“. . . a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse—and ThouBeside me singing in the Wilderness—And Wilderness is Paradise enow.â€He knows who really has chosen the better part. One cannot rejoice much and rejoice alone. Companionship and love are supremely valuable “goods,†and the pleasure of others he recognises as a very real part of his own. The egoist’s pleasure is, on the other hand, very largely an illusion. He loses, says Guyau, far more by his isolated enjoyment than he would gain by sharing.Life itself is the greatest of all goods, as it is the condition of all others, but life’s value fades if we are not loved. It is love, comradeship and the fellowship of kindred souls which give to the humblest life a significance and a feeling of value. This, Guyau points out with some tenderness, is the tragedy of suicides. These occurrences are a social no less than an individual tragedy. The tragic element lies in the fact that they were persons who were unable to give their devotion to some object, and the loss of personalities in this way is a real loss to society, but it is mainly society itself which is to blame for them.We need not fear, says Guyau, that such a gospel will promote unduly the operation of mere animality or instinctive action, for in the growth of the scientific spirit he sees the development of the great enemy of all instinct. It is the dissolving forcepar excellence, the revolutionary spirit which incessantly wages warfare within society against authority, and in the individual it operates through reason against the instinctive impulses. Every instinct tends to lapse in so far as it is reflected upon by consciousness.The old notion of duty or obligation must, in Guyau’s opinion, be abandoned. The sole commandment which a scientific and positive ethic, such as he endeavours to indicate, can recognise, is expressible only in the words, “Develop your life in all directions, be an individual as rich as possible in energy, intensive and extensiveâ€â€”in other words, “Be the most social and sociable being you can.†It is this which replaces the “categorical imperative.â€He aptly points out the failure of modern society to offer scope for devotion, which is really a superabundance of life, and its proneness to crush out opportunities which offer a challenge to the human spirit. There is a claim of life itself to adventure; there is a pleasure in risk and in conflict; and this pleasure in risk and adventure has been largely overlooked in its relation to the moral life. Such risk and adventure are not merely a pure negation of self or of personal life, but rather, he considers, that life raised to its highest power, reaching the sublime. By virtue of such devotion our lives are enriched. He draws a touching picture of the sacrifice upon which our modern social life and civilisation are based, and draws an analogy between the blood of dead horses used by the ploughman in fertilising his field, and the blood of the martyrs of humanity,qui ont fécondé l’avenir. Often they may have been mistaken; later generations may wonder if their cause was worth fighting for; yet, although nothing truly is sadder than to die in vain, that devotion was valuable in and for itself.With the demand of life for risk in action is bound up the impetus to undertake risk in thought. From this springs the moral need for faith, for belief and acceptance of some hypotheses. The very divergence or diversity of the world-religions is not discouraging but rather the reverse. It is a sign of healthy moral life. Uniformity would be highly detrimental; it would cease to express life, for with conformity of belief would come spiritual decline and stagnation. Guyau anticipates here his doctrine of a religion of free thought, a “non-religion†of the future, which we shall discuss in our next chapter, when we examine his book on that subject. In the diversity of religious views Guyau sees a moral good, for these religions are themselves an expression of life in its richness, and the conservation and expansion of this rich variety of life are precisely the moral ideal itself.We must endeavour to realise how rich and varied the nature of human life really is. Revolutionaries, Guyau points out, are always making the mistake of regarding life and truth as too simple. Life and truth are so complex that evolution is the key-note to what is desirable in the individual intellect and in society, not a revolution which must inevitably express the extreme of one side or the other. The search for truth is slow and needs faith and patience, but the careful seekers of it are making the future of mankind. But truth will be discovered only in relation to action and life and in proportion to the labour put into its realisation. The search for truth must never be divorced from the active life, Guyau insists, and, indeed, he approaches the view that the action will produce the knowledge, “He that doeth the will shall know of the doctrine.†Moreover he rightly sees in action the wholesome cure for pessimism and that cynicism which all too frequently arises from an equal appreciation of opposing views. “Even in doubt,†he exclaims, “we can love; even in the intellectual night, which prevents our seeing any ultimate goal, we can stretch out a hand to him who weeps at our feet.â€[34]In other words, we must do the duty that lies nearest, in the hope and faith that by that action itself light will come.[34]Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction, p. 178.In the last part of his treatise Guyau deals with the difficult problem of “sanction,†so ultimately connected with ethics, and, it must be added, with religion. The Providence who rewards and punishes us, according to the orthodox religious creed of Christendom, is merely a personified “sanction†or distributive justice, operating in a terrestrial and celestial court of assize. Guyau condemns this as an utterly immoral conception. Religious sanctions, as he has not much difficulty in showing, are more cruel than those which a man could imagine himself inflicting upon his mortal enemy. The “Heavenly Father†ought at least to be as good as earthly ones, who do not cruelly punish their children. Guyau touches upon an important point here, which will be further emphasised—namely, the necessity for making our idea of God, if we have one at all, harmonious with our own ethical conceptions. The old ideas of the divinity are profoundly immoral and are based on physical force. This is natural because those views which have survived in modern times are those of primitive and savage people to whom the most holy was the most powerful and physically majestic. But, says Guyau, now that we see that “all physical force represents moral weakness,†the idea of God the All-terrible, with his hell-fire ready for the sinful soul, must be condemned as immoral blasphemy itself. “God,†he remarks, “in damning any soul might be said to damn himself.â€Virtue is really its own reward. No one should be or do good in order to gain an entry into paradise or to escape the torments of hell. That is to build morality on an immoral principle and on a belief, not in goodness as valuable in and for itself, but on a basis of material self-interest alone, “the best policy.†It is true, Guyau admits, that virtue involves happiness, but it is not in this sense. A conflict between “pleasure†and virtue is usually one of higherversuslower ideals. Virtue is not a precedent to sense-happiness, and in this sense is not at all equivalent or bound up with happiness, but, as the facts of life reveal, very often opposed to it.Guyau opposes the ordinary view of punishment in society and shows that it is both immoral and socially harmful in its application. It adds evil to evil, and legal murder is really more absurd than the illegal murder. Punishment, capital or other, is no “compensation†exacted for the crime committed, and it never can be such. Attempts to treat and cure the guilty one would, Guyau suggests, be far more rational, humane and really beneficial to society itself, which at present creates by its punishments, especially those inflicted for first offences, a “criminal class.†One should convert the criminal before punishing him, and then, Guvau asks, if he is converted, why punish him?The appeal to justice denoted in the words “To everyone according to his works†is frequently heard in the defence of punishment. This is an excellent maxim in Guyau’s opinion, but he is careful to point out that it is purely one of social economics. It is a plea for a just distribution of the products of labour, but does not apply at all to the problem of punishment. In a manner which recalls the remarks of Renan, Guyau sees in evil-doing a lack of culture, or rather of that sociability, which comes of social culture, from consciousness of a membership of society and a solidarity with one’s fellows. In vice and in virtue alike the human will appears aspiring to better things according to its lights. As virtue is its own reward, so is evil; and the moralist must say to the wicked: “Verily they have their reward†(Comme si ce n’était pas assez pour eux d’être méchants).Guyau comments upon the gradual modifications of punishment from a social point of view. There was the day when the chastisement was infinitely worse than the crime itself. Then came the morality of reciprocity, “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,†an ethic which represented a high ideal for primitive man to reach, and one to which, Guyau thinks, we have yet to reach to-day in some spheres of life. Yet a further moral development will show how foolish, in a civilised society, are wrath and hatred of the criminal and the cry for vengeance. Society must aim at ensuring protection for itself with the minimum of individual suffering. Punishment must be regarded as an example for the future rather than as revenge or compensation. In the individual himself Guyau observes how powerful can be the inner sanction of remorse, the suffering caused by the unrealised ideal. This is perhaps the only real moral punishment, and it is one which society cannot itself directly enforce. Only by increasing “sociability†and social sensitiveness can this sanction be indirectly developed.Herein lies the highest ethical ideal, far more concrete and living, in Guyau’s opinion, than the rigorism of a Kant or the “scholasticâ€[35]temper of a Renouvier. Charity or love for all men, whatever their value morally, intellectually or physically, must, he claims, “be the final end pursued even by public opinion.â€In co-operation and sociability, he finds the vital moral ideal; in love and brotherhood, he finds the real sanction which should operate.â€Love supposes mutuality of love,†he says; and there is one idea superior to that of justice, that is the idea of brotherhood, and he remarks with a humane tenderness “the guilty have probably more need for love than anyone else.†“I have,†he cries, “two hands—the one for gripping the hand of those with whom I march along in life, the other to lift up the fallen. Indeed, to these I should be able to stretch out both hands together.â€[36][35]This is Guyau’s word to describe Renouvier, whom he regards as far too much under the influence of Kant.[36]Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction, p. 223.While Fouillée and, more especially, Guyau were thus outlining an ethic marked by a strong humanitarianism, a more definitely religious ethic was being proclaimed by that current of philosophy of belief and of action which has profoundly associated itself in its later developments with “Modernism†in the Roman Church. The tendency to stress action and the practical reason is noticeable in the work of Brochard, Ollé-Laprune and Blondel, also in Rauh. They agree with Renouvier in advocating the primacy of the practical reason, but their own reasons for this are different from his, or at least in them the reasons are more clearly enunciated. Plainly these reasons lie in the difficulties of intellectualism and the quest of truth. They propose the quest of the good in the hope of finding in that sphere some objectivity, some absolute, in fact, which they cannot find out by intellectual searching. They correspond in a somewhat parallel fashion to the philosophy of intuition with its rejection of intellectualism as offering a final solution. These thinkers desire by action, by doing the will, to attain to a knowledge of the doctrine. The first word in their gospel is—“Im Anfang war die That.â€It is for them the beginning and the end. Their certainty is an act of belief, which grows out of action and life. It is a curious mixture of insistence upon life and action, such as we find in Guyau and in Bergson, coupled with a religious Platonism. Brochard’s work is of this type. He wrote as early as 1874 onLa Responsabilité morale, and in 1876 onL’Universalité des Notions morales. Three years later appeared his workL’Erreur. Ollé-Laprune and Blondel, who best represent this tendency, do not like Guyau’s ethics, which lacks the religious idealism which they consider should be bound up with morality. This was the thesis developed in the volumeLa Certitude morale, written by Ollé-Laprune in 1881. “By what right,†says Ollé-Laprune in his subsequent bookLe Prix de la Vie(1895), “can Guyau speak of a high exalted life, of a moral ideal? It is impossible to speak so when you have only a purely naturalistic ethic; for merely to name these things is an implication that there is not only intensity in life, but also quality. You suppress duty because you can see in it only a falsely mystical view of life and of nature. What you fail to realise is that between duty and life there is a profound agreement. You reduce duty to life, and in life itself you consider only its quantity and intensity, and regard as illusion everything that is of a different order from the natural physical order in which you imprison yourself.â€[37][37]Le Prix de la Vie, p. 139.Such a criticism is not altogether fair to Guyau who, as we noted, proclaimed the superiority of the higher qualities of spiritual life. It does, however, attack his abandonment of the idea of Duty; and we must now turn to examine a thinker, who, by his contribution to ethics, endeavoured to satisfy the claims of life and of duty.This was Rauh, whoseEssai sur le Fondement métaphysique de la Moraleappeared in 1890. It had been preceded by a study of the psychology of the feelings, and was later followed byL’Expérience morale(1903). In seeking a metaphysical foundation for morality, Rauh recalls Kant’sMetaphysic of Morals. He, indeed, agrees with Kant in the view that the essence of morality lies in the sentiment of obligation. Belief or faith in an ideal, by which it behoves us to act, imposes itself, says Rauh, upon the mind of man as essential. It is as positive a fact as the laws of the natural sciences. Man not only states facts and formulates general laws in a scientific manner, he also conceives and believes in ideals, which become bound up in his mind with the sentiment of obligation—that is, the general feeling of duty. But beyond a general agreement upon this point, Rauh does not follow Kant. He tends to look upon the ethical problem in the spirit which Guyau, Bergson and Blondel show in their general philosophic outlook. In life, action and immediacy alone can we find a solution. Nothing practical can be deduced from the abstract principle of obligation or duty in general. The moral consciousness of man is, in Rauh’s opinion, akin to the intuitional perceptions of Bergson’s philosophy. Morality, moreover, is creating itself perpetually by the reflection of sensitive minds on action and on life itself. “Morality, or rather moral action, is not merely the crown of metaphysical speculation, but itself the true metaphysic, which is learnt only in living, as it is naught but life itself.â€[38]In concluding his thesis, Rauh reminds us that “the essential and most certain factor in the midst of the uncertainties of life and of duty lies in the constant consciousness of the moral ideal.†In it he sees a spiritual reality which, if we keep it ever before us, may inspire the most insignificant of our actions and render them into a harmony, a living harmony of character.[38]Essai sur le Fondement métaphysique de la Morale, p. 255.Rauh’s doctrines, we claim, have affinities to the doctrines of action and intuition. That does not imply, however, that the intelligence is to be minimised—far from this; but the intelligence triumphs here in realising that it is not all-sufficing or supreme. “The heart hath reasons which the reason cannot know.†While Fouillée had remarked that morality is metaphysics in action, Rauh points out that “metaphysics in action†is the foundation of our knowledge. We must, he insists, seek for certitude in an immediate and active adaptation to reality instead of deducing a rule or rules of action from abstract systems.He separates himself from the sociologists[39]by pointing out that, however largely social environment may determine our moral ideals and rules of conduct, nevertheless the ethical decision is fundamentally an absolutely personal affair. The human conscience, in so far as active, must neverpassivelyaccept the existing social morality. It finds itself sometimes in agreement, sometimes obliged to give a newer interpretation to old conventions, and at times is obliged to revolt against them. In no case can the idea of duty be equated simply and calmly with acquiescence in the collective general will. It must demand from social morality its credentials and hold itself free to criticise the current ethic of the community. More often than not society acts, Rauh thinks, as a break rather than a stimulus; and social interest is not a measure of the moral ideal, but rather a limitation of it.[39]The relation of ethics and sociology is well discussed, not only by Durkheim (who, in hisDivision du Travail social, speaks of the development of democracy and increasing respect for human personality), but also by Lévy-Bruhl, who followed his thesis onL’Idée de Responsabilité, 1883, by the volume,La Morale el la Science des Moeurs.Although the moral ideal is one which must be personally worked out, it is not a merely individualistic affair. Rauh does not abandon the guidance of reason, but he objects equally to the following of instinct or a transcendent teaching divorced from the reality of life. Our guide must be reflection upon instinct, and this is only possible by action and experience, the unique experience of living itself. Reason itself is experience; and it is our duty to face problems personally and sincerely, in a manner which the rational element in us renders “impersonal, universal and disinterested.â€Any code of morality which is not directly in contact with life is worthless, and all ethical ideas which are not those of our time are of little value. Only he is truly a man who lives the life of his time. The truly moral man is he who is alive to this spirit and who does not unreflectingly deduce his rules of conduct from ancient books or teachers of a past age. The art of living is the supreme art, and it is this which the great moralists have endeavoured to show humanity. Neither Socrates nor Jesus wrote down their ethical ideas: they lived them.Rauh thus reminds us partly of Guyau in his insistence upon life. He regards the ethical life at its highest, as onesans obligation ni sanction. Rather than the Kantian obligation of duty, of constraint, he favours in his second book,L’Expérience morale, a state of spontaneity, of passion and exaltation of the personal conscience which faces the issue in a disinterested manner. The man who is morally honest himself selects his values, his ideals, his ends, by the light which reason gives him. Ethics becomes thus an independent science, a science of “ends,†which Reason, as reflected in the personal conscience, acclaims a science of the ideal ordering of life.Such was Rauh’s conception of rational moral experience, one which he endeavoured to apply in his lectures to the two problems which he considered to be supreme in his time, that of patriotism and of social justice.These problems were further touched upon in 1896, when Léon Bourgeois (since noted for his advocacy of the “League of Nationsâ€) published his little workSolidarité, which was also a further contribution to an independent, positive and lay morality. In the conception of the solidarity of humanity throughout the ages, Bourgeois accepted the teaching of the sociologists, and urges that herein can be found an obligation, for the present generation must repay their debt to their ancestors and be worthy of the social heritage which has made them what they are. Somewhat similar sentiments had Been expressed by Marion in his Solidarité morale (1880). Ethical questions were kept in the forefront by the society known asL’Union pour l’Action morale, founded by Desjardins and supported by Lagneau (1851- 1894). After the excitement of the Dreyfus case (1894- 1899) this society took the nameL’Union pour la Verité. In 1902 Lapie made an eloquent plea for a rational morality in hisLogique de la Volonté, and in the following year Séailles published hisAffirmations de la Conscience moderne. The littlePrécisof André Lalande, written in the form of a catechism, was a further contribution to the establishment of a rational and independent lay morality, which the teaching of ethics as a subject in thelycéesand lay schools rendered in some degree necessary.[40]This little work appeared in 1907, the same year in which Paul Bureau wrote his bookLa Crise morale des Temps nouveaux. Then Parodi (who in 1919 produced a fine study of French thought since 1890[41]) followed up the discussion of ethical problems by his workLe Problème morale et la Pensée contemporaine(1909), and in 1912 Wilbois published his contribution entitledDevoir et Durée: Essai de Morale sociale.[40]The teaching of a lay morality is a vital and practical problem which the Government of the Republic is obliged to face. The urgent need for such lay teaching will be more clearly demonstrated or evident when our next chapter, dealing with the religious problem, has been read.[41]La Philosophie contemporaine en France.Thus concludes a period in which the discussion, although not marked by a definite turning round of positions as was manifested in our discussions of science, freedom and progress, bears signs of a general development. This development is shown by the greater insistence upon the social aspects of ethics and by a turning away from the formalism of Kant to a more concrete conception of duty, or an ethic in which the notion of duty itself has disappeared. This is the general tendency from Renan with his insistence upon the aesthetic element, Renouvier with his claim for justice in terms of personality, to Fouillée, Guyau, Ollé-Laprune and Rauh with their insistence upon action, upon love and life.Yet, although the departure from an intense individualism in ethics is desirable, we must beware of the danger which threatens from the other extreme. We cannot close this chapter without insisting upon this point. Good must be personally realised in the inner life of individuals, even if they form a community. The collective life is indeed necessary, but it is not collectively that the good is experienced. It is personal. In the neglect of this important aspect lies the error of much Communistic philosophy and of that social science which looks on society as purely an organism. This analogy is false, for however largely a community exhibits a general likeness to an organism, it is a superficial resemblance. There is not a centre of consciousness, but a multitude of such centres each living an inner life of personal experience which is peculiarly its own; and these personalities, we must remember, are not simply a homogeneous mass of social matter, they are capable of realising the good each in his or her own manner. This is the only realisation of the good.In this chapter we have traced the attempt to reconcilescience et conscience, after the way had been opened up by the maintenance of freedom. It was recognised that reason is not entirely pure speculation: it is also practical. Human nature seeks for goodness as well as for truth. It is noticeable that while the insistence upon the primacy of the practical reason developed, on the one hand, into a philosophy of action (anti-intellectual action in its extreme development as shown in Syndicalism), the same tendency, operating in a different manner and upon different data, essayed to find in action, and in the belief which arises from action, that Absolute or Ideal to which the pure reason feels it cannot alone attain—namely, the realisation of God. To this problem of religion we devote our next chapter.
“. . . a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse—and ThouBeside me singing in the Wilderness—And Wilderness is Paradise enow.â€
He knows who really has chosen the better part. One cannot rejoice much and rejoice alone. Companionship and love are supremely valuable “goods,†and the pleasure of others he recognises as a very real part of his own. The egoist’s pleasure is, on the other hand, very largely an illusion. He loses, says Guyau, far more by his isolated enjoyment than he would gain by sharing.
Life itself is the greatest of all goods, as it is the condition of all others, but life’s value fades if we are not loved. It is love, comradeship and the fellowship of kindred souls which give to the humblest life a significance and a feeling of value. This, Guyau points out with some tenderness, is the tragedy of suicides. These occurrences are a social no less than an individual tragedy. The tragic element lies in the fact that they were persons who were unable to give their devotion to some object, and the loss of personalities in this way is a real loss to society, but it is mainly society itself which is to blame for them.
We need not fear, says Guyau, that such a gospel will promote unduly the operation of mere animality or instinctive action, for in the growth of the scientific spirit he sees the development of the great enemy of all instinct. It is the dissolving forcepar excellence, the revolutionary spirit which incessantly wages warfare within society against authority, and in the individual it operates through reason against the instinctive impulses. Every instinct tends to lapse in so far as it is reflected upon by consciousness.
The old notion of duty or obligation must, in Guyau’s opinion, be abandoned. The sole commandment which a scientific and positive ethic, such as he endeavours to indicate, can recognise, is expressible only in the words, “Develop your life in all directions, be an individual as rich as possible in energy, intensive and extensiveâ€â€”in other words, “Be the most social and sociable being you can.†It is this which replaces the “categorical imperative.â€
He aptly points out the failure of modern society to offer scope for devotion, which is really a superabundance of life, and its proneness to crush out opportunities which offer a challenge to the human spirit. There is a claim of life itself to adventure; there is a pleasure in risk and in conflict; and this pleasure in risk and adventure has been largely overlooked in its relation to the moral life. Such risk and adventure are not merely a pure negation of self or of personal life, but rather, he considers, that life raised to its highest power, reaching the sublime. By virtue of such devotion our lives are enriched. He draws a touching picture of the sacrifice upon which our modern social life and civilisation are based, and draws an analogy between the blood of dead horses used by the ploughman in fertilising his field, and the blood of the martyrs of humanity,qui ont fécondé l’avenir. Often they may have been mistaken; later generations may wonder if their cause was worth fighting for; yet, although nothing truly is sadder than to die in vain, that devotion was valuable in and for itself.
With the demand of life for risk in action is bound up the impetus to undertake risk in thought. From this springs the moral need for faith, for belief and acceptance of some hypotheses. The very divergence or diversity of the world-religions is not discouraging but rather the reverse. It is a sign of healthy moral life. Uniformity would be highly detrimental; it would cease to express life, for with conformity of belief would come spiritual decline and stagnation. Guyau anticipates here his doctrine of a religion of free thought, a “non-religion†of the future, which we shall discuss in our next chapter, when we examine his book on that subject. In the diversity of religious views Guyau sees a moral good, for these religions are themselves an expression of life in its richness, and the conservation and expansion of this rich variety of life are precisely the moral ideal itself.
We must endeavour to realise how rich and varied the nature of human life really is. Revolutionaries, Guyau points out, are always making the mistake of regarding life and truth as too simple. Life and truth are so complex that evolution is the key-note to what is desirable in the individual intellect and in society, not a revolution which must inevitably express the extreme of one side or the other. The search for truth is slow and needs faith and patience, but the careful seekers of it are making the future of mankind. But truth will be discovered only in relation to action and life and in proportion to the labour put into its realisation. The search for truth must never be divorced from the active life, Guyau insists, and, indeed, he approaches the view that the action will produce the knowledge, “He that doeth the will shall know of the doctrine.†Moreover he rightly sees in action the wholesome cure for pessimism and that cynicism which all too frequently arises from an equal appreciation of opposing views. “Even in doubt,†he exclaims, “we can love; even in the intellectual night, which prevents our seeing any ultimate goal, we can stretch out a hand to him who weeps at our feet.â€[34]In other words, we must do the duty that lies nearest, in the hope and faith that by that action itself light will come.
[34]Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction, p. 178.
In the last part of his treatise Guyau deals with the difficult problem of “sanction,†so ultimately connected with ethics, and, it must be added, with religion. The Providence who rewards and punishes us, according to the orthodox religious creed of Christendom, is merely a personified “sanction†or distributive justice, operating in a terrestrial and celestial court of assize. Guyau condemns this as an utterly immoral conception. Religious sanctions, as he has not much difficulty in showing, are more cruel than those which a man could imagine himself inflicting upon his mortal enemy. The “Heavenly Father†ought at least to be as good as earthly ones, who do not cruelly punish their children. Guyau touches upon an important point here, which will be further emphasised—namely, the necessity for making our idea of God, if we have one at all, harmonious with our own ethical conceptions. The old ideas of the divinity are profoundly immoral and are based on physical force. This is natural because those views which have survived in modern times are those of primitive and savage people to whom the most holy was the most powerful and physically majestic. But, says Guyau, now that we see that “all physical force represents moral weakness,†the idea of God the All-terrible, with his hell-fire ready for the sinful soul, must be condemned as immoral blasphemy itself. “God,†he remarks, “in damning any soul might be said to damn himself.â€
Virtue is really its own reward. No one should be or do good in order to gain an entry into paradise or to escape the torments of hell. That is to build morality on an immoral principle and on a belief, not in goodness as valuable in and for itself, but on a basis of material self-interest alone, “the best policy.†It is true, Guyau admits, that virtue involves happiness, but it is not in this sense. A conflict between “pleasure†and virtue is usually one of higherversuslower ideals. Virtue is not a precedent to sense-happiness, and in this sense is not at all equivalent or bound up with happiness, but, as the facts of life reveal, very often opposed to it.
Guyau opposes the ordinary view of punishment in society and shows that it is both immoral and socially harmful in its application. It adds evil to evil, and legal murder is really more absurd than the illegal murder. Punishment, capital or other, is no “compensation†exacted for the crime committed, and it never can be such. Attempts to treat and cure the guilty one would, Guyau suggests, be far more rational, humane and really beneficial to society itself, which at present creates by its punishments, especially those inflicted for first offences, a “criminal class.†One should convert the criminal before punishing him, and then, Guvau asks, if he is converted, why punish him?
The appeal to justice denoted in the words “To everyone according to his works†is frequently heard in the defence of punishment. This is an excellent maxim in Guyau’s opinion, but he is careful to point out that it is purely one of social economics. It is a plea for a just distribution of the products of labour, but does not apply at all to the problem of punishment. In a manner which recalls the remarks of Renan, Guyau sees in evil-doing a lack of culture, or rather of that sociability, which comes of social culture, from consciousness of a membership of society and a solidarity with one’s fellows. In vice and in virtue alike the human will appears aspiring to better things according to its lights. As virtue is its own reward, so is evil; and the moralist must say to the wicked: “Verily they have their reward†(Comme si ce n’était pas assez pour eux d’être méchants).
Guyau comments upon the gradual modifications of punishment from a social point of view. There was the day when the chastisement was infinitely worse than the crime itself. Then came the morality of reciprocity, “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,†an ethic which represented a high ideal for primitive man to reach, and one to which, Guyau thinks, we have yet to reach to-day in some spheres of life. Yet a further moral development will show how foolish, in a civilised society, are wrath and hatred of the criminal and the cry for vengeance. Society must aim at ensuring protection for itself with the minimum of individual suffering. Punishment must be regarded as an example for the future rather than as revenge or compensation. In the individual himself Guyau observes how powerful can be the inner sanction of remorse, the suffering caused by the unrealised ideal. This is perhaps the only real moral punishment, and it is one which society cannot itself directly enforce. Only by increasing “sociability†and social sensitiveness can this sanction be indirectly developed.
Herein lies the highest ethical ideal, far more concrete and living, in Guyau’s opinion, than the rigorism of a Kant or the “scholasticâ€[35]temper of a Renouvier. Charity or love for all men, whatever their value morally, intellectually or physically, must, he claims, “be the final end pursued even by public opinion.â€In co-operation and sociability, he finds the vital moral ideal; in love and brotherhood, he finds the real sanction which should operate.â€Love supposes mutuality of love,†he says; and there is one idea superior to that of justice, that is the idea of brotherhood, and he remarks with a humane tenderness “the guilty have probably more need for love than anyone else.†“I have,†he cries, “two hands—the one for gripping the hand of those with whom I march along in life, the other to lift up the fallen. Indeed, to these I should be able to stretch out both hands together.â€[36]
[35]This is Guyau’s word to describe Renouvier, whom he regards as far too much under the influence of Kant.
[36]Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction, p. 223.
While Fouillée and, more especially, Guyau were thus outlining an ethic marked by a strong humanitarianism, a more definitely religious ethic was being proclaimed by that current of philosophy of belief and of action which has profoundly associated itself in its later developments with “Modernism†in the Roman Church. The tendency to stress action and the practical reason is noticeable in the work of Brochard, Ollé-Laprune and Blondel, also in Rauh. They agree with Renouvier in advocating the primacy of the practical reason, but their own reasons for this are different from his, or at least in them the reasons are more clearly enunciated. Plainly these reasons lie in the difficulties of intellectualism and the quest of truth. They propose the quest of the good in the hope of finding in that sphere some objectivity, some absolute, in fact, which they cannot find out by intellectual searching. They correspond in a somewhat parallel fashion to the philosophy of intuition with its rejection of intellectualism as offering a final solution. These thinkers desire by action, by doing the will, to attain to a knowledge of the doctrine. The first word in their gospel is—
“Im Anfang war die That.â€
It is for them the beginning and the end. Their certainty is an act of belief, which grows out of action and life. It is a curious mixture of insistence upon life and action, such as we find in Guyau and in Bergson, coupled with a religious Platonism. Brochard’s work is of this type. He wrote as early as 1874 onLa Responsabilité morale, and in 1876 onL’Universalité des Notions morales. Three years later appeared his workL’Erreur. Ollé-Laprune and Blondel, who best represent this tendency, do not like Guyau’s ethics, which lacks the religious idealism which they consider should be bound up with morality. This was the thesis developed in the volumeLa Certitude morale, written by Ollé-Laprune in 1881. “By what right,†says Ollé-Laprune in his subsequent bookLe Prix de la Vie(1895), “can Guyau speak of a high exalted life, of a moral ideal? It is impossible to speak so when you have only a purely naturalistic ethic; for merely to name these things is an implication that there is not only intensity in life, but also quality. You suppress duty because you can see in it only a falsely mystical view of life and of nature. What you fail to realise is that between duty and life there is a profound agreement. You reduce duty to life, and in life itself you consider only its quantity and intensity, and regard as illusion everything that is of a different order from the natural physical order in which you imprison yourself.â€[37]
[37]Le Prix de la Vie, p. 139.
Such a criticism is not altogether fair to Guyau who, as we noted, proclaimed the superiority of the higher qualities of spiritual life. It does, however, attack his abandonment of the idea of Duty; and we must now turn to examine a thinker, who, by his contribution to ethics, endeavoured to satisfy the claims of life and of duty.
This was Rauh, whoseEssai sur le Fondement métaphysique de la Moraleappeared in 1890. It had been preceded by a study of the psychology of the feelings, and was later followed byL’Expérience morale(1903). In seeking a metaphysical foundation for morality, Rauh recalls Kant’sMetaphysic of Morals. He, indeed, agrees with Kant in the view that the essence of morality lies in the sentiment of obligation. Belief or faith in an ideal, by which it behoves us to act, imposes itself, says Rauh, upon the mind of man as essential. It is as positive a fact as the laws of the natural sciences. Man not only states facts and formulates general laws in a scientific manner, he also conceives and believes in ideals, which become bound up in his mind with the sentiment of obligation—that is, the general feeling of duty. But beyond a general agreement upon this point, Rauh does not follow Kant. He tends to look upon the ethical problem in the spirit which Guyau, Bergson and Blondel show in their general philosophic outlook. In life, action and immediacy alone can we find a solution. Nothing practical can be deduced from the abstract principle of obligation or duty in general. The moral consciousness of man is, in Rauh’s opinion, akin to the intuitional perceptions of Bergson’s philosophy. Morality, moreover, is creating itself perpetually by the reflection of sensitive minds on action and on life itself. “Morality, or rather moral action, is not merely the crown of metaphysical speculation, but itself the true metaphysic, which is learnt only in living, as it is naught but life itself.â€[38]In concluding his thesis, Rauh reminds us that “the essential and most certain factor in the midst of the uncertainties of life and of duty lies in the constant consciousness of the moral ideal.†In it he sees a spiritual reality which, if we keep it ever before us, may inspire the most insignificant of our actions and render them into a harmony, a living harmony of character.
[38]Essai sur le Fondement métaphysique de la Morale, p. 255.
Rauh’s doctrines, we claim, have affinities to the doctrines of action and intuition. That does not imply, however, that the intelligence is to be minimised—far from this; but the intelligence triumphs here in realising that it is not all-sufficing or supreme. “The heart hath reasons which the reason cannot know.†While Fouillée had remarked that morality is metaphysics in action, Rauh points out that “metaphysics in action†is the foundation of our knowledge. We must, he insists, seek for certitude in an immediate and active adaptation to reality instead of deducing a rule or rules of action from abstract systems.
He separates himself from the sociologists[39]by pointing out that, however largely social environment may determine our moral ideals and rules of conduct, nevertheless the ethical decision is fundamentally an absolutely personal affair. The human conscience, in so far as active, must neverpassivelyaccept the existing social morality. It finds itself sometimes in agreement, sometimes obliged to give a newer interpretation to old conventions, and at times is obliged to revolt against them. In no case can the idea of duty be equated simply and calmly with acquiescence in the collective general will. It must demand from social morality its credentials and hold itself free to criticise the current ethic of the community. More often than not society acts, Rauh thinks, as a break rather than a stimulus; and social interest is not a measure of the moral ideal, but rather a limitation of it.
[39]The relation of ethics and sociology is well discussed, not only by Durkheim (who, in hisDivision du Travail social, speaks of the development of democracy and increasing respect for human personality), but also by Lévy-Bruhl, who followed his thesis onL’Idée de Responsabilité, 1883, by the volume,La Morale el la Science des Moeurs.
Although the moral ideal is one which must be personally worked out, it is not a merely individualistic affair. Rauh does not abandon the guidance of reason, but he objects equally to the following of instinct or a transcendent teaching divorced from the reality of life. Our guide must be reflection upon instinct, and this is only possible by action and experience, the unique experience of living itself. Reason itself is experience; and it is our duty to face problems personally and sincerely, in a manner which the rational element in us renders “impersonal, universal and disinterested.â€
Any code of morality which is not directly in contact with life is worthless, and all ethical ideas which are not those of our time are of little value. Only he is truly a man who lives the life of his time. The truly moral man is he who is alive to this spirit and who does not unreflectingly deduce his rules of conduct from ancient books or teachers of a past age. The art of living is the supreme art, and it is this which the great moralists have endeavoured to show humanity. Neither Socrates nor Jesus wrote down their ethical ideas: they lived them.
Rauh thus reminds us partly of Guyau in his insistence upon life. He regards the ethical life at its highest, as onesans obligation ni sanction. Rather than the Kantian obligation of duty, of constraint, he favours in his second book,L’Expérience morale, a state of spontaneity, of passion and exaltation of the personal conscience which faces the issue in a disinterested manner. The man who is morally honest himself selects his values, his ideals, his ends, by the light which reason gives him. Ethics becomes thus an independent science, a science of “ends,†which Reason, as reflected in the personal conscience, acclaims a science of the ideal ordering of life.
Such was Rauh’s conception of rational moral experience, one which he endeavoured to apply in his lectures to the two problems which he considered to be supreme in his time, that of patriotism and of social justice.
These problems were further touched upon in 1896, when Léon Bourgeois (since noted for his advocacy of the “League of Nationsâ€) published his little workSolidarité, which was also a further contribution to an independent, positive and lay morality. In the conception of the solidarity of humanity throughout the ages, Bourgeois accepted the teaching of the sociologists, and urges that herein can be found an obligation, for the present generation must repay their debt to their ancestors and be worthy of the social heritage which has made them what they are. Somewhat similar sentiments had Been expressed by Marion in his Solidarité morale (1880). Ethical questions were kept in the forefront by the society known asL’Union pour l’Action morale, founded by Desjardins and supported by Lagneau (1851- 1894). After the excitement of the Dreyfus case (1894- 1899) this society took the nameL’Union pour la Verité. In 1902 Lapie made an eloquent plea for a rational morality in hisLogique de la Volonté, and in the following year Séailles published hisAffirmations de la Conscience moderne. The littlePrécisof André Lalande, written in the form of a catechism, was a further contribution to the establishment of a rational and independent lay morality, which the teaching of ethics as a subject in thelycéesand lay schools rendered in some degree necessary.[40]This little work appeared in 1907, the same year in which Paul Bureau wrote his bookLa Crise morale des Temps nouveaux. Then Parodi (who in 1919 produced a fine study of French thought since 1890[41]) followed up the discussion of ethical problems by his workLe Problème morale et la Pensée contemporaine(1909), and in 1912 Wilbois published his contribution entitledDevoir et Durée: Essai de Morale sociale.
[40]The teaching of a lay morality is a vital and practical problem which the Government of the Republic is obliged to face. The urgent need for such lay teaching will be more clearly demonstrated or evident when our next chapter, dealing with the religious problem, has been read.
[41]La Philosophie contemporaine en France.
Thus concludes a period in which the discussion, although not marked by a definite turning round of positions as was manifested in our discussions of science, freedom and progress, bears signs of a general development. This development is shown by the greater insistence upon the social aspects of ethics and by a turning away from the formalism of Kant to a more concrete conception of duty, or an ethic in which the notion of duty itself has disappeared. This is the general tendency from Renan with his insistence upon the aesthetic element, Renouvier with his claim for justice in terms of personality, to Fouillée, Guyau, Ollé-Laprune and Rauh with their insistence upon action, upon love and life.
Yet, although the departure from an intense individualism in ethics is desirable, we must beware of the danger which threatens from the other extreme. We cannot close this chapter without insisting upon this point. Good must be personally realised in the inner life of individuals, even if they form a community. The collective life is indeed necessary, but it is not collectively that the good is experienced. It is personal. In the neglect of this important aspect lies the error of much Communistic philosophy and of that social science which looks on society as purely an organism. This analogy is false, for however largely a community exhibits a general likeness to an organism, it is a superficial resemblance. There is not a centre of consciousness, but a multitude of such centres each living an inner life of personal experience which is peculiarly its own; and these personalities, we must remember, are not simply a homogeneous mass of social matter, they are capable of realising the good each in his or her own manner. This is the only realisation of the good.
In this chapter we have traced the attempt to reconcilescience et conscience, after the way had been opened up by the maintenance of freedom. It was recognised that reason is not entirely pure speculation: it is also practical. Human nature seeks for goodness as well as for truth. It is noticeable that while the insistence upon the primacy of the practical reason developed, on the one hand, into a philosophy of action (anti-intellectual action in its extreme development as shown in Syndicalism), the same tendency, operating in a different manner and upon different data, essayed to find in action, and in the belief which arises from action, that Absolute or Ideal to which the pure reason feels it cannot alone attain—namely, the realisation of God. To this problem of religion we devote our next chapter.