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

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

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

Here are other facts equally incontestable:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

LECTURE XIV.

TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.

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.