Elements of Morals Part 31

Not only should sentiment not be excluded from virtue, as Kant in his excessive austerity demands, but it should be considered its ornament and bloom. "The virtuous man," says Aristotle, "is he who takes pleasure in doing virtuous acts." One should therefore endeavor to awaken in one's self, if one has not yet experienced it, or develop, if one has already experienced it, the n.o.ble pleasure which accompanies great sentiments. On the other hand, and for the same reason that it is a duty for man to develop within him, in the limits of the possible, the share of sensibility he may have received from nature, it is also his duty not to encourage this same disposition too much if he should be inclined this way. For sensibility should only be an auxiliary and a stimulant to virtue; it should never take its place: otherwise it will lead us astray.

An exaggerated sensibility often smothers the voice of justice, enervates us, and deprives us of the robust courage we need in life. There is a reasonable limit which tact and experience alone can teach us. Morality can only give advice and directions. More precise rules are impossible, and would be ridiculous. There is no moral thermometer to indicate the degree of heart-heat each of us is allowed and is obliged to have. Let us only say, that in so delicate a matter, it is better to have too much sensibility than too little.

CHAPTER XV.

RELIGIOUS MORALITY.--RELIGIOUS RIGHTS AND DUTIES.

SUMMARY.

Are there duties toward G.o.d?

=Duties toward G.o.d.--a.n.a.lysis of the religious sentiment.=--Two elements: 1, the sentiment of the infinite; 2, the need of hope and consolation.

Can sentiment become a duty?

=Indirect duties toward G.o.d.=--Piety united with all the acts of life: 1, obedience; 2, resignation; 3, love of G.o.d united to that of man.

=The idea of G.o.d in morals.=--G.o.d the surety of the moral law.

=Religious society.=--Fenelon and Epictetus.

=Religious rights.=--Liberty of conscience: liberty of opinion, liberty of worship, liberty of propagandism.

It is not our purpose to speak here of the different forms of religious thought among men: this is the special domain of conscience; but among all these forms, is there no common ground which may be said to belong to the human soul, and which is found to be the same with the sages of pagan antiquity and the modern philosophers, although they may not have adopted any special form of worship? Yes. This common ground of all religion is the idea of G.o.d.

=167. Are there any duties toward G.o.d?=--If, as we have seen in our first book (Vol. I., last chapter), there is a G.o.d, that is to say, an author of the physical and moral universe, and its preserver and protector and father, it follows that man, as a part of this universe, and distinguished from its other creatures by the fact that he knows himself to be a child of G.o.d, is held to entertain toward this supreme father, sentiments of grat.i.tude and respect, and toward this supreme judge sentiments of fear and hope, all of which gives rise to a whole cla.s.s of duties.

Some doubts have been raised on this point by certain philosophers, and the question has been asked whether man, so out of all proportion when compared to G.o.d, could have any duties toward Him? It has been said, moreover, that there could be no duty toward a being to whom we can do neither good nor harm. G.o.d, the essence of all perfection and supreme happiness, can have nothing added to nor taken from these by us. We are therefore under no obligation to him whatsoever.

1. As for the absolute disproportion we imagine to exist between G.o.d and man, this disproportion does not prevent my having an idea of G.o.d: why should it prevent my loving him and putting myself in relation with him?

Fenelon justly said: "Nothing is so wonderful as the idea of G.o.d which I carry within myself; it is the infinite contained within the finite. That which is within me is infinitely beyond me. I do not understand how it comes to be in my mind, and yet it is there, nevertheless. This indelible and incomprehensible idea of the Divine Being is what, despite my imperfection and weakness, makes me resemble him. As he infinitely knows and loves himself, so do I, according to my power, know and love him. I can love the infinite by no other means than by my finite knowledge, and love it by no other than a love as finite as myself.... I wish my love were as limitless as the perfection it loves. It is true, again, that this knowledge and this love are not equally as perfect as their object, but the man who knows and loves G.o.d according to his measure of knowledge and love is incomparably more worthy of this perfect being than the man without G.o.d in the world, caring neither to know nor to love him."[139]

Hence it can be concluded that the duties of man toward G.o.d are implied in the knowledge he has of him.

2. As to the second difficulty, it consists in saying that G.o.d being susceptible of neither benefits nor injuries, it is not quite clear what acts we could perform in his behalf. But the question is precisely to know whether we only owe duties to beings susceptible of benefits and injuries.

We have, for example, to perform duties of justice, love, respect toward the dead, although we can do them neither good nor harm, since they are dead; and although we have reason to think that the dead still exist under another form, the duties we still owe them, are independent of this consideration, and notwithstanding the doubt of the immortality of souls, or their relations with the living, these duties still subsist: those souls might be so happy, and in conditions so different from those of our earthly life, that they might have become wholly indifferent to such, at least to harm. A historian, for instance, would not be justified in slandering his heroes under the pretext that, not believing in the immortality of the soul, he knew he could do them no harm. Man, even in this life, can, through patience and gentleness, so rise above all insults as to become wholly insensible to them: which fact, however, does not imply that the insults done him are innocent. The same man might be so modest as to feel no need of any homage, which would make it no less a duty of justice on the part of others to render him all the homage that is due him. Wholly inward feelings, not evidenced by any outward act whatsoever, cannot in reality do their object any good or harm; yet no one will question their being duties. It may then be seen that duty is not regulated by the good or evil which may outwardly be done, but by the order of things which requires that every being be loved and respected according to his merit. Now, from this standpoint, there can be no doubt that G.o.d, who is supreme perfection and the principle of all order and justice, is the legitimate object of the highest respect and the profoundest love.

It may be said, perhaps, that these sentiments toward the Creator are rather duties we owe ourselves than G.o.d, for it is for our own sakes that we are bound to give to our sensibility and affection the highest object they can have. Since the perfection and the dignity of the soul are enhanced by religion, it is our duty to be religious.

Fenelon is quite right when he says that "the man who knows and loves G.o.d is more _worthy_ of him than he who lives without him." Is it not the same as to say that religion rendering man more like G.o.d, and bringing him nearer to him, man owes it to himself to rise above himself through piety and the love of G.o.d?

But it matters very little how we explain the nature of the duties toward G.o.d, provided we recognize them. Whether they be considered a distinct cla.s.s, or whether we only see in them the highest degree of man's duties toward himself; all this is but a useless speculation. We could say conversely, and with equal justice, that our duties toward ourselves are but a part of our duties toward G.o.d: for duty itself, in its highest conception, being to reach after the highest possible perfection, we can say, with Plato, that virtue is the imitation of G.o.d; that, consequently, man owes it to himself to resemble G.o.d as much as possible, and that, conversely, he owes G.o.d, as the type of supreme perfection, to draw ever nearer to him through self-improvement. But how could he seek to draw nearer to G.o.d's supreme perfection if he did not entertain for him the feelings of love and respect, which const.i.tute what we, in general, call religious sentiment?

=168. Duties toward G.o.d.--a.n.a.lysis of the religious sentiment.=--What is called _duties toward G.o.d_ is nothing else than the different acts by which we endeavor to bring about, cultivate, develop in us, or in others, religious sentiment. When these acts are external, and take a certain definite form, they const.i.tute what is called _outward worship_, and are consequent upon positive religions. When they are concentrated in the soul, and confined to sentiments, they const.i.tute what is called _inner worship_. The virtue which corresponds to these inner acts and sentiments is called _piety_.

The duties toward G.o.d being thus blended with religious sentiment we must, in order to set them forth, first a.n.a.lyze this sentiment.

Religious sentiment is composed of two elements: one which may be called _metaphysical_;[140] the other, _moral_. 1. Metaphysically, the love of G.o.d is the sentiment of the infinite, the need of attaching ourselves to the absolute, the eternal, the immutable, the true in itself--in one word, to Being. The thinking man, and even the thoughtless man, looking at himself, finds himself small, feeble, miserable. "Oh!" exclaims Bossuet, "how much we are nothing!" "Man becomes vile to himself," says St.

Bernard. "Man feels that he is frail, that his life hangs but on a thread, that he is constantly pa.s.sing away. The goods of the world are perishable.

The fashion of this world pa.s.seth away. We neither know who we are, whence we come, whither we are going, nor what sustains us during the short period of our lives. We are suspended between heaven and earth: between two infinities; we stand as on quicksands." All these strong expressions of mystics and religious writers admirably express the need we stand in of the absolute, the immutable, the perfect,--a need felt more particularly by devout minds, but which all men, without exception, experience in some degree or other, and which they endeavor to satisfy the best they can. All our efforts to reach the absolute in science, in art, in politics even, are but the forms in which this need of the absolute manifests itself. The insatiable pursuit of the gratification of the pa.s.sions even is, also, under a vain appearance, the same need. It is this feeling of the eternal and the infinite, which the greatest metaphysicians all regarded as the ultimate foundation of morality. Plato, Plotinus, Malebranche, Spinoza, all enjoin upon us to seek eternal, in preference to perishable, goods.

This sentiment, conscious of ever striving after the substance of good and not its shadow, is the profoundest, nearest, and dearest element of religious sentiment.

2. Thus much in regard to the metaphysical element of religion: next comes the moral element. G.o.d does not only appear to the human soul as a being infinite, inexhaustible, eternal. The soul wants him nearer, and in her respectful boldness she calls him _Father_. Man is not only feeble and imperfect; he is also a sinner and a sufferer; evil is his condition. The frailty of our being and its narrow limits are already an evil; but these are the least of evils; humanity suffers, furthermore, from a double evil far more real and poignant: pain and sin. Against physical pain, suffering, it has but the feeble resource of prudence; against moral evil it has but one means of defense, very weak also--free-will. It would seem that we are the masters of the universe; but experience shows, on the contrary, that we are the feeblest among its creatures; often does the will succ.u.mb; and Kant himself, despite his stoicism, asks whether indeed a single act of virtue has ever been accomplished in the world. Life, on the whole, notwithstanding its grand aspects and its few exquisite and sublime joys, life is bad; all ends badly, and death, which puts an end to all evils, is yet the greatest of evils. "The human soul," says Plato, "like a bird, raises its eyes to heaven," and calls for a remedy, a help, a deliverance. "Deliver us from evil," is the cry of every religion. G.o.d is the liberator and comforter. We love what is good and we do what is evil; we impatiently desire happiness, and meet with nothing but wretchedness. Such is the contradiction Pascal points out with such incisive eloquence. This contradiction must be removed. Hope and trust in a supreme and benevolent Being must ransom us from pain and sin.

Many persons place the essence of religion in the belief in a future life, or immortality of the soul. Who, without the hope of gaining paradise, would think of G.o.d? But this is a contradiction in terms. Paradise, for the true believer, is nothing; G.o.d, everything. If a future life is a necessary consequence of the divine justice and bounty, we need not doubt its existence; if not, we have nothing to ask; it does not concern us.

What especially concerns us is to know what we ought to do here below, and to have the strength to do it with. "_Life is a meditation, not of death, but of life_," said Spinoza. But in order to live, and live well, one must believe in life, must believe in its healthy and holy significance, believe that it is not mere play, a mere mystification, but that it was given us by the principle of good for the success of good.

The essence of religion, then, is a belief in the goodness of G.o.d. A German critic, Feuerbach, said with great effect, that religion consisted in divinizing human attributes. Thus: G.o.d is good, means according to him: goodness is divine. G.o.d is just, signifies: justice is divine. The boldness of Christianity, its profound, pathetic beauty, its great moral efficacy lie in the fact that it has divinized our miseries; and that, instead of saying, pain is divine, death is divine, it has said: G.o.d has suffered, G.o.d has died. In a word, according to the same author, G.o.d "is the human heart divinized." Nothing could be more true and beautiful, only in another sense than that in which the author takes it. If G.o.d himself was not supreme goodness, the heart of man would then contain something divine, and G.o.d would not himself be divine! The heart feels that it exceeds all things, but, in order to believe in itself, it must know itself coming from a higher and purer source than it is itself.

"In thinking of such a being (G.o.d), man experiences a sentiment which is above all a religious sentiment. Every man, as we come into contact with him, awakens in us a feeling of some kind, according to the qualities we perceive in him, and should not He who possesses all perfections excite in us the strongest of feelings? If we think of the infinite essence of G.o.d, if we are thoroughly impressed by his omnipotence, if we remember that the moral law expresses his will, and that he has attached to the fulfillment and violation of this law, rewards and punishments which he distributes with inflexible justice, we must of necessity experience before such greatness emotions of respect and fear. If next we come to consider that this omnipotent being was pleased to create us, we, whom he had no need of, and that in creating us he heaped upon us benefits of all kinds, that he has given us this universe to enjoy its ever renewed beauties, that he has given us society that our life may become enlarged in that of our fellow-beings, that he has given us reason to think, a heart to love, liberty to act, that same respect and fear will receive additional strength from a still gentler sentiment, namely, that of love. Love, when directed toward feeble and circ.u.mscribed beings, inspires us with the desire to do them good: but, in itself, love does not especially consider the advantage of the person beloved: we love a thing, good or beautiful, simply because it is good or beautiful, and without thought of benefiting it; or benefiting ourselves. How much more so when this love is turned to G.o.d, as a pure homage to his perfections; when it is the natural outpouring of the soul toward a being infinitely adorable.

"Adoration consists in respect and love. If man, however, sees in G.o.d the omnipotent master of heaven and earth only, the source of all justice and the avenger of all wrong, he will, in his weakness, be crushed by the overwhelming weight of G.o.d's greatness: he will be living a life of perpetual fear, from the uncertainty of the judgment of G.o.d; he will conceive for this world and life, always so full of misery, nothing but hatred. Read Pascal's _Thoughts_. Pascal, in his superb humility, forgets two things: the dignity of man and the goodness of G.o.d. If, on the other hand, man only sees in G.o.d a kind and indulgent Father, he will run into a chimerical mysticism. In subst.i.tuting love for fear, there is danger of losing the awe which we should have for him. G.o.d is then no longer a master, scarcely a father even; for the idea of father carries with it, in a certain degree, that of a respectful fear: he is nothing more than a friend. True adoration does not sever love from respect: it is respect animated by love.

"Adoration is a universal sentiment; it differs in degrees according to the differences in human nature; it takes the greatest variety of forms; it often does not even know itself; sometimes it betrays itself by a sudden exclamation, a cry from the heart over the grand scenes of nature and life; sometimes it rises silently in the deeply-moved and dumb-stricken soul; it may in its expression mistake its aim; but fundamentally it is always the same. It is a spontaneous and irresistible yearning of the soul, which reason must declare just and legitimate. What more just, in fact, than to fear the judgments of Him who is holiness itself, who knows our actions and our intentions, and who will judge them as it becomes supreme justice? What more just, also, than to love perfect goodness and the source of all love?

Adoration is first a natural sentiment: reason makes of it a _duty_."[141]

These two sentiments, love and respect, may, inasmuch as they relate to G.o.d--that is to say, to an infinite being--be resolved into one, which we call _veneration_. Veneration is the respect mixed with love which we feel for our aged parents, for some exalted virtue, for devotion to a suffering country; but it is only through extension we so understand it: its true object, its proper domain, is the divinity;[142] and if there are other objects to _be revered_ and venerated, it is because we detect in them something august and sacred.

It will, perhaps, be said that _sentiments_ cannot be erected into _duties_: for how can I force myself to feel what I do not feel? Acts can be commanded, but not sentiments.

This is true; but the acts, in the first place, are nothing without the sentiments, and if piety is not already in the heart, the most pious works will have no virtue. Moreover, if it be true that it is impossible to generate, either in one's self or in others, sentiments, the germs of which do not exist in human nature, it is not true that sentiments in conformity with this nature, and which, whilst we believe them completely absent, may only be dormant, could not be excited, awakened, cultivated, and developed. Now, it is enough to think of divine greatness, to experience a feeling of fear and respect; it is enough to think of divine perfection, to love this perfection, and seek to come nearer to it. Duty here consists, then, in thinking of G.o.d, in giving this great thought a part of our life, in uniting it with all the acts of that life: these sentiments will, then, be generated and will expand of themselves.

=169. Piety united with all the acts of life: indirect duties toward G.o.d.=--We have just said that the idea of G.o.d can be united with all the acts of life. Every action being the fulfillment of the will of Providence, can be both moral and religious. _He who works, prays_, says the proverb; a life which strives to preserve itself pure and virtuous, is a continuous prayer. In this sense, all our duties are _indirect duties_ toward G.o.d.

1. _Obedience to G.o.d_, manifested by obedience to moral law. I can obey the moral law in two ways: on the one hand, because it is a duty, whatever besides may be the reason of this duty, and next because this duty is in unison with universal order, which is the work of divine wisdom. To fulfill one's duty is, then, to co-operate in some respect with G.o.d in the achievement of this order. It is thus that in ancient religions, agriculture was regarded a religious act, because man took therein the part of the creator.

2. _Resignation to the will of Providence._--Patience is unquestionably a duty in itself. There is a lack of dignity in rebelling against evils which cannot be prevented; but this is as yet a wholly negative virtue. It becomes a religious virtue if we regard the ills of life in the light of trials, and as the condition of a higher good, and expect to voluntarily submit to them as being in the plan of Providence. It is thus the Pythagoreans forbade suicide, saying that it was leaving the post in which G.o.d had placed us.

It would, moreover, be interpreting this duty of resignation very falsely to think that it commands us to bear trouble and make no effort to escape it. This were confounding Providence with fatalism. On the contrary, G.o.d, having given us free will, not only permits us thereby, but even positively enjoins upon us, to use it in bettering our condition.

3. _Love of G.o.d conjoined with the love of man._--There is no real love of G.o.d without love of neighbor; it is a false piety which thinks itself obliged to sacrifice the love of men to the love of G.o.d: thence come _fanaticism_, _intolerance_, _persecution_. To believe these to be religious virtues is _impious_. We cannot please G.o.d by acts of hatred and cruelty. Thus is the love of G.o.d nothing without the love of men.

But it can also be said that the love of men is incomplete if it does not get its sustenance from a higher source, which is the love of G.o.d. We can, in fact, love men in two ways: first, because they are men, because they are like us, because there is between them and us a natural bond of sympathy. But we can also love them because they are, like ourselves, members of the universe of which G.o.d is the sovereign ruler, members of a family of which G.o.d is the father, because, like ourselves, they reflect some of the attributes of supreme perfection, because they ought, like us, to strive after all perfection. We can then love men religiously, love them in G.o.d in some respect. Thus conversely to love men will be loving G.o.d.

=170. The idea of G.o.d in morals.=--We have, in a former course of lectures, seen how the moral law is related to G.o.d: this law is certainly not dependent on his will alone, but on his holiness and supreme perfection; and it is still further related to him as to a supreme sanction. We have to consider here only the _practical efficacy_ of the idea of G.o.d--that is to say, the additional strength moral belief receives by a belief in absolute justice and holiness. It is on this condition and from this standpoint that Kant has called the existence of G.o.d the _postulate_[143]

of the moral law. The moral law, in fact, supposes the world able to conform to this law; but how are we to believe in such a possibility if this world were the effect of a blind and indifferent necessity? "Since it is our duty," says Kant, "to work toward the realization of the supreme good, it is not only a right, but a necessity flowing from this duty, to suppose the possibility of this supreme good, which good is only possible on the condition of G.o.d's existence"[144]....--"Suppose, for example," he says elsewhere, "an honest man like Spinoza, firmly convinced that there is no G.o.d and no future life. He will, without doubt, fulfill disinterestedly the duty that holy law imposes on his activity; but his efforts will be limited. If here and there he finds in nature accidental co-operation, he can never expect of this co-operation to be in perfect and constant accordance with the end he feels himself obliged to pursue.

Though honest, peaceful, benevolent himself, he will always be surrounded by fraud, violence, envy; in vain do the good people he meets deserve to be happy; nature has no regard for their goodness, and exposes them, like all the rest of earth's animals, to disease and misery, to a premature death, until one vast tomb--the gulf of blind matter from which they issued--swallows them all up again. Thus would this righteous man be obliged to give up as absolutely impossible the end which the law imposed on him; or, if he wished to remain true to the inner voice of his moral destiny, he will, from a practical point of view, be obliged to recognize the existence of a moral cause in the world, namely, G.o.d." Thus, according to Kant, is religion, namely, the belief in the existence of G.o.d, required, not as a theoretical basis for morality, but as a practical basis. "The righteous man can say: I _will_ that there be a G.o.d."[145]

It may be objected that moral law can dispense with outward success; that it does not appear to be essential to the idea of that law; that the wise, as far as their own happiness is concerned, need not consider it, can ignore it. But what they are obliged to consider, and are not allowed to ignore, is the happiness of others, and what is generally understood by progress--the possible improvement of the race. If, as some pessimistic and misanthropic philosophers seem to think, men will never be anything more than monkeys or tigers given to the lowest and most ferocious instincts, do you believe that any man, be he ever so well endowed morally, ever so deeply convinced of the obligation of the law of duty, could, if he believed such a thing, be able to continue doing his duty, a duty followed by no appreciable or perceptible results? The first condition for becoming or remaining virtuous, is to believe in virtue. But to believe in virtue means to believe that virtue is a fact, that it exists in the world, that it can do it good; in other words, it is to believe that the human race was created for good; that nature is capable of being transformed according to the law of good; it is, in short, to believe that the universe obeys a principle of good, and not a principle of evil--an Oromazes, not an Ahrimanes. As to believing in an indifferent being, one that were neither good nor evil, we should not be any better off; it would leave us just as uncertain in regard to the possible success of our efforts, and just as doubtful about the worth of our moral beliefs.

In one word, and to conclude, if G.o.d were an illusion, why could not virtue be an illusion also? In order that I may believe in the dignity and excellence of my soul and that of other men, I must believe in a supreme principle of dignity and excellence. Nothing comes from nothing. If there is no being to love me and my fellow-men, why should I be held to love them? If the world is not good, if it was not created for good, if good is not its origin and end, what have I to do here in this world, and what care I for that swarm of ants of which I am a part? Let them get along as well as they can! Why should I take so much trouble to so little purpose?

Take any intelligent man, a friend of civil and political liberty, and ready to suffer anything to procure these to his country, as long as he believes the thing possible, both wisdom and virtue will command him to devote himself wholly to it. But let experience prove to him that it is a chimera, that his fellow-citizens are either too great cowards or too vicious to be worthy and capable of the good he wishes to secure to them; suppose he sees all around him nothing but cupidity, servility, unbridled and abominable pa.s.sions; suppose, finally, that he becomes convinced that liberty among men, or at least among the people he lives with, is an illusion, do you think he could, do you even think he should, continue wasting his faculties in an impossible enterprise? Once more, I can forget myself, and I ought; and I should leave to internal justice or divine goodness the care to watch over my destinies; but that which I cannot forget, that which cannot leave me indifferent, is the reign of justice on earth. I must be able to say: _Let Thy kingdom come!_ How can I co-operate with the Divine Idea if there is no G.o.d, who, in creating us for the furthering of his kingdom, made it, at the same time, possible for us? And how any I to believe that out of that great void whereto atheism reduces us, there can come a reign of wills holy and just, bound to each other by the laws of respect and love? Kant, the great stoic, without borrowing from theology, has more strongly than any other, described the necessity of this reign of law; but he fully understood that this abstract and ideal order of things would remain but a pure conception, if there were not conjoined with it what he justly calls "the practical, the moral faith" in the existence of G.o.d.

=171. Religious rights.=--_Religious duties_ imply _religious rights_: for if it is a duty to honor the Creator, it is also a right. Even those who do not admit obligations toward G.o.d, ought to respect in those who do admit them, their liberty to do so. The right of having a religion, and practicing it, is what is called _liberty of conscience_.

"The first right I claim," says an eloquent writer, "is the right of adopting a free belief touching the nature of G.o.d, my duties, my future; it is a wholly interior right, which governs the relations of my will or conscience alone. It is the liberty of conscience in its essence, its first act, its indispensable basis. It is the _liberty to believe_, or _faith_. Free in the innermost of my thought, shall I be confined to a silent worship? Shall I not be allowed to express what I think? Faith is communicative, and will make itself felt by others. I cannot control its expressing itself without doing it violence, without offending G.o.d, without rendering myself guilty of ingrat.i.tude. I cannot, moreover, worship a G.o.d that is not my G.o.d. The freedom of belief, without the freedom of prayer--that is to say, without free worship--is only a delusion.