Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good Part 23

[221] 1st part, lecture 2.

[222] Lecture 2.

[223] 1st part, lecture 3. See also vol. v. of the 1st Series, lecture 8.

[224] 1st Series, vol. v., lecture 7.

[225] See, for the entire development of the theory of liberty, 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 1, _Locke_, p. 71; lecture 3, _Condillac_, p.

116, 149, etc.; vol. iv., lecture 23, _Reid_, p. 541-574; 2d Series, vol. iii., _Examination of the System of Locke_, lecture 25.

[226] Lecture 12.

[227] See 1st Series, vol. iv., Lecture on Smith and on the true principle of political economy, p. 278-302.

[228] Le crime fait la honte et non pas l'echafaud.

[229] See lecture 16, _G.o.d, the Principle of the Idea of the Good_.

[230] See lecture 16.

[231] On Jacobi, see Tennemann's _Manual of the History of Philosophy_, vol. iii., p. 318, etc.

[232] On this important question of method, see lecture 12.

LECTURE XV.

PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS.

Application of the preceding principles.--General formula of interest,--to obey reason.--Rule for judging whether an action is or is not conformed to reason,--to elevate the motive of this action into a maxim of universal legislation.--Individual ethics. It is not towards the individual, but towards the moral person that one is obligated. Principle of all individual duties,--to respect and develop the moral person.--Social ethics,--duties of justice and duties of charity.--Civil society. Government. Law. The right to punish.

We know that there is moral good and that there is moral evil: we know that this distinction between good and evil engenders an obligation, a law, duty; but we do not yet know what our duties are. The general principle of ethics is laid down; it must be followed at least into its most important applications.

If duty is only truth become obligatory, and if truth is known only by reason, to obey the law of duty, is to obey reason.

But to obey reason is a precept very vague and very abstract:--how can we be sure that our action is conformed or is not conformed to reason?

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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sions or to overwhelming pa.s.sions, 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 n.o.ble 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sions, 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 a.s.siduous 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. n.o.ble, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 wis.h.i.+ng to prevent too much the evil that G.o.d 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 establis.h.i.+ng 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.