Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good Part 19

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

On the contrary, do we witness a bad action? We experience for the author of this action antipathy; moreover we wish him evil,--we desire that he should suffer for the fault that he has committed, and in proportion to the gravity of the fault. For this reason great culprits are odious to us, if they do not compensate for their crimes by deep remorse, or by great virtues mingled with their crimes. This sentiment is not malevolence. Malevolence is a personal and interested sentiment, which makes us wish evil to others, because they are an obstacle to us.

Hatred does not ask whether such a man is virtuous or vicious, but whether he obstructs us, surpa.s.ses us, or injures us. The sentiment of which we are speaking is a sort of hatred, but a generous hatred that neither springs from interest nor envy, but from a shocked conscience.

It is turned against us when we do evil, as well as against others.

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

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

Other philosophers have a.s.signed the same part to sympathy or benevolence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Egoism admits all pleasures; it repels none; it may, if it is enlightened, if it has become delicate and refined, recommend, as more durable and less alloyed, the pleasures of sentiment. The ethics of sentiment would then be confounded with those of egoism, if they should prescribe obedience to sentiment for the pleasure that we find in it.

There would, then, be no disinterestedness in it,--the individual would be the centre and sole end of all his actions. But such is not the case.

The charm of the pleasures of conscience comes from the very fact that we are forgetful of self in the action that has produced them. So if nature has joined to sympathy and benevolence a true enjoyment, it is on condition that these sentiments remain as they are, pure and disinterested; you must only think of the object of your sympathy and benevolence in order that benevolence and sympathy may receive their recompense in the pleasure which they give. Otherwise, this pleasure no longer has its reason for existence, and it is wanting as soon as it sought for itself. No metamorphose of interest can produce a pleasure attached to disinterestedness alone.

The ethics of egoism are only a perpetual falsehood,--they preserve the names consecrated by ethics, but they abolish ethics themselves; they deceive humanity by speaking to humanity its own language, concealing under this borrowed language a radical opposition to all the instincts, to all the ideas that form the treasure of mankind. On the contrary, if sentiment is not the good itself, it is its faithful companion and useful auxiliary. It is as it were the sign of the presence of the good, and renders the accomplishment of it more easy. We always have sophisms at our disposal, in order to persuade ourselves that our true interest is to satisfy present pa.s.sion; but sophism has less influence over the mind when the mind is in some sort defended by the heart. Nothing is, therefore, more salutary than to excite and preserve in the soul those n.o.ble sentiments that lift us above the slavery of personal interest.

The habit of partic.i.p.ating in the sentiments of virtuous men disposes us to act like them. To cultivate in ourselves benevolence and sympathy is to fertilize the source of charity and love, is to nourish and develop the germ of generosity and devotion.

It is seen that we render sincere homage to the ethics of sentiment.

These ethics are true,--only they are not sufficient for themselves; they need a principle which authorizes them.

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

So is it not because we find a good action that we sympathize with it?

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

Benevolence also is not always determined by the good alone. And, again, when it is applied to a virtuous man, it supposes a judgment by which we p.r.o.nounce that this man is virtuous. It is not because we wish the author of an action well that we judge that this action is good; it is because we judge that this action is good that we wish its author well.

This is not all. In the sentiment of benevolence is enveloped a new judgment which is not in sympathy. This judgment is the following: the author of a good action deserves to be happy, as the author of a bad action deserves to suffer in order to expiate it. This is the reason why we desire happiness for the one and reparatory suffering for the other.

Benevolence is little else than the sensible form of this judgment.

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

Another difficulty is, that sentiments pertain to sensibility, and borrow from it something of its relative and changing nature. It is, then, very necessary that all men should be made to enjoy with the same delicacy the pleasures of the heart. There are gross natures and natures refined. If your desires are impetuous and violent, will not the idea of the pleasures of virtue be in you much more easily overcome by the force of pa.s.sion than if nature had given you a tranquil temperament? The state of the atmosphere, health, sickness, calm or rouse our moral sensibility. Solitude, by delivering man up to himself, leaves to remorse all its energy, the presence of death redoubles it; but the world, noise, force of example, habit, without power to smother it, in some sort stun it. The spirit has a little season of rest. We are not always in the vein of enthusiasm. Courage itself has its intermissions.

We know the celebrated expression: He was one day brave. Humor has its vicissitudes that influence our most intimate sentiments. The purest, the most ideal sentiment still pertains on some side to organization.

The inspiration of the poet, the pa.s.sion of the lover, the enthusiasm of the martyr, have their languors and shortcomings that often depend on very pitiable material causes. On those perpetual fluctuations of sentiment, is it possible to ground a legislation equal for all?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Consider to what perplexity this famous principle of the greatest good of the greatest number condemns me. I have already much difficulty in discerning my true interest in the obscurity of the future; by subst.i.tuting for the infallible voice of justice the uncertain calculations of personal interest, you have not rendered action easy for me;[207] but it becomes impossible, if it is necessary to seek, before acting, what is the interest not only of myself, but of my family, not only of my family, but of my country, not only of my country, but of humanity. What! must I embrace the entire world in my foresight? What!

is such the price of virtue? You impose upon me a knowledge that G.o.d alone possesses. Am I in his counsels so as to adjust my actions according to his decrees? The philosophy of history and the wisest diplomacy are not, then, sufficient for conducting ourselves well.

Imagine, therefore, that there is no mathematical science of human life.

Chance and liberty confound the profoundest calculations, overturn the best-established fortunes, relieve the most desperate miseries, mingle good fortune and bad, confound all foresight.

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

Another error of this system is that it confounds the good itself with one of its applications. If the good is the greatest interest of the greatest number, the consequence is clear, that there are only public and social ethics, and no private ethics; there is only a single cla.s.s of duties, duties towards others, and there are no duties towards ourselves. But this is retrenching precisely those of our duties that most surely guarantee the exercise of all the rest.[209] The most constant relations that I sustain are with that being which is myself.

I am my own most habitual society. I bear in myself, as Plato[210] has well said, a whole world of ideas, sentiments, desires, pa.s.sions, emotions, which claim a legislation. This necessary legislation is suppressed.

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

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

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

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