Exposition of the doctrine of interest.—What there is of truth in this doctrine.—Its defects. 1st. It confounds liberty and desire, and thereby abolishes liberty. 2d. It cannot explain the fundamental distinction between good and evil. 3d. It cannot explain obligation and duty. 4th. Nor right. 5th. Nor the principle of merit and demerit.—Consequences of the ethics of interest: that they cannot admit a providence, and lead to despotism.
Exposition of the doctrine of interest.—What there is of truth in this doctrine.—Its defects. 1st. It confounds liberty and desire, and thereby abolishes liberty. 2d. It cannot explain the fundamental distinction between good and evil. 3d. It cannot explain obligation and duty. 4th. Nor right. 5th. Nor the principle of merit and demerit.—Consequences of the ethics of interest: that they cannot admit a providence, and lead to despotism.
The philosophy of sensation, setting out from a single fact, agreeable or painful sensation, necessarily arrives in ethics at a single principle,—interest. The whole of the system may be explained as follows:
Man is sensible to pleasure and pain: he shuns the one and seeks the other. That is his first instinct, and this instinct will never abandon him. Pleasure may change so far as its object is concerned, and be diversified in a thousand ways: but whatever form it takes,—physical pleasure, intellectual pleasure, moral pleasure, it is always pleasure that man pursues.
The agreeable generalized is the useful; and the greatest possible sum of pleasure, whatever it may be, no longer concentrated within such or such an instant, but distributed over a certain extent of duration, is happiness.[191]
Happiness, like pleasure, is relative to him who experiences it; it is essentially personal. Ourselves, and ourselves alone we love, in loving pleasure and happiness.
Interest is that which prompts us to seek in every thing our pleasure and our happiness.
If happiness is the sole end of life, interest is the sole motive of all our actions.
Man is only sensible to his interest, but he understands it well or ill. Much art is necessary in order to be happy. We are not ready to give ourselves up to all the pleasures that are offered on the highway of life, without examining whether these pleasures do not conceal many a pain. Present pleasure is not every thing,—it is necessary to take thought for the future; it is necessary to know how to renounce joys that may bring regret, and sacrifice pleasure to happiness, that is to say, to pleasure still, but pleasure more enduring and less intoxicating. The pleasures of the body are not the only ones,—there are other pleasures, those of mind, even those of opinion: the sage tempers them by each other.
The ethics of interest are nothing else than the ethics of perfected pleasure, substituting happiness for pleasure, the useful for the agreeable, prudence for passion. It admits, like the human race, the words good and evil, virtue and vice, merit and demerit, punishment and reward, but it explains them in its own way. The good is that which in the eyes of reason is conformed to our true interest; evil is that which is contrary to our true interest. Virtue is that wisdom which knows how to resist the enticement of passions, discerns what is truly useful, and surely proceeds to happiness. Vice is that aberration of mind and character that sacrifices happiness to pleasures without duration or full of dangers. Merit and demerit, punishment andreward, are the consequences of virtue and vice:—for not knowing how to seek happiness by the road of wisdom, we are punished by not attaining it. The ethics of interest do not pretend to destroy any of the duties consecrated by public opinion; it establishes that all are conformed to our personal interest, and it is thereby that they are duties. To do good to men is the surest means of making them do good to us; and it is also the means of acquiring their esteem, their good will, and their sympathy,—always agreeable, and often useful. Disinterestedness itself has its explanation. Doubtless there is no disinterestedness in the vulgar sense of the word, that is to say, a real sacrifice of self, which is absurd, but there is the sacrifice of present interest to future interest, of gross and sensual passion to a nobler and more delicate pleasure. Sometimes one renders to himself a bad account of the pleasure that he pursues, and in fault of seeing clearly into his own heart, invents that chimera of disinterestedness of which human nature is incapable, which it cannot even comprehend.
It will be conceded that this explanation of the ethics of interest is not overcharged, that it is faithful.
We go further,—we acknowledge that these ethics are an extreme, but, up to a certain point, a legitimate reaction against the excessive rigor of stoical ethics, especially ascetic ethics that smother sensibility instead of regulating it, and, in order to save the soul from passions, demands of it a sacrifice of all the passions of nature that resembles a suicide.
Man was not made to be a sublime slave, like Epictetus, employed in supporting bad fortune well without trying to surmount it, nor, like the author of theImitation, the angelic inhabitant of a cloister, calling for death as a fortunate deliverance, and anticipating it, as far as in him lies, by continual penitence and in mute adoration. The love of pleasure, even the passions, have a place among the needs of humanity. Suppress the passions, and it is true there is no more excess; neither is there any mainspring of action,—without winds the vessel no longer proceeds, and soonsinks in the deep. Suppose a being that lacks love of self, the instinct of preservation, the horror of suffering, especially the horror of death, who has neither the love of pleasure nor the love of happiness, in a word, destitute of all personal interest,—such a being will not long resist the innumerable causes of destruction that surround and besiege him; he will not remain a day. Never can a single family, nor the least society be formed or maintained. He who has made man has not confided the care of his work to virtue alone, to devotedness and sublime charity,—he has willed that the duration and development of the race and human society should be placed upon simpler and surer foundations; and this is the reason why he has given to man the love of self, the instinct of preservation, the taste of pleasure and happiness, the passions that animate life, hope and fear, love, ambition, personal interest, in fine, a powerful, permanent, universal motive that urges us on to continually ameliorate our condition upon the earth.
So we do not contest with the ethics of interest the reality of their principle,—we are convinced that this principle exists, that it has a right to be. The only question that we raise is the following:—The principle of interest is true in itself, but are there not other principles quite as true, quite as real? Man seeks pleasure and happiness, but are there not in him other needs, other sentiments as powerful, as vital? The first and universal principle of human life is the need of the individual to preserve himself; but would this principle suffice to support human life and society entire and as we behold it?
Just as the existence of the body does not hinder that of the soul, and reciprocally, so in the ample bosom of humanity and the profound designs of divine Providence, the principles that differ most do not exclude each other.
The philosophy of sensation continually appeals to experience. We also invoke experience; and it is experience that has given us certain facts mentioned in the preceding lecture, which constitute the primary notions of common sense. We admit the factsthat serve as a foundation for the system of interest, and reject the system. The facts are true in their proper bearing,—the system is false in attributing to them an excessive, limitless bearing; and it is false again in denying other facts quite as incontestable. A sound philosophy holds for its primary law to collect all real facts and respect the real differences that also distinguish them. What it pursues before all, is not unity, but truth.[192]Now the ethics of interest mutilate truth,—they choose among facts those that agree with them, and reject all the others, which are precisely the very facts of morality. Exclusive and intolerant, they deny what they do not explain,—they form a whole well united, which, as an artificial work, may have its merit, but is broken to pieces as soon as it comes to encounter human nature with its grand parts.
We are about to show that the ethics of interest, an offspring of the philosophy of sensation, are in contradiction with a certain number of phenomena, which human nature presents to whomsoever interrogates it without the spirit of system.
1st. We have established, not in the name of a system, but in the name of the most common experience, that entire humanity believes in the existence, in each of its members, of a certain force, a certain power that is called liberty. Because it believes in liberty in the individual, it desires that this liberty should be respected and protected in society. Liberty is a fact that the consciousness of each of us attests to him, which, moreover, is enveloped in all the moral phenomena that we have signalized, in moral approbation and disapprobation, in esteem and contempt, in admiration and indignation, in merit and demerit, in punishment and reward. We ask the philosophy of sensation and the ethics of interest what they do with this universal phenomena which all the beliefs of humanity suppose, on which entire life, private and public, turns.
Every system of ethics, whatever it may be, which contains, I do not say a rule, but a simple advice, implicitly admits liberty. When the ethics of interest advise a man to sacrifice the agreeable to the useful, it apparently admits that man is free to follow or not to follow this advice. But in philosophy it does not suffice to admit a fact, there must be the right to admit it. Now, most moralists of interest deny the liberty of man, and no one has the right to admit it in a system that derives the entire human soul, all its faculties as well as all its ideas, from sensation alone and its developments.
When an agreeable sensation, after having charmed our soul, quits it and vanishes, the soul experiences a sort of suffering, a want, a need,—it is agitated, disquieted. This disquietude, at first vague and indecisive, is soon determined; it is borne towards the object that has pleased us, whose absence makes us suffer. This movement of the soul, more or less vivid, is desire.
Is there in desire any of the characters of liberty? What is it called to be free? Each one knows that he is free, when he knows that he is master of his action, that he can begin it, arrest it, or continue it as he pleases. We are free, when before acting we have taken the resolution to act, knowing well that we are able to take the opposite resolution. A free act is that of which, by the infallible testimony of my consciousness, I know that I am the cause, for which, therefore, I regard myself as responsible. God, the world, the body, can produce in me a thousand movements; these movements may seem to the eyes of an external observer to be voluntary acts; but any error is impossible to consciousness,—it distinguishes every movement not voluntary, whatever it may be, from a voluntary act.
True activity is voluntary and free activity. Desire is just the opposite. Desire, carried to its culmination, is passion; but language, as well as consciousness, says that man is passive in passion; and the more vivid passion is, the more imperative are its movements, the farther is it from the type of true activity in which the soul possesses and governs itself.
I am no more free in desire than in the sensation that precedes and determines it. If an agreeable object is presented to me, am I able not to be agreeably moved? If it is a painful object, am I able not to be painfully moved? And so, when this agreeable sensation has disappeared, if memory and imagination remind me of it, is it in my power not to suffer from no longer experiencing it, is it in my power not to feel the need of experiencing it again, and to desire more or less ardently the object that alone can appease the disquietude and suffering of my soul?
Observe well what takes place within you in desire; you recognize in it a blind emotion, that, without any deliberation on your part, and without the intervention of your will, rises or falls, increases or diminishes. One does not desire, and cease to desire, according to his will.
Will often combats desire, as it often also yields to it; it is not, therefore, desire. We do not reproach the sensations that objects produce, nor even the desires that these sensations engender; we do reproach ourselves for the consent of the will to these desires, and the acts that follow, for these acts are in our power.
Desire is so little will, that it often abolishes it, and leads man into acts that he does not impute to himself, for they are not voluntary. It is even the refuge of many of the accused; they lay their faults to the violence of desire and passion, which have not left them masters of themselves.
If desire were the basis of will, the stronger the desire the freer we should be. Evidently the contrary is true. As the violence of desire increases, the dominion of man over himself decreases; and as desire is weakened and passion extinguished, man repossesses himself.
I do not say that we have no influence over our desires. That two facts differ, it does not follow that they must be without relation to each other. By removing certain objects, or even by merely diverting our thoughts away from the pleasure that they can give us, we are able, to a certain extent, to turn aside and elude the sensible effects of these objects, and escape the desirewhich they might excite in us. One may also, by surrounding himself with certain objects, in some sort manage himself, and produce in himself sensations and desires which for that are not more voluntary than would be the impression made upon us by a stone with which we should strike ourselves. By yielding to these desires, we lend them a new force, and we moderate them by a skilful resistance. One even has some power over the organs of the body, and, by applying to them an appropriate regimen, he goes so far as to modify their functions. All this proves that there is in us a power different from the senses and desire, which, without disposing of them, sometimes exercises over them an indirect authority.
Will also directs intelligence, although it is not intelligence. To will and to know are two things essentially different. We do not judge as we will, but according to the necessary laws of the judgment and the understanding. The knowledge of truth is not a resolution of the will. It is not the will that declares, for example, that body is extended, that it is in space, that every phenomenon has a cause, etc. Yet the will has much power over intelligence. It is freely and voluntarily that we work, that we give attention, for a longer or a shorter time, more or less intense, to certain things; consequently, it is the will that develops and increases intelligence, as it might let it languish and become extinguished. It must, then, be avowed that there is in us a supreme power that presides over all our faculties, over intelligence as well as sensibility, which is distinguished from them, and is mingled with them, governs them, or leaves them to their natural development, making appear, even in its absence, the character that belongs to it, since the man that is deprived of it avows that he is no longer master of himself, that he is not himself, so true is it that human personality resides particularly in that prominent power that is called the will.[193]
Singular destiny of that power, so often misconceived, and yet so manifest! Strange confounding of will and desire, wherein the most opposite schools meet each other, Spinoza, Malebranche, and Condillac, the philosophy of the seventeenth century, and that of the eighteenth! One, a despiser of humanity, by an extreme and ill-understood piety, strips man of his own activity, in order to concentrate it in God; the other transfers it to nature. In both man is a mere instrument, nothing else than a mode of God or a product of nature. When desire is once taken as the type of human activity, there is an end of all liberty and personality. A philosophy, less systematic, by conforming itself to facts, carries through common sense to better results. By distinguishing between the passive phenomenon of desire and the power of freely determining self, it restores the true activity that characterizes human personality. The will is the infallible sign and the peculiar power of a real and effective being; for how could he who should be only a mode of another being find in his own borrowed being a power capable of willing and producing acts of which he should feel himself the cause, and the responsible cause?
If the philosophy of sensation, by setting out from passive phenomena, cannot explain true activity, voluntary and free activity, we might regard it as demonstrated that this same philosophy cannot give a true doctrine of morality, for all ethics suppose liberty. In order to impose rules of action on a being, it is necessary that this being should be capable of fulfilling or violating them. What makes the good and evil of an action is not the action itself, but the intention that has determined it. Before every equitable tribunal, the crime is in the intention, and to the intention the punishment is attached. Where, then, liberty is wanting, where there is nothing but desire and passion, not even a shade of morality subsists. But we do not wish to reject, by the previous question, the ethics of sensation. We proceed to examine in itself the principle that they lay down, and to show that from this principle can be deduced neither the idea of good and evil, nor any of the moral ideas that are attached to it.
2d. According to the philosophy of sensation, the good is nothing else than the useful. By substituting the useful for the agreeable, without changing the principle, there has been contrived a convenient refuge against many difficulties; for it will always be possible to distinguish interest well understood from apparent and vulgar interest. But even under this somewhat refined form, the doctrine that we are examining none the less destroys the distinction between good and evil.
If utility is the sole measure of the goodness of actions, I must consider only one thing when an action is proposed to me to do,—what advantages can result from it to me?
So I make the supposition that a friend, whose innocence is known to me, falls into disfavor with a king, or opinion—a mistress more jealous and imperious than all kings,—and that there is danger in remaining faithful to him and advantage in separating myself from him; if, on one side, the danger is certain, and on the other the advantage is infallible, it is clear that I must either abandon my unfortunate friend, or renounce the principle of interest—of interest well understood.
But it will be said to me:—think on the uncertainty of human things; remember that misfortune may also overtake you, and do not abandon your friend, through fear that you may one day be abandoned.
I respond that, at first, it is the future that is uncertain, but the present is certain; if I can reap great and unmistakable advantages from an action, it would be absurd to sacrifice them to the chance of a possible misfortune. Besides, according to my supposition, all the chances of the future are in my favor,—this is the hypothesis that we have made.
Do not speak to me of public opinion. If personal interest is the only rational principle, the public reason must be with me. If it were against me, it would be an objection against the truth of the principle. For how could a true principle, rationally applied, be revolting to the public conscience?
Neither oppose to me remorse. What remorse can I feel forhaving followed the truth, if the principle of interest is in fact moral truth? On the contrary, I should feel satisfaction on account of it.
The rewards and punishments of another life remain. But how are we to believe in another life, in a system that confines human consciousness within the limits of transformed sensation?
I have, then, no motive to preserve fidelity to a friend. And mankind nevertheless imposes on me this fidelity; and, if I am wanting in it, I am dishonored.
If happiness is the highest aim, good and evil are not in the act itself, but in its happy or unhappy results.
Fontenelle seeing a man led to punishment, said, "There is a man who has calculated badly." Whence it follows that, if this man, in doing what he did, could have escaped punishment, he would have calculated well, and his conduct would have been laudable. The action then becomes good or ill according to the issue. Every act is of itself indifferent, and it is lot that qualifies it.
If the honest is only the useful, the genius of calculation is the highest wisdom; it is even virtue!
But this genius is not within the reach of everybody. It supposes, with long experience of life, a sure insight, capable of discerning all the consequences of actions, a head strong and large enough to embrace and weigh their different chances. The young man, the ignorant, the poor in mind, are not able to distinguish between the good and the evil, the honest and the dishonest. And even in supposing the most consummate prudence, what place remains, in the profound obscurity of human things, for chance and the unforeseen! In truth, in the system of interest well understood, there must be great knowledge in order to be an honest man. Much less is requisite for ordinary virtue, whose motto has always been: Do what you ought, let come what may.[194]But this principle is precisely the opposite of theprinciple of interest. It is necessary to choose between them. If interest is the only principle avowed by reason, disinterestedness is a lie and madness, and literally an incomprehensible monster in well-ordered human nature.
Nevertheless humanity speaks of disinterestedness, and thereby it does not simply mean that wise selfishness that deprives itself of a pleasure for a surer, more delicate, or more durable pleasure. No one has ever believed that it was the nature or the degree of the pleasure sought that constituted disinterestedness. This name is awarded only to the sacrifice of an interest, whatever it may be, to a motive free from all interest. And the human race, not only thus understands disinterestedness, but it believes that such a disinterestedness exists; it believes the human soul capable of it. It admires the devotedness of Regulus, because it does not see what interest could have impelled that great man to go far from his country to seek, among cruel enemies, a frightful death, when he might have lived tranquil and even honored in the midst of his family and his fellow-citizens.
But glory, it will be said, the passion of glory inspired Regulus; it is, then, interest still that explains the apparent heroismof the old Roman. Admit, then, that this manner of understanding his interest is even ridiculously absurd, and that heroes are very unskilful and inconsistent egoists. Instead of erecting statues, with the deceived human race, to Regulus, d'Assas, and St. Vincent de Paul, true philosophy must send them to the Petites-Maisons, that a good regime may cure them of generosity, charity, and greatness of soul, and restore them to the sane state, the normal state, the state in which man only thinks of himself, and knows no other law, no other principle of action than his interest.
3d. If there is no liberty, if there is no essential distinction between good and evil, if there is only interest well or ill understood, there can be no obligation.
It is at first very evident that obligation supposes a being capable of fulfilling it, that duty is applied only to a free being. Then the nature of obligation is such, that if we are delinquent in fulfilling it, we feel ourselves culpable, whilst if, instead of understanding our interest well, we have understood it ill, there follows only a single thing, that we are unfortunate. Are, then, being culpable and being unfortunate the same thing? These are two ideas radically different. You may advise me to understand my interest well, under penalty of falling into misfortune; you cannot command me to see clearly in regard to my interest under penalty of crime.
Imprudence has never been considered a crime. When it is morally accused, it is much less as being wrong than as attesting vices of the soul, lightness, presumption, feebleness.
As we have said, our true interest is often most difficult of discernment. Obligation is always immediate and manifest. In vain passion and desire combat it; in vain the reasoning that passion trains for its attendance, like a docile slave, tries to smother it under a mass of sophisms: the instinct of conscience, a cry of the soul, an intuition of reason, different from reasoning, is sufficient to repel all sophisms, and make obligation appear.
However pressing may be the solicitations of interest, we may always enter into contest and arrangement with it. There are a thousand ways of being happy. You assure me that, by conducting myself in such a manner, I shall arrive at fortune. Yes, but I love repose more than fortune, and with happiness alone in view, activity is not better than sloth. Nothing is more difficult than to advise any one in regard to his interest, nothing is easier than to advise him in regard to honor.
After all, in practice, the useful is resolved into the agreeable, that is to say, into pleasure. Now, in regard to pleasure, every thing depends on humor and temperament. When there is neither good nor evil in itself, there are no pleasures more or less noble, more or less elevated; there are only pleasures that are more or less agreeable to us. Every thing depends on the nature of each one. This is the reason why interest is so capricious. Each one understands it as it pleases him, because each one is the judge of what pleases him. One is more moved by pleasures of the senses; another by pleasures of mind and heart. To the latter, the passion of glory takes the place of pleasures of the senses; to the former, the pleasure of dominion appears much superior to that of glory. Each man has his own passions, each man, then, has his own way of understanding his interest; and even my interest of to-day is not my interest of to-morrow. The revolutions of health, age, and events greatly modify our tastes, our humors. We are ourselves perpetually changing, and with us change our desires and our interests.
It is not so with obligation. It exists not, or it is absolute. The idea of obligation implies that of something inflexible. That alone is a duty from which one cannot be loosed under any pretext, and is, by the same title, a duty for all. There is one thing before which all the caprices of my mind, of my imagination, of my sensibility must disappear,—the idea of the good with the obligation which it involves. To this supreme command I can oppose neither my humor, nor circumstances, nor even difficulties. This law admits of no delay, no accommodation, no excuse. When it speaks, be it to you or me, in whatever place, under whatever circumstance, in whatever disposition we may be, it only remains for us to obey. We are able not toobey, for we are free; but every disobedience to the law appears to ourselves a fault more or less grave, a bad use of our liberty. And the violated law has its immediate penal sanction in the remorse that it inflicts upon us.
The only penalty that is brought upon us by the counsels of prudence, comprehended more or less well, followed more or less well, is, in the final account, more or less happiness or unhappiness. Now I pray you, am I obligated to be happy? Can obligation depend upon happiness, that is to say, on a thing that it is equally impossible for me to always seek and obtain at will? If I am obligated, it must be in my power to fulfil the obligation imposed. But my liberty has but little power over my happiness, which depends upon a thousand circumstances independent of me, whilst it is all in all in regard to virtue, for virtue is only an employment of liberty. Moreover, happiness is in itself, morally, neither better nor worse than unhappiness. If I understand my interest badly, I am punished for it by regret, not by remorse. Unhappiness can overwhelm me; it does not disgrace me, if it is not the consequence of some vice of the soul.
Not that I would renew stoicism and say to suffering, Thou art no evil. No, I earnestly advise man to escape suffering as much as he can, to understand well his interest, to shun unhappiness and seek happiness. I only wish to establish that happiness is one thing and virtue another, that man necessarily aspires after happiness, but that he is only obligated to virtue, and that consequently, by the side of and above interest well understood is a moral law, that is to say, as consciousness attests, and the whole human race avows, an imperative prescription of which one cannot voluntarily divest himself without crime and shame.
4th. If interest does not account for the idea of duty, by a necessary consequence, it does not more account for that of right; for duty and right reciprocally suppose each other.
Might and right must not be confounded. A being might have immense power, that of the whirlwind, of the thunderbolt, that of one of the forces of nature; if liberty is not joined to it,it is only a fearful and terrible thing, it is not a person,—it may inspire, in the highest degree, fear and hope,—it has no right to respect; one has no duties towards it.
Duty and right are brothers. Their common mother is liberty.
They are born at the same time, are developed and perish together. It might even be said that duty and right make one, and are the same being, having a face on two different sides. What, in fact, is my right to your respect, except the duty you have to respect me, because I am a free being? But you are yourself a free being, and the foundation of my right and your duty becomes for you the foundation of an equal right, and in me of an equal duty.[195]
I say equal with the exactest equality, for liberty, and liberty alone, is equal to itself. All the rest is diverse; by all the rest men differ; for resemblance implies difference. As there are no two leaves that are the same, there are no two men absolutely the same in body, senses, mind, heart. But it is impossible to conceive of difference between the free will of one man and the free will of another. I am free or I am not free. If I am free, I am free as much as you, and you are as much as I. There is not in this more or less. One is a moral person as much as, and by the same title as another moral person. Volition, which is the seat of liberty, is the same in all men. It may have in its service different instruments, powers different, and consequently unequal, whether material or spiritual. But the powers of which will disposes are not it,[196]for it does not dispose of them in an absolute manner. The only free power is that of will, but that is essentially so. If will recognizes laws, these laws are not motives, springs that move it,—they are ideal laws, that of justice, for example; will recognizes this law, and at the same time it has the consciousness of the ability to fulfil it or to break it, doing the one only with the consciousness of the ability to do theother, and reciprocally. Therein is the type of liberty, and at the same time of true equality; every thing else is false. It is not true that men have the right to be equally rich, beautiful, robust, to enjoy equally, in a word, to be equally fortunate; for they originally and necessarily differ in all those points of their nature that correspond to pleasure, to riches, to good fortune. God has made us with powers unequal in regard to all these things. Here equality is against nature and eternal order; for diversity and difference, as well as harmony, are the law of creation. To dream of such an equality is a strange mistake, a deplorable error. False equality is the idol of ill-formed minds and hearts, of disquiet and ambitious egoism. True equality accepts without shame all the exterior inequalities that God has made, and that it is not in the power of man not only to efface, but even to modify. Noble liberty has nothing to settle with the furies of pride and envy. As it does not aspire to domination, so, and by virtue of the same principle, it does not more aspire to a chimerical equality of mind, of beauty, of fortune, of enjoyments. Moreover, such an equality, were it possible, would be of little value in its own eyes; it asks something much greater than pleasure, fortune, rank, to wit, respect. Respect, an equal respect of the sacred right of being free in every thing that constitutes the person, that person which is truly man; this is what liberty and with it true equality claim, or rather imperatively demand. Respect must not be confounded with homage. I render homage to genius and beauty. I respect humanity alone, and by that I mean all free natures, for every thing that is not free in man is foreign to him. Man is therefore the equal of man precisely in every thing that makes him man, and the reign of true equality exacts on the part of all only the same respect for what each one possesses equally in himself, both young and old, both ugly and beautiful, both rich and poor, both the man of genius and the mediocre man, both woman and man, whatever has consciousness of being a person and not a thing. The equal respect of common liberty is the principle at once of duty and right; it isthe virtue of each and the security of all; by an admirable agreement, it is dignity among men, and accordingly peace on earth. Such is the great and holy image of liberty and equality, which has made the hearts of our fathers beat, and the hearts of all virtuous and enlightened men, of all true friends of humanity. Such is the ideal that true philosophy pursues across the ages, from the generous dreams of Plato to the solid conceptions of Montesquieu, from the first free legislation of the smallest city of Greece to our declaration of rights, and the immortal works of the constituent Assembly.
The philosophy of sensation starts with a principle that condemns it to consequences as disastrous as those of the principle of liberty are beneficent. By confounding will with desire, it justifies passion, which is desire in all its force—passion, which is precisely the opposite of liberty. It accordingly unchains all the desires and all the passions, it gives full rein to imagination and the heart; it renders each man much less happy on account of what he possesses, than miserable on account of what he lacks; it makes him regard his neighbors with an eye of envy and contempt, and continually pushes society towards anarchy or tyranny. Whither, in fact, would you have interest lead in the train of desire? My desire is certainly to be the most fortunate possible. My interest is to seek to be so by all means, whatever they may be, under the single reserve that they be not contrary to their end. If I am born the first of men, the richest, the most beautiful, the most powerful, etc., I shall do every thing to preserve the advantages I have received. If fate has given me birth in a rank little elevated, with a moderate fortune, limited talents, and immense desires—for it cannot too often be repeated, desire of every kind aspires after the infinite—I shall do every thing to rise above the crowd, in order to increase my power, my fortune, my joys. Unfortunate on account of my position in this world, in order to change it, I dream of, and call for revolutions, it is true, without enthusiasm and political fanaticism, for interest alone does not produce these noble follies, but under the sharp goad of vanityand ambition. Thereby, then, I arrive at fortune and power; interest, then, claims security, as before it invoked agitation. The need of security brings me back from anarchy to the need of order, provided order be to my profit; and I become a tyrant, if I can, or the gilt servant of a tyrant. Against anarchy and tyranny, those two scourges of liberty, the only rampart is the universal sentiment of right, founded on the firm distinction between good and evil, the just and the useful, the honest and the agreeable, virtue and interest, will and desire, sensation and conscience.
5. Let us again signalize one of the necessary consequences of the doctrine of interest.
A free being, in possession of the sacred rule of justice, cannot violate it, knowing that he should and may follow it, without immediately recognizing that he merits punishment. The idea of punishment is not an artificial idea, borrowed from the profound calculations of legislators; legislations rest upon the natural idea of punishment. This idea, corresponding to that of liberty and justice, is necessarily wanting where the former two do not exist. Does he who obeys, and fatally obeys his desires, by the attraction of pleasure and happiness, supposing that, without any other motive than that of interest, he does an act conformed, externally at least, to the rule of justice, merit any thing by doing such an action? Not the least in the world. Conscience attributes to him no merit, and no one owes him thanks or recompense, for he only thinks of himself. On the other hand, if he injures others in wishing to serve himself, he does not feel culpable, and no one can say to him that he has merited punishment. A free being who wills what he does, who has a law, and can conform to it, or break it, is alone responsible for his acts. But what responsibility can there be in the absence of liberty and a recognized and accepted rule of justice? The man of sensation and desire tends to his own good under the law of interest, as the stone is drawn towards the centre of the earth under the law of gravitation, as the needle points to the pole. Man may err in the pursuit of his interest. In this case, what is to be done!As it seems, to put him again in the right way. Instead of that, he is punished. And for what, I pray you? For being deceived. But error merits advice, not punishment. Punishment has, in the system of interest, no more the sanction of moral sense than recompense. Punishment is only an act of personal defence on the part of society; it is an example which it gives, in order to inspire a salutary terror. These motives are excellent, if it be added that this punishment is just in itself, that it is merited, and that it is legitimately applied to the action committed. Omit that, and the other motives lose their authority, and there remains only an exercise of force, destitute of all morality. Then the culprit is not punished; he is smitten, or even put to death, as the animal that injures instead of serving is put to death without scruple. The condemned does not bow his head to the wholesome reparation due to justice, but to the weight of irons or the stroke of the axe. The chastisement is not a legitimate satisfaction, an expiation which, comprehended by the culprit, reconciles him in his own eyes with the order that he has violated. It is a storm that he could not escape; it is the thunder-bolt that falls upon him; it is a force more powerful than his own, which compasses and overthrows him. The appearance of public chastisements acts, without doubt, upon the imagination of peoples; but it does not enlighten their reason and speak to their conscience; it intimidates them, perhaps; it does not soften them. So recompense is only an additional attraction, added to all the others. As, properly speaking, there is no merit, recompense is simply an advantage that one desires, that is striven for and obtained without attaching to it any moral idea. Thus is degraded and effaced the great institution, natural and divine, of the recompense of virtue by happiness, and of reparation for a fault by proportionate suffering.[197]
We may then draw the conclusion, without fear of its being contradicted either by analysis or dialectics, that the doctrine ofinterest is incompatible with the most certain facts, with the strongest convictions of humanity. Let us add, that this doctrine is not less incompatible with the hope of another world, where the principle of justice will be better realized than in this.
I will not seek whether the sensualistic metaphysics can arrive at an infinite being, author of the universe and man. I am well persuaded that it cannot. For every proof of the existence of God supposes in the human mind principles of which sensation renders no account,—for example, the universal and necessary principle of causality, without which I should have no need of seeking, no power of finding the cause of whatever exists.[198]All that I wish to establish here is, that in the system of interest, man, not possessing any truly moral attribute, has no right to put in God that of which he finds no trace either in the world or in himself. The God of the ethics of interest must be analogous to the man of these same ethics. How could they attribute to him the justice and the love—I mean disinterested love—of which they cannot have the least idea? The God that they can admit loves himself, and loves only himself. And reciprocally, not considering him as the supreme principle of charity and justice, we can neither love nor honor him, and the only worship that we can render him, is that of the fear with which his omnipotence inspires us.
What holy hope could we then found upon such a God? And we who have some time grovelled upon this earth, thinking only of ourselves, seeking only pleasure and a pitiable happiness, what sufferings nobly borne for justice, what generous efforts to maintain and develop the dignity of our soul, what virtuous affections for other souls, can we offer to the Father of humanity as titles to his merciful justice? The principle that most persuades the human race of the immortality of the soul is still the necessary principle of merit and demerit, which, not finding here below its exact satisfaction, and yet under the necessity of finding it, inspires us to call upon God for its satisfaction, who has not put in our hearts the law of justice to violate it himself in regard to us.[199]Now, we have just seen that the ethics of interest destroy the principle of merit and demerit, both in this world, and above all, in the world to come. Accordingly, there is no regard beyond this world,—no recourse to an all-powerful judge, wholly just and wholly good, against the sports of fortune and the imperfections of human justice. Every thing is completed for man between birth and death, in spite of the instincts and presentiments of his heart, and even the principles of his reason.
The disciples of Helvetius will, perhaps, claim the glory of having freed humanity from the fears and hopes that turn it aside from its true interests. It is a service which mankind will appreciate. But since they confine our whole destiny to this world, let us demand of them what lot so worthy of envy they have in reserve for us here, what social order they charge with our good fortune, what politics, in fine, are derived from their ethics.[200]
You already know. We have demonstrated that the philosophy of sensation knows neither true liberty nor true right. What, in fact, is will for this philosophy? It is desire. What, then, is right? The power of satisfying desires. On this score, man is not free, and right is might.
Once more, nothing pertains less to man than desire. Desire comes of need which man does not make, which he submits to. He submits in the same way to desire. To reduce will to desire is to annihilate liberty; it is worse still, it is to put it where it is not; it is to create a mendacious liberty that becomes an instrument of crime and misery. To call man to such a liberty is to open his soul to infinite desires, which it is impossible for him to satisfy. Desire is in its nature without limits, and our power is very limited. If we were alone in this world, we should eventhen be much troubled to satisfy our desires. But we press against each other with immense desires, and limited, diverse, and unequal powers. When right is the force that is in each of us, equality of rights is a chimera,—all rights are unequal, since all forces are unequal and can never cease to be so. It is, therefore, necessary to renounce equality as well as liberty; or if one invents a false equality as well as a false liberty, he puts humanity in pursuit of a phantom.
Such are the social elements that the ethics of interest give to politics. From such elements I defy all the politics of the school of sensation and interest to produce a single day of liberty and happiness for the human race.
When right is might, the natural state of men among themselves, is war. All desiring the same things, they are all necessarily enemies; and in this war, woe to the feeble, to the feeble in body and the feeble in mind! The stronger are the masters by perfect right. Since right is might, the feeble may complain of nature that has not made them strong, and not complain of the strong man who uses his right in oppressing them. The feeble then call deception to their aid; and it is in this strife between cunning and force that humanity combats with itself.
Yes, if there are only needs, desires, passions, interests, with different forces pitted against each other, war, a war sometimes declared and bloody, sometimes silent and full of meannesses, is in the nature of things. No social art can change this nature,—it may be more or less covered; it always reappears, overcomes and rends the veil with which a mendacious legislation envelops it. Dream, then, of liberty for beings that are not free, of equality between beings that are essentially different, of respect for rights where there is no right, and of the establishment of justice on an indestructible foundation of inimical passions! From such a foundation can spring only endless troubles or oppression, or rather all these evils together in a necessary circle.
This fatal circle can be broken only by the aid of principles which all the metamorphoses of sensation do not engender, and for which interest cannot account, which none the less subsist to the honor and for the safety of humanity. These principles are those that time has little by little drawn from Christianity in order to give them for the guidance of modern societies. You will find them written in the glorious declaration of rights that forever broke the monarchy of Louis XV., and prepared the constitutional monarchy. They are in the charter that governs us, in our laws, in our institutions, in our manners, in the air that we breathe. They serve at once as foundations for our society and the new philosophy necessary to a new order.[201]
Perhaps you will ask me how, in the eighteenth century, so many distinguished, so many honest souls could let themselves be seduced by a system that must have been revolting to all their sentiments. I will answer by reminding you that the eighteenth century was an immoderate reaction against the faults into which had sadly fallen the old age of a great century and a great king, that is to say, the revocation of the edict of Nantes, the persecution of all free and elevated philosophy, a narrow and suspicious devotion, and intolerance, with its usual companion, hypocrisy. These excesses must have produced opposite excesses. Mme. de Maintenon opened the route to Mme. de Pompadour. After the mode of devotion comes that of license; it takes every thing by storm. It descends from the court to the nobility, to the clergy even, and accordingly to the people. It carried away the bestspirits, even genius itself. It put a foreign philosophy in the place of the national philosophy, culpable, persecuted as it had been, for not being irreconcilable with Christianity. A disciple of Locke, whom Locke had discarded, Condillac, took the place of Descartes, as the author ofCandideandla Pucellehad taken the place of Corneille and Bossuet, as Boucher and Vanloo had taken the place of Lesueur and Poussin. The ethics of pleasure and interest were the necessary ethics of that epoch. It must not be supposed from this that all souls were corrupt. Men, says M. Royer-Collard, are neither as good nor as bad as their principles[202]. No stoic has been as austere as stoicism, no epicurean as enervated as epicureanism. Human weakness practically baffles virtuous theories; in return, thank God, the instinct of the heart condemns to inconsistency the honest man who errs in bad theories. Accordingly, in the eighteenth century, the most generous and most disinterested sentiments often shone forth under the reign of the philosophy of sensation and the ethics of interest. But it is none the less true, that the philosophy of sensation is false, and the ethics of interest destructive of all morality.
I should perhaps make an apology for so long a lecture; but it was necessary to combat seriously a doctrine of morality radically incompatible with that which I would make penetrate your minds and your souls. It was especially necessary for me to strip the ethics of interest of that false appearance of liberty which they usurp in vain. I maintain, on the contrary, that they are the ethics of slaves, and send them back to the time when they ruled. Now, the principle of interest being destroyed, I propose to examine other principles also, less false without doubt, but stilldefective, exclusive, and incomplete, upon which celebrated systems have pretended to found ethics. I will successively combat these principles taken in themselves, and will then bring them together, reduced to their just value, in a theory large enough to contain all the true elements of morality, in order to express faithfully common sense and entire human consciousness.