Chapter XV: Appendix: 371 (13)

The sanction of law is punishment. We have already seen that the right to punish springs from the idea of demerit.[243] In the universal order, to God alone it belongs to apply a punishment to all faults, whatever they may be. In the social order, government is invested with the right to punish only for the purpose of protecting liberty by imposing a just reparation on those who violate it. Every fault that is not contrary to justice, and does not strike at liberty, escapes, then, social retribution. Neither is the right to punish the right of avenging one's self. To render evil for evil, to demand an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, is the barbarous form of a justice without light; for the evil that I do you will not take away the evil that you have done me. It is not the pain felt by the victim that demands a corresponding pain; it is violated justice that imposes on the culpable man the expiation of suffering. Such is the morality of penalty. The principle of penalty is not the reparation of damage caused. If I have caused you damage without intending it, I pay you an indemnity; that is not a penalty, for I am not culpable; whilst if I have committed a crime, in spite of the material indemnity for the evil that I have done, I owe a reparation to justice by a proper suffering, and in that truly consists the penalty.

What is the exact proportion of chastisements and crimes? This question cannot receive an absolute solution. What is here immutable, is that the act opposed to justice merits a punishment, and that the more unjust the act is, the severer ought to be the punishment. But by the side of the right to punish is the duty of correcting. To the culprit must be left the possibility of repairing his crime. The culpable man is still a man; he is not a thing of which we ought to rid ourselves as soon as it becomes injurious, a stone that falls on our heads, that we throw into a gulf that it may wound no more. Man is a rational being, capable of comprehending good and evil, of repenting, and of being one day reconciled with order. These truths have given birth to works that honor the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. The conception of houses of correction reminds one of those early times of Christianity when punishment consisted in an expiation that permitted the culprit to return through repentance to the ranks of the just. Here intervenes, as we have just indicated, the principle of charity, which is very different from the principle of justice. To punish is just, to ameliorate is charitable. In what measure ought those two principles to be united? Nothing is more delicate, more difficult to determine. It is certain that justice ought to govern. In undertaking the amendment of the culprit, government usurps, with a very generous usurpation, the rights of religion; but it ought not to go so far as to forget its proper function and its rigorous duty.

Let us pause on the threshold of politics, properly so called. Nothing in them but these principles is fixed and invariable; all else is relative. The constitutions of states have something absolute by their relation to the inviolable rights which they ought to guarantee; but they also have a relative side by the variable forms with which they are clothed, according to times, places, manners, history. The supreme rule of which philosophy reminds politics, is that politics ought, in consulting all circumstances, to seek always those social forms and institutions that best realize those eternal principles. Yes, they are eternal; because they are drawn from no arbitrary hypothesis, because they rest on the immutable nature of man, on the all-powerful instincts of the heart, on the indestructible notion of justice, and the sublime idea of charity, on the consciousness of person, liberty, and equality, on duty and right, on merit and demerit. Such are the foundations of all true society, worthy of the beautiful name of human society, that is to say, formed of free and rational beings; and such are the maxims that ought to direct every government worthy of its mission, which knows that it is not dealing with beasts but with men, which respects them and loves them.

Thank God, French society has always marched by the light of this immortal idea, and the dynasty that has been at its head for some centuries has always guided it in these generous ways. It was Louis le Gros, who, in the Middle Age, emancipated the communes; it was Philippe le Bel who instituted parliaments--an independent and gratuitous justice; it was Henri IV. who began religious liberty; it was Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. who, while they undertook to give to France her natural frontiers, and almost succeeded in it, labored to unite more and more all parts of the nation, to put a regular administration in the place of feudal anarchy, and to reduce the great vassals to a simple aristocracy, from day to day deprived of every privilege but that of serving the common country in the first rank. It was a king of France who, comprehending the new wants, and associating himself with the progress of the times, attempted to substitute for that very real, but confused and formless representative government, that was called the assemblies of the nobility, the clergy, and the _tiers etat_, the true representative government that is proper for great civilized nations,--a glorious and unfortunate attempt that, if royalty had then been served by a Richelieu, a Mazarin, or a Colbert, might have terminated in a necessary reform, that, through the fault of every one, ended in a revolution full of excess, violence, and crime, redeemed and covered by an incomparable courage, a sincere patriotism, and the most brilliant triumphs. Finally, it was the brother of Louis XVI. who, enlightened and not discouraged by the misfortunes of his family, spontaneously gave to France that liberal and wise constitution of which our fathers had dreamed, about which Montesquieu had written, which, loyally adhered to, and necessarily developed, is admirably fitted for the present time, and sufficient for a long future. We are fortunate in finding in the Charter the principles that we have just explained, that contain our views and our hopes for France and humanity.[244]

FOOTNOTES:

[233] See the _Republic_, book iv., vol. ix., of our translation.

[234] On our principal duties towards ourselves, and on that error, too much accredited in the eighteenth century, of reducing ethics to our duties towards others, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lectures on the ethics of Helvetius and Saint-Lambert, lecture vi., p. 235: "To define virtue an habitual disposition to contribute to the happiness of others, is to concentrate virtue into a single one of its applications, is to suppress its general and essential character. Therein is the fundamental vice of the ethics of the eighteenth century. Those ethics are an exaggerated reaction against the somewhat mystical ethics of the preceding age, which, rightly occupied with perfecting the internal man, often fell into asceticism, which is not only useless to others, but is contrary to well-ordered human life. Through fear of asceticism, the philosophy of the eighteenth century forgot the care of internal perfection, and only considered the virtues useful to society. That was retrenching many virtues, and the best ones. I take, for example, dominion over self. How make a virtue of it, when virtue is defined a _disposition to contribute to the happiness of others_? Will it be said that dominion over self is useful to others? But that is not always true; often this dominion is exercised in the solitude of the soul over internal and wholly personal movements; and there it is most painful and most sublime. Were we in a desert, it would still be for us a duty to resist our passions, to command ourselves, and to govern our life as it becomes a rational and free being. Beneficence is an adorable virtue, but it is neither the whole of virtue, nor its most difficult employment. What auxiliaries we have when the question is to do good to our fellow-creatures,--pity, sympathy, natural benevolence! But to resist pride and envy, to combat in the depths of the soul a natural desire legitimate in itself, often culpable in its excesses, to suffer and struggle in silence, is the hardest task of a virtuous man. I add that the virtues useful to others have their surest guaranty in those personal virtues that the eighteenth century misconceived. What are goodness, generosity, and beneficence without dominion over self, without the form of soul attached to the religious observance of duty? They are, perhaps, only the emotions of a beautiful nature placed in fortunate circumstances. Take away these circumstances, and, perhaps, the effects will disappear or be diminished. But when a man, who knows himself to be a rational and free being, comprehends that it is his duty to remain faithful to liberty and reason, when he applies himself to govern himself, and pursue, without cessation, the perfection of his nature through all circumstances, you may rely upon that man; he will know how, in case of need, to be useful to others, because there is no true perfection for him without justice and charity. From the care of internal perfection you may draw all the useful virtues, but the reciprocal is not always true. One may be beneficent without being virtuous; one is not virtuous without being beneficent."

[235] On the true foundation of property see the preceding lecture.

[236] Voluntary servitude is little better than servitude imposed by force. See 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 4, p. 240: "Had another the desire to serve us as a slave, without conditions and without limits, to be for us a thing for our use, a pure instrument, a staff, a vase, and had we also the desire to make use of him in this manner, and to let him serve us in the same way, this reciprocity of desires would authorize for neither of us this absolute sacrifice, because desire can never be the title of a right, because there is something in us that is above all desires, participated or not participated, to wit, duty and right,--justice. To justice it belongs to be the rule of our desires, and not to our desires to be the rule of justice. Should entire humanity forget its dignity, should it consent to its own degradation, should it extend the hand to slavery, tyranny would be none the more legitimate; eternal justice would protest against a contract, which, were it supported by desires, reciprocal desires most authentically expressed and converted into solemn laws, is none the less void of all right, because, as Bossuet very truly said, there is no right against right, no contracts, no conventions, no human laws against the law of laws, against natural law."

[237] On the danger of seeking at first the origin of human knowledge, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture on Hobbes, p. 261: "Hobbes is not the only one who took the question of the origin of societies as the starting-point of political science. Nearly all the publicists of the eighteenth century, Montesquieu excepted, proceed in the same manner. Rousseau imagines at first a primitive state in which man being no longer savage without being yet civilized, lived happy and free under the dominion of the laws of nature. This golden age of humanity disappearing carries with it all the rights of the individual, who enters naked and disarmed into what we call the social state. But order cannot reign in a state without laws, and since natural laws perished in the shipwreck of primitive manners, new ones must be created. Society is formed by aid of a contract whose principle is the abandonment by each and all of their individual force and rights to the profit of the community, of the state, the instrument of all forces, the depository of all rights. The state, for Hobbes, will be a man, a monarch, a king; for Rousseau, the state is the collection itself of citizens, who by turns are considered as subjects and governors, so that instead of the despotism of one over all, we have the despotism of all over each. Law is not the more or less happy, more or less faithful expression of natural justice; it is the expression of the general will. This general will is alone free; particular wills are not free. The general will has all rights, and particular wills have only the rights that it confers on them, or rather lends them. Force, in _The Citizen_ is the foundation of society, of order, of laws, of the rights and duties which laws alone institute. In the _Contrat Social_, the general will plays the same part, fulfils the same function. Moreover, the general will scarcely differs in itself from force. In fact, the general will is number, that is to say, force still. Thus, on both sides, tyranny under different forms. One may here observe the power of method. If Hobbes, if Rousseau especially had at first studied the idea of right in itself, with the certain characters without which we are not able to conceive it, they would have infallibly recognized that if there are rights derived from positive laws, and particularly from conventions and contracts, there are rights derived from no contract, since contracts take them for principles and rules; from no convention, since they serve as the foundation to all conventions in order that these conventions may be reputed just;--rights that society consecrates and develops, but does not make,--rights not subject to the caprices of general or particular will, belonging essentially to human nature, and like it, inviolable and sacred."

[238] 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 265: "What!" somewhere says Montesquieu, "man is everywhere in society, and it is asked whether man was born for society! What is this fact that is reproduced in all the vicissitudes of the life of humanity, except a law of humanity? The universal and permanent fact of society attests the principle of sociability. This principle shines forth in all our inclinations, in our sentiments, in our beliefs. It is true that we love society for the advantages that it brings; but it is none the less true, that we also love it for its own sake, that we seek it independently of all calculation. Solitude saddens us; it is not less deadly to the life of the moral being, than a perfect vacuum is to the life of the physical being. Without society what would become of sympathy, which is one of the most powerful principles of our soul, which establishes between men a community of sentiments, by which each lives in all and all live in each? Who would be blind enough not to see in that an energetic call of human nature for society? And the attraction of the sexes, their union, the love of parents for children,--do they not found a sort of natural society, that is increased and developed by the power of the same causes which produced it? Divided by interest, united by sentiment, men respect each other in the name of justice. Let us add that they love each other in virtue of natural charity. In the sight of justice, equal in right, charity inspires us to consider ourselves as brethren, and to give each other succor and consolation. Wonderful thing! God has not left to our wisdom, nor even to experience, the care of forming and preserving society,--he has willed that sociability should be a law of our nature, and a law so imperative that no tendency to isolation, no egoism, no distaste even, can prevail against it. All the power of the spirit of system was necessary in order to make Hobbes say that society is an accident, as an incredible degree of melancholy to wring from Rousseau the extravagant expression that society is an evil."

[239] 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 283: "We do not hold from a compact our quality as man, and the dignity and rights attached to it; or, rather, there is an immortal compact which is nowhere written, which makes itself felt by every uncorrupted conscience, that compact which binds together all beings intelligent, free, and subject to misfortune, by the sacred ties of a common respect and a common charity.... Laws promulgate duties, but do not give birth to them; they could not violate duties without being unjust, and ceasing to merit the beautiful name of laws--that is to say, decisions of the public authority worthy of appearing obligatory to the conscience of all. Nevertheless, although laws have no other virtue than that of declaring what exists before them, we often found on them right and justice, to the great detriment of justice itself, and the sentiment of right. Time and habit despoil reason of its natural rights in order to transfer it to law. What then happens? We either obey it, even when it is unjust, which is not a very great evil, but we do not think of reforming it little by little, having no superior principle that enables us to judge it,--or we continually change it, in an invincible impotence of founding any thing, by not knowing the immutable basis on which written law must rest. In either case, all progress is impossible, because the laws are not related to their true principle, which is reason, conscience, sovereign and absolute justice."

[240] Lecture 12.

[241] See 4th Series, vol. i., p. 40.

[242] See our pamphlet entitled _Justice and Charity_, composed in 1848, in the midst of the excesses of socialism, in order to remind of the dignity of liberty, the character, bearing, and the impassable limits of true charity, private and civil.

[243] See on the theory of penalty, the _Gorgias_, vol. iii. of the translation of Plato, and our argument, p. 367: "The first law of order is to be faithful to virtue, and to that part of virtue which is related to society, to wit, justice; but if one is wanting in that, the second law of order is to expiate one's fault, and it is expiated by punishment. Publicists are still seeking the foundation of penalty. Some, who think themselves great politicians, find it in the utility of the punishment for those who witness it, and are turned aside from crime by fear of its menace, by its preventive virtue. And that it is true, is one of the effects of penalty, but it is not its foundation; for punishment falling upon the innocent, would produce as much, and still more terror, and would be quite as preventive. Others, in their pretensions to humanity, do not wish to see the legitimacy of punishment except in its utility for him who undergoes it, in its corrective virtue,--and that, too, is one of the possible effects of punishment, but not its foundation; for that punishment may be corrective, it must be accepted as just. It is, then, always necessary to recur to justice. Justice is the true foundation of punishment,--personal and social utility are only consequences. It is an incontestable fact, that after every unjust act, man thinks, and cannot but think that he has incurred demerit, that is to say, has merited a punishment. In intelligence, to the idea of injustice corresponds that of penalty; and when injustice has taken place in the social sphere, merited punishment ought to be inflicted by society. Society can inflict it only because it ought. Right here has no other source than duty, the strictest, most evident, and most sacred duty, without which this pretended right would be only that of force, that is to say, an atrocious injustice, should it even result in the moral profit of him who undergoes it, and in a salutary spectacle for the people,--what it would not then be; for then the punishment would find no sympathy, no echo, either in the public conscience or in that of the condemned. The punishment is not just, because it is preventively or correctively useful; but it is in both ways useful, because it is just." This theory of penalty, in demonstrating the falsity, the incomplete and exclusive character of two theories that divide publicists, completes and explains them, and gives them both a legitimate centre and base. It is doubtless only indicated in Plato, but is met in several passages, briefly but positively expressed, and on it rests the sublime theory of expiation.

[244] As it is perceived, we have confined ourselves to the most general principles. The following year, in 1819, in our lectures on Hobbes, 1st Series, vol. iii., we gave a more extended theory of rights, and the civil and political guaranties which they demand; we even touched the question of the different forms of government, and established the truth and beauty of the constitutional monarchy. In 1828, 2d Series, vol. i., lecture 13, we explained and defended the Charter in its fundamental parts. Under the government of July, the part of defender of both liberty and royalty was easy. We continued it in 1848; and when, at the unexpected inundation of democracy, soon followed by a passionate reaction in favor of an absolute authority, many minds, and the best, asked themselves whether the young American republic was not called to serve as a model for old Europe, we did not hesitate to maintain the principle of the monarchy in the interest of liberty; we believe that we demonstrated that the development of the principles of 1789, and in particular the progress of the lower classes, so necessary, can be obtained only by the aid of the constitutional monarchy,--6th Series, POLITICAL DISCOURSES, _with an introduction on the principles of the French Revolution and representative government_.

LECTURE XVI.

GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD.

Principle on which true theodicea rests. God the last foundation
of moral truth, of the good, and of the moral person.--Liberty
of God.--The divine justice and charity.--God the sanction of
the moral law. Immortality of the soul; argument from merit and
demerit; argument from the simplicity of the soul; argument from
final causes.--Religious sentiment.--Adoration.--Worship.--Moral
beauty of Christianity.

The moral order has been confirmed,--we are in possession of moral truth, of the idea of the good, and the obligation that is attached to it. Now, the same principle that has not permitted us to stop at absolute truth,[245] and has forced us to seek its supreme reason in a real and substantial being, forces us here again to refer the idea of the good to the being who is its first and last foundation.

Moral truth, like every other universal and necessary truth, cannot remain in a state of abstraction. In us it is only conceived. There must somewhere be a being who not only conceives it, but constituted it.

As all beautiful things and all true things are related--these to a unity that is absolute truth, and those to another unity that is absolute beauty, so all moral principles participate in the same principle, which is the good. We thus elevate ourselves to the conception of the good in itself, of absolute good, superior to all particular duties, and determined in these duties. Now, can the absolute good be any thing else than an attribute of him who, properly speaking, is alone absolute being?

Would it be possible that there might be several absolute beings, and that the being in whom are realized absolute truth and absolute beauty might not also be the one who is the principle of absolute good? The very idea of the absolute implies absolute unity. The true, the beautiful, and the good, are not three distinct essences; they are one and the same essence considered in its fundamental attributes. Our mind distinguishes them, because it can comprehend them only by division; but, in the being in whom they reside, they are indivisibly united; and this being at once triple and one, who sums up in himself perfect beauty, perfect truth, and the supreme good, is nothing else than God.

So God is necessarily the principle of moral truth and the good. He is also the type of the moral person that we carry in us.

Man is a moral person, that is to say, he is endowed with reason and liberty. He is capable of virtue, and virtue has in him two principal forms, respect of others, and love of others, justice and charity.

Can there be among the attributes possessed by the creature something essential not possessed by the Creator? Whence does the effect draw its reality and its being, except from its cause? What it possesses, it borrows and receives. The cause at least contains all that is essential in the effect. What particularly belongs to the effect, is inferiority, is a lack, is imperfection: from the fact alone that it is dependent and derived, it bears in itself the signs and the conditions of dependence. If, then, we cannot legitimately conclude from the imperfection of the effect in that of the cause, we can and must conclude from the excellence of the effect in the perfection of the cause, otherwise there would be something prominent in the effect which would be without cause.

Such is the principle of our theodicea. It is neither new nor subtle; but it has not yet been thoroughly disengaged and elucidated, and it is, to our eyes, firm against every test. It is by the aid of this principle that we can, up to a certain point, penetrate into the true nature of God.

God is not a being of logic, whose nature can be explained by way of deduction, and by means of algebraic equations. When, setting out from a first attribute, we have deduced the attributes of God from each other, after the manner of geometricians and the schoolmen, what do we possess,[246] I pray you, but abstractions? It is necessary to leave these vain dialectics in order to arrive at a real and living God.

The first notion that we have of God, to wit, the notion of an infinite being, is itself given to us independently of all experience. It is the consciousness of ourselves, as being at once, and as being limited, that elevates us directly to the conception of a being who is the principle of our being, and is himself without bounds. This solid and single argument, which is at bottom that of Descartes,[247] opens to us a way that must be followed, in which Descartes too quickly stopped. If the being that we possess forces us to recur to a cause which possesses being in an infinite degree, all that we have of being, that is to say, of substantial attributes, equally requires an infinite cause. Then, God will no longer be merely the infinite, abstract, or at least indeterminate being in which reason and the heart know not where to betake themselves,[248] he will be a real and determined being, a moral person like ours and psychology conducts us without hypothesis to a theodicea at once sublime and related to us.[249]

Before all, if man is free, can it be that God is not free? No one contends that he who is cause of all causes, who has no cause but himself, can be dependent on any thing whatever. But in freeing God from all external constraint, Spinoza subjects him to an internal and mathematical necessity, wherein he finds the perfection of being. Yes, of being which is not a person; but the essential character of personal being is precisely liberty. If, then, God were not free, God would be beneath man. Would it not be strange that the creature should have the marvellous power of disposing of himself, and of freely willing, and that the being who has made him should be subjected to a necessary development, whose cause is only in himself, without doubt, but, in fine, is a sort of abstract power, mechanical or metaphysical, but very inferior to the personal and voluntary cause that we are, and of which we have the clearest consciousness? God is therefore free, since we are free. But he is not free as we are free; for God is at once all that we are, and nothing that we are. He possesses the same attributes that we possess, but elevated to infinity. He possesses an infinite liberty, joined to an infinite intelligence; and, as his intelligence is infallible, excepted from the uncertainties of deliberation, and perceiving at a glance where the good is, so his liberty spontaneously, and without effort, fulfils it.[250]

In the same manner as we transfer to God the liberty that is the foundation of our being, we also transfer to him justice and charity. In man, justice and charity are virtues; in God, they are attributes. What is in us the laborious conquest of liberty, is in him his very nature. If respect of rights is in us the very essence of justice and the sign of the dignity of our being, it is impossible that the perfect being should not know and respect the rights of the lowest beings, since it is he, moreover, who has imparted to them those rights. In God resides a sovereign justice, which renders to each one his due, not according to deceptive appearances, but according to the truth of things. Finally, if man, that limited being, has the power of going out of himself, of forgetting his person, of loving another than himself, of devoting himself to another's happiness, or, what is better, to the perfecting of another, should not the perfect being have, in an infinite degree, this disinterested tenderness, this charity, the supreme virtue of the human person? Yes, there is in God an infinite tenderness for his creatures: he at first manifested it in giving us the being that he might have withheld, and at all times it appears in the innumerable signs of his divine providence. Plato knew this love of God well, and expressed it in those great words, "Let us say that the cause which led the supreme ordainer to produce and compose this universe is, that he was good; and he who is good has no species of envy. Exempt from envy, he willed that all things should be, as much as possible, like himself."[251] Christianity went farther: according to the divine doctrine, God so loved men that he gave them his only Son. God is inexhaustible in his charity, as he is inexhaustible in his essence. It is impossible to give more to the creature; he gives him every thing that he can receive without ceasing to be a creature; he gives him every thing, even himself, so far as the creature is in him and he in the creature. At the same time nothing can be lost; for being absolute being, he eternally expands and gives himself without being diminished. Infinite in power, infinite in charity, he bestows his love in exhaustless abundance upon the world, to teach us that the more we give the more we possess. It is egoism, whose root is at the bottom of every heart, even by the side of the sincerest charity, that inculcates in us the error that we lose by self-devotion: it is egoism that makes us call devotion a sacrifice.

If God is wholly just and wholly good, he can will nothing but what is good and just; and, as he is all-powerful, every thing that he wills he can do, and consequently does do. The world is the work of God; it is therefore perfectly made, perfectly adapted to its end.

And nevertheless, there is in the world a disorder that seems to accuse the justice and goodness of God.

A principle that is attached to the very idea of the good, says to us that every moral agent deserves a reward when he does good, and a punishment when he does evil. This principle is universal and necessary: it is absolute. If this principle has not its application in this world, it must either be a lie, or this world is ordered ill.

Now, it is a fact that the good is not always followed by happiness, nor evil always by unhappiness.

Let us, in the first place, remark that if the fact exists, it is rare enough, and seems to present the character of an exception.

Virtue is a struggle against passion; this struggle, full of dignity, is also full of pain; but, on one side, crime is condemned to much harder pains; on the other, those of virtue are of short duration; they are a necessary and almost always beneficent trial.

Virtue has its pains, but the greatest happiness is still with it, as the greatest unhappiness is with crime; and such is the case in small and great, in the secret of the soul, and on the theatre of life, in the obscurest conditions and in the most conspicuous situations.

Good and bad health are, after all, the greatest part of happiness or unhappiness. In this regard, compare temperance and its opposite, order and disorder, virtue and vice; I mean a temperance truly temperate, and not an atrabilarious asceticism, a rational virtue, and not a fierce virtue.

The great physician Hufeland[252] remarks that the benevolent sentiments are favorable to health, and that the malevolent sentiments are opposed to it. Violent and sinful passions irritate, inflame, and carry trouble into the organization as well as the soul; the benevolent affections preserve the measured and harmonious play of all the functions.

Hufeland again remarks that the greatest longevities pertain to wise and well-regulated lives.

Thus, for health, strength, and life, virtue is better than vice: it is already much, it seems to me.

I surely mean to speak of conscience only after health; but, in fine, with the body, our most constant host is conscience. Peace or trouble of conscience decides internal happiness or unhappiness. At this point of view, compare again order and disorder, virtue and vice.

And without us, in society, to whom come esteem and contempt, consideration and infamy? Certainly opinion has its mistakes, but they are not long. In general, if charlatans, intriguers, impostors of every kind, for some time surreptitiously get suffrages, it must be that a sustained honesty is the surest and the almost infallible means of reaching a good renown.

I regret that upon this point time does not allow of any development. It would have afforded me delight, after having distinguished virtue from happiness, to show them to you almost always united by the admirable law of merit and demerit. I should have been pleased to show you this beneficent law already governing human destiny, and called to preside over it more exactly from day to day by the ever-increasing progress of lights in governments and peoples, by the perfecting of civil and judicial institutions. It would have been my wish to make pass into your minds and hearts the consoling conviction that, after all, justice is already in this world, and that the surest road to happiness is still that of virtue.

This was the opinion of Socrates and Plato; and it is also that of Franklin, and I gather it from my personal experience and an attentive examination of human life. But I admit that there are exceptions; and were there but one exception, it would be necessary to explain it.

Suppose a man, young, beautiful, rich, amiable, and loved, who, placed between the scaffold and the betrayal of a sacred cause, voluntarily mounts the scaffold at twenty years of age. What do you make of this noble victim? The law of merit and demerit seems here suspended. Do you dare blame virtue, or how in this world do you accord to it the recompense that it has not sought, but is its due?

By careful search you will find more than one case analogous to that.

The laws of this world are general; they turn aside to suit no one: they pursue their course without regard to the merit or demerit of any. If a man is born with a bad temperament, it is in virtue of certain obscure but undeviating physical laws, to which he is subject, like the animal and the plant, and he suffers during his whole life, although personally innocent. He is brought up in the midst of flames, epidemics, calamities that strike at hazard the good as well as the bad.

Human justice condemns many that are innocent, it is true, but it absolves, in fault of proof, more than one who is culpable. Besides, it knows only certain derelictions. What faults, what basenesses occur in the dark, which do not receive merited chastisement! In like manner, what obscure devotions of which God is the sole witness and judge! Without doubt nothing escapes the eye of conscience, and the culpable soul cannot escape remorse. But remorse is not always in exact relation with the fault committed; its vivacity may depend on a nature more or less delicate, on education and habit. In a word, if it is in general very true that the law of merit and demerit is fulfilled in this world, it is not fulfilled with mathematical rigor.

What must we conclude from this? That the world is ill-made? No. That cannot be, and is not. That cannot be, for incontestably the world has a just and good author; that is not, for, in fact, we see order reigning in the world; and it would be absurd to misconceive the manifest order that almost everywhere shines forth on account of a few phenomena that we cannot refer to order. The universe endures, therefore it is well made. The pessimism of Voltaire is still more opposed to the aggregate of facts than an absolute optimism. Between these two systematic extremes which facts deny, the human race places the hope of another life. It has found it very irrational to reject a necessary law on account of some infractions; it has, therefore, maintained the law; and from infractions it has only concluded that they ought to be referred to the law, that there will be a reparation. Either this conclusion must be admitted, or the two great principles previously admitted, that God is just, and that the law of merit and demerit is an absolute law, must be rejected.

Now, to reject these two principles is to totally overthrow all human belief.

To maintain them, is implicitly to admit that actual life must be, elsewhere terminated or continued.

But is this continuation of the person possible? After the dissolution of the body, can any thing of us remain?

In truth, the moral person, which acts well or ill, which awaits the reward or punishment of its good or bad actions, is united to a body,--it lives with the body, makes use of it, and, in a certain measure, depends on it, but is not it.[253] The body is composed of parts, may decrease or increase; is divisible, essentially divisible, and even infinitely divisible. But that something that has consciousness of itself, that says, _I_, _me_, that feels itself to be free and responsible, does it not also feel that there is in it no division, even no possible division, that it is a being one and simple? Is the _me_ more or less _me_? Is there a half of _me_, a quarter of _me_? I cannot divide my person. It remains identical to itself under the diversity of the phenomena that manifest it. This identity, this indivisibility of the person, is its spirituality. Spirituality is, therefore, the very essence of the person. Belief in the spirituality of the soul is involved in the belief of this identity of the _me_, which no rational being has ever called in question. Accordingly, there is not the least hypothesis for affirming that the soul does not essentially differ from the body. Add that when we say the soul, we mean to say, and do say the person, which is not separated from the consciousness of the attributes that constitute it, thought and will. The being without consciousness is not a person. It is the person that is identical, one, simple. Its attributes, in developing it, do not divide it. Indivisible, it is indissoluble, and may be immortal. If, then, divine justice, in order to be exercised in regard to us, demands an immortal soul, it does not demand an impossible thing. The spirituality of the soul is the necessary foundation of immortality. The law of merit and demerit is the direct demonstration of this. The first proof is called the metaphysical proof, the second, the moral proof, which is the most celebrated, most popular, at once the most convincing and the most persuasive.

What powerful motives are added to these two proofs to fortify them in the heart! The following, for example, is a presumption of great value for any one that believes in the virtue of sentiment and instinct.

Every thing has its end. This principle is as absolute as that which refers every event to a cause.[254] Man has, therefore, an end. This end is revealed in all his thoughts, in all his ways, in all his sentiments, in all his life. Whatever he does, whatever he feels, whatever he thinks, he thinks upon the infinite, loves the infinite, tends to the infinite.[255] This need of the infinite is the mainspring of scientific curiosity, the principle of all discoveries. Love also stops and rests only there. On the route it may experience lively joys; but a secret bitterness that is mingled with them soon makes it feel their insufficiency and emptiness. Often, while ignorant of its true object, it asks whence comes that fatal disenchantment by which all its successes, all its pleasures are successively extinguished. If it knew how to read itself, it would recognize that if nothing here below satisfies it, it is because its object is more elevated, because the true bourne after which it aspires is infinite perfection. Finally, like thought and love, human activity is without limits. Who can say where it shall stop? Behold this earth almost known. Soon another world will be necessary for us. Man is journeying towards the infinite, which is always receding before him, which he always pursues. He conceives it, he feels it, he bears it, thus to speak, in himself,--how should his end be elsewhere? Hence that unconquerable instinct of immortality, that universal hope of another life to which all worships, all poesies, all traditions bear witness. We tend to the infinite with all our powers; death comes to interrupt the destiny that seeks its goal, and overtakes it unfinished. It is, therefore, likely that there is something after death, since at death nothing in us is terminated. Look at the flower that to-morrow will not be. To-day, at least, it is entirely developed: we can conceive nothing more beautiful of its kind; it has attained its perfection. My perfection, my moral perfection, that of which I have the clearest idea and the most invincible need, for which I feel that I am born,--in vain I call for it, in vain I labor for it; it escapes me, and leaves me only hope. Shall this hope be deceived? All beings attain their end; should man alone not attain his? Should the greatest of creatures be the most ill-treated? But a being that should remain incomplete and unfinished, that should not attain the end which all his instincts proclaim for him, would be a monster in the eternal order,--a problem much more difficult to solve than the difficulties that have been raised against the immortality of the soul. In our opinion, this tendency of all the desires and all the powers of the soul towards the infinite, elucidated by the principle of final causes, is a serious and important confirmation of the moral proof and the metaphysical proof of another life.

When we have collected all the arguments that authorize belief in another life, and when we have thus arrived at a satisfying demonstration, there remains an obstacle to be overcome. Imagination cannot contemplate without fright that unknown which is called death. The greatest philosopher in the world, says Pascal, on a plank wider than it is necessary in order to go without danger from one side of an abyss to the other, cannot think without trembling on the abyss that is beneath him. It is not reason, it is imagination that frightens him; it is also imagination that in great part causes that remnant of doubt, that trouble, that secret anxiety which the firmest faith cannot always succeed in overcoming in the presence of death. The religious man experiences this terror, but he knows whence it comes, and he surmounts it by attaching himself to the solid hopes furnished him by reason and the heart. Imagination is a child that must be educated, by putting it under the discipline and government of better faculties; it must be accustomed to go to intelligence for aid instead of troubling intelligence with its phantoms. Let us acknowledge that there is a terrible step to be taken when we meet death. Nature trembles when face to face with the unknown eternity. It is wise to present ourselves there with all our forces united,--reason and the heart lending each other mutual support, the imagination being subdued or charmed. Let us continually repeat that, in death as in life, the soul is sure to find God, and that with God all is just, all is good.[256]

We now know what God truly is. We have already seen two of his adorable attributes,--truth and beauty. The most august attribute is revealed to us,--holiness. God is the holy of holies, as the author of the moral law and the good, as the principle of liberty, justice, and charity, as the dispenser of penalty and reward. Such a God is not an abstract God, but an intelligent and free person, who has made us in his own image, from whom we hold the law itself that presides over our destiny, whose judgments we await. It is his love that inspires us in our acts of charity; it is his justice that governs our justice, that of our societies and our laws. If we do not continually remind ourselves that he is infinite, we degrade his nature; but he would be for us as if he were not, if his infinite essence had no forms that pertain to us, the proper forms of our reason and our soul.

By thinking upon such a being, man feels a sentiment that is _par excellence_ the religious sentiment. All the beings with whom we are in relation awaken in us different sentiments, according to the qualities that we perceive in them; and should he who possesses all perfections excite in us no particular sentiment? When we think upon the infinite essence of God, when we are penetrated with his omnipotence, when we are reminded that the moral law expresses his will, that he attaches to the fulfilment and the violation of this law recompenses and penalties which he dispenses with an inflexible justice, we cannot guard ourselves against an emotion of respect and fear at the idea of such a grandeur. Then, if we come to consider that this all-powerful being has indeed wished to create us, us of whom he has no need, that in creating us he has loaded us with benefits, that he has given us this admirable universe for enjoying its ever-new beauties, society for ennobling our life in that of our fellow-men, reason for thinking, the heart for loving, liberty for acting; without disappearing, respect and fear are tinged with a sweeter sentiment, that of love. Love, when it is applied to feeble and limited beings, inspires us with a desire to do good to them; but in itself it proposes to itself no advantage from the person loved; we love a beautiful or good object, because it is beautiful or good, without at first regarding whether this love may be useful to its object and ourselves. For a still stronger reason, love, when it ascends to God, is a pure homage rendered to his perfections; it is the natural overflow of the soul towards a being infinitely lovable.

Respect and love compose adoration. True adoration does not exist without possessing both of these sentiments. If you consider only the all-powerful God, master of heaven and earth, author and avenger of justice, you crush man beneath the weight of the grandeur of God and his own feebleness, you condemn him to a continual trembling in the uncertainty of God's judgments, you make him hate the world, life, and himself, for every thing is full of misery. Towards this extreme, Port-Royal inclines. Read the _Pensees de Pascal_.[257] In his great humility, Pascal forgets two things,--the dignity of man and the love of God. On the other hand, if you see only the good God and the indulgent father, you incline to a chimerical mysticism. By substituting love for fear, little by little with fear, we run the risk of losing respect. God is no more a master, he is no more even a father; for the idea of a father still to a certain point involves that of a respectful fear; he is no more any thing but a friend, sometimes even a lover. True adoration does not separate love and respect; it is respect animated by love.

Adoration is a universal sentiment. It differs in degrees according to different natures; it takes the most different forms; it is often even ignorant of itself; sometimes it is revealed by an exclamation springing from the heart, in the midst of the great scenes of nature and life, sometimes it silently rises in the mute and penetrated soul; it may err in its expressions, even in its object; but at bottom it is always the same. It is a spontaneous, irresistible emotion of the soul; and when reason is applied to it, it is declared just and legitimate. What, in fact, is more just than to fear the judgments of him who is holiness itself, who knows our actions and our intentions, and will judge them according to the highest justice? What, too, is more just than to love perfect goodness and the source of all love? Adoration is at first a natural sentiment; reason makes it a duty.

Adoration confined to the sanctuary of the soul is what is called internal worship--the necessary principle of all public worships.

Public worship is no more an arbitrary institution than society and government, language and arts. All these things have their roots in human nature. Adoration abandoned to itself, would easily degenerate into dreams and ecstasy, or would be dissipated in the rush of affairs and the necessities of every day. The more energetic it is, the more it tends to express itself outwardly in acts that realize it, to take a sensible, precise, and regular form, which, by a proper reaction on the sentiment that produced it, awakens it when it slumbers, sustains it when it languishes, and also protects it against extravagances of every kind to which it might give birth in so many feeble or unbridled imaginations. Philosophy, then, lays the natural foundation of public worship in the internal worship of adoration. Having arrived at that point, it stops, equally careful not to betray its rights and not to go beyond them, to run over, in its whole extent and to its farthest limit, the domain of natural reason, as well as not to usurp a foreign domain.