Chapter 16

[185]The Pantheon is an imitation of the St. Paul's of London, which is itself a very sad imitation of St. Peter's of Rome. The only merit of the Pantheon is its situation on the summit of the hill of St. Geneviève, from which it overlooks that part of the town, and is seen on different sides to a considerable distance. Put in its place the Val-de-Grâce of Lemercier with the dome of Lemuet, and judge what would be the effect of such an edifice![186]In the first rank of the intelligent auditors of this course was M. Jouffroy, who already under our auspices, had presented to thefaculté des lettres, in order to obtain the degree of doctor, a thesis on the beautiful. M. Jouffroy had cultivated, with care and particular taste, the seeds that our teaching might have planted in his mind. But of all those who at that epoch or later frequented our lectures, no one was better fitted to embrace the entire domain of beauty or art than the author of the beautiful articles on Eustache Lesueur, the Cathedral of Noyon, and the Louvre. M. Vitet possesses all the knowledge, and, what is more, all the qualities requisite for a judge of every kind of beauty, for a worthy historian of art. I yield to the necessity of addressing to him the public petition that he may not be wanting to a vocation so marked and so elevated.[187]See 2d Series, vol. ii., lect. 11 and 12; 4th Series, vol. ii., last pages ofJacqueline Pascal, and theFragments of the Cartesian Philosophy, p. 469.[188]1st Series, vol. iii., lectures 2 and 3,Condillac.[189]See the Theory of Sentiment, part i.,lecture 5.[190]On the ethics of interest, to this lecture may be joined those of vol. iii. of the 1st Series, on the doctrine of Helvetius and St. Lambert.[191]The wordbonheur, which has no exact English equivalent, which M. Cousin uses in his ethical discussions in the precise sense of the definition given above, we have sometimes translated happiness, sometimes good fortune, sometimes prosperity, sometimes fortune. When one has in mind the thing, he will not be troubled by the more or less exact word that indicates it:—all language, at best, is only symbolic; it bears the same relation to thought as the forms of nature do to the laws that produce and govern them. The true reader never mistakes the symbol for the thing symbolized, the shadow for the reality.[192]On the danger of seeking unity before all, see in the 3d Series,Fragments Philosophiques, vol. iv., ourExamination of the Lectures of M. Laromeguière.[193]On the difference between desire, intelligence, and will, see theExamination, already cited,of the Lectures of M. Laromeguière.[194]1st Series, vol. iii., p. 193: "In the doctrine of interest, every man seeks the useful, but he is not sure of attaining it. He may, by dint of prudence and profound combinations, increase in his favor the chances of success; it is impossible that there should not remain some chances against him; he never pursues, then, any thing but a probable result. On the contrary, in the doctrine of duty, I am always sure of obtaining the last end that I propose to myself, moral good. I risk my life to save my fellow; if, through mischance, I miss this end, there is another which does not, which cannot, escape me,—I have aimed at the good, I have been successful. Moral good, being especially in the virtuous intention, is always in my power and within my reach; as to the material good that can result from the action itself, Providence alone disposes of it. Let us felicitate ourselves that Providence has placed our moral destiny in our own hands, by making it depend upon the good and not upon the useful. The will, in order to act in the sad trials of life, has need of being sustained by certainty. Who would be disposed to give his blood for an uncertain end? Success is a complicated problem, that, in order to be solved, exacts all the power of the calculus of probabilities. What labor and what uncertainties does such a calculus involve! Doubt is a very sad preparation for action. But when one proposes before all to do his duty, he acts without any perplexity. Do what you ought, let come what may, is a motto that does not deceive. With such an end, we are sure of never pursuing it in vain."[195]See the development of the idea of right, lectures14and15.[196]Seelecture 14, Theory of liberty.[197]See the precedinglecture, and lectures14and15.[198]1st part,lecture 1.[199]Seelecture 16.[200]On the politics that are derived from the philosophy of sensation, see the four lectures that we devoted to the exposition and refutation of the doctrine of Hobbes, vol. iii. of the 1st Series.[201]These words sufficiently mark the generous epoch in which we pronounce them, without wounding the authority and the applauses of a noble youth, when M. de Châteaubriand covered the Restoration with his own glory, when M. Royer-Collard presided over public instruction, M. Pasquier, M. Lainé, M. de Serre over justice and the interior, Marshal St. Cyr over war, and the Duke de Richelieu over foreign affairs, when the Duke de Broglie prepared the true legislation of the press, and M. Decazes, the author of the wise and courageous ordinance of September 5, 1816, was at the head of the councils of the crown; when finally, Louis XVIII. separated himself, like Henry IV., from his oldest servants in order to be the king of the whole nation.[202]Œuvres de Reid, vol. iv., p. 297: "Men are neither as good nor as bad as their principles; and, as there is no skeptic in the street, so I am sure there is no disinterested spectator of human actions who is not compelled to discern them as just and unjust. Skepticism has no light that does not pale before the splendor of that vivid internal light that lightens the objects of moral perception, as the light of day lightens the objects of sensible perception."[203]Mordre—to bite, is the main root ofremords—remorse.[204]See 1st part,lecture 5,On Mysticism, and 2d part,lecture 6,On the Sentiment of the Beautiful. See, also, 1st Series, vol. iv., detailed refutation of the Theories of Hutcheson and Smith.[205]We do not grow weary of citing M. Royer-Collard. He has marked the defects of the ethics of sentiment in a lively and powerful passage, from which we borrow some traits.Œuvres de Reid, vol. iii., p. 410, 411: "The perception of the moral qualities of human actions is accompanied by an emotion of the soul that is calledsentiment. Sentiment is a support of nature that invites us to good by the attraction of the noblest joys of which man is capable, and turns us from evil by the contempt, the aversion, the horror with which it inspires us. It is a fact that by the contemplation of a beautiful action or a noble character, at the same time that we perceive these qualities of the action and the character (perception, which is a judgment), we feel for the person a love mingled with respect, and sometimes an admiration that is full of tenderness. A bad action, a loose and perfidious character, excite a contrary perception and sentiment. The internal approbation of conscience and remorse are sentiments attached to the perception of the moral qualities of our own actions.... I do not weaken the part of sentiment; yet it is not true that ethics are wholly in sentiment; if we maintain this, we annihilate moral distinctions.... Let ethics be wholly in sentiment, and nothing is in itself good, nothing is in itself evil; good and evil are relative; the qualities of human actions are precisely such as each one feels them to be. Change sentiment, and you change every thing; the same action is at once good, indifferent, and bad, according to the affection of the spectator. Silence sentiment, and actions are only physical phenomena; obligation is resolved into inclinations, virtue into pleasure, honesty into utility. Such are the ethics of Epicurus:Dii meliora piis!"[206]In this formula is recognized the system of Bentham, who, for some time, had numerous partisans in England, and even in France.[207]Seelecture 12.[208]1st Series, vol. iv., p. 174: "If the good is that alone which must be the most useful to the greatest number, where can the good be found, and who can discern it? In order to know whether such an action, which I propose to myself to do, is good or bad, I must be sure, in spite of its visible and direct utility in the present moment, that it will not become injurious in a future that I do not yet know. I must seek whether, useful to mine and those that surround me, it will not have counter-strokes disastrous to the human race, of which I must think before all. It is important that I should know whether the money that I am tempted to give this unfortunate who needs it, could not be otherwise more usefully employed, in fact, the rule is here the greatest good of the greatest number. In order to follow it, what calculations are imposed on me? In the obscurity of the future, in the uncertainty of the somewhat remote consequences of every action, the surest way is to do nothing that is not related to myself, and the last result of a prudence so refined is indifference and egoism. Supposing you have received a deposit from an opulent neighbor, who is old and sick, a sum of which he has no need, and without which your numerous family runs the risk of dying with famine. He calls on you for this sum,—what will you do? The greatest number is on your side, and the greatest utility also; for this sum is insignificant for your rich neighbor, whilst it will save your family from misery, and perhaps from death. Father of a family, I should like much to know in the name of what principle you would hesitate to retain the sum which is necessary to you? Intrepid reasoner, placed in the alternative of killing this sick old man, or of letting your wife and children die of hunger, in all honesty of conscience you ought to kill him. You have the right, it is even your duty to sacrifice the less advantage of a single person to much the greater advantage of a greater number; and since this principle is the expression of true justice, you are only its minister in doing what you do. A vanquishing enemy or a furious people threaten destruction to a whole city, if there be not delivered up to them the head of such a man, who is, nevertheless, innocent. In the name of the greatest good of the greatest number, this man will be immolated without scruple. It might even be maintained that innocent to the last, he has ceased to be so, since he is an obstacle to the public good. It having once been declared that justice is the interest of the greatest number, the only question is to know where this interest is. Now, here, doubt is impossible, therefore, it is perfectly just to offer innocence as a holocaust to public safety. This consequence must be accepted, or the principle rejected."[209]Seelecture 15,Private and Public Ethics.[210]Plato,Republic, vol. ix. and x. of our translation.[211]Lecture 16.[212]Lectures4and7.[213]This polemic is not new. The school of St. Thomas engaged in it early against the theory of Occam, which was quite similar to that which we combat. See ourSketch of a General History of Philosophy, 2d Series, vol. ii., lect. 9,On Scholasticism. Here are two decisive passages from St. Thomas, 1st book of theSummation against the Gentiles, chap. lxxxvii: "Per prædicta autem excluditur error dicentiam omnia procedere a Deo secundum simplicem voluntatem, ut de nullo oporteat rationem reddere, nisi quia Deus vult. Quod etiam divinæ Scripturæ contrariatur, quæ Deum perhibet secundum ordinem sapientiæ suæ omnia fecisse, secundum illud Psalm ciii.: omnia in sapientia fecisti."Ibid., book ii., chap. xxiv.: "Per hoc autem excluditur quorundam error qui dicebant omnia ex simplica divina voluntate dependere aliqua ratione."[214]See the famous calculus applied to the immortality of the soul,Des Pensées de Pascal, vol. i. of the 4th Series, p. 229-235 and p. 289-296.[215]Lecture 16.[216]On indignation, seelecture 11.[217]On remorse, seelecture 11.[218]See theGorgias, with theArgument, vol. iii. of our translation.[219]Lectures1and6.[220]Lectures2,3, and6.[221]1st part,lecture 2.[222]Lecture 2.[223]1st part,lecture 3. See also vol. v. of the 1st Series, lecture 8.[224]1st Series, vol. v., lecture 7.[225]See, for the entire development of the theory of liberty, 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 1,Locke, p. 71; lecture 3,Condillac, p. 116, 149, etc.; vol. iv., lecture 23,Reid, p. 541-574; 2d Series, vol. iii.,Examination of the System of Locke, lecture 25.[226]Lecture 12.[227]See 1st Series, vol. iv., Lecture on Smith and on the true principle of political economy, p. 278-302.[228]Le crime fait la honte et non pas l'échafaud.[229]Seelecture 16,God, the Principle of the Idea of the Good.[230]Seelecture 16.[231]On Jacobi, see Tennemann'sManual of the History of Philosophy, vol. iii., p. 318, etc.[232]On this important question of method, seelecture 12.[233]See theRepublic, book iv., vol. ix., of our translation.[234]On our principal duties towards ourselves, and on that error, too much accredited in the eighteenth century, of reducing ethics to our duties towards others, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lectures on the ethics of Helvetius and Saint-Lambert, lecture vi., p. 235: "To define virtue an habitual disposition to contribute to the happiness of others, is to concentrate virtue into a single one of its applications, is to suppress its general and essential character. Therein is the fundamental vice of the ethics of the eighteenth century. Those ethics are an exaggerated reaction against the somewhat mystical ethics of the preceding age, which, rightly occupied with perfecting the internal man, often fell into asceticism, which is not only useless to others, but is contrary to well-ordered human life. Through fear of asceticism, the philosophy of the eighteenth century forgot the care of internal perfection, and only considered the virtues useful to society. That was retrenching many virtues, and the best ones. I take, for example, dominion over self. How make a virtue of it, when virtue is defined adisposition to contribute to the happiness of others? Will it be said that dominion over self is useful to others? But that is not always true; often this dominion is exercised in the solitude of the soul over internal and wholly personal movements; and there it is most painful and most sublime. Were we in a desert, it would still be for us a duty to resist our passions, to command ourselves, and to govern our life as it becomes a rational and free being. Beneficence is an adorable virtue, but it is neither the whole of virtue, nor its most difficult employment. What auxiliaries we have when the question is to do good to our fellow-creatures,—pity, sympathy, natural benevolence! But to resist pride and envy, to combat in the depths of the soul a natural desire legitimate in itself, often culpable in its excesses, to suffer and struggle in silence, is the hardest task of a virtuous man. I add that the virtues useful to others have their surest guaranty in those personal virtues that the eighteenth century misconceived. What are goodness, generosity, and beneficence without dominion over self, without the form of soul attached to the religious observance of duty? They are, perhaps, only the emotions of a beautiful nature placed in fortunate circumstances. Take away these circumstances, and, perhaps, the effects will disappear or be diminished. But when a man, who knows himself to be a rational and free being, comprehends that it is his duty to remain faithful to liberty and reason, when he applies himself to govern himself, and pursue, without cessation, the perfection of his nature through all circumstances, you may rely upon that man; he will know how, in case of need, to be useful to others, because there is no true perfection for him without justice and charity. From the care of internal perfection you may draw all the useful virtues, but the reciprocal is not always true. One may be beneficent without being virtuous; one is not virtuous without being beneficent."[235]On the true foundation of property see the precedinglecture.[236]Voluntary servitude is little better than servitude imposed by force. See 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 4, p. 240: "Had another the desire to serve us as a slave, without conditions and without limits, to be for us a thing for our use, a pure instrument, a staff, a vase, and had we also the desire to make use of him in this manner, and to let him serve us in the same way, this reciprocity of desires would authorize for neither of us this absolute sacrifice, because desire can never be the title of a right, because there is something in us that is above all desires, participated or not participated, to wit, duty and right,—justice. To justice it belongs to be the rule of our desires, and not to our desires to be the rule of justice. Should entire humanity forget its dignity, should it consent to its own degradation, should it extend the hand to slavery, tyranny would be none the more legitimate; eternal justice would protest against a contract, which, were it supported by desires, reciprocal desires most authentically expressed and converted into solemn laws, is none the less void of all right, because, as Bossuet very truly said, there is no right against right, no contracts, no conventions, no human laws against the law of laws, against natural law."[237]On the danger of seeking at first the origin of human knowledge, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture on Hobbes, p. 261: "Hobbes is not the only one who took the question of the origin of societies as the starting-point of political science. Nearly all the publicists of the eighteenth century, Montesquieu excepted, proceed in the same manner. Rousseau imagines at first a primitive state in which man being no longer savage without being yet civilized, lived happy and free under the dominion of the laws of nature. This golden age of humanity disappearing carries with it all the rights of the individual, who enters naked and disarmed into what we call the social state. But order cannot reign in a state without laws, and since natural laws perished in the shipwreck of primitive manners, new ones must be created. Society is formed by aid of a contract whose principle is the abandonment by each and all of their individual force and rights to the profit of the community, of the state, the instrument of all forces, the depository of all rights. The state, for Hobbes, will be a man, a monarch, a king; for Rousseau, the state is the collection itself of citizens, who by turns are considered as subjects and governors, so that instead of the despotism of one over all, we have the despotism of all over each. Law is not the more or less happy, more or less faithful expression of natural justice; it is the expression of the general will. This general will is alone free; particular wills are not free. The general will has all rights, and particular wills have only the rights that it confers on them, or rather lends them. Force, inThe Citizenis the foundation of society, of order, of laws, of the rights and duties which laws alone institute. In theContrat Social, the general will plays the same part, fulfils the same function. Moreover, the general will scarcely differs in itself from force. In fact, the general will is number, that is to say, force still. Thus, on both sides, tyranny under different forms. One may here observe the power of method. If Hobbes, if Rousseau especially had at first studied the idea of right in itself, with the certain characters without which we are not able to conceive it, they would have infallibly recognized that if there are rights derived from positive laws, and particularly from conventions and contracts, there are rights derived from no contract, since contracts take them for principles and rules; from no convention, since they serve as the foundation to all conventions in order that these conventions may be reputed just;—rights that society consecrates and develops, but does not make,—rights not subject to the caprices of general or particular will, belonging essentially to human nature, and like it, inviolable and sacred."[238]1st Series, vol. iii., p. 265: "What!" somewhere says Montesquieu, "man is everywhere in society, and it is asked whether man was born for society! What is this fact that is reproduced in all the vicissitudes of the life of humanity, except a law of humanity? The universal and permanent fact of society attests the principle of sociability. This principle shines forth in all our inclinations, in our sentiments, in our beliefs. It is true that we love society for the advantages that it brings; but it is none the less true, that we also love it for its own sake, that we seek it independently of all calculation. Solitude saddens us; it is not less deadly to the life of the moral being, than a perfect vacuum is to the life of the physical being. Without society what would become of sympathy, which is one of the most powerful principles of our soul, which establishes between men a community of sentiments, by which each lives in all and all live in each? Who would be blind enough not to see in that an energetic call of human nature for society? And the attraction of the sexes, their union, the love of parents for children,—do they not found a sort of natural society, that is increased and developed by the power of the same causes which produced it? Divided by interest, united by sentiment, men respect each other in the name of justice. Let us add that they love each other in virtue of natural charity. In the sight of justice, equal in right, charity inspires us to consider ourselves as brethren, and to give each other succor and consolation. Wonderful thing! God has not left to our wisdom, nor even to experience, the care of forming and preserving society,—he has willed that sociability should be a law of our nature, and a law so imperative that no tendency to isolation, no egoism, no distaste even, can prevail against it. All the power of the spirit of system was necessary in order to make Hobbes say that society is an accident, as an incredible degree of melancholy to wring from Rousseau the extravagant expression that society is an evil."[239]1st Series, vol. iii., p. 283: "We do not hold from a compact our quality as man, and the dignity and rights attached to it; or, rather, there is an immortal compact which is nowhere written, which makes itself felt by every uncorrupted conscience, that compact which binds together all beings intelligent, free, and subject to misfortune, by the sacred ties of a common respect and a common charity.... Laws promulgate duties, but do not give birth to them; they could not violate duties without being unjust, and ceasing to merit the beautiful name of laws—that is to say, decisions of the public authority worthy of appearing obligatory to the conscience of all. Nevertheless, although laws have no other virtue than that of declaring what exists before them, we often found on them right and justice, to the great detriment of justice itself, and the sentiment of right. Time and habit despoil reason of its natural rights in order to transfer it to law. What then happens? We either obey it, even when it is unjust, which is not a very great evil, but we do not think of reforming it little by little, having no superior principle that enables us to judge it,—or we continually change it, in an invincible impotence of founding any thing, by not knowing the immutable basis on which written law must rest. In either case, all progress is impossible, because the laws are not related to their true principle, which is reason, conscience, sovereign and absolute justice."[240]Lecture 12.[241]See 4th Series, vol. i., p. 40.[242]See our pamphlet entitledJustice and Charity, composed in 1848, in the midst of the excesses of socialism, in order to remind of the dignity of liberty, the character, bearing, and the impassable limits of true charity, private and civil.[243]See on the theory of penalty, theGorgias, vol. iii. of the translation of Plato, and our argument, p. 367: "The first law of order is to be faithful to virtue, and to that part of virtue which is related to society, to wit, justice; but if one is wanting in that, the second law of order is to expiate one's fault, and it is expiated by punishment. Publicists are still seeking the foundation of penalty. Some, who think themselves great politicians, find it in the utility of the punishment for those who witness it, and are turned aside from crime by fear of its menace, by its preventive virtue. And that it is true, is one of the effects of penalty, but it is not its foundation; for punishment falling upon the innocent, would produce as much, and still more terror, and would be quite as preventive. Others, in their pretensions to humanity, do not wish to see the legitimacy of punishment except in its utility for him who undergoes it, in its corrective virtue,—and that, too, is one of the possible effects of punishment, but not its foundation; for that punishment may be corrective, it must be accepted as just. It is, then, always necessary to recur to justice. Justice is the true foundation of punishment,—personal and social utility are only consequences. It is an incontestable fact, that after every unjust act, man thinks, and cannot but think that he has incurred demerit, that is to say, has merited a punishment. In intelligence, to the idea of injustice corresponds that of penalty; and when injustice has taken place in the social sphere, merited punishment ought to be inflicted by society. Society can inflict it only because it ought. Right here has no other source than duty, the strictest, most evident, and most sacred duty, without which this pretended right would be only that of force, that is to say, an atrocious injustice, should it even result in the moral profit of him who undergoes it, and in a salutary spectacle for the people,—what it would not then be; for then the punishment would find no sympathy, no echo, either in the public conscience or in that of the condemned. The punishment is not just, because it is preventively or correctively useful; but it is in both ways useful, because it is just." This theory of penalty, in demonstrating the falsity, the incomplete and exclusive character of two theories that divide publicists, completes and explains them, and gives them both a legitimate centre and base. It is doubtless only indicated in Plato, but is met in several passages, briefly but positively expressed, and on it rests the sublime theory of expiation.[244]As it is perceived, we have confined ourselves to the most general principles. The following year, in 1819, in our lectures on Hobbes, 1st Series, vol. iii., we gave a more extended theory of rights, and the civil and political guaranties which they demand; we even touched the question of the different forms of government, and established the truth and beauty of the constitutional monarchy. In 1828, 2d Series, vol. i., lecture 13, we explained and defended the Charter in its fundamental parts. Under the government of July, the part of defender of both liberty and royalty was easy. We continued it in 1848; and when, at the unexpected inundation of democracy, soon followed by a passionate reaction in favor of an absolute authority, many minds, and the best, asked themselves whether the young American republic was not called to serve as a model for old Europe, we did not hesitate to maintain the principle of the monarchy in the interest of liberty; we believe that we demonstrated that the development of the principles of 1789, and in particular the progress of the lower classes, so necessary, can be obtained only by the aid of the constitutional monarchy,—6th Series,Political Discourses,with an introduction on the principles of the French Revolution and representative government.[245]Lectures4and7.[246]Such is the common vice of nearly all theodiceas, without excepting the best—that of Leibnitz, that of Clarke; even the most popular of all, theProfession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard. See our small work entitledPhilosophie Populaire, 3d edition, p. 82.[247]On the Cartesian argument, see above, part 1st,lecture 4; see also 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 12, and especially vol. v., lecture 6.[248]Fragments de Philosophie Cartésienne, p. 24: "The infinite being, inasmuch as infinite, is not a mover, a cause; neither is he, inasmuch as infinite, an intelligence; neither is he a will; neither is he a principle of justice, nor much less a principle of love. We have no right to impute to him all these attributes in virtue of the single argument that every contingent being supposes a being that is not so, that every finite supposes an infinite. The God given by this argument is the God of Spinoza, is rigorously so; but he is almost as though he were not, at least for us who with difficulty perceive him in the inaccessible heights of an eternity and existence that are absolute, void of thought, of liberty, of love, similar to nonentity itself, and a thousand times inferior, in his infinity and eternity, to an hour of our finite and perishable existence, if during this fleeting hour we know what we are, if we think, if we love something else than ourselves, if we feel capable of freely sacrificing to an idea the few minutes that have been accorded to us."[249]This theodicea is herein résumé, and in the4thand5thlectures of part first, as well as in thelecturethat follows. The most important of our different writings, on this point, will be found collected and elucidated by each other, in the Appendix to the 5th lecture of the first volume of the 1st Series.—See our translation of this entire Series of M. Cousin's works, under the title of the History of Modern Philosophy.[250]3d Series, vol. iv., advertisement to the 3d edition: "Without vain subtilty, there is a real distinction between free will and spontaneous liberty. Arbitrary freedom is volition with the appearance of deliberation between different objects, and under this supreme condition, that when, as a consequence of deliberation, we resolve to do this or that, we have the immediate consciousness of having been able, and of being able still, to will the contrary. It is in volition, and in the retinue of phenomena which surround it, that liberty more energetically appears, but it is not thereby exhausted. It is at rare and sublime moments in which liberty is as much greater as it appears less to the eyes of a superficial observation. I have often cited the example of d'Assas. D'Assas did not deliberate; and for all that, was d'Assas less free, did he not act with entire liberty? Has the saint who, after a long and painful exercise of virtue, has come to practise, as it were by nature, the acts of self-renunciation which are repugnant to human weakness; has the saint, in order to have gone out from the contradictions and the anguish of this form of liberty which we called volition, fallen below it instead of being elevated above it; and is he nothing more than a blind and passive instrument of grace, as Luther and Calvin have inappropriately wished to call it, by an excessive interpretation of the Augustinian doctrine? No, freedom still remains; and far from being annihilated, its liberty, in being purified, is elevated and ennobled; from the human form of volition it has passed to the almost divine form of spontaneity. Spontaneity is essentially free, although it may be accompanied with no deliberation, and although often, in the rapid motion of its inspired action, it escapes its own observation, and leaves scarcely a trace in the depths of consciousness. Let us transfer this exact psychology to theodicea, and we may recognize without hypothesis, that spontaneity is also especially the form of God's liberty. Yes, certainly, God is free; for, among other proofs, it would be absurd that there should be less freedom in the first cause than in one of its effects, humanity; God is free, but not with that liberty which is related to our double nature, and made to contend against passion and error, and painfully to engender virtue and our imperfect knowledge; he is free, with a liberty that is related to his own divine nature, that is a liberty unlimited, infinite, recognizing no obstacle. Between justice and injustice, between good and evil, between reason and its contrary, God cannot deliberate, and, consequently, cannot will after our manner. Can one conceive, in fact, that he could take what we call the bad part? This very supposition is impious. It is necessary to admit that when he has taken the contrary part, he has acted freely without doubt, but not arbitrarily, and with the consciousness of having been able to choose the other part. His nature, all-powerful, all-just, all-wise, is developed with that spontaneity which contains entire liberty, and excludes at once the efforts and the miseries of volition, and the mechanical operation of necessity. Such is the principle and the true character of the divine action."

[186]In the first rank of the intelligent auditors of this course was M. Jouffroy, who already under our auspices, had presented to thefaculté des lettres, in order to obtain the degree of doctor, a thesis on the beautiful. M. Jouffroy had cultivated, with care and particular taste, the seeds that our teaching might have planted in his mind. But of all those who at that epoch or later frequented our lectures, no one was better fitted to embrace the entire domain of beauty or art than the author of the beautiful articles on Eustache Lesueur, the Cathedral of Noyon, and the Louvre. M. Vitet possesses all the knowledge, and, what is more, all the qualities requisite for a judge of every kind of beauty, for a worthy historian of art. I yield to the necessity of addressing to him the public petition that he may not be wanting to a vocation so marked and so elevated.

[187]See 2d Series, vol. ii., lect. 11 and 12; 4th Series, vol. ii., last pages ofJacqueline Pascal, and theFragments of the Cartesian Philosophy, p. 469.

[188]1st Series, vol. iii., lectures 2 and 3,Condillac.

[189]See the Theory of Sentiment, part i.,lecture 5.

[190]On the ethics of interest, to this lecture may be joined those of vol. iii. of the 1st Series, on the doctrine of Helvetius and St. Lambert.

[191]The wordbonheur, which has no exact English equivalent, which M. Cousin uses in his ethical discussions in the precise sense of the definition given above, we have sometimes translated happiness, sometimes good fortune, sometimes prosperity, sometimes fortune. When one has in mind the thing, he will not be troubled by the more or less exact word that indicates it:—all language, at best, is only symbolic; it bears the same relation to thought as the forms of nature do to the laws that produce and govern them. The true reader never mistakes the symbol for the thing symbolized, the shadow for the reality.

[192]On the danger of seeking unity before all, see in the 3d Series,Fragments Philosophiques, vol. iv., ourExamination of the Lectures of M. Laromeguière.

[193]On the difference between desire, intelligence, and will, see theExamination, already cited,of the Lectures of M. Laromeguière.

[194]1st Series, vol. iii., p. 193: "In the doctrine of interest, every man seeks the useful, but he is not sure of attaining it. He may, by dint of prudence and profound combinations, increase in his favor the chances of success; it is impossible that there should not remain some chances against him; he never pursues, then, any thing but a probable result. On the contrary, in the doctrine of duty, I am always sure of obtaining the last end that I propose to myself, moral good. I risk my life to save my fellow; if, through mischance, I miss this end, there is another which does not, which cannot, escape me,—I have aimed at the good, I have been successful. Moral good, being especially in the virtuous intention, is always in my power and within my reach; as to the material good that can result from the action itself, Providence alone disposes of it. Let us felicitate ourselves that Providence has placed our moral destiny in our own hands, by making it depend upon the good and not upon the useful. The will, in order to act in the sad trials of life, has need of being sustained by certainty. Who would be disposed to give his blood for an uncertain end? Success is a complicated problem, that, in order to be solved, exacts all the power of the calculus of probabilities. What labor and what uncertainties does such a calculus involve! Doubt is a very sad preparation for action. But when one proposes before all to do his duty, he acts without any perplexity. Do what you ought, let come what may, is a motto that does not deceive. With such an end, we are sure of never pursuing it in vain."

[195]See the development of the idea of right, lectures14and15.

[196]Seelecture 14, Theory of liberty.

[197]See the precedinglecture, and lectures14and15.

[198]1st part,lecture 1.

[199]Seelecture 16.

[200]On the politics that are derived from the philosophy of sensation, see the four lectures that we devoted to the exposition and refutation of the doctrine of Hobbes, vol. iii. of the 1st Series.

[201]These words sufficiently mark the generous epoch in which we pronounce them, without wounding the authority and the applauses of a noble youth, when M. de Châteaubriand covered the Restoration with his own glory, when M. Royer-Collard presided over public instruction, M. Pasquier, M. Lainé, M. de Serre over justice and the interior, Marshal St. Cyr over war, and the Duke de Richelieu over foreign affairs, when the Duke de Broglie prepared the true legislation of the press, and M. Decazes, the author of the wise and courageous ordinance of September 5, 1816, was at the head of the councils of the crown; when finally, Louis XVIII. separated himself, like Henry IV., from his oldest servants in order to be the king of the whole nation.

[202]Œuvres de Reid, vol. iv., p. 297: "Men are neither as good nor as bad as their principles; and, as there is no skeptic in the street, so I am sure there is no disinterested spectator of human actions who is not compelled to discern them as just and unjust. Skepticism has no light that does not pale before the splendor of that vivid internal light that lightens the objects of moral perception, as the light of day lightens the objects of sensible perception."

[203]Mordre—to bite, is the main root ofremords—remorse.

[204]See 1st part,lecture 5,On Mysticism, and 2d part,lecture 6,On the Sentiment of the Beautiful. See, also, 1st Series, vol. iv., detailed refutation of the Theories of Hutcheson and Smith.

[205]We do not grow weary of citing M. Royer-Collard. He has marked the defects of the ethics of sentiment in a lively and powerful passage, from which we borrow some traits.Œuvres de Reid, vol. iii., p. 410, 411: "The perception of the moral qualities of human actions is accompanied by an emotion of the soul that is calledsentiment. Sentiment is a support of nature that invites us to good by the attraction of the noblest joys of which man is capable, and turns us from evil by the contempt, the aversion, the horror with which it inspires us. It is a fact that by the contemplation of a beautiful action or a noble character, at the same time that we perceive these qualities of the action and the character (perception, which is a judgment), we feel for the person a love mingled with respect, and sometimes an admiration that is full of tenderness. A bad action, a loose and perfidious character, excite a contrary perception and sentiment. The internal approbation of conscience and remorse are sentiments attached to the perception of the moral qualities of our own actions.... I do not weaken the part of sentiment; yet it is not true that ethics are wholly in sentiment; if we maintain this, we annihilate moral distinctions.... Let ethics be wholly in sentiment, and nothing is in itself good, nothing is in itself evil; good and evil are relative; the qualities of human actions are precisely such as each one feels them to be. Change sentiment, and you change every thing; the same action is at once good, indifferent, and bad, according to the affection of the spectator. Silence sentiment, and actions are only physical phenomena; obligation is resolved into inclinations, virtue into pleasure, honesty into utility. Such are the ethics of Epicurus:Dii meliora piis!"

[206]In this formula is recognized the system of Bentham, who, for some time, had numerous partisans in England, and even in France.

[207]Seelecture 12.

[208]1st Series, vol. iv., p. 174: "If the good is that alone which must be the most useful to the greatest number, where can the good be found, and who can discern it? In order to know whether such an action, which I propose to myself to do, is good or bad, I must be sure, in spite of its visible and direct utility in the present moment, that it will not become injurious in a future that I do not yet know. I must seek whether, useful to mine and those that surround me, it will not have counter-strokes disastrous to the human race, of which I must think before all. It is important that I should know whether the money that I am tempted to give this unfortunate who needs it, could not be otherwise more usefully employed, in fact, the rule is here the greatest good of the greatest number. In order to follow it, what calculations are imposed on me? In the obscurity of the future, in the uncertainty of the somewhat remote consequences of every action, the surest way is to do nothing that is not related to myself, and the last result of a prudence so refined is indifference and egoism. Supposing you have received a deposit from an opulent neighbor, who is old and sick, a sum of which he has no need, and without which your numerous family runs the risk of dying with famine. He calls on you for this sum,—what will you do? The greatest number is on your side, and the greatest utility also; for this sum is insignificant for your rich neighbor, whilst it will save your family from misery, and perhaps from death. Father of a family, I should like much to know in the name of what principle you would hesitate to retain the sum which is necessary to you? Intrepid reasoner, placed in the alternative of killing this sick old man, or of letting your wife and children die of hunger, in all honesty of conscience you ought to kill him. You have the right, it is even your duty to sacrifice the less advantage of a single person to much the greater advantage of a greater number; and since this principle is the expression of true justice, you are only its minister in doing what you do. A vanquishing enemy or a furious people threaten destruction to a whole city, if there be not delivered up to them the head of such a man, who is, nevertheless, innocent. In the name of the greatest good of the greatest number, this man will be immolated without scruple. It might even be maintained that innocent to the last, he has ceased to be so, since he is an obstacle to the public good. It having once been declared that justice is the interest of the greatest number, the only question is to know where this interest is. Now, here, doubt is impossible, therefore, it is perfectly just to offer innocence as a holocaust to public safety. This consequence must be accepted, or the principle rejected."

[209]Seelecture 15,Private and Public Ethics.

[210]Plato,Republic, vol. ix. and x. of our translation.

[211]Lecture 16.

[212]Lectures4and7.

[213]This polemic is not new. The school of St. Thomas engaged in it early against the theory of Occam, which was quite similar to that which we combat. See ourSketch of a General History of Philosophy, 2d Series, vol. ii., lect. 9,On Scholasticism. Here are two decisive passages from St. Thomas, 1st book of theSummation against the Gentiles, chap. lxxxvii: "Per prædicta autem excluditur error dicentiam omnia procedere a Deo secundum simplicem voluntatem, ut de nullo oporteat rationem reddere, nisi quia Deus vult. Quod etiam divinæ Scripturæ contrariatur, quæ Deum perhibet secundum ordinem sapientiæ suæ omnia fecisse, secundum illud Psalm ciii.: omnia in sapientia fecisti."Ibid., book ii., chap. xxiv.: "Per hoc autem excluditur quorundam error qui dicebant omnia ex simplica divina voluntate dependere aliqua ratione."

[214]See the famous calculus applied to the immortality of the soul,Des Pensées de Pascal, vol. i. of the 4th Series, p. 229-235 and p. 289-296.

[215]Lecture 16.

[216]On indignation, seelecture 11.

[217]On remorse, seelecture 11.

[218]See theGorgias, with theArgument, vol. iii. of our translation.

[219]Lectures1and6.

[220]Lectures2,3, and6.

[221]1st part,lecture 2.

[222]Lecture 2.

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

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

[225]See, for the entire development of the theory of liberty, 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 1,Locke, p. 71; lecture 3,Condillac, p. 116, 149, etc.; vol. iv., lecture 23,Reid, p. 541-574; 2d Series, vol. iii.,Examination of the System of Locke, lecture 25.

[226]Lecture 12.

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

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

[229]Seelecture 16,God, the Principle of the Idea of the Good.

[230]Seelecture 16.

[231]On Jacobi, see Tennemann'sManual of the History of Philosophy, vol. iii., p. 318, etc.

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

[233]See theRepublic, book iv., vol. ix., of our translation.

[234]On our principal duties towards ourselves, and on that error, too much accredited in the eighteenth century, of reducing ethics to our duties towards others, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lectures on the ethics of Helvetius and Saint-Lambert, lecture vi., p. 235: "To define virtue an habitual disposition to contribute to the happiness of others, is to concentrate virtue into a single one of its applications, is to suppress its general and essential character. Therein is the fundamental vice of the ethics of the eighteenth century. Those ethics are an exaggerated reaction against the somewhat mystical ethics of the preceding age, which, rightly occupied with perfecting the internal man, often fell into asceticism, which is not only useless to others, but is contrary to well-ordered human life. Through fear of asceticism, the philosophy of the eighteenth century forgot the care of internal perfection, and only considered the virtues useful to society. That was retrenching many virtues, and the best ones. I take, for example, dominion over self. How make a virtue of it, when virtue is defined adisposition to contribute to the happiness of others? Will it be said that dominion over self is useful to others? But that is not always true; often this dominion is exercised in the solitude of the soul over internal and wholly personal movements; and there it is most painful and most sublime. Were we in a desert, it would still be for us a duty to resist our passions, to command ourselves, and to govern our life as it becomes a rational and free being. Beneficence is an adorable virtue, but it is neither the whole of virtue, nor its most difficult employment. What auxiliaries we have when the question is to do good to our fellow-creatures,—pity, sympathy, natural benevolence! But to resist pride and envy, to combat in the depths of the soul a natural desire legitimate in itself, often culpable in its excesses, to suffer and struggle in silence, is the hardest task of a virtuous man. I add that the virtues useful to others have their surest guaranty in those personal virtues that the eighteenth century misconceived. What are goodness, generosity, and beneficence without dominion over self, without the form of soul attached to the religious observance of duty? They are, perhaps, only the emotions of a beautiful nature placed in fortunate circumstances. Take away these circumstances, and, perhaps, the effects will disappear or be diminished. But when a man, who knows himself to be a rational and free being, comprehends that it is his duty to remain faithful to liberty and reason, when he applies himself to govern himself, and pursue, without cessation, the perfection of his nature through all circumstances, you may rely upon that man; he will know how, in case of need, to be useful to others, because there is no true perfection for him without justice and charity. From the care of internal perfection you may draw all the useful virtues, but the reciprocal is not always true. One may be beneficent without being virtuous; one is not virtuous without being beneficent."

[235]On the true foundation of property see the precedinglecture.

[236]Voluntary servitude is little better than servitude imposed by force. See 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 4, p. 240: "Had another the desire to serve us as a slave, without conditions and without limits, to be for us a thing for our use, a pure instrument, a staff, a vase, and had we also the desire to make use of him in this manner, and to let him serve us in the same way, this reciprocity of desires would authorize for neither of us this absolute sacrifice, because desire can never be the title of a right, because there is something in us that is above all desires, participated or not participated, to wit, duty and right,—justice. To justice it belongs to be the rule of our desires, and not to our desires to be the rule of justice. Should entire humanity forget its dignity, should it consent to its own degradation, should it extend the hand to slavery, tyranny would be none the more legitimate; eternal justice would protest against a contract, which, were it supported by desires, reciprocal desires most authentically expressed and converted into solemn laws, is none the less void of all right, because, as Bossuet very truly said, there is no right against right, no contracts, no conventions, no human laws against the law of laws, against natural law."

[237]On the danger of seeking at first the origin of human knowledge, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture on Hobbes, p. 261: "Hobbes is not the only one who took the question of the origin of societies as the starting-point of political science. Nearly all the publicists of the eighteenth century, Montesquieu excepted, proceed in the same manner. Rousseau imagines at first a primitive state in which man being no longer savage without being yet civilized, lived happy and free under the dominion of the laws of nature. This golden age of humanity disappearing carries with it all the rights of the individual, who enters naked and disarmed into what we call the social state. But order cannot reign in a state without laws, and since natural laws perished in the shipwreck of primitive manners, new ones must be created. Society is formed by aid of a contract whose principle is the abandonment by each and all of their individual force and rights to the profit of the community, of the state, the instrument of all forces, the depository of all rights. The state, for Hobbes, will be a man, a monarch, a king; for Rousseau, the state is the collection itself of citizens, who by turns are considered as subjects and governors, so that instead of the despotism of one over all, we have the despotism of all over each. Law is not the more or less happy, more or less faithful expression of natural justice; it is the expression of the general will. This general will is alone free; particular wills are not free. The general will has all rights, and particular wills have only the rights that it confers on them, or rather lends them. Force, inThe Citizenis the foundation of society, of order, of laws, of the rights and duties which laws alone institute. In theContrat Social, the general will plays the same part, fulfils the same function. Moreover, the general will scarcely differs in itself from force. In fact, the general will is number, that is to say, force still. Thus, on both sides, tyranny under different forms. One may here observe the power of method. If Hobbes, if Rousseau especially had at first studied the idea of right in itself, with the certain characters without which we are not able to conceive it, they would have infallibly recognized that if there are rights derived from positive laws, and particularly from conventions and contracts, there are rights derived from no contract, since contracts take them for principles and rules; from no convention, since they serve as the foundation to all conventions in order that these conventions may be reputed just;—rights that society consecrates and develops, but does not make,—rights not subject to the caprices of general or particular will, belonging essentially to human nature, and like it, inviolable and sacred."

[238]1st Series, vol. iii., p. 265: "What!" somewhere says Montesquieu, "man is everywhere in society, and it is asked whether man was born for society! What is this fact that is reproduced in all the vicissitudes of the life of humanity, except a law of humanity? The universal and permanent fact of society attests the principle of sociability. This principle shines forth in all our inclinations, in our sentiments, in our beliefs. It is true that we love society for the advantages that it brings; but it is none the less true, that we also love it for its own sake, that we seek it independently of all calculation. Solitude saddens us; it is not less deadly to the life of the moral being, than a perfect vacuum is to the life of the physical being. Without society what would become of sympathy, which is one of the most powerful principles of our soul, which establishes between men a community of sentiments, by which each lives in all and all live in each? Who would be blind enough not to see in that an energetic call of human nature for society? And the attraction of the sexes, their union, the love of parents for children,—do they not found a sort of natural society, that is increased and developed by the power of the same causes which produced it? Divided by interest, united by sentiment, men respect each other in the name of justice. Let us add that they love each other in virtue of natural charity. In the sight of justice, equal in right, charity inspires us to consider ourselves as brethren, and to give each other succor and consolation. Wonderful thing! God has not left to our wisdom, nor even to experience, the care of forming and preserving society,—he has willed that sociability should be a law of our nature, and a law so imperative that no tendency to isolation, no egoism, no distaste even, can prevail against it. All the power of the spirit of system was necessary in order to make Hobbes say that society is an accident, as an incredible degree of melancholy to wring from Rousseau the extravagant expression that society is an evil."

[239]1st Series, vol. iii., p. 283: "We do not hold from a compact our quality as man, and the dignity and rights attached to it; or, rather, there is an immortal compact which is nowhere written, which makes itself felt by every uncorrupted conscience, that compact which binds together all beings intelligent, free, and subject to misfortune, by the sacred ties of a common respect and a common charity.... Laws promulgate duties, but do not give birth to them; they could not violate duties without being unjust, and ceasing to merit the beautiful name of laws—that is to say, decisions of the public authority worthy of appearing obligatory to the conscience of all. Nevertheless, although laws have no other virtue than that of declaring what exists before them, we often found on them right and justice, to the great detriment of justice itself, and the sentiment of right. Time and habit despoil reason of its natural rights in order to transfer it to law. What then happens? We either obey it, even when it is unjust, which is not a very great evil, but we do not think of reforming it little by little, having no superior principle that enables us to judge it,—or we continually change it, in an invincible impotence of founding any thing, by not knowing the immutable basis on which written law must rest. In either case, all progress is impossible, because the laws are not related to their true principle, which is reason, conscience, sovereign and absolute justice."

[240]Lecture 12.

[241]See 4th Series, vol. i., p. 40.

[242]See our pamphlet entitledJustice and Charity, composed in 1848, in the midst of the excesses of socialism, in order to remind of the dignity of liberty, the character, bearing, and the impassable limits of true charity, private and civil.

[243]See on the theory of penalty, theGorgias, vol. iii. of the translation of Plato, and our argument, p. 367: "The first law of order is to be faithful to virtue, and to that part of virtue which is related to society, to wit, justice; but if one is wanting in that, the second law of order is to expiate one's fault, and it is expiated by punishment. Publicists are still seeking the foundation of penalty. Some, who think themselves great politicians, find it in the utility of the punishment for those who witness it, and are turned aside from crime by fear of its menace, by its preventive virtue. And that it is true, is one of the effects of penalty, but it is not its foundation; for punishment falling upon the innocent, would produce as much, and still more terror, and would be quite as preventive. Others, in their pretensions to humanity, do not wish to see the legitimacy of punishment except in its utility for him who undergoes it, in its corrective virtue,—and that, too, is one of the possible effects of punishment, but not its foundation; for that punishment may be corrective, it must be accepted as just. It is, then, always necessary to recur to justice. Justice is the true foundation of punishment,—personal and social utility are only consequences. It is an incontestable fact, that after every unjust act, man thinks, and cannot but think that he has incurred demerit, that is to say, has merited a punishment. In intelligence, to the idea of injustice corresponds that of penalty; and when injustice has taken place in the social sphere, merited punishment ought to be inflicted by society. Society can inflict it only because it ought. Right here has no other source than duty, the strictest, most evident, and most sacred duty, without which this pretended right would be only that of force, that is to say, an atrocious injustice, should it even result in the moral profit of him who undergoes it, and in a salutary spectacle for the people,—what it would not then be; for then the punishment would find no sympathy, no echo, either in the public conscience or in that of the condemned. The punishment is not just, because it is preventively or correctively useful; but it is in both ways useful, because it is just." This theory of penalty, in demonstrating the falsity, the incomplete and exclusive character of two theories that divide publicists, completes and explains them, and gives them both a legitimate centre and base. It is doubtless only indicated in Plato, but is met in several passages, briefly but positively expressed, and on it rests the sublime theory of expiation.

[244]As it is perceived, we have confined ourselves to the most general principles. The following year, in 1819, in our lectures on Hobbes, 1st Series, vol. iii., we gave a more extended theory of rights, and the civil and political guaranties which they demand; we even touched the question of the different forms of government, and established the truth and beauty of the constitutional monarchy. In 1828, 2d Series, vol. i., lecture 13, we explained and defended the Charter in its fundamental parts. Under the government of July, the part of defender of both liberty and royalty was easy. We continued it in 1848; and when, at the unexpected inundation of democracy, soon followed by a passionate reaction in favor of an absolute authority, many minds, and the best, asked themselves whether the young American republic was not called to serve as a model for old Europe, we did not hesitate to maintain the principle of the monarchy in the interest of liberty; we believe that we demonstrated that the development of the principles of 1789, and in particular the progress of the lower classes, so necessary, can be obtained only by the aid of the constitutional monarchy,—6th Series,Political Discourses,with an introduction on the principles of the French Revolution and representative government.

[245]Lectures4and7.

[246]Such is the common vice of nearly all theodiceas, without excepting the best—that of Leibnitz, that of Clarke; even the most popular of all, theProfession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard. See our small work entitledPhilosophie Populaire, 3d edition, p. 82.

[247]On the Cartesian argument, see above, part 1st,lecture 4; see also 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 12, and especially vol. v., lecture 6.

[248]Fragments de Philosophie Cartésienne, p. 24: "The infinite being, inasmuch as infinite, is not a mover, a cause; neither is he, inasmuch as infinite, an intelligence; neither is he a will; neither is he a principle of justice, nor much less a principle of love. We have no right to impute to him all these attributes in virtue of the single argument that every contingent being supposes a being that is not so, that every finite supposes an infinite. The God given by this argument is the God of Spinoza, is rigorously so; but he is almost as though he were not, at least for us who with difficulty perceive him in the inaccessible heights of an eternity and existence that are absolute, void of thought, of liberty, of love, similar to nonentity itself, and a thousand times inferior, in his infinity and eternity, to an hour of our finite and perishable existence, if during this fleeting hour we know what we are, if we think, if we love something else than ourselves, if we feel capable of freely sacrificing to an idea the few minutes that have been accorded to us."

[249]This theodicea is herein résumé, and in the4thand5thlectures of part first, as well as in thelecturethat follows. The most important of our different writings, on this point, will be found collected and elucidated by each other, in the Appendix to the 5th lecture of the first volume of the 1st Series.—See our translation of this entire Series of M. Cousin's works, under the title of the History of Modern Philosophy.

[250]3d Series, vol. iv., advertisement to the 3d edition: "Without vain subtilty, there is a real distinction between free will and spontaneous liberty. Arbitrary freedom is volition with the appearance of deliberation between different objects, and under this supreme condition, that when, as a consequence of deliberation, we resolve to do this or that, we have the immediate consciousness of having been able, and of being able still, to will the contrary. It is in volition, and in the retinue of phenomena which surround it, that liberty more energetically appears, but it is not thereby exhausted. It is at rare and sublime moments in which liberty is as much greater as it appears less to the eyes of a superficial observation. I have often cited the example of d'Assas. D'Assas did not deliberate; and for all that, was d'Assas less free, did he not act with entire liberty? Has the saint who, after a long and painful exercise of virtue, has come to practise, as it were by nature, the acts of self-renunciation which are repugnant to human weakness; has the saint, in order to have gone out from the contradictions and the anguish of this form of liberty which we called volition, fallen below it instead of being elevated above it; and is he nothing more than a blind and passive instrument of grace, as Luther and Calvin have inappropriately wished to call it, by an excessive interpretation of the Augustinian doctrine? No, freedom still remains; and far from being annihilated, its liberty, in being purified, is elevated and ennobled; from the human form of volition it has passed to the almost divine form of spontaneity. Spontaneity is essentially free, although it may be accompanied with no deliberation, and although often, in the rapid motion of its inspired action, it escapes its own observation, and leaves scarcely a trace in the depths of consciousness. Let us transfer this exact psychology to theodicea, and we may recognize without hypothesis, that spontaneity is also especially the form of God's liberty. Yes, certainly, God is free; for, among other proofs, it would be absurd that there should be less freedom in the first cause than in one of its effects, humanity; God is free, but not with that liberty which is related to our double nature, and made to contend against passion and error, and painfully to engender virtue and our imperfect knowledge; he is free, with a liberty that is related to his own divine nature, that is a liberty unlimited, infinite, recognizing no obstacle. Between justice and injustice, between good and evil, between reason and its contrary, God cannot deliberate, and, consequently, cannot will after our manner. Can one conceive, in fact, that he could take what we call the bad part? This very supposition is impious. It is necessary to admit that when he has taken the contrary part, he has acted freely without doubt, but not arbitrarily, and with the consciousness of having been able to choose the other part. His nature, all-powerful, all-just, all-wise, is developed with that spontaneity which contains entire liberty, and excludes at once the efforts and the miseries of volition, and the mechanical operation of necessity. Such is the principle and the true character of the divine action."

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