Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good Part 17

We are about to show that the ethics of interest, an offspring of the philosophy of sensation, are in contradiction with a certain number of phenomena, which human nature presents to whomsoever interrogates it without the spirit of system.

1st. We have established, not in the name of a system, but in the name of the most common experience, that entire humanity believes in the existence, in each of its members, of a certain force, a certain power that is called liberty. Because it believes in liberty in the individual, it desires that this liberty should be respected and protected in society. Liberty is a fact that the consciousness of each of us attests to him, which, moreover, is enveloped in all the moral phenomena that we have signalized, in moral approbation and disapprobation, in esteem and contempt, in admiration and indignation, in merit and demerit, in punishment and reward. We ask the philosophy of sensation and the ethics of interest what they do with this universal phenomena which all the beliefs of humanity suppose, on which entire life, private and public, turns.

Every system of ethics, whatever it may be, which contains, I do not say a rule, but a simple advice, implicitly admits liberty. When the ethics of interest advise a man to sacrifice the agreeable to the useful, it apparently admits that man is free to follow or not to follow this advice. But in philosophy it does not suffice to admit a fact, there must be the right to admit it. Now, most moralists of interest deny the liberty of man, and no one has the right to admit it in a system that derives the entire human soul, all its faculties as well as all its ideas, from sensation alone and its developments.

When an agreeable sensation, after having charmed our soul, quits it and vanishes, the soul experiences a sort of suffering, a want, a need,--it is agitated, disquieted. This disquietude, at first vague and indecisive, is soon determined; it is borne towards the object that has pleased us, whose absence makes us suffer. This movement of the soul, more or less vivid, is desire.

Is there in desire any of the characters of liberty? What is it called to be free? Each one knows that he is free, when he knows that he is master of his action, that he can begin it, arrest it, or continue it as he pleases. We are free, when before acting we have taken the resolution to act, knowing well that we are able to take the opposite resolution. A free act is that of which, by the infallible testimony of my consciousness, I know that I am the cause, for which, therefore, I regard myself as responsible. G.o.d, the world, the body, can produce in me a thousand movements; these movements may seem to the eyes of an external observer to be voluntary acts; but any error is impossible to consciousness,--it distinguishes every movement not voluntary, whatever it may be, from a voluntary act.

True activity is voluntary and free activity. Desire is just the opposite. Desire, carried to its culmination, is pa.s.sion; but language, as well as consciousness, says that man is pa.s.sive in pa.s.sion; and the more vivid pa.s.sion is, the more imperative are its movements, the farther is it from the type of true activity in which the soul possesses and governs itself.

I am no more free in desire than in the sensation that precedes and determines it. If an agreeable object is presented to me, am I able not to be agreeably moved? If it is a painful object, am I able not to be painfully moved? And so, when this agreeable sensation has disappeared, if memory and imagination remind me of it, is it in my power not to suffer from no longer experiencing it, is it in my power not to feel the need of experiencing it again, and to desire more or less ardently the object that alone can appease the disquietude and suffering of my soul?

Observe well what takes place within you in desire; you recognize in it a blind emotion, that, without any deliberation on your part, and without the intervention of your will, rises or falls, increases or diminishes. One does not desire, and cease to desire, according to his will.

Will often combats desire, as it often also yields to it; it is not, therefore, desire. We do not reproach the sensations that objects produce, nor even the desires that these sensations engender; we do reproach ourselves for the consent of the will to these desires, and the acts that follow, for these acts are in our power.

Desire is so little will, that it often abolishes it, and leads man into acts that he does not impute to himself, for they are not voluntary. It is even the refuge of many of the accused; they lay their faults to the violence of desire and pa.s.sion, which have not left them masters of themselves.

If desire were the basis of will, the stronger the desire the freer we should be. Evidently the contrary is true. As the violence of desire increases, the dominion of man over himself decreases; and as desire is weakened and pa.s.sion extinguished, man repossesses himself.

I do not say that we have no influence over our desires. That two facts differ, it does not follow that they must be without relation to each other. By removing certain objects, or even by merely diverting our thoughts away from the pleasure that they can give us, we are able, to a certain extent, to turn aside and elude the sensible effects of these objects, and escape the desire which they might excite in us. One may also, by surrounding himself with certain objects, in some sort manage himself, and produce in himself sensations and desires which for that are not more voluntary than would be the impression made upon us by a stone with which we should strike ourselves. By yielding to these desires, we lend them a new force, and we moderate them by a skilful resistance. One even has some power over the organs of the body, and, by applying to them an appropriate regimen, he goes so far as to modify their functions. All this proves that there is in us a power different from the senses and desire, which, without disposing of them, sometimes exercises over them an indirect authority.

Will also directs intelligence, although it is not intelligence. To will and to know are two things essentially different. We do not judge as we will, but according to the necessary laws of the judgment and the understanding. The knowledge of truth is not a resolution of the will.

It is not the will that declares, for example, that body is extended, that it is in s.p.a.ce, that every phenomenon has a cause, etc. Yet the will has much power over intelligence. It is freely and voluntarily that we work, that we give attention, for a longer or a shorter time, more or less intense, to certain things; consequently, it is the will that develops and increases intelligence, as it might let it languish and become extinguished. It must, then, be avowed that there is in us a supreme power that presides over all our faculties, over intelligence as well as sensibility, which is distinguished from them, and is mingled with them, governs them, or leaves them to their natural development, making appear, even in its absence, the character that belongs to it, since the man that is deprived of it avows that he is no longer master of himself, that he is not himself, so true is it that human personality resides particularly in that prominent power that is called the will.[193]

Singular destiny of that power, so often misconceived, and yet so manifest! Strange confounding of will and desire, wherein the most opposite schools meet each other, Spinoza, Malebranche, and Condillac, the philosophy of the seventeenth century, and that of the eighteenth!

One, a despiser of humanity, by an extreme and ill-understood piety, strips man of his own activity, in order to concentrate it in G.o.d; the other transfers it to nature. In both man is a mere instrument, nothing else than a mode of G.o.d or a product of nature. When desire is once taken as the type of human activity, there is an end of all liberty and personality. A philosophy, less systematic, by conforming itself to facts, carries through common sense to better results. By distinguis.h.i.+ng between the pa.s.sive phenomenon of desire and the power of freely determining self, it restores the true activity that characterizes human personality. The will is the infallible sign and the peculiar power of a real and effective being; for how could he who should be only a mode of another being find in his own borrowed being a power capable of willing and producing acts of which he should feel himself the cause, and the responsible cause?

If the philosophy of sensation, by setting out from pa.s.sive phenomena, cannot explain true activity, voluntary and free activity, we might regard it as demonstrated that this same philosophy cannot give a true doctrine of morality, for all ethics suppose liberty. In order to impose rules of action on a being, it is necessary that this being should be capable of fulfilling or violating them. What makes the good and evil of an action is not the action itself, but the intention that has determined it. Before every equitable tribunal, the crime is in the intention, and to the intention the punishment is attached. Where, then, liberty is wanting, where there is nothing but desire and pa.s.sion, not even a shade of morality subsists. But we do not wish to reject, by the previous question, the ethics of sensation. We proceed to examine in itself the principle that they lay down, and to show that from this principle can be deduced neither the idea of good and evil, nor any of the moral ideas that are attached to it.

2d. According to the philosophy of sensation, the good is nothing else than the useful. By subst.i.tuting the useful for the agreeable, without changing the principle, there has been contrived a convenient refuge against many difficulties; for it will always be possible to distinguish interest well understood from apparent and vulgar interest. But even under this somewhat refined form, the doctrine that we are examining none the less destroys the distinction between good and evil.

If utility is the sole measure of the goodness of actions, I must consider only one thing when an action is proposed to me to do,--what advantages can result from it to me?

So I make the supposition that a friend, whose innocence is known to me, falls into disfavor with a king, or opinion--a mistress more jealous and imperious than all kings,--and that there is danger in remaining faithful to him and advantage in separating myself from him; if, on one side, the danger is certain, and on the other the advantage is infallible, it is clear that I must either abandon my unfortunate friend, or renounce the principle of interest--of interest well understood.

But it will be said to me:--think on the uncertainty of human things; remember that misfortune may also overtake you, and do not abandon your friend, through fear that you may one day be abandoned.

I respond that, at first, it is the future that is uncertain, but the present is certain; if I can reap great and unmistakable advantages from an action, it would be absurd to sacrifice them to the chance of a possible misfortune. Besides, according to my supposition, all the chances of the future are in my favor,--this is the hypothesis that we have made.

Do not speak to me of public opinion. If personal interest is the only rational principle, the public reason must be with me. If it were against me, it would be an objection against the truth of the principle.

For how could a true principle, rationally applied, be revolting to the public conscience?

Neither oppose to me remorse. What remorse can I feel for having followed the truth, if the principle of interest is in fact moral truth?

On the contrary, I should feel satisfaction on account of it.

The rewards and punishments of another life remain. But how are we to believe in another life, in a system that confines human consciousness within the limits of transformed sensation?

I have, then, no motive to preserve fidelity to a friend. And mankind nevertheless imposes on me this fidelity; and, if I am wanting in it, I am dishonored.

If happiness is the highest aim, good and evil are not in the act itself, but in its happy or unhappy results.

Fontenelle seeing a man led to punishment, said, "There is a man who has calculated badly." Whence it follows that, if this man, in doing what he did, could have escaped punishment, he would have calculated well, and his conduct would have been laudable. The action then becomes good or ill according to the issue. Every act is of itself indifferent, and it is lot that qualifies it.

If the honest is only the useful, the genius of calculation is the highest wisdom; it is even virtue!

But this genius is not within the reach of everybody. It supposes, with long experience of life, a sure insight, capable of discerning all the consequences of actions, a head strong and large enough to embrace and weigh their different chances. The young man, the ignorant, the poor in mind, are not able to distinguish between the good and the evil, the honest and the dishonest. And even in supposing the most consummate prudence, what place remains, in the profound obscurity of human things, for chance and the unforeseen! In truth, in the system of interest well understood, there must be great knowledge in order to be an honest man.

Much less is requisite for ordinary virtue, whose motto has always been: Do what you ought, let come what may.[194] But this principle is precisely the opposite of the principle of interest. It is necessary to choose between them. If interest is the only principle avowed by reason, disinterestedness is a lie and madness, and literally an incomprehensible monster in well-ordered human nature.

Nevertheless humanity speaks of disinterestedness, and thereby it does not simply mean that wise selfishness that deprives itself of a pleasure for a surer, more delicate, or more durable pleasure. No one has ever believed that it was the nature or the degree of the pleasure sought that const.i.tuted disinterestedness. This name is awarded only to the sacrifice of an interest, whatever it may be, to a motive free from all interest. And the human race, not only thus understands disinterestedness, but it believes that such a disinterestedness exists; it believes the human soul capable of it. It admires the devotedness of Regulus, because it does not see what interest could have impelled that great man to go far from his country to seek, among cruel enemies, a frightful death, when he might have lived tranquil and even honored in the midst of his family and his fellow-citizens.

But glory, it will be said, the pa.s.sion of glory inspired Regulus; it is, then, interest still that explains the apparent heroism of the old Roman. Admit, then, that this manner of understanding his interest is even ridiculously absurd, and that heroes are very unskilful and inconsistent egoists. Instead of erecting statues, with the deceived human race, to Regulus, d'a.s.sas, and St. Vincent de Paul, true philosophy must send them to the Pet.i.tes-Maisons, that a good regime may cure them of generosity, charity, and greatness of soul, and restore them to the sane state, the normal state, the state in which man only thinks of himself, and knows no other law, no other principle of action than his interest.

3d. If there is no liberty, if there is no essential distinction between good and evil, if there is only interest well or ill understood, there can be no obligation.

It is at first very evident that obligation supposes a being capable of fulfilling it, that duty is applied only to a free being. Then the nature of obligation is such, that if we are delinquent in fulfilling it, we feel ourselves culpable, whilst if, instead of understanding our interest well, we have understood it ill, there follows only a single thing, that we are unfortunate. Are, then, being culpable and being unfortunate the same thing? These are two ideas radically different. You may advise me to understand my interest well, under penalty of falling into misfortune; you cannot command me to see clearly in regard to my interest under penalty of crime.

Imprudence has never been considered a crime. When it is morally accused, it is much less as being wrong than as attesting vices of the soul, lightness, presumption, feebleness.

As we have said, our true interest is often most difficult of discernment. Obligation is always immediate and manifest. In vain pa.s.sion and desire combat it; in vain the reasoning that pa.s.sion trains for its attendance, like a docile slave, tries to smother it under a ma.s.s of sophisms: the instinct of conscience, a cry of the soul, an intuition of reason, different from reasoning, is sufficient to repel all sophisms, and make obligation appear.

However pressing may be the solicitations of interest, we may always enter into contest and arrangement with it. There are a thousand ways of being happy. You a.s.sure me that, by conducting myself in such a manner, I shall arrive at fortune. Yes, but I love repose more than fortune, and with happiness alone in view, activity is not better than sloth. Nothing is more difficult than to advise any one in regard to his interest, nothing is easier than to advise him in regard to honor.

After all, in practice, the useful is resolved into the agreeable, that is to say, into pleasure. Now, in regard to pleasure, every thing depends on humor and temperament. When there is neither good nor evil in itself, there are no pleasures more or less n.o.ble, more or less elevated; there are only pleasures that are more or less agreeable to us. Every thing depends on the nature of each one. This is the reason why interest is so capricious. Each one understands it as it pleases him, because each one is the judge of what pleases him. One is more moved by pleasures of the senses; another by pleasures of mind and heart. To the latter, the pa.s.sion of glory takes the place of pleasures of the senses; to the former, the pleasure of dominion appears much superior to that of glory. Each man has his own pa.s.sions, each man, then, has his own way of understanding his interest; and even my interest of to-day is not my interest of to-morrow. The revolutions of health, age, and events greatly modify our tastes, our humors. We are ourselves perpetually changing, and with us change our desires and our interests.

It is not so with obligation. It exists not, or it is absolute. The idea of obligation implies that of something inflexible. That alone is a duty from which one cannot be loosed under any pretext, and is, by the same t.i.tle, a duty for all. There is one thing before which all the caprices of my mind, of my imagination, of my sensibility must disappear,--the idea of the good with the obligation which it involves. To this supreme command I can oppose neither my humor, nor circ.u.mstances, nor even difficulties. This law admits of no delay, no accommodation, no excuse.

When it speaks, be it to you or me, in whatever place, under whatever circ.u.mstance, in whatever disposition we may be, it only remains for us to obey. We are able not to obey, for we are free; but every disobedience to the law appears to ourselves a fault more or less grave, a bad use of our liberty. And the violated law has its immediate penal sanction in the remorse that it inflicts upon us.

The only penalty that is brought upon us by the counsels of prudence, comprehended more or less well, followed more or less well, is, in the final account, more or less happiness or unhappiness. Now I pray you, am I obligated to be happy? Can obligation depend upon happiness, that is to say, on a thing that it is equally impossible for me to always seek and obtain at will? If I am obligated, it must be in my power to fulfil the obligation imposed. But my liberty has but little power over my happiness, which depends upon a thousand circ.u.mstances independent of me, whilst it is all in all in regard to virtue, for virtue is only an employment of liberty. Moreover, happiness is in itself, morally, neither better nor worse than unhappiness. If I understand my interest badly, I am punished for it by regret, not by remorse. Unhappiness can overwhelm me; it does not disgrace me, if it is not the consequence of some vice of the soul.

Not that I would renew stoicism and say to suffering, Thou art no evil.

No, I earnestly advise man to escape suffering as much as he can, to understand well his interest, to shun unhappiness and seek happiness. I only wish to establish that happiness is one thing and virtue another, that man necessarily aspires after happiness, but that he is only obligated to virtue, and that consequently, by the side of and above interest well understood is a moral law, that is to say, as consciousness attests, and the whole human race avows, an imperative prescription of which one cannot voluntarily divest himself without crime and shame.

4th. If interest does not account for the idea of duty, by a necessary consequence, it does not more account for that of right; for duty and right reciprocally suppose each other.

Might and right must not be confounded. A being might have immense power, that of the whirlwind, of the thunderbolt, that of one of the forces of nature; if liberty is not joined to it, it is only a fearful and terrible thing, it is not a person,--it may inspire, in the highest degree, fear and hope,--it has no right to respect; one has no duties towards it.

Duty and right are brothers. Their common mother is liberty.

They are born at the same time, are developed and perish together. It might even be said that duty and right make one, and are the same being, having a face on two different sides. What, in fact, is my right to your respect, except the duty you have to respect me, because I am a free being? But you are yourself a free being, and the foundation of my right and your duty becomes for you the foundation of an equal right, and in me of an equal duty.[195]

I say equal with the exactest equality, for liberty, and liberty alone, is equal to itself. All the rest is diverse; by all the rest men differ; for resemblance implies difference. As there are no two leaves that are the same, there are no two men absolutely the same in body, senses, mind, heart. But it is impossible to conceive of difference between the free will of one man and the free will of another. I am free or I am not free. If I am free, I am free as much as you, and you are as much as I.

There is not in this more or less. One is a moral person as much as, and by the same t.i.tle as another moral person. Volition, which is the seat of liberty, is the same in all men. It may have in its service different instruments, powers different, and consequently unequal, whether material or spiritual. But the powers of which will disposes are not it,[196] for it does not dispose of them in an absolute manner. The only free power is that of will, but that is essentially so. If will recognizes laws, these laws are not motives, springs that move it,--they are ideal laws, that of justice, for example; will recognizes this law, and at the same time it has the consciousness of the ability to fulfil it or to break it, doing the one only with the consciousness of the ability to do the other, and reciprocally. Therein is the type of liberty, and at the same time of true equality; every thing else is false. It is not true that men have the right to be equally rich, beautiful, robust, to enjoy equally, in a word, to be equally fortunate; for they originally and necessarily differ in all those points of their nature that correspond to pleasure, to riches, to good fortune. G.o.d has made us with powers unequal in regard to all these things. Here equality is against nature and eternal order; for diversity and difference, as well as harmony, are the law of creation. To dream of such an equality is a strange mistake, a deplorable error. False equality is the idol of ill-formed minds and hearts, of disquiet and ambitious egoism. True equality accepts without shame all the exterior inequalities that G.o.d has made, and that it is not in the power of man not only to efface, but even to modify. n.o.ble liberty has nothing to settle with the furies of pride and envy. As it does not aspire to domination, so, and by virtue of the same principle, it does not more aspire to a chimerical equality of mind, of beauty, of fortune, of enjoyments. Moreover, such an equality, were it possible, would be of little value in its own eyes; it asks something much greater than pleasure, fortune, rank, to wit, respect. Respect, an equal respect of the sacred right of being free in every thing that const.i.tutes the person, that person which is truly man; this is what liberty and with it true equality claim, or rather imperatively demand. Respect must not be confounded with homage. I render homage to genius and beauty. I respect humanity alone, and by that I mean all free natures, for every thing that is not free in man is foreign to him. Man is therefore the equal of man precisely in every thing that makes him man, and the reign of true equality exacts on the part of all only the same respect for what each one possesses equally in himself, both young and old, both ugly and beautiful, both rich and poor, both the man of genius and the mediocre man, both woman and man, whatever has consciousness of being a person and not a thing. The equal respect of common liberty is the principle at once of duty and right; it is the virtue of each and the security of all; by an admirable agreement, it is dignity among men, and accordingly peace on earth. Such is the great and holy image of liberty and equality, which has made the hearts of our fathers beat, and the hearts of all virtuous and enlightened men, of all true friends of humanity. Such is the ideal that true philosophy pursues across the ages, from the generous dreams of Plato to the solid conceptions of Montesquieu, from the first free legislation of the smallest city of Greece to our declaration of rights, and the immortal works of the const.i.tuent a.s.sembly.

The philosophy of sensation starts with a principle that condemns it to consequences as disastrous as those of the principle of liberty are beneficent. By confounding will with desire, it justifies pa.s.sion, which is desire in all its force--pa.s.sion, which is precisely the opposite of liberty. It accordingly unchains all the desires and all the pa.s.sions, it gives full rein to imagination and the heart; it renders each man much less happy on account of what he possesses, than miserable on account of what he lacks; it makes him regard his neighbors with an eye of envy and contempt, and continually pushes society towards anarchy or tyranny. Whither, in fact, would you have interest lead in the train of desire? My desire is certainly to be the most fortunate possible. My interest is to seek to be so by all means, whatever they may be, under the single reserve that they be not contrary to their end. If I am born the first of men, the richest, the most beautiful, the most powerful, etc., I shall do every thing to preserve the advantages I have received.

If fate has given me birth in a rank little elevated, with a moderate fortune, limited talents, and immense desires--for it cannot too often be repeated, desire of every kind aspires after the infinite--I shall do every thing to rise above the crowd, in order to increase my power, my fortune, my joys. Unfortunate on account of my position in this world, in order to change it, I dream of, and call for revolutions, it is true, without enthusiasm and political fanaticism, for interest alone does not produce these n.o.ble follies, but under the sharp goad of vanity and ambition. Thereby, then, I arrive at fortune and power; interest, then, claims security, as before it invoked agitation. The need of security brings me back from anarchy to the need of order, provided order be to my profit; and I become a tyrant, if I can, or the gilt servant of a tyrant. Against anarchy and tyranny, those two scourges of liberty, the only rampart is the universal sentiment of right, founded on the firm distinction between good and evil, the just and the useful, the honest and the agreeable, virtue and interest, will and desire, sensation and conscience.