Part 25 (1/2)
[240] Lecture 12.
[241] See 4th Series, vol. i., p. 40.
[242] See our pamphlet ent.i.tled _Justice and Charity_, composed in 1848, in the midst of the excesses of socialism, in order to remind of the dignity of liberty, the character, bearing, and the impa.s.sable limits of true charity, private and civil.
[243] See on the theory of penalty, the _Gorgias_, vol. iii. of the translation of Plato, and our argument, p. 367: ”The first law of order is to be faithful to virtue, and to that part of virtue which is related to society, to wit, justice; but if one is wanting in that, the second law of order is to expiate one's fault, and it is expiated by punishment. Publicists are still seeking the foundation of penalty.
Some, who think themselves great politicians, find it in the utility of the punishment for those who witness it, and are turned aside from crime by fear of its menace, by its preventive virtue. And that it is true, is one of the effects of penalty, but it is not its foundation; for punishment falling upon the innocent, would produce as much, and still more terror, and would be quite as preventive. Others, in their pretensions to humanity, do not wish to see the legitimacy of punishment except in its utility for him who undergoes it, in its corrective virtue,--and that, too, is one of the possible effects of punishment, but not its foundation; for that punishment may be corrective, it must be accepted as just. It is, then, always necessary to recur to justice.
Justice is the true foundation of punishment,--personal and social utility are only consequences. It is an incontestable fact, that after every unjust act, man thinks, and cannot but think that he has incurred demerit, that is to say, has merited a punishment. In intelligence, to the idea of injustice corresponds that of penalty; and when injustice has taken place in the social sphere, merited punishment ought to be inflicted by society. Society can inflict it only because it ought.
Right here has no other source than duty, the strictest, most evident, and most sacred duty, without which this pretended right would be only that of force, that is to say, an atrocious injustice, should it even result in the moral profit of him who undergoes it, and in a salutary spectacle for the people,--what it would not then be; for then the punishment would find no sympathy, no echo, either in the public conscience or in that of the condemned. The punishment is not just, because it is preventively or correctively useful; but it is in both ways useful, because it is just.” This theory of penalty, in demonstrating the falsity, the incomplete and exclusive character of two theories that divide publicists, completes and explains them, and gives them both a legitimate centre and base. It is doubtless only indicated in Plato, but is met in several pa.s.sages, briefly but positively expressed, and on it rests the sublime theory of expiation.
[244] As it is perceived, we have confined ourselves to the most general principles. The following year, in 1819, in our lectures on Hobbes, 1st Series, vol. iii., we gave a more extended theory of rights, and the civil and political guaranties which they demand; we even touched the question of the different forms of government, and established the truth and beauty of the const.i.tutional monarchy. In 1828, 2d Series, vol. i., lecture 13, we explained and defended the Charter in its fundamental parts. Under the government of July, the part of defender of both liberty and royalty was easy. We continued it in 1848; and when, at the unexpected inundation of democracy, soon followed by a pa.s.sionate reaction in favor of an absolute authority, many minds, and the best, asked themselves whether the young American republic was not called to serve as a model for old Europe, we did not hesitate to maintain the principle of the monarchy in the interest of liberty; we believe that we demonstrated that the development of the principles of 1789, and in particular the progress of the lower cla.s.ses, so necessary, can be obtained only by the aid of the const.i.tutional monarchy,--6th Series, POLITICAL DISCOURSES, _with an introduction on the principles of the French Revolution and representative government_.
LECTURE XVI.
G.o.d THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD.
Principle on which true theodicea rests. G.o.d the last foundation of moral truth, of the good, and of the moral person.--Liberty of G.o.d.--The divine justice and charity.--G.o.d the sanction of the moral law. Immortality of the soul; argument from merit and demerit; argument from the simplicity of the soul; argument from final causes.--Religious sentiment.--Adoration.--Wors.h.i.+p.--Moral beauty of Christianity.
The moral order has been confirmed,--we are in possession of moral truth, of the idea of the good, and the obligation that is attached to it. Now, the same principle that has not permitted us to stop at absolute truth,[245] and has forced us to seek its supreme reason in a real and substantial being, forces us here again to refer the idea of the good to the being who is its first and last foundation.
Moral truth, like every other universal and necessary truth, cannot remain in a state of abstraction. In us it is only conceived. There must somewhere be a being who not only conceives it, but const.i.tuted it.
As all beautiful things and all true things are related--these to a unity that is absolute truth, and those to another unity that is absolute beauty, so all moral principles partic.i.p.ate in the same principle, which is the good. We thus elevate ourselves to the conception of the good in itself, of absolute good, superior to all particular duties, and determined in these duties. Now, can the absolute good be any thing else than an attribute of him who, properly speaking, is alone absolute being?
Would it be possible that there might be several absolute beings, and that the being in whom are realized absolute truth and absolute beauty might not also be the one who is the principle of absolute good? The very idea of the absolute implies absolute unity. The true, the beautiful, and the good, are not three distinct essences; they are one and the same essence considered in its fundamental attributes. Our mind distinguishes them, because it can comprehend them only by division; but, in the being in whom they reside, they are indivisibly united; and this being at once triple and one, who sums up in himself perfect beauty, perfect truth, and the supreme good, is nothing else than G.o.d.
So G.o.d is necessarily the principle of moral truth and the good. He is also the type of the moral person that we carry in us.
Man is a moral person, that is to say, he is endowed with reason and liberty. He is capable of virtue, and virtue has in him two princ.i.p.al forms, respect of others, and love of others, justice and charity.
Can there be among the attributes possessed by the creature something essential not possessed by the Creator? Whence does the effect draw its reality and its being, except from its cause? What it possesses, it borrows and receives. The cause at least contains all that is essential in the effect. What particularly belongs to the effect, is inferiority, is a lack, is imperfection: from the fact alone that it is dependent and derived, it bears in itself the signs and the conditions of dependence.
If, then, we cannot legitimately conclude from the imperfection of the effect in that of the cause, we can and must conclude from the excellence of the effect in the perfection of the cause, otherwise there would be something prominent in the effect which would be without cause.
Such is the principle of our theodicea. It is neither new nor subtle; but it has not yet been thoroughly disengaged and elucidated, and it is, to our eyes, firm against every test. It is by the aid of this principle that we can, up to a certain point, penetrate into the true nature of G.o.d.
G.o.d is not a being of logic, whose nature can be explained by way of deduction, and by means of algebraic equations. When, setting out from a first attribute, we have deduced the attributes of G.o.d from each other, after the manner of geometricians and the schoolmen, what do we possess,[246] I pray you, but abstractions? It is necessary to leave these vain dialectics in order to arrive at a real and living G.o.d.
The first notion that we have of G.o.d, to wit, the notion of an infinite being, is itself given to us independently of all experience. It is the consciousness of ourselves, as being at once, and as being limited, that elevates us directly to the conception of a being who is the principle of our being, and is himself without bounds. This solid and single argument, which is at bottom that of Descartes,[247] opens to us a way that must be followed, in which Descartes too quickly stopped. If the being that we possess forces us to recur to a cause which possesses being in an infinite degree, all that we have of being, that is to say, of substantial attributes, equally requires an infinite cause. Then, G.o.d will no longer be merely the infinite, abstract, or at least indeterminate being in which reason and the heart know not where to betake themselves,[248] he will be a real and determined being, a moral person like ours and psychology conducts us without hypothesis to a theodicea at once sublime and related to us.[249]
Before all, if man is free, can it be that G.o.d is not free? No one contends that he who is cause of all causes, who has no cause but himself, can be dependent on any thing whatever. But in freeing G.o.d from all external constraint, Spinoza subjects him to an internal and mathematical necessity, wherein he finds the perfection of being. Yes, of being which is not a person; but the essential character of personal being is precisely liberty. If, then, G.o.d were not free, G.o.d would be beneath man. Would it not be strange that the creature should have the marvellous power of disposing of himself, and of freely willing, and that the being who has made him should be subjected to a necessary development, whose cause is only in himself, without doubt, but, in fine, is a sort of abstract power, mechanical or metaphysical, but very inferior to the personal and voluntary cause that we are, and of which we have the clearest consciousness? G.o.d is therefore free, since we are free. But he is not free as we are free; for G.o.d is at once all that we are, and nothing that we are. He possesses the same attributes that we possess, but elevated to infinity. He possesses an infinite liberty, joined to an infinite intelligence; and, as his intelligence is infallible, excepted from the uncertainties of deliberation, and perceiving at a glance where the good is, so his liberty spontaneously, and without effort, fulfils it.[250]
In the same manner as we transfer to G.o.d the liberty that is the foundation of our being, we also transfer to him justice and charity. In man, justice and charity are virtues; in G.o.d, they are attributes. What is in us the laborious conquest of liberty, is in him his very nature.
If respect of rights is in us the very essence of justice and the sign of the dignity of our being, it is impossible that the perfect being should not know and respect the rights of the lowest beings, since it is he, moreover, who has imparted to them those rights. In G.o.d resides a sovereign justice, which renders to each one his due, not according to deceptive appearances, but according to the truth of things. Finally, if man, that limited being, has the power of going out of himself, of forgetting his person, of loving another than himself, of devoting himself to another's happiness, or, what is better, to the perfecting of another, should not the perfect being have, in an infinite degree, this disinterested tenderness, this charity, the supreme virtue of the human person? Yes, there is in G.o.d an infinite tenderness for his creatures: he at first manifested it in giving us the being that he might have withheld, and at all times it appears in the innumerable signs of his divine providence. Plato knew this love of G.o.d well, and expressed it in those great words, ”Let us say that the cause which led the supreme ordainer to produce and compose this universe is, that he was good; and he who is good has no species of envy. Exempt from envy, he willed that all things should be, as much as possible, like himself.”[251]
Christianity went farther: according to the divine doctrine, G.o.d so loved men that he gave them his only Son. G.o.d is inexhaustible in his charity, as he is inexhaustible in his essence. It is impossible to give more to the creature; he gives him every thing that he can receive without ceasing to be a creature; he gives him every thing, even himself, so far as the creature is in him and he in the creature. At the same time nothing can be lost; for being absolute being, he eternally expands and gives himself without being diminished. Infinite in power, infinite in charity, he bestows his love in exhaustless abundance upon the world, to teach us that the more we give the more we possess. It is egoism, whose root is at the bottom of every heart, even by the side of the sincerest charity, that inculcates in us the error that we lose by self-devotion: it is egoism that makes us call devotion a sacrifice.
If G.o.d is wholly just and wholly good, he can will nothing but what is good and just; and, as he is all-powerful, every thing that he wills he can do, and consequently does do. The world is the work of G.o.d; it is therefore perfectly made, perfectly adapted to its end.