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

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

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

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

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

Now, when and how is the law fulfilled that attaches pleasure and pain to good and evil? Most of the time even here below. For order rules in this world, since the world endures. If order is sometimes disturbed, and happiness and unhappiness are not always distributed in right proportion to crime and virtue, still the absolute judgment of the good, the absolute judgment of obligation, the absolute judgment of merit and demerit, subsist inviolable and imprescriptible,—we remain convinced that he who has put in us the sentiment and the idea of order cannot in that fail himself, and that sooner or later he will re-establish the sacred harmony between virtue and happiness by the means that to him belong. But the time has not come to sound these mysterious prospects.[229] It is sufficient for us, but it was necessary to mark them, in order to show the nature and the end of moral truth.

We terminate this analysis of the different parts of the complex phenomenon of morality by recalling that one which is the most apparent of all, which, however, is only the accompaniment, and, thus to speak, the echo of all the others—sentiment. Sentiment has for its object to render sensible to the soul the tie between virtue and happiness. It is the direct and vital application of the law of merit and demerit. It precedes and authorizes the punishments and rewards that society institutes. It is the internal model according to which the imagination, guided by faith, represents to itself the punishments and rewards of the divine city. The world that we place beyond this is, in great part, our own heart transported into heaven. Since it comes thence, it is just that it should return thither.

We will not dwell upon the different phenomena of sentiment; we have sufficiently explained them in the last lecture. A few words will replace them under your eyes.

We cannot witness a good action, whoever may be its author, another or ourselves, without experiencing a particular pleasure, analogous to that which is attached to the perception of the beautiful; and we cannot witness a bad action without feeling a contrary sentiment, also analogous to that which the sight of an ugly and deformed object excites in us. This sentiment is profoundly different from agreeable or disagreeable sensation.

Are we the authors of the good action? We feel a satisfaction that we do not confound with any other. It is not the triumph of interest nor that of pride,—it is the pleasure of modest honesty or dignified virtue that renders justice to itself. Are we the authors of the bad action? We feel offended conscience groaning within us. Sometimes it is only an importunate reclamation, sometimes it is a bitter agony. Remorse is a suffering the more poignant on account of our feeling that it is deserved.

The spectacle of a good action done by another also has something delicious to the soul. Sympathy is an echo in us that responds to whatever is noble and good in others. When interest does not lead us astray, we naturally put ourselves in the place of him who has done well. We feel in a certain measure the sentiments that animate him. We elevate ourselves to the mood of his spirit. Is it not already for the good man an exquisite reward to make the noble sentiments that animate him thus pass into the hearts of his fellow-men? The spectacle of a bad action, instead of sympathy, excites an involuntary antipathy, a painful and sad sentiment. Without doubt, this sentiment is never acute like remorse. There is in innocence something serene and placid that tempers even the sentiment of injustice, even when this injustice falls on us. We then experience a sort of shame for humanity, we mourn over human weakness, and, by a melancholy return upon ourselves, we are less moved to anger than to pity. Sometimes also pity is overcome by a generous anger, by a disinterested indignation. If, as we have said, it is a sweet reward to excite a noble sympathy, an enthusiasm almost always fertile in good actions, it is a cruel punishment to stir up around us pity, indignation, aversion, and contempt.

Sympathy for a good action is accompanied by benevolence for its author. He inspires us with an affectionate disposition. Even without knowing it, we would love to do good to him; we desire that he may be happy, because we judge that he deserves to be. Antipathy also passes from the action to the person, and engenders against him a sort of bad will, for which we do not blame ourselves, because we feel it to be disinterested and find it legitimate.

Moral satisfaction and remorse, sympathy, benevolence, and their opposites are sentiments and not judgments; but they are sentiments that accompany judgments, the judgment of the good, especially that of merit and demerit. These sentiments have been given us by the sovereign Author of our moral constitution to aid us in doing good. In their diversity and mobility, they cannot be the foundations of absolute obligation which must be equal for all, but they are to it happy auxiliaries, sure and beneficent witnesses of the harmony between virtue and happiness.

These are the facts as presented by a faithful description, as brought to light by a detailed analysis.

Without facts all is chimera; without a severe distinction of facts, all is confusion; but, also, without the knowledge of their relations, instead of a single vast doctrine, like the total phenomenon that we have undertaken to embrace, there can be only different systems like the different parts of this phenomenon, consequently imperfect systems, systems always at war with each other.

We set out from common sense; for the object of true science is not to contradict common sense, but to explain it, and for this end we must commence by recognizing it. We have at first painted in its simplicity, even in the gross, the phenomenon of morality. Then we have separated its elements, and carefully marked the characteristic traits of each of them. It only remains for us to re-collect them all, to seize their relations, and thus to find again, but more precise and more clear, the primitive unity that served us as a point of departure.

Beneath all facts analysis has shown us a primitive fact, which vests only on itself,—the judgment of the good. We do not sacrifice other facts to that, but we must establish that it is the first both in date and in importance.

By its close resemblance to the judgment of the true and the beautiful, the judgment of the good has shown us the affinities of ethics, metaphysics, and æsthetics.

The good, so essentially united to the true, is distinguished from it in that it is practical truth. The good is obligatory. These two ideas are inseparable, but not identical. For obligation rests on the good,—in this intimate alliance, from the good obligation borrows its universal and absolute character.

The obligatory good is the moral law. Therein is for us the foundation of all ethics. Thereby it is that we separate ourselves from the ethics of interest and the ethics of sentiment. We admit all the facts, but we do not admit them in the same rank.

To the moral law in the reason of man corresponds liberty in action. Liberty is deduced from obligation, and moreover it is a fact of an irresistible evidence.

Man as a being free and subject to obligation, is a moral person. The idea of person contains several moral notions, among others that of right. Person alone can have rights.

To all these ideas is added that of merit and demerit, which serves as their sanction.

Merit and demerit suppose the distinction between good and evil, obligation and liberty, and give birth to the idea of reward and punishment.

It is on the condition that the good may be an object of reason, that ethics can have an immovable basis. We have therefore insisted on the rational character of the idea of the good, but without misconceiving the part of sentiment.

We have distinguished that particular sensibility, which is stirred in us in the train of reason itself, from physical sensibility, which needs an impression made upon the organs in order to enter into exercise.

All our moral judgments are accompanied by sentiments that respond to them. The sight of an action which we judge to be good gives us pleasure,—the consciousness of having performed an obligatory act, and of having performed it freely, is also a pleasure; the judgment of merit and demerit makes our hearts beat by taking the form of sympathy and benevolence.

It must be avowed that the law of duty, although it ought to be fulfilled for its own sake, would be an ideal almost inaccessible to human weakness, if to its austere prescriptions were not added some inspiration of the heart. Sentiment is in some sort a natural grace that has been given us, either to supply the light of reason that is sometimes uncertain, or to succor the will wavering in the presence of an obscure or painful duty. In order to resist the violence of culpable passions, the aid of generous passions is needed; and when the moral law exacts the sacrifice of natural sentiments, of the sweetest and most lively instincts, it is fortunate that it can support itself on other sentiments, or other instincts which also have their charm and their force. Truth enlightens the mind; sentiment warms the soul and leads to action. It is not cold reason that determines a Codrus to devote himself for his countrymen, a d'Assas to utter, beneath the steel of the enemy, the generous cry that brings him death and saves the army. Let us guard ourselves, then, from weakening the authority of sentiment; let us honor and sustain enthusiasm; it is the source whence spring great and heroic actions.

And shall interest be entirely banished from our system? No; we recognize in the human soul a desire for happiness which is the work of God himself. This desire is a fact,—it must then have its place in a system founded upon experience. Happiness is one of the ends of human nature; only it is neither its sole end nor its principal end.

Admirable economy of the moral constitution of man! Its supreme end is the good, its law is virtue, which often imposes on it suffering, and thereby it is the most excellent of all things that we know. But this law is very hard and in contradiction with the instinct of happiness. Fear nothing,—the beneficent author of our being has placed in our souls, by the side of the severe law of duty, the sweet and amiable force of sentiment,—he has, in general, attached happiness to virtue; and, for the exceptions, for there are exceptions, at the end of the course he has placed hope.[230]

Our doctrine is now known. Its only pretension is to express faithfully each fact, to express them all, and to make appear at once their differences and their harmony.

Beyond that there is nothing new to attempt in ethics. To admit only a single fact and to sacrifice to that all the rest,—such is the beaten way. Of all the facts that we have just analyzed, there is not one that has not in its turn played the part of sole principle. All the great schools of moral philosophy have each seen only one side of truth,—fortunate when they have not chosen among the different phases of the moral phenomenon, in order to found upon them their entire system, precisely those that are least adapted to that end!

Who could now return to Epicurus, and, against the most manifest facts, against common sense, against the very idea of all ethics, found duty, virtue, the good, on the desire of happiness alone? It would be proof of great blindness and great barrenness. On the other hand, shall we immolate the need of happiness, the hope of all reward, human or divine, to the abstract idea of the good? The Stoics have done it,—we know with what apparent grandeur, with what real impotence. Shall we confine with Kant the whole of ethics to obligation? That is straitening still more a system that is already very narrow. Moreover, one may hope to surpass Kant in extent of views, by a completer knowledge and more faithful representation of facts; one cannot hope to be more profound in the point of view that he has chosen. Or, in another order of ideas, shall we refer to the will of God alone the obligation of virtue, and found ethics on religion, instead of giving religion to ethics as their necessary perfection? We still invent nothing new, we only renew the ethics of the theologians of the Middle Age, or rather of a particular school which has had for its adversaries the most illustrious doctors. Finally, shall we reduce all morality to sentiment, to sympathy, to benevolence? It only remains to follow the footsteps of Hutcheson and Smith, abandoned by Reid himself, or the footsteps of a celebrated adversary of Kant, Jacobi.[231]

The time of exclusive theories has gone by; to renew them is to perpetuate war in philosophy. Each of them, being founded upon a real fact, rightly refuses the sacrifice of this fact; and it meets in hostile theories an equal right and an equal resistance. Hence the perpetual return of the same systems, always at war with each other, and by turns vanquished and victorious. This strife can cease only by means of a doctrine that conciliates all systems by comprising all the facts that give them authority.

It is not the preconceived design of conciliating systems in history that suggests to us the idea of conciliating facts in reality. It is, on the contrary, the full possession of all the facts, analogous and different, that forces us to absolve and condemn all systems on account of the truth that is in each of them, and on account of the errors that are mixed with the truth.

It is important to repeat continually, that nothing is so easy as to arrange a system, by suppressing or altering the facts that embarrass it. But is it, then, the object of philosophy to produce at any cost a system, instead of seeking to understand the truth and express it as it is?

It is objected that such a doctrine has not sufficient character. But is it not sporting with philosophy to demand of it any other character than that of truth? Do men complain that modern chemistry has not sufficient character, because it limits itself to studying facts in their relations, and also in their differences, and because it does not end at a single substance? The only true philosophy that is proper for a century returned from all exaggerations, is a picture of human nature whose first merit is fidelity, which must offer all the traits of the original in their right proportion and real harmony. The unity of the doctrine that we profess is in that of the human soul, whence we have drawn it. Is it not one and the same being that perceives the good, that knows that he is obligated to fulfil it, that knows that he is free in fulfilling it, that loves the good, and judges that the fulfilment or violation of the good justly brings after it reward or punishment, happiness or misery? We draw, then, a true unity from the intimate relation between all the facts that, as we have seen, imply and sustain each other. But by what right is the unity of a doctrine placed in allowing in it only a single principle? Such a unity is possible only in those regions of mathematical abstraction, where one is not disturbed by what is, where one retrenches at will from the object that he is studying, in order to simplify it continually, where every thing is reduced to pure notions. In the reality all is determined, and consequently, all is complex. A science of facts is not a series of equations. In it must be found again the life that is in things, life with its harmony doubtless, but also with its richness and diversity.[232]

LECTURE XV.

PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS.

The character of reason being, as we have said, its universality, action, in order to be conformed to reason, must possess something universal; and as it is the motive itself of the action that gives it its morality, it is also the motive that must, if the action is good, reflect the character of reason. By what sign, then, do you recognize that an action is conformed to reason, that it is good? By the sign that the motive of this action being generalized, appears to you a maxim of universal legislation, which reason imposes upon all intelligent and free beings. If you are not able thus to generalize the motive of an action, and if it is the opposite motive that appears to you a universal maxim, your action, being opposed to this maxim, is thereby proved to be contrary to reason and duty,—it is bad. If neither the motive of your action nor the motive of the opposite action can be erected into a universal law, the action is neither good nor bad, it is indifferent. Such is the ingenious measure that Kant has applied to the morality of actions. It makes known with the last degree of clearness where duty is and where it is not, as the severe and naked form of syllogism, being applied to reasoning, brings out in the precisest manner its error or its truth.

To obey reason,—such is duty in itself, the duty superior to all other duties, giving to all others their foundation, and being itself founded only on the essential relation between liberty and reason.

It may be said that there is only a single duty, that of obeying reason. But man having different relations, this single and general duty is determined by these different relations, and divided into a corresponding number of particular duties.

Of all the beings that we know, there is not one with whom we are more constantly in relation than with ourselves. The actions of which man is at once the author and the object, have rules as well as other actions. Hence that first class of duties which are called the duties of man towards himself.

At first sight, it is strange that man should have duties towards himself. Man, being free, belongs to himself. What is most to me is myself:—this is the first property and the foundation of all other properties. Now, is it not the essence of property to be at the free disposition of the proprietor, and consequently, am I not able to do with myself what I please?

No; from the fact that man is free, from the fact that he belongs only to himself, it must not be concluded that he has over himself all power. On the contrary, indeed, from the fact alone that he is endowed with liberty, as well as intelligence, I conclude that he can no more degrade his liberty than his intelligence, without transgressing. It is a culpable use of liberty to abdicate it. We have said that liberty is not only sacred to others, but is so to itself. To subject it to the yoke of passion, instead of increasing it under the liberal discipline of duty, is to abase in us what deserves our respect as much as the respect of others. Man is not a thing; it has not, then, been permitted him to treat himself as a thing.

If I have duties towards myself, it is not towards myself as an individual, it is towards the liberty and intelligence that make me a free moral person. It is necessary to distinguish closely in us what is peculiar to us from what pertains to humanity. Each one of us contains in himself human nature with all its essential elements; and, in addition, all these elements are in him in a certain manner that is not the same in two different men. These particularities make the individual, but not the person; and the person alone in us is to be respected and held as sacred, because it alone represents humanity. Every thing that does not concern the moral person is indifferent. In these limits I may consult my tastes, even my fancies to a certain extent, because in them there is nothing absolute, because in them good and evil are in no way involved. But as soon as an act touches the moral person, my liberty is subjected to its law, to reason, which does not allow liberty to be turned against itself. For example, if through caprice, or melancholy, or any other motive, I condemn myself to an abstinence too prolonged, if I impose on myself vigils protracted and beyond my strength; if I absolutely renounce all pleasure, and, by these excessive privations, endanger my health, my life, my reason, these are no longer indifferent actions. Sickness, death, madness, may become crimes, if we voluntarily bring them upon ourselves.

I have not established this obligation of self-respect imposed on the moral person, therefore I cannot destroy it. Is self-respect founded on one of those arbitrary conventions that cease to exist when the two contracting parties freely renounce them? Are the two contracting parties here me and myself? By no means; one of the contracting parties is not me, to wit, humanity, the moral person. And there is here neither convention nor contract. By the fact alone that the moral person is in us, we are obligated towards it, without convention of any sort, without contract that can be cancelled, and by the very nature of things. Hence it comes that obligation is absolute.

Respect of the moral person in us is the general principle whence are derived all individual duties. We will cite some of them.

The most important, that which governs all others, is the duty of remaining master of one's self. One may lose possession of himself in two ways, either by allowing himself to be carried away, or by allowing himself to be overcome, by yielding to enervating passions or to overwhelming passions, to anger or to melancholy. On either hand there is equal weakness. And I do not speak of the consequences of those vices for society and ourselves,—certainly they are very injurious; but they are much worse than that, they are already bad in themselves, because in themselves they give a blow to moral dignity, because they diminish liberty and disturb intelligence.

Prudence is an eminent virtue. I speak of that noble prudence that is the moderation in all things, the foresight, the fitness, that preserve at once from negligence and that rashness which adorns itself with the name of heroism, as cowardice and selfishness sometimes usurp the name of prudence. Heroism, without being premeditated, ought always to be rational. One may be a hero at intervals; but, in every-day life, it is sufficient to be a wise man. We must ourselves hold the reins of our life, and not prepare difficulties for ourselves by carelessness or bravado, nor create for ourselves useless perils. Doubtless we must know how to dare, but still prudence is, if not the principle, at least the rule of courage; for true courage is not a blind transport, it is before all coolness and self possession in danger. Prudence also teaches temperance; it keeps the soul in that state of moderation without which man is incapable of recognizing and practising justice. This is the reason why the ancients said that prudence is the mother and guardian of all the virtues. Prudence is the government of liberty by reason, as imprudence is liberty escaped from reason:—on the one side, order, the legitimate subordination of our faculties to each other; on the other, anarchy and revolt.[233]

Veracity is also a great virtue. Falsehood, by breaking the natural alliance between man and truth, deprives him of that which makes his dignity. This is the reason why there is no graver insult than giving the lie, and why the most honored virtues are sincerity and frankness.

One may degrade the moral person by wounding it in its instruments. For this reason the body is to man the object of imperative duties. The body may become an obstacle or a means. If you refuse it what sustains and strengthens it, or if you demand too much from it by exciting it beyond measure, you exhaust it, and by abusing it, deprive yourself of it. It is worse still if you pamper it, if you grant every thing to its unbridled desires, if you make yourself its slave. It is being unfaithful to the soul to enfeeble its servant; it is being much more unfaithful to it still, to enslave it to its servant.

But it is not enough to respect the moral person, it is necessary to perfect it; it is necessary to labor to return the soul to God better than we received it; and it can become so only by a constant and courageous exercise. Everywhere in nature, all things are spontaneously developed, without willing it, and without knowing it. With man, if the will slumbers, the other faculties degenerate into languor and inertion; or, carried away by the blind impulse of passion, they are precipitated and go astray. It is by the government and education of himself that man is great.

Man must, before every thing else, occupy himself with his intelligence. It is in fact our intelligence that alone can give us a clear sight of the true and the good, that guides liberty by showing it the legitimate object of its efforts. No one can give himself another mind than the one that he has received, but he may train and strengthen it as well as the body, by putting it to a task of some kind, by rousing it when it is drowsy, by restraining it when it is carried away, by continually proposing to it new objects,—for it is only by continually enriching it that it does not grow poor. Sloth benumbs and enervates the mind; regular work excites and strengthens it, and work is always in our power.

There is an education of liberty as well as our other faculties. It is sometimes in subduing the body, sometimes in governing our intelligence, especially in resisting our passions, that we learn to be free. We encounter opposition at each step,—the only question is not to shun it. In this constant struggle liberty is formed and augmented, until it becomes a habit.

Finally, there is a culture of sensibility itself. Fortunate are those who have received from nature the sacred fire of enthusiasm! They ought religiously to preserve it. But there is no soul that does not conceal some fortunate vein of it. It is necessary to watch it and pursue, to avoid what restrains it, to seek what favors it, and, by an assiduous culture, draw from it, little by little, some treasures. If we cannot give ourselves sensibility, we can at least develop what we have. We can do this by giving ourselves up to it, by seizing all the occasions of giving ourselves up to it, by calling to its aid intelligence itself; for, the more we know of the beautiful and the good, the more we love it. Sentiment thereby only borrows from intelligence what it returns with usury. Intelligence in its turn finds, in the heart, a rampart against sophism. Noble, sentiments, nourished and developed, preserve from those sad systems that please certain spirits so much only because their hearts are so small.

Man would still have duties, should he cease to be in relation with other men.[234] As long as he preserves any intelligence and any liberty, the idea of the good dwells in him, and with it duty. Were we cast upon a desert island, duty would follow us thither. It would be beyond belief strange that it should be in the power of certain external circumstances to affranchise an intelligent and free being from all obligation towards his liberty and his intelligence. In the deepest solitude he is always and consciously under the empire of a law attached to the person itself, which, by obligating him to keep continual watch over himself, makes at once his torment and his grandeur.

If the moral person is sacred to me, it is not because it is in me, it is because it is the moral person; it is in itself respectable; it will be so, then, wherever we meet it.

It is in you as in me, and for the same reason. In relation to me it imposes on me a duty; in you it becomes the foundation of a right, and thereby imposes on me a new duty in relation to you.

I owe to you truth as I owe it to myself; for truth is the law of your reason as of mine. Without doubt there ought to be measure in the communication of truth,—all are not capable of it at the same moment and in the same degree; it is necessary to portion it out to them in order that they may be able to receive it; but, in fine, the truth is the proper good of the intelligence; and it is for me a strict duty to respect the development of your mind, not to arrest, and even to favor its progress towards truth.

I ought also to respect your liberty. I have not even always the right to hinder you from committing a fault. Liberty is so sacred that, even when it goes astray, it still deserves, up to a certain point, to be managed. We are often wrong in wishing to prevent too much the evil that God himself permits. Souls may be corrupted by an attempt to purify them.

I ought to respect you in your affections, which make part of yourself; and of all the affections there are none more holy than those of the family. There is in us a need of expanding ourselves beyond ourselves, yet without dispelling ourselves, of establishing ourselves in some souls by a regular and consecrated affection,—to this need the family responds. The love of men is something of the general good. The family is still almost the individual, and not merely the individual,—it only requires us to love as much as ourselves what is almost ourselves. It attaches one to the other, by the sweetest and strongest of all ties—father, mother, child; it gives to this sure succor in the love of its parents—to these hope, joy, new life, in their child. To violate the conjugal or paternal right, is to violate the person in what is perhaps its most sacred possession.

I ought to respect your body, inasmuch as it belongs to you, inasmuch as it is the necessary instrument of your person. I have neither the right to kill you, nor to wound you, unless I am attacked and threatened; then my violated liberty is armed with a new right, the right of defence and even constraint.

I owe respect to your goods, for they are the product of your labor; I owe respect to your labor, which is your liberty itself in exercise; and, if your goods come from an inheritance, I still owe respect to the free will that has transmitted them to you.[235]

Respect for the rights of others is called justice; every violation of a right is an injustice.

Every injustice is an encroachment upon our person,—to retrench the least of our rights, is to diminish our moral person, is, at least, so far as that retrenchment goes, to abase us to the condition of a thing.

The greatest of all injustices, because it comprises all others, is slavery. Slavery is the subjecting of all the faculties of one man to the profit of another man. The slave develops his intelligence a little only in the interest of another,—it is not for the purpose of enlightening him, but to render him more useful, that some exercise of mind is allowed him. The slave has not the liberty of his movements; he is attached to the soil, is sold with it, or he is chained to the person of a master. The slave should have no affection, he has no family, no wife, no children,—he has a female and little ones. His activity does not belong to him, for the product of his labor is another's. But, that nothing may be wanting to slavery, it is necessary to go farther,—in the slave must be destroyed the inborn sentiment of liberty, in him must be extinguished all idea of right; for, as long as this idea subsists, slavery is uncertain, and to an odious power may respond the terrible right of insurrection, that last resort of the oppressed against the abuse of force.[236]

Justice, respect for the person in every thing that constitutes the person, is the first duty of man towards his fellow-man. Is this duty the only one?

When we have respected the person of others, when we have neither restrained their liberty, nor smothered their intelligence, nor maltreated their body, nor outraged their family, nor injured their goods, are we able to say that we have fulfilled the whole law in regard to them? One who is unfortunate is suffering before us. Is our conscience satisfied, if we are able to bear witness to ourselves that we have not contributed to his sufferings? No; something tells that it is still good to give him bread, succor, consolation.

There is here an important distinction to be made. If you have remained hard and insensible at the sight of another's misery, conscience cries out against you; and yet this man who is suffering, who, perhaps, is ready to die, has not the least right over the least part of your fortune, were it immense; and, if he used violence for the purpose of wresting from you a single penny, he would commit a crime. We here meet a new order of duties that do not correspond to rights. Man may resort to force in order to make his rights respected; he cannot impose on another any sacrifice whatever. Justice respects or restores; charity gives, and gives freely.

Charity takes from us something in order to give it to our fellow-men. If it goes so far as to inspire us to renounce our dearest interests, it is called devotedness.

It certainly cannot be said that to be charitable is not obligatory. But this obligation must not be regarded as precise, as inflexible as the obligation to be just. Charity is a sacrifice; and who can find the rule of sacrifice, the formula of self-renunciation? For justice, the formula is clear,—to respect the rights of another. But charity knows neither rule nor limit. It transcends all obligation. Its beauty is precisely in its liberty.

But it must be acknowledged that charity also has its dangers. It tends to substitute its own action for the action of him whom it wishes to help; it somewhat effaces his personality, and makes itself in some sort his providence,—a formidable part for a mortal! In order to be useful to others, one imposes himself on them, and runs the risk of violating their natural rights. Love, in giving itself, enslaves. Doubtless it is not interdicted us to act upon another. We can always do it through petition and exhortation. We can also do it by threatening, when we see one of our fellows engaged in a criminal or senseless action. We have even the right to employ force when passion carries away liberty and makes the person disappear. So we may, we even ought to prevent by force the suicide of one of our fellow-men. The legitimate power of charity is measured by the more or less liberty and reason possessed by him to whom it is applied. What delicacy, then, is necessary in the exercise of this perilous virtue! How can we estimate with sufficient certainty the degree of liberty still possessed by one of our fellow-men to know how far we may substitute ourselves for him in the guiding of his destiny? And when, in order to assist a feeble soul, we take possession of it, who is sufficiently sure of himself not to go farther, not to pass from the person governed to the love of domination itself? Charity is often the commencement and the excuse, and always the pretext of usurpation. In order to have the right of abandoning one's self to the emotions of charity, it is necessary to be fortified against one's self by a long exercise of justice.

To respect the rights of others and do good to men, to be at once just and charitable,—such are social ethics in the two elements that constitute them.

We speak of social ethics, and we do not yet know what society is. Let us look around us:—everywhere society exists, and where it is not, man is not man. Society is a universal fact which must have universal foundations.

Let us avoid at first the question of the origin of society.[237] The philosophy of the last century delighted in such questions too much. How can we demand light from the regions of darkness, and the explanation of reality from an hypothesis? Why go back to a pretended primitive state in order to account for a present state which may be studied in itself in its unquestionable characters? Why seek what may have been in the germ that which may be perceived, that which it is the question to understand, completed and perfect? Moreover, there is great peril in starting with the question of the origin of society. Has such or such an origin been found? Actual society is arranged according to the type of the primitive society that has been dreamed of, and political society is delivered up to the mercy of historical romances. This one imagines that the primitive state is violence, and he sets out from that in order to authorize the right of the strongest, and to consecrate despotism. That one thinks that he has found in the family the first form of society, and he compares government to the father of a family, and subjects to children; society in his eyes is a minor that must be held in tutelage in the hands of the paternal power, which in the origin is absolute, and consequently, must remain so. Or has one thrown himself to the extreme of the opposite opinion, and into the hypothesis of an agreement, of a contract that expresses the will of all or of the greatest number? He delivers up to the mobile will of the crowd the eternal laws of justice and the inalienable rights of the person. Finally, are powerful religious institutions found in the cradle of society? It is hence concluded, that power belongs of right to priesthoods, which have the secret of the designs of God, and represent his sovereign authority. Thus a vicious method in philosophy leads to a deplorable political system,—the commencement is made in hypothesis, and the termination is in anarchy or tyranny.

True politics do not depend on more or less well directed historical researches into the profound night of a past forever vanished, and of which no vestige subsists: they rest on the knowledge of human nature.

Wherever society is, wherever it was, it has for its foundations:—1st, The need that we have of our fellow-creatures, and the social instincts that man bears in himself; 2d, The permanent and indestructible idea and sentiment of justice and right.

Man, feeble and powerless when he is alone, profoundly feels the need that he has of the succor of his fellow-creatures in order to develop his faculties, to embellish his life, and even to preserve it.[238] Without reflection, without convention, he claims the hand, the experience, the love of those whom he sees made like himself. The instinct of society is in the first cry of the child that calls for the mother's help without knowing that it has a mother, and in the eagerness of the mother to respond to the cries of the child. It is in the feelings for others that nature has put in us—pity, sympathy, benevolence. It is in the attraction of the sexes, in their union, in the love of parents for their children, and in the ties of every kind that these first ties engender. If Providence has attached so much sadness to solitude, so much charm to society, it is because society is indispensable for the preservation of man and for his happiness, for his intellect and moral development.

But if need and instinct begin society, it is justice that completes it.

In the presence of another man, without any external law, without any compact,[239] it is sufficient that I know that he is a man, that is to say, that he is intelligent and free, in order to know that he has rights, and to know that I ought to respect his rights as he ought to respect mine. As he is no freer than I am, nor I than he, we recognize towards each other equal rights and equal duties. If he abuses his force to violate the equality of our rights, I know that I have the right to defend myself and make myself respected; and if a third party is found between us, without any personal interest in the quarrel, he knows that it is his right and his duty to use force in order to protect the feeble, and even to make the oppressor expiate his injustice by a chastisement. Therein is already seen entire society with its essential principles,—justice, liberty, equality, government, and punishment.

Justice is the guaranty of liberty. True liberty does not consist in doing what we will, but in doing what we have a right to do. Liberty of passion and caprice would have for its consequence the enslavement of the weakest to the strongest, and the enslavement of the strongest themselves to their unbridled desires. Man is truly free in the interior of his consciousness only in resisting passion and obeying justice; therein also is the type of true social liberty. Nothing is falser than the opinion that society diminishes our mutual liberty; far from that, it secures it, develops it: what it suppresses is not liberty; it is its opposite, passion. Society no more injures liberty than justice, for society is nothing else than the very idea of justice realized.

In securing liberty, justice secures equality also. If men are unequal in physical force and intelligence, they are equal in so far as they are free beings, and consequently equally worthy of respect. All men, when they bear the sacred character of the moral person, are to be respected, by the same title, and in the same degree.[240]

The limit of liberty is in liberty itself; the limit of right is in duty. Liberty is to be respected, but provided it injure not the liberty of an other. I ought to let you do what you please, but on the condition that nothing which you do will injure my liberty. For then, in virtue of my right of liberty, I should regard myself as obligated to repress the aberrations of your will, in order to protect my own and that of others. Society guaranties the liberty of each one, and if one citizen attacks that of another, he is arrested in the name of liberty. For example, religious liberty is sacred; you may, in the secret of consciousness, invent for yourself the most extravagant superstition; but if you wish publicly to inculcate an immoral worship, you threaten the liberty and reason of your citizens: such preaching is interdicted.

From the necessity of repressing springs the necessity of a constituted repressive force.

Rigorously, this force is in us; for if I am unjustly attacked, I have the right to defend myself. But, in the first place, I may not be the strongest; in the second place, no one is an impartial judge in his own cause, and what I regard or give out as an act of legitimate defence may be an act of violence and oppression.

So the protection of the rights of each one demands an impartial and disinterested force, that may be superior to all particular forces.

This disinterested party, armed with the power necessary to secure and defend the liberty of all, is called government.

The right of government expresses the rights of all and each. It is the right of personal defence transferred to a public force, to the profit of common liberty.

Government is not, then, a power distinct from and independent of society; it draws from society its whole force. It is not what it has seemed to two opposite schools of publicists,—to those who sacrifice society to government,—to those who consider government as the enemy of society. If government did not represent society, it would be only a material, illegitimate, and soon powerless force; and without government, society would be a war of all against all. Society makes the moral power of government, as government makes the security of society. Pascal is wrong[241] when he says, that not being able to make what is just powerful, men have made what is powerful just. Government, in principle at least, is precisely what Pascal desired,—justice armed with force.

It is a sad and false political system that places society and government, authority and liberty, in opposition to each other, by making them come from two different sources, by presenting them as two contrary principles. I often hear the principle of authority spoken of as a principle apart, independent, deriving from itself its force and legitimacy, and consequently made to rule. No error is deeper and more dangerous. Thereby it is thought to confirm the principle of authority; far from that, from it is taken away its solidest foundation. Authority—that is to say, legitimate and moral authority—is nothing else than justice, and justice is nothing else than the respect of liberty; so that there is not therein two different and contrary opinions, but one and the same principle, of equal certainty and equal grandeur, under all its forms and in all its applications.

Authority, it is said, comes from God: doubtless; but whence comes liberty, whence comes humanity? To God must be referred every thing that is excellent on the earth; and nothing is more excellent than liberty. Reason, which in man commands liberty, commands it according to its nature; and the first law that reason imposes on liberty is that of self-respect.

Authority is so much the stronger as its true title is better understood; and obedience is the easiest when, instead of degrading, it honors; when, instead of resembling servitude, it is at once the condition and guaranty of liberty.

The mission, the end of government, is to make justice, the protector of the common liberty, reign. Whence it follows, that as long as the liberty of one citizen does not injure the liberty of another, it escapes all repression. So government cannot be severe against falsehood, intemperance, imprudence, levity, avarice, egoism, except when these vices become prejudicial to others. Moreover, it is not necessary to confine government within too narrow limits. Government, which represents society, is also a moral person; it has a heart like the individual; it has generosity, goodness, charity. There are legitimate, and even universally admired facts, that are not explained, if the function of government is reduced to the protection of rights alone.[242] Government owes to the citizens, in a certain measure, to guard their well-being, to develop their intelligence, to fortify their morality, for the interest of society, and even for the interest of humanity. Hence sometimes for government the formidable right of using force in order to do good to men. But we are here touching upon that delicate point where charity inclines to despotism. Too much intelligence and wisdom, therefore, cannot be demanded in the employment of a power perhaps necessary, but dangerous.

Now, on what condition is government exercised? Is an act of its own will sufficient for it in order to employ to its own liking under all circumstances, as it shall understand them, the power that has been confided to it? Government must have been thus exercised in early society, and in the infancy of the art of governing. But the power, exercised by men, may go astray in different ways, either through weakness or through excess of force. It must, then, have a rule superior to itself, a public and known rule, that may be a lesson for the citizens, and for the government a rein and support: that rule is called law.

Universal and absolute law is natural justice, which cannot be written, but speaks to the reason and heart of all. Written laws are the formulas wherein it is sought to express, with the least possible imperfection, what natural justice requires in such or such determined circumstances.

If laws propose to express in each thing natural justice, which is universal and absolute justice, one of the necessary conditions of a good law is the universality of its character. It is necessary to examine in an abstract and general manner what is required by justice in such or such a case, to the end that this case being presented may be judged according to the rule laid down, without regard to circumstances, place, time, or person.

The collection of those rules or laws that govern the social relations of individuals is called positive right. Positive right rests wholly on natural right, which at once serves as its foundation, measure, and limit. The supreme law of every positive law is that it be not opposed to natural law: no law can impose on us a false duty, nor deprive us of a true right.

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 état, 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]

LECTURE XVI.

GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD.