Lecture XIV

TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS.

Description of the different facts that compose the moral phenomena.--Analysis of each of these facts:--1st, Judgment and idea of the good. That this judgment is absolute. Relation between the true and the good.--2d, Obligation. Refutation of the doctrine of Kant that draws the idea of the good from obligation instead of founding obligation on the idea of the good.--3d, Liberty, and the moral notions attached to the notion of liberty.--4th, Principle of merit and demerit. Punishments and rewards.--5th, Moral sentiments.--Harmony of all these facts in nature and science.

Philosophic criticism is not confined to discerning the errors of systems; it especially consists in recognizing and disengaging the truths mixed with these errors. The truths scattered in different systems compose the whole truth which each of these almost always expresses on a single side. So, the systems that we have just run over and refuted deliver up to us, in some sort, divided and opposed to each other, all the essential elements of human morality. The only question is to collect them, in order to restore the entire moral phenomenon. The history of philosophy, thus understood, prepares the way for or confirms psychological analysis, as psychological analysis receives from the history of philosophy its light. Let us, then, interrogate ourselves in presence of human actions, and faithfully collect, without altering them by any preconceived system, the ideas and the sentiments of every kind that the spectacle of these actions produce in us.

There are actions that are agreeable or disagreeable to us, that procure us advantages or injure us, in a word, that are, in one way or another, directly or indirectly, addressed to our interest. We are rejoiced with actions that are useful to us, and shun those that may injure us. We seek earnestly and with the greatest effort what seems to us our interest.

This is an incontestable fact. Here is another fact that is not less incontestable.

There are actions that have no relation to us, that, consequently, we cannot estimate and judge on the ground of our interest, that we nevertheless qualify as good or bad.

Suppose that before your eyes a man, strong and armed, falls upon another man, feeble and disarmed, whom he maltreats and kills, in order to take away his purse. Such an action does not reach you in any way, and, notwithstanding, it fills you with indignation. You do every thing in your power that this murderer may be arrested and delivered up to justice; you demand that he shall be punished, and if he is punished in one way or another, you think that it is just; your indignation is appeased only after a chastisement proportioned to the crime committed has been inflicted on the culprit. I repeat that in this you neither hope nor fear any thing for yourself. Were you placed in an inaccessible fortress, from the top of which you might witness this scene of murder, you would feel these sentiments none the less.

This is only a rude picture of what takes place in you at the sight of a crime. Apply now a little reflection and analysis to the different traits of which this picture is composed, without destroying their nature, and you will have a complete philosophic theory.

What is it that first strikes you in what you have experienced? It is doubtless the indignation, the instinctive horror that you have felt. There is, then, in the soul a power of raising indignation that is foreign to all personal interests! There are, then, in us sentiments of which we are not the end! There is an antipathy, an aversion, a horror, that are not related to what injures us, but to acts whose remotest influence cannot reach us, that we detest for the sole reason that we judge them to be bad!

Yes, we judge them to be bad. A judgment is enveloped under the sentiments that we have just mentioned. In fact, in the midst of the indignation that transports you, let one tell you that all this generous anger pertains to your particular organization, and that, after all, the action that takes place is indifferent,--you revolt against such an explanation, you exclaim that the action is bad in itself; you not only express a sentiment, you pronounce a judgment. The next day after the action, when the feelings that agitated your soul have been quieted, you none the less still judge that the action was bad; you judge thus six months after, you judge thus always and everywhere; and it is because you judge that this action is in itself bad, that you bear this other judgment, that it should not have been done.

This double judgment is at the foundation of sentiment; otherwise sentiment would be without reason. If the action is not bad in itself, if he who has done it was not obligated not to do it, the indignation that we experience is only a physical emotion, an excitement of the senses, of the imagination, of the heart,--a phenomenon destitute of every moral character, like the trouble that visits us before some frightful scene of nature. You cannot rationally feel indignation for the author of an indifferent action. Every sentiment of disinterested anger against the author of an action supposes in him who feels it, this double conviction:--1st, That the action is in itself bad; 2d, That it should not have been done.

This sentiment also supposes that the author of this action has himself a consciousness of the evil that he has done, and of the obligation that he has violated; for without this he would have acted like a brutal and blind force, not like an intelligent and moral force, and we should have felt towards him no more indignation than towards a rock that falls on our head, towards a torrent that sweeps us away into an abyss.

Indignation equally supposes in him who is the object of it an other character still, to wit, that he is free,--that he could do or not do what he has done. It is evident that the agent must be free in order to be responsible.

You desire that the murderer may be arrested and delivered up to justice, you desire that he may be punished; when he has been arrested, delivered up to justice, and punished, you are satisfied. What does that mean? Is it a capricious movement of the imagination and heart? No. Calm or indignant, at the moment of the crime or a long time after, without any spirit of personal vengeance, since you are not the least interested in this affair, you none the less declare that the murderer ought to be punished. If, instead of receiving a punishment, the culpable man makes his crime a stepping-stone to fortune, you still declare that, far from deserving prosperity, he deserves to suffer in reparation of his fault; you protest against lot, and appeal to a superior justice. This judgment philosophers have called the judgment of merit and demerit. I suppose, in the mind of man, the idea of a supreme law that attaches happiness to virtue, unhappiness to crime. Omit the idea of this law, and the judgment of merit and demerit is without foundation. Omit this judgment, and indignation against prosperous crime and the neglect of virtue is an unintelligible, even an impossible sentiment, and never, at the sight of crime, would you think of demanding the chastisement of a criminal.

All the parts of the moral phenomenon are connected together; all are equally certain parts,--destroy one, and you completely overturn the whole phenomenon. The most common observation bears witness to all these facts, and the least subtle logic easily discovers their connection. It is necessary to renounce even sentiment, or it must be avowed that sentiment covers a judgment, the judgment of the essential distinction between good and evil, that this distinction involves an obligation, that this obligation is applied to an intelligent and free agent; in fine, it must be observed that the distinction between merit and demerit, that corresponds to the distinction between good and evil, contains the principle of the natural harmony between virtue and happiness.

What have we done thus far? We have done as the physicist or chemist does, who submits a composite body to analysis and reduces it to its simple elements. The only difference here is that the phenomenon to which our analysis is applied is in us, instead of being out of us. Besides, the processes employed are exactly the same; there is in them neither system nor hypothesis; there are only experience and the most immediate induction.

In order to render experience more certain, we may vary it. Instead of examining what takes place in us when we are spectators of bad or good actions in another, let us interrogate our own consciousness when we are doing well or ill. In this case, the different elements of the moral phenomenon are still more striking, and their order appears more distinctly.

Suppose that a dying friend has confided to me a more or less important deposit, charging me to remit it after his death to a person whom he has designated to me alone, and who himself knows not what has been done in his favor. He who confided to me the deposit dies, and carries with him his secret; he for whom the deposit has been made to me has no knowledge of it; if, then, I wish to appropriate this deposit to myself, no one will ever be able to suspect me. In this case what should I do? It is difficult to imagine circumstances more favorable for crime. If I consult only interest, I ought not to hesitate to return the deposit. If I hesitate, in the system of interest, I am senseless, and I revolt against the law of my nature. Doubt alone, in the impunity that is assured me, would betray in me a principle different from interest.

But naturally I do not doubt, I believe with the most entire certainty, that the deposit confided to me does not belong to me, that it has been confided to me to be remitted to another, and that to this other it belongs. Take away interest, and I should not even think of returning this deposit,--it is interest alone that tempts me. It tempts me, it does not bear me away without resistance. Hence the struggle between interest and duty,--a struggle filled with troubles, opposite resolutions, by turns taken and abandoned; it energetically attests the presence of a principle of action different from interest and quite as powerful.

Duty succumbs, interest triumphs over it. I retain the deposit that has been confided to me, and apply it to my own wants, and to the wants of my family; it makes me rich, and in appearance happy; but I internally suffer with that bitter and secret suffering that is called remorse. The fact is certain; it has been a thousand times described; all languages contain the word, and there is no one who, in some degree, has not experienced the thing, that sharp gnawing at the heart which is caused by every fault, great or small, as long as it has not been expiated. This painful recollection follows me in the midst of pleasures and prosperity. The applauses of the crowd are not able to silence this inexorable witness. Only a long habit of sin and crime, an accumulation of oft-repeated faults, can compass this sentiment, at once avenging and expiatory. When it is stifled, every resource is lost, and an end is made of the soul's life; as long as it endures, the sacred fire is not wholly extinguished.

Remorse is a suffering of a particular character. In remorse I do not suffer on account of such an impression made upon my senses, nor on account of the thwarting of my natural passions, nor on account of the injury done or threatened to my interest, nor by the disquietude of my hopes and the agony of my fears: no, I suffer without any external cause, yet I suffer in the most cruel manner. I suffer for the sole reason that I have a consciousness of having committed a bad action which I knew I was obligated not to commit, which I was able not to commit, which leaves behind it a chastisement that I know to be deserved. No exact analysis can take away from remorse, without destroying it, a single one of these elements. Remorse contains the idea of good and evil, of an obligatory law, of liberty, of merit and demerit. All these ideas were already in the struggle between good and evil; they reappear in remorse. In vain interest counselled me to appropriate the deposit that had been confided to me; something said to me, and still says to me, that to appropriate it is to do evil, is to commit an injustice; I judged, and judge, thus, not such a day, but always, not under such a circumstance, but under all circumstances. In vain I say to myself that the person to whom I ought to remit this deposit has no need of it, and that it is necessary to me; I judge that a deposit must be respected without regard to persons, and the obligation that is imposed on me appears inviolable and absolute. Having taken upon myself this obligation, I believe by this fact alone that I have the power to fulfil it: this is not all; I am directly conscious of this power, I know with the most certain knowledge that I am able to keep this deposit or to remit it to the lawful owner; and it is precisely because I am conscious of this power that I judge that I have deserved punishment for not having made the use of it for which it was given me. It is, in fine, because I have a lively consciousness of all that, that I experience this sentiment of indignation against myself, this suffering of remorse which expresses in itself the moral phenomenon entire.

According to the rules of the experimental method, let us take an opposite course; let us suppose that, in spite of the suggestions of interest, in spite of the pressing goad of misery, in order to be faithful to pledged faith, I send the deposit to the person that had been designated to me; instead of the painful scene that just now passed in consciousness, there passes another quite as real, but very different. I know that I have done well; I know that I have not obeyed a chimera, an artificial and mendacious law, but a law true, universal, obligatory upon all intelligent and free beings. I know that I have made a good use of my liberty; I have of this liberty, by the very use that I have made of it, a sentiment more distinct, more energetic, and, in some sort, triumphant. Every opinion would accuse me in vain, I appeal from it to a better justice, and this justice is already declared in me by sentiments that press upon each other in my soul. I respect myself, esteem myself, and believe that I have a right to the esteem of others; I have the sentiment of my dignity; I feel for myself only sentiments of affection opposed to that species of horror for myself with which I was just now inspired. Instead of remorse, I feel an incomparable joy that no one can deprive me of, that, were every thing else wanting to me, would console and support me. This sentiment of pleasure is as penetrating, as profound as was the remorse. It expresses the satisfaction of all the generous principles of human nature, as remorse represented their revolt. It testifies by the internal happiness that it gives me to the sublime accord between happiness and virtue, whilst remorse is the first link in that fatal chain, that chain of iron and adamant, which, according to Plato, binds pain to transgression, trouble to passion, misery to faithlessness, vice, and crime.

Moral sentiment is the echo of all the moral judgments and entire moral life. It is so striking that it has been regarded by a somewhat superficial philosophy as sufficient to found entire ethics; and, nevertheless, we have just seen that this admirable sentiment would not exist without the different judgments that we have just enumerated; it is their consequence, but not their principle; it supplies, but does not constitute them; it does not take their place, but sums them up.

Now that we are in possession of all the elements of human morality, we proceed to take these elements one by one, and submit them to a detailed analysis.

That which is most apparent in the complex phenomenon that we are studying is sentiment; but its foundation is judgment.

The judgment of good and evil is the principle of all that follows it; but this judgment rests only on the constitution itself of human nature, like the judgment of the true and the judgment of the beautiful. As well as these two judgments, that of the good is a simple, primitive, indecomposable judgment.

Like them, again, it is not arbitrary. We cannot but fear this judgment in presence of certain acts; and, in fearing it, we know that it does not make good or evil, but declares it. The reality of moral distinctions is revealed by this judgment, but it is independent of it, as beauty is independent of the eye that perceives it, as universal and necessary truths are independent of the reason that discovers them.

Good and evil are real characters of human actions, although these characters might not be seen with our eyes nor touched with our hands. The moral qualities of an action are none the less real for not being confounded with the material qualities of this action. This is the reason why actions materially identical may be morally very different. A homicide is always a homicide; nevertheless, it is often a crime, it is also often a legitimate action, for example, when it is not done for the sake of vengeance, nor for the sake of interest, in a strict case of self-defence.

It is not the spilling of blood that makes the crime, it is the spilling of innocent blood. Innocence and crime, good and evil, do not reside in such or such an external circumstance determined one for all. Reason recognizes them with certainty under the most different appearances, in circumstances sometimes the same and sometimes dissimilar.

Good and evil almost always appear to us connected with particular actions; but it is not on account of what is particular in them that these actions are good or bad. So when I declare that the death of Socrates is unjust, and that the devotion of Leonidas is admirable, it is the unjust death of a wise man that I condemn, and the devotion of a hero that I admire. It is not important whether this hero be called Leonidas or d'Assas, whether the immolated sage be called Socrates or Bailly.

The judgment of the good is at first applied to particular actions, and it gives birth to general principles which in course serve us as rules for judging all actions of the same kind. As after having judged that such a particular phenomenon has such a particular cause, we elevate ourselves to the general principle that every phenomenon has its cause; so we erect into a general rule the moral judgment that we have borne in regard to a particular fact. Thus, at first we admire the death of Leonidas, thence we elevate ourselves to the principle that it is good to die for one's country. We already possess the principle in its first application to Leonidas; otherwise, this particular application would not have been legitimate, it would not have been even possible; but we possess it implicitly; as soon as it is disengaged, it appears to us under its universal and pure form, and we apply it to all analogous cases.

Ethics have their axioms like other sciences; and these axioms are rightly called in all languages moral truths.

It is good not to violate one's oath, and in this is also involved a truth. In fact, an oath is founded in the truth of things,--its good is only derived. Moral truths considered in themselves have no less certainty than mathematical truths. The idea of a deposit being given, I ask whether the idea of faithfully keeping it is not necessarily attached to it, as to the idea of a triangle is attached the idea that its three angles are equal to two right angles. You may withhold a deposit; but, in withholding it, do not believe that you change the nature of things, nor that you make it possible for a deposit ever to become property. These two ideas exclude each other. You have only a false semblance of property; and all the efforts of passion, all the sophisms of interest will not reverse the essential differences. This is the reason why moral truth is so troublesome,--it is because, like all truth, it is what it is, and does not bend to any caprice. Always the same and always present, in spite of all our efforts, it inexorably condemns, with a voice always heard, but not always listened to, the sensible and the culpable will which thinks to hinder it from being by denying it, or rather by pretending to deny it.

Moral truths are distinguished from other truths by the singular character that, as soon as we perceive them, they appear to us as the rule of our conduct. If it is true that a deposit is made to be remitted to its legitimate possessor, it is necessary to remit it to him. To the necessity of believing is here added the necessity of practising.

The necessity of practising is obligation. Moral truths, in the eyes of reason necessary, are to the will obligatory.

Moral obligation, like the moral truth that is its foundation, is absolute. As necessary truths are not more or less necessary, so obligation is not more or less obligatory. There are degrees of importance between different obligations; but there are no degrees in the same obligation. We are not somewhat obligated, almost obligated; we are either wholly obligated, or not at all.

If obligation is absolute, it is immutable and universal. For, if the obligation of to-day were not the obligation of to-morrow, if what is obligatory for me were not so for you, obligation would differ from itself, would be relative and contingent.

This fact of absolute, immutable, universal obligation is so certain and so manifest, in spite of all the efforts of the doctrine of interest to obscure it, that one of the profoundest moralists of modern philosophy, particularly struck with this fact, has regarded it as the principle of the whole of ethics. By separating duty from interest which ruins it, and from sentiment which enervates it, Kant restored to ethics their true character. He elevated himself very high in the century of Helvetius, in elevating himself to the holy law of duty; but he still did not ascend high enough, he did not reach the reason itself of duty.

The good for Kant is what is obligatory. But logically, whence comes the obligation of performing an action, if not from the intrinsic goodness of this act? Is it not because that, in the order of reason, it is absolutely impossible to regard a deposit as a property, that we cannot appropriate it to ourselves without a crime? If one action must be performed, and another action must not, it is because there is apparently an essential difference between these two acts. To found the good on obligation, instead of founding obligation on the good, is, therefore, to take the effect for the cause, is to draw the principle from the consequence.

If I ask an honest man who, in spite of the suggestions of misery, has respected the deposit that was intrusted to him, why he respected it, he will answer me,--because it was my duty. If I persist, and ask why it was his duty, he will very rightly answer,--because it was just, because it was good. That point having been reached, all answers are stopped; but questions also are stopped. No one allows a duty to be imposed upon him without rendering to himself a reason for it; but as soon as it is recognized that this duty is imposed upon us because it is just, the mind is satisfied; for it reaches a principle beyond which it has nothing more to seek, justice being its own principle. First truths carry with them their reason for being. Now, justice, the essential distinction between good and evil in the relations of men among themselves, is the primary truth of ethics.

Justice is not a consequence, since we cannot ascend to another more elevated principle; and duty is not, rigorously speaking, a principle, since it supposes a principle above it, that explains and authorizes it, to wit, justice.

Moral truth no more becomes relative and subjective, to take for a moment the language of Kant, in appearing to us obligatory, than truth becomes relative and subjective in appearing to us necessary; for in the very nature of truth and the good must be sought the reason of necessity and obligation. But if we stop at obligation and necessity, as Kant did, in ethics as well as in metaphysics, without knowing it, and even against our intention, we destroy, or at least weaken truth and the good.

Obligation has its foundation in the necessary distinction between good and evil; and is itself the foundation of liberty. If man has duties, he must possess the faculty of fulfilling them, of resisting desire, passion, and interest, in order to obey law. He ought to be free, therefore he is free, or human nature is in contradiction with itself. The direct certainty of obligation implies the corresponding certainty of liberty.

This proof of liberty is doubtless good; but Kant is deceived in supposing it the only legitimate proof. It is very strange that he should have preferred the authority of reasoning to that of consciousness, as if the former had no need of being confirmed by the latter; as if, after all, my liberty ought not to be a fact for me. Empiricism must be greatly feared to distrust the testimony of consciousness; and, after such a distrust, one must be very credulous to have a boundless faith in reasoning. We do not believe in our liberty as we believe in the movement of the earth. The profoundest persuasion that we have of it comes from the continual experience that we carry with ourselves.

Is it true that in presence of an act to be done I am able to will or not to will to do it? In that lies the whole question of liberty.

Let us clearly distinguish between the power of doing and the power of willing. The will has, without doubt, in its service and under its empire, the most of our faculties; but that empire, which is real, is very limited. I will to move my arm, and I am often able to do it,--in that resides, as it were, the physical power of will; but I am not always able to move my arm, if the muscles are paralyzed, if the obstacle to be overcome is too strong, &c.; the execution does not always depend on me; but what always depends on me is the resolution itself. The external effects may be hindered, my resolution itself can never be hindered. In its own domain, will is sovereign.

And I am conscious of this sovereign power of the will. I feel in myself, before its determination, the force that can determine itself in such a manner or in such another. At the same time that I will this or that, I am equally conscious of the power to will the opposite; I am conscious of being master of my resolution, of the ability to arrest it, continue it, repress it. When the voluntary act ceases, the consciousness of the power does not cease,--it remains with the power itself, which is superior to all its manifestations. Liberty is therefore the essential and always-subsisting attribute of will.

The will, we have seen, is neither desire nor passion,--it is exactly the opposite. Liberty of will is not, then, the license of desires and passions. Man is a slave in desire and passion, he is free only in will. That they may not elsewhere be confounded, liberty and anarchy must not be confounded in psychology. Passions abandoning themselves to their caprices, is anarchy. Passions concentrated upon a dominant passion, is tyranny. Liberty consists in the struggle of will against this tyranny and this anarchy. But this combat must have an aim, and this aim is the duty of obeying reason, which is our true sovereign, and justice, which reason reveals to us and prescribes for us. The duty of obeying reason is the law of will, and will is never more itself than when it submits to its law. We do not possess ourselves, as long as to the domination of desire, of passion, of interest, reason does not oppose the counterpoise of justice. Reason and justice free us from the yoke of passions, without imposing upon us another yoke. For, once more, to obey them, is not to abdicate liberty, but to save it, to apply it to its legitimate use.

It is in liberty, and in the agreement of liberty with reason and justice, that man belongs to himself, to speak properly. He is a person only because he is a free being enlightened by reason.

What distinguishes a person from a simple thing, is especially the difference between liberty and its opposite. A thing is that which is not free, consequently that which does not belong to itself, that which has no self, which has only a numerical individuality, a perfect effigy of true individuality, which is that of person.

A thing, not belonging to itself, belongs to the first person that takes possession of it and puts his mark on it.

A thing is not responsible for the movements which it has not willed, of which it is even ignorant. Person alone is responsible, for it is intelligent and free; and it is responsible for the use of its intelligence and freedom.

A thing has no dignity; dignity is only attached to person.

A thing has no value by itself; it has only that which person confers on it. It is purely an instrument whose whole value consists in the use that the person using it derives from it.

Obligation implies liberty; where liberty is not, duty is wanting, and with duty right is wanting also.

It is because there is in me a being worthy of respect, that I have the duty of respecting it, and the right to make it respected by you. My duty is the exact measure of my right. The one is in direct ratio with the other. If I had no sacred duty to respect what makes my person, that is to say, my intelligence and my liberty, I should not have the right to defend it against your injuries. But as my person is inviolable and sacred in itself, it follows that, considered in relation to me, it imposes on me a duty, and, considered in relation to you, it confers on me a right.

I am not myself permitted to degrade the person that I am by abandoning myself to passion, to vice and crime, and I am not permitted to let it be degraded by you.

The person is inviolable; and it alone is inviolable.

It is inviolable not only in the intimate sanctuary of consciousness, but in all its legitimate manifestations, in its acts, in the product of its acts, even in the instruments that it makes its own by using them.

Therein is the foundation of the sanctity of property. The first property is the person. All other properties are derived from that. Think of it well. It is not property in itself that has rights, it is the proprietor, it is the person that stamps upon it, with its own character, its right and its title.

The person cannot cease to belong to itself, without degrading itself,--it is to itself inalienable. The person has no right over itself; it cannot treat itself as a thing, cannot sell itself, cannot destroy itself, cannot in any way abolish its free will and its liberty, which are its constituent elements.

Why has the child already some rights? Because it will be a free being. Why have the old man, returned to infancy, and the insane man still some rights? Because they have been free beings. We even respect liberty in its first glimmerings or its last vestiges. Why, on the other hand, have the insane man and the imbecile old man no longer all their rights? Because they have lost liberty. Why do we enchain the furious madman? Because he has lost knowledge and liberty. Why is slavery an abominable institution? Because it is an outrage upon what constitutes humanity. This is the reason why, in fine, certain extreme devotions are sometimes sublime faults, and no one is permitted to offer them, much less to demand them. There is no legitimate devotion against the very essence of right, against liberty, against justice, against the dignity of the human person.

We have not been able to speak of liberty, without indicating a certain number of moral notions of the highest importance which it contains and explains; but we could not pursue this development without encroaching upon the domain of private and public ethics and anticipating the following lecture.

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 constitute 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 chastisement.

'Tis crime and not the scaffold makes the shame.

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. 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 analysis 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 institutes. 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, analogous to that which is attached to the perception of the beautiful; and we cannot witness a bad action without feeling a contrary sentiment, also analogous 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 noble 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 noble sentiments that animate him thus pass 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 noble 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 passes 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 constitution 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 analysis.

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 analysis 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 passions, the aid of generous passions 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'Assas 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 God 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 principal end.

Admirable economy of the moral constitution 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.

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 analyzed, 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 surpass 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 God 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 illustrious 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.

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, analogous 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 embarrass 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.

FOOTNOTES:

On indignation, see lecture 11.

On remorse, see lecture 11.

See the Gorgias, with the Argument, vol. iii. of our translation.

Lectures 1 and 6.

1st part, lecture 2.

Lecture 2.

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

1st Series, vol. v., lecture 7.

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.

Lecture 12.

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

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

See lecture 16, God, the Principle of the Idea of the Good.

See lecture 16.

On Jacobi, see Tennemann's Manual of the History of Philosophy, vol. iii., p. 318, etc.

On this important question of method, see lecture 12.