Part 24 (1/2)

Of cleanliness.

=Other duties concerning the body.--Temperance.=--Temperance recommended for two reasons: 1, as necessary to health, and consequently as a corollary to the duty of self-preservation; 2, as necessary to human dignity, which, through intemperance, falls below the brute.

Of the moderate use of sensual pleasures. That we should elevate them by attaching to them ideas and sentiments.

Other virtues: Decency, modesty, propriety, etc.

=131. Have we duties toward ourselves?=--This has been disputed, and it seems rather strange that it should have been. No one, say the jurists, binds himself to himself; no one does himself injustice, they say again.

In short, man belongs to himself: is not that the first of owners.h.i.+ps, and the basis of all the others?

”No,” replies Victor Cousin, ”from man's being free and belonging to himself, it is not to be concluded that he has all power over himself.

From the fact alone that he is endowed with both liberty and intelligence, I, on the contrary, conclude that he cannot, without failing in his duty, degrade his liberty any more than he can degrade his intelligence. Liberty is not only sacred to others; it is so in itself.

”This obligation imposed on the moral personality to respect itself, it is not I who established it; I cannot, therefore, destroy it. Is the respect I have for myself founded on one of those arbitrary agreements which cease to be when the two parties freely renounce it?

Are the two contracting parties here I and myself? No; there is one of the parties that is not I, namely, humanity itself, the moral personality, the human essence which does not belong to me, which is not my property, which I can no more degrade or wound in myself than I can in others. There is not even any agreement here or contract.

”Finally, man would still have duties, even though he ceased to be in any relation with other men. As long as he has any intelligence and liberty left, the idea of right remains in him, and with that idea, duty. If he were all at once thrown upon a desert island, duty would still follow him there.”[89]

Kant has likewise defended the existence of the duties of man toward himself.

”Supposing,” he says, ”that there were no duties of this kind, there would not be any duties then of any kind; for I can only think myself under obligations to others, so far as I am under obligations to myself.... Thus do people say, when the question is to save a man or his life: I owe this to myself; I owe it to myself to cultivate such dispositions of mind as make of me a fit member of society (_Doctrine de la vertu_, trad. franc. de Barni, p. 70).”

=132. Duties concerning the body.--Duty of self-preservation.=--The duties toward one's self are generally divided into two cla.s.ses: duties _toward the body_, duties _toward the soul_. Kant justly criticised this distinction, and asks how can there be any obligations toward the body--that is to say, toward a ma.s.s of matter--which, apart from the soul, is nothing better than any of the rough bodies which surround us. Kant proposes to subst.i.tute for this distinction the following: duties of man toward himself as an _animal_ (that is, united to animality by the corporeal functions), and the duties of man toward himself as a _moral being_.

Considered as an animal, man is united to a body, and this union of soul and body is what is called life. Hence a first duty which may be considered a fundamental duty, and the basis of all the others, namely, the duty of self-preservation. It is, in fact, obvious that the fulfillment of all our other duties rests on this prior one.

Before being a duty, self-preservation is for man an instinct, and even so energetic and so universal an instinct that there would seem to be very little need to transform it into duty: so much so is it an instinct that man has rather to combat in himself the cowardly tendency which attaches him to life, than that which induces him to seek death. Yet does it happen, and unfortunately too often, that men, crazed by despair, come to believe that they have a right to free themselves of life: this is what is called suicide. It is, therefore, very important in morals to combat this fatal idea, and to teach men that, even though life ceases to be a pleasure, there is still a moral obligation which they cannot escape.

=133. Suicide.--J. J. Rousseau and Kant.=--The question of suicide was treated with great ability by J. J. Rousseau in one of his most celebrated works. He put into the mouth of two personages, on the one side, the apology for, and on the other, the condemnation of suicide. We will not cite here these two pieces, the eloquence of which is somewhat declamatory, but we will give an abstract of the princ.i.p.al arguments presented on each side in favor of its own position.

_Arguments in favor of suicide._--1. It is said that life is not our own because it was given us.--Not so, for, just because it was given us, is it our own. G.o.d has given us arms, and yet we allow them to be cut off when necessary.

2. Man, it is said, is a soldier on sentry on earth: he should not leave his post without orders.--So be it; but misfortune is precisely that order which informs me that I have nothing more to do here below.

3. Suicide, it is said again, is rebellion against Providence.--But how?

it is not to escape its laws one puts an end to one's life; it is to execute them the better: in whatever place the soul may be, it will always be under G.o.d's government.

4. ”If thy slave attempted to kill himself,” says Socrates to Cebes in the _Phaedo_, ”wouldst thou not punish him for trying unjustly to deprive thee of thy property?”--Good Socrates, what sayest thou? Does one no longer belong to G.o.d when dead? Thou art quite wrong; thou shouldst have said: ”If thou puttest on thy slave a garment which is in his way in the service he owes thee, wouldst thou punish him for laying this garment aside in order the better to serve thee?”

5. It is said that life is never an evil.--Yet has nature implanted in us so great a horror of death that life to certain beings must surely be an evil, since they resolve to renounce it.

6. It is said that suicide is a cowardice.--How many cowards, then, among the ancients! Arria, Eponina, Lucretia, Brutus, Cato! Certainly there is courage in suffering the evils one cannot avoid; but it were insanity to suffer voluntarily those from which one can free himself.

7. There are unquestionably duties that should attach us to life.--But he who is a burden to every one, and of no use to himself, why should he not have a right to quit a place where his complaints are importunate and his sufferings useless?

8. Why should it be allowable to get cured of the gout and not of life? If we consider the will of G.o.d, what evil is there for us to combat, that he has not himself sent us? Are we not permitted, then, to change the nature of any thing because all that is, is as he wished it?

9. ”Thou shall not kill,” says the Decalogue.--But if this commandment is to be taken literally, one should kill neither criminals nor enemies.