Part 22 (1/2)
We arrive, then, at the last element of the moral phenomenon, the judgment of merit and demerit.
At the same time that we judge that a man has done a good or bad action, we bear this other judgment quite as necessary as the former, to wit, that if this man has acted well he has merited a reward, and if he has acted ill, he has merited a punishment. It is exactly the same with this judgment as with that of the good. It may be outwardly expressed in a more or less lively manner, according as it is mingled with more or less energetic feelings. Sometimes it will be only a benevolent disposition towards the virtuous agent, and an unfavorable disposition towards the culpable agent; sometimes it will be enthusiasm or indignation. In some cases one will make himself the executor of the judgment that he bears, he will crown the hero and load the criminal with chains. But when all your feelings are calmed, when enthusiasm has cooled as well as indignation, when time and separation have rendered an action almost indifferent to you, you none the less persist in judging that the author of this action merits a reward or a punishment, according to the quality of the action. You decide that you were right in the sentiments that you felt, and, although they are extinguished, you declare them legitimate.
The judgment of merit and demerit is essentially tied to the judgment of good and evil. In fact, he who does an action without knowing whether it is good or bad, has neither merit nor demerit in doing it. It is with him the same as with those physical agents that accomplish the most beneficent or the most destructive works, to which we never think of attributing knowledge and will, consequently accountability. Why are there no penalties attached to involuntary crimes? Because for that very reason they are not regarded as crimes. Hence it comes that the question of premeditation is so grave in all criminal processes. Why is the child, up to a certain age, subject to none but light punishments?
Because where the idea of the good and liberty are wanting, merit and demerit are also wanting, which alone authorize reward and punishment.
The author of an injurious but involuntary action is condemned to an indemnity corresponding to the damage done; he is not condemned to a punishment properly so called.
Such are the conditions of merit and demerit. When these conditions are fulfilled, merit and demerit manifest themselves, and involve reward and punishment.
Merit is the natural right we have to be rewarded; demerit the natural right that others have to punish us, and, if we may thus speak, the right that we have to be punished. This expression may seem paradoxical, nevertheless it is true. A culpable man, who, opening his eyes to the light of the good, should comprehend the necessity of expiation, not only by internal repentance, without which all the rest is in vain, but also by a real and effective suffering, such a culpable man would have the right to claim the punishment that alone can reconcile him with order. And such reclamations are not so rare. Do we not every day see criminals denouncing themselves and offering themselves up to avenge the public? Others prefer to satisfy justice, and do not have recourse to the pardon that law places in the hands of the monarch in order to represent in the state charity and mercy, as tribunals represent in it justice. This is a manifest proof of the natural and profound roots of the idea of punishment and reward.
Merit and demerit imperatively claim, like a lawful debt, punishment and reward; but reward must not be confounded with merit, nor punishment with demerit; this would be confounding cause and effect, principle and consequence. Even were reward and punishment not to take place, merit and demerit would subsist. Punishment and reward satisfy merit and demerit, but do not const.i.tute them. Suppress all reward and all punishment and you do not thereby suppress merit and demerit; on the contrary, suppress merit and demerit, and there are no longer true punishments and true rewards. Unmerited goods and honors are only material advantages; reward is essentially moral, and its value is independent of its form. One of those crowns of oak that the early Romans decreed to heroism is worth more than all the riches in the world, when it is the sign of the recognition and the admiration of a people. To reward is to give in return. He who is rewarded must have first given something in order to deserve to be rewarded. Reward accorded to merit is a debt; reward without merit is a charity or a theft. It is the same with punishment. It is the relation of pain to a fault,--in this relation, and not in the pain alone, is the truth as well as the shame of chastis.e.m.e.nt.
'Tis crime and not the scaffold makes the shame.[228]
There are two things that must be unceasingly repeated, because they are equally true,--the first is, that the good is good in itself, and ought to be pursued whatever may be the consequences; the second is, that the consequences of the good cannot fail to be fortunate. Happiness, separated from the good, is only a fact to which is attached no moral idea; but, as an effect of the good, it enters into the moral order and completes it.
Virtue without happiness, and crime without unhappiness, are a contradiction, a disorder. If virtue supposes sacrifice, that is to say, suffering, it is of eternal justice that the sacrifice, generously accepted and courageously borne, have for a reward the very happiness that has been sacrificed. So, it is of eternal justice that crime be punished by the unhappiness of the culpable happiness which it has tried to obtain by stealth.
Now, when and how is the law fulfilled that attaches pleasure and pain to good and evil? Most of the time even here below. For order rules in this world, since the world endures. If order is sometimes disturbed, and happiness and unhappiness are not always distributed in right proportion to crime and virtue, still the absolute judgment of the good, the absolute judgment of obligation, the absolute judgment of merit and demerit, subsist inviolable and imprescriptible,--we remain convinced that he who has put in us the sentiment and the idea of order cannot in that fail himself, and that sooner or later he will re-establish the sacred harmony between virtue and happiness by the means that to him belong. But the time has not come to sound these mysterious prospects.[229] It is sufficient for us, but it was necessary to mark them, in order to show the nature and the end of moral truth.
We terminate this a.n.a.lysis of the different parts of the complex phenomenon of morality by recalling that one which is the most apparent of all, which, however, is only the accompaniment, and, thus to speak, the echo of all the others--sentiment. Sentiment has for its object to render sensible to the soul the tie between virtue and happiness. It is the direct and vital application of the law of merit and demerit. It precedes and authorizes the punishments and rewards that society inst.i.tutes. It is the internal model according to which the imagination, guided by faith, represents to itself the punishments and rewards of the divine city. The world that we place beyond this is, in great part, our own heart transported into heaven. Since it comes thence, it is just that it should return thither.
We will not dwell upon the different phenomena of sentiment; we have sufficiently explained them in the last lecture. A few words will replace them under your eyes.
We cannot witness a good action, whoever may be its author, another or ourselves, without experiencing a particular pleasure, a.n.a.logous to that which is attached to the perception of the beautiful; and we cannot witness a bad action without feeling a contrary sentiment, also a.n.a.logous to that which the sight of an ugly and deformed object excites in us. This sentiment is profoundly different from agreeable or disagreeable sensation.
Are we the authors of the good action? We feel a satisfaction that we do not confound with any other. It is not the triumph of interest nor that of pride,--it is the pleasure of modest honesty or dignified virtue that renders justice to itself. Are we the authors of the bad action? We feel offended conscience groaning within us. Sometimes it is only an importunate reclamation, sometimes it is a bitter agony. Remorse is a suffering the more poignant on account of our feeling that it is deserved.
The spectacle of a good action done by another also has something delicious to the soul. Sympathy is an echo in us that responds to whatever is n.o.ble and good in others. When interest does not lead us astray, we naturally put ourselves in the place of him who has done well. We feel in a certain measure the sentiments that animate him. We elevate ourselves to the mood of his spirit. Is it not already for the good man an exquisite reward to make the n.o.ble sentiments that animate him thus pa.s.s into the hearts of his fellow-men? The spectacle of a bad action, instead of sympathy, excites an involuntary antipathy, a painful and sad sentiment. Without doubt, this sentiment is never acute like remorse. There is in innocence something serene and placid that tempers even the sentiment of injustice, even when this injustice falls on us.
We then experience a sort of shame for humanity, we mourn over human weakness, and, by a melancholy return upon ourselves, we are less moved to anger than to pity. Sometimes also pity is overcome by a generous anger, by a disinterested indignation. If, as we have said, it is a sweet reward to excite a n.o.ble sympathy, an enthusiasm almost always fertile in good actions, it is a cruel punishment to stir up around us pity, indignation, aversion, and contempt.
Sympathy for a good action is accompanied by benevolence for its author.
He inspires us with an affectionate disposition. Even without knowing it, we would love to do good to him; we desire that he may be happy, because we judge that he deserves to be. Antipathy also pa.s.ses from the action to the person, and engenders against him a sort of bad will, for which we do not blame ourselves, because we feel it to be disinterested and find it legitimate.
Moral satisfaction and remorse, sympathy, benevolence, and their opposites are sentiments and not judgments; but they are sentiments that accompany judgments, the judgment of the good, especially that of merit and demerit. These sentiments have been given us by the sovereign Author of our moral const.i.tution to aid us in doing good. In their diversity and mobility, they cannot be the foundations of absolute obligation which must be equal for all, but they are to it happy auxiliaries, sure and beneficent witnesses of the harmony between virtue and happiness.
These are the facts as presented by a faithful description, as brought to light by a detailed a.n.a.lysis.
Without facts all is chimera; without a severe distinction of facts, all is confusion; but, also, without the knowledge of their relations, instead of a single vast doctrine, like the total phenomenon that we have undertaken to embrace, there can be only different systems like the different parts of this phenomenon, consequently imperfect systems, systems always at war with each other.
We set out from common sense; for the object of true science is not to contradict common sense, but to explain it, and for this end we must commence by recognizing it. We have at first painted in its simplicity, even in the gross, the phenomenon of morality. Then we have separated its elements, and carefully marked the characteristic traits of each of them. It only remains for us to re-collect them all, to seize their relations, and thus to find again, but more precise and more clear, the primitive unity that served us as a point of departure.
Beneath all facts a.n.a.lysis has shown us a primitive fact, which vests only on itself,--the judgment of the good. We do not sacrifice other facts to that, but we must establish that it is the first both in date and in importance.
By its close resemblance to the judgment of the true and the beautiful, the judgment of the good has shown us the affinities of ethics, metaphysics, and aesthetics.
The good, so essentially united to the true, is distinguished from it in that it is practical truth. The good is obligatory. These two ideas are inseparable, but not identical. For obligation rests on the good,--in this intimate alliance, from the good obligation borrows its universal and absolute character.
The obligatory good is the moral law. Therein is for us the foundation of all ethics. Thereby it is that we separate ourselves from the ethics of interest and the ethics of sentiment. We admit all the facts, but we do not admit them in the same rank.