolence? In benevolence, far from wishing others well by reason of our interest, we will voluntarily risk something, we will make some sacrifice in order to serve an honest man who has coined our heart. If even in this sacrifice the soul feels a pleasure, this pleasure is only the involuntary accompaniment of sentiment, it is not the end proposed,--we feel it without having sought it. It is, indeed, permitted the soul to taste this pleasure, for it is nature herself that attaches it to benevolence.

Sympathy, like benevolence, is related to another than ourselves,--our interest is not its starting-point. The soul is so constituted that it is capable of suffering on account of the sufferings of an enemy. That a man does a noble action, although it opposes our interests, awakens in us a certain sympathy for that action and its author.

The attempt has been made to explain the compassion with which the suffering of one of our fellow-men inspires us by the fear that we have of feeling it in our turn. But the unhappiness for which we feel compassion, is often so far from us and threatens us so little, that it would be absurd to fear it. Doubtless, that sympathy may have existence it is necessary to experience suffering,--_non ignara mali_. For how do you suppose that I can be sensible to evils of which I form to myself no idea? But that is only the condition of sympathy. It is not at all necessary to conclude that it is only a remembrance of our own ills or the fear of ills to come.

No recurrence to ourselves can account for sympathy. In the first place, it is involuntary, like antipathy. Then it cannot be supposed that we sympathize with any one in order to win his benevolence; for he who is its object often knows not what we feel. What benevolence are we seeking, when we sympathize with men that we have never seen, that we never shall see, with men that are no more?

Egoism admits all pleasures; it repels none; it may, if it is enlightened, if it has become delicate and refined, recommend, as more durable and less alloyed, the pleasures of sentiment. The ethics of sentiment would then be confounded with those of egoism, if they should prescribe obedience to sentiment for the pleasure that we find in it. There would, then, be no disinterestedness in it,--the individual would be the centre and sole end of all his actions. But such is not the case. The charm of the pleasures of conscience comes from the very fact that we are forgetful of self in the action that has produced them. So if nature has joined to sympathy and benevolence a true enjoyment, it is on condition that these sentiments remain as they are, pure and disinterested; you must only think of the object of your sympathy and benevolence in order that benevolence and sympathy may receive their recompense in the pleasure which they give. Otherwise, this pleasure no longer has its reason for existence, and it is wanting as soon as it sought for itself. No metamorphose of interest can produce a pleasure attached to disinterestedness alone.

The ethics of egoism are only a perpetual falsehood,--they preserve the names consecrated by ethics, but they abolish ethics themselves; they deceive humanity by speaking to humanity its own language, concealing under this borrowed language a radical opposition to all the instincts, to all the ideas that form the treasure of mankind. On the contrary, if sentiment is not the good itself, it is its faithful companion and useful auxiliary. It is as it were the sign of the presence of the good, and renders the accomplishment of it more easy. We always have sophisms at our disposal, in order to persuade ourselves that our true interest is to satisfy present passion; but sophism has less influence over the mind when the mind is in some sort defended by the heart. Nothing is, therefore, more salutary than to excite and preserve in the soul those noble sentiments that lift us above the slavery of personal interest. The habit of participating in the sentiments of virtuous men disposes us to act like them. To cultivate in ourselves benevolence and sympathy is to fertilize the source of charity and love, is to nourish and develop the germ of generosity and devotion.

It is seen that we render sincere homage to the ethics of sentiment. These ethics are true,--only they are not sufficient for themselves; they need a principle which authorizes them.

I act well, and I feel on account of it an internal satisfaction: I do evil, and feel remorse on account of it. These two sentiments do not qualify the act that I have just done, since they follow it. Would it be possible for us to feel any internal satisfaction for having acted well if we did not judge that we had acted well?--any remorse for having done evil, if we did not judge that we had done evil? At the same time that we do such or such an act, a natural and instinctive judgment characterizes it, and it is in consequence of this judgment that our sensibility is moved. Sentiment is not this primitive and immediate judgment; far from forming the basis of the idea of the good, it supposes it. It is manifestly a vicious circle to derive the knowledge of the good from that which would not exist without this knowledge.[204]

So is it not because we find a good action that we sympathize with it? Is it not because the dispositions of a man appear to us conformed to the idea of justice, that we are inclined to participate in them with him? Moreover, if sympathy were the true criterion of the good, every thing for which we feel sympathy would be good. But sympathy is not only related to things in their nature moral, we also sympathize with the grief and the joy that have nothing to do with virtue and crime. We even sympathize with physical sufferings. Moral sympathy is only a case of general sympathy. It must even be acknowledged that sympathy is not always in accordance with right. We sometimes sympathize with certain sentiments that we condemn, because, without being in themselves bad--which would prevent all sympathy--they give an inclination to the greatest faults; for example, love, which comes so near to irregularity, and emulation, that so quickly leads to ambition.

Benevolence also is not always determined by the good alone. And, again, when it is applied to a virtuous man, it supposes a judgment by which we pronounce that this man is virtuous. It is not because we wish the author of an action well that we judge that this action is good; it is because we judge that this action is good that we wish its author well. This is not all. In the sentiment of benevolence is enveloped a new judgment which is not in sympathy. This judgment is the following: the author of a good action deserves to be happy, as the author of a bad action deserves to suffer in order to expiate it. This is the reason why we desire happiness for the one and reparatory suffering for the other. Benevolence is little else than the sensible form of this judgment.

All these sentiments, therefore, suppose an anterior and superior judgment. Everywhere and always the same vicious circle. From the fact that the sentiments which we have just described have a moral character, it is concluded that they constitute the idea of the good, whilst it is the idea of the good that communicates to them the character that we perceive in them.

Another difficulty is, that sentiments pertain to sensibility, and borrow from it something of its relative and changing nature. It is, then, very necessary that all men should be made to enjoy with the same delicacy the pleasures of the heart. There are gross natures and natures refined. If your desires are impetuous and violent, will not the idea of the pleasures of virtue be in you much more easily overcome by the force of passion than if nature had given you a tranquil temperament? The state of the atmosphere, health, sickness, calm or rouse our moral sensibility. Solitude, by delivering man up to himself, leaves to remorse all its energy, the presence of death redoubles it; but the world, noise, force of example, habit, without power to smother it, in some sort stun it. The spirit has a little season of rest. We are not always in the vein of enthusiasm. Courage itself has its intermissions. We know the celebrated expression: He was one day brave. Humor has its vicissitudes that influence our most intimate sentiments. The purest, the most ideal sentiment still pertains on some side to organization. The inspiration of the poet, the passion of the lover, the enthusiasm of the martyr, have their languors and shortcomings that often depend on very pitiable material causes. On those perpetual fluctuations of sentiment, is it possible to ground a legislation equal for all?

Sympathy and benevolence do not escape the conditions of all the phenomena of sensibility. We do not all possess in the same degree the power of feeling what others experience. Those who have suffered most best comprehend suffering, and consequently feel for it the most lively compassion. With mere imagination one also represents to himself better and feels more what passes in the souls of his fellow-man. One feels more sympathy for physical pleasures and pains, another for pleasures and pains of soul; and each of these sympathies has in each of us its degrees and variations. They not only differ, they often oppose each other. Sympathy for talent weakens the indignation that outraged virtue produces. We overlook many things in Voltaire, in Rousseau, in Mirabeau, and we excuse them on account of the corruption of their century. The sympathy caused by the pain of a condemned person renders less lively the just antipathy excited by his crime. Thus turns and wavers at each step that sympathy which some would set up as the supreme arbiter of the good. Benevolence does not vary less. We have souls naturally more or less affectionate, more or less animated. And, then, like sympathy, benevolence receives the counter-stroke of different passions that are mingled with it. Friendship, for example, often renders us, in spite of ourselves, more benevolent than justice would wish.

Is it not a rule of prudence not to listen to, without always disdaining them, the inspirations--often capricious--of the heart? Governed by reason, sentiment becomes to it an admirable support. But, delivered up to itself, in a little while it degenerates into passion, and passion is fantastic, excessive, unjust; it gives to the soul spring and energy, but generally troubles and perverts it. It is even not very far from egoism, and it usually terminates in that, wholly generous as it is or seems to be in the beginning. Unless we always keep in sight the good and the inflexible obligation that is attached to it, unless we always keep in sight this fixed and immutable point, the soul knows not where to betake itself on that moving ground that is called sensibility; it floats from sentiment to passion, from generosity to selfishness, ascending one day to the pitch of enthusiasm, and the next day descending to all the miseries of personality.

Thus the ethics of sentiment, although superior to those of interest, are not less insufficient: 1st. They give as the foundation of the idea of the good what is founded on this same idea; 2d. The rule that they propose is too mobile to be universally obligatory.[205]

There is another system of which I will also say, as of the preceding, that it is not false, but incomplete and insufficient.

The partisans of the ethics of utility and happiness have tried to save their principle by generalizing it. According to them, the good can be nothing but happiness; but egoism is wrong in understanding by that the happiness of the individual; we must understand by it the general happiness.

Let us establish, in the first place, that the new principle is entirely opposed to that of personal interest, for, according to circumstances, it may demand, not only a passing sacrifice, but an irreparable sacrifice, that of life. Now, the wisest calculations of personal interest cannot go thus far.

And, notwithstanding, this principle is far from containing true ethics and the whole of ethics.

The principle of general interest leans towards disinterestedness, and this is certainly much; but disinterestedness is the condition of virtue, not virtue itself. We may commit an injustice with the most entire disinterestedness. From the fact that an action does not profit him who does it, it does not follow that it may not be in itself very unjust, in seeking general interest before all, we escape, it is true, that vice of soul which is called selfishness, but we may fall into a thousand iniquities. Or, indeed, it must be felt, that general interest is always conformed to justice. But these two ideas are not adequate to each other. If they very often go together, they are sometimes also separated. Themistocles proposed to the Athenians to burn the fleet of the allies that was in the port of Athens, and thus to secure to themselves the supremacy. The project is useful, says Aristides, but it is unjust, and on account of this simple speech, the Athenians renounce an advantage that must be purchased by an injustice. Observe that Themistocles had no particular interest in that; he thought only of the interest of his country. But, had he hazarded or given his life in order to engage the Athenians in such an act, he would only have been consecrating--what has often been seen--an admirable devotion to a course in itself immoral.

To this it is replied, that if, in the example cited, justice and interest exclude each other, it is because the interest was not sufficiently general; and the celebrated maxim is arrived at, that one must sacrifice himself to his family, his family to the city, the city to country, country to humanity, that, in fine, the good is the interest of the greatest number.[206]

When you have gone thus far, you have not yet attained even the idea of justice. The interest of humanity, like that of the individual, may accord in fact with justice, for in that there is certainly no incompatibility, but the two things are none the more identical, so that we cannot say with exactness that the interest of humanity is the foundation of justice. A single case, even a single hypothesis, in which the interest of humanity should not accord with the good, is sufficient to enable us to conclude that one is not essentially the other.

We go farther: if it is the interest of humanity that constitutes and measures justice, that only is unjust which this interest declares to be so. But you are not able to affirm absolutely, that, in any circumstance, the interest of humanity will not demand such or such an action; and if it demands it, by virtue of your principle, it will be necessary to do it, whatever it may be, and to do it inasmuch as it is just.

You order me to sacrifice particular interest to general interest. But in the name of what do you order me to do this? Is it in the name of interest? If interest, as such, must touch me, evidently my interest must also touch me, and I do not see why I should sacrifice it to that of others.

The supreme end of human life, you say, is happiness. I hence conclude very reasonably, that the supreme end of my life is my happiness.

In order to ask of me the sacrifice of my happiness, it must be called for by some other principle than happiness itself.

Consider to what perplexity this famous principle of the greatest good of the greatest number condemns me. I have already much difficulty in discerning my true interest in the obscurity of the future; by substituting for the infallible voice of justice the uncertain calculations of personal interest, you have not rendered action easy for me;[207] but it becomes impossible, if it is necessary to seek, before acting, what is the interest not only of myself, but of my family, not only of my family, but of my country, not only of my country, but of humanity. What! must I embrace the entire world in my foresight? What! is such the price of virtue? You impose upon me a knowledge that God alone possesses. Am I in his counsels so as to adjust my actions according to his decrees? The philosophy of history and the wisest diplomacy are not, then, sufficient for conducting ourselves well. Imagine, therefore, that there is no mathematical science of human life. Chance and liberty confound the profoundest calculations, overturn the best-established fortunes, relieve the most desperate miseries, mingle good fortune and bad, confound all foresight.

And would you establish ethics on a foundation so mobile? How much place you leave for sophism in that complaisant and enigmatical law of general interest![208] It will not be very difficult always to find some remote reason of general interest, which will excuse us from being faithful in the present moment to our friends, when they shall be in misfortune. A man in adversity addresses himself to my generosity. But could I not employ my money in a way more useful to humanity? Will not the country have need of it to-morrow? Let us virtuously keep it for the country then. Moreover, even where the interest of all seems evident, there still remains some chance of error; it is, therefore, better to withhold. It will always be wisdom to withhold. Yes, when it is necessary, in order to do well, to be sure of serving the greatest interest of the greatest number, none but the rash and senseless will dare to act. The principle of general interest will produce, I admit, great devotedness, but it will also produce great crimes. Is it not in the name of this principle that fanatics of every kind, fanatics in religion, fanatics in liberty, fanatics in philosophy, taking it upon themselves to understand the eternal interest of humanity, have engaged in abominable acts, mingled often with a sublime disinterestedness?

Another error of this system is that it confounds the good itself with one of its applications. If the good is the greatest interest of the greatest number, the consequence is clear, that there are only public and social ethics, and no private ethics; there is only a single class of duties, duties towards others, and there are no duties towards ourselves. But this is retrenching precisely those of our duties that most surely guarantee the exercise of all the rest.[209] The most constant relations that I sustain are with that being which is myself. I am my own most habitual society. I bear in myself, as Plato[210] has well said, a whole world of ideas, sentiments, desires, passions, emotions, which claim a legislation. This necessary legislation is suppressed.

Let us also say a word on a system that, under sublime appearances, conceals a vicious principle.

There are persons who believe that they are magnifying God, by placing in his will alone the foundation of the moral law, and the sovereign motive of humanity in the punishments and rewards that it has pleased him to attach to the respect and violation of his will.

Let us understand what we are about in a matter of such delicacy.

It is certain, and we shall establish it for the good,[211] as we have done for the true and the beautiful,[212] it is certain that, from explanations to explanations, we come to be convinced that God is definitively the supreme principle of ethics, so that it may be very truly said, that the good is the expression of his will, since his will is itself the expression of the eternal and absolute justice that resides in him. God wills, without doubt, that we should act according to the law of justice that he has put in our understanding and our heart; but it is not at all necessary to conclude that he has arbitrarily instituted this law. Far from that, justice is in the will of God only because it has its roots in his intelligence and wisdom, that is to say, in his most intimate nature and essence.

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