Chapter XIII: Appendix: 371 (11)

In the first place, it does not pertain to the will, whatever it may be, to institute the good, any more than it belongs to it to institute the true and the beautiful. I have no idea of the will of God except by my own, to be sure with the differences that separate what is finite from what is infinite. Now, I cannot by my will found the least truth. Is it because my will is limited? No; were it armed with infinite power, it would, in this respect, be equally impotent. Such is the nature of my will that, in doing a thing, it is conscious of the power to do the opposite; and that is not an accidental character of the will, it is its fundamental character; if, then, it is supposed that truth, or that first part of it which is called justice, has been established as it is by an act of volition, human or Divine, it must be acknowledged that another act might have established it otherwise, and made what is now just unjust, and what is unjust just. But such mobility is contrary to the nature of justice and truth. In fact, moral truths are as absolute as metaphysical truths. God cannot make effects exist without a cause, phenomena without a substance; neither can he make it evil to respect his word, to love truth, to repress one's passions. The principles of ethics are immutable axioms like those of geometry. Of moral laws especially must be said what Montesquieu said of all laws in general,--they are necessary relations that are derived from the nature of things.

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

One will exclaim,--It is not the arbitrary will of God that makes the foundation of obligation and justice; it is his just will. Very well. Every thing changes then. It is not the pure will of God that obligates us, it is the motive itself that determines his will, that is to say, the justice passed into his will. The distinction between the just and the unjust is not then the work of his will.

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

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

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

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

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

But to what human faculty are addressed the promise and threat of the chastisements and the rewards of another life? To the same one that in this life fears pain and seeks pleasure, shuns unhappiness and desires happiness, that is to say, to sensibility animated by imagination, that is to say, again, to what is most changing in each of us and most different in the human species. The joys and sufferings of another life excite in us the two most vivid but most mobile passions, hope and fear. Every thing influences our fears and hopes,--aye, health, the passing cloud, a ray of the sun, a cup of coffee, a thousand causes of this kind. I have known men, even philosophers, who on certain days hoped more, and other days less. And such a basis some would give to ethics! Then it is doing nothing else than proposing for human conduct an interested motive. The calculation which I obey is purer, if you will; the happiness that one makes me hope for is greater; but I see in that no justice that obligates me, no virtue and no vice in me, who know or do not know how to make this calculation, not having a head as strong as that of Pascal,[214] who yield to or resist those fears and hopes according to the deposition of my sensibility and my imagination, over which I have no power. Finally, the pains and pleasures of the future life are instituted on the ground of punishments and rewards. Now, none but actions in themselves good or bad can be rewarded and punished. If already there is in itself no good, no law that in conscience we are obligated to follow, there is neither merit nor demerit; recompense is not then recompense, nor penalty penalty, since they are such only on the condition of being the complement and the sanction of the idea of the good. Where this idea does not pre-exist, there remain, instead of recompense and penalty, only the attraction of pleasure and the fear of suffering, added to a prescription deprived in itself of morality. In that we come back to the punishments of earth invented for the purpose of frightening popular imagination, and supported solely on the decrees of legislators, on an abstraction of good and evil, of justice and injustice, of merit and demerit. It is the worst human justice that is found thus transported into heaven. We shall see that the human soul has foundation somewhat solider.[215]

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

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

[205] We do not grow weary of citing M. Royer-Collard. He has marked the defects of the ethics of sentiment in a lively and powerful passage, from which we borrow some traits. _Oeuvres de Reid_, vol. iii., p. 410, 411: "The perception of the moral qualities of human actions is accompanied by an emotion of the soul that is called _sentiment_. Sentiment is a support of nature that invites us to good by the attraction of the noblest joys of which man is capable, and turns us from evil by the contempt, the aversion, the horror with which it inspires us. It is a fact that by the contemplation of a beautiful action or a noble character, at the same time that we perceive these qualities of the action and the character (perception, which is a judgment), we feel for the person a love mingled with respect, and sometimes an admiration that is full of tenderness. A bad action, a loose and perfidious character, excite a contrary perception and sentiment. The internal approbation of conscience and remorse are sentiments attached to the perception of the moral qualities of our own actions.... I do not weaken the part of sentiment; yet it is not true that ethics are wholly in sentiment; if we maintain this, we annihilate moral distinctions.... Let ethics be wholly in sentiment, and nothing is in itself good, nothing is in itself evil; good and evil are relative; the qualities of human actions are precisely such as each one feels them to be. Change sentiment, and you change every thing; the same action is at once good, indifferent, and bad, according to the affection of the spectator. Silence sentiment, and actions are only physical phenomena; obligation is resolved into inclinations, virtue into pleasure, honesty into utility. Such are the ethics of Epicurus: _Dii meliora piis_!"

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

[207] See lecture 12.

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

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

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

[211] Lecture 16.

[212] Lectures 4 and 7.

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

[214] See the famous calculus applied to the immortality of the soul, _Des Pensees de Pascal_, vol. i. of the 4th Series, p. 229-235 and p. 289-296.

[215] Lecture 16.

LECTURE XIV.

TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is it that first strikes you in what you have experienced? It is doubtless the indignation, the instinctive horror that you have felt. There is, then, in the soul a power of raising indignation that is foreign to all personal interests! There are, then, in us sentiments of which we are not the end! There is an antipathy, an aversion, a horror, that are not related to what injures us, but to acts whose remotest influence cannot reach us, that we detest for the sole reason that we judge them to be bad!

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

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

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

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

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

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

What have we done thus far? We have done as the physicist or chemist does, who submits a composite body to analysis and reduces it to its simple elements. The only difference here is that the phenomenon to which our analysis is applied is in us, instead of being out of us. Besides, the processes employed are exactly the same; there is in them neither system nor hypothesis; there are only experience and the most immediate induction.

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

Suppose that a dying friend has confided to me a more or less important deposit, charging me to remit it after his death to a person whom he has designated to me alone, and who himself knows not what has been done in his favor. He who confided to me the deposit dies, and carries with him his secret; he for whom the deposit has been made to me has no knowledge of it; if, then, I wish to appropriate this deposit to myself, no one will ever be able to suspect me. In this case what should I do? It is difficult to imagine circumstances more favorable for crime. If I consult only interest, I ought not to hesitate to return the deposit. If I hesitate, in the system of interest, I am senseless, and I revolt against the law of my nature. Doubt alone, in the impunity that is assured me, would betray in me a principle different from interest.

But naturally I do not doubt, I believe with the most entire certainty, that the deposit confided to me does not belong to me, that it has been confided to me to be remitted to another, and that to this other it belongs. Take away interest, and I should not even think of returning this deposit,--it is interest alone that tempts me. It tempts me, it does not bear me away without resistance. Hence the struggle between interest and duty,--a struggle filled with troubles, opposite resolutions, by turns taken and abandoned; it energetically attests the presence of a principle of action different from interest and quite as powerful.

Duty succumbs, interest triumphs over it. I retain the deposit that has been confided to me, and apply it to my own wants, and to the wants of my family; it makes me rich, and in appearance happy; but I internally suffer with that bitter and secret suffering that is called remorse.[217] The fact is certain; it has been a thousand times described; all languages contain the word, and there is no one who, in some degree, has not experienced the thing, that sharp gnawing at the heart which is caused by every fault, great or small, as long as it has not been expiated. This painful recollection follows me in the midst of pleasures and prosperity. The applauses of the crowd are not able to silence this inexorable witness. Only a long habit of sin and crime, an accumulation of oft-repeated faults, can compass this sentiment, at once avenging and expiatory. When it is stifled, every resource is lost, and an end is made of the soul's life; as long as it endures, the sacred fire is not wholly extinguished.

Remorse is a suffering of a particular character. In remorse I do not suffer on account of such an impression made upon my senses, nor on account of the thwarting of my natural passions, nor on account of the injury done or threatened to my interest, nor by the disquietude of my hopes and the agony of my fears: no, I suffer without any external cause, yet I suffer in the most cruel manner. I suffer for the sole reason that I have a consciousness of having committed a bad action which I knew I was obligated not to commit, which I was able not to commit, which leaves behind it a chastisement that I know to be deserved. No exact analysis can take away from remorse, without destroying it, a single one of these elements. Remorse contains the idea of good and evil, of an obligatory law, of liberty, of merit and demerit. All these ideas were already in the struggle between good and evil; they reappear in remorse. In vain interest counselled me to appropriate the deposit that had been confided to me; something said to me, and still says to me, that to appropriate it is to do evil, is to commit an injustice; I judged, and judge, thus, not such a day, but always, not under such a circumstance, but under all circumstances. In vain I say to myself that the person to whom I ought to remit this deposit has no need of it, and that it is necessary to me; I judge that a deposit must be respected without regard to persons, and the obligation that is imposed on me appears inviolable and absolute. Having taken upon myself this obligation, I believe by this fact alone that I have the power to fulfil it: this is not all; I am directly conscious of this power, I know with the most certain knowledge that I am able to keep this deposit or to remit it to the lawful owner; and it is precisely because I am conscious of this power that I judge that I have deserved punishment for not having made the use of it for which it was given me. It is, in fine, because I have a lively consciousness of all that, that I experience this sentiment of indignation against myself, this suffering of remorse which expresses in itself the moral phenomenon entire.

According to the rules of the experimental method, let us take an opposite course; let us suppose that, in spite of the suggestions of interest, in spite of the pressing goad of misery, in order to be faithful to pledged faith, I send the deposit to the person that had been designated to me; instead of the painful scene that just now passed in consciousness, there passes another quite as real, but very different. I know that I have done well; I know that I have not obeyed a chimera, an artificial and mendacious law, but a law true, universal, obligatory upon all intelligent and free beings. I know that I have made a good use of my liberty; I have of this liberty, by the very use that I have made of it, a sentiment more distinct, more energetic, and, in some sort, triumphant. Every opinion would accuse me in vain, I appeal from it to a better justice, and this justice is already declared in me by sentiments that press upon each other in my soul. I respect myself, esteem myself, and believe that I have a right to the esteem of others; I have the sentiment of my dignity; I feel for myself only sentiments of affection opposed to that species of horror for myself with which I was just now inspired. Instead of remorse, I feel an incomparable joy that no one can deprive me of, that, were every thing else wanting to me, would console and support me. This sentiment of pleasure is as penetrating, as profound as was the remorse. It expresses the satisfaction of all the generous principles of human nature, as remorse represented their revolt. It testifies by the internal happiness that it gives me to the sublime accord between happiness and virtue, whilst remorse is the first link in that fatal chain, that chain of iron and adamant, which, according to Plato,[218] binds pain to transgression, trouble to passion, misery to faithlessness, vice, and crime.

Moral sentiment is the echo of all the moral judgments and entire moral life. It is so striking that it has been regarded by a somewhat superficial philosophy as sufficient to found entire ethics; and, nevertheless, we have just seen that this admirable sentiment would not exist without the different judgments that we have just enumerated; it is their consequence, but not their principle; it supplies, but does not constitute them; it does not take their place, but sums them up.

Now that we are in possession of all the elements of human morality, we proceed to take these elements one by one, and submit them to a detailed analysis.

That which is most apparent in the complex phenomenon that we are studying is sentiment; but its foundation is judgment.

The judgment of good and evil is the principle of all that follows it; but this judgment rests only on the constitution itself of human nature, like the judgment of the true and the judgment of the beautiful. As well as these two judgments,[219] that of the good is a simple, primitive, indecomposable judgment.

Like them, again, it is not arbitrary. We cannot but fear this judgment in presence of certain acts; and, in fearing it, we know that it does not make good or evil, but declares it. The reality of moral distinctions is revealed by this judgment, but it is independent of it, as beauty is independent of the eye that perceives it, as universal and necessary truths are independent of the reason that discovers them.[220]

Good and evil are real characters of human actions, although these characters might not be seen with our eyes nor touched with our hands. The moral qualities of an action are none the less real for not being confounded with the material qualities of this action. This is the reason why actions materially identical may be morally very different. A homicide is always a homicide; nevertheless, it is often a crime, it is also often a legitimate action, for example, when it is not done for the sake of vengeance, nor for the sake of interest, in a strict case of self-defence.

It is not the spilling of blood that makes the crime, it is the spilling of innocent blood. Innocence and crime, good and evil, do not reside in such or such an external circumstance determined one for all. Reason recognizes them with certainty under the most different appearances, in circumstances sometimes the same and sometimes dissimilar.

Good and evil almost always appear to us connected with particular actions; but it is not on account of what is particular in them that these actions are good or bad. So when I declare that the death of Socrates is unjust, and that the devotion of Leonidas is admirable, it is the unjust death of a wise man that I condemn, and the devotion of a hero that I admire. It is not important whether this hero be called Leonidas or d'Assas, whether the immolated sage be called Socrates or Bailly.

The judgment of the good is at first applied to particular actions, and it gives birth to general principles which in course serve us as rules for judging all actions of the same kind. As after having judged that such a particular phenomenon has such a particular cause, we elevate ourselves to the general principle that every phenomenon has its cause;[221] so we erect into a general rule the moral judgment that we have borne in regard to a particular fact. Thus, at first we admire the death of Leonidas, thence we elevate ourselves to the principle that it is good to die for one's country. We already possess the principle in its first application to Leonidas; otherwise, this particular application would not have been legitimate, it would not have been even possible; but we possess it implicitly; as soon as it is disengaged, it appears to us under its universal and pure form, and we apply it to all analogous cases.

Ethics have their axioms like other sciences; and these axioms are rightly called in all languages moral truths.

It is good not to violate one's oath, and in this is also involved a truth. In fact, an oath is founded in the truth of things,--its good is only derived. Moral truths considered in themselves have no less certainty than mathematical truths. The idea of a deposit being given, I ask whether the idea of faithfully keeping it is not necessarily attached to it, as to the idea of a triangle is attached the idea that its three angles are equal to two right angles. You may withhold a deposit; but, in withholding it, do not believe that you change the nature of things, nor that you make it possible for a deposit ever to become property. These two ideas exclude each other. You have only a false semblance of property; and all the efforts of passion, all the sophisms of interest will not reverse the essential differences. This is the reason why moral truth is so troublesome,--it is because, like all truth, it is what it is, and does not bend to any caprice. Always the same and always present, in spite of all our efforts, it inexorably condemns, with a voice always heard, but not always listened to, the sensible and the culpable will which thinks to hinder it from being by denying it, or rather by pretending to deny it.

Moral truths are distinguished from other truths by the singular character that, as soon as we perceive them, they appear to us as the rule of our conduct. If it is true that a deposit is made to be remitted to its legitimate possessor, it is necessary to remit it to him. To the necessity of believing is here added the necessity of practising.

The necessity of practising is obligation. Moral truths, in the eyes of reason necessary, are to the will obligatory.

Moral obligation, like the moral truth that is its foundation, is absolute. As necessary truths are not more or less necessary,[222] so obligation is not more or less obligatory. There are degrees of importance between different obligations; but there are no degrees in the same obligation. We are not somewhat obligated, almost obligated; we are either wholly obligated, or not at all.

If obligation is absolute, it is immutable and universal. For, if the obligation of to-day were not the obligation of to-morrow, if what is obligatory for me were not so for you, obligation would differ from itself, would be relative and contingent.

This fact of absolute, immutable, universal obligation is so certain and so manifest, in spite of all the efforts of the doctrine of interest to obscure it, that one of the profoundest moralists of modern philosophy, particularly struck with this fact, has regarded it as the principle of the whole of ethics. By separating duty from interest which ruins it, and from sentiment which enervates it, Kant restored to ethics their true character. He elevated himself very high in the century of Helvetius, in elevating himself to the holy law of duty; but he still did not ascend high enough, he did not reach the reason itself of duty.

The good for Kant is what is obligatory. But logically, whence comes the obligation of performing an action, if not from the intrinsic goodness of this act? Is it not because that, in the order of reason, it is absolutely impossible to regard a deposit as a property, that we cannot appropriate it to ourselves without a crime? If one action must be performed, and another action must not, it is because there is apparently an essential difference between these two acts. To found the good on obligation, instead of founding obligation on the good, is, therefore, to take the effect for the cause, is to draw the principle from the consequence.

If I ask an honest man who, in spite of the suggestions of misery, has respected the deposit that was intrusted to him, why he respected it, he will answer me,--because it was my duty. If I persist, and ask why it was his duty, he will very rightly answer,--because it was just, because it was good. That point having been reached, all answers are stopped; but questions also are stopped. No one allows a duty to be imposed upon him without rendering to himself a reason for it; but as soon as it is recognized that this duty is imposed upon us because it is just, the mind is satisfied; for it reaches a principle beyond which it has nothing more to seek, justice being its own principle. First truths carry with them their reason for being. Now, justice, the essential distinction between good and evil in the relations of men among themselves, is the primary truth of ethics.

Justice is not a consequence, since we cannot ascend to another more elevated principle; and duty is not, rigorously speaking, a principle, since it supposes a principle above it, that explains and authorizes it, to wit, justice.

Moral truth no more becomes relative and subjective, to take for a moment the language of Kant, in appearing to us obligatory, than truth becomes relative and subjective in appearing to us necessary; for in the very nature of truth and the good must be sought the reason of necessity and obligation. But if we stop at obligation and necessity, as Kant did, in ethics as well as in metaphysics, without knowing it, and even against our intention, we destroy, or at least weaken truth and the good.[223]

Obligation has its foundation in the necessary distinction between good and evil; and is itself the foundation of liberty. If man has duties, he must possess the faculty of fulfilling them, of resisting desire, passion, and interest, in order to obey law. He ought to be free, therefore he is free, or human nature is in contradiction with itself. The direct certainty of obligation implies the corresponding certainty of liberty.

This proof of liberty is doubtless good; but Kant is deceived in supposing it the only legitimate proof. It is very strange that he should have preferred the authority of reasoning to that of consciousness, as if the former had no need of being confirmed by the latter; as if, after all, my liberty ought not to be a fact for me.[224] Empiricism must be greatly feared to distrust the testimony of consciousness; and, after such a distrust, one must be very credulous to have a boundless faith in reasoning. We do not believe in our liberty as we believe in the movement of the earth. The profoundest persuasion that we have of it comes from the continual experience that we carry with ourselves.

Is it true that in presence of an act to be done I am able to will or not to will to do it? In that lies the whole question of liberty.

Let us clearly distinguish between the power of doing and the power of willing. The will has, without doubt, in its service and under its empire, the most of our faculties; but that empire, which is real, is very limited. I will to move my arm, and I am often able to do it,--in that resides, as it were, the physical power of will; but I am not always able to move my arm, if the muscles are paralyzed, if the obstacle to be overcome is too strong, &c.; the execution does not always depend on me; but what always depends on me is the resolution itself. The external effects may be hindered, my resolution itself can never be hindered. In its own domain, will is sovereign.

And I am conscious of this sovereign power of the will. I feel in myself, before its determination, the force that can determine itself in such a manner or in such another. At the same time that I will this or that, I am equally conscious of the power to will the opposite; I am conscious of being master of my resolution, of the ability to arrest it, continue it, repress it. When the voluntary act ceases, the consciousness of the power does not cease,--it remains with the power itself, which is superior to all its manifestations. Liberty is therefore the essential and always-subsisting attribute of will.[225]

The will, we have seen,[226] is neither desire nor passion,--it is exactly the opposite. Liberty of will is not, then, the license of desires and passions. Man is a slave in desire and passion, he is free only in will. That they may not elsewhere be confounded, liberty and anarchy must not be confounded in psychology. Passions abandoning themselves to their caprices, is anarchy. Passions concentrated upon a dominant passion, is tyranny. Liberty consists in the struggle of will against this tyranny and this anarchy. But this combat must have an aim, and this aim is the duty of obeying reason, which is our true sovereign, and justice, which reason reveals to us and prescribes for us. The duty of obeying reason is the law of will, and will is never more itself than when it submits to its law. We do not possess ourselves, as long as to the domination of desire, of passion, of interest, reason does not oppose the counterpoise of justice. Reason and justice free us from the yoke of passions, without imposing upon us another yoke. For, once more, to obey them, is not to abdicate liberty, but to save it, to apply it to its legitimate use.

It is in liberty, and in the agreement of liberty with reason and justice, that man belongs to himself, to speak properly. He is a person only because he is a free being enlightened by reason.

What distinguishes a person from a simple thing, is especially the difference between liberty and its opposite. A thing is that which is not free, consequently that which does not belong to itself, that which has no self, which has only a numerical individuality, a perfect effigy of true individuality, which is that of person.

A thing, not belonging to itself, belongs to the first person that takes possession of it and puts his mark on it.

A thing is not responsible for the movements which it has not willed, of which it is even ignorant. Person alone is responsible, for it is intelligent and free; and it is responsible for the use of its intelligence and freedom.

A thing has no dignity; dignity is only attached to person.

A thing has no value by itself; it has only that which person confers on it. It is purely an instrument whose whole value consists in the use that the person using it derives from it.[227]

Obligation implies liberty; where liberty is not, duty is wanting, and with duty right is wanting also.

It is because there is in me a being worthy of respect, that I have the duty of respecting it, and the right to make it respected by you. My duty is the exact measure of my right. The one is in direct ratio with the other. If I had no sacred duty to respect what makes my person, that is to say, my intelligence and my liberty, I should not have the right to defend it against your injuries. But as my person is inviolable and sacred in itself, it follows that, considered in relation to me, it imposes on me a duty, and, considered in relation to you, it confers on me a right.

I am not myself permitted to degrade the person that I am by abandoning myself to passion, to vice and crime, and I am not permitted to let it be degraded by you.

The person is inviolable; and it alone is inviolable.

It is inviolable not only in the intimate sanctuary of consciousness, but in all its legitimate manifestations, in its acts, in the product of its acts, even in the instruments that it makes its own by using them.

Therein is the foundation of the sanctity of property. The first property is the person. All other properties are derived from that. Think of it well. It is not property in itself that has rights, it is the proprietor, it is the person that stamps upon it, with its own character, its right and its title.

The person cannot cease to belong to itself, without degrading itself,--it is to itself inalienable. The person has no right over itself; it cannot treat itself as a thing, cannot sell itself, cannot destroy itself, cannot in any way abolish its free will and its liberty, which are its constituent elements.

Why has the child already some rights? Because it will be a free being. Why have the old man, returned to infancy, and the insane man still some rights? Because they have been free beings. We even respect liberty in its first glimmerings or its last vestiges. Why, on the other hand, have the insane man and the imbecile old man no longer all their rights? Because they have lost liberty. Why do we enchain the furious madman? Because he has lost knowledge and liberty. Why is slavery an abominable institution? Because it is an outrage upon what constitutes humanity. This is the reason why, in fine, certain extreme devotions are sometimes sublime faults, and no one is permitted to offer them, much less to demand them. There is no legitimate devotion against the very essence of right, against liberty, against justice, against the dignity of the human person.

We have not been able to speak of liberty, without indicating a certain number of moral notions of the highest importance which it contains and explains; but we could not pursue this development without encroaching upon the domain of private and public ethics and anticipating the following lecture.

We arrive, then, at the last element of the moral phenomenon, the judgment of merit and demerit.

At the same time that we judge that a man has done a good or bad action, we bear this other judgment quite as necessary as the former, to wit, that if this man has acted well he has merited a reward, and if he has acted ill, he has merited a punishment. It is exactly the same with this judgment as with that of the good. It may be outwardly expressed in a more or less lively manner, according as it is mingled with more or less energetic feelings. Sometimes it will be only a benevolent disposition towards the virtuous agent, and an unfavorable disposition towards the culpable agent; sometimes it will be enthusiasm or indignation. In some cases one will make himself the executor of the judgment that he bears, he will crown the hero and load the criminal with chains. But when all your feelings are calmed, when enthusiasm has cooled as well as indignation, when time and separation have rendered an action almost indifferent to you, you none the less persist in judging that the author of this action merits a reward or a punishment, according to the quality of the action. You decide that you were right in the sentiments that you felt, and, although they are extinguished, you declare them legitimate.

The judgment of merit and demerit is essentially tied to the judgment of good and evil. In fact, he who does an action without knowing whether it is good or bad, has neither merit nor demerit in doing it. It is with him the same as with those physical agents that accomplish the most beneficent or the most destructive works, to which we never think of attributing knowledge and will, consequently accountability. Why are there no penalties attached to involuntary crimes? Because for that very reason they are not regarded as crimes. Hence it comes that the question of premeditation is so grave in all criminal processes. Why is the child, up to a certain age, subject to none but light punishments? Because where the idea of the good and liberty are wanting, merit and demerit are also wanting, which alone authorize reward and punishment. The author of an injurious but involuntary action is condemned to an indemnity corresponding to the damage done; he is not condemned to a punishment properly so called.

Such are the conditions of merit and demerit. When these conditions are fulfilled, merit and demerit manifest themselves, and involve reward and punishment.

Merit is the natural right we have to be rewarded; demerit the natural right that others have to punish us, and, if we may thus speak, the right that we have to be punished. This expression may seem paradoxical, nevertheless it is true. A culpable man, who, opening his eyes to the light of the good, should comprehend the necessity of expiation, not only by internal repentance, without which all the rest is in vain, but also by a real and effective suffering, such a culpable man would have the right to claim the punishment that alone can reconcile him with order. And such reclamations are not so rare. Do we not every day see criminals denouncing themselves and offering themselves up to avenge the public? Others prefer to satisfy justice, and do not have recourse to the pardon that law places in the hands of the monarch in order to represent in the state charity and mercy, as tribunals represent in it justice. This is a manifest proof of the natural and profound roots of the idea of punishment and reward.

Merit and demerit imperatively claim, like a lawful debt, punishment and reward; but reward must not be confounded with merit, nor punishment with demerit; this would be confounding cause and effect, principle and consequence. Even were reward and punishment not to take place, merit and demerit would subsist. Punishment and reward satisfy merit and demerit, but do not constitute them. Suppress all reward and all punishment and you do not thereby suppress merit and demerit; on the contrary, suppress merit and demerit, and there are no longer true punishments and true rewards. Unmerited goods and honors are only material advantages; reward is essentially moral, and its value is independent of its form. One of those crowns of oak that the early Romans decreed to heroism is worth more than all the riches in the world, when it is the sign of the recognition and the admiration of a people. To reward is to give in return. He who is rewarded must have first given something in order to deserve to be rewarded. Reward accorded to merit is a debt; reward without merit is a charity or a theft. It is the same with punishment. It is the relation of pain to a fault,--in this relation, and not in the pain alone, is the truth as well as the shame of chastisement.

'Tis crime and not the scaffold makes the shame.[228]

There are two things that must be unceasingly repeated, because they are equally true,--the first is, that the good is good in itself, and ought to be pursued whatever may be the consequences; the second is, that the consequences of the good cannot fail to be fortunate. Happiness, separated from the good, is only a fact to which is attached no moral idea; but, as an effect of the good, it enters into the moral order and completes it.

Virtue without happiness, and crime without unhappiness, are a contradiction, a disorder. If virtue supposes sacrifice, that is to say, suffering, it is of eternal justice that the sacrifice, generously accepted and courageously borne, have for a reward the very happiness that has been sacrificed. So, it is of eternal justice that crime be punished by the unhappiness of the culpable happiness which it has tried to obtain by stealth.