Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good Part 22

We arrive, then, at the last element of the moral phenomenon, the judgment of merit and demerit.

At the same time that we judge that a man has done a good or bad action, we bear this other judgment quite as necessary as the former, to wit, that if this man has acted well he has merited a reward, and if he has acted ill, he has merited a punishment. It is exactly the same with this judgment as with that of the good. It may be outwardly expressed in a more or less lively manner, according as it is mingled with more or less energetic feelings. Sometimes it will be only a benevolent disposition towards the virtuous agent, and an unfavorable disposition towards the culpable agent; sometimes it will be enthusiasm or indignation. In some cases one will make himself the executor of the judgment that he bears, he will crown the hero and load the criminal with chains. But when all your feelings are calmed, when enthusiasm has cooled as well as indignation, when time and separation have rendered an action almost indifferent to you, you none the less persist in judging that the author of this action merits a reward or a punishment, according to the quality of the action. You decide that you were right in the sentiments that you felt, and, although they are extinguished, you declare them legitimate.

The judgment of merit and demerit is essentially tied to the judgment of good and evil. In fact, he who does an action without knowing whether it is good or bad, has neither merit nor demerit in doing it. It is with him the same as with those physical agents that accomplish the most beneficent or the most destructive works, to which we never think of attributing knowledge and will, consequently accountability. Why are there no penalties attached to involuntary crimes? Because for that very reason they are not regarded as crimes. Hence it comes that the question of premeditation is so grave in all criminal processes. Why is the child, up to a certain age, subject to none but light punishments?

Because where the idea of the good and liberty are wanting, merit and demerit are also wanting, which alone authorize reward and punishment.

The author of an injurious but involuntary action is condemned to an indemnity corresponding to the damage done; he is not condemned to a punishment properly so called.

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

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

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

'Tis crime and not the scaffold makes the shame.[228]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The spectacle of a good action done by another also has something delicious to the soul. Sympathy is an echo in us that responds to whatever is n.o.ble and good in others. When interest does not lead us astray, we naturally put ourselves in the place of him who has done well. We feel in a certain measure the sentiments that animate him. We elevate ourselves to the mood of his spirit. Is it not already for the good man an exquisite reward to make the n.o.ble sentiments that animate him thus pa.s.s into the hearts of his fellow-men? The spectacle of a bad action, instead of sympathy, excites an involuntary antipathy, a painful and sad sentiment. Without doubt, this sentiment is never acute like remorse. There is in innocence something serene and placid that tempers even the sentiment of injustice, even when this injustice falls on us.

We then experience a sort of shame for humanity, we mourn over human weakness, and, by a melancholy return upon ourselves, we are less moved to anger than to pity. Sometimes also pity is overcome by a generous anger, by a disinterested indignation. If, as we have said, it is a sweet reward to excite a n.o.ble sympathy, an enthusiasm almost always fertile in good actions, it is a cruel punishment to stir up around us pity, indignation, aversion, and contempt.

Sympathy for a good action is accompanied by benevolence for its author.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To the moral law in the reason of man corresponds liberty in action.

Liberty is deduced from obligation, and moreover it is a fact of an irresistible evidence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Admirable economy of the moral const.i.tution of man! Its supreme end is the good, its law is virtue, which often imposes on it suffering, and thereby it is the most excellent of all things that we know. But this law is very hard and in contradiction with the instinct of happiness.

Fear nothing,--the beneficent author of our being has placed in our souls, by the side of the severe law of duty, the sweet and amiable force of sentiment,--he has, in general, attached happiness to virtue; and, for the exceptions, for there are exceptions, at the end of the course he has placed hope.[230]

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

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

Who could now return to Epicurus, and, against the most manifest facts, against common sense, against the very idea of all ethics, found duty, virtue, the good, on the desire of happiness alone? It would be proof of great blindness and great barrenness. On the other hand, shall we immolate the need of happiness, the hope of all reward, human or divine, to the abstract idea of the good? The Stoics have done it,--we know with what apparent grandeur, with what real impotence. Shall we confine with Kant the whole of ethics to obligation? That is straitening still more a system that is already very narrow. Moreover, one may hope to surpa.s.s Kant in extent of views, by a completer knowledge and more faithful representation of facts; one cannot hope to be more profound in the point of view that he has chosen. Or, in another order of ideas, shall we refer to the will of G.o.d alone the obligation of virtue, and found ethics on religion, instead of giving religion to ethics as their necessary perfection? We still invent nothing new, we only renew the ethics of the theologians of the Middle Age, or rather of a particular school which has had for its adversaries the most ill.u.s.trious doctors.

Finally, shall we reduce all morality to sentiment, to sympathy, to benevolence? It only remains to follow the footsteps of Hutcheson and Smith, abandoned by Reid himself, or the footsteps of a celebrated adversary of Kant, Jacobi.[231]

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

[216] On indignation, see lecture 11.

[217] On remorse, see lecture 11.

[218] See the _Gorgias_, with the _Argument_, vol. iii. of our translation.

[219] Lectures 1 and 6.

[220] Lectures 2, 3, and 6.