[These draft translations are part of on ongoing effort to translate both editions of Proudhon’s Justice in the Revolution and in the Church into English, together with some related works, as the first step toward establishing an edition of Proudhon’s works in English. They are very much a first step, as there are lots of decisions about how best to render the texts which can only be answered in the course of the translation process. It seems important to share the work as it is completed, even in rough form, but the drafts are not suitable for scholarly work or publication elsewhere in their present state. — Shawn P. Wilbur, translator]
EIGHTH STUDY
CHAPTER ONE.
Theological objections: That it is much less a question of giving the formulas of Justice than of procuring its observance, for which one cannot do without religion.
I
ESSAYS IN POPULAR PHILOSOPHY. — N° 8.
OF JUSTICE
IN THE REVOLUTION
AND IN THE CHURCH.
———
EIGHTH STUDY.
CONSCIENCE AND LIBERTY.
CHAPTER ONE.
Theological objections: That it is much less a question of giving the formulas of Justice than of procuring its observance, for which one cannot do without religion.
Fénelon, in the eleventh book of Telemachus, leading his hero to hell, gives him this lesson in theology:
“Telemachus, seeing the three judges condemning a man, dared to ask them what his crimes were. Immediately the condemned man, taking the floor, exclaimed: I have never done any harm; I put all my pleasure in doing good; I have been magnificent, liberal, just, compassionate: what can you blame me for? Then Minos said to him: You are not reproached with anything towards men; but didn’t you owe less to men than to the gods? What is this justice of which you boast? You have failed in no duty towards men, who are nothing; you were virtuous, but you brought back all your virtue to yourself, and not to the gods who had given it to you: for you wanted to enjoy the fruit of your own virtue, and shut yourself up in yourself; you were your divinity. But the gods who have done everything, and who have done nothing but for themselves, cannot waive their rights. You have forgotten them, so they will forget you; they will deliver you to yourself, since you wanted to be yours, and not theirs. Seek therefore now, if you can, your consolation in your own heart. Here you are forever separated from men, whom you wanted to please; here you are alone with yourself, who was your idol, Learn that there is no true virtue without the respect and love of the gods, to whom everything is due. Your false virtue, which has long dazzled men, easy to deceive, will be confounded. Men, judging vices and virtues only by what shocks or accommodates them, are blind both to good and to evil: here, a light overthrows all their superficial judgments; it often condemns what they admire, and justifies what they condemn.
“At these words this philosopher, as if struck by a thunderbolt, could not support himself. The complacency which he had formerly had in contemplating his moderation, his courage and his generous inclinations, is changed into despair. The sight of his own heart, enemy of the gods, becomes his torture: he sees himself, and cannot stop seeing himself; he sees the vanity of the judgments of men, whom he wanted to please in all his actions; there is a universal revolution of all that is within him, as if all his entrails were upset; he no longer finds himself: he lacks all support in his heart; his conscience, whose testimony had been so sweet to him, rises up against him and reproaches him bitterly for the error and the illusion of all his virtues, which did not have the worship of the divinity for principle and for end: he is troubled, dismayed, full of shame, remorse and despair. The Furies do not torment him, because it is enough for them to have left him to himself, and his own heart sufficiently avenges the despised gods. He seeks the darkest places to hide from the other dead, unable to hide from himself; he seeks darkness, and cannot find it: an importunate light pursues him everywhere; everywhere the piercing rays of truth will avenge the truth, which he has neglected to follow. Everything he loved becomes odious to him, as being the source of his evils, which can never end, He says within himself: O fool! I therefore knew neither the gods, nor men, nor myself! No, I didn’t know anything, since I didn’t know the unique and true good: all my steps have been errors; my wisdom was madness; my virtue was only impious and sacrilegious pride; I myself was my idol.”
I cannot say what horror seized my youth when I read this dreadful piece for the first time. Behold, then, to what delirium the religion of grace has led the gentlest, the most virtuous of men, and one might add, one of the most reasonable! What happiness that the pupil of Fénelon did not reign over France! The chaste Duke of Burgundy would have been a hundred times worse for her than the voluptuous Louis XV. He would not have had near him a Pompadour, a Dubarry, to distract him from his hatred of the philosophers: he would have exercised the justice of Minos towards them. His memory, in horror to liberty, would be celebrated in the Church. Fénelon certainly deserved, for this edifying episode, that Rome made him pope. But, admire the play of fortune: it was precisely Rome that struck the Archbishop of Cambrai, and it was democracy that glorified him,
If I had been in the place of the philosopher damned by Fénelon, I would have replied to the infernal magistrate:
Son of Jupiter, you spoke as a fanatic, not as a judge; and you have just proven by your speech that you yourself do not believe in virtue. These gods of whom you speak to me, with their providence, with their favoritism and their mysteries, are for humanity, as you well know, a perpetual subject of scandal. Thanks to them, we know nothing of our rights and our duties, and our existence is unintelligible. By them, my reason has been distorted, my conscience has two faces. I asked them about Justice: what did they answer me? That inequality of conditions and fortunes is the law of the land, and they lied; that the authority of the prince, established from heaven, takes precedence over Justice itself, and they blasphemed; that, reason being doubtful, man has no resource but to rely on their oracles, and these oracles, I have convicted them of imposture. Oh! If I was worth anything up there, if I have not been a monster, if I have sometimes deserved the approval of my fellow men, it is in spite of the gods. I have repaired, as far as was in me, their iniquity; they take revenge for my insolence. Come, Tisiphone, take me to Tartarus; and you, Minos, let your masters know that there is here, in the depths of hell, a good man who despises them.
Monsignor,
I. — Fénelon, in the eleventh book of Telemachus, leading his hero to hell, gives him this lesson in theology:
“Telemachus, seeing the three judges condemning a man, dared to ask them what his crimes were. Immediately the condemned man, taking the floor, exclaimed: I have never done any harm; I put all my pleasure in doing good; I have been magnificent, liberal, just, compassionate: what can you blame me for? Then Minos said to him: You are not reproached with anything towards men; but didn’t you owe less to men than to the gods? What is this justice of which you boast? You have failed in no duty towards men, who are nothing; you were virtuous, but you brought back all your virtue to yourself, and not to the gods who had given it to you: for you wanted to enjoy the fruit of your own virtue, and shut yourself up in yourself; you were your divinity. But the gods who have done everything, and who have done nothing but for themselves, cannot waive their rights. You have forgotten them, so they will forget you; they will deliver you to yourself, since you wanted to be yours, and not theirs. Seek therefore now, if you can, your consolation in your own heart. Here you are forever separated from men, whom you wanted to please; here you are alone with yourself, who was your idol, Learn that there is no true virtue without the respect and love of the gods, to whom everything is due. Your false virtue, which has long dazzled men, easy to deceive, will be confounded. Men, judging vices and virtues only by what shocks or accommodates them, are blind both to good and to evil: here, a light overthrows all their superficial judgments; it often condemns what they admire, and justifies what they condemn.
“At these words this philosopher, as if struck by a thunderbolt, could not support himself. The complacency which he had formerly had in contemplating his moderation, his courage and his generous inclinations, is changed into despair. The sight of his own heart, enemy of the gods, becomes his torture: he sees himself, and cannot stop seeing himself; he sees the vanity of the judgments of men, whom he wanted to please in all his actions; there is a universal revolution of all that is within him, as if all his entrails were upset; he no longer finds himself: he lacks all support in his heart; his conscience, whose testimony had been so sweet to him, rises up against him and reproaches him bitterly for the error and the illusion of all his virtues, which did not have the worship of the divinity for principle and for end: he is troubled, dismayed, full of shame, remorse and despair. The Furies do not torment him, because it is enough for them to have left him to himself, and his own heart sufficiently avenges the despised gods. He seeks the darkest places to hide from the other dead, unable to hide from himself; he seeks darkness, and cannot find it: an importunate light pursues him everywhere; everywhere the piercing rays of truth will avenge the truth, which he has neglected to follow. Everything he loved becomes odious to him, as being the source of his evils, which can never end, He says within himself: O fool! I therefore knew neither the gods, nor men, nor myself! No, I didn’t know anything, since I didn’t know the unique and true good: all my steps have been errors; my wisdom was madness; my virtue was only impious and sacrilegious pride; I myself was my idol.” (A)
I cannot say what horror seized my youth when I read this dreadful piece for the first time. Behold, then, to what delirium the religion of grace has led the gentlest, the most virtuous of men, and one might add, one of the most reasonable! What happiness that the pupil of Fénelon did not reign over France! The chaste Duke of Burgundy would have been a hundred times worse for her than the voluptuous Louis XV. He would not have had near him a Pompadour, a Dubarry, to distract him from his hatred of the philosophers: he would have exercised the justice of Minos towards them. His memory, in horror to liberty, would be celebrated in the Church. Fénelon certainly deserved, for this edifying episode, that Rome made him pope. But, admire the play of fortune: it was precisely Rome that struck the Archbishop of Cambrai, and it was democracy that glorified him,
If I had been in the place of the philosopher damned by Fénelon, I would have replied to the infernal magistrate:
Son of Jupiter, you spoke as a fanatic, not as a judge; and you have just proven by your speech that you yourself do not believe in virtue. These gods of whom you speak to me, with their providence, with their favoritism and their mysteries, are for humanity, as you well know, a perpetual subject of scandal. Thanks to them, we know nothing of our rights and our duties, and our existence is unintelligible. By them, my reason has been distorted, my conscience has two faces. I asked them about Justice: what did they answer me? That inequality of conditions and fortunes is the law of the land, and they lied; that the authority of the prince, established from heaven, takes precedence over Justice itself, and they blasphemed; that, reason being doubtful, man has no resource but to rely on their oracles, and these oracles, I have convicted them of imposture. Oh! If I was worth anything up there, if I have not been a monster, if I have sometimes deserved the approval of my fellow men, it is in spite of the gods. I have repaired, as far as was in me, their iniquity; they take revenge for my insolence. Come, Tisiphone, take me to Tartarus; and you, Minos, let your masters know that there is here, in the depths of hell, a good man who despises them.
II
But I hear, like the voice of a council, the complaints of theologians.
“You have understood nothing of our doctrine,” they tell me, “and you do not understand your own thesis any better. Here are six long lectures that you tell us about Justice:
“Justice with respect to persons;
“Justice in the distribution of goods;
“Justice in the State;
“Justice in education;
“Justice in labor;
“Justice in the direction of the mind.
“You have, in your own way, developed the application of this Justice. To this appearance of a system, you have opposed the discipline of the Church, whose substance and thought are found in all the institutions of humanity, and which imposes itself on the reason of the philosopher and the legislator with the same necessity as a category of the understanding. And for having made this parallel, you imagine yourself having raised, on the ruins of religion, what you call revolutionary justice.
« Vous n’êtes seulement pas à la question.
“I. When your theory is as flawless as you seem to believe, what would follow?
“It would follow that you would have given a deduction of Justice, such as it must exist in a healthy nature, in a virgin subject coming out of the hands of God; you would have shown Justice as it is from faith in the Church that man possessed it in the earthly Paradise, before he allowed himself to be corrupted at the suggestion of the tempter.
“In this state of innocence, we are willing to grant it to you, Justice would conform to your definitions. It is not to such a morality that we say anathema.
“But this potentiality of Justice whose applications you take so much trouble to develop, this victorious energy of our juridical faculty, does it exist to the extent that your theory supposes? That is the question, and this question you have not even touched.
“Now the Church, and all the peoples with her with a unanimous consent, bear witness, and the experience of all history proves, that the Justice of which you speak is lost, that the human soul is infected, that this deep infection renders the feeling of right and duty in it ineffective; that a supplement of help is indispensable to it in order to do the good that society expects of it and its Author commands of it.
“This is what the Church says, and you don’t want to hear it. Do you deny, by any chance, the existence of evil, you who impute it to religion?
“Now, if evil exists, if evil overflows, how do you explain it in your theory? How does it come about that immanent Justice does not repress it? What prevents it from acting, this Justice? What makes conscience so weak, so inert, so dead? To accuse religion of this inertia, of this death by sin, a logician of your strength who would not allow himself such a sophism. Religion, this results from your own words, was born from the feeling that the conscience has of its impotence; it is the cry of the soul in distress, which, feeling its Justice failing, calls to its aid the Justice of God. Would you object to such testimony? Will you challenge the testimony of so many nations that barbarism covers with its rust, only because their so-called Justice has remained ineffectual? Where did civilization flourish, if it is not among the races that Christianity has purified, or that, at an immemorial time, received the first rays of anterior revelation? Will you challenge the testimony of so many philosophers, pagans or apostates, all strangers to the Church or its enemies, who have recognized this slavery of conscience, which is incomprehensible without a supernatural cause? Plato, in his Republic, written to put an end to the excesses of liberty; Aristotle, declaring at the end of his Nicomachean Ethics the radical impotence of theory to determine men to practice; Cicero, acknowledging that virtue is a gift from the gods; the Stoics, who recommend to their disciple to place himself constantly under the gaze of God; Hobbes, Spinoza, Hegel and so many others, in whom desertion from the faith only served to lead them to the most appalling despotism?
“Man is a slave,” Spinoza confesses. — “And whose slave?” — “The slave of his passions,” replies this unbeliever. — What! A slave of the passions that are the prerogative of his nature, of the passions that God has given him! Could there be anything more absurd? Rather than getting along with the Church, Spinoza prefers to put God in the place of Satan in the story of the fall, to make the author of all Justice the author of sin!
“And what is the remedy for this slavery, great philosopher? Who will be, against God who dooms us, our redeemer? — A doubling of servitude, replies the monk of the Hague. Spinoza in fact proposes to man, on the one hand, for the direction of his mind, the philosophy that blinds him; on the other, for the balance of his will, the despotism of the state! It is no doubt not to this conclusion of Spinozism that you think you are leading us! Prove then that conscience is endowed with sufficient force and that its justification by itself is possible. Banish sin, after explaining it however.
“This difficulty is not the only one.
“II. Justice, you say, is the ability we have to feel our dignity in others. Perfectly. But, whatever this faculty, and granting it all possible energy, it will not succeed, and Justice, conceived in conscience, will not be realized in acts, without the certainty of reciprocity. Some obstinate virtuous individuals will perhaps resign themselves to respecting right all the same, to paying those who steal them, to glorify those who slander them, to reach out to the brigands who assassinate them. Philosophy has had its martyrs, Justice may well have its own as well. But these rare examples will not have the power to enthrall the masses. For them to respect right and obey duty, they must, at the very least, have some guarantee of return. Where do you find this guarantee, which in your system should play the same role as religion in that of the Church? When distrust, having become universal, will have made iniquity general and irremediable, with what will you restore confidence? Nothing happens by virtue of nothing, this is your third axiom. Do you have in reserve some premoving* influence, which solicits faith prior to Justice, and takes the place of grace for you? What is this influence? Can you say where it comes from and how it operates?
“That is not all.
“(c) Sin has no objective existence. The actions of man, like the creatures that surround him, are, from the point of view of morality, in themselves indifferent; they become reprehensible only by the intention that presides over them. Now, if actions are indifferent by nature, how do they become condemnable by intention? Who can judge the latter? Who will tell us where the virtuous intention ends, where the criminal intention begins? What human science can affirm that intentions are not, like actions, indifferent? And then, what is an intention? You who laugh so pleasantly at the absolute, are you not here sacrificing to the absolute, against your own maxims? Where do you find, finally, this criterion of good and evil without which it is impossible for you to establish an accusation, to formulate a judgment, to impose a sentence? Oh what! By dint of wanting to realize, according to your expression, Justice by humanizing it, here you are evaporating it in second intentions, as your favorite author, Rabelais, says! You have nothing on which to base your legislation; and your Practical Reason, separated from religion, which alone can give it the exequatur, vanishes into nothingness.
“Thus, without speaking of innateness or immanence, on which it is useless to prolong the debate, you in no way prove, as you should have done first, the efficacy, in man, of sentiment or of his faculty of Justice. Not only do you not prove this efficacy, you are forced to recognize that the fact of sin, a universal fact if ever there was one, belies it. Then you cannot, in your system of immanence, do without an additional excitation that acts on the soul in the manner of grace. And when you would do without this excitement, your theory would fall again, by your radical impotence to formulate a law and to distinguish the good from the evil. Add that it remains for you to explain the existence of sin, and to say what becomes of religion, which cannot lead to nothing, according to your axioms.
“That if this is so, continue our adversaries, from purely rational conceptions of morality, must we not with the universal feeling draw this conclusion: that the government of humanity by Justice alone is chimerical; that uncircumcised and conténébrés hearts need something other than political economy and the free press, something other than this so-called right of man and of the the citizen, which no doubt has value as a confession of the necessity of a moral law, but which outside of that is pure deception, unworthy charlatanism? And to conclude, are we not forced to recognize that to speak to men of disinterestedness, of fidelity to the word, of chastity, to make them accept these strong maxims, there is need of a higher reason that supports them, of a grace, finally, which makes them sweet, precious, to the most rebellious souls?
“For whatever you do, whatever light your recent sciences bring to you, political economy, philosophy of history, ethnography and psychology, there will always remain this fact, that the moral bond, this legal obligation that you invoke, is, just as much as the faith that assures it, a mystery; that, at base, man has no knowledge of his mental state, and that wanting to bring him back to pure morality is a pure utopia, a crime against divine and human lèse-majesté, which religion rightly declared inexpiable.
“It is for this reason that the Church, instructed from above reason, not content with restraining the passions and mortifying the senses, uses the same coercion towards the highest faculties of the soul. Without stopping at the vain curiosities of an ambitious casuistry, it tells us that man, above all, wants to be tamed, and that this call for a learned and rigorous Justice, on the part of a subject of such ill will, is trickery of pride, cunning of Satan, sophistry of envy and revolt.
“Let the distribution of goods takes place according to a balance a little more or a little less exact; let the command be subjected to a little more or a little less severe control, the average level of instruction a little more or a little less high: what good business! Supposing all these equations demonstrated and feasible in practice, it is a question of converting them into obligations for the will, which is outside the competence of your mathematics. Ah! You who speak of human reason, of human conscience, of human virtue, who on this fragile foundation raise the edifice of your right and your duty, beware rather of these powers of perdition: nothing good will come of it, if religion does not govern them. Repress this stubborn genius, if you don’t want it to consume you. There is nothing that its indiscretion respects, and that its philosophies do not shake. Let it go: you will see it come to the negation of the universe and of itself. Break this conscience, which dares to act as principle and arbiter of the just and the unjust. As long as you give it space, it will rise to the summit from which the father of sin was thrown, when, availing himself of the sublimity of his prerogatives, he came to equal himself with the Eternal: Similis ero Altissimo. Quench this courage lest it look upon itself with complacency, lest it should boast of a virtue that comes entirely from God, and make itself God. For God alone is just and can alone say what justice is; God alone can impose the law on us, which alone judges intentions, probes minds and hearts. God alone, therefore, can give us the strength to do good, even though our heart denies it and our mouth blasphemes it.”
II. — But I hear, like the voice of a council, the complaints of theologians.
“You have understood nothing of our doctrine,” they tell me, “and you do not understand your own thesis any better. Here are six long lectures that you tell us about Justice:
“Justice with respect to persons;
“Justice in the distribution of goods;
“Justice in the State;
“Justice in education;
“Justice in labor;
“Justice in the direction of the mind.
“You have, in your own way, developed the application of this Justice. To this appearance of a system, you have opposed the discipline of the Church, whose substance and thought are found in all the institutions of humanity, and which imposes itself on the reason of the philosopher and the legislator with the same necessity as a category of the understanding. And for having made this parallel, you imagine yourself having raised, on the ruins of religion, what you call revolutionary justice. You have not even asked the question.
“a) When your theory is as flawless as you seem to believe, what would follow?
“It would follow that you would have given a deduction of Justice, such as it must exist in a healthy nature, in a virgin subject coming out of the hands of God; you would have shown Justice as it is from faith in the Church that man possessed it in the earthly Paradise, before he allowed himself to be corrupted at the suggestion of the tempter.
“In this state of innocence, we are willing to grant it to you, Justice would conform to your definitions. It is not to such a morality that we say anathema.
“But this potentiality of Justice whose applications you take so much trouble to develop, this victorious energy of our juridical faculty, does it exist to the extent that your theory supposes? That is the question, and this question you have not even touched.
“Now the Church, and all the peoples with her with a unanimous consent, bear witness, and the experience of all history proves, that the Justice of which you speak is lost, that the human soul is infected, that this deep infection renders the feeling of right and duty in it ineffective; that a supplement of help is indispensable to it in order to do the good that society expects of it and its Author commands of it.
“This is what the Church says, and you don’t want to hear it. Do you deny, by any chance, the existence of evil, you who impute it to religion?
“Now, if evil exists, if evil overflows, how do you explain it in your theory? How does it come about that immanent Justice does not repress it? What prevents it from acting, this Justice? What makes conscience so weak, so inert, so dead? To accuse religion of this inertia, of this death by sin, a logician of your strength who would not allow himself such a sophism. Religion, this results from your own words, was born from the feeling that the conscience has of its impotence; it is the cry of the soul in distress, which, feeling its Justice failing, calls to its aid the Justice of God. Would you object to such testimony? Will you challenge the testimony of so many nations that barbarism covers with its rust, only because their so-called Justice has remained ineffectual? Where did civilization flourish, if it is not among the races that Christianity has purified, or that, at an immemorial time, received the first rays of anterior revelation? Will you challenge the testimony of so many philosophers, pagans or apostates, all strangers to the Church or its enemies, who have recognized this slavery of conscience, which is incomprehensible without a supernatural cause? Plato, in his Republic, written to put an end to the excesses of liberty; Aristotle, declaring at the end of his Nicomachean Ethics the radical impotence of theory to determine men to practice (B); Cicero, acknowledging that virtue is a gift from the gods; the Stoics, who recommend to their disciple to place himself constantly under the gaze of God; Hobbes, Spinoza, Hegel and so many others, in whom desertion from the faith only served to lead them to the most appalling despotism?
“Man is a slave,” Spinoza confesses. — “And whose slave?” — “The slave of his passions,” replies this unbeliever. — What! A slave of the passions that are the prerogative of his nature, of the passions that God has given him! Could there be anything more absurd? Rather than getting along with the Church, Spinoza prefers to put God in the place of Satan in the story of the fall, to make the author of all Justice the author of sin!
“And what is the remedy for this slavery, great philosopher? Who will be, against God who dooms us, our redeemer? — A doubling of servitude, replies the monk of the Hague. Spinoza in fact proposes to man, on the one hand, for the direction of his mind, the philosophy that blinds him; on the other, for the balance of his will, the despotism of the state! It is no doubt not to this conclusion of Spinozism that you think you are leading us! Prove then that conscience is endowed with sufficient force and that its justification by itself is possible. Banish sin, after explaining it however.
“This difficulty is not the only one.
“b) Justice, you say, is the ability we have to feel our dignity in others. Perfectly. But, whatever this faculty, and granting it all possible energy, it will not succeed, and Justice, conceived in conscience, will not be realized in acts, without the certainty of reciprocity. Some obstinate virtuous individuals will perhaps resign themselves to respecting right all the same, to paying those who steal them, to glorify those who slander them, to reach out to the brigands who assassinate them. Philosophy has had its martyrs, Justice may well have its own as well. But these rare examples will not have the power to enthrall the masses. For them to respect right and obey duty, they must, at the very least, have some guarantee of return. Where do you find this guarantee, which in your system should play the same role as religion in that of the Church? When distrust, having become universal, will have made iniquity general and irremediable, with what will you restore confidence? Nothing happens by virtue of nothing, this is your third axiom. Do you have in reserve some premoving* influence, which solicits faith prior to Justice, and takes the place of grace for you? What is this influence? Can you say where it comes from and how it operates?
“That is not all.
“(c) Sin has no objective existence. The actions of man, like the creatures that surround him, are, from the point of view of morality, in themselves indifferent; they become reprehensible only by the intention that presides over them. Now, if actions are indifferent by nature, how do they become condemnable by intention? Who can judge the latter? Who will tell us where the virtuous intention ends, where the criminal intention begins? What human science can affirm that intentions are not, like actions, indifferent? And then, what is an intention? You who laugh so pleasantly at the absolute, are you not here sacrificing to the absolute, against your own maxims? Where do you find, finally, this criterion of good and evil without which it is impossible for you to establish an accusation, to formulate a judgment, to impose a sentence? Oh what! By dint of wanting to realize, according to your expression, Justice by humanizing it, here you are evaporating it in second intentions, as your favorite author, Rabelais, says! You have nothing on which to base your legislation; and your Practical Reason, separated from religion, which alone can give it the exequatur, vanishes into nothingness.
“Thus, without speaking of innateness or immanence, on which it is useless to prolong the debate, you in no way prove, as you should have done first, the efficacy, in man, of sentiment or of his faculty of Justice. Not only do you not prove this efficacy, you are forced to recognize that the fact of sin, a universal fact if ever there was one, belies it. Then you cannot, in your system of immanence, do without an additional excitation that acts on the soul in the manner of grace. And when you would do without this excitement, your theory would fall again, by your radical impotence to formulate a law and to distinguish the good from the evil. Add that it remains for you to explain the existence of sin, and to say what becomes of religion, which cannot lead to nothing, according to your axioms.
“That if this is so, continue our adversaries, from purely rational conceptions of morality, must we not with the universal feeling draw this conclusion: that the government of humanity by Justice alone is chimerical; that uncircumcised and conténébrés hearts need something other than political economy and the free press, something other than this so-called right of man and of the the citizen, which no doubt has value as a confession of the necessity of a moral law, but which outside of that is pure deception, unworthy charlatanism? And to conclude, are we not forced to recognize that to speak to men of disinterestedness, of fidelity to the word, of chastity, to make them accept these strong maxims, there is need of a higher reason that supports them, of a grace, finally, which makes them sweet, precious, to the most rebellious souls?
“For whatever you do, whatever light your recent sciences bring to you, political economy, philosophy of history, ethnography and psychology, there will always remain this fact, that the moral bond, this legal obligation that you invoke, is, just as much as the faith that assures it, a mystery; that, at base, man has no knowledge of his mental state, and that wanting to bring him back to pure morality is a pure utopia, a crime against divine and human lèse-majesté, which religion rightly declared inexpiable.
“It is for this reason that the Church, instructed from above reason, not content with restraining the passions and mortifying the senses, uses the same coercion towards the highest faculties of the soul. Without stopping at the vain curiosities of an ambitious casuistry, it tells us that man, above all, wants to be tamed, and that this call for a learned and rigorous Justice, on the part of a subject of such ill will, is trickery of pride, cunning of Satan, sophistry of envy and revolt.
“Let the distribution of goods takes place according to a balance a little more or a little less exact; let the command be subjected to a little more or a little less severe control, the average level of instruction a little more or a little less high: what good business! Supposing all these equations demonstrated and feasible in practice, it is a question of converting them into obligations for the will, which is outside the competence of your mathematics. Ah! You who speak of human reason, of human conscience, of human virtue, who on this fragile foundation raise the edifice of your right and your duty, beware rather of these powers of perdition: nothing good will come of it, if religion does not govern them. Repress this stubborn genius, if you don’t want it to consume you. There is nothing that its indiscretion respects, and that its philosophies do not shake. Let it go: you will see it come to the negation of the universe and of itself. Break this conscience, which dares to act as principle and arbiter of the just and the unjust. As long as you give it space, it will rise to the summit from which the father of sin was thrown, when, availing himself of the sublimity of his prerogatives, he came to equal himself with the Eternal: Similis ero Altissimo. Quench this courage lest it look upon itself with complacency, lest it should boast of a virtue that comes entirely from God, and make itself God. For God alone is just and can alone say what justice is; God alone can impose the law on us, which alone judges intentions, probes minds and hearts. God alone, therefore, can give us the strength to do good, even though our heart denies it and our mouth blasphemes it.”
III
I do not know, Monsignor, if I have rendered the thought of theology to your liking. But as it has just occurred under my pen, I admit that the argument has something to give food for thought to stronger intelligences than mine, and I am not surprised that so many thinkers have been broken by it.
After all, sin exists. If sin exists, however it occurs, Justice seems ineffectual; if Justice is ineffective, it is because it does not find in conscience the principle that assures it; finally, if this force of equilibrium does not exist in consciousness, it must receive it from elsewhere, Nothing being able to be balanced by nothing (ax. 5), which brings us back to religion. Otherwise, man becomes demoralized, and society is in peril.
The just man, says Scripture, falls seven times a day. What then can be expected of those who are not just? What to expect even from those who are only half-just? Entire nations, great and powerful nations, virtuous at first, have perished through the failure of Justice within them. Doesn’t that mean that with them, compensation made for virtue and crime, the average of Justice was not found to be sufficient to preserve them from moral dissolution, which was soon to follow material dissolution? Now, virtue is nothing other than the energy with which the subject tends to realize its law (def. 3); whence follows, as Christian dogma teaches, that the attraction of Justice, which alone produces virtue, finding himself too weak, man is below his destiny, which is contradictory.
To accuse institutions for this lack of virtue, or the tyranny of the great, the unworthiness of the multitude, the corruption of the priest, is to take the symptoms of the disease for the cause. How did tyranny arise, how was it subsequently suffered, if not by the complicity of the masses? How does man, whom nature, according to us, created worthy, then fall into unworthiness? The animal is faithful to its instinct: how does it come about that man alone deceives his own heart, that he shows himself cowardly, immoral, and, despite the wishes of his soul, unsocial?
In short, if, as the prevalence of sin leads one to believe, Justice is ineffective, Justice is a chimera; it is not of humanity, and all that remains is for us to bend our knees. Such is the objection.
I leave aside the opinion of some mixed theologians, who will perhaps accuse me of having forced the meaning of Christianity, and think that fallen man is still endowed with some capacity for good, maintaining only that this capacity would have been incomparably greater without original sin.
Ces théologiens de juste milieu, en croyant sauver leur foi des dangers du rigorisme, ne s’aperçoivent pas qu’ils la livrent. Si peu que vous accordiez d’efficacité propre à la conscience, elle n’a plus besoin de grâce supplémentaire ; l’homme peut marcher seul, et la religion devient inutile. Car, de même que ce n’est pas tant par la force physique que l’ouvrier triomphe de la fatalité du travail, mais par l’intelligence de son industrie ; de même ce n’est pas tant par son énergique sainteté que l’homme se préserve du mal, mais par son intelligence de la Justice, par la prudence de sa conduite, par les garanties sociales dont il s’environne. Toute sa puissance morale est précisément dans cette étincelle, qui n’attend pour l’embraser que le souffle de l’intelligence…
We touch on the depths of psychology.
The fact of sin or the slavery of the soul raising doubt about the effectiveness of Justice, Justice is threatened in its reality and its immanence, and the whole system of the Revolution finds itself compromised.
After having shown, in the preceding Studies, how much the idea of Justice, as it emerges from the revolutionary hypothesis, is superior to the idea given by revelation, we therefore have to prove again, against the insistence of the theologians:
1. That Justice is really, as we have defined it, a positive faculty, the preponderant faculty of the soul;
2. That by reason of this faculty man clearly discerns good from evil, and that this discernment is the surest part of his knowledge;
3. That he is free;
4. That his conscience is endowed with all the necessary efficacy, and that in fact this efficacy is attested by the constant progress of Justice.
5. and 6. We will then explain the production of sin, and we will say what becomes, in the definitively constituted society, of religion and grace.
7. Finally, Justice, being a function of human life, must have, like all functions, its organism: we will seek out what it is.
This will be the subject of this Study and the three that follow.
III. — I do not know, Monsignor, if I have rendered the thought of theology to your liking. But as it has just occurred under my pen, I admit that the argument has something to give food for thought to stronger intelligences than mine, and I am not surprised that so many thinkers have been broken by it.
After all, sin exists. If sin exists, however it occurs, Justice seems ineffectual; if Justice is ineffective, it is because it does not find in conscience the principle that assures it; finally, if this force of equilibrium does not exist in consciousness, it must receive it from elsewhere, Nothing being able to be balanced by nothing (ax. 5), which brings us back to religion. Otherwise, man becomes demoralized, and society is in peril.
The just man, says Scripture, falls seven times a day. What then can be expected of those who are not just? What to expect even from those who are only half-just? Entire nations, great and powerful nations, virtuous at first, have perished through the failure of Justice within them. Doesn’t that mean that with them, compensation made for virtue and crime, the average of Justice was not found to be sufficient to preserve them from moral dissolution, which was soon to follow material dissolution? Now, virtue is nothing other than the energy with which the subject tends to realize its law (def. 3); whence follows, as Christian dogma teaches, that the attraction of Justice, which alone produces virtue, finding himself too weak, man is below his destiny, which is contradictory.
To accuse institutions for this lack of virtue, or the tyranny of the great, the unworthiness of the multitude, the corruption of the priest, is to take the symptoms of the disease for the cause. How did tyranny arise, how was it subsequently suffered, if not by the complicity of the masses? How does man, whom nature, according to us, created worthy, then fall into unworthiness? The animal is faithful to its instinct: how does it come about that man alone deceives his own heart, that he shows himself cowardly, immoral, and, despite the wishes of his soul, unsocial?
In short, if, as the prevalence of sin leads one to believe, Justice is ineffective, Justice is a chimera; it is not of humanity, and all that remains is for us to bend our knees. Such is the objection.
I leave aside the opinion of some mixed theologians, who will perhaps accuse me of having forced the meaning of Christianity, and think that fallen man is still endowed with some capacity for good, maintaining only that this capacity would have been incomparably greater without original sin.
These middle-ground theologians, believing they are saving their faith from the dangers of rigorism, do not notice that they are surrendering it. However little you grant proper efficacy to the conscience, it no longer needs additional grace; man can walk alone, and religion becomes useless. For, just as it is not so much by physical force that the worker triumphs over the inevitability of work, but by the intelligence of his industry; in the same way it is not so much by his energetic holiness that man preserves himself from evil, but by his understanding of Justice, by the prudence of his conduct, by the social guarantees with which he surrounds himself. God himself would not hold to constant heroism. All our moral power is precisely in this spark, which awaits to ignite us only the breath of intelligence.
We touch on the depths of psychology.
The fact of sin or the slavery of the soul raising doubt about the effectiveness of Justice, Justice is threatened in its reality and its immanence, and the whole system of the Revolution finds itself compromised.
After having shown, in the preceding Studies, how much the idea of Justice, as it emerges from the revolutionary hypothesis, is superior to the idea given by revelation, we therefore have to prove again, against the insistence of the theologians:
1. That Justice is really, as we have defined it, a positive faculty, the preponderant faculty of the soul;
2. That by reason of this faculty man clearly discerns good from evil, and that this discernment is the surest part of his knowledge;
3. That he is free;
4. That his conscience is endowed with all the necessary efficacy, and that in fact this efficacy is attested by the constant progress of Justice.
5. and 6. We will then explain the production of sin, and we will say what becomes, in the definitively constituted society, of religion and grace.
7. Finally, Justice, being a function of human life, must have, like all functions, its organism: we will seek out what it is.
This will be the subject of this Study and the three that follow.
CHAPTER II.
Refutation of theological pyrrhonism: existence of the moral sense.
IV
I have remarked elsewhere that the theory of an auxiliary grace, a theory that has taken on such great development in Christianity, is essential to all religion. Paganism related everything to the gods: θεός έδωκεν, a god gave it, says Homer; like the Bible, nathan Yehovah.
The partisans of natural religion hold the same language: it is the only thing that the public has retained from the first two volumes of M. Jules Simon.
Well, Monsignor, do you know what you, and all the religionists your predecessors and your copyists, profess by this beautiful theory? The most immoral thing that one can imagine, Pyrrhonism.
Humanly, you do not believe in Justice. It is only by your faith in the Divinity that you become aware of a law that otherwise would not exist for you, according to what Bergier says, supported by Mgr. Gusset:
“No purely human reason can establish the distinction between good and evil; and if it had not pleased God to let us know his intention, the son could kill his father without being guilty.”
Take away God, you no longer have faith or law; you are parricide, thief, forger, traitor to the country, incestuous, pederast.
And spiritualist philosophy agrees with you. It too denies the efficacy of the conscience, the discernment of good and evil; and without the knowledge that it claims to have of God through reason, a superior faculty, in its opinion, and in a way divine, it would say, like you, that the honest atheist is a frank dupe, while the son who poisons his old father to save the pension he pays him is a practitioner who reasons correctly.
Oh what! You do not recoil before this frightful doctrine that has poured out on the world more crimes than the priesthood has ever absolved; which made you disregard, violate, under the pretext of discipline, all the precepts of Justice; to which you sacrifice without remorse the rights of man, of the citizen, of the worker, of the child, of the woman!
Certainly, when Christianity presented itself to the world with its triple dogma of a revealing and redemptive God, an original prevarication and a necessary grace, it hardly suspected that it raised a hundredfold doubt about Justice. more disastrous, more immoral, than that of Pyrrho. It thought itself so sure of its faith! Its hope was so lively, and human reason seemed so weak!
Let us forgive Christianity, and judge it as it itself judges us, by the intention. Christianity, damning the heroes and the sages, those who practice Justice gratuitously and for itself, while it opens heaven to base souls from whom the fear of hell tears a hypocritical Peccavi, believed to serve Justice If it had failed in its work, which moreover explains the law of human development, then it would have been immoral.
CHAPTER II.
Refutation of theological pyrrhonism: existence of the moral sense.
IV. — I have remarked elsewhere that the theory of an auxiliary grace, a theory that has taken on such great development in Christianity, is essential to all religion. Paganism related everything to the gods: θεός έδωκεν, a god gave it, says Homer; like the Bible, nathan Yehovah.
The partisans of natural religion hold the same language: it is the only thing that the public has retained from the first two volumes of M. Jules Simon.
Well, Monsignor, do you know what you, and all the religionists your predecessors and your copyists, profess by this beautiful theory? The most immoral thing that one can imagine, Pyrrhonism.
As a human, you do not believe in Justice. It is only by your faith in the Divinity that you become aware of a law that otherwise would not exist for you, according to what Bergier says, supported by Mgr. Gusset:
“No purely human reason can establish the distinction between good and evil; and if it had not pleased God to let us know his intention, the son could kill his father without being guilty.”
Take away God, you no longer have faith or law; you are parricide, thief, forger, traitor to the country, incestuous, pederast.
And spiritualist philosophy agrees with you. It too denies the efficacy of the conscience, the discernment of good and evil; and without the knowledge that it claims to have of God through reason, a superior faculty, in its opinion, and in a way divine, it would say, like you, that the honest atheist is a frank dupe, while the son who poisons his old father to save the pension he pays him is a practitioner who reasons correctly.
Oh what! You do not recoil before this frightful doctrine that has poured out on the world more crimes than the priesthood has ever absolved; which made you disregard, violate, under the pretext of discipline, all the precepts of Justice; to which you sacrifice without remorse the rights of man, of the citizen, of the worker, of the child, of the woman!
Certainly, when Christianity presented itself to the world with its triple dogma of a revealing and redemptive God, an original prevarication and a necessary grace, it hardly suspected that it raised a hundredfold doubt about Justice. more disastrous, more immoral, than that of Pyrrho. It thought itself so sure of its faith! Its hope was so lively, and human reason seemed so weak!
Let us forgive Christianity, and judge it as it itself judges us, by the intention. Christianity, damning the heroes and the sages, those who practice Justice gratuitously and for itself, while it opens heaven to base souls from whom the fear of hell tears a hypocritical Peccavi, believed to serve Justice If it had failed in its work, which moreover explains the law of human development, then it would have been immoral.
V
Proof by the innermost sense.
The position given to Justice by religious thought being the same as that given to certainty by Pyrrho, it is with the argument that defeated Pyrrho that I begin my answer to the objections of theology.
Descartes, looking for a solid point in knowledge, begins by saying to himself, following the example of the ancient doubters:
Is there any truth? And, assuming something true exists, can I discover it? Can I be certain of it? By what sign will I recognize it? Who will guarantee me its legitimacy? Are my senses deceiving me and only showing me the particularism of things? Is it my notions, of which nothing guarantees me the legitimacy; which participate in the error of my senses, although they are not given solely in sensation; which, moreover, teach me nothing on their own and without the perpetual help of my senses? Is it my innermost feeling, which comes into action only as far as I am in relation to external things? Who am I to believe? Who do I trust? Where do I find out? Where to start? What is the principle, free from all suspicion, on which I am going to base my philosophy? Because it is clear that if I find the point of attachment, the rest will go by itself. Detur mihi punctum, et terram movebo, said Archimedes.
Such was the hypothetical doubt, a prerequisite for all philosophy, to which Descartes submitted.
It is obviously the same doubt that strikes morals today.
Following the example of the acataleptics, the transcendentalists maintain that there is no morality for man, apart from faith in God; that all his actions, from the point of view of the natural conscience, are indifferent; that the distinction between good and evil is arbitrary; that, moreover, were morality to exist, man is incapable, by his will as well as by his reason, of attaining it; that he cannot form an exact and certain idea of it; that consequently everything with him is darkness, inertia, corruption, lies; that the ways of mankind are erroneous, leading to error and crime, or better said, madness; that it is only the grace of Christ that can lay down a law for him, save him from sin, and give him the courage of virtue.
Which amounts to saying that the same doubt raised by the Pyrrhonians in the realm of intelligence, is carried by religion into the realm of conscience.
What can we know for sure? asked Pyrrho. — Nothing, doubt is absolute and invincible.
“What can we, on our own, know and do well?” asks the Church. And she replies like Pyrrho: “Nothing. The discernment of good and evil is impossible; immorality is complete.”
And as Pyrrho concluded in the absolute suspension of judgment, so the Church concludes in the radical impotence of the will.
But there is this difference between Pyrrho and the Church, that Pyrrho, not having found a supernatural illuminator to remove his doubt, had not dared to make himself head or pontiff of any dogma; while the Church possesses a Christ, who has given her the secret of morals, and, with this secret, the art of changing the man of sin into an angel of light.
Pyrrho therefore taught that man, to be reasonable, should begin by renouncing reason, swear by no one, and hold himself in universal distrust; the Church, on the contrary, boasts of moralizing man, immoral by nature, by plunging him into the baptismal font and then maintaining the whiteness of his soul by means of the bestowing of the sacraments, and the transfusion of the graces of which she holds the dispensary.
V. — Proof by the innermost sense.
The position given to Justice by religious thought being the same as that given to certainty by Pyrrho, it is with the argument that defeated Pyrrho that I begin my answer to the objections of theology.
Descartes, looking for a solid point in knowledge, begins by saying to himself, following the example of the ancient doubters:
Is there any truth? And, assuming something true exists, can I discover it? Can I be certain of it? By what sign will I recognize it? Who will guarantee me its legitimacy? Are my senses deceiving me and only showing me the particularism of things? Is it my notions, of which nothing guarantees me the legitimacy; which participate in the error of my senses, although they are not given solely in sensation; which, moreover, teach me nothing on their own and without the perpetual help of my senses? Is it my innermost feeling, which comes into action only as far as I am in relation to external things? Who am I to believe? Who do I trust? Where do I find out? Where to start? What is the principle, free from all suspicion, on which I am going to base my philosophy? Because it is clear that if I find the point of attachment, the rest will go by itself. Detur mihi punctum, et terram movebo, said Archimedes.
Such was the hypothetical doubt, a prerequisite for all philosophy, to which Descartes submitted.
It is obviously the same doubt that strikes morals today.
Following the example of the acataleptics, the transcendentalists maintain that there is no morality for man, apart from faith in God; that all his actions, from the point of view of the natural conscience, are indifferent; that the distinction between good and evil is arbitrary; that, moreover, were morality to exist, man is incapable, by his will as well as by his reason, of attaining it; that he cannot form an exact and certain idea of it; that consequently everything with him is darkness, inertia, corruption, lies; that the ways of mankind are erroneous, leading to error and crime, or better said, madness; that it is only the grace of Christ that can lay down a law for him, save him from sin, and give him the courage of virtue.
Which amounts to saying that the same doubt raised by the Pyrrhonians in the realm of intelligence, is carried by religion into the realm of conscience.
What can we know for sure? asked Pyrrho. — Nothing, doubt is absolute and invincible.
“What can we, on our own, know and do well?” asks the Church. And she replies like Pyrrho: “Nothing. The discernment of good and evil is impossible; immorality is complete.”
And as Pyrrho concluded in the absolute suspension of judgment, so the Church concludes in the radical impotence of the will.
But there is this difference between Pyrrho and the Church, that Pyrrho, not having found a supernatural illuminator to remove his doubt, had not dared to make himself head or pontiff of any dogma; while the Church possesses a Christ, who has given her the secret of morals, and, with this secret, the art of changing the man of sin into an angel of light.
Pyrrho therefore taught that man, to be reasonable, should begin by renouncing reason, swear by no one, and hold himself in universal distrust; the Church, on the contrary, boasts of moralizing man, immoral by nature, by plunging him into the baptismal font and then maintaining the whiteness of his soul by means of the bestowing of the sacraments, and the transfusion of the graces of which she holds the dispensary.
VI
You know, Monseigneur, how Descartes pulled himself out of Pyrrho’s net, to the great applause of the theological notabilities of his century: Arnaud, Nicole, Bossuet, Fénelon, Malebranche.
I am willing, says Descartes, to admit that everything is doubtful and questionable. But you will at least grant me that I cannot doubt that I doubt, since it is because of this doubt, of which you make for me a rule, that you order me to suspend my judgment.
Such, then, is my first proposition, the certainty of which is invincible: _I doubt_.
If I doubt, I think; 2nd proposition, equally certain.
If I think, I am; 3rd proposal.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And here is the pyrrhonism, at least in what concerns humanity and its laws, on the ground.
With subjective certainty, in fact, the whole interior world, that is to say, individual and social life, freedom, justice, economy, art, is given. It remained to establish, either by antithesis or by extension of this first term, the objective certainty, to find the passage from the inner world to the outer world: which was more difficult, and where the philosophy of Descartes, as well as that of Kant, making God intervene in philosophy at the very moment when it arises through the affirmation of the self, was bound to fail.
We have argued about the beauty, accuracy, elegance of this great coup by Descartes: what is certain is that Pyrrho is half dead and could not get up. .
I will try in my turn to treat the acataleptism of the Church as Descartes treated that of Pyrrho.
I am willing, I will tell you, to admit for a moment that I am incapable on my own of discerning the true good and of wanting it. I therefore suppose that my conscience, like my reason, is obscure; that my justice might well be only an inspiration of envy; that what seems to me virtue is vice in disguise; in any case, that nothing human obliges me. So that, as I can have neither the clear sight, nor the pure love of honesty, I cannot boast of realizing them gratuitously in my person. The man stirs, said one of yours with sovereign eloquence, and God leads him. And it is only because God leads him that the good, a little good, is found at the bottom of the human boiling; for, however little God would leave him, man, if by impossibility he produced no evil, would only produce indifferent actions, or those that, good in themselves, but stripped of intelligence and good intentions, would be null.
Such is indeed the thesis of the Church, identical and adequate to that of Pyrrho, and its principal corollary.
I therefore place myself at the bottom of this abyss, dug by the misanthropy of believers. I establish myself in this distressing hypothesis, that I cannot practice, love or know the good by myself and for itself; so that my feelings, my thoughts, my words, my actions, being constantly mixed with selfishness, as La Rochefoucauld has shown, I am and can only be in relation to morality an equivocal being, if not decidedly wicked.
It is from this abyss that I must extricate myself, without resorting to any means other than those provided by the hypothesis itself; otherwise, at the slightest appeal I would make to a foreign power, my condemnation would become irrevocable. For any theory of duty and right that implies in its terms, as a principle, condition, postulated or adminiculated, the notion, even the most refined, of a metaphysical being, angel or demon, is a religious theory, which means a theory of skepticism, a theory of immorality.
VI. — You know, Monseigneur, how Descartes pulled himself out of Pyrrho’s net, to the great applause of the theological notabilities of his century: Arnaud, Nicole, Bossuet, Fénelon, Malebranche.
I am willing, says Descartes, to admit that everything is doubtful and questionable. But you will at least grant me that I cannot doubt that I doubt, since it is because of this doubt, of which you make for me a rule, that you order me to suspend my judgment.
Such, then, is my first proposition, the certainty of which is invincible: I doubt.
If I doubt, I think; 2nd proposition, equally certain.
If I think, I am; 3rd proposal.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And here is the pyrrhonism on the ground.
With subjective certainty, in fact, the whole interior world, that is to say, individual and social life, freedom, justice, economy, art, is given. It remained to establish, either by antithesis or by extension of this first term, the objective certainty, to find the passage from the inner world to the outer world: which was more difficult, and where the philosophy of Descartes, as well as that of Kant, making God intervene in philosophy at the very moment when it arises through the affirmation of the self, was bound to fail.
We have argued about the beauty, accuracy, elegance of this great coup by Descartes: what is certain is that Pyrrho is half dead and could not get up.
I will try in my turn to treat the acataleptism of the Church as Descartes treated that of Pyrrho.
I am willing, I will tell you, to admit for a moment that I am incapable on my own of discerning the true good and of wanting it. I therefore suppose that my conscience, like my reason, is obscure; that my justice might well be only an inspiration of envy; that what seems to me virtue is vice in disguise; in any case, that nothing human obliges me. So that, as I can have neither the clear sight, nor the pure love of honesty, I cannot boast of realizing them gratuitously in my person. The man stirs, said one of yours with sovereign eloquence, and God leads him. And it is only because God leads him that the good, a little good, is found at the bottom of the human boiling; for, however little God would leave him, man, if by impossibility he produced no evil, would only produce indifferent actions, or those that, good in themselves, but stripped of intelligence and good intentions, would be null.
Such is indeed the thesis of the Church, identical and adequate to that of Pyrrho, and its principal corollary.
I therefore place myself at the bottom of this abyss, dug by the misanthropy of believers. I establish myself in this distressing hypothesis, that I cannot practice, love or know the good by myself and for itself; so that my feelings, my thoughts, my words, my actions, being constantly mixed with selfishness, as La Rochefoucauld has shown, I am and can only be in relation to morality an equivocal being, if not decidedly wicked.
It is from this abyss that I must extricate myself, without resorting to any means other than those provided by the hypothesis itself; otherwise, at the slightest appeal I would make to a foreign power, my condemnation would become irrevocable. For any theory of duty and right that implies in its terms, as a principle, condition, postulated or adminiculated, the notion, even the most refined, of a metaphysical being, angel or demon, is a religious theory, which means a theory of skepticism, a theory of immorality.
VII
Now here, it seems to me, is a reflection that should stop the skeptic short. It does not come to me from anything but the hypothesis, as you will see; it is furnished to me by the hypothesis.
Supposing, with the Church, that I cannot by myself practice good and avoid evil, and that my will has a decided inclination for sin;
Supposing, moreover, my conscience is so crooked that it does not even know how to discern good from evil:
I say that you cannot deny me this, that there is in me a prejudice or some feeling of good and bad, that is to say of that which is the very object of the hypothesis.
That I do not know my law, is possible;
That, knowing it, nothing clearly makes me feel that it is obligatory for me, is still possible;
That consequently the morality of my actions seems to me delivered up to my sole imagination, all that is possible;
What is impossible is that there should not be an echo in my soul that, on the supposition of the moral good which I seek, responds good; to the supposition of evil, answer evil; it is in a word that my conscience, at the moment when it doubts its lucidity, its morality, its own energy, still doubts its doubt, doubts what is the object of its doubt, doubt, in an word, itself.
In a restricted form, it is still the Cogito ergo sum of Descartes.
Break down this thought, this self: the argument, in being broken down, will not lose any of its force.
Décomposez cette pensée, ce moi ; l’argument, pour être détaillé, ne perdra rien de sa force.
The eye, sensing itself seeing, will say: I see, therefore I am.
The ear: I hear, therefore I am.
The stomach: I digest, therefore I am.
The heart: I love, therefore I am.
Put whatever faculty or organ you want, it will say: I function, therefore I am. If the falling stone could speak without ceasing to be stone, it would say to Pyrrho, to Berkeley: I gravitate, therefore I am.
And notice the march of the reasoning. It is not from the metaphysical notion of substance or cause, but indeed from the phenomenon of the function, that Descartes drew this argument that kills doubt, an argument that, moreover, enters into the demonstration of the Cynic, before whom one denied movement and began to advance.
Well, there is a faculty in me, an integral and constituting part of me, a faculty poorly served perhaps by my intelligence, even worse served by my will, but whose existence you, theologian psychologist, are forced to recognize, since you raise doubts about its lucidity and its energy, and you offer him the eyewash of your religion: it is _Conscience_.
I understand by conscience, in the order of ideas that I treat, the faculty or the container of which Justice is the product or the content; a faculty that is to Justice consequently what memory is to remembrance, the understanding to the concept, the heart to love, etc. This explains to us in passing why conscience and Justice frequently take themselves for one another: the same thing happens for the other faculties.
Before knowing therefore whether it is obliged or if it is not, prior to any idea of right and duty, this faculty says to you: There are things that I judge a priori to be good and laudable, although I I do not yet have a clear idea of them, and that I do not know whether or not I am capable of accomplishing; and I approve of these things, I want them. There are others that I feel to be bad, although I cannot distinguish them clearly from the preceding ones, and I do not know whether I would have enough energy to abstain from them; and these things, I reprove them, I do not want them. Therefore I am.
In short, just as there is in us an intelligence for which truth is good, error bad, and which, calling for one, rejecting the other, cannot, a priori, doubt itself; just as we have a certain taste for which beauty is equally good, ugliness evil, and which, naming them both, cannot, even though it would never encounter them, doubt itself: in the same way there is in us a faculty for which filial piety, for example, in itself is good, parricide bad, and which, judging them such, even though its practice would be contrary to this judgment, cannot doubt itself any more.
In spite of you then, I am not allowed to doubt that I have at least this general notion of good and evil; then, with the notion, this taste for the one, this horror of the other, that constitute conscience: and that, although I do not yet know how to discern with certainty good from evil, although I hesitate to produce it, even though I wonder whether I am capable of producing it or obliged to have regard for it. It is in me, I say, this consciousness, prior to any act on my part, to any empiricism, to any legal bond. And it is your own doubt that reveals it to me, a doubt that can very well bear on the kind, the species, the degree, the urgency, the obligation, in a word on the circumstances, qualities and conditions of the moral act, but never on the function, which is my conscience, nor on the product of this function, which is Justice.
Deny that, and your argument crumbles: you yourself no longer know what you are saying. For when you object that I am incapable by myself of discerning good from evil, and still more of conforming my conduct to it, thus reasoning about good and evil, you implicitly suppose that I have some feeling or notion regarding it, consequently that there exists in me a faculty of appetition that corresponds to it; absolutely as Pyrrho, reasoning from certainty, implicitly presupposes thought, and consequently being.
VII. — Now here, it seems to me, is a reflection that should stop the skeptic short. It does not come to me from anything but the hypothesis, as you will see; it is furnished to me by the hypothesis.
Supposing, with the Church, that I cannot by myself practice good and avoid evil, and that my will has a decided inclination for sin;
Supposing, moreover, my conscience is so crooked that it does not even know how to discern good from evil:
I say that you cannot deny me this, that there is in me a prejudice or some feeling of good and bad, that is to say of that which is the very object of the hypothesis.
That I do not know my law, is possible;
That, knowing it, nothing clearly makes me feel that it is obligatory for me, is still possible;
That consequently the morality of my actions seems to me delivered up to my sole imagination, all that is possible;
What is impossible is that there should not be an echo in my soul that, on the supposition of the moral good which I seek, responds good; to the supposition of evil, answer evil; it is in a word that my conscience, at the moment when it doubts its lucidity, its morality, its own energy, still doubts its doubt, doubts what is the object of its doubt, doubt, in an word, itself.
In a restricted form, it is still the Cogito ergo sum of Descartes. When Descartes says: Cogito, I think, he makes the self, the being considered in the universality of its functions, speak, which is thought.
Break down this thought, this self: the argument, in being broken down, will not lose any of its force.
The eye, sensing itself seeing, will say: I see, therefore I am.
The ear: I hear, therefore I am.
The stomach: I digest, therefore I am.
The heart: I love, therefore I am.
Put whatever faculty or organ you want, it will say: I function, therefore I am. If the falling stone could speak without ceasing to be stone, it would say to Pyrrho, to Berkeley: I gravitate, therefore I am.
And notice the march of the reasoning. It is not from the metaphysical notion of substance or cause, but indeed from the phenomenon of the function, that Descartes drew this argument that kills doubt, an argument that, moreover, enters into the demonstration of the Cynic, before whom one denied movement and began to advance.
Well, there is a faculty in me, an integral and constituting part of me, a faculty poorly served perhaps by my intelligence, even worse served by my will, but whose existence you, theologian psychologist, are forced to recognize, since you raise doubts about its lucidity and its energy, and you offer him the eyewash of your religion: it is Conscience.
I understand by conscience, in the order of ideas that I treat, the faculty or the container of which Justice is the product or the content; a faculty that is to Justice consequently what memory is to remembrance, the understanding to the concept, the heart to love, etc. This explains to us in passing why conscience and Justice frequently take themselves for one another: the same thing happens for the other faculties.
Before knowing therefore whether it is obliged or if it is not, prior to any idea of right and duty, this faculty says to you: There are things that I judge a priori to be good and laudable, although I I do not yet have a clear idea of them, and that I do not know whether or not I am capable of accomplishing; and I approve of these things, I want them. There are others that I feel to be bad, although I cannot distinguish them clearly from the preceding ones, and I do not know whether I would have enough energy to abstain from them; and these things, I reprove them, I do not want them. Therefore I am.
In short, just as there is in us an intelligence for which truth is good, error bad, and which, calling for one, rejecting the other, cannot, a priori, doubt itself; just as we have a certain taste for which beauty is equally good, ugliness evil, and which, naming them both, cannot, even though it would never encounter them, doubt itself: in the same way there is in us a faculty for which filial piety, for example, in itself is good, parricide bad, and which, judging them such, even though its practice would be contrary to this judgment, cannot doubt itself any more.
In spite of you then, I am not allowed to doubt that I have at least this general notion of good and evil; then, with the notion, this taste for the one, this horror of the other, that constitute conscience: and that, although I do not yet know how to discern with certainty good from evil, although I hesitate to produce it, even though I wonder whether I am capable of producing it or obliged to have regard for it. It is in me, I say, this consciousness, prior to any act on my part, to any empiricism, to any legal bond. And it is your own doubt that reveals it to me, a doubt that can very well bear on the kind, the species, the degree, the urgency, the obligation, in a word on the circumstances, qualities and conditions of the moral act, but never on the function, which is my conscience, nor on the product of this function, which is Justice.
Deny that, and your argument crumbles: you yourself no longer know what you are saying. For when you object that I am incapable by myself of discerning good from evil, and still more of conforming my conduct to it, thus reasoning about good and evil, you implicitly suppose that I have some feeling or notion regarding it, consequently that there exists in me a faculty of appetition that corresponds to it; absolutely as Pyrrho, reasoning from certainty, implicitly presupposes thought, and consequently being.
VIII
VIII. — If you now seek a psychological explanation for the existence of the moral sense, a reason in itself, it will not be difficult for you to discover it. The psychic constitution of man being such that instinct is subordinate to reflection, and that the sphere of action of the latter is constantly expanding, while instinct is dulled and retrograde, it results that the balance of affections and appetites cannot be established in him in the same way as in other animals. He must exercise over the faculties governed by instinct a domination proportional to his own thought. In short, man, because he is and becomes more and more intelligent, must be all the more master of himself, animi compos: therein lies his dignity. Now, such is precisely the function fulfilled, first of all with regard to itself, by conscience: it is conscience, in fact, that establishes order in his inclinations, in his needs, in his passions, not only for his momentary happiness, but for the glory of his entire life. In relations with one’s neighbor, the empire of conscience is no less: it is conscience that governs relations of service, exchange, etc., whereas love or hatred, greed, caprice or indifference would threaten to throw into these relations a disastrous disturbance. Take away Justice from the soul, you make it acephalous: it is no longer the essence of a man, it is the essence of an animal, a contradiction.
Consciousness, then, not only exists in us like any other faculty, necessitated by its object and evident by its action; it is the sovereign faculty that all the others are called to serve, as the members of the body serve the brain, while it itself serves none. By its absolute command it represses any exorbitance, insures the subject against the injuries he may suffer, on the one hand from the ardor of his senses and his passions, on the other hand from the incursion of his fellows, at the same time time that it guarantees these against the injuries that this same subject could do to them. It is a voice that pleads in us against ourselves the right of our neighbor, as soon as our egoism pretends not to recognize it; a voice that silences all the suggestions of sensitivity, of lust, of sympathy, of the blood even and of the heart. The offense to Justice covers the offense to every other feeling.
This is why, if my father wanted to do violence to me, I would kill my father, despite my filial instinct, and I would not sin against Justice; if my son betrayed the fatherland, I would immolate my son, like Brutus, and I would not sin against Justice; if my mother, perjured, murdered my father, to introduce a lover into the family, I would stab my mother like Orestes, and I would not sin against Justice.
Justice is higher than the affection that attaches us to father, mother, wife, child, companion. It does not prevent us from loving them; it makes us love them in another way, with a view to Humanity. It is for this reason that Justice was made God, and that he who has renounced God always adores Justice, although it is nothing other than the commandment of himself towards himself, the principle and the law of social dignity.
From all that precedes it results, and it is a point on which I cannot insist too strongly, because it constitutes the foundation of human morality, that Justice cannot be reduced to the simple notion of a relation declared by pure reason as necessary to the social order; but that it is also the product of a faculty or function whose object is to realize this relation, which comes into play as soon as man finds himself in the presence of man.
It is thus, to use a comparison already made, that the union of man and woman does not result solely from the necessity, conceived by the understanding, of providing through generation for the preservation of the species; it also has for its determining cause a special faculty or function, love, and for the service of this love a whole organic apparatus. In the system of nature, as soon as there is a need for a thing, there is a craving for this thing, an animistic and organic function intended to provide for it: beyond this, the thing claimed to be necessary, falling exclusively within the domain of the understanding, being nothing for the soul, is also nothing for the conscience, nothing for morality.
VIII. — If you now seek a psychological explanation for the existence of the moral sense, a reason in itself, it will not be difficult for you to discover it. The psychic constitution of man being such that instinct is subordinate to reflection, and that the sphere of action of the latter is constantly expanding, while instinct is dulled and retrograde, it results that the balance of affections and appetites cannot be established in him in the same way as in other animals. He must exercise over the faculties governed by instinct a domination proportional to his own thought. In short, man, because he is and becomes more and more intelligent, must be all the more master of himself, animi compos: therein lies his dignity. Now, such is precisely the function fulfilled, first of all with regard to itself, by conscience: it is conscience, in fact, that establishes order in his inclinations, in his needs, in his passions, not only for his momentary happiness, but for the glory of his entire life. In relations with one’s neighbor, the empire of conscience is no less: it is conscience that governs relations of service, exchange, etc., whereas love or hatred, greed, caprice or indifference would threaten to throw into these relations a disastrous disturbance. Take away Justice from the soul, you make it acephalous: it is no longer the essence of a man, it is the essence of an animal, a contradiction.
Consciousness, then, not only exists in us like any other faculty, necessitated by its object and evident by its action; it is the sovereign faculty that all the others are called to serve, as the members of the body serve the brain, while it itself serves none. By its absolute command it represses any exorbitance, insures the subject against the injuries he may suffer, on the one hand from the ardor of his senses and his passions, on the other hand from the incursion of his fellows, at the same time time that it guarantees these against the injuries that this same subject could do to them. It is a voice that pleads in us against ourselves the right of our neighbor, as soon as our egoism pretends not to recognize it; a voice that silences all the suggestions of sensitivity, of lust, of sympathy, of the blood even and of the heart. The offense to Justice covers the offense to every other feeling.
This is why, if my father wanted to do violence to me, I would kill my father, despite my filial instinct, and I would not sin against Justice; if my son betrayed the fatherland, I would immolate my son, like Brutus, and I would not sin against Justice; if my mother, perjured, murdered my father, to introduce a lover into the family, I would stab my mother like Orestes, and I would not sin against Justice.
Justice is higher than the affection that attaches us to father, mother, wife, child, companion. It does not prevent us from loving them; it makes us love them in another way, with a view to Humanity. It is for this reason that Justice was made God, and that he who has renounced God always adores Justice, although it is nothing other than the commandment of himself towards himself, the principle and the law of social dignity.
From all that precedes it results, and it is a point on which I cannot insist too strongly, because it constitutes the foundation of human morality, that Justice cannot be reduced to the simple notion of a relation declared by pure reason as necessary to the social order; but that it is also the product of a faculty or function whose object is to realize this relation, which comes into play as soon as man finds himself in the presence of man.
It is thus, to use a comparison already made, that the union of man and woman does not result solely from the necessity, conceived by the understanding, of providing through generation for the preservation of the species; it also has for its determining cause a special faculty or function, love, and for the service of this love a whole organic apparatus. In the system of nature, as soon as there is a need for a thing, there is a craving for this thing, an animistic and organic function intended to provide for it: beyond this, the thing claimed to be necessary, falling exclusively within the domain of the understanding, being nothing for the soul, is also nothing for the conscience, nothing for morality.
XI
Proof by the facts of social life.
But my demonstration does not stop there. Justice, being a function of the self, gives rise to multiplied manifestations, the spontaneity and power of which do not allow us to relate them to an hallucination of the understanding, and which cannot be explained, as I have just explained them, only by the exercise of a positive faculty. Let us first cite the forms of civility, with which barbarian peoples often show themselves more lavish than the civilized themselves.
All men feel that the self is absolute and, as absolute, inviolable in its dignity. (C) So many precautions, so many detours, in dealing with it! Among most European nations it is customary, speaking to a person, to employ the plural you; the German goes further, it says they, instead of you. When a discussion arises, it is never the self that is contradicted, and which is supposed to be wrong; it is his memory, his eye, his ear, his phenomenality. For himself, he is deemed infallible. Let this self be directly implicated, there is an insult, a duel. The point of honor, so sensitive, is, like the dignity of the Roman patrician, only a form of Justice, its thesis.
Respect for dignity acquires a hundredfold energy in the social collectivity. The cynics, who treated the observation of propriety as a prejudice and dared to free themselves from it, were hardly less detested than the thieves and adulterers: they not only offended taste, they violated public respect, that is to say, of all the faculties of the soul the most intolerant, conscience. Even the condemned man who is sent to execution, society wants him to be respected: the Convention condemned to a month’s imprisonment the lackey of the executioner who had struck Charlotte Corday’s head. What more striking manifestation of the profound sentiment of Justice than this ceremonial on the scaffold! And what puerility to explain it by pure rationalism, as if the nation were sensitive to the insult and demanded revenge! That society avenges itself is already a fact that the purely rational theory of right does not explain; but that she respect herself in her victim, that as a consequence of this respect the execution, as well as the judgment, take place in broad daylight, before the assembled crowd, so that the punishment of the culprit does not resemble the tracking of a ferocious beast, that is what, in the system of rationalism, makes Justice an idea, as in that of Christianity, which makes it a grace, seems to me incomprehensible, absurd.
IX. — Proof by the facts of social life.
But my demonstration does not stop there. Justice, being a function of the self, gives rise to multiplied manifestations, the spontaneity and power of which do not allow us to relate them to an hallucination of the understanding, and which cannot be explained, as I have just explained them, only by the exercise of a positive faculty. Let us first cite the forms of civility, with which barbarian peoples often show themselves more lavish than the civilized themselves.
All men feel that the self is absolute and, as absolute, inviolable in its dignity. (C) So many precautions, so many detours, in dealing with it! Among most European nations it is customary, speaking to a person, to employ the plural you; the German goes further, it says they, instead of you. When a discussion arises, it is never the self that is contradicted, and which is supposed to be wrong; it is his memory, his eye, his ear, his phenomenality. For himself, he is deemed infallible. Let this self be directly implicated, there is an insult, a duel. The point of honor, so sensitive, is, like the dignity of the Roman patrician, only a form of Justice, its thesis.
Respect for dignity acquires a hundredfold energy in the social collectivity. The cynics, who treated the observation of propriety as a prejudice and dared to free themselves from it, were hardly less detested than the thieves and adulterers: they not only offended taste, they violated public respect, that is to say, of all the faculties of the soul the most intolerant, conscience. Even the condemned man who is sent to execution, society wants him to be respected: the Convention condemned to a month’s imprisonment the lackey of the executioner who had struck Charlotte Corday’s head. What more striking manifestation of the profound sentiment of Justice than this ceremonial on the scaffold! And what puerility to explain it by pure rationalism, as if the nation were sensitive to the insult and demanded revenge! That society avenges itself is already a fact that the purely rational theory of right does not explain; but that she respect herself in her victim, that as a consequence of this respect the execution, as well as the judgment, take place in broad daylight, before the assembled crowd, so that the punishment of the culprit does not resemble the tracking of a ferocious beast, that is what, in the system of rationalism, makes Justice an idea, as in that of Christianity, which makes it a grace, seems to me incomprehensible, absurd.
X
But, you object, what are we to answer to the one who says: I do not experience this feeling of Justice; I do not feel in me this movement of a juridical faculty, to which you refer all the institutions whose object is to regulate the right and the duty, it would be better to say, the assets and the liabilities, of each citizen. I understand very well, moreover, that my safety, my well-being, require on my part the observation of certain conditions, outside of which my existence is compromised. I will go so far as to say that the violation of these conditions, in itself unreasonable, seems to me da more ridiculous, like all that is false, odious even, like all that is harmful: that is enough for me to explain the facts that you quote. As for this respect for the fellow and for myself that you make a reality in the same way as love, friendship, the ideal, etc., I admit that I do not have it, that I even feel myself incapable of it.
Let us add, in order to reinforce the objection, that Justice, as we have defined it and as it seems only admissible, is almost nonexistent among children, mediocre among young people, women and people of lower class, all the more weak finally in a nation as this nation approaches barbarism.
I respond:
All that can be concluded from these allegations is that the legal faculty, like love itself, requires of the subject, for its full exercise, certain conditions of development outside of which it is as if asleep; as for the individual exceptions, apart from the fact that the subjects most often misunderstand themselves, they do not prove more against the reality of Justice than the obliteration of memory in certain patients, the deprivation of sight, hearing, smell prove against the existence of the same faculties in the human race.
Yes, the exercise of the moral sense, of the juridical function, is slow to establish itself in humanity: who does not see that it is precisely in order to make up for this slowness that nature creates in us this other entirely ideal consciousness, all the more vivid in the subject as it comes closer to childhood, divine respect, religion? Will we also deny that religion has its focus in a particular action of the soul, and will we still see in it only the product of erroneous notions, unlike science, which is the product of exact notions?
I think it superfluous to refute here such opinions, which science itself has done justice to. It is accepted everywhere today, and the most materialistic phrenology recognizes it, that religiosity is an attribute of the soul, a mode of its activity, what I call a function; all that I claim is that this religiosity, a sort of supplement to Justice, is basically nothing other than the first, ideal, objective, symbolic form of Justice, a form that must diminish, atrophy, through the progress of Justice that it represents. It is for this reason that the races whose theology is the most learned are also those that have made the most progress in right: it is enough to name Rome, Italy, France and Germany. It is because France was once very Christian that it has become revolutionary France. (D)
If civil and judicial institutions make sense; if the laws of urbanity, if nobility, heroism, chivalrous honor, mean anything; if religion, which for three centuries we have seen gradually dying out, has not been a phenomenon without significance, and if its disappearance inevitably calls for a new feeling, more real, more energetic, to continue its work; if Justice, finally, is the only human prejudice before which irony and blasphemy are silent, it must be admitted that this spontaneity, this set of manifestations, attest in man to the presence of a superior feeling, of which he is as impossible to account for by the sole notion of social necessities, as it is impossible to explain love by the sole necessity of generation.
Justice is a necessary law of the human collectivity: therefore it supposes in the individual, member of this collectivity, with the notion of the law, a faculty of conscience that corresponds to it; therefore this faculty exists.
Justice is defined not only as the notion of a relationship, which would leave man indifferent to right and society without guarantee, but as a feeling or faculty: therefore this faculty also exists.
This juridical faculty is attested by intimate sense and by universal consent: therefore it exists.
It is affirmed by religion, which throughout the first age of humanity represents it, supplements it, and in the end is identified and absorbed in it: therefore it exists.
It is manifested by all social relations and institutions, inexplicable in their forms by the mere notion of the useful (E): therefore it exists.
It subordinates, directs, contains, represses, sacrifices, in a word balances, all the other forces and faculties united: therefore it exists.
We will see later that it alone explains the distinction between the sexes and marriage, of which it makes its organ; that, moreover, it is the sole principle of all public and individual happiness: therefore it exists.
As an object of knowledge, the juridical faculty, or more simply Justice, unites all kinds of certainty: certainty of reason and certainty of fact, certainty of conscience and certainty of habit. It has on its side the understanding, the inner sense, theology, fable, history, practice, the senses, everything that makes up human reality, collective and individual, physical and psychic, ideal and phenomenal. Nowhere, neither in the world of nature nor in that of the mind, is such a competition of testimonies to be found. It is even freed from that invincible skepticism, revealed by Kant, which distressed the soul of Jouffroy, and which, bearing on the divine absolute, exterior to man, falls before Justice, the expression of the human absolute, who, according to Descartes and Kant, it is forbidden to doubt himself.
X. — But, you object, what are we to answer to the one who says: I do not experience this feeling of Justice; I do not feel in me this movement of a juridical faculty, to which you refer all the institutions whose object is to regulate the right and the duty, it would be better to say, the assets and the liabilities, of each citizen. I understand very well, moreover, that my safety, my well-being, require on my part the observation of certain conditions, outside of which my existence is compromised. I will go so far as to say that the violation of these conditions, in itself unreasonable, seems to me da more ridiculous, like all that is false, odious even, like all that is harmful: that is enough for me to explain the facts that you quote. As for this respect for the fellow and for myself that you make a reality in the same way as love, friendship, the ideal, etc., I admit that I do not have it, that I even feel myself incapable of it.
Let us add, in order to reinforce the objection, that Justice, as we have defined it and as it seems only admissible, is almost nonexistent among children, mediocre among young people, women and people of lower class, all the more weak finally in a nation as this nation approaches barbarism.
I respond:
All that can be concluded from these allegations is that the legal faculty, like love itself, requires of the subject, for its full exercise, certain conditions of development outside of which it is as if asleep; as for the individual exceptions, apart from the fact that the subjects most often misunderstand themselves, they do not prove more against the reality of Justice than the obliteration of memory in certain patients, the deprivation of sight, hearing, smell prove against the existence of the same faculties in the human race. There are eunuchs from birth, barren women; does that prove that love and generation are a fable?
Yes, the exercise of the moral sense, of the juridical function, is slow to establish itself in humanity: who does not see that it is precisely in order to make up for this slowness that nature creates in us this other entirely ideal consciousness, all the more vivid in the subject as it comes closer to childhood, divine respect, religion? Will we also deny that religion has its focus in a particular action of the soul, and will we still see in it only the product of erroneous notions, unlike science, which is the product of exact notions?
I think it superfluous to refute here such opinions, which science itself has done justice to. It is accepted everywhere today, and the most materialistic phrenology recognizes it, that religiosity is an attribute of the soul, a mode of its activity, what I call a function; all that I claim is that this religiosity, a sort of supplement to Justice, is basically nothing other than the first, ideal, objective, symbolic form of Justice, a form that must diminish, atrophy, through the progress of Justice that it represents. It is for this reason that the races whose theology is the most learned are also those that have made the most progress in right: it is enough to name Rome, Italy, France and Germany. It is because France was once very Christian that it has become revolutionary France. (D)
If civil and judicial institutions make sense; if the laws of urbanity, if nobility, heroism, chivalrous honor, mean anything; if religion, which for three centuries we have seen gradually dying out, has not been a phenomenon without significance, and if its disappearance inevitably calls for a new feeling, more real, more energetic, to continue its work; if Justice, finally, is the only human prejudice before which irony and blasphemy are silent, it must be admitted that this spontaneity, this set of manifestations, attest in man to the presence of a superior feeling, of which he is as impossible to account for by the sole notion of social necessities, as it is impossible to explain love by the sole necessity of generation.
Justice is a necessary law of the human collectivity: therefore it supposes in the individual, member of this collectivity, with the notion of the law, a faculty of conscience that corresponds to it; therefore this faculty exists.
Justice is defined not only as the notion of a relationship, which would leave man indifferent to right and society without guarantee, but as a feeling or faculty: therefore this faculty also exists.
This juridical faculty is attested by intimate sense and by universal consent: therefore it exists.
It is affirmed by religion, which throughout the first age of humanity represents it, supplements it, and in the end is identified and absorbed in it: therefore it exists.
It is manifested by all social relations and institutions, inexplicable in their forms by the mere notion of the useful (E): therefore it exists.
It subordinates, directs, contains, represses, sacrifices, in a word balances, all the other forces and faculties united: therefore it exists.
We will see later that it alone explains the distinction between the sexes and marriage, of which it makes its organ; that, moreover, it is the sole principle of all public and individual happiness: therefore it exists.
As an object of knowledge, the juridical faculty, or more simply Justice, unites all kinds of certainty: certainty of reason and certainty of fact, certainty of conscience and certainty of habit. It has on its side the understanding, the inner sense, theology, fable, history, practice, the senses, everything that makes up human reality, collective and individual, physical and psychic, ideal and phenomenal. Nowhere, neither in the world of nature nor in that of the mind, is such a competition of testimonies to be found. It is even freed from that invincible skepticism, revealed by Kant, which distressed the soul of Jouffroy, and which, bearing on the divine absolute, exterior to man, falls before Justice, the expression of the human absolute, who, according to Descartes and Kant, it is forbidden to doubt himself.
XI
The double proof of the reality of Justice accomplished, and I remind you that I do it in the manner of Descartes, by relying, no longer on a transcendental hypothesis or a postulate drawn from social necessity, but on the direct testimony and the functional manifestations of the conscience, let us draw from it, always in the manner of Descartes, the anti-theological consequences.
If I possess the notion of good, and if I name it, in a word, if I think it, that means both that I do it and that I am it, given, on the one hand, that to think is to function, it is to do, it is to be; on the other, that my thought cannot be separated from me, the product of this thought is necessarily mine, which means that man is by himself and fundamentally just, and that he only becomes unjust by other cause. Cogito, ergo sum.
In other words, any thought of Justice is a beginning of justification, just as any thought of love is a beginning of love, any thought of reason a beginning of reason. Like love and reason, Justice, even simply thought, adds to our being, it amplifies and ennobles it; likewise vice, even simply thought, is for us a diminution of being, a weakness, a debasement.
So I am both subject and object of the good that I think, subject and object of the evil, depending on whether my consciousness thinks, wants, produces, all these words are synonyms, one or the other.
What need have I at present, to advance in virtue, of a transcendental protectorate, God, Messiah, Holy Spirit, or other? It was Descartes who, after overturning pyrrhonism by positing the self, gave the example of immediately abandoning the phenomenality of the self in order to attach himself to the absolute, and to deduce from it, in the order of Justice as in the ontological order, the so-called laws. What fruit have we gathered from this method, so well exploited by Spinoza, Malebranche, the Scots and the Germans? We have no morals: pantheism has ended, like the Church, by leading to the destruction of freedom and justice, and if the honorable eclectics who preach to us in the name of God do not have to the same reproach they owe it only to their inconsistency.
Any theodicy, I have demonstrated it ad nauseum, is a gangrene for the conscience, any idea of grace a thought of despair. Let us return to ourselves; let us study this Justice that is given to us a priori in the very fact of our existence, and constitutes our quality of men: we will find there these treasures of holiness and grace that religious hallucination has made us place in the bosom of the infinite mercy.
XI. — The double proof of the reality of Justice accomplished, and I remind you that I do it in the manner of Descartes, by relying, no longer on a transcendental hypothesis or on a postulate drawn from social necessity, but on the direct testimony and the functional manifestations of the conscience, let us draw from it, always in the manner of Descartes, the anti-theological consequences.
If I possess the notion of good, and if I name it, in a word, if I think it, that means both that I do it and that I am it, given, on the one hand, that to think is to function, it is to do, it is to be; on the other, that my thought cannot be separated from me, the product of this thought is necessarily mine, which means that man is by himself and fundamentally just, and that he only becomes unjust by other cause. Cogito, ergo sum.
In other words, any thought of Justice is a beginning of justification, just as any thought of love is a beginning of love, any thought of reason a beginning of reason. Like love and reason, Justice, even simply thought, adds to our being, it amplifies and ennobles it; likewise vice, even simply thought, is for us a diminution of being, a weakness, a debasement.
So I am both subject and object of the good that I think, subject and object of the evil, depending on whether my consciousness thinks, wants, produces, all these words are synonyms, one or the other.
What need have I at present, to advance in virtue, of a transcendental protectorate, God, Messiah, Holy Spirit, or other? It was Descartes who, after overturning pyrrhonism by positing the self, gave the example of immediately abandoning the phenomenality of the self in order to attach himself to the absolute, and to deduce from it, in the order of Justice as in the ontological order, the so-called laws. What fruit have we gathered from this method, so well exploited by Spinoza, Malebranche, the Scots and the Germans? We have no morals: pantheism has ended, like the Church, by leading to the destruction of freedom and justice, and if the honorable eclectics who preach to us in the name of God do not have to the same reproach they owe it only to their inconsistency.
Any theodicy, I have demonstrated it ad nauseum, is a gangrene for the conscience, any idea of grace a thought of despair. Let us return to ourselves; let us study this Justice that is given to us a priori in the very fact of our existence, and constitutes our quality of men: we will find there these treasures of holiness and grace that religious hallucination has made us place in the bosom of the infinite mercy.
CHAPTER III.
Of the distinction between good and evil.
XII
Mais, dit-on, par où distinguer le bien du mal ? Quelle sera notre règle de droit, pierre de touche du juste et de l’injuste ? Comment la consulter, à chaque instant de la vie ? Est-ce la conscience encore, simple faculté d’appétence, que nous allons faire législatrice et justicière ? Un savant professeur l’a dit : Il y a science et conscience, et il s’en faut qu’elles s’accordent toujours. Comment les formules de la première deviendront-elles des décrets pour la seconde ? Est-ce la conscience qui jugera la science ? vous revenez au probabilisme, en admettant une autorité supérieure à la raison. Est-ce la science qui régira la conscience ? vous revenez à l’utilitarisme, et votre faculté juridique est hors de service. Oh ! vous nous avez déliés de la foi à Dieu et à l’Église, vous ne voulez plus ni tribunaux ni confessionnaux. Avez-vous trouvé le secret de faire rendre à la conscience privée des jugements justes, quand depuis le commencement du monde la conscience universelle s’égare ?…
Such is the difficulty.
The philosophers agree, and we can add to their opinion that of the theologians, that between good and evil there is no substantial difference. There are not, it is said with reason, two principles in the world, one good, Ormuzd, the other bad, Ahrimane; two series of creatures, one good in itself and the other evil; two series of facts in humanity, these commendable in essence, and for that always precepts, those odious, and for this reason always forbidden. In the system of nature, as in that of the evolutions of humanity, creatures and actions, from the point of view of Justice, are by their nature indifferent: it is the law of man, it is his hand, that qualifies them.
This being so, one asks how what is in itself indifferent to morality can become, by the hand of the agent or by the will of the legislator, just or unjust, virtuous or culpable; how could the indifference that belongs to the act not extend to its author?
The objection, as we shall see, rests on the grossest sophism. But gross as this sophism is, it has nonetheless made its way, an immense way; it reigns in theology, in philosophy, in jurisprudence, everywhere; the most honest men, the most circumspect thinkers repeat it, and it will be a real service to science to refute it in the rules.
CHAPTER III
Of the distinction between good and evil.
XII. But, they say, how can we distinguish good from evil? What will be our touchstone of justice and injustice? How to consult it, at every moment of life? Is it still conscience, a simple faculty of appetite, that we are going to make legislator and justice? A learned professor has said: There is science and conscience, and it is necessary that they always agree. How will the formulas of the first become decrees for the second? Will conscience judge science? You return to probabilism, admitting an authority superior to reason. Will science govern consciousness? you return to utilitarianism, and your legal faculty is out of order. Oh! You have untied us from faith in God and the Church, you no longer want either courts or confessionals. Have you found the secret of making the private conscience render just judgments, when since the beginning of the world the universal conscience has been wandering?
Such is the difficulty.
The philosophers agree, and we can add to their opinion that of the theologians, that between good and evil there is no substantial difference. There are not, it is said with reason, two principles in the world, one good, Ormuzd, the other bad, Ahrimane; two series of creatures, one good in itself and the other evil; two series of facts in humanity, these commendable in essence, and for that always precepts, those odious, and for this reason always forbidden. In the system of nature, as in that of the evolutions of humanity, creatures and actions, from the point of view of Justice, are by their nature indifferent: it is the law of man, it is his hand, that qualifies them.
This being so, one asks how what is in itself indifferent to morality can become, by the hand of the agent or by the will of the legislator, just or unjust, virtuous or culpable; how could the indifference that belongs to the act not extend to its author?
The objection, as we shall see, rests on the grossest sophism. But gross as this sophism is, it has nonetheless made its way, an immense way; it reigns in theology, in philosophy, in jurisprudence, everywhere; the most honest men, the most circumspect thinkers repeat it, and it will be a real service to science to refute it in the rules.
XIII
Let us first give the objection all the scope it deserves.
In itself, it is a perfectly innocent thing to eat or not to eat eel. Why did Moses forbid this edible to the Jews? How does this particular abstinence affect good morals? The worshiper of Jehovah does not doubt that the law must be obeyed; but his reason, self-respect, demands that he be shown that this law contains justice, and this is precisely what he is not told. How does the eating of the eel, a fish without scales, violate Justice, while the eating of the pike, a fish with scales, does not violate it? It will perhaps be said that there is, as with the meat of the pig, a health reason behind it. All in good time! But let’s not confuse morality with hygiene: since when is it a sin to break the abstinence prescribed by the doctor?
I begin deliberately with this example, in which it is not possible for us, who do not believe in Moses and who mock his ordinances, to discover the least character of morality: here is why. Nothing is more indifferent to Justice than abstaining from flesh or fish, is it not true? Well, ask the skeptics, are we sure that our most essential laws, those that touch most closely on public order and morality, are better founded in their object than this?
Examples:
Theologians dispute among themselves what constitutes the sacrament or, to use secular language, the bond of marriage: whether it is the consent of the spouses, or the formula pronounced by the public functionary, or the consummation of the conjugal act, we still have the combination of all these circumstances. And the theologians disagree; to put it better, they agree that none of this makes marriage, and they still don’t know today what does.
If it is the consent of the spouses and their cohabitation, why are not all cohabiting couples, ipso facto, declared by law to be united in legitimate marriage?
If this is the sacramental formula, what is this mysterious virtue, attached to a sentence of the Code or the Breviary, by which, independent of any subsequent relationship, two persons of different sex are united, but which without it, whatever they would, the would not be? Why still the publications, witnesses and other formalities, if the bestowing of the sacrament, by the minister who has the power to give it, is enough? When I buy a house before a notary, I don’t take witnesses; I do not trumpet my acquisition ten days in advance. What does this addition mean?
Admitting the witnesses, it still remains to explain what a marriage may be in which cohabitation is not the essential element. Would the legal union of man and woman be, like the nun’s marriage with Christ, a spiritual nuptials, of which physical cohabitation is the usual accessory, not obligatory? So the union of the sexes is one thing, and marriage another. What prevents prepubescents, eunuchs from marrying, and much more, men from marrying each other and women from marrying each other?
That if it is the combination of all these circumstances that constitutes marriage and gives the union of man and woman its morality, one wonders how, in so many cases, this solemn ceremony is so ineffective, so unhappy? Where do so many scandals, adulteries, divorces come from? One, in the freedom of his loves, surrounds himself with loyalty, delicacy and honor; some other, in his marriage, is impure, governed by ambition and avarice. What is a marriage that has married you so badly, while alongside we encounter lovers whom concubinage unites so well? Obviously, people who get married do not know what they are doing; but the legislator, the priest, the mayor, do they know any better? What is the use, therefore, of the intervention of the magistrate? What can be the usefulness, from the point of view of morality, of this convention so universally adopted, of marriage? Morality, Justice in love, which these words of prostitution, concubinage, marriage, could not define and safeguard, corresponding to more or less honorable situations, but in reality to completely arbitrary arrangements, would it not be better assured, as the communists claim, by an unlimited liberty than by all the legal formalities?
Under the old law, polygamy, — what am I saying, polygamy? the faculty of having not only several wives, but several concubines in addition to the legitimate wife or wives, — this faculty was recognized, honorable, honored; whoever used it did not become an adulterer. Under the new law, on the contrary, monogamy is inviolable. The Landgrave of Hesse, for having taken a second wife without leaving the first; Louis XIV, for having successively had, beside his wife, two or three mistresses, is condemned by divine and human law. How did what was once permitted become illegitimate? Jesus, summoned to untie this knot, replies that polygamy was granted to the ancients because of the hardness of their hearts, that is to say, because of the ardor of their senses, projectissima ad libidinem gens, this is the phrase of Tacitus, because of the weakness of their moral sense: an explanation that is not one, which accuses man without justifying God, and makes conjugal morality a question of temperament.
What we have just said of love relations must be said of all social, economic, political and other relations.
It pleased the author of the Civil Code to declare usurious any interest on a loan greater than 3 percent; below 3, usury ceases. Among the Romans, the legal rate, which varied according to circumstances, was on the average 12 percent. In Texas it is not uncommon for capital placed at interest to return 30 and 40 percent, and under these conditions the borrowers still realize large profits. From these facts and an infinity of others economists have concluded, not without reason, that the interest on capital is like the price of products, that it varies according to supply and demand, and that if anyone is to be blamed here, it is the legislator, who has created an offense by regulating a fact not susceptible to regulation.
If anything can upset Justice, it is certainly that the legislator is suspected of ineptitude or arbitrariness. Everything is usury or nothing is usury. In either case, no more moral rule, no more Justice, which, however, immediately seems absurd. For if society cannot do without credit, and if this credit must be paid, it is however repugnant that there is not for credit, as for all services, an average, normal rate, one likely as a consequence to become the expression of right.
It would be easy for me to extend this argument to all the facts of collective or individual life that imply a relationship of Justice; and I would ask, at each article: Where is the morality of the oath? Where the immorality of perjury? Where is the morality of property? Where the immorality of theft? But it is repugnant to me to rehash criticisms that have become familiar to all educated men.
XIII. — Let us first give the objection all the scope it deserves.
In itself, it is a perfectly innocent thing to eat or not to eat eel. Why did Moses forbid this edible to the Jews? How does this particular abstinence affect good morals? The worshiper of Jehovah does not doubt that the law must be obeyed; but his reason, self-respect, demands that he be shown that this law contains justice, and this is precisely what he is not told. How does the eating of the eel, a fish without scales, violate Justice, while the eating of the pike, a fish with scales, does not violate it? It will perhaps be said that there is, as with the meat of the pig, a health reason behind it. All in good time! But let’s not confuse morality with hygiene: since when is it a sin to break the abstinence prescribed by the doctor?
I begin deliberately with this example, in which it is not possible for us, who do not believe in Moses and who mock his ordinances, to discover the least character of morality: here is why. Nothing is more indifferent to Justice than abstaining from flesh or fish, is it not true? Well, ask the skeptics, are we sure that our most essential laws, those that touch most closely on public order and morality, are better founded in their object than this?
Examples:
Theologians dispute among themselves what constitutes the sacrament or, to use secular language, the bond of marriage: whether it is the consent of the spouses, or the formula pronounced by the public functionary, or the consummation of the conjugal act, we still have the combination of all these circumstances. And the theologians disagree; to put it better, they agree that none of this makes marriage, and they still don’t know today what does.
If it is the consent of the spouses and their cohabitation, why are not all cohabiting couples, ipso facto, declared by law to be united in legitimate marriage?
If this is the sacramental formula, what is this mysterious virtue, attached to a sentence of the Code or the Breviary, by which, independent of any subsequent relationship, two persons of different sex are united, but which without it, whatever they would, the would not be? Why still the publications, witnesses and other formalities, if the bestowing of the sacrament, by the minister who has the power to give it, is enough? When I buy a house before a notary, I don’t take witnesses; I do not trumpet my acquisition ten days in advance. What does this addition mean?
Admitting the witnesses, it still remains to explain what a marriage may be in which cohabitation is not the essential element. Would the legal union of man and woman be, like the nun’s marriage with Christ, a spiritual nuptials, of which physical cohabitation is the usual accessory, not obligatory? So the union of the sexes is one thing, and marriage another. What prevents prepubescents, eunuchs from marrying, and much more, men from marrying each other and women from marrying each other?
That if it is the combination of all these circumstances that constitutes marriage and gives the union of man and woman its morality, one wonders how, in so many cases, this solemn ceremony is so ineffective, so unhappy? Where do so many scandals, adulteries, divorces come from? One, in the freedom of his loves, surrounds himself with loyalty, delicacy and honor; some other, in his marriage, is impure, governed by ambition and avarice. What is a marriage that has married you so badly, while alongside we encounter lovers whom concubinage unites so well? Obviously, people who get married do not know what they are doing; but the legislator, the priest, the mayor, do they know any better? What is the use, therefore, of the intervention of the magistrate? What can be the usefulness, from the point of view of morality, of this convention so universally adopted, of marriage? Morality, Justice in love, which these words of prostitution, concubinage, marriage, could not define and safeguard, corresponding to more or less honorable situations, but in reality to completely arbitrary arrangements, would it not be better assured, as the communists claim, by an unlimited liberty than by all the legal formalities?
Under the old law, polygamy, — what am I saying, polygamy? the faculty of having not only several wives, but several concubines in addition to the legitimate wife or wives, — this faculty was recognized, honorable, honored; whoever used it did not become an adulterer. Under the new law, on the contrary, monogamy is inviolable. The Landgrave of Hesse, for having taken a second wife without leaving the first; Louis XIV, for having successively had, beside his wife, two or three mistresses, is condemned by divine and human law. How did what was once permitted become illegitimate? Jesus, summoned to untie this knot, replies that polygamy was granted to the ancients because of the hardness of their hearts, that is to say, because of the ardor of their senses, projectissima ad libidinem gens, this is the phrase of Tacitus, because of the weakness of their moral sense: an explanation that is not one, which accuses man without justifying God, and makes conjugal morality a question of temperament.
What we have just said of love relations must be said of all social, economic, political and other relations.
It pleased the author of the Civil Code to declare usurious any interest on a loan greater than 3 percent; below 3, usury ceases. Among the Romans, the legal rate, which varied according to circumstances, was on the average 12 percent. In Texas it is not uncommon for capital placed at interest to return 30 and 40 percent, and under these conditions the borrowers still realize large profits. From these facts and an infinity of others economists have concluded, not without reason, that the interest on capital is like the price of products, that it varies according to supply and demand, and that if anyone is to be blamed here, it is the legislator, who has created an offense by regulating a fact not susceptible to regulation.
If anything can upset Justice, it is certainly that the legislator is suspected of ineptitude or arbitrariness. Everything is usury or nothing is usury. In either case, no more moral rule, no more Justice, which, however, immediately seems absurd. For if society cannot do without credit, and if this credit must be paid, it is however repugnant that there is not for credit, as for all services, an average, normal rate, one likely as a consequence to become the expression of right.
It would be easy for me to extend this argument to all the facts of collective or individual life that imply a relationship of Justice; and I would ask, at each article: Where is the morality of the oath? Where the immorality of perjury? Where is the morality of property? Where the immorality of theft? But it is repugnant to me to rehash criticisms that have become familiar to all educated men.
XIV
One consequence of this uncertainty in the distinction between good and evil is that each, more struck in his inner sense by the immorality of certain acts than by the criminality of certain others, makes for himself a morality quite different from that of his neighbor, what produces the strangest cacophony.
One, for example, is sensitive about the point of honor, which is not at all about Justice.
One boasts of never having touched another man’s wife, who regards the corruption of little girls and pederasty as indifferent things.
Under Louis XIV, the nobles cheated at games; today they only cheat on the Stock Exchange. The Greeks are regarded by these honorable speculators as the last of men.
What is agiotage? asked M. Oscar de Vallée M. Mirès a short time ago: I defy you to give a definition of it. And the financier’s challenge remained unanswered.
Double onanism, condemned by the Church and by medicine, is publicly preached by the school of Malthus and by the Academy.
All Christian nations make a profession of charity, while they refuse to recognize the right to work.
Isn’t all this well done to raise skepticism, and to sink consciences at every step? Finally, what is the law? What is morality?
Some, who are disturbed by this lack of precision and fixity, say that it is not in the definition of human acts that we must seek their morality, but in their tendency, in their progress.
It is certain that all things change incessantly in society, not, as was once believed, by chance or blind fate, but according to a law that it is easy for religious souls to take for a manifestation of Providence. It is thus that we have seen the condition of the worker improve imperceptibly, rise from slavery to wage-earning, and presently to participation; that property, from feudal and inalienable, has become egalitarian and mobile, and that the principle of solidarity, hardly suspected by the ancients, appears more and more in its truth and its power. This movement is one of the most characteristic aspects of human mores, and can serve up to a certain point as a guide for the moralist. This will be, if you will, a useful means of foresight: I deny its value as to the obligation that may result from it for the conscience.
Progress in society, without taking into account retrogradations, which must nevertheless be taken into account, is insensible; it only manifests itself at long intervals: meanwhile, what will be the rule of individuals, whose life is so short? Assuming the average rate of interest of 12 percent towards the end of the Roman republic, it took eighteen centuries to lower it to 3 percent. Since Charlemagne, whom we will take as the starting point of feudalism, it took nearly eleven centuries to produce the constitutional system of government. So with the rest. In the meantime, what was the rule of consciences? Would it have sufficed to invoke progress, even if they had had the idea of it? And we who seem to believe in it, what use can we make of it for our virtue? Do we even know which way we are going? And if we do not know it, how can we flatter ourselves that we possess a criterion? Where is the good, where is the evil, at this hour, in France and throughout Europe? I challenge anyone, philosopher or prophet, if he possesses other lights than those that are current, to say so.
XIV. — One consequence of this uncertainty in the distinction between good and evil is that each, more struck in his inner sense by the immorality of certain acts than by the criminality of certain others, makes for himself a morality quite different from that of his neighbor, what produces the strangest cacophony.
One, for example, is sensitive about the point of honor, which is not at all about Justice.
One boasts of never having touched another man’s wife, who regards the corruption of little girls and pederasty as indifferent things.
Under Louis XIV, the nobles cheated at games; today they only cheat on the Stock Exchange. The Greeks are regarded by these honorable speculators as the last of men.
What is agiotage? asked M. Oscar de Vallée M. Mirès a short time ago: I defy you to give a definition of it. And the financier’s challenge remained unanswered.
Double onanism, condemned by the Church and by medicine, is publicly preached by the school of Malthus and by the Academy.
All Christian nations make a profession of charity, while they refuse to recognize the right to work.
Isn’t all this well done to raise, like a storm wind, skepticism, and to sink consciences at every step? Finally, what is the law? What is morality?
Some, who are disturbed by this lack of precision and fixity, say that it is not in the definition of human acts that we must seek their morality, but in their tendency, in their progress.
It is certain that all things change incessantly in society, not, as was once believed, by chance or blind fate, but according to a law that it is easy for religious souls to take for a manifestation of Providence. It is thus that we have seen the condition of the worker improve imperceptibly, rise from slavery to wage-earning, and presently to participation; that property, from feudal and inalienable, has become egalitarian and mobile, and that the principle of solidarity, hardly suspected by the ancients, appears more and more in its truth and its power. This movement is one of the most characteristic aspects of human mores, and can serve up to a certain point as a guide for the moralist. This will be, if you will, a useful means of foresight: I deny its value as to the obligation that may result from it for the conscience.
Progress in society, without taking into account retrogradations, which must nevertheless be taken into account, is insensible; it only manifests itself at long intervals: meanwhile, what will be the rule of individuals, whose life is so short? Assuming the average rate of interest of 12 percent towards the end of the Roman republic, it took eighteen centuries to lower it to 3 percent. Since Charlemagne, whom we will take as the starting point of feudalism, it took nearly eleven centuries to produce the constitutional system of government. So with the rest. In the meantime, what was the rule of consciences? Would it have sufficed to invoke progress, even if they had had the idea of it? And we who seem to believe in it, what use can we make of it for our virtue? Do we even know which way we are going? And if we do not know it, how can we flatter ourselves that we possess a criterion? Where is the good, where is the evil, at this hour, in France and throughout Europe? I challenge anyone, philosopher or prophet, if he possesses other lights than those that are current, to say so.
XV
To demonstrate the existence in us of a juridical faculty, I addressed myself to Descartes, one of the fathers of the Revolution. To find the principle of determination of this faculty, I will address myself to the Revolution itself.
The first declarations (July 27-August 31, 1789, September 3, 1794, February 15-16, and June 24, 1793) had only mentioned the _Rights_ of man and of the citizen; they implied rather than expressed the Duties.
Then came the declaration of Year III (August 22, 1798), which, in the chapter of _Rights_, always stated first, added, as a complement, that of Duties.
There is first, in the simple fact of this addition, a lesson that it is important to gather: it is that, according to the Revolution, conscience originally has only one law, namely respect for itself, its dignity, its Justice, Jus; that this law is immanent to it, not communicated from without, and that it is from the recognition of this law in others as in ourselves that is then born duty, or the plenitude of Justice.
It is therefore the formula of this duty that it is important for us now to collect, since, if man were alone, his dignity having no correlative, no equal, there would be no reason for him to seek the rule of his obligations: his morality would be reduced to liberty.
Now, here is what the declaration of Year III says:
“All the duties of man and of the citizen derive from these two principles, engraved by _nature_ in all hearts:
“Do not do to others what you would not have done to you;
“Constantly do to others the good that you would like to receive from them.”
The formula is double, negative and positive: it prescribes as much as it forbids. But that is not what I want to point out, and what my comment will focus on.
What has not been noticed enough, perhaps not noticed at all, because I do not remember having seen it anywhere, is that by means of this maxim, the first perhaps that the human brain formulated, and of which we find traces among the sages of China more than 2,000 years before Jesus Christ, the distinction between good and evil is made, consequently the law enacted, for all degrees of civilization and all possible cases.
It is the Fiat lux of the legislator, by means of which there are no longer any indifferent actions, however variable the formula that governs them; no more uncertainty about the just and the unjust, in a word, no more excuses for infringement.
One of my regrets, on reading M. Cournot’s Essai sur les fondements de nos connaissances, was to see this learned man, carried away by his fixed idea of the reason of things, reason about Justice and morality like the theologian Mgr Th. Gousset, and apply his system of probability to the distinction between crimes and misdemeanors: as if Justice had its reason in things! As if this juridical reason were not on the contrary, as the Constitution of 93 shows us, entirely in persons! Well! No doubt, Mr. Inspector, your calculation of probability can be useful if it is a question of evaluating a product, of valuing a service, a situation, a damage, of fixing the fair price of the goods, the exact rate of interest or discount; it can also serve to predict the acts of human spontaneity: but it is not in this calculation, in this objective determination, that Justice is found, and whatever error we make in this respect, the certainty of right cannot suffer. Justice is in our will and resolution to treat others, in all things, as ourselves, that is to say according to the principle of equality, as much as it appears to us, and notwithstanding the error committed. in good faith by the parties, which error, whatever damage it does to interests, counts, in morality, absolutely for nothing.
This distinction established between the reason of things, so badly presented as a criterion of Justice, and the reason of persons, all difficulty vanishes and everything is explained. The aberrations of the practice remain reprehensible; the conscience, which has given itself up to it in good faith, is justified.
Thus, under the pagan and Mosaic law, slavery is in the mores, admitted by universal consent, to such an extent that the Pentateuch shows it to us as a good for the slave, who accepts it, sticks to it voluntarily, takes pride in it, and often demands it. What will be the spirit of the law? It is that the master must in all circumstances treat his slave as he would like to be treated if the roles were reversed, and the slave must serve his master as he would like to be in the same case.
Does this justify slavery? In no way. The law starts from the hypothesis of a common ignorance; it decides according to the datum of universal opinion, which posits slavery as necessary, and does not recognize in the reason of persons a reason for denying it. But if later, with time and experience, the same universal opinion comes to change on the fact of servitude; if it is recognized that such a regime is contrary to reason and humanity, destructive of the person and harmful to all interests; in a word, if the social idea, in rising, repudiates servitude, then let the legislator do his duty. The institution must change, and while changing it will only accomplish, with a more perfect intelligence, the ancient precept, Do unto others as you wish it to be done unto you, which is invariable.
I would therefore have nothing to reproach religion with regarding the fact of slavery, if it had limited itself, like politics, to interpreting according to the progress of time and the measure of opinion this great juridical principle of people’s reason. Instead, it availed itself of a so-called reason of things that does not exist; it has made the inequality of persons a dogma of its theology; it is by virtue of this spiritualism that it first consecrated slavery by regulating it through the ministry of Moses, a second time serfdom by bringing it into its hierarchy, and that it strives today today to maintain the salariat, the last form of servitude!…
Qu’y a-t-il de plus inhumain que la guerre ? Et pourtant elle est susceptible de recevoir des applications nombreuses du principe, Faites à autrui, etc., applications dont l’ensemble forme le Droit de la guerre, deux mots qui rugissent de se voir accouplés. Ainsi, entre nations qui admettent ce droit, il n’est plus permis de massacrer les prisonniers, de tuer les parlementaires ; bien plus, les traités de paix conclus entre le vainqueur et le vaincu, traités dont le droit ne repose que sur la force, ces traités doivent être respectés comme s’ils avaient été consentis librement. Cela justifie-t-il la victoire ? Point du tout : le règne de la force ne peut jamais être le règne du droit, l’oppression d’un peuple est toujours une violation de la Justice ; mais, sous l’empire de la force, quand le plus faible a succombé, quand, au lieu de protester jusqu’à la mort par la révolte ou le silence, il a imploré et obtenu l’aman, comme dit l’Arabe, il est lié par sa propre soumission, par la raison de sa propre personne, et l’expérience prouve qu’il vaut mieux pour lui de toute façon y rester fidèle que se parjurer.
Polygamy, at one time, was common right. The woman, the first to be convinced of her inferiority, does not complain, witness the Circassian woman, proud of the high price at which she is bought. It is repugnant to say, and yet such is the expression of the right: Husband, treat your wives and your concubines as you would like to be treated by your husband, if you were a woman; and you, women, behave towards your chief as you would like your women to do, if you were men.
Is the law that, according to this formula, regulates the rights of wives, concubines and their children, a justification of polygamy? No: it starts from an institution established spontaneously and in good faith, and it rules accordingly. Now let the ideal of love arise; let the reason of persons, between man and woman, be better understood; let he contradiction break out between the marriage which unites and the polygamy that divides: then the form of the union must be modified. At base, Justice does not change; it remains absolute and immutable.
The loan at interest is essential to commercial relations. In the economic state of the first societies, it would be unfair to require the owner to lend his Capital for nothing; therefore, the legislator authorizes interest. Does this prove that interest is by its nature a moral thing, and that the government that protects it affirms its equity? No more than the Church, which understands nothing of it and which devotes itself to it with ardor, does itself sanctify it. Justice says only one thing here: Capitalist, lend to your brother on the terms you would reasonably obtain, if you were a borrower; and you, borrower, discharge your engagements with the good faith and the exactitude that you would wish to meet, if you were lender.
When, therefore, to ensure, as regards the loan, the observance of the principle, the legislator orders that the maximum rate of interest, in civil cases, shall be 5 percent, in commercial affairs 6 percent, does that mean that, in the spirit of the law, the 5 or the 6 are in themselves something more moral than the 7 or the 8? Not at all. The law rendered by the legislator is equivalent in this case to a synallagmatic contract passed between all the citizens, by which they bind themselves to each other never to demand an interest higher than the rate fixed by law, or, if the guarantees offered by the borrower do not seem sufficient, not to lend at all: direct application of the maxim, Do unto others, etc.; Do not do unto others, etc.
One day, and it is my firm hope, economic science will teach men to obtain the advantages of credit without any compensation. Will the law that decrees this great reform condemn, as immoral in itself, the previous practice? Not at all. Justice, while following the progress of knowledge, does not therefore cease to be identical to itself. It only forbids violence, insult to man, either to his person or to his interests, however these are understood. The day will come when the principle of interest on loans will only be defended by a minority of capitalists against the national will, and the law will go along with science and public opinion. Otherwise it would be immoral.
As for agiotage, I propose, for the instruction of M. Oscar de Vallée and his colleagues, to make it the subject of a special monograph.
In themselves, and from the point of view of Justice, slavery, war, usury, are therefore nothing, polygamy nothing, continence and lust nothing, property nothing, theft no more. They are situations, accidents, fortunes, good or bad, errors of judgment if you will; as to morality, nothing.
Only one thing is true: Justice, that is to say the obligation to respect oneself in all circumstances, and to respect others, as one would like to be respected oneself, if one were in one’s place.
L’appréciation de ce qui est utile ou nuisible peut être erronée, par conséquent la loi ou convention qui en est la suite manquer de justesse et être, sujette à révision ; la Justice est infaillible et commande toujours.
This explains to us how the distinction of meats could become, among certain nations, a precept of Justice. Whatever the motive of the legislator, a motive that it is perfectly useless to seek today, since the prohibition, proposed and accepted in good faith, was part of a discipline on which depended the order and the preservation of society, the observance was just and the violation reprehensible.
It is according to this principle that the declaration of Year III could say:
“5. No one is a good man if he is not a frank and religious observer of the laws.
“6. He who openly violates the laws declares himself in a state of war with society.
“7. He who, without openly breaking the laws, evades them by trickery or skill, hurts the interests of all: he renders himself unworthy of their benevolence and esteem.”
XV. — To demonstrate the existence in us of a juridical faculty, we addressed ourselves to Descartes, one of the fathers of the Revolution. To find the principle of determination of this faculty, we will address ourselves to the Revolution itself.
The first declarations (July 27-August 31, 1789, September 3, 1794, February 15-16, and June 24, 1793) had only mentioned the Rights of man and of the citizen; they implied rather than expressed the Duties.
Then came the declaration of Year III (August 22, 1798), which, to the chapter of Rights, always stated first, added, as a complement, that of Duties.
There is first, in the simple fact of this addition, a lesson that it is important to gather: it is that, according to the Revolution, conscience originally has only one law, namely respect for itself, its dignity, its Justice, Jus; that this law is immanent to it, not communicated from without, and that it is from the recognition of this law in others as in ourselves that is then born duty, or the plenitude of Justice.
It is therefore the formula of this duty that it is important for us now to collect, since, if man were alone, his dignity having no correlative, there would be no reason for him to seek the rule of his obligations: his morality would be reduced to liberty.
Now, here is what the declaration of Year III says:
“All the duties of man and of the citizen derive from these two principles, engraved by nature in all hearts:
“Do not do to others what you would not have done to you;
“Constantly do to others the good that you would like to receive from them.”
The formula is double, negative and positive: it prescribes as much as it forbids. But that is not what I want to point out, and what my comment will focus on.
What has not been noticed enough, perhaps not noticed at all, because I do not remember having seen it anywhere, is that by means of this maxim, the first perhaps that the human brain formulated, and of which we find traces among the sages of China more than 2,000 years before Jesus Christ, the distinction between good and evil is made, consequently the law enacted, for all degrees of civilization and all possible cases.
It is the Fiat lux of the legislator, by means of which there are no longer any indifferent actions, however variable the formula that governs them; no more uncertainty about the just and the unjust, in a word, no more excuses for infringement.
One of my regrets, on reading M. Cournot’s Essai sur les fondements de nos connaissances, was to see this learned man, carried away by his fixed idea of the reason of things, reason about Justice and morality like the theologian Mgr Th. Gousset, and apply his system of probability to the distinction between crimes and misdemeanors: as if Justice had its reason in things! As if this juridical reason were not on the contrary, as the Constitution of 93 shows us, entirely in persons! Well! No doubt, Mr. Inspector, your calculation of probability can be useful if it is a question of evaluating a product, of valuing a service, a situation, a damage, of fixing the fair price of the goods, the exact rate of interest or discount; it can also serve to predict the acts of human spontaneity: but it is not in this calculation, in this objective determination, that Justice is found, and whatever error we make in this respect, the certainty of right cannot suffer. Justice is in our will and resolution to treat others, in all things, as ourselves, that is to say according to the principle of equality, as much as it appears to us, and notwithstanding the error committed. in good faith by the parties, which error, whatever damage it does to interests, counts, in morality, absolutely for nothing.
This distinction established between the reason of things, so badly presented as a criterion of Justice, and the reason of persons, all difficulty vanishes and everything is explained. The aberrations of the practice remain reprehensible; the conscience, which has given itself up to it in good faith, is justified.
XVI. — Thus, under the pagan and Mosaic law, slavery is in the mores, admitted by universal consent, to such an extent that the Pentateuch shows it to us as a good for the slave, who accepts it, sticks to it voluntarily, takes pride in it, and often demands it. What will be the spirit of the law? It is that the master must in all circumstances treat his slave as he would like to be treated if the roles were reversed, and the slave must serve his master as he would like to be in the same case.
Does this justify slavery? In no way. The law starts from the hypothesis of a common ignorance; it decides according to the datum of universal opinion, which posits slavery as necessary, and does not recognize in the reason of persons a reason for denying it. But if later, with time and experience, the same universal opinion comes to change on the fact of servitude; if it is recognized that such a regime is contrary to reason and humanity, destructive of the person and harmful to all interests; in a word, if the social idea, in rising, repudiates servitude, then let the legislator do his duty. The institution must change, and while changing it will only accomplish, with a more perfect intelligence, the ancient precept, Do unto others as you wish it to be done unto you, which is invariable.
I would therefore have nothing to reproach religion with regarding the fact of slavery, if it had limited itself, like politics, to interpreting according to the progress of time and the measure of opinion this great juridical principle of people’s reason. Instead, it availed itself of a so-called reason of things that does not exist; it has made the inequality of persons a dogma of its theology; it is by virtue of this spiritualism that it first consecrated slavery by regulating it through the ministry of Moses, a second time serfdom by bringing it into its hierarchy, and that it strives today today to maintain the salariat, the last form of servitude.
What is more inhuman than war? And yet it is capable of receiving numerous applications from the principle, Do unto others, etc., applications that together form the Right of war, two words which seem to roar at being coupled together. Thus, between nations that admit this right, it is no longer permitted to massacre prisoners, to kill parliamentarians; much more, the treaties of peace concluded between the conqueror and the conquered, treaties whose law has force as its basis, these treaties must be respected as if they had been freely consented to. Does this absolutely justify the battle? No: the judgment of force, or the custom that aims to settle certain disputes by means of force, can only be considered as a preparatory institution. Just as the political constitution must one day give way to the economic constitution, so the incorporation of one nation into another can only be claimed under special conditions, created by the very absence of economic law. Until then, war inevitably remains, by the admission of all nations, a form of Justice. This is why, in a war according to forms, when the weakest has succumbed, when, instead of protesting unto death by revolt or silence, he has implored and obtained the aman, as the Arab says, he is bound by his own submission, by the reason of his own person; and experience proves that it is better for him anyway to remain faithful to it than to perjure himself. (F)
Polygamy, at one time, was common right. The woman, the first to be convinced of her inferiority, does not complain, witness the Circassian woman, proud of the high price at which she is bought. It is repugnant to say, and yet such is the expression of the right: Husband, treat your wives and your concubines as you would like to be treated by your husband, if you were a woman; and you, women, behave towards your chief as you would like your women to do, if you were men.
Is the law that, according to this formula, regulates the rights of wives, concubines and their children, a justification of polygamy? No: it starts from an institution established spontaneously and in good faith, and it rules accordingly. Now let the ideal of love arise; let the reason of persons, between man and woman, be better understood; let he contradiction break out between the marriage which unites and the polygamy that divides: then the form of the union must be modified. At base, Justice does not change; it remains absolute and immutable.
The loan at interest is essential to commercial relations. In the economic state of the first societies, it would be unfair to require the owner to lend his Capital for nothing; therefore, the legislator authorizes interest. Does this prove that interest is by its nature a moral thing, and that the government that protects it affirms its equity? No more than the Church, which understands nothing of it and which devotes itself to it with ardor, does itself sanctify it. Justice says only one thing here: Capitalist, lend to your brother on the terms you would reasonably obtain, if you were a borrower; and you, borrower, discharge your engagements with the good faith and the exactitude that you would wish to meet, if you were lender.
When, therefore, to ensure, as regards the loan, the observance of the principle, the legislator orders that the maximum rate of interest, in civil cases, shall be 5 percent, in commercial affairs 6 percent, does that mean that, in the spirit of the law, the 5 or the 6 are in themselves something more moral than the 7 or the 8? Not at all. The law rendered by the legislator is equivalent in this case to a synallagmatic contract passed between all the citizens, by which they bind themselves to each other never to demand an interest higher than the rate fixed by law, or, if the guarantees offered by the borrower do not seem sufficient, not to lend at all: direct application of the maxim, Do unto others, etc.; Do not do unto others, etc.
One day, and it is my firm hope, economic science will teach men to obtain the advantages of credit without any compensation. Will the law that decrees this great reform condemn, as immoral in itself, the previous practice? Not at all. Justice, while following the progress of knowledge, does not therefore cease to be identical to itself. It only forbids violence, insult to man, either to his person or to his interests, however these are understood. The day will come when the principle of interest on loans will only be defended by a minority of capitalists against the national will, and the law will go along with science and public opinion. Otherwise it would be immoral.
As for agiotage, I propose, for the instruction of M. Oscar de Vallée and his colleagues, to make it the subject of a special monograph some day.
In themselves, and from the point of view of Justice, slavery, war, usury, are therefore nothing, polygamy nothing, continence and lust nothing, property nothing, theft no more. They are situations, accidents, fortunes, good or bad, errors of judgment if you will; as to morality, nothing.
Only one thing is true: Justice, that is to say the obligation to respect oneself in all circumstances, and to respect others, as one would like to be respected oneself, if one were in one’s place.
The judgment of what is useful or harmful can be erroneous, consequently the law or convention that is the expression may lack correctness and be subject to revision; Justice is infallible and always commands.
This explains to us how the distinction of meats could become, among certain nations, a precept of Justice. Whatever the motive of the legislator, a motive that it is perfectly useless to seek today, since the prohibition, proposed and accepted in good faith, was part of a discipline on which depended the order and the preservation of society, the observance was just and the violation reprehensible.
It is according to this principle that the declaration of Year III could say:
“5. No one is a good man if he is not a frank and religious observer of the laws.
“6. He who openly violates the laws declares himself in a state of war with society.
“7. He who, without openly breaking the laws, evades them by trickery or skill, hurts the interests of all: he renders himself unworthy of their benevolence and esteem.”
XVI
The principle of the certainty and inalterability of Justice, or of the reason of persons, even though in practice the law is subject to variation as a result of the greater or lesser intelligence that we have of reason things, this principle, I say, can serve to dissipate a few more clouds, which the confusion of the objective point of view with the subjective has created, and which do the greatest harm to morality.
All casuists distinguish matters of precept from matters of counsel.
For example, it is a precept to abstain from the goods of others in all circumstances; it is only advisable to assist the neighbor in his poverty, to expose oneself to danger in order to save him from the hands of an assassin or the tooth of a ferocious beast.
This difference arises because precept is based on right, which is absolute, while counsel is based on charity, which is gracious munificence. This amounts to saying that, if we must, in our commutative relations, do to others as we have the right to require them to do to us, the obligation no longer exists if it is an accident of force majeure, for which we are not committed to him. Everyone by themselves, everyone for themselves.
The maxim of charity coming after the maxim of Justice, there would thus be, as regards things and as regards conscience, a certain hierarchy of rights and duties.
How is it, however, that in certain cases the maxim of charity takes precedence over right, and that the man who acts otherwise is deemed infamous?
A poor devil, whose children are crying out for hunger, steals, at night, from an attic, after breaking into and climbing over, a four-pound loaf. The baker has him sentenced to eight years of hard labor: that is the law. The robbed could erase the crime and prevent the penalty by voluntarily giving bread to the culprit: this is what charity advised. On the other hand, the same baker, accused of having put plaster in his bread as flour, and vitriol for leaven, is sentenced to 5 pounds fine: it is the law. But conscience cries out that this trafficker is a monster, and the law itself absurd and odious. Where does this contradiction come from?
I answer that conscience is only just: it is the penal law, it is the social economy, property and casuistry that are wrong.
Positive law, in other words applied Justice, based on an appreciation as it is of the reason of things, being never more than approximate, cannot go so far as to prevail against the intimate sense, called upon incessantly to rectify it. Does the contradiction arise? Conscience says and proclaims that the man of honor must not wait for the scholar’s definition and the prince’s decree: it supplements both, seeks Justice, and practices it in its fullness.
It is by virtue of this principle that the Gospel, with its maxim of charity that some have nowadays tried to rejuvenate, has deceived minds. This heroic virtue, which Christ commends to his disciples, which the Church never ceases to preach, but of which she has never dared to make a law, is none other than the compensation that generous souls bring, of their own accord. to the injustice of the system; a precious compensation because it is voluntary, but insufficient as long as it will not be converted by the Revolution into a bond of right, and whose public assistance, organized alms, makes a hypocrisy and a shame.
The time will come when, by the development of social science, the relations of Justice being better and better determined, the matters of counsel will pass into the precepts, more or less as we see in the contract of insurance, which has precisely intended to replace the precarious benefit of charity with positive law. It is also thus that for the soldier the obligation to help his comrade, even at the risk of his life, to be killed to save the flag, is of justice: where would the country be if the defense depended on a virtue of supererogation?
I say as much of the things of private life, which we are in the habit of relating to the morality of counsel: as they concern personal dignity, since otherwise we would not make them the object of maxims, they belong, by virtue of social solidarity, to imperative morality, to Justice. It is not indifferent to society that the individual, in all his actions, respects himself: private impurity, secret vice, is the beginning of all iniquity. Also I share the sentiment of Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics: this philosopher maintains that Justice is not a division of ethics, but the very principle of ethics, which it embraces entirely; and I regard, as for me, the seven capital sins as being able to fall within the scope of the law, as well as slander, theft, adultery and murder.
XVII. — The principle of the certainty and inalterability of Justice, or of the reason of persons, even though in practice the law is subject to variation as a result of the greater or lesser intelligence that we have of reason things, this principle, I say, can serve to dissipate a few more clouds, which the confusion of the objective point of view with the subjective has created, and which do the greatest harm to morality.
All casuists distinguish matters of precept from matters of counsel.
For example, it is a precept to abstain from the goods of others in all circumstances; it is only advisable to assist the neighbor in his poverty, to expose oneself to danger in order to save him from the hands of an assassin or the tooth of a ferocious beast.
This difference arises because precept is based on right, which is absolute, while counsel is based on charity, which is gracious munificence. This amounts to saying that, if we must, in our commutative relations, do to others as we have the right to require them to do to us, the obligation no longer exists if it is an accident of force majeure, for which we are not committed to him. Everyone by themselves, everyone for themselves.
The maxim of charity coming after the maxim of Justice, there would thus be, as regards things and as regards conscience, a certain hierarchy of rights and duties.
How is it, however, that in certain cases the maxim of charity takes precedence over right, and that the man who acts otherwise is deemed infamous?
A poor devil, whose children are crying out for hunger, steals, at night, from an attic, after breaking into and climbing over, a four-pound loaf. The baker has him sentenced to eight years of hard labor: that is the law. The robbed could erase the crime and prevent the penalty by voluntarily giving bread to the culprit: this is what charity advised. On the other hand, the same baker, accused of having put plaster in his bread as flour, and vitriol for leaven, is sentenced to 5 pounds fine: it is the law. But conscience cries out that this trafficker is a monster, and the law itself absurd and odious. Where does this contradiction come from?
I answer that conscience is only just: it is the penal law, it is the social economy, property and casuistry that are wrong.
Positive law, in other words applied Justice, based on an appreciation as it is of the reason of things, being never more than approximate, cannot go so far as to prevail against the intimate sense, called upon incessantly to rectify it. Does the contradiction arise? Conscience says and proclaims that the man of honor must not wait for the scholar’s definition and the prince’s decree: it supplements both, seeks Justice, and practices it in its fullness.
It is by virtue of this principle that the Gospel, with its maxim of charity that some have nowadays tried to rejuvenate, has deceived minds. This heroic virtue, which Christ commends to his disciples, which the Church never ceases to preach, but of which she has never dared to make a law, is none other than the compensation that generous souls bring, of their own accord. to the injustice of the system; a meritorious compensation because it is voluntary, but insufficient as long as it will not be converted by the Revolution into a bond of right, and whose public assistance, organized alms, makes a hypocrisy and a shame.
The time will come when, by the development of social science, the relations of Justice being better and better determined, the matters of counsel will pass into the precepts, more or less as we see in the contract of insurance, which has precisely intended to replace the precarious benefit of charity with positive law. It is also thus that for the soldier the obligation to help his comrade, even at the risk of his life, to be killed to save the flag, is of justice: where would the country be if the defense depended on a virtue of supererogation?
I say as much of the things of private life, which we are in the habit of relating to the morality of counsel: as they concern personal dignity, since otherwise we would not make them the object of maxims, they belong, by virtue of social solidarity, to imperative morality, to Justice. It is not indifferent to society that the individual, in all his actions, respects himself: private impurity, secret vice, is the beginning of all iniquity. Also I share the sentiment of Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics: this philosopher maintains that Justice is not a division of ethics, but the very principle of ethics, which it embraces entirely; and I regard, as for me, the seven capital sins as being able to fall within the scope of the law, as well as slander, theft, adultery and murder. (G)
XVII
Here, then, is Pyrrhonism vanquished on the first two questions: the reality of the juridical sense, and the certainty of the distinction between good and evil.
As he is intelligent, loving, industrious, artistic, man is worthy, he is just. Justice is in him like all the other faculties, manifesting itself in its own way, and with a certainty that errors of application do not in any way invalidate.
And as the juridical faculty is clearly distinguished from the intelligent, industrial, artistic faculty, so the notion of good and evil that is proper to it is not vain, fleeting, variable, as has been said; it does not fluctuate according to the temperament of the people, the suggestions of the climate, the good pleasure of the revelators: it is perfectly clear, distinct, freed from all confusion. For it does not result from the definition, impossible to give, of variable facts and contradictory acts, but from the definition that consciousness makes of itself, when it takes, if I dare say so, its own measure. to apply it to others.
What is there, please, better defined, more intelligible, more fixed, more clear, less susceptible to ambiguity, than equality of respect?
As much as the mathematician is sure of not being mistaken about the notion of equality, as far as he pushes his demonstrations and his calculations; so much the moral being is certain of not losing his way with regard to the notion of good and evil, since this notion, which he carries written in his soul, is none other than equality itself.
Do you understand now what conscience is, and this absolute command it makes to itself to respect others, as it wants to be respected? Do you understand why the principle of Justice must be sought exclusively in humanity, the idea of a revelation being incompatible with that of a Justice in progress?
Just as lucidity is a need for the eye, fidelity a need for the memory, accuracy of judgment a need for the reason, science a need for the mind, beauty a need for the heart, reciprocity a need for love, because it is of the essence of every organ and every faculty to find its well-being in the plenitude of its function, its misfortune in lessening; likewise equality is a need for the conscience, it is its own happiness, its right, its duty, its necessity, its obligation, all these words are synonymous. Beyond that it suffers, it complains; it assails you with remorse, it tyrannizes you. What more can I say?
Armed with its incorruptible criterion, consciousness enters into action as soon as it is placed in the conditions that require it. As the eye sees as soon as it opens in an enlightened environment, as the heart loves as soon as it is provoked by a pleasant object, so consciousness, as soon as it is invited to do so by a person-to-person relationship, raises its voice: This is just and that unjust, this is good and that bad; and no force of will, no revolt of passions can silence it. Of all the spontaneities that together form our soul, it is the most powerful; all the others serve as its instrument, but it is the servant of none; we can bear the loss of those, we cannot bear the loss of this one. What can you once again wish for that is more positive, more categorical, more clear?
Mais l’imagination peut se tromper sur les qualités des choses : dans ce cas la Justice, sans changer de formule, procède à un autre partage. Rien, à mon avis, n’honore plus l’humanité, ne témoigne mieux de sa haute dignité, que cette révision ; rien, au contraire, n’accuserait plus énergiquement la Providence, s’il fallait admettre qu’en nous imposant la Justice elle nous eût laissés sans la moindre instruction. L’ironie de Pascal à l’adresse de la législation humaine, erreur en deçà des Pyrénées, vérité au delà, tombe directement sur la religion. En essayant, pour la réalisation de mon droit, de toutes les hypothèses, je prouve mon autonomie ; la révélation, qui me laisse aller et ne m’offre que ses sacrements et ses grâces, fait voir son impuissance. L’homme est tout désormais ; la Divinité, plus rien.
XVIII. — Here, then, is Pyrrhonism vanquished on the first two questions: the reality of the juridical sense, and the certainty of the distinction between good and evil.
As he is intelligent, loving, industrious, artistic, man is worthy, he is just. Justice is in him like all the other faculties, manifesting itself in its own way, and with a certainty that errors of application do not in any way invalidate.
And as the juridical faculty is clearly distinguished from the intelligent, industrial, artistic faculty, so the notion of good and evil that is proper to it is not vain, fleeting, variable, as has been said; it does not fluctuate according to the temperament of the people, the suggestions of the climate, the good pleasure of the revelators: it is perfectly clear, distinct, freed from all confusion. For it does not result from the definition, impossible to give, of variable facts and contradictory acts, but from the definition that consciousness makes of itself, when it takes, if I dare say so, its own measure. to apply it to others.
What is there, please, better defined, more intelligible, more fixed, more clear, less susceptible to ambiguity, than equality of respect?
As much as the mathematician is sure of not being mistaken about the notion of equality, as far as he pushes his demonstrations and his calculations; so much the moral being is certain of not losing his way with regard to the notion of good and evil, since this notion, which he carries written in his soul, is none other than equality itself.
Do you understand now what conscience is, and this absolute command it makes to itself to respect others, as it wants to be respected? Do you understand why the principle of Justice must be sought exclusively in humanity, the idea of a revelation being incompatible with that of a Justice in progress?
Just as lucidity is a need for the eye, fidelity a need for the memory, accuracy of judgment a need for the reason, science a need for the mind, beauty a need for the heart, reciprocity a need for love, because it is of the essence of every organ and every faculty to find its well-being in the plenitude of its function, its misfortune in lessening; likewise equality is a need for the conscience, it is its own happiness, its right, its duty, its necessity, its obligation, all these words are synonymous. Beyond that it suffers, it complains; it assails you with remorse and tyrannizes you. What more can I say?
Armed with its incorruptible criterion, consciousness enters into action as soon as it is placed in the conditions that require it. As the eye sees as soon as it opens in an enlightened environment, as the heart loves as soon as it is provoked by a pleasant object, so consciousness, as soon as it is invited to do so by a person-to-person relationship, raises its voice: This is just and that unjust, this is good and that bad; and no force of will, no revolt of passions can silence it. Of all the spontaneities that together form our soul, it is the most powerful; all the others serve as its instrument, but it is the servant of none; we can bear the loss of those, we cannot bear the loss of this one. What can you once again wish for that is more positive, more categorical, more clear?
But the imagination can be mistaken about the qualities of things: in this case Justice, as soon as it has recognized the error, proceeds, without changing its maxim, to another division. Nothing, in my opinion, honors humanity more, testifies better to its high dignity, than this revision; nothing, on the contrary, would accuse Providence more energetically, if it were necessary to admit that by imposing justice on us it would have left us without the slightest instruction. Pascal’s irony addressed to human legislation, error on this side of the Pyrenees, truth beyond, falls directly on religion. By trying, for the realization of my right, of all the hypotheses, I prove my autonomy; revelation, which lets me go and offers me only its sacraments and its graces, shows its impotence. Man is everything henceforth; Divinity, nothing.
XVIII
The situation thus established, we no longer have to ask ourselves, as before, if there is a morality for humanity, if virtue and crime are arbitrary determinations, Justice a vain prejudice.
The problem is reversed: it is a question of knowing how, apart from involuntary errors, which do not affect the conscience, man can become culpable; how this lofty spontaneity, consciousness, so often remains impassive; how, while society should be composed only of the just, if man obeyed, only with the fidelity of an animal, the most powerful of his attractions, there are so many scoundrels, so many cowards?
But this presupposes that man has the power not to follow the instigations of his conscience, and to suspend in his heart of hearts the action of Justice. What is this new power? How are we to explain, in the wisdom of nature, this new conflict?
Thus, we escape from one difficulty only to fall into another. The problem of Justice and the distinction between good and evil resolved, there immediately presents itself that of free will and the existence of sin.
XIX. — The situation thus established, we no longer have to ask ourselves, as before, if there is a morality for humanity, if virtue and crime are arbitrary determinations, Justice a vain prejudice.
The problem is reversed: it is a question of knowing how, apart from involuntary errors, which do not affect the conscience, man can become culpable; how this lofty spontaneity, consciousness, so often remains impassive; how, while society should be composed only of the just, if man obeyed, only with the fidelity of an animal, the most powerful of his attractions, there are so many scoundrels, so many cowards?
But this presupposes that man has the power not to follow the instigations of his conscience, and to suspend in his heart of hearts the action of Justice. What is this new power? How are we to explain, in the wisdom of nature, this new conflict? Thus, we escape from one difficulty only to fall into another. The problem of Justice and the distinction between good and evil resolved, there immediately presents itself that of free will and the existence of sin.
CHAPTER IV.
Free will. — Advance of the idea.
XIX
Here is the Gordian knot of ethics, which religion has always presented as the deepest of its dogmas, and which modern eclecticism, with the fatuity that distinguishes it, simply does not perceive.
Ce que je vais essayer serait la plus téméraire des entreprises, si la loi du développement philosophique n’en avait fait la chose la plus attendue, la question la plus mûre, pour laquelle il suffit désormais de la lumière de l’histoire.
Il en est des idées comme des choses : elles ne se révèlent pas instantanément dans leur plénitude (ax. 6) ; comme des astres qui se lèvent dans le firmament de la pensée, elles ont leur période d’émergence ; qui sait si elles n’ont pas aussi leur couchant ?
Among the religions, Christianity is the one that affirms liberty most energetically: it had to be. Without speaking of the great question of slavery that gave impetus to messianic ideas, it is liberty that, according to Christian theology, is the cause of evil; it is through it that sin is made possible, the intervention of God and of grace necessary. Thus liberty, well or ill known, is the secret motive for the establishment of worship, the constitution of priesthoods and the formation of Churches. Without this power of misfortune, man, having preserved his primitive innocence, would realize on earth the life of the blessed; he would need no atonement or discipline.
In spite of this immense role that liberty plays in the economy of Christianity, one must not believe that it has been for theologians an intelligible principle, a definite thing, falling under the appreciation of common sense. Oh, no: liberty, like grace, is for the theologian an article of faith; it is the necessary postulate of revelation, serving to account for the fall, and alternatively to motivate redemption and the government of the Church, a mystery serving to explain other mysteries.
Philosophy, more enterprising, has endeavored to interpret this mystery. But, while theology, giving its mysteries for what they are, that is to say, for being impenetrable, remains firm in its doctrine, philosophy, in wishing to define liberty, has constantly ended by denying it: to such an extent that among the philosophers who have approached the question, one cannot say which have done the most harm to freedom, those who have attacked it of those who have thought to defend it. No doubt there is no lack among the philosophers of people who believe in free will, but we have not yet met people who explain it; and I repeat it, those who imagine themselves to prove it best are usually those who compromise it the most.
This singular turn, in a debate of such high interest, is already in itself a very remarkable fact, especially since it does not come from the ineptitude of the thinkers, but from the nature of the thing. This will also be the point of view from which we will proceed with this study.
CHAPTER IV.
Free will. — Advance of the idea.
XX. — Here is the Gordian knot of ethics, which religion has always presented as the deepest of its dogmas, and which modern eclecticism, with the fatuity that distinguishes it, simply does not perceive.
What we are about to attempt would be the most daring of undertakings, if the law of philosophical development had not made it the most expected thing, the most mature question, for which, in our opinion, the light of history now suffices.
It is with ideas as with things: they are not instantly revealed in their plenitude (ax. 7); like stars rising in the firmament of thought, they have their period of emergence; who knows if they don’t also have their sunset?
Among the religions, Christianity is the one that affirms liberty most energetically: it had to be. Without speaking of the great question of slavery that gave impetus to messianic ideas, it is liberty that, according to Christian theology, is the cause of evil; it is through it that sin is made possible, the intervention of God and of grace necessary. Thus liberty, well or ill known, is the secret motive for the establishment of worship, the constitution of priesthoods and the formation of Churches. Without this power of misfortune, man, having preserved his primitive innocence, would realize on earth the life of the blessed; he would need no atonement or discipline.
In spite of this immense role that liberty plays in the economy of Christianity, one must not believe that it has been for theologians an intelligible principle, a definite thing, falling under the appreciation of common sense. Oh, no: liberty, like grace, is for the theologian an article of faith; it is the necessary postulate of revelation, serving to account for the fall, and alternatively to motivate redemption and the government of the Church, a mystery serving to explain other mysteries.
Philosophy, more enterprising, has endeavored to interpret this mystery. But, while theology, giving its mysteries for what they are, that is to say, for being impenetrable, remains firm in its doctrine, philosophy, in wishing to define liberty, has constantly ended by denying it: to such an extent that among the philosophers who have approached the question, one cannot say which have done the most harm to freedom, those who have attacked it of those who have thought to defend it. No doubt there is no lack among the philosophers of people who believe in free will, but we have not yet met people who explain it; and I repeat it, those who imagine themselves to prove it best are usually those who compromise it the most.
This singular turn, in a debate of such high interest, is already in itself a very remarkable fact, especially since it does not come from the ineptitude of the thinkers, but from the nature of the thing. This will also be the point of view from which we will proceed with this study.
XX
Descartes.
To render more intelligible the theory of the free will, which he had first exposed in his fourth Meditation, Descartes, answering the Sixth objections no. 6, takes as the subject of his hypothesis God, in whom all the faculties, liberty like the others, are raised to infinity. Descartes, occupying himself with psychology, acts like the naturalist who considers an animalcule under the microscope: what the weakness of his sight does not allow him to see in himself will become perceptible in God, through magnification.
What then is liberty in God, that is to say, conceived in its highest power, a perfect, complete liberty, without any mixture of determinism or influence?
“God,” replies Descartes, “in doing all things, has acted with the fullest, the most sovereign independence: it is repugnant that no idea of the good, of the true, of the beautiful, had been the object of his understanding before the nature of this idea had been constituted as such by the determination of his will. And I am not talking about a simple priority of time, but much more: I am saying that it was impossible for such an idea to have preceded the determination of the will of God by a priority of order or nature, or of reasoned reason, as it is called in the school, so that this idea of the good induced God to elect one rather than the other. For example, it was not because he saw that it was better for the world to be created in time than from eternity that he wanted to create it in time; and he did not want the three angles of a triangle to be equal to two right angles, because he knew that it could not be done otherwise; etc But, on the contrary, because he wanted to create the world in time, for that he is thus better than if he had been created from eternity; and especially since he wanted the three angles of a triangle to be necessarily equal to two right angles, for that this is now true. And it cannot be otherwise, and so with all other things. And thus an entire indifference to God is a very great proof of his omnipotence.”
In short, the idea in God comes after the will, not the will after the idea: otherwise, observes Descartes, liberty, which in God must be infinite, would be null.
Thus, very different from Plato, who makes ideas co-eternal with God, and who finds in them the principle of all divine determinations, Descartes maintains that ideas themselves are a creation of the divine arbiter, who neither can nor should can be determined except by himself. If it pleased God that the three angles of a triangle ceased to be equal to two right angles, it would be so, says Descartes. So that what seems to our limited intelligences necessary by an absolute necessity is never, for the infinite intelligence, anything but of a relative truth. And if we asked Descartes what use God’s free will can be in the government of Providence, once the world of ideas and beings has been constituted by him as we see it, Descartes could answer, in agreement with the Church: To work miracles! This is certainly the most complete idea, if it were possible to stick to it, that one could conceive of liberty.
From this ideal conception of free will, Descartes passes to realized liberty, such as it appears to us in man, the freest, the only truly free creature. For him, says Descartes, things no longer happen in the same way as in the divine understanding:
“Man, already finding the nature of God’s established and determined goodness and truth, and his will being such that it can naturally lead only to what is good, it is manifest that he embraces the more freely the good and the true as he knows them more obviously, and that he is never indifferent except when he is unaware of what is better or more true, or at least when that does not appear to him so clearly that there can be no doubt about it; and thus the indifference that befits the liberty of man is very different from that which befits the liberty of God. (Response to the sixth objections, No. vi.)
“And certainly,” he had said, “divine grace and natural knowledge, far from diminishing my liberty, instead increase and strengthen it; so that this indifference that I feel when I am not swept to one side rather than another by the weight of any reason is the lowest degree of liberty, and makes a defect appear in knowledge rather than a perfection in the will. For if I always knew clearly what is true and what is good, I would never be at pains to deliberate what judgment and what choice I should make, and thus I would be entirely free without ever being indifferent. (4th Meditation.)
All this amounts to saying that liberty is a spontaneity that consists, in God, in producing all things, even the ideas and laws of his understanding, when and as he pleases, and without being determined by any internal or external necessity, seeing that the will of God, his pivotal faculty, the Father, is prior and superior, not only to the order of the world, but even to the intellectual order. In man, on the contrary, liberty consists in embracing the law of good and truth, that is, the law of the natural and supernatural system of which he is a part, as the idea of it is given, either by revelations from without or by the interior help of grace.
Toute considération d’un motif, même d’une loi de géométrie, fait cesser en Dieu la liberté ; au rebours, toute suspension des idées et des influences, soit physiques, soit hyperphysiques, la fait cesser dans l’homme.
After this, we can very well understand that Descartes defines liberty in God as the power to do or not to do, to deny or affirm, to pursue or flee a thing. God, whose spontaneity is infinite, prior to all ideas, capable of exercising itself at will in time and in eternity, God, I say, according to this definition of his spontaneity, is free.
But it is not the same with human spontaneity, which, engaged in the system of creation and divine decrees, of which it is also a part, consists only in following what nature and the Creator propose to it, so Descartes is he careful to say that, as for what is of us,
“Liberty consists _only_ in the fact that, in order to affirm or deny, to pursue or flee a thing that the understanding proposes to us, we act in such a way that we do not feel that any external force constrains us.”
After this explanation, it is no longer possible to have regard either for the liberty of indifference, which is only the cessation of our spontaneity, produced by the suspension of the causes which act on it, or for the inner feeling that Descartes claims that we have of our freedom, and that he presents as the irrefutable proof that it exists, since this feeling, being none other than that of the conformity of our actions with the laws of our conscience and our understanding, which are those of God and nature, can serve just as well to prove that we are not free.
As a result, man is a spontaneity governed by a legislation that envelops him; he is said to be free when nothing prevents him from obeying its laws: this is all that emerges from Descartes’ argument. As for true liberty, free will, it is an ideal faculty whose realization is found in God, but which in man is useless, and appears only as a power of negation with regard to some particular cause from which he tends to free himself, without his ever being able to free himself from the ensemble of the causes that determine and press him.
What Descartes calls liberty of indifference, by a remnant of regard for prejudice, is only a state of reason, a sort of mathematical point, serving to mark the indivisible moment when this spontaneity, receiving on neither side a preponderant impulse, would remain, by hypothesis, at rest. The free man, according to Descartes, is the man who is between life and nothingness.
XXI. — Descartes. To render more intelligible the theory of the free will, which he had first exposed in his fourth Meditation, Descartes, answering the Sixth objections no. 6, takes as the subject of his hypothesis God, in whom all the faculties, liberty like the others, are raised to infinity. Descartes, occupying himself with psychology, acts like the naturalist who considers an animalcule under the microscope: what the weakness of his sight does not allow him to see in himself will become perceptible in God, through magnification.
What then is liberty in God, that is to say, conceived in its highest power, a perfect, complete liberty, without any mixture of determinism or influence?
“God,” replies Descartes, “in doing all things, has acted with the fullest, the most sovereign independence: it is repugnant that no idea of the good, of the true, of the beautiful, had been the object of his understanding before the nature of this idea had been constituted as such by the determination of his will. And I am not talking about a simple priority of time, but much more: I am saying that it was impossible for such an idea to have preceded the determination of the will of God by a priority of order or nature, or of reasoned reason, as it is called in the school, so that this idea of the good induced God to elect one rather than the other. For example, it was not because he saw that it was better for the world to be created in time than from eternity that he wanted to create it in time; and he did not want the three angles of a triangle to be equal to two right angles, because he knew that it could not be done otherwise; etc But, on the contrary, because he wanted to create the world in time, for that he is thus better than if he had been created from eternity; and especially since he wanted the three angles of a triangle to be necessarily equal to two right angles, for that this is now true. And it cannot be otherwise, and so with all other things. And thus an entire indifference to God is a very great proof of his omnipotence.”
In short, the idea in God comes after the will, not the will after the idea: otherwise, observes Descartes, liberty, which in God must be infinite, would be null.
Thus, very different from Plato, who makes ideas co-eternal with God, and who finds in them the principle of all divine determinations, Descartes maintains that ideas themselves are a creation of the divine arbiter, who neither can nor should can be determined except by himself. If it pleased God that the three angles of a triangle ceased to be equal to two right angles, it would be so, says Descartes. So that what seems to our limited intelligences necessary by an absolute necessity is never, for the infinite intelligence, anything but of a relative truth. And if we asked Descartes what use God’s free will can be in the government of Providence, once the world of ideas and beings has been constituted by him as we see it, Descartes could answer, in agreement with the Church: To work miracles! This is certainly the most complete idea, if it were possible to stick to it, that one could conceive of liberty.
From this ideal conception of free will, Descartes passes to realized liberty, such as it appears to us in man, the freest, the only truly free creature. For him, says Descartes, things no longer happen in the same way as in the divine understanding:
“Man, already finding the nature of God’s established and determined goodness and truth, and his will being such that it can naturally lead only to what is good, it is manifest that he embraces the more freely the good and the true as he knows them more obviously, and that he is never indifferent except when he is unaware of what is better or more true, or at least when that does not appear to him so clearly that there can be no doubt about it; and thus the indifference that befits the liberty of man is very different from that which befits the liberty of God. (Response to the sixth objections, No. vi.)
“And certainly,” he had said, “divine grace and natural knowledge, far from diminishing my liberty, instead increase and strengthen it; so that this indifference that I feel when I am not swept to one side rather than another by the weight of any reason is the lowest degree of liberty, and makes a defect appear in knowledge rather than a perfection in the will. For if I always knew clearly what is true and what is good, I would never be at pains to deliberate what judgment and what choice I should make, and thus I would be entirely free without ever being indifferent. (4th Meditation.)
All this amounts to saying that liberty is a spontaneity that consists, in God, in producing all things, even the ideas and laws of his understanding, when and as he pleases, and without being determined by any internal or external necessity, seeing that the will of God, his pivotal faculty, the Father, is prior and superior, not only to the order of the world, but even to the intellectual order. In man, on the contrary, liberty consists in embracing the law of good and truth, that is, the law of the natural and supernatural system of which he is a part, as the idea of it is given, either by revelations from without or by the interior help of grace.
Any consideration of a motive, even of a law of geometry, puts an end to liberty in God; conversely, any suspension of ideas and graces causes it to cease in man.
After this, we can very well understand that Descartes defines liberty in God as the power to do or not to do, to deny or affirm, to pursue or flee a thing. God, whose spontaneity is infinite, prior to all ideas, capable of exercising itself at will in time and in eternity, God, I say, according to this definition of his spontaneity, is free.
But it is not the same with human spontaneity, which, engaged in the system of creation and divine decrees, of which it is also a part, consists only in following what nature and the Creator propose to it, so Descartes is he careful to say that, as for what is of us,
“Liberty consists only in the fact that, in order to affirm or deny, to pursue or flee a thing that the understanding proposes to us, we act in such a way that we do not feel that any external force constrains us.”
After this explanation, it is no longer possible to have regard either for the liberty of indifference, which is only the cessation of our spontaneity, produced by the suspension of the causes which act on it, or for the inner feeling that Descartes claims that we have of our freedom, and that he presents as the irrefutable proof that it exists, since this feeling, being none other than that of the conformity of our actions with the laws of our conscience and our understanding, which are those of God and nature, can serve just as well to prove that we are not free.
As a result, man is a spontaneity governed by a legislation that envelops him; he is said to be free when nothing prevents him from obeying its laws: this is all that emerges from Descartes’ argument. As for true liberty, free will, it is an ideal faculty whose realization is found in God, but which in man is useless, and appears only as a power of negation with regard to some particular cause from which he tends to free himself, without his ever being able to free himself from the ensemble of the causes that determine and press him.
What Descartes calls liberty of indifference, by a remnant of regard for prejudice, is only a state of reason, a sort of mathematical point, serving to mark the indivisible moment when this spontaneity, receiving on neither side a preponderant impulse, would remain, by hypothesis, at rest. The free man, according to Descartes, is the man who is between life and nothingness.
XXI
Spinoza.
Spinoza denies free will with as much energy as Descartes had put into asserting it. For that, he just needs to re-establish order in Descartes’ thought, and to draw the consequences.
You say, Spinoza observes to Descartes, that in God acting necessarily precedes thinking, that it is repugnant that the sovereign Being was determined at creation by any idea of good and truth. I think like you. But then what good is intelligence in God? To lend him an understanding is to make him in the image of man: you must reject this anthropomorphism. For the same reason, what good is a will? One might as well take literally what is said in Scripture, that God gets angry, that he then repents, that he has feet, hands, a face, a behind; that he sniffs the smoke of the sacrifices, etc. As for the prophecies and miracles, by which God, creator and orderer of the world, puts himself in communication with man, attests his power, and performs an act of freedom, Spinoza rejects them. so that the liberty of God, remaining without exercise, no longer even has a pretext for existence.
Two things only, says this philosopher, result from the notion or essence of God: first, that he exists, that is to say, he is the unique and necessary substance; second, that he develops into an infinity of attributes, of which we can only know two, extension and thought. As extension, God produces bodies and movements; as thought, he produces souls and their ideas. But he himself is neither body, nor soul, nor life, nor understanding. He is the substance inaccessible to the senses, which eternally produces all things by its activity. What you call liberty in God is therefore nothing other than his infinite spontaneity, a spontaneity freed from all foreign determination without any doubt, but which determines itself by the necessity of its nature.
The liberty of God, in a word, is necessity itself: summa libertas, summa necessitas.
To establish his theory, Spinoza proceeds in geometric fashion, as Descartes had given the example in his Response to the Second Objections; so that one can say that everything in Spinoza, principle, ideas, method, is from Descartes.
So far, it is impossible to see what the Cartesians could reply to the Spinozists. In a necessary being, everything is necessary, especially since this being is unique, since there is nothing outside of it or within it that can provide it with the alternative of doing or not doing, affirming or denying, a faculty that essentially constitutes the free will, according to the words of Descartes himself. In God, liberty being able to arise only from the motives furnished to him by his creatures, that is to say his modes, implies contradiction.
Spinoza does not confine himself to the theory of necessary Being; he follows his master from point to point, and right to the end. Descartes, after positing the existence of God, continues with the famous distinction between spirit and matter: the second book of Spinoza’s Ethics is entitled On the Soul. Descartes, applying his philosophy to the conduct of human life, had composed a treatise on the passions: the 3rd book of Ethics is entitled, On the Passions. In a word, if Descartes had not thought, Spinoza would not have written; and the reason is simple, Spinoza’s system is none other than that of Descartes, pruned, corrected, better linked, made more complete and more consistent, by a genius of extreme vigor, who, while following a track, deploys an unparalleled originality.
Spinoza having thus demonstrated, according to Descartes, that liberty cannot take place in the necessary Being, all the more denies it in man: it is his master who furnishes him with his arguments.
Descartes, in fact, for whom human free will was already reduced to so little, had believed that, at least, this little is sufficiently demonstrated to us by the inner feeling. I feel that I am free, says Descartes; nothing can go against this testimony of my conscience: what I feel, I am.
Take care, Bayle, Leibnitz and Spinoza reply to him at the same time: you could legitimately reason in this way when it was a question of your existence, because doubt and nothingness imply contradiction; you cannot reason in the same way about your liberty, which you have not defined and which you do not know: all you can say is that you feel yourself acting without obstacle and without constraint, but that you do not feel the causes that determine you.
Now, adds Spinoza, you are always, unwittingly, determined; I prove it by the theory of God and creation. Everything is necessary, in God by the necessity of his nature, in man by the necessity of the divine nature on which all being is founded, and of which we are, in our body and in our soul, only a double mode.
And Spinoza has no difficulty in showing that, whether we consider the divine essence, or whether we consider the order of the universe, the nature of the soul, its union with the bod , the influences, passions, motives and motives of all kinds that besiege it and make it move, it is impossible to find anything that justifies this conception of free will, which universal prejudice demands. The soul is a spiritual automaton; such is Spinoza’s last word.
XXII. — Spinoza.
Spinoza denies free will with as much energy as Descartes had put into asserting it. For that, he just needs to re-establish order in Descartes’ thought, and to draw the consequences.
You say, Spinoza observes to Descartes, that in God acting necessarily precedes thinking, that it is repugnant that the sovereign Being was determined at creation by any idea of good and truth. I think like you. But then what good is intelligence in God? To lend him an understanding is to make him in the image of man: you must reject this anthropomorphism. For the same reason, what good is a will? One might as well take literally what is said in Scripture, that God gets angry, that he then repents, that he has feet, hands, a face, a behind; that he sniffs the smoke of the sacrifices, etc. As for the prophecies and miracles, by which God, creator and orderer of the world, puts himself in communication with man, attests his power, and performs an act of freedom, Spinoza rejects them. so that the liberty of God, remaining without exercise, no longer even has a pretext for existence.
Two things only, says this philosopher, result from the notion or essence of God: first, that he exists, that is to say, he is the unique and necessary substance; second, that he develops into an infinity of attributes, of which we can only know two, extension and thought. As extension, God produces bodies and movements; as thought, he produces souls and their ideas. But he himself is neither body, nor soul, nor life, nor understanding. He is the substance inaccessible to the senses, which eternally produces all things by its activity. What you call liberty in God is therefore nothing other than his infinite spontaneity, a spontaneity freed from all foreign determination without any doubt, but which determines itself by the necessity of its nature.
The liberty of God, in a word, is necessity itself: summa libertas, summa necessitas.
To establish his theory, Spinoza proceeds in geometric fashion, as Descartes had given the example in his Response to the Second Objections; so that one can say that everything in Spinoza, principle, ideas, method, is from Descartes.
So far, it is impossible to see what the Cartesians could reply to the Spinozists. In a necessary being, everything is necessary, especially since this being is unique, since there is nothing outside of it or within it that can provide it with the alternative of doing or not doing, affirming or denying, a faculty that essentially constitutes the free will, according to the words of Descartes himself. In God, liberty being able to arise only from the motives furnished to him by his creatures, that is to say his modes, implies contradiction.
Spinoza does not confine himself to the theory of necessary Being; he follows his master from point to point, and right to the end. Descartes, after positing the existence of God, continues with the famous distinction between spirit and matter: the second book of Spinoza’s Ethics is entitled On the Soul. Descartes, applying his philosophy to the conduct of human life, had composed a treatise on the passions: the 3rd book of Ethics is entitled, On the Passions. In a word, if Descartes had not thought, Spinoza would not have written; and the reason is simple, Spinoza’s system is none other than that of Descartes, pruned, corrected, better linked, made more complete and more consistent, by a genius of extreme vigor, who, while following a track, deploys an unparalleled originality.
Spinoza having thus demonstrated, according to Descartes, that liberty cannot take place in the necessary Being, all the more denies it in man: it is his master who furnishes him with his arguments.
Descartes, in fact, for whom human free will was already reduced to so little, had believed that, at least, this little is sufficiently demonstrated to us by the inner feeling. I feel that I am free, says Descartes; nothing can go against this testimony of my conscience: what I feel, I am.
Take care, Bayle, Leibnitz and Spinoza reply to him at the same time: you could legitimately reason in this way when it was a question of your existence, because doubt and nothingness imply contradiction; you cannot reason in the same way about your liberty, which you have not defined and which you do not know: all you can say is that you feel yourself acting without obstacle and without constraint, but that you do not feel the causes that determine you.
Now, adds Spinoza, you are always, unwittingly, determined; I prove it by the theory of God and creation. Everything is necessary, in God by the necessity of his nature, in man by the necessity of the divine nature on which all being is founded, and of which we are, in our body and in our soul, only a double mode.
And Spinoza has no difficulty in showing that, whether we consider the divine essence, or whether we consider the order of the universe, the nature of the soul, its union with the bod , the influences, passions, motives and motives of all kinds that besiege it and make it move, it is impossible to find anything that justifies this conception of free will, which universal prejudice demands. The soul is a spiritual automaton; such is Spinoza’s last word.
XXII
Spinoza is therefore right against Descartes, and by the reason of Descartes himself; is he finally right? No, because he contradicts himself, and no one will escape the contradiction.
Spinoza, following the example of Descartes, composed his Ethics expressly to teach man to conduct himself by the contemplation and practice of eternal truths, to free himself, by this means, from the slavery of the passions, in which incessantly precipitates his imperfect condition, and to rise to the perfection of his being, which is union in God, beatitude, salvation, or, as Descartes said, liberty.
Isn’t it strange that after having explained the universe, the soul, the passions, sin, misery, by the development of divine necessity, Spinoza invites us to come out of this misery, to wash away this sin, to combat these passions, to finally ascend the current of necessity, as if, against necessity, we could do something! And that in the name of this same necessity, as if necessity could be undone!…
You have to see it to believe it; and how do Spinoza’s translators and critics not see it? The Ethics, which everyone knows as a theory of necessity in God, is at the same time a theory of man’s free will. The word isn’t there, and it’s fair to say that the author doesn’t believe it; but since when do we judge a philosopher exclusively on his own words?
Spinoza explains in his own way by what degradation of the rays of the divine sun the beings that he necessarily creates become less and less perfect, the souls more and more dark, their ideas less and less adequate, and the passions to which they are subject more and more hazy. It is a whole metaphysical theory of the fall, which would do honor to the Christian gnosis. This first part of his work carried out, he shows how the same souls, by virtue of the activity that is proper to them, and which in his system cannot be fundamentally other than that of God, must rise from their misery and tend towards the sovereign good: a theory of rehabilitation that has nothing to envy to that of the Orthodox. I will not criticize this double movement, one that expresses, if I dare say so, the dissemination of souls out of infinity, the other, their reentry into infinity. I take the system as it is, with all the corrections that one would like to make: it still remains that in order to effect this return one must suppose in the system, present everywhere, a force of reaction equal to the action. I ask what is this force. Action is necessity: Spinoza demonstrates this. What name does he want me to give to the reaction, of which he supposes man capable?
“In the preceding propositions,” he says, “I have brought together all the remedies for the passions, that is to say, all that the soul, considered solely in itself, can dopower of the soul over the passions consists: first, in the very knowledge of the passions; second, in the separation that the soul effects between such and such a passion and the thought of a confusedly imagined external cause; third, in the progress of time, which makes those of our affections which relate to things of which we understand superior to the affections that relate to things of which we have only confused ideas; fourth, in the multitude of causes that sustain those of our passions that relate to the general properties of things or to God; fifth, finally, in the order in which the soul can dispose and enchain its passions. The power of the soul is determined solely by the degree of knowledge it possesses, and its powerlesness or its passivity by the mere deprivation of knowledge, or by what causes it to have inadequate ideas; whence it follows that the soul that suffers the most is the soul that is constituted in the greater part of its being by inadequate ideas, and, on the contrary, the soul that acts the most is that which is constituted in the greater part of its being by adequate ideas. (Ethics, book. v. prop. 20, scholia; trans. by M. Saisset.)
It is not possible to refute oneself more completely than Spinoza does here. What we have just read is nothing other than the history of the development of liberty; but, because it pleased him to place the initial point of this development in an adequate idea, Spinoza imagines that this liberty, always increasing, is null. It is therefore at the very origin of this genesis that we must grasp Spinoza’s reasoning, if we want to show the weakness of his system.
En dernière analyse, dit Spinoza, la puissance de l’âme se réduit à la connaissance, ce qu’il y a de moins libre, de plus fatal. Mais, observerai-je, pour connaître, il faut pouvoir connaître, il faut penser ; pour avoir une connaissance adéquate, il faut une puissance de réflexion égale à l’impression reçue : Spinoza ne sortira pas de là. La puissance est la condition préalable et productrice de la connaissance ; elle n’en est pas l’effet : cela impliquerait contradiction. Or, il est de la nature de toute puissance de tendre à l’infini par l’absorption de ce qui l’entoure ; et quand Spinoza nous montre la puissance de l’âme se développant proportionnellement au degré de la connaissance, il ne fait autre chose, sans qu’il s’en doute, que raconter le progrès de la liberté aux dépens de la nécessité qu’elle se subordonne.
The whole system of Spinoza therefore rests on a begging of the question: it is at the center of the soul that he places the initiative of reflection which, by a chain of gradually acquired ideas and spontaneously accomplished purifications, must lead the soul to the sovereign good, ad Deum qui dedit illam. I therefore ask Spinoza how, if everything happens by divine necessity, after the vibrations of this necessity, more and more weakened, have given birth to souls engaged in the servitude of the passions, how, I say, does it happen that these souls find, by means of their adequate ideas, more strength to return to God than they received at the moment of their existence, if by themselves they are not free forces?…
In Christianity, there is, to explain this rehabilitation, or, to put it better, this ascent of souls towards infinity, a new action of God: it is grace, a new creation, complement of the first creation. Spinoza suppresses grace, after having destroyed liberty, and he replaces them both with adequate ideas. This is what you call dry communion, the hypothesis of liberty while waiting for liberty.
Thus, Descartes affirms liberty, and his whole argument tends to destroy it; Spinoza denies it, and his system invincibly presupposes it. This power that he supposes of the soul to return to God with the help of its adequate ideas, is evidently nothing other than liberty. Both, with a power that will never be surpassed, after having raised to the ideal, one free will, the other necessity, end in an equal contradiction.
XXIII. — Spinoza is therefore right against Descartes, and by the reason of Descartes himself; is he finally right? No, because he contradicts himself, and no one will escape the contradiction.
Spinoza, following the example of Descartes, composed his Ethics expressly to teach man to conduct himself by the contemplation and practice of eternal truths, to free himself, by this means, from the slavery of the passions, in which incessantly precipitates his imperfect condition, and to rise to the perfection of his being, which is union in God, beatitude, salvation, or, as Descartes said, liberty.
Isn’t it strange that after having explained the universe, the soul, the passions, sin, misery, by the development of divine necessity, Spinoza invites us to come out of this misery, to wash away this sin, to combat these passions, to finally ascend the current of necessity, as if, against necessity, we could do something! And that in the name of this same necessity, as if necessity could be undone!
You have to see it to believe it; and how do Spinoza’s translators and critics not see it? The Ethics, which everyone knows as a theory of necessity in God, is at the same time a theory of man’s free will. The word isn’t there, and it’s fair to say that the author doesn’t believe it; but since when do we judge a philosopher exclusively on his own words?
Spinoza explains in his own way by what degradation of the rays of the divine sun the beings that he necessarily creates become less and less perfect, the souls more and more dark, their ideas less and less adequate, and the passions to which they are subject more and more hazy. It is a whole metaphysical theory of the fall, which would do honor to the Christian gnosis. This first part of his work carried out, he shows how the same souls, by virtue of the activity that is proper to them, and which in his system cannot be fundamentally other than that of God, must rise from their misery and tend towards the sovereign good: a theory of rehabilitation that has nothing to envy to that of the Orthodox. I will not criticize this double movement, one that expresses, if I dare say so, the dissemination of souls out of infinity, the other, their reentry into infinity. I take the system as it is, with all the corrections that one would like to make: it still remains that in order to effect this return one must suppose in the system, present everywhere, a force of reaction equal to the action. I ask what is this force. Action is necessity: Spinoza demonstrates this. What name does he want me to give to the reaction, of which he supposes man capable?
“In the preceding propositions,” he says, “I have brought together all the remedies for the passions, that is to say, all that the soul, considered solely in itself, can dopower of the soul over the passions consists: first, in the very knowledge of the passions; second, in the separation that the soul effects between such and such a passion and the thought of a confusedly imagined external cause; third, in the progress of time, which makes those of our affections which relate to things of which we understand superior to the affections that relate to things of which we have only confused ideas; fourth, in the multitude of causes that sustain those of our passions that relate to the general properties of things or to God; fifth, finally, in the order in which the soul can dispose and enchain its passions. The power of the soul is determined solely by the degree of knowledge it possesses, and its powerlesness or its passivity by the mere deprivation of knowledge, or by what causes it to have inadequate ideas; whence it follows that the soul that suffers the most is the soul that is constituted in the greater part of its being by inadequate ideas, and, on the contrary, the soul that acts the most is that which is constituted in the greater part of its being by adequate ideas. (Ethics, book. v. prop. 20, scholia; trans. by M. Saisset.)
It is not possible to refute oneself more completely than Spinoza does here. What we have just read is nothing other than the history of the development of liberty; but, because it pleased him to place the initial point of this development in an adequate idea, Spinoza imagines that this liberty, always increasing, is null. It is therefore at the very origin of this genesis that we must grasp Spinoza’s reasoning, if we want to show the contradiction of his system.
In the final analysis, says Spinoza, the power of the soul is reduced to knowledge, which is the least free, the most fatal. But, I will observe, in order to know, one must be able to know, one must think; to have adequate knowledge, a power of reflection equal to the impression received is necessary; to act as a consequence of the adequate idea and in proportion to this idea, there must be in the soul a power of determination that, making it mistress of itself, allows it to go so far, and no further: Spinoza will not escape from this. Power is the precondition and producer of knowledge; it is not its effect: that would imply a contradiction. Moreover, it is the condition of the exequatur given to the idea, which by itself is inert, indifferent to its own realization. Now, it is in the nature of every power to tend to infinity by absorbing what surrounds it; and when Spinoza shows us the power of the soul developing in proportion to the degree of knowledge, he is doing nothing else, without his suspecting it, than recounting the progress of liberty at the expense of the necessity it subordinates.
The whole system of Spinoza therefore rests on a begging of the question: it is at the center of the soul that he places the initiative of reflection which, by a chain of gradually acquired ideas and spontaneously accomplished purifications, must lead the soul to the sovereign good, ad Deum qui dedit illam. I therefore ask Spinoza how, if everything happens by divine necessity, after the vibrations of this necessity, more and more weakened, have given birth to souls engaged in the servitude of the passions, how, I say, does it happen that these souls find, by means of their adequate ideas, more strength to return to God than they received at the moment of their existence, if by themselves they are not free forces?
In Christianity, there is, to explain this rehabilitation, or, to put it better, this ascent of souls towards infinity, a new action of God: it is grace, a new creation, complement of the first creation. Spinoza suppresses grace, after having destroyed liberty, and he replaces them both with adequate ideas. This is what you call dry communion, the hypothesis of liberty while waiting for liberty.
Thus, Descartes affirms liberty, and his whole argument tends to destroy it; Spinoza denies it, and his system invincibly presupposes it. This power that he supposes of the soul to return to God with the help of its adequate ideas, is evidently nothing other than liberty. Both, with a power that will never be surpassed, after having raised to the ideal, one free will, the other necessity, end in an equal contradiction.
XXIII
Leibnitz.
According to the Cartesian definition, the free will is the absolute independence of the cause which acts.
But, observes Spinoza, free will conceived in God, unique and infinite substance, sovereign and necessary cause, is identical and adequate to necessity itself. A cause that develops spontaneously, without obstacle, without influence or deviation from without, produces its effect. infallibly, necessarily. The effect obtained, the cause stops and everything returns to rest. Consider a body in dissolution: if this body is left to itself, far from any disturbing influence, it will precipitate in regular crystals: this is the image of necessity. God, the infinite cause, does not stop; it always produces, it radiates eternally: that is the whole difference.
The observation heard, I speak again against Spinoza, and I ask if necessity can react against itself, turn back the current of its action, divert it, hold it back, then precipitate it anew, as said by the will of man? And I respond that it is impossible; that to make necessity change, a cause would be needed, that is to say, a second necessity, which implies contradiction. Just as a supposedly free cause, from the moment it is influenced, loses the plenitude of its free will; likewise a cause supposedly necessary, if it can be influenced, loses the plenitude of its necessity: it falls, like the first, into contingency.
There, then, is the irremediable vice of Spinoza’s system. Necessity alone is powerless to explain the world. As true as Descartes’ free will is a pure logical conception, an ideal hypothesis, like the mathematical point, which has neither length, nor breadth, nor depth; so certainly Spinoza’s pure necessity is a chimera. And to whoever denies free will, the first thing to answer is not to allege, as Descartes did and as the eclectics do today, the intimate sense, which proves nothing here; it is to deny necessity.
Now let us listen to Leibnitz.
Just as Spinoza started from the contradiction of Descartes, he starts from the contradiction of Spinoza. For the world to exist, and above all for humanity to develop, it is absolutely necessary to admit somewhere the use of a force of reaction, in the opposite direction to divine action. Spinoza’s system presupposes it invincibly, and nothing can redeem in it this lack of logic, not to say frankness.
But with the prior hypothesis of a unique, infinite, absolute Being, such as the God of Descartes and Spinoza, the evil is without remedy. No more virtuous and deserving souls, no more souls even: for, if Justice without liberty is null, life without proper activity is nothing.
So what does Leibnitz do?
He changes the fundamental hypothesis. For the infinite cause of Descartes and Spinoza he substitutes the infinity of causes: here is the reaction created in the universe in a quantity equal to the action. The monadology, in fact, stripped of the precautions with which its author surrounds it, has no other meaning. It is the divine Absolute, with its double attribute of thought and extension, which Leibnitz, with a wave of his wand, divides ad infinitum. From this division to infinity are born the monads, infinitesimal forces, differing among themselves in quality, consequently susceptible of coordination, finally capable of grouping together and forming worlds. God himself is nothing but a monad, the queen of monads, whose predominant action determines the centralization of the universe and the connection of its parts.
Here, the action of God is no longer necessitating an absolute necessity, as in Spinoza; it acts on the monads by relying on their very faculty of reaction, by way of influence, of excitation, of contingency, not omnipotence.
From then on, no doubt, no absolute independence; but also no more absolute necessity, neither in God nor in man. God acts by reason, by the eternal knowledge that he has of the relations of things: in which, observes Leibnitz, his system has the advantage of being reconciled with the doctrine of all the Catholic and Protestant churches, which was of great importance to him. Saint Thomas and the casuists, Calvin, Grotius, etc., think like him.
In man, more liberty of indifference, as Descartes supposed. Man is always influenced, excited, never necessitated. On this subject, Leibnitz quotes the aphorism of the astrologers: Astra inclinant, non necessitant. And he pleasantly mocks the Cartesians and Bayle, who accepted the hypothesis of Buridan’s donkey, immobile between two meadows:
“The universe cannot be divide in half by a plane pulled through the middle of the donkey, cut vertically along its length, so that everything is equal and similar on both sides. For neither the parts of the universe nor the viscera of the animal are alike nor equally situated on both sides of this vertical plane.”
He could add that, were they at a given moment, by the universal movement they would immediately cease to be.
Everything is thus linked in the universe, not by an absolute and necessitating action, but by a reciprocal influence: which destroys both pure liberty and pure necessity, two ideal conceptions that only serve to mark the two extreme points of reality.
Moreover, as all the parts of the universe are co-ordinated among themselves, according to the specific quality of the monads, and the whole subordinate to God, the sovereign being, it follows that the universe, in spite of the relative imperfection of all its parts, and in spite of its own imperfection compared to God, is however, altogether, the best possible.
Leibnitz was not a man, like Spinoza, to break with the beliefs established for a system of metaphysics; he wanted to live well with the powers, especially with the Church. So his great business was less to demonstrate his synthesis in its dialectical rigor, than to reconcile it with faith. All objections came to him from that side. It was not until Bayle who, instead of taking the system of monads, as it was fitting, in its realistic and scientific tendency, began to quibble with the author about divine prescience and damnation. This, in fact, was the danger for Leibnitz; but there also lies the folly of his adversaries. Instead of risking his religion, the great man preferred to risk his philosophy: this retreat may have cost the world a hundred and fifty years.
Since Leibnitz was doing so much to eliminate the absolute from necessity and free will, he had to, in order to be consistent and at the risk of sounding like an atheist, eliminate it everywhere. His thought then would have scandalized the world, but it would have dominated it. Instead, Leibnitz strives to re-establish the absolute, in God first, whose infinity he recognizes in every attribute; then in the universe, which he maintains is the _best possible_, which before logic is equivalent to necessity itself. This absolutism granted, everything is provided for in the universe, the great organism; everything is preordained, predestined, harmonically pre-established, and we fall back into all the inconveniences and all the contradictions of Spinoza. Let Leibnitz distinguish as much as he likes between metaphysical necessity, geometric necessity, hypothetical or contingent necessity, moral necessity: the concatenation of all these necessities, on which the world is built, nevertheless constitutes an absolute necessity, within which any action or proper liberty vanishes. The immanence of God paralyzes everything. The faculty of choosing, which Leibnitz attributes to man, despite the multitude of influences that determine him, is reduced to a simple vote, less than that, to the consciousness of his acts, to the conformity of his will to the order of God, said Descartes. Leibnitz, in a word, after having made liberty possible, immediately annuls it by his best of worlds, and by the embarrassment in which he is to find a use for this liberty. Man knows that he is necessity while the world does not know it: that is the difference. The fatum christianum and the fatum mahumetanum are identical.
We can see that, in order to take the step where Leibnitz had stopped, a revolutionary energy was needed with which his religious soul was not endowed, and with which the eighteenth century itself, until 1789, was totally lacking. Even after 89, philosophy, German and French, retreated before this abyss.
XXIV. — Leibnitz.
According to the Cartesian definition, the free will is the absolute independence of the cause which acts.
But, observes Spinoza, free will conceived in God, unique and infinite substance, sovereign and necessary cause, is identical and adequate to necessity itself. A cause that develops spontaneously, without obstacle, without influence or deviation from without, produces its effect. infallibly, necessarily. The effect obtained, the cause stops and everything returns to rest. Consider a body in dissolution: if this body is left to itself, far from any disturbing influence, it will precipitate in regular crystals: this is the image of necessity. God, the infinite cause, does not stop; it always produces, it radiates eternally: that is the whole difference.
The observation heard, I speak again against Spinoza, and I ask if necessity can react against itself, turn back the current of its action, divert it, hold it back, then precipitate it anew, as said by the will of man? And I respond that it is impossible; that to make necessity change, a cause would be needed, that is to say, a second necessity, which implies contradiction. Just as a supposedly free cause, from the moment it is influenced, loses the plenitude of its free will; likewise a cause supposedly necessary, if it can be influenced, loses the plenitude of its necessity: it falls, like the first, into contingency.
There, then, is the irremediable vice of Spinoza’s system. Necessity alone is powerless to explain the world. As true as Descartes’ free will is a pure logical conception, an ideal hypothesis, like the mathematical point, which has neither length, nor breadth, nor depth; so certainly Spinoza’s pure necessity is a chimera. And to whoever denies free will, the first thing to answer is not to allege, as Descartes did and as the eclectics do today, the intimate sense, which proves nothing here; it is to deny necessity.
Now let us listen to Leibnitz.
Just as Spinoza started from the contradiction of Descartes, he starts from the contradiction of Spinoza. For the world to exist, and above all for humanity to develop, it is absolutely necessary to admit somewhere the use of a force of reaction, in the opposite direction to divine action. Spinoza’s system presupposes it invincibly, and nothing can redeem in it this lack of logic, not to say frankness.
But with the prior hypothesis of a unique, infinite, absolute Being, such as the God of Descartes and Spinoza, the evil is without remedy. No more virtuous and deserving souls, no more souls even: for, if Justice without liberty is null, life without proper activity is nothing.
So what does Leibnitz do?
He changes the fundamental hypothesis. For the infinite cause of Descartes and Spinoza he substitutes the infinity of causes: here is the reaction created in the universe in a quantity equal to the action. The monadology, in fact, stripped of the precautions with which its author surrounds it, has no other meaning. It is the divine Absolute, with its double attribute of thought and extension, which Leibnitz, with a wave of his wand, divides ad infinitum. From this division to infinity are born the monads, infinitesimal forces, differing among themselves in quality, consequently susceptible of coordination, finally capable of grouping together and forming worlds. God himself is nothing but a monad, the queen of monads, whose predominant action determines the centralization of the universe and the connection of its parts.
Here, the action of God is no longer necessitating an absolute necessity, as in Spinoza; it acts on the monads by relying on their very faculty of reaction, by way of influence, of excitation, of contingency, not omnipotence.
From then on, no doubt, no absolute independence; but also no more absolute necessity, neither in God nor in man. God acts by reason, by the eternal knowledge that he has of the relations of things: in which, observes Leibnitz, his system has the advantage of being reconciled with the doctrine of all the Catholic and Protestant churches, which was of great importance to him. Saint Thomas and the casuists, Calvin, Grotius, etc., think like him.
In man, more liberty of indifference, as Descartes supposed. Man is always influenced, excited, never necessitated. On this subject, Leibnitz quotes the aphorism of the astrologers: Astra inclinant, non necessitant. And he pleasantly mocks the Cartesians and Bayle, who accepted the hypothesis of Buridan’s donkey, immobile between two meadows:
“The universe cannot be divide in half by a plane pulled through the middle of the donkey, cut vertically along its length, so that everything is equal and similar on both sides. For neither the parts of the universe nor the viscera of the animal are alike nor equally situated on both sides of this vertical plane.”
He could add that, were they at a given moment, by the universal movement they would immediately cease to be.
Everything is thus linked in the universe, not by an absolute and necessitating action, but by a reciprocal influence: which destroys both pure liberty and pure necessity, two ideal conceptions that only serve to mark the two extreme points of reality.
Moreover, as all the parts of the universe are co-ordinated among themselves, according to the specific quality of the monads, and the whole subordinate to God, the sovereign being, it follows that the universe, in spite of the relative imperfection of all its parts, and in spite of its own imperfection compared to God, is however, altogether, the best possible.
Leibnitz was not a man, like Spinoza, to break with the beliefs established for a system of metaphysics; he wanted to live well with the powers, especially with the Church. So his great business was less to demonstrate his synthesis in its dialectical rigor, than to reconcile it with faith. All objections came to him from that side. It was not until Bayle who, instead of taking the system of monads, as it was fitting, in its realistic and scientific tendency, began to quibble with the author about divine prescience and damnation. This, in fact, was the danger for Leibnitz; but there also lies the folly of his adversaries. Instead of risking his religion, the great man preferred to risk his philosophy: this retreat may have cost the world a hundred and fifty years.
Since Leibnitz was doing so much to eliminate the absolute from necessity and free will, he had to, in order to be consistent and at the risk of sounding like an atheist, eliminate it everywhere. His thought then would have scandalized the world, but it would have dominated it. Instead, Leibnitz strives to re-establish the absolute, in God first, whose infinity he recognizes in every attribute; then in the universe, which he maintains is the best possible, which before logic is equivalent to necessity itself. This absolutism granted, everything is provided for in the universe, the great organism; everything is preordained, predestined, harmonically pre-established, and we fall back into all the inconveniences and all the contradictions of Spinoza. Let Leibnitz distinguish as much as he likes between metaphysical necessity, geometric necessity, hypothetical or contingent necessity, moral necessity: the concatenation of all these necessities, on which the world is built, nevertheless constitutes an absolute necessity, within which any action or proper liberty vanishes. The immanence of God paralyzes everything. The faculty of choosing, which Leibnitz attributes to man, despite the multitude of influences that determine him, is reduced to a simple vote, less than that, to the consciousness of his acts, to the conformity of his will to the order of God, said Descartes. Leibnitz, in a word, after having made liberty possible, immediately annuls it by his best of worlds, and by the embarrassment in which he is to find a use for this liberty. Man knows that he is necessity while the world does not know it: that is the difference. The fatum christianum and the fatum mahumetanum are identical.
We can see that, in order to take the step where Leibnitz had stopped, a revolutionary energy was needed with which his religious soul was not endowed, and with which the eighteenth century itself, until 1789, was totally lacking. Even after 89, philosophy, German and French, retreated before this abyss.
XXIV
After Leibnitz, the sauve-qui-peut is general. Those who pride themselves on exactitude take refuge in the absolute, some for the God of Descartes, some for the God of Spinoza; the great number close their eyes and put up with a superficial eclecticism, in the manner of Voltaire and Rousseau: God and Liberty! Even today, the world is full of people who find this sublime.
Hobbes, quoted by Leibnitz: “A thing is supposed to be free when the power it has is not hindered by an external thing.” What enters into the spontaneity, arbitral or necessary, of Descartes and Spinoza.
The same, quoted by M. Renouvier: “When several passions act simultaneously and contradictorily, there is deliberation: animals, like men, deliberate. When the deliberation is finished, there is will. If there is no deliberation or excitement of any kind, man does not act.” — By which we see that Hobbes goes through all the theories, without doubt: sometimes Cartesian, sometimes Leibnitzian, sometimes Spinozist.
Bossuet is pure Cartesian: he admits the liberty of indifference and believes that man acts in certain cases without motives, which amounts to saying that liberty, having neither rhyme nor reason, is useless, does not exist.
Malebranche follows Descartes: he admits a faculty of directing the understanding towards objects that please it, and consequently of directing inclinations. We are consequently so much the freer the better we know our duty, and the more strongly we cling to it. — A liberty that consists in losing oneself, said a critic, is that a liberty?
Locke makes liberty synonymous with power: still Descartes.
Hume denies causality, let alone liberty. His philosophy is an idealism whose form is doubt; it is the fatalism of powerlessness.
Collins, Priestley are determinists. What is determinism? A brutal idea, which, setting aside the absolute of Spinoza, places in things the principle of our determinations, and thus makes the thinking being the plaything of matter. This does not even deserve the honor of a philosophical mention.
Let us listen to the Germans.
Kant seems to be walking on coals.
“The will being a kind of causality of rational beings, liberty would be the independence of this same causality from all foreign influence; while beings not endowed with reason, determined as they are to action by causes that are not in them, are subject to physical necessity.
“The reality of liberty cannot be proven by experience.
“Liberty is only an idea, a supposition necessary to explain this fact of consciousness according to which we attribute to ourselves another will than simple appetite; that is to say, the faculty of determining us to action as intelligences, in accordance with the laws of reason and independently of the instincts of nature.
“The reality of the moral law can only be proven by the aid of the idea of freedom, which is itself incomprehensible in itself. This is why every being who cannot act otherwise than under the idea of liberty is _supposed_, because of that, practically free.” _Willm_, Histoire de la philosophie allemande, bk. I, p. 368, 370, 373, 375.)
If Kant doesn’t tell us anything clear, at least he doesn’t compromise himself. He is careful not to affirm anything; he knows only appearances. — If the will were a cause, liberty would be independence from this cause. Now, is the will a cause? No experience proves it. If the will is a cause, is this cause independent? Nothing proves that either. Liberty being admitted as a cause, what are its effects? In other words, what is the function of liberty and what is it for? Kant did not even ask himself the question. What then is liberty? An idea that morality needs to establish itself! This is a sacrifice that Kant makes to the universal prejudice, which affirms, as correlative, assuming and motivating each other, Justice and liberty. But a philosopher does not sacrifice to prejudice, he kills it or he proves it. Kant, in a word, knows nothing: I would be happier with him if he had admitted it with better grace.
Fichte recognizes liberty only in the _absolute_ self, which self is neither yours nor mine, but only an idea, an ideal. Doesn’t that come down to the God of Descartes, who could make a square circle, if such were his good pleasure, with this difference, however, that Descartes takes his God for a reality, while Fichte makes of his only an idea, an ideal?
“Morality has liberty as its principle: its law is the absolute determination of itself by itself, and its end is the absolute independence of the reasonable subject from all that is not him.
“But this liberty, which is that of the ideal ego, this aspiration to liberty, must not be confused with this fierce love of independence, which manifests itself as a spirit of oppressive domination: it is absolute submission to the consciousness of duty, which is only the expression of our superior nature, of our true being.
« Mais cette indépendance ne peut se réaliser dans l’individu ; elle ne peut se concevoir que comme liberté universelle, comme autocratie de la raison en général ; sa fin est un règne moral, réunissant tous les êtres raisonnables en une même conscience : en sorte que la moralité devient abnégation entière de soi dans l’intérêt de tous. » (Ibid., t. II, p. 344, 347.)
Can there be greater cowards than these German philosophers? Fichte is the one of all who is said to have best supported liberty, and philosophy must never forget that he died for it as a hero. Courage in the face of death is no more lacking in Germany than on this side of the Rhine. It is courage before the _Absolute_ that is rare. Newton discovered himself when the name of God was pronounced before him; Leibnitz sacrifices his monads to it. In the name of the Absolute, Fichte teaches us that liberty, or, to put it better, the aspiration to liberty—he grants us no more—is submission, autocracy, reign, abnegation, finally communism. He thus poses the problem of the philosophy of right:
“Find a will that is necessarily the expression of the common will, or in which the private will and the general will are synthetically united!”
Do you believe that such a proposal frightens much more in St. Petersburg than in Paris?
The absolute intoxicates Fichte so much that he goes as far as dogma: he becomes priestly, he is in full revelation.
“I maintain,” he said, “and this is the essence of my system, that by fundamental and primitive dispositions of human nature there is predetermined a _way of thinking_, which in truth is not realized in each individual, but which one can require of each one to admit; that there is something that limits the flight of thought, that arrests it and obliges it, etc.” (Ibid.)
Are you surprised after that that the German people, falling from Christianity into the philosophy of the absolute, that is to say always into religion, showed themselves in 1848 so impractical, so little in love with liberty, so weakly revolutionary!
It is useless for me to quote Hegel: he denies, mocks liberty, in the same way and in the same way as Spinoza, executing his predecessors, Kant and Fichte, as Spinoza had executed Descartes, and, like Spinoza, concluding, in politics , with absolutism.
XXV. — After Leibnitz, the sauve-qui-peut is general. Those who pride themselves on exactitude take refuge in the absolute, some for the God of Descartes, some for the God of Spinoza; the great number close their eyes and put up with a superficial eclecticism, in the manner of Voltaire and Rousseau: God and Liberty! Even today, the world is full of people who find this sublime.
Hobbes, quoted by Leibnitz: “A thing is supposed to be free when the power it has is not hindered by an external thing.” What enters into the spontaneity, arbitral or necessary, of Descartes and Spinoza.
The same, quoted by M. Renouvier: “When several passions act simultaneously and contradictorily, there is deliberation: animals, like men, deliberate. When the deliberation is finished, there is will. If there is no deliberation or excitement of any kind, man does not act.”
By which we see that Hobbes goes through all the theories, without doubt: sometimes Cartesian, sometimes Leibnitzian, sometimes Spinozist.
Bossuet is pure Cartesian: he admits the liberty of indifference and believes that man acts in certain cases without motives, which amounts to saying that liberty, having neither rhyme nor reason, is useless, does not exist.
Malebranche follows Descartes: he admits a faculty of directing the understanding towards objects that please it, and consequently of directing inclinations. We are consequently so much the freer the better we know our duty, and the more strongly we cling to it. — A liberty that consists in losing oneself, said a critic, is that a liberty?
Locke makes liberty synonymous with power: still Descartes.
Hume denies causality, let alone liberty. His philosophy is an idealism whose form is doubt; it is the fatalism of powerlessness.
Collins, Priestley are determinists. What is determinism? A brutal idea, which, setting aside the absolute of Spinoza, places in things the principle of our determinations, and thus makes the thinking being the plaything of matter. This does not even deserve the honor of a philosophical mention.
Let us listen to the Germans.
Kant seems to be walking on coals.
“The will being a kind of causality of rational beings, liberty would be the independence of this same causality from all foreign influence; while beings not endowed with reason, determined as they are to action by causes that are not in them, are subject to physical necessity.
“The reality of liberty cannot be proven by experience.
“Liberty is only an idea, a supposition necessary to explain this fact of consciousness according to which we attribute to ourselves another will than simple appetite; that is to say, the faculty of determining us to action as intelligences, in accordance with the laws of reason and independently of the instincts of nature.
“The reality of the moral law can only be proven by the aid of the idea of freedom, which is itself incomprehensible in itself. This is why every being who cannot act otherwise than under the idea of liberty is supposed, because of that, practically free.” Willm, Histoire de la philosophie allemande, Bk. I, p. 368, 370, 373, 375.)
If Kant doesn’t tell us anything clear, at least he doesn’t compromise himself. He is careful not to affirm anything; he knows only appearances. — If the will were a cause, liberty would be independence from this cause. Now, is the will a cause? No experience proves it. If the will is a cause, is this cause independent? Nothing proves that either. Liberty being admitted as a cause, what are its effects? In other words, what is the function of liberty and what is it for? Kant did not even ask himself the question. What then is liberty? An idea that morality needs to establish itself! This is a sacrifice that Kant makes to the universal prejudice, which affirms, as correlative, assuming and motivating each other, Justice and liberty. But a philosopher does not sacrifice to prejudice, he kills it or he proves it. Kant, in a word, knows nothing: I would be happier with him if he had admitted it with better grace.
Fichte recognizes liberty only in the absolute self, which self is neither yours nor mine, but only an idea, an ideal. Doesn’t that come down to the God of Descartes, who could make a square circle, if such were his good pleasure, with this difference, however, that Descartes takes his God for a reality, while Fichte makes of his only an idea, an ideal?
“Morality has liberty as its principle: its law is the absolute determination of itself by itself, and its end is the absolute independence of the reasonable subject from all that is not him.
“But this liberty, which is that of the ideal ego, this aspiration to liberty, must not be confused with this fierce love of independence, which manifests itself as a spirit of oppressive domination: it is absolute submission to the consciousness of duty, which is only the expression of our superior nature, of our true being.
“But this independence cannot be realized in the individual; it can only be conceived as universal liberty, as the autocracy of reason in general; its end is a moral reign, uniting all reasonable beings in the same consciousness: so that morality becomes complete self-abnegation in the interest of all. (Ibid., Bk. II, p. 344, 347.)
Can there be greater cowards than these German philosophers? Fichte is the one of all who is said to have best supported liberty, and philosophy must never forget that he died for it as a hero. Courage in the face of death is no more lacking in Germany than on this side of the Rhine. It is courage before the _Absolute_ that is rare. Newton discovered himself when the name of God was pronounced before him; Leibnitz sacrifices his monads to it. In the name of the Absolute, Fichte teaches us that liberty, or, to put it better, the aspiration to liberty—he grants us no more—is submission, autocracy, reign, abnegation, finally communism. He thus poses the problem of the philosophy of right:
“Find a will that is necessarily the expression of the common will, or in which the private will and the general will are synthetically united!”
Do you believe that such a proposal frightens much more in St. Petersburg than in Paris?
The absolute intoxicates Fichte so much that he goes as far as dogma: he becomes priestly, he is in full revelation.
“I maintain,” he said, “and this is the essence of my system, that by fundamental and primitive dispositions of human nature there is predetermined a way of thinking, which in truth is not realized in each individual, but which one can require of each one to admit; that there is something that limits the flight of thought, that arrests it and obliges it, etc.” (Ibid.)
Are you surprised after that that the German people, falling from Christianity into the philosophy of the absolute, that is to say always into religion, showed themselves in 1848 so impractical, so little in love with liberty, so weakly revolutionary!
It is useless for me to quote Hegel: he denies, mocks liberty, in the same way and in the same way as Spinoza, executing his predecessors, Kant and Fichte, as Spinoza had executed Descartes, and, like Spinoza, concluding, in politics , with absolutism.
XXV
After all these masters, the controversy might seem exhausted, and it was permissible not to expect much from the contemporary lucubration. But, as I have said, time pushes, and the century will not pass before the riddle is guessed, and the thing established.
M. Tissot, professor of philosophy in the Faculty of Letters of Dijon, knows of each question all that has been said about it before him, and he shows it. What is better, M. Tissot has formed his own opinion on each question; unfortunately, he does not do so well in bringing it to light. The cause is in the difficulty experienced by any professor in writing, freeing himself from the habits and style of the school, from the line of the programs and from the dust of the doctorate, in order to remember only the public.
Here is what I have extracted from the Nouvelles considérations sur le libre arbitré, published by M. Tissot (1849) in connection with the Méditations critiques sur l’homme et sur Dieu, by M. Gruyer. The idea deserves to be reported, because of its empirical character and because, without yet dissipating the darkness that covers the question, it positively defeats fatalism.
According to M. Tissot, all the faculties and affections of man develop in two ascending, parallel series, intimately linked to each other, which envelop the soul as in a double chain. The first of these series is given by the organism, the second by the movement of the mind. One forms, so to speak, the system of the ego’s passivity, the other the system of its autonomy.
| A | B | ||||
| Il y a | de la matière, | Il y a | de la puissance, | ||
| — | des organes, | — | de la spontanéité, | ||
| — | de la sensibilité, | — | de l’instinct, | ||
| — | des besoins, | — | de l’activité, | ||
| — | des affections, | — | des facultés, | ||
| — | des passions, | — | de la volonté, | ||
| — | des impressions, | — | de la délibération, | ||
| — | des influences, | — | de l’option, | ||
| — | des intuitions, | — | de l’erreur, | ||
| — | des conceptions, | — | du remords, | ||
| — | de la mémoire, | — | de la révolte, | ||
| — | des associations d’idées, | — | de la résipiscence, | ||
| — | des mobiles, | — | la foi qu’on est libre, | ||
| — | des motifs, | — | la haine de toute tyrannie, | ||
| Il y a donc | de la nécessité. | Il y a donc | de l’autonomie. |
These two series suppose each other reciprocally, and cannot do without each other: thus there is no will without motives, nor intuition without power, and vice versa. It is always the irreducible opposition of the self and the non-self that forms the basis of creation and shows itself fully in humanity.
Now, this antinomy, whatever has been said, cannot be resolved, and all the efforts attempted to this end result in a blunder. The two orders of phenomena, once established, each unfold according to its own law, without it being possible either to explain them by the same principle, or to resolve them into an identical expression. They subsist with regard to each other: it would be as childish to confiscate this one for the benefit of that one as to make them both disappear.
This is not all: each of the two series is in gradation, the first going from the attractions of brute matter to the most abstract apperceptions of the understanding; the second from the spontaneous movements of the vegetative force to the most heroic protests of the conscience. So that, as there are degrees in necessity, there are also degrees in autonomy. There, it is the yoke that weighs more or less heavily on the will; here, it is the force that appears more or less energetic, without it being possible to assign a limit to this double scale, either in minimum or in maximum.
Such, freed from his abstruse psychology and from a sometimes unfortunate argumentation, is the thought of M. Tissot.
I admit, for my part, that all this seems to me an excellent philosophy. This is precisely what I was saying earlier when speaking of Spinoza: Can you explain all the phenomena of nature and of humanity by the single principle of divine necessity? No, of course not, since you need, in order to create the world and society, a force of reaction that necessity cannot provide. Therefore, if you deny freedom, which, by its ascending evolution, explains this reaction and all the facts that flow from it, I will in my turn deny your necessity, which can do nothing except on the condition of reacting against itself in generating free forces: which is a contradiction.
From the theory of M. Tissot it therefore follows that, if there is no pure liberty in the universe, there is no pure necessity either; that one cannot say that anything is absolutely fatal, anything absolutely free. And it must be admitted that this is so, since there does not exist, since there could not even exist phenomena that can be attributed exclusively to liberty or to necessity.
It is certainly something to have made us take this step, and the honor originally belongs, as I have shown, to Leibnitz. But here the question is presented in another form. We ask if this general freedom, if this force of reaction, whose presence makes itself felt everywhere in things, does not exist in a superior degree and with special qualities in man. For it must be admitted, we would hardly be further advanced, we could not call ourselves much freer, and fatalism would have little to fall back from its conclusions, if the liberty of man were reduced to a spontaneity analogous to that of the body that gravitates, of the light that radiates and is reflected, of the plant that vegetates, of the animal that obeys its instincts, and already to calculations. Spontaneity is not liberty, at least it is not all the liberty that man demands. He aims higher: he needs sovereignty and independence, he needs free will; and this free will, everyone, M. Tissot himself, sacrifices him. Could we expect it from this mysterious dualism, according to which freedom is never completely free, necessity never completely necessary? We thought we had caught a ray of light: could it not be that our darkness has thickened?
M. Dunoyer will take us one step further.
XXVI. — After all these masters, the controversy might seem exhausted, and it was permissible not to expect much from the contemporary lucubration. But, as I have said, time pushes, and the century will not pass before the riddle is guessed, and the thing established.
M. Tissot, professor of philosophy in the Faculty of Letters of Dijon, knows of each question all that has been said about it before him, and he shows it. What is better, M. Tissot has formed his own opinion on each question; unfortunately, he does not do so well in bringing it to light. The cause is in the difficulty experienced by any professor in writing, freeing himself from the habits and style of the school, from the line of the programs and from the dust of the doctorate, in order to remember only the public.
Here is what I have extracted from the Nouvelles considérations sur le libre arbitré, published by M. Tissot (1849) in connection with the Méditations critiques sur l’homme et sur Dieu, by M. Gruyer. The idea deserves to be reported, because of its empirical character and because, without yet dissipating the darkness that covers the question, it positively defeats fatalism.
According to M. Tissot, all the faculties and affections of man develop in two ascending, parallel series, intimately linked to each other, which envelop the soul as in a double chain. The first of these series is given by the organism, the second by the movement of the mind. One forms, so to speak, the system of the ego’s passivity, the other the system of its autonomy.
In man, says M. Tissot,
| A | B | ||||
| There is | matter, | There is | power, | ||
| — | organs, | — | spontaneity, | ||
| — | sensitivity, | — | instinct, | ||
| — | needs, | — | activity, | ||
| — | affections, | — | faculties, | ||
| — | passions, | — | will, | ||
| — | impressions, | — | deliberation, | ||
| — | influences, | — | option, | ||
| — | intuitions, | — | error, | ||
| — | conceptions, | — | remorse, | ||
| — | memory, | — | rebellion, | ||
| — | associations of ideas, | — | repentence, | ||
| — | reasons, | — | the faith that one is free, | ||
| — | motives, | — | hatred off all tyranny, | ||
| So there is | necessity. | So there is | autonomy. |
These two series suppose each other reciprocally, and cannot do without each other: thus there is no will without motives, nor intuition without power, and vice versa. It is always the irreducible opposition of the self and the non-self that forms the basis of creation and shows itself fully in humanity.
Now, this antinomy, whatever has been said, cannot be resolved, and all the efforts attempted to this end result in a blunder. The two orders of phenomena, once established, each unfold according to its own law, without it being possible either to explain them by the same principle, or to resolve them into an identical expression. They subsist with regard to each other: it would be as childish to confiscate this one for the benefit of that one as to make them both disappear.
This is not all: each of the two series is in gradation, the first going from the attractions of brute matter to the most abstract apperceptions of the understanding; the second from the spontaneous movements of the vegetative force to the most heroic protests of the conscience. So that, as there are degrees in necessity, there are also degrees in autonomy. There, it is the yoke that weighs more or less heavily on the will; here, it is the force that appears more or less energetic, without it being possible to assign a limit to this double scale, either in minimum or in maximum.
Such, freed from his abstruse psychology and from a sometimes unfortunate argumentation, is the thought of M. Tissot.
I admit, for my part, that all this seems to me an excellent philosophy. This is precisely what I was saying earlier when speaking of Spinoza: Can you explain all the phenomena of nature and of humanity by the single principle of divine necessity? No, of course not, since you need, in order to create the world and society, a force of reaction that necessity cannot provide. Therefore, if you deny freedom, which, by its ascending evolution, explains this reaction and all the facts that flow from it, I will in my turn deny your necessity, which can do nothing except on the condition of reacting against itself in generating free forces: which is a contradiction.
From the theory of M. Tissot it therefore follows that, if there is no pure liberty in the universe, there is no pure necessity either; that one cannot say that anything is absolutely fatal, anything absolutely free. And it must be admitted that this is so, since there does not exist, since there could not even exist phenomena that can be attributed exclusively to liberty or to necessity.
It is certainly something to have made us take this step, and the honor originally belongs, as I have shown, to Leibnitz. But here the question is presented in another form. We ask if this general freedom, if this force of reaction, whose presence makes itself felt everywhere in things, does not exist in a superior degree and with special qualities in man. For it must be admitted, we would hardly be further advanced, we could not call ourselves much freer, and fatalism would have little to fall back from its conclusions, if the liberty of man were reduced to a spontaneity analogous to that of the body that gravitates, of the light that radiates and is reflected, of the plant that vegetates, of the animal that obeys its instincts, and already to calculations. Spontaneity is not liberty, at least it is not all the liberty that man demands. He aims higher: he needs sovereignty and independence, he needs free will; and this free will, everyone, M. Tissot himself, sacrifices him. Could we expect it from this mysterious dualism, according to which freedom is never completely free, necessity never completely necessary? We thought we had caught a ray of light: could it not be that our darkness has thickened?
M. Dunoyer will take us one step further.
XXVI
M. Dunoyer, member of the Institute, one of the most original minds and most honorable characters of the period that followed the first empire, has what he will allow me to call a quirk which spoils his excellent qualities: it is an excessive horror of metaphysics and of any theory tending to bring economic science back to primary notions, especially to notions of right.
“I can’t stand these dogmatic philosophers who only talk about rights and duties; of what governments have the duty to do, and nations the right to demand. Each must be master of his thing; everyone must be able to express their thoughts; everyone should participate in public life: this is their customary language. I don’t explain myself in this way, I don’t say sententiously: Men have the right to be free; they have the right to live, etc. — The right to be free! I would as well say that they have the right to be intelligent, active, educated, fair; that two lines have the right to form an angle, that water has the right to change into gas, etc. What use is all this verbiage?…. The question is how man can be free, how it can happen that he is free, what measure of freedom he can obtain in such and such a given condition, by what combination of knowledge and habits he succeeds in freely exercising an industry, in rising to political life, etc. (De la Liberté du travail, volume I, page 17.)
M. Dunoyer, in a word, fulfills M. Babinet’s wish. Instead of beginning in the moral and political sciences with the in-itself of things, according to the old method, and thus going from the unknown to the unknown, he begins with phenomena: an excellent method, especially when it is a matter of defining notions and demonstrating laws, and which is also mine. But whether the law arrives in the form of a conclusion or in the form of a principle, it nevertheless remains for that reason a metaphysical expression, and, if it is a question of morality, a legal formula which, immediately becoming an obligation for conscience, can be opposed by the individual to society, by the citizen to the State and vice versa.
Let us therefore study phenomena and do not malign principles: for, if the first make the second more intelligible to us, the latter in their turn summarize the others and explain them; there is no more dogmatism on one side than on the other.
In accordance with his method, M. Dunoyer therefore undertakes to tell us how, by labor, science and justice, man and society become free.
But, contrary to his method, he cannot prevent himself from telling us first of all what he means by the word liberty. It is true that he only gives his definition after a final snub to metaphysics:
« On a beaucoup cherché si le mobile des facultés de l’homme était en lui-même ou hors de lui, en sa puissance ou hors de sa puissance ; s’il donnait son attention, comparait, jugeait, désirait, délibérait, se déterminait, parce qu’il le voulait et comme il le voulait ; ou bien si ses facultés étaient mises en jeu sans lui, malgré lui, par l’influence de causes sur lesquelles il n’avait aucun empire, et si le résultat de leur travail était aussi indépendant de sa volonté. Certains philosophes ont prétendu qu’il était également maître de leur action et des résultats de leur action ; d’autres ont nié qu’il eût sur elles un tel pouvoir, etc. — Je n’ai point à m’occuper de ce débat.
« Que l’homme ait ou n’ait pas en lui-même le premier mobile de son activité, on conviendra du moins qu’il n’agit pas toujours avec la même aisance ; on m’accordera, sans doute, qu’il peut y avoir dans ses infirmités, son inexpérience, ses vices, ses dispositions à la violence et à l’injustice, des empêchements à l’exercice de ses facultés ; on m’accordera sûrement aussi qu’il parvient, plus ou moins, à s’affranchir de ces causes naturelles de faiblesse et de servitude, et qu’à mesure qu’il y réussit, il entre en possession d’une certaine puissance, d’une certaine facilité d’action, qu’il ne sentait pas en lui auparavant.
“On the other hand, when he comes to unlearn what he had learned, to recontract the vices and infirmities that he had succeeded in getting rid of, he loses little by little the power that he had acquired, and passes back again through all the degrees of his former powerlessness.
“What I call liberty is the capacity, the _power_ to act, which manifests itself and which grows in us as we manage to free, rid, and unclog our faculties of the obstacles of every kind that hinder or impede their exercise.” (De la Liberté du Travail, t. I, p. 23, 24 et seq.)
This definition, essentially practical, once given, M. Dunoyer then shows, chapter by chapter, how the power of man over nature and over himself is at the lowest degree in the wild state, how it is greater in slavery, greater still in serfdom, etc. He takes the measure, the gauge of power compatible with all conditions of race, climate, political institutions, religion. This is the subject of his book (3 vol. in-8°, Paris, Guillaumin).
I could quibble with M. Dunoyer on the terms of his definition, and show him that it contains a question of principle. Liberty, you say, is the _power_ that manifests itself in man in proportion as _he rids himself_ of the obstacles that hindered this power. Now, for man to rid himself, he already needs power. What is this power by virtue of which he opens the way to his power?…
Mais ne soyons pas si sévères, admettons que la puissance qui dans l’homme apparaît à mesure qu’il se débarrasse de ses entraves est la même que celle en vertu de laquelle il se débarrasse. Toute autre interprétation, nous menant de puissance en puissance à l’infini, doit être écartée. Ce que je veux recueillir de l’idée de M. Dunoyer, c’est qu’appliquant la théorie de M. Tissot, que du reste il ne connaissait point, savoir, qu’il y a des degrés dans la fatalité et dans la liberté, que ni l’une ni l’autre ne saurait être jamais absolue, qu’elles forment deux séries parallèles et irréductibles, il nous montre à son tour la liberté en émersion progressive, gagnant du terrain sur sa rivale ou en perdant, selon qu’elle manœuvre avec plus ou moins d’énergie et d’intelligence. De sorte que la liberté nous apparaît maintenant, non plus seulement comme une spontanéité, une connaissance adéquate, un désir de conformité à l’ordre de Dieu, mais comme une fonction en perpétuel travail, la fonction motrice de cet être étonnant, l’homme, dont la Justice est la faculté ou fonction directrice.
What is this function now? What is its ontological reason? What is its object? What are its limits ? Does it go as far as free will, or does it only tend towards it? Has it a part, and what part, in the economy of the world and the government of humanity? By what effects, by what acts, can we recognize it?… We need an answer, and Mr. Dunoyer is far from providing it.
XXVII. — M. Dunoyer, member of the Institute, one of the most original minds and most honorable characters of the period that followed the first empire, has what he will allow me to call a quirk which spoils his excellent qualities: it is an excessive horror of metaphysics and of any theory tending to bring economic science back to primary notions, especially to notions of right.
“I can’t stand these dogmatic philosophers who only talk about rights and duties; of what governments have the duty to do, and nations the right to demand. Each must be master of his thing; everyone must be able to express their thoughts; everyone should participate in public life: this is their customary language. I don’t explain myself in this way, I don’t say sententiously: Men have the right to be free; they have the right to live, etc. — The right to be free! I would as well say that they have the right to be intelligent, active, educated, fair; that two lines have the right to form an angle, that water has the right to change into gas, etc. What use is all this verbiage?…. The question is how man can be free, how it can happen that he is free, what measure of freedom he can obtain in such and such a given condition, by what combination of knowledge and habits he succeeds in freely exercising an industry, in rising to political life, etc. (De la Liberté du travail, volume I, page 17.)
M. Dunoyer, in a word, fulfills M. Babinet’s wish. Instead of beginning in the moral and political sciences with the in-itself of things, according to the old method, and thus going from the unknown to the unknown, he begins with phenomena: an excellent method, especially when it is a matter of defining notions and demonstrating laws, and which is also mine. But whether the law arrives in the form of a conclusion or in the form of a principle, it nevertheless remains for that reason a metaphysical expression, and, if it is a question of morality, a legal formula which, immediately becoming an obligation for conscience, can be opposed by the individual to society, by the citizen to the State and vice versa.
Let us therefore study phenomena and do not malign principles: for, if the first make the second more intelligible to us, the latter in their turn summarize the others and explain them; there is no more dogmatism on one side than on the other.
XXVIII. — In accordance with his method, M. Dunoyer therefore undertakes to tell us how, by labor, by science and justice, man and society become free.
But, contrary to his method, he cannot prevent himself from telling us first of all what he means by the word liberty. It is true that he only gives his definition after a final snub to metaphysics:
“One has often sought whether the motive force of man’s faculties is within himself or outside of him, within his power or outside of his power; if he gave his attention, compared, judged, desired, deliberated, determined, because he wanted to and as he wanted to; or else if his faculties were brought into play without him, in spite of him, by the influence of causes over which he had no control, and if the result of their work was also independent of his will. Some philosophers have claimed that he was equally master of their action and the results of their action; others denied that he had such power over them, etc. — I have nothing to do with this debate.
“Whether or not man has the primary motive for his activity within himself, it will at least be agreed that he does not always act with the same ease; it will no doubt be granted that there may be in his infirmities, his inexperience, his vices, his dispositions to violence and injustice, impediments to the exercise of his faculties; it will surely also be granted that he succeeds, more or less, in freeing himself from these natural causes of weakness and servitude, and that to the extent that he succeeds in doing so, he comes into possession of a certain power, of a certain facility of action, which he did not feel in him before.
“On the other hand, when he comes to unlearn what he had learned, to recontract the vices and infirmities that he had succeeded in getting rid of, he loses little by little the power that he had acquired, and passes back again through all the degrees of his former powerlessness.
“What I call liberty is the capacity, the _power_ to act, which manifests itself and which grows in us as we manage to free, rid, and unclog our faculties of the obstacles of every kind that hinder or impede their exercise.” (De la Liberté du Travail, t. I, p. 23, 24 et seq.)
This definition, essentially practical, once given, M. Dunoyer then shows, chapter by chapter, how the power of man over nature and over himself is at the lowest degree in the wild state, how it is greater in slavery, greater still in serfdom, etc. He takes the measure, the gauge of power compatible with all conditions of race, climate, political institutions, religion. This is the subject of his book (3 vol. in-8°, Paris, Guillaumin).
I could quibble with M. Dunoyer on the terms of his definition, and show him that it contains a question of principle. Liberty, you say, is the _power_ that manifests itself in man in proportion as _he rids himself_ of the obstacles that hindered this power. Now, for man to rid himself, he already needs power. What is this power by virtue of which he opens the way to his power?
But let us not be so severe. Let us admit that the power that appears in man as he rid himself of his shackles is the same as that by virtue of which he rids himself of himself. Any other interpretation, leading us from power to power to infinity, must be discarded. What I want to gather from M. Dunoyer’s idea is that, applying M. Tissot’s theory, which moreover he did not know, namely that there are degrees in fatality and in liberty, that neither of them can ever be absolute, that they form two parallel and irreducible series, he in turn shows us liberty in progressive emergence, gaining ground on its rival or losing, according to whether it maneuvers with more or less energy and intelligence. So that liberty appears to us now, not only as a spontaneity, an adequate knowledge, a desire for conformity to the order of God, but as a _function_ in perpetual labor, the motor function of this astonishing being, man, of which Justice is the directing faculty or function.
What is this function now? What is its ontological reason? What is its object? What are its limits ? Does it go as far as free will, or does it only tend towards it? Has it a part, and what part, in the economy of the world and the government of humanity? By what effects, by what acts, can we recognize it? We need an answer, and Mr. Dunoyer is far from providing it.
XXVII
The event of December 2, 1851, was of a nature to revive the controversy over liberty. It was in fact taken up, first by MM. Jules Simon and Oudot, the first in his book Du Devoir, the second in his treatise De la Conscience et de la Science du Devoir; then, by MM. Charles Renouvier, Lemonnier and Michelet (of Berlin), in the Revue philosophique et religieuse.
I dare say that these discussions are far from having given the result that the circumstances seemed to call for.
And first of all M. Jules Simon will allow me to tell him that for a man of his talent and character, from whom the Revolution expects something, the hundred pages he wrote on liberty are unforgivable: they were enough, I believe it, for the edification of the Academy that crowned them; they cannot find favor before judges who ask for anything other than erudition.
The theory of M. Simon is a composite of the ideas of Descartes, Leibnitz and Kant; there may still be others.
À Descartes, il emprunte la soi-disant preuve psychologique ou du sens intime, inadmissible depuis la critique qu’en ont faite Bayle, Spinoza et Leibnitz. À Kant, il prend ce fameux postulat où le philosophe se borne à répéter fort doctement, après tout le monde, que la liberté est indispensable à la morale, il serait plus exact de dire au Code pénal ; que sans la liberté il n’y a ni mérite ni démérite, et autres considérations édifiantes ; mais de la liberté elle-même ne disant mot, n’en indiquant ni l’objet ni l’utilité, s’excusant au contraire devant la contradiction flagrante. Avec Leibnitz, enfin, M. Simon rejette la liberté d’indifférence de Descartes, reconnaît que la liberté n’agit jamais sans motifs, ce qui est très-vrai, mais ce qui précisément rend douteux le franc arbitre et semble réduira l’homme à la seule spontanéité.
Yes, I will say again to M. Simon, psychological proof is in the right when it is a question of existence, since to doubt that one doubts implies contradiction. It is also in the right when it is a question of a faculty in full exercise, of a faculty observed, recognized, defined, whose manifestations can no longer therefore be confused with those of any other faculty, but whose product is attributed to a supernatural cause, such as consciousness. I say that in this case the psychological proof is also in the right, since the doubt raised about the autonomy of this function also becomes contradictory.
But the doubt that strikes liberty is of an entirely different kind: it is no longer in this doubt that the contradiction lies, it is in the very notion of liberty. On the one hand, you say, and you admit it yourself, liberty is never pure, since it is always accompanied by motives; on the other hand, you are reminded that a liberty without motives, such as the genius of Descartes posits in God, is unintelligible. According to this, it is a question of knowing what liberty can be, if indeed it is still something. Say what liberty is, distinguish it from all the rest, define it, show its function: you will then be allowed to invoke the intimate meaning. But to affirm the existence of a thing, while you do not know the first word about this thing; on this occasion reproduce the famous argument of the school, I want to raise my arm and I raise it, and break down this elevation into four moments, the first two of which entail the negation of liberty and the other two only recall its hypothesis, it is not explaining, defining, demonstrating the thing in question, it is hoodwinking your readers.
As for the moral sentiment, the joy that follows good deeds, the remorse that accompanies bad ones; as for all these manifestations of the collective and individual self that, it is said, presume liberty, I answer once and for all: Yes, I admit that they presume it, but I deny that they judge it; they are so far from judging it that the greatest moralists, Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, saw in it just one more reason to deny liberty, reducing it to a simple attraction, to a desire, which makes us happy if it is satisfied, unhappy if it is prevented, and consequently defining free will by its use, conformity of the will to the order of God.
I will say nothing of M. Oudot, who follows M. Jules Simon in everything, even in the way of harmonizing human freedom with divine prescience. Fury of the absolute! Philosophy, according to the least justified of its hypotheses, transcendental justice, hardly dares to call us free; and it is already trembling that this liberty will cause a din up there! Hey! Philosophers of the good Lord, know yourselves, you will always know enough about the Other.
XXIX. — The event of December 2, 1851, was of a nature to revive the controversy over liberty. It was in fact taken up, first by MM. Jules Simon and Oudot, the first in his book Du Devoir, the second in his treatise De la Conscience et de la Science du Devoir; then, by MM. Charles Renouvier, Lemonnier and Michelet (of Berlin), in the Revue philosophique et religieuse.
I dare say that these discussions are far from having given the result that the circumstances seemed to call for.
And first of all M. Jules Simon will allow me to tell him that for a man of his talent and character, from whom the Revolution expects something, the hundred pages he wrote on liberty are unforgivable: they were enough, I believe it, for the edification of the Academy that crowned them; they cannot find favor before judges who ask for anything other than erudition.
The theory of M. Simon is a composite of the ideas of Descartes, Leibnitz and Kant; there may still be others.
From Descartes, he borrows the so-called psychological or intimate proof, inadmissible since the criticism made of it by Bayle, Spinoza and Leibniz. From Kant, he takes this famous postulate where the philosopher confines himself to repeating very learnedly, after everyone else, that liberty is indispensable to morality, it would be more exact to say to the penal code; that without liberty there is neither merit nor demerit, and other edifying considerations; but of liberty itself saying not a word, indicating neither its object nor its usefulness, apologizing on the contrary in the face of the flagrant contradiction. With Leibnitz, finally, M. Simon rejects Descartes’ liberty of indifference, recognizes that liberty never acts without motives, which is very true, but precisely what makes free will doubtful and seems to reduce man to spontaneity alone.
Yes, I will say again to M. Simon, psychological proof is in the right when it is a question of existence, since to doubt that one doubts implies contradiction. It is also in the right when it is a question of a faculty in full exercise, of a faculty observed, recognized, defined, whose manifestations can no longer therefore be confused with those of any other faculty, but whose product is attributed to a supernatural cause, such as consciousness. I say that in this case the psychological proof is also in the right, since the doubt raised about the autonomy of this function also becomes contradictory.
But the doubt that strikes liberty is of an entirely different kind: it is no longer in this doubt that the contradiction lies, it is in the very notion of liberty. On the one hand, you say, and you admit it yourself, liberty is never pure, since it is always accompanied by motives; on the other hand, you are reminded that a liberty without motives, such as the genius of Descartes posits in God, is unintelligible. According to this, it is a question of knowing what liberty can be, if indeed it is still something. Say what liberty is, distinguish it from all the rest, define it, show its function: you will then be allowed to invoke the intimate meaning. But to affirm the existence of a thing, while you do not know the first word about this thing; on this occasion reproduce the famous argument of the school, I want to raise my arm and I raise it, and break down this elevation into four moments, the first two of which entail the negation of liberty and the other two only recall its hypothesis, it is not explaining, defining, demonstrating the thing in question, it is hoodwinking your readers.
As for the moral sentiment, the joy that follows good deeds, the remorse that accompanies bad ones; as for all these manifestations of the collective and individual self that, it is said, presume liberty, I answer once and for all: Yes, I admit that they presume it, but I deny that they judge it; they are so far from judging it that the greatest moralists, Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, saw in it just one more reason to deny liberty, reducing it to a simple attraction, to a desire, which makes us happy if it is satisfied, unhappy if it is prevented, and consequently defining free will by its use, conformity of the will to the order of God. (H)
I will say nothing of M. Oudot, who follows M. Jules Simon in everything, even in the way of harmonizing human freedom with divine prescience. Fury of the absolute! Philosophy, according to the least justified of its hypotheses, transcendental justice, hardly dares to call us free; and it is already trembling that this liberty will cause a din up there! Hey! Philosophers of the good Lord, know yourselves, you will always know enough about the Other.
XXVIII
M. Renouvier, answering M. Lemonnier in the Revue Philosophique et Religieuse, has very well asserted against his adversary, who moreover granted it, the faculty that man has of acting on himself, of striving, of trying, to educating himself, a faculty that is precisely that which Spinoza supposes, and that he accounts for by means of adequate ideas. But spontaneity is not yet liberty; then M. Renouvier, although one can hardly reproach him for religion, still admits a certain cosmic absolute that has spoiled his defense, so that the controversy has remained without result.
Si tout est aussi bien lié dans l’univers que les philosophes modernes, à l’exemple de Leibnitz, inclinent à le penser, il est impossible de voir dans la liberté autre chose qu’un rouage, c’est-à-dire une non-liberté ; et quand M. Renouvier, qui admet en principe cette liaison, prétend ensuite, pour le besoin de sa cause, introduire dans l’ordre universel, parfait, des possibles, des exceptions, des nouveautés, il peut se tenir pour assuré que sur ce terrain il ne sera pas suivi. Des exceptions aux lois éternelles de l’univers ! un règne des possibles, en dehors du règne des réalités ! une faculté donnée à l’âme spécialement en vue de ces exceptions et de ces possibles !… On aura beau le faire aussi petit qu’on voudra, ce prétendu règne, enfermer les exceptions dans une sphère si étroite qu’elles ne gâtent rien à l’ensemble : l’inconséquence ne paraîtra que mieux, et la liberté aura droit de dire à son champion : Tu m’as trahie !
M. Michelet (of Berlin) names liberty, but only to retract it immediately. I quote his words:
“In our system, nature and humanity developing according to eternal laws, constituting themselves the sovereign intelligence, there is this difference between nature and humanity, that in the latter individuals are not, as in nature, all driven indiscriminately by a blind instinct that they cannot resist; but that, by the consciousness they have, that is to say by the dualism between the subject and the object, they can withdraw into their subjectivity, follow their arbitrary fantasies, turn away from the objective march of things , not take an active part in it, or even try to stop it.”
All this, as we see, is pure assertion. What is this faculty whose only privilege is to conform to eternal laws, and which becomes illegitimate as soon as it resists them? Can such a faculty be anything but a myth? Does it have a role in human life? Isn’t it more judicious to reduce it immediately to the liberty of indifference, like Descartes, by explaining its alleged revolts by simple ignorance, errors of the understanding?
M. Michelet felt it; so he hastens to return to the quietism of Hegel:
“The individuals, it is true, who make such attempts are sooner or later crushed by the wheels of the chariot of history, which ends up treading on those who obstruct its passage.
“Nevertheless the individuals have a certain strength. They retard the march of history, although they cannot prevent it. But, in this case again, the individuals, while following their inclinations and exercising their free will, are not free in the true sense of the word. They are the slaves of their passions, as Spinoza says, while the liberty of man consists in directing his passions towards the supreme intelligence, in seizing with an ardent love its eternal laws, in devoting himself entirely to their execution in the march of history. For only then does the individual actualize the intrinsic power he finds within himself, the divine intelligence that constitutes his essence and animates him, without his being diverted from it by the accidental inclinations that nature inspires in him externally.”
Pure Spinoza, which is to say, pure Christian. Let M. Michelet make a few more stations before the Absolute, and he will be Father of the Church.
To name liberty the faculty of knowing oneself, then of heading towards the Absolute, like the magnetic needle towards the pole; slavery, the ability to give in to a forced impulse, like the said needle when there is a storm, that is to say that we know nothing of man, except that he is in all circumstances necessity, that only his necessity is sometimes mistaken, because it is composed of several antagonistic necessities.
XXX. — M. Renouvier, answering M. Lemonnier in the Revue Philosophique et Religieuse, has very well asserted against his adversary, who moreover granted it, the faculty that man has of acting on himself, of striving, of trying, to educating himself, a faculty that is precisely that which Spinoza supposes, and that he accounts for by means of adequate ideas. But spontaneity is not yet liberty; then M. Renouvier, although one can hardly reproach him for religion, still admits a certain cosmic absolute that has spoiled his defense, so that the controversy has remained without result.
If everything in the universe is as well linked as modern philosophers, following the example of Leibnitz, are inclined to think, it is impossible to see in liberty anything other than a cog, that is to say a non-freedom; and when M. Renouvier, who admits this connection in principle, then claims, for the need of his cause, to introduce into the universal, perfect order, possibilities, exceptions, novelties, he can take it for granted that on this ground he will not be followed. Exceptions to the eternal laws of the universe! A realm of possibilities, apart from the realm of harmonies, that is supposed to embrace all phenomena! A faculty given to the soul in view of these exceptions and these possibilities!We can make it as small as we want, this so-called reign, enclose the exceptions in a sphere so narrow that they do not spoil the whole thing: the inconsistency will only appear better, and liberty will have the right to say to his champion: You have betrayed me! (I)
M. Michelet (of Berlin) names liberty, but only to retract it immediately. I quote his words:
“In our system, nature and humanity developing according to eternal laws, constituting themselves the sovereign intelligence, there is this difference between nature and humanity, that in the latter individuals are not, as in nature, all driven indiscriminately by a blind instinct that they cannot resist; but that, by the consciousness they have, that is to say by the dualism between the subject and the object, they can withdraw into their subjectivity, follow their arbitrary fantasies, turn away from the objective march of things , not take an active part in it, or even try to stop it.”
All this, as we see, is pure assertion. What is this faculty whose only privilege is to conform to eternal laws, and which becomes illegitimate as soon as it resists them? Can such a faculty be anything but a myth? Does it have a role in human life? Isn’t it more judicious to reduce it immediately to the liberty of indifference, like Descartes, by explaining its alleged revolts by simple ignorance, errors of the understanding?
M. Michelet felt it; so he hastens to return to the quietism of Hegel:
“The individuals, it is true, who make such attempts are sooner or later crushed by the wheels of the chariot of history, which ends up treading on those who obstruct its passage.
“Nevertheless the individuals have a certain strength. They retard the march of history, although they cannot prevent it. But, in this case again, the individuals, while following their inclinations and exercising their free will, are not free in the true sense of the word. They are the slaves of their passions, as Spinoza says, while the liberty of man consists in directing his passions towards the supreme intelligence, in seizing with an ardent love its eternal laws, in devoting himself entirely to their execution in the march of history. For only then does the individual actualize the intrinsic power he finds within himself, the divine intelligence that constitutes his essence and animates him, without his being diverted from it by the accidental inclinations that nature inspires in him externally.”
Pure Spinoza, which is to say, pure Christian. Let M. Michelet make a few more stations before the Absolute, and he will be Father of the Church.
To name liberty the faculty of knowing oneself, then of heading towards the Absolute, like the magnetic needle towards the pole; slavery, the ability to give in to a forced impulse, like the said needle when there is a storm, that is to say that we know nothing of man, except that he is in all circumstances necessity, that only his necessity is sometimes mistaken, because it is composed of several antagonistic necessities.
XXIX
After these quotations, it is useless to report the theologians’ definitions. Is not theology precisely, as M. Michelet says, the doctrine that teaches man to direct his passions towards the supreme intelligence, to seize with an ardent love the eternal laws, to devote himself entirely to their execution in the march of history?
“God, says theology, created the world with his laws, the soul of man with his inclinations. He gave him the idea and the word; he has revealed his commandments to him, and he incessantly assists him with his grace, either by the interior attraction that leads him to beauty and good, or by a supernatural influence of the Holy Spirit.
“But, by an inconceivable mystery, man has the power to disobey God and to do evil: it is this power of damnation that constitutes liberty. It is not a prerogative of our nature: to God alone, as Descartes proved, belongs the free will; nor is it a function or faculty of our soul: a faculty of option, or one that is exercised only for evil, is not. Liberty, the stumbling block of philosophy, is the irrefutable and incorruptible witness, which you cannot challenge without making an act of religion, which you cannot receive without falling on your knees before Christ.”
What do they want with their so-called rationalism, these philosophers whose thought constantly tends to be absorbed in the absolute? What do they bring us more than the Church? What did they find that she would not have found before them? What have they seen that she has not seen, and what else do they do, from Descartes to M. Michelet, than to turn, like merry-go-round horses, in the labyrinth of theology?
Is not Spinoza, in spite of his fatalism, which moreover exists only in his imagination and which his system contradicts, as much a Christian as Descartes and Leibnitz? Do Kant and Fichte speak differently from Malebranche and Bossuet? And when Mr. Jules Simon, as an eclectic logician, gathers around liberty what he calls the proofs of liberty: the inner sense, which proves nothing; universal consent, which is the same as inner meaning; the practice of society, which intimate sense leads blindly; remorse, which has no need of freedom to exist, and proves even less than inner sense; the establishment of penalties, which enters into the practice, true or false, of society; the idea of final cause, which belongs to the intelligence and is only a way of considering the action of fatality itself; when, I say, M. Jules Simon devotes himself to this oratorical development and gives it the title of Natural Religion, does he imagine himself to be anything other than a Christian?
A writer whom the turn of his mind renders little capable of philosophical work, but one of a singular quickness of intelligence as soon as it is a question of reducing to a lively and simple expression the jumble of current opinions, M. de Girardin, has taken _Liberty_ as his motto!
Liberty, with the talent of M. de Girardin, has made the fortune of the Presse.
Now, what does the famous journalist mean by this word? I asked him one day: he confessed to me frankly that he knew nothing about it. Liberty, for him, like right, is a word that awaits its interpreter. But there is one thing that M. de Girardin has perfectly understood: it is that everything in society having become doubtful through criticism, religion, government, property, justice, there remains only the arbitrariness of each individual, his good pleasure, his fancy, and that such is precisely the power with which the statesman must reckon. Hence this original theory that assimilates crime to a risk, liberty to an insurance, the right to an indemnity, and which has won its author a host of adherents.
This, then, is what remains to us of so many and so learned controversies! Instead of knowledge of the divine order and the conformity of our will to this order, the ability to believe what we see fit and to act as we please, unless there is reciprocal assurance: there is no for man, if we are to believe M. de Girardin, another right, another duty, another morality, another liberty, another reality, another law!… O philosophy!
And now, what is this final arbitrariness to which universal skepticism pushes us? This good pleasure that constitutes our individuality and constitutes our whole being? This right of fancy that remains to us, when all Justice and all truth have disappeared?
Listen to this, good people who imagine that philosophy, like speech, was given to man to clarify ideas, not to confuse them: this shameless runner whom you religiously called liberty, but against which religion, which knows well, fulminates its anathemas, the State organizes its forces, philosophy twists its powerless sentences, it is sin, always original sin!…
Now, sin calls for repression, or insurance, if prefer. M. de Girardin, who speaks as an economist, basically reasons like theologians.
In summary:
The negation of every principle, of every idea, of all order, of every aim, of all morality: so much for the theory;
Agitation in the void, without ballast or compass, without reason or goal: so much for the practice;
These premises laid down, organization of a general insurance, with courts, police, gendarmerie, centralized administration and all that follows, of course, to serve as a counterweight to the fantasia, prevent risks and repair claims: so much for the government:
Such is, with regard to free will, the system of which M. de Girardin believed himself the inventor one day, and of which the reader has just seen the genealogy. Also, M. de Girardin, despite his motto, does like Hobbes, Spinoza, Hegel and tutti quanti; he is above all a man of authority, a statesman. — “I don’t want progress from below,” he wrote in 1848; “I only believe in progress through government. I could do more in an hour with power than you will do in a hundred years with your ideas!”
Is it any wonder now that freedom, always invoked, always retreats; that the Church, attacked from all sides, remains mistress; .and that the State, organ of public thought, which only decrees and acts from the abundance of public thought, drives back the Revolution from everywhere!…
XXXI. — After these quotations, it is useless to report the definitions of the theologians. Is not theology precisely, as M. Michelet says, the doctrine that teaches man to direct his passions towards the supreme intelligence, to seize with an ardent love the eternal laws, to devote himself entirely to their execution in the march of history?
“God, says theology, created the world with his laws, the soul of man with his inclinations. He gave him the idea and the word; he has revealed his commandments to him, and he incessantly assists him with his grace, either by the interior attraction that leads him to beauty and good, or by a supernatural influence of the Holy Spirit.
“But, by an inconceivable mystery, man has the power to disobey God and to do evil: it is this power of damnation that constitutes liberty. It is not a prerogative of our nature: to God alone, as Descartes proved, belongs the free will; nor is it a function or faculty of our soul: a faculty of option, or one that is exercised only for evil, is not. Liberty, the stumbling block of philosophy, is the irrefutable and incorruptible witness, which you cannot challenge without making an act of religion, which you cannot receive without falling on your knees before Christ.”
What do they want with their so-called rationalism, these philosophers whose thought constantly tends to be absorbed in the absolute? What do they bring us more than the Church? What did they find that she would not have found before them? What have they seen that she has not seen, and what else do they do, from Descartes to M. Michelet, than to turn, like merry-go-round horses, in the labyrinth of theology?
Is not Spinoza, in spite of his fatalism, which moreover exists only in his imagination and which his system contradicts, as much a Christian as Descartes and Leibnitz? Do Kant and Fichte speak differently from Malebranche and Bossuet? And when Mr. Jules Simon, as an eclectic logician, gathers around liberty what he calls the proofs of liberty: the inner sense, which proves nothing; universal consent, which is the same as inner meaning; the practice of society, which intimate sense leads blindly; remorse, which has no need of freedom to exist, and proves even less than inner sense; the establishment of penalties, which enters into the practice, true or false, of society; the idea of final cause, which belongs to the intelligence and is only a way of considering the action of fatality itself; when, I say, M. Jules Simon devotes himself to this oratorical development and gives it the title of Natural Religion, does he imagine himself to be anything other than a Christian?
A writer whom the turn of his mind renders little capable of philosophical work, but one of a singular quickness of intelligence as soon as it is a question of reducing to a lively and simple expression the jumble of current opinions, M. de Girardin, has taken Liberty as his motto!
Liberty, with the talent of M. de Girardin, has made the fortune of the Presse.
Now, what does the famous journalist mean by this word? I asked him one day: he confessed to me frankly that he knew nothing about it. Liberty, for him, like right, is a word that awaits its interpreter. But there is one thing that M. de Girardin has perfectly understood: it is that everything in society having become doubtful through criticism, religion, government, property, justice, there remains only the arbitrariness of each individual, his good pleasure, his fancy, and that such is precisely the power with which the statesman must reckon. Hence this original theory that assimilates crime to a risk, liberty to an insurance, the right to an indemnity, and which has won its author a host of adherents.
This, then, is what remains to us of so many and so learned controversies! Instead of knowledge of the divine order and the conformity of our will to this order, the ability to believe what we see fit and to act as we please, unless there is reciprocal assurance: there is no for man, if we are to believe M. de Girardin, another right, another duty, another morality, another liberty, another reality, another law! O philosophy!
And now, what is this final arbitrariness to which universal skepticism pushes us? This good pleasure that constitutes our individuality and constitutes our whole being? This right of fancy that remains to us, when all Justice and all truth have disappeared?
Listen to this, good people who imagine that philosophy, like speech, was given to man to clarify ideas, not to confuse them: this shameless runner whom you religiously called liberty, but against which religion, which knows well, fulminates its anathemas, the State organizes its forces, philosophy twists its powerless sentences, it is sin, always original sin!
Now, sin calls for repression, or insurance, if prefer. M. de Girardin, who speaks as an economist, basically reasons like theologians.
In summary:
The negation of every principle, of every idea, of all order, of every aim, of all morality: so much for the theory;
Agitation in the void, without ballast or compass, without reason or goal: so much for the practice;
These premises laid down, organization of a general insurance, with courts, police, gendarmerie, centralized administration and all that follows, of course, to serve as a counterweight to the fantasia, prevent risks and repair claims: so much for the government:
Such is, with regard to free will, the system of which M. de Girardin believed himself the inventor one day, and of which the reader has just seen the genealogy. Also, M. de Girardin, despite his motto, does like Hobbes, Spinoza, Hegel and tutti quanti; he is above all a man of authority, a statesman. — “I don’t want progress from below,” he wrote in 1848; “I only believe in progress through government. I could do more in an hour with power than you will do in a hundred years with your ideas!”
Is it any wonder now that freedom, always invoked, always retreats; that the Church, attacked from all sides, remains mistress; .and that the State, organ of public thought, which only decrees and acts from the abundance of public thought, drives back the Revolution from everywhere!
CHAPTER V.
Nature and function of liberty.
XXX
Let us finish first with the ambiguity which, on this question of the free will, trips up the philosophers.
If one thinks about it a little, it is easy to see that the word liberty, like the terms substance, cause, heart, God, force, movement, reason, Justice, etc., serves to indicate a conception of the understanding, formed, like all the others, on the occasion of certain facts of experience, but which, evading experience as a substratum or subject, escapes direct observation itself.
This comes down to saying, following the observations that we made on the formation of concepts (Seventh Study), that it is a particular point of view under which common sense is accustomed to considering human actions, and that it names liberty, in opposition to another point of view, necessity. And one asks whether this classification is exact, founded in fact and in right, or if liberty would not be instead a subdivision of necessity, in which case, the generic distinction that gives it birth having to be erased, the entire ethics must be remade.
To thus reduce the demonstration of liberty to a simple classification of the facts, from a metaphysical question to make a question of pure observation, would be already to greatly simplify the problem, and to ensure to the solution all the certainty of which a human thought is capable.
But that is another advantage which this method provides us, an advantage of a decisive bearing.
It is a principle of logic, a law of the understanding, that any metaphysical conception, spontaneously formed by the mind on the occasion of phenomena, implies a contradictory appearance, what is called an antinomy. That has been shown, since the Greeks, for time, space, substance, movement. I have proven it myself, in another order of ideas, for property, community, competition, government, credit, etc. Modern philosophy, far from making of this intellectual phenomenon a principle of doubt, has used it to raise its most famous systems. And, save for the execution, which does not appear to me up to now to have been fortunate, philosophy was perfectly within its right. Do we doubt, can we doubt the legitimacy of all these categories, because at the analysis they have an appearance of constant contradiction? Justice itself, becoming, by the development of its concept, identical to happiness, seems to go against its definition, which requires that it be free: do we doubt, therefore, that Justice, and the philosophy of Rochefoucauld, has a single sincere partisan?
It will be the same for liberty. Let is be rejected, if it does not do anything, tends to nothing, does not mean anything, is nothing, all well and good; but to reject under the pretext of the antinomy that its concept raises is as unreasonable as to declare property a utopia because it implies in its concept the right to use and misuse, government a utopia because it supposes assent of all or anarchy, Justice a dream because it promises happiness to the just. What do I say? Necessity itself is contradictory, since, as Spinoza demonstrates, nothing exists outside of infinite necessity, and yet nevertheless, to explain the movement of the universe and the perfectibility of souls, we needed, with Leibniz, to divide this necessity infinitely, i.e. to create a liberty equal to it. Do we doubt, therefore, the necessity of certain things? Would all be free, by chance?
In short, the antinomy that generally strikes any concept is so small a reason to challenge this concept, that one could almost say that it is what gives it authenticity. We will thus not be surprised that it is in this respect with liberty as with the rest, and that we should begin precisely, in order to recognize it, by asking of what its antinomy consists.
Ou la liberté n’est rien, ou elle a son objet à elle, son but, sa fonction propre, son emploi déterminé dans le système universel : toutes conditions qui impliquent une antinomie manifeste. Quelle est donc cette fonction de la liberté ? Ne nous effrayons pas du mot : à quoi sert-elle ? En autres termes, existe-t-il, dans l’ordre de la nature et de la société, des phénomènes doués d’un caractère spécifique tel que nous puissions dire avec assurance : Ceci est de la liberté, et cela n’en est pas ; comme nous disons : Ceci est de la vie, et cela n’est pas de la vie ; Ceci est de la raison, et cela n’est pas de la raison ; Ceci est de la Justice, et cela n’est pas de la Justice ? Et comment cette liberté fonctionnelle, utile, servante, car il faut appeler les choses par leur nom, peut-elle néanmoins être dite libre ?
Here is all that we have to seek, the proof of liberty by the reality of its function.
For it is obvious that, if freedom is not a functional reality, what would be far more serious for it than to present an antinomic character; if, as a function, it is not distinguished both from activity, and from intelligence, and from the will to conform ourselves to general laws and justice; if any act of man that does not proceed from one or the other of these faculties or from their co-operation must be attributed to unreason and madness, that is to say, in the last analysis, to the fatality of nature, it is, I say, evident that liberty, contradictory or not, is reduced to zero; instead of looking for a demonstration of it, we would only have to explain this appearance of the understanding.
CHAPTER V.
Nature and realism of liberty.
XXXI. — Let us finish first with the ambiguity which, on this question of the free will, trips up the philosophers.
If one thinks about it a little, it is easy to see that the word liberty, like the terms substance, cause, heart, God, force, movement, reason, Justice, etc., serves to indicate a conception of the understanding, formed, like all the others, on the occasion of certain facts of experience, but which, evading experience as a substratum or subject, escapes direct observation itself.
This comes down to saying, following the observations that we made on the formation of concepts (Seventh Study), that it is a particular point of view under which common sense is accustomed to considering human actions, and that it names liberty, in opposition to another point of view, necessity. And one asks whether this classification is exact, founded in fact and in right, or if liberty would not be instead a subdivision of necessity, in which case, the generic distinction that gives it birth having to be erased, the entire ethics must be remade.
To thus reduce the demonstration of liberty to a simple classification of the facts, from a metaphysical question to make a question of pure observation, would be already to greatly simplify the problem, and to ensure to the solution all the certainty of which a human thought is capable.
But that is another advantage which this method provides us, an advantage of a decisive bearing.
It is a principle of logic, a law of the understanding, that any metaphysical conception, spontaneously formed by the mind on the occasion of phenomena, implies a contradictory appearance, what is called an antinomy. That has been shown, since the Greeks, for time, space, substance, movement. I have proven it myself, in another order of ideas, for property, community, competition, government, credit, etc. Modern philosophy, far from making of this intellectual phenomenon a principle of doubt, has used it to raise its most famous systems. And, save for the execution, which does not appear to me up to now to have been fortunate, philosophy was perfectly within its right. Do we doubt, can we doubt the legitimacy of all these categories, because at the analysis they have an appearance of constant contradiction? Justice itself, becoming, by the development of its concept, identical to happiness, seems to go against its definition, which requires that it be free: do we doubt, therefore, that Justice, and the philosophy of Rochefoucauld, has a single sincere partisan?
It will be the same for liberty. Let is be rejected, if it does not do anything, tends to nothing, does not mean anything, is nothing, all well and good; but to reject under the pretext of the antinomy that its concept raises is as unreasonable as to declare property a utopia because it implies in its concept the right to use and misuse, government a utopia because it supposes assent of all or anarchy, Justice a dream because it promises happiness to the just. What do I say? Necessity itself is contradictory, since, as Spinoza demonstrates, nothing exists outside of infinite necessity, and yet nevertheless, to explain the movement of the universe and the perfectibility of souls, we needed, with Leibniz, to divide this necessity infinitely, i.e. to create a liberty equal to it. Do we doubt, therefore, the necessity of certain things? Would all be free, by chance?
In short, the antinomy that generally strikes any concept is so small a reason to challenge this concept, that one could almost say that it is what gives it authenticity. We will thus not be surprised that it is in this respect with liberty as with the rest, and that we should begin precisely, in order to recognize it, by asking of what its antinomy consists.
Either liberty is nothing, or it has its object, its goal, its own function, its employment determined in the universal system: all conditions that imply a manifest antinomy. What is then this function of liberty? We are not frightened of the word: what purpose does it _serve_? In other words, Ido there exist, in the order of nature and of society, phenomena of such a specific nature that we can say with assurance: This is liberty, and that is not; as we say: This is life, and that is not life; this is reason, and that is not reason; is this Justice, and that is not Justice? And how can this functional, useful, serviceable liberty, for it is necessary to call things by their names, nevertheless be called free?
That’s all we have to look for, the proof of freedom by the reality, Kant has already used this word, of its function.
For it is obvious that, if freedom is not a functional reality, what would be far more serious for it than to present an antinomic character; if, as a function, it is not distinguished both from activity, and from intelligence, and from the will to conform ourselves to general laws and justice; if any act of man that does not proceed from one or the other of these faculties or from their co-operation must be attributed to unreason and madness, that is to say, in the last analysis, to the fatality of nature, it is, I say, evident that liberty, contradictory or not, is reduced to zero; instead of looking for a demonstration of it, we would only have to explain this appearance of the understanding.
XXXI
After the embarrassment caused by the antinomic character of liberty, the second difficulty to overcome results from the double concept of God and the universe: God conceived as substance, cause and infinite intelligence, from which all flows, by which all is put in order, whose action is irresistible, from the foreknowledge of which nothing escapes; the universe, conceived as completely organized, seriated, interdependent in all its parts and all its evolutions, complete, perfect as a creation, as God, as a creator, is himself perfect.
Here all the philosophers are in agreement, theists, pantheists and atheists, materialists or idealists. Whether they distinguish the two terms, God and the universe, or whether they resolve them into only one, nature, they begin from the absolute.
Is there then, within the infinite substance, under the all-powerful action of God and the regard of his providence, in that system of nature of which all the parts are linked, a place for liberty?
To this question, I have already hinted that the monadology provides the possibility of an affirmative answer. But the monadology was for Leibnitz hardly more than a hypothesis: it is a matter of making it a truth.
All the difficulty consists in knowing if the things in which power appears can and must be considered, not as simple vehicles of the infinite power, but as possessing by themselves the force with which they are endowed, in a word, as causes.
No, responds Spinoza; the power that appears in things does not belong to them. Causality, force, life, action, truly exist only in God, from whom they radiate in all directions to infinity, and by that radiation produce and animate all creatures. As for the things themselves, they have neither causality nor power; they are only the rays of the universal cause or substance, which is God.
This system necessarily unites Descartes, Malebranche, Fichte, and all those who affirm, at the beginning of science, God or the Absolute.
But if the absolute imposes itself fatally as a metaphysical condition of knowledge, it is itself outside of knowledge, and we do not have the right to affirm anything more of it than that which knowledge demands, namely, that every phenomenon supposes, in a measure equal to itself, nothing more and nothing less, a substance, a cause, a a duration, a space, a mode, etc.
From what right then does Spinoza conclude that the absolute that serves as substratum to the horse is the same absolute as the one which serves as the substratum to the oak; that the cause that makes one vegetate is identically, substantially, dynamically the same as that that animates the other; in other words, that the absolute, the in-itself of things, is necessarily single for all things, and that the opposite is not true, namely, that each thing possesses its absolute, its substance in itself, its own energy, its modality within it, although that substratum, that energy, that modality, can encounter its analog, or even its fellow, in other beings?
With what right, I ask, does Spinoza, from the particular and individualistic conception of the absolute suggested by the apperception of such and such a thing, conclude in favor of the pantheistic affirmation of the absolute?
I do not deny that the concept of Spinoza is intellectually possible, since he expresses it, since we all can form the thought, and since it serves religion as a principle. I deny only, in the question, the admissibility of that concept, which rests on a gratuitous generalization; I deny that the unity of creation must be conceived as Spinoza conceived it; I maintain that this unity, if it exists, can only be the effect of a competition, concert or conflict (it matters little what one calls it) and must be considered as a resultant; I reject as a consequence the conception of Spinoza, making the totality of created nature the expression of a single and infinite substantial force, as equally surpassing the limits of experience and the laws of metaphysics.
Every apperception of the sensibility suggests to the understanding the conception of an absolute–substance, force, life, etc.–forming the substratum, the in-itself, of the object manifested: this is acknowledged.
But that absolute that we conceive in each thing, we have no right to say that it is individually and synthetically the same for all things; it would be, I repeat, to conclude beyond observation and to reason about the nature of the absolute as absolute, which science forbids and which metaphysics itself condemns.
In order for us to have the right to conceive and affirm a collective absolute, it is necessary for new facts, additional observations, to authorize us: it is thus that we have concluded, from the analysis of the economic facts and the agitation of opinion, the distinction between individual and social reason. The absolute has grown, for us, from observation; it has never preceded it. Moreover, it has appeared to us constantly as a resultant, never, if one will allow me the word, as principiant.
If then the absolute of Spinoza bothers my reason in the least, if it is outside the facts, if it is in contradiction with the facts, I can challenge that concept, divide it, dissect it; that is what Leibniz does.
Leibniz, dispersing the infinite substance in monads, putting in the place of the infinite cause the infinity of causes, has banished forever from the universe and the sciences the causative absolute, the natura naturans of Spinoza; at the same time, he has founded the cosmos, natura naturata, visible form of the absolute, as Spinoza said, on the reciprocal action of the infinitesimal beings that he had just created, the monads.
But that great philosopher, whose soul was no less religious than that of Spinoza, and who, because of his faith, could no more than he conceive otherwise the system of worlds, could not consider without terror the consequences of his hypothesis. It was to avert, as much as it was in him, the disaster that threatened theology, that he invented his great monad, suzerain of a monadic world harmonically pre-established, and the best possible.
We, who no longer have the same scruples, and whom nothing prevents from applying to the moral world a theory that definitely grasps the physical sciences, can at our ease make this application, and deduce the consequences.
XXXII. — After the embarrassment caused by the antinomic character of liberty, the second difficulty to overcome results from the double concept of God and the universe: God conceived as substance, cause and infinite intelligence, from which all flows, by which all is put in order, whose action is irresistible, from the foreknowledge of which nothing escapes; the universe, conceived as completely organized, seriated, interdependent in all its parts and all its evolutions, complete, perfect as a creation, as God, as a creator, is himself perfect.
Here all the philosophers are in agreement, theists, pantheists and atheists, materialists or idealists. Whether they distinguish the two terms, God and the universe, or whether they resolve them into only one, nature, they begin from the absolute.
Is there then, within the infinite substance, under the all-powerful action of God and the regard of his providence, in that system of nature of which all the parts are linked, a place for liberty?
To this question, I have already hinted that the monadology provides the possibility of an affirmative answer. But the monadology was for Leibnitz hardly more than a hypothesis: it is a matter of making it a truth.
All the difficulty consists in knowing if the things in which power appears can and must be considered, not as simple vehicles of the infinite power, but as possessing by themselves the force with which they are endowed, in a word, as causes.
No, responds Spinoza; the power that appears in things does not belong to them. Causality, force, life, action, truly exist only in God, from whom they radiate in all directions to infinity, and by that radiation produce and animate all creatures. As for the things themselves, they have neither causality nor power; they are only the rays of the universal cause or substance, which is God.
This system necessarily unites Descartes, Malebranche, Fichte, and all those who affirm, at the beginning of science, God or the Absolute.
But if the absolute imposes itself fatally as a metaphysical condition of knowledge, it is itself outside of knowledge, and we do not have the right to affirm anything more of it than that which knowledge demands, namely, that every phenomenon supposes, in a measure equal to itself, nothing more and nothing less, a substance, a cause, a a duration, a space, a mode, etc.
From what right then does Spinoza conclude that the absolute that serves as substratum to the horse is the same absolute as the one which serves as the substratum to the oak; that the cause that makes one vegetate is identically, substantially, dynamically the same as that that animates the other; in other words, that the absolute, the in-itself of things, is necessarily single for all things, and that the opposite is not true, namely, that each thing possesses its absolute, its substance in itself, its own energy, its modality within it, although that substratum, that energy, that modality, can encounter its analog, or even its fellow, in other beings? With what right, I ask, does Spinoza, from the particular and individualistic conception of the absolute suggested by the apperception of such and such a thing, conclude in favor of the pantheistic affirmation of the absolute?
I do not deny that the concept of Spinoza is intellectually possible, since he expresses it, since we all can form the thought, and since it serves religion as a principle. I deny only, in the question, the admissibility of that concept, which rests on a gratuitous generalization; I deny that the unity of creation must be conceived as Spinoza conceived it; I maintain that this unity, if it exists, can only be the effect of a competition, concert or conflict (it matters little what one calls it) and must be considered as a resultant; I reject as a consequence the conception of Spinoza, making the totality of created nature the expression of a single and infinite substantial force, as equally surpassing the limits of experience and the laws of metaphysics.
Every apperception of the sensibility suggests to the understanding the conception of an absolute–substance, force, life, etc.–forming the substratum, the in-itself, of the object manifested: this is acknowledged.
But that absolute that we conceive in each thing, we have no right to say that it is individually and synthetically the same for all things; it would be, I repeat, to conclude beyond observation and to reason about the nature of the absolute as absolute, which science forbids and which metaphysics itself condemns.
In order for us to have the right to conceive and affirm a collective absolute, it is necessary for new facts, additional observations, to authorize us: it is thus that we have concluded, from the analysis of the economic facts and the agitation of opinion, the distinction between individual and social reason. The absolute has grown, for us, from observation; it has never preceded it. Moreover, it has appeared to us constantly as a resultant, never, if one will allow me the word, as principiant.
If therefore Spinoza’s absolute bothers my reason in the least, if it is outside the facts, if it is in contradiction with the facts, I can reject that concept, divide it, cut it up; I can, at the very least, if I am condemned to submit to it, reconstruct it: this is what Leibnitz did.
Leibniz, dispersing the infinite substance in monads, putting in the place of the infinite cause the infinity of causes, has banished forever from the universe and the sciences the causative absolute, the natura naturans of Spinoza; at the same time, he has founded the cosmos, natura naturata, visible form of the absolute, as Spinoza said, on the reciprocal action of the infinitesimal beings that he had just created, the monads.
But that great philosopher, whose soul was no less religious than that of Spinoza, and who, because of his faith, could no more than he conceive otherwise the system of worlds, could not consider without terror the consequences of his hypothesis. It was to avert, as much as it was in him, the disaster that threatened theology, that he invented his great monad, suzerain of a monadic world harmonically pre-established, and the best possible.
We, who no longer have the same scruples, and whom nothing prevents from applying to the moral world a theory that definitely grasps the physical sciences, can at our ease make this application, and deduce the consequences.
XXXII
Il suit donc de la monadologie leibnizienne :
a) Que la puissance existe en chaque être ; qu’elle est propre à cet être, inhérente à sa nature, qu’elle fait partie de son substratum ou sujet, lequel est individuel, existant par lui-même et indépendant de tout autre ;
b) Que la puissance de chaque être, qu’elle se manifeste par l’action ou par l’inertie, spontanéité pour lui-même, est, relativement aux autres êtres qui en subissent l’atteinte, nécessité ou fatalisme ;
c) Qu’en vertu de cette spontanéité, l’être, se posant à priori dans son indépendance, non-seulement résiste à l’action des autres êtres, mais les nie, c’est-à-dire tend à les soumettre, à les absorber, à les détruire ;
d) That thus the order in creation depends, no longer on a divine influx, on a divine action, on a soul of the world or universal life, elaborating unitarily the matter that it creates, but on the similar and opposing qualities of atoms, which attract, assemble, repel, balance, arrange and subordinate each other according to their qualities;
e) Consequently, that on the side of God, the Absolute of absolutes, all difficulties ceasing, liberty is possible.
There remains the difficulty drawn from the universal organism, within which one wonders if there can be liberty.
Now, it results from observation, illuminated by the principle of Leibniz, and we are going to prove:
f) That spontaneity, at the lowest degrees in the organized beings, to a higher degree in plants and animals, attains, under the name of _liberty_, its fullness in man, who alone tends to free himself from all fatalism, whether objective or subjective, and who liberates himself in fact;
g) Qu’ainsi la liberté est en émergence, c’est-à-dire en attaque ; la nécessité en défense, c’est-à-dire en rétrogradation ;
h) Qu’au total on peut dire que l’univers est établi sur le chaos, et la société humaine sur l’antagonisme ;
i) Qu’en conséquence l’état du premier, en perpétuelle transition, ne peut être considéré ni comme meilleur, ni comme pire ;
j) Mais que, si, dans cet univers, toute action finit par rencontrer une réaction égale et si les forces se balancent, il n’en est pas de même entre lui et l’humanité, qui triomphe sans cesse de la fatalité des choses et de la fatalité de son organisme, et seule se constitue souveraine ;
k) Que cette liberté franche, dégagée de toute conditionnalité, est attestée par l’histoire et par la Justice, que l’on peut définir, la première l’évolution de la liberté, la seconde le pacte que la liberté fait avec elle-même pour la conquête du monde et la subordination de la nature.
These propositions, which all follow from the metaphysical hypothesis of the monads, a perfectly licit hypothesis and one much better justified than that of unique absolute, provide to liberty, even before man makes it apparent by his actions, the conditions of a positive existence, highly intelligible, capable, finally, wherever man may appear, of being noted by its phenomena.
This idea of universal order is just the opposite of the optimism of Leibniz, which the world has hissed since Candide, and which nevertheless arrests, in politics and philosophy, the progress of liberty. Let us speak a word of it.
XXXIII. — It follows then from the leibnizean monadology:
a) That power exists in each being; that it is proper to that being, inherent in its nature, that it forms part of its substratum or subject, which is individual, existing for itself and independent of all others;
b) That the power of each being, which it manifests by action or by inertia, spontaneity for itself, is, in relation to the other beings that are subject to its reach, necessity or fatalism;
c) That by virtue of that spontaneity, the being, presenting itself a priori in its independence, not only resists the actions of other beings, but denies them, that is, tends to subdue them, absorb them, destroy them;
d) That thus the order in creation depends, no longer on a divine influx, on a divine action, on a soul of the world or universal life, elaborating unitarily the matter that it creates, but on the similar and opposing qualities of atoms, which attract, assemble, repel, balance, arrange and subordinate each other according to their qualities;
e) Consequently, that on the side of God, the Absolute of absolutes, all difficulties ceasing, liberty is possible.
There remains the difficulty drawn from the universal organism, within which one wonders if there can be liberty.
Now, it results from observation, illuminated by the principle of Leibniz, and we are going to prove:
f) That spontaneity, at the lowest degrees in the organized beings, to a higher degree in plants and animals, attains, under the name of liberty, its fullness in man, who alone tends to free himself from all fatalism, whether objective or subjective, and who liberates himself in fact;
g) That thus liberty is in emergence, on the attack; necessity is on defense, in retreat;
h) That on the whole one can say that the universe is established on chaos, and human society on antagonism;
i) That as a consequence the state of the first, in perpetual transition, can be considered neither as better, nor as worse;
j) But that, if, in that universe, all action ends up encountering an equal reaction and if forces balance, it is not the same between it and humanity, which triumphs constantly over the fatality of things and the fatality of its own organism, and alone is constituted sovereign;
k) That this total liberty, freed of all conditionality, is attested to by history and by Justice, that one can define, first, the evolution of liberty, and, second, the pact that liberty makes with itself for the conquest of the world and the subordination of nature.
These propositions, which all follow from the metaphysical hypothesis of the monads, a perfectly licit hypothesis and one much better justified than that of unique absolute, provide to liberty, even before man makes it apparent by his actions, the conditions of a positive existence, highly intelligible, capable, finally, wherever man may appear, of being noted by its phenomena.
This idea of universal order is just the opposite of the optimism of Leibniz, which the world has hissed since Candide, and which nevertheless arrests, in politics and philosophy, the progress of liberty. Let us speak a word of it.
XXXIII
What is optimism?
A myth, the myth of perfect accord, of the universal concert, of cosmic music, pre-established harmony, nature natured, everything that expresses the realization of the absolute.
Optimism is common to all religious cosmogonies and to all pantheistic conceptions of the universe. For the first, it is the Edenic state, which is maintained until the moment when sin, by the malice of the devil and the seduction of man, enters the world and sows discord there. For the second, it is the opposite hypothesis, by which the philosopher, denying the distinction between good and evil and positing the indifference of actions, denies sin, makes Justice a simple relation of interests, and on this datum creates a universe of which all the parts are linked by relations of love and harmony, where everything contributes, everything conspires, everything consents, according to the word of Hippocrates; where everything is beauty, perfection, without shock or discord, and, as Leibnitz said, as best as possible.
Isn’t this what M. Renouvier concedes when, by an inconceivable contradiction, he seeks liberty in such a world, and to find it introduces there, one knows not how or why, exceptions?
Certainly, Monsignor, after having denied original sin in humanity, you have no reason to fear that I will restore it to nature. There is nothing bad in itself, neither as substance, nor as cause, nor as accident; and everything that exists is good in its essence.
But it is not a question here of that: it is a question of the relations of beings, of the interplay of causes; it is a question of knowing whether all these spontaneities of which creation is composed agree with each other or fight each other; if, either by the law of their constitution, or by superior order, they form a circle of perfect love or if they deliver an immense battle; if the order, finally, which here and there is discovered in this melee, comes from the concert of instruments tuned like the pipes of an organ, or if it is not rather an effect of balance between antagonistic forces.
As for me, my opinion cannot be in doubt: what makes creation possible is in my eyes the same thing as what makes freedom possible, the opposition of powers. It is to have a very false idea of the order of the world and of universal life, to make an opera out of it. Everywhere I see forces in struggle; I do not discover anywhere, I cannot understand this melody of the great All, which Pythagoras thought he heard.
Let’s take a plant, whichever you want, a cloverleaf. According to the laws of reproduction, a small number of years would suffice for this clover to cover the earth with its trifoliate posterity, if its spontaneity could develop freely and if it were not checked by any other. What is blocking its way? Other seeds, whose competition pushes it back; then the herbivores, which feed on it.
Take an animal, the goat. A few years would suffice for a couple to cast a few billion heads on the globe. What comes to put a stop to this overflow of population? Man and the carnivores, who consume the goat, and the lack of pastures. More spontaneities that become sad and formidable necessities for the goat species.
Allow yourself to admire this circulus, which antiquity represented under the emblem of the serpent eating its tail. I maintain with antiquity that this so-called circle is nothing other than the conflict of creation. For there to be harmony between existences, they would have to not live at the expense of each other, they would have to resemble the lions and gazelles of the earthly Paradise, which grew and multiplied while grazing the same courtyard. But nothing can be balanced, supported, fed by anything: war is universal, and from this war results equilibrium.
In summary:
What is similar in the idea that we successively form of each being, as experience progresses, such as gravity, extension, etc., proves nothing in favor of the ultra-metaphysical hypothesis of a great organism, or, what comes to the same thing, of an identity of substance, of cause, of life, of will, of idea, of plan, of action, in the totality of beings. This pantheism has nothing to justify it, and we are all the better justified in rejecting it, since it is from this that comes to us, in speculation and practice, all abandonment of ourselves, all decline.
Au contraire, de l’antagonisme que nous observons entre les êtres nous sommes fondés à conclure l’indépendance des substances, des causes, des volontés, des jugements ; de telle sorte que, laissant de côté l’univers, dont nous ne savons rien comme univers, nous pouvons du moins affirmer que chacune des existences dont il se compose est gouvernée par deux lois en opposition diamétrale, l’une qui est sa spontanéité, puissance d’absorption, d’envahissement, de négation ; l’autre qui est la nécessité, influence reçue du dehors, à laquelle il faut que l’être succombe, s’il ne la tue ?
All this seems so clear to me that I cannot understand from which side doubt can come, unless we drop the thread of observation to abandon ourselves to transcendental contemplation, which instead of realities makes us see chimeras.
XXXIV. — What is optimism?
A myth, the myth of perfect accord, of the universal concert, of cosmic music, pre-established harmony, nature natured, everything that expresses the realization of the absolute.
Optimism is common to all religious cosmogonies and to all pantheistic conceptions of the universe. For the first, it is the Edenic state, which is maintained until the moment when sin, by the malice of the devil and the seduction of man, enters the world and sows discord there. For the second, it is the opposite hypothesis, by which the philosopher, denying the distinction between good and evil and positing the indifference of actions, denies sin, makes Justice a simple relation of interests, and on this datum creates a universe of which all the parts are linked by relations of love and harmony, where everything contributes, everything conspires, everything consents, according to the word of Hippocrates; where everything is beauty, perfection, without shock or discord, and, as Leibnitz said, as best as possible.
Isn’t this what M. Renouvier concedes when, by an inconceivable contradiction, he seeks liberty in such a world, and to find it introduces there, one knows not how or why, exceptions?
Certainly, Monsignor, after having denied original sin in humanity, you have no reason to fear that I will restore it to nature. There is nothing bad in itself, neither as substance, nor as cause, nor as accident; and everything that exists is good in its essence.
But it is not a question here of that: it is a question of the relations of beings, of the interplay of causes; it is a question of knowing whether all these spontaneities of which creation is composed agree with each other or fight each other; if, either by the law of their constitution, or by superior order, they form a circle of perfect love or if they deliver an immense battle; if the order, finally, which here and there is discovered in this melee, comes from the concert of instruments tuned like the pipes of an organ, or if it is not rather an effect of balance between antagonistic forces.
As for me, my opinion cannot be in doubt: what makes creation possible is in my eyes the same thing as what makes freedom possible, the opposition of powers. It is to have a very false idea of the order of the world and of universal life, to make an opera out of it. Everywhere I see forces in struggle; I do not discover anywhere, I cannot understand this melody of the great All, which Pythagoras thought he heard.
Let’s take a plant, whichever you want, a cloverleaf. According to the laws of reproduction, a small number of years would suffice for this clover to cover the earth with its trifoliate posterity, if its spontaneity could develop freely and if it were not checked by any other. What is blocking its way? Other seeds, whose competition pushes it back; then the herbivores, which feed on it.
Take an animal, the goat. A few years would suffice for a couple to cast a few billion heads on the globe. What comes to put a stop to this overflow of population? Man and the carnivores, who consume the goat, and the lack of pastures. More spontaneities that become sad and formidable necessities for the goat species.
Allow yourself to admire this circulus, which antiquity represented under the emblem of the serpent eating its tail. I maintain with antiquity that this so-called circle is nothing other than the conflict of creation. For there to be harmony between existences, they would have to not live at the expense of each other, they would have to resemble the lions and gazelles of the earthly Paradise, which grew and multiplied while grazing the same courtyard. But nothing can be balanced, supported, fed by anything: war is universal, and from this war results equilibrium.
In summary:
What is similar in the idea that we successively form of each being, as experience progresses, such as gravity, extension, etc., proves nothing in favor of the ultra-metaphysical hypothesis of a great organism, or, what comes to the same thing, of an identity of substance, of cause, of life, of will, of idea, of plan, of action, in the totality of beings. This pantheism has nothing to justify it, and we are all the better justified in rejecting it, since it is from this that comes to us, in speculation and practice, all abandonment of ourselves, all decline.
On the contrary, from the antagonism that we observe between beings we are justified in concluding the independence of substances, causes, wills, judgments; so that, leaving aside the universe, of which we know nothing as a universe, we can at least affirm that each of the existences of which it is composed is governed by two laws in diametrical opposition, one which is its spontaneity, power of absorption, invasion, negation; the other which is necessity, an influence received from without, to which the being must succumb if he appropriates it.
All this seems so clear to me that I cannot understand from which side doubt can come, unless we drop the thread of observation to abandon ourselves to transcendental contemplation, which instead of realities makes us see chimeras.
XXXIV
The field is open to human spontaneity. It is no longer a question of knowing how this spontaneity becomes freedom or free will; how, by the energy of his ego, man frees himself, not only from external necessity, but also from the necessity of his nature, in order to affirm himself decidedly as absolute.
In inferior beings, spontaneity fatally breaks out in the face of outside provocations; it is not mistress to react or not to react, still less to possess itself and to disobey its own laws, which it follows blindly, without ever being able to deviate from them.
It is otherwise with man:
Man has the privilege, among all the creatures whose various attributes he summarizes, not only to react or not to react, as he chooses, against the outside, but to resist his own spontaneity, in whatever form it solicits him, organic, intellectual, moral, social; to use and abuse this spontaneity, to destroy it, in a word to deny in himself and outside of himself all fatalism, by positing itself, and more and more, as an inverted expression of the Absolute.
More simply:
Man, because he is not a simple spontaneity, but a composite of all the spontaneities or powers of nature, enjoys free will.
This is the proposition we now have to prove. At the point to which these studies have brought us, the difficulty is no longer anything.
XXXV. — The field is open to human spontaneity. It is no longer a question of knowing how this spontaneity becomes freedom or free will; how, by the energy of his ego, man frees himself, not only from external necessity, but also from the necessity of his nature, in order to affirm himself decidedly as absolute.
In inferior beings, spontaneity fatally breaks out in the face of outside provocations; it is not mistress to react or not to react, still less to possess itself and to disobey its own laws, which it follows blindly, without ever being able to deviate from them.
It is otherwise with man:
Man has the privilege, among all the creatures whose various attributes he summarizes, not only to react or not to react, as he chooses, against the outside, but to resist his own spontaneity, in whatever form it solicits him, organic, intellectual, moral, social; to use and abuse this spontaneity, to destroy it, in a word to deny in himself and outside of himself all fatalism, by positing itself, and more and more, as an inverted expression of the Absolute.
More simply:
Man, because he is not a simple spontaneity, but a composite of all the spontaneities or powers of nature, enjoys free will.
This is the proposition we now have to prove. At the point to which these studies have brought us, the difficulty is no longer anything.
XXXV
If man were all matter, he would not be free. Neither attraction, nor any combination of the different qualities of bodies, suffices to constitute free will: common sense suffices to make this understood.
If he were pure spirit, he would not be freer: the laws of understanding, like those of attraction, are incompatible by their nature with a faculty of free will.
If he were pure passion or affectivity, he would still not be free.
If the universe were annihilated, and man existed alone in infinite space, his faculties no longer having anything to exercise themselves on, he could not call himself free, except perhaps in his memories.
But man is complex: he is a compound of matter, life, intelligence, passion; moreover, he is not alone. I therefore say that his is free by the synthesis of his nature; that he cannot but be free, that is to say endowed with a power that surpasses, by its quality and its scope, each and the totality of the spontaneities which compose it; here is why:
Whether there truly exist souls, immaterial substances, as Descartes says, or monads, elementary forces, according to Leibnitz’s idea; whether or not matter is infinitely divisible; by what mystery are united in man two natures as opposite as spirit and matter, or how the latter can engender thought, it matters little to us. These questions touch on the absolute; they are outside science, and we have to concern ourselves with them all the less since, the problem of liberty being given by a conception of the mind, formed, like all conceptions, on the occasion of phenomena, it is to the reason of the phenomena we have to ask for the solution.
Without thus going beyond the phenomenon, and considering things as observation shows them to us, we know that no analysis could arrive at the last particles of matter, and that all that falls under our senses, organized being or mass inorganic, appears to us as a collection, a composition, a group.
Such is man, a marvelous assemblage of unknown elements, solid, liquid, gaseous, ponderable and imponderable; of unknown essences, matter, life, spirit; of unknown functions or faculties, activity, sensibility, will, instinct, memory, intelligence, love.
Now, wherever there is a group, there is produced a resultant that is the power of the group, distinct not only from the particular forces or powers that compose the group, but also from their sum, and which expresses its synthetic unity, the pivotal, central function.
What is this resultant in man? It is liberty.
Man is free, he cannot not be, because he is a compound; because the law of every compound is to produce a resultant that is its proper power; because, the human compound being formed of body, life, spirit, subdivided into more and more special faculties, the resultant, proportional to the number and diversity of the constituent principles, must be a force superior to all the laws of body, life and spirit, precisely what we call free will.
This is how we have seen industrial groups, constituent faculties of the collective being, engender through their relations a superior power, which is political power, we could say the liberty of the social being.
C’est cette force de collectivité que l’homme désigne quand il parle de son âme ; c’est par elle que son moi acquiert une réalité et sort du nuage métaphysique, quand, se distinguant de chacune et de la totalité de ses facultés, il se pose comme affranchi de toute fatalité interne et externe, souverain de sa vie autonome, absolu comme le Dieu que conçoit sa piété, mais en sens inverse de ce Dieu, puisque l’absolu divin enveloppe le monde qu’il produit, et que par conséquent il est nécessaire ; tandis que l’homme est partie intégrante du monde, qu’il tend à absorber, ce qui constitue le libre arbitre.
Thus the conception of free will as a force of collectivity of the human being explains, justifies the universal belief; moreover, as if this conception could only have been formed by a series of partial hypotheses, all the philosophers we have consulted find in it the secret reason for their theories: Descartes, guessing that freedom in God cannot be of the same form and quality as in man; Spinoza, demonstrating that the divine, all-powerful, all-wise Infinite excludes the idea of liberty, which has the consequence that liberty can only be the attribute of a creature placed in a world of other creatures; Leibnitz, who makes liberty three times possible, three times intelligible, first by his theory of monads, secondly by their grouping, finally by the balance of liberty and necessity, both declared absolute in tendency, not in reality; MM. Tissot, Dunoyer and others, who note the oscillations of liberty and its progress, by virtue of the principle that we have just laid down, namely, that in man the power of collectivity or liberty is proportional to the sum of the elementary forces, faculties and ideas at his disposal.
Tant que la liberté fut, comme la Justice, rapportée à un sujet divin, qui n’en communiquait à l’homme qu’une faible parcelle, faculté d’option ou d’indifférence, la liberté demeura, comme la Justice, une notion fantastique, un mythe. Nous venons d’en faire une réalité ; nous faisons mieux encore, nous prouvons que cette réalité est exclusivement humaine, incompatible avec l’idée de Dieu. Sous ce rapport l’anthropomorphisme n’est plus permis, il devient une contradiction.
XXXVI..— If man were all matter, he would not be free. Neither attraction, nor any combination of the different qualities of bodies, suffices to constitute free will: common sense suffices to make this understood.
If he were pure spirit, he would not be freer: the laws of understanding, like those of attraction, are incompatible by their nature with a faculty of free will.
If he were pure passion or affectivity, he would still not be free.
If the universe were annihilated, and man existed alone in infinite space, his faculties no longer having anything to exercise themselves on, he could not call himself free, except perhaps in his memories.
But man is complex: he is a compound of matter, life, intelligence, passion; moreover, he is not alone. I therefore say that his is free by the synthesis of his nature; that he cannot but be free, that is to say endowed with a power that surpasses, by its quality and its scope, each and the totality of the spontaneities which compose it; here is why:
Whether there truly exist souls, immaterial substances, as Descartes says, or monads, elementary forces, according to Leibnitz’s idea; whether or not matter is infinitely divisible; by what mystery are united in man two natures as opposite as spirit and matter, or how the latter can engender thought, it matters little to us. These questions touch on the absolute; they are outside science, and we have to concern ourselves with them all the less since, the problem of liberty being given by a conception of the mind, formed, like all conceptions, on the occasion of phenomena, it is to the reason of the phenomena we have to ask for the solution.
Without thus going beyond the phenomenon, and considering things as observation shows them to us, we know that no analysis could arrive at the last particles of matter, and that all that falls under our senses, organized being or mass inorganic, appears to us as a collection, a composition, a group.
Such is man, a marvelous assemblage of unknown elements, solid, liquid, gaseous, ponderable and imponderable; of unknown essences, matter, life, spirit; of unknown functions or faculties, activity, sensibility, will, instinct, memory, intelligence, love.
Now, wherever there is a group, there is produced a resultant that is the power of the group, distinct not only from the particular forces or powers that compose the group, but also from their sum, and which expresses its synthetic unity, the pivotal, central function.
What is this resultant in man? It is liberty.
Man is free, he cannot not be, because he is a compound; because the law of every compound is to produce a resultant that is its proper power; because, the human compound being formed of body, life, spirit, subdivided into more and more special faculties, the resultant, proportional to the number and diversity of the constituent principles, must be a force superior to all the laws of body, life and spirit, precisely what we call free will.
This is how we have seen industrial groups, constituent faculties of the collective being, engender through their relations a superior power, which is political power, we could say the liberty of the social being. (J)
It is this force of collectivity that man designates when he speaks of his _soul_; it is through it that his self acquires a reality and emerges from the metaphysical cloud, when, distinguishing itself from each and from the totality of its faculties, it poses as freed from all internal and external fatality, sovereign of its autonomous life, absolute like the God whom its piety conceives, but in the opposite sense of this God, since the divine absolute, one, that is to say simple, identical, immutable, envelops the world that it produces, and that consequently it is necessary; while man, multiple, complex, collective, evolving, is an integral part of the world, which he tends to absorb, which constitutes free will.
Thus the conception of free will as a force of collectivity of the human being explains, justifies the universal belief; moreover, as if this conception could only have been formed by a series of partial hypotheses, all the philosophers we have consulted find in it the secret reason for their theories: Descartes, guessing that freedom in God cannot be of the same form and quality as in man; Spinoza, demonstrating that the divine, all-powerful, all-wise Infinite excludes the idea of liberty, which has the consequence that liberty can only be the attribute of a creature placed in a world of other creatures; Leibnitz, who makes liberty three times possible, three times intelligible, first by his theory of monads, secondly by their grouping, finally by the balance of liberty and necessity, both declared absolute in tendency, not in reality; MM. Tissot, Dunoyer and others, who note the oscillations of liberty and its progress, by virtue of the principle that we have just laid down, namely, that in man the power of collectivity or liberty is proportional to the sum of the elementary forces, faculties and ideas at his disposal.
As long as liberty was, like Justice, related to a divine subject, who communicated to man only a small part of it, faculty of option or indifference, liberty remained, like Justice, a notion fantastic, a myth. We just made it a reality; we do even better, we prove that this reality is exclusively human, incompatible with the nature of God, at least as defined by the metaphysicians Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz himself, and all the others. In this respect, anthropomorphism, which we have pointed out as the indispensable condition of the reality of the divine Being, receives a striking confirmation. Either God, the absolute sovereign, the being of beings, is not free, therefore he is equivalent to nothingness; or else he is the universal collectivity, the supreme liberty, the supreme humanity.
XXXVI
Now what is the function of liberty? To find it, we have only to return to the principle, and to follow its deduction.
Liberty is the power that results from the synthesis or collectivity of the human faculties.
These faculties are generally divided into three groups: physical, intellectual, affective or moral; a classification that exhausts all the forces of nature, manifested as matter, life, mind.
Or, il est de l’essence de toute collectivité que sa résultante diffère en qualité de chacun des éléments dont le groupe se compose, et surpasse en puissance leur somme : la fonction de la liberté consistera donc à porter le sujet au delà de toutes les manifestations, appétences et lois, tant de la matière que de la vie et de l’esprit ; de lui donner un caractère pour ainsi dire sur-nature, et qui distinguera par excellence l’humanité. Le sublime et le beau, en un mot l’idéal ; inversement, l’ignoble et le laid, ou le chaos : voilà ce qui constitue l’œuvre propre, la fonction de la liberté.
La liberté ne crée pas les idées et les choses, elle les fait autres ; elle ne les supplée ni ne les devance, elle les prend pour matériaux.
CHAPITRE VI.
Function of liberty. — Objections: Conclusion.
XXXVII. — Now what is the function of liberty? To find it, we have only to return to the principle, and to follow its deduction.
Liberty is the power that results from the synthesis or collectivity of the human faculties.
These faculties are generally divided into three groups: physical, intellectual, affective or moral; a classification that exhausts all the forces of nature, manifested as matter, life, mind.
Now, it is of the essence of every collectivity that its resultant differs in quality from each of the elements of which the group is composed, and surpasses in power their sum.
The function of liberty will therefore consist in carrying the free subject beyond all manifestations, appetites and laws, as much of matter as of life and mind; to give it a supernatural character, so to speak. Whence it follows that man, placed under the direction of his own will, will be able, if he wishes, not to remain such as nature has laid down; it will depend on him to reform himself, to perfect himself, to transfigure himself, as also, in the case where he would put his liberty at the same time as his intelligence at the service of his passion, he will be the master of dishonoring his person, of depraving his being and of lowering it below what animality would produce on its own. In short, according to the path he has chosen, man, by virtue of his liberty, will give to his figure, to his thought, to his language, to his acts, to his mores, to his productions, a character of grandeur, poetry or baseness that, more than intelligence itself, will distinguish him from other animals and will attest to his power over himself.
Relative to the creation in which he is placed and of which he is the head, the action of man, by virtue of the free will that is vested in him, will be similar to that which he exercises on his own person. He will cultivate that nature, as it says in Genesis; he will embellish it, he will make it in his own image, he will raise it to his height, he will make of it a garden of delights, purged of harmful animals and pestilential influences, he will spread fantasy, harmony and grace; just as he can deform it, destroy it, make it a place of torture, a theater of robbery and horror.
The sublime and the beautiful, in a word, the Ideal; conversely, the ignoble and the ugly, or chaos: this is what constitutes in man, the proper work, the function of liberty.
XXXVIII. — A fact that psychological analysis has never elucidated, that it could not elucidate for lack of a satisfactory theory of liberty, is precisely the formation in our mind of this idea or this feeling of the beautiful and the sublime. . To account for this, it is obvious that intelligence properly speaking, pure reason or understanding, it matters little what name one uses to designate the faculty we have of grasping the relations of things, of grouping them, of generalizing them, of extracting concepts from them; it is evident, I say, that this faculty is not enough: another is needed, of a superior nature and of a special constitution. What, in fact, is intelligence? A kind of camera, which gives us the mental representation of phenomena and their relations, everything that reality contains, but nothing more. Now, the sublime and the beautiful go beyond reality; there is the same difference between them and ideas or intuitions as between a portrait made by the hand of an artist and the image given by the daguerreotype. Will we make of the ideal a metaphysical conception, analogous to that of substance, of being, of time, of space, of life, of spirit, of cause, etc.? But these conceptions are all relative to the in-themselves of things; they result for us from the generalization that we have made of phenomena, combined with the feeling of our existence, while the beautiful and the sublime concern only the form of things, and are conceived by us, abstraction made of all substantiality. Imagination itself is powerless to explain the mystery: it is the ability to combine perceived relations, to make them serve new constructions, to establish hypotheses, to go, if you will, from the fact to the possible, to the chimerical, which however does not escape from the real, from the objectivity such as it is of phenomena.
The mathematician, the mechanic, the physicist, the naturalist, the industrialist are demonstrators of nature, copyists. The poet and the artist do more: their job is, by imitating nature, to express the ideal, something that is not in the real, which consequently is not in our understanding, which cannot be there, any more than it is in the mirror that sends images back to us. To produce this notion of the beautiful and the sublime, to experience the feeling of it, a new faculty is needed, which has at our disposal at the same time our intuitions, our conceptions, our feelings, our sensations, because all this enters into the composition of the Ideal. This faculty, according to me, is liberty: let us follow it at work.
Ainsi, la notion de l’absolu préexiste dans l’homme au libre arbitre : je parle d’une préexistence logique, non d’une préexistence chronologique. Mais l’homme, par sa liberté, élevant cette notion à l’infini, nomme Dieu, l’Absolu absolu, et l’adore ; ce qui signifie, d’après l’interprétation que nous avons donnée du sentiment religieux, que l’homme se définit lui-même en la qualité qu’il agit, comme être libre, souverain de l’univers.
Ainsi, la Justice, comme instinct de sociabilité, préexiste au libre arbitre. Mais c’est le libre arbitre qui, par sa puissance d’idéalisation, donne à ce sentiment organo-psychique ce caractère de majesté sainte, cette force pénétrante, cet esprit de sacrifice, qui fait du droit une religion et de la répression du crime une vengeance. Par la liberté l’homme s’excite lui-même à bien faire ; elle est cette grâce que la théologie place, avec la Justice et le libre arbitre, dans l’Être divin, et qui donne l’attrait à la Justice et à ses œuvres.
Ainsi, l’idée du monde préexiste au libre arbitre ; avec l’idée du monde entre dans l’âme le sentiment des misères dont il est le théâtre. Mais c’est alors que le libre arbitre crée en nous le rêve d’une existence ultra-mondaine, récompense à venir des justes et des pauvres.
Le libre arbitre fait plus : la religion, avec ses sublimes espérances, n’est qu’une allégorie, un signe, le premier manifeste de la pensée révolutionnaire. Cet idéal haut placé, il faut que d’ores et déjà nous le réalisions ci-bas, par la poésie et l’art. C’est-à-dire que l’homme, en vertu de son libre arbitre, déclare la nature, telle qu’elle est, indigne de lui ; il la juge de haut, la critique, la condamne ou l’approuve, la chante ou la dénigre, en fait des peintures idéalisées ou sarcastiques, la démolit ou la recrée, comme s’il voulait reconstruire le monde sur un plan meilleur. Toute poésie, tout art, relève de la même Muse, la liberté.
La religion, en tant qu’histoire figurative du progrès de la Justice ; l’art, en tant que représentation de la nature et de l’histoire, sont susceptibles d’un certain degré de vérité objective, et peuvent, sous ce rapport, se formuler en dogmes et en préceptes : tel est l’objet de la théologie et de l’esthétique. En tant qu’expression de la liberté, la religion et l’art ne se peuvent réduire en raison démonstrative ; et toutes les recettes imaginées pour créer dans l’âme de l’artiste le génie et l’enthousiasme ne produisent que vulgarité, froideur ou système.
Dans la philosophie, le pyrrhonisme et la dispute témoignent tous deux de l’existence du libre arbitre : c’est l’acte par lequel l’homme, curieux de connaître la raison des choses, dans l’intérêt même de sa liberté et des créations de son bon plaisir, se tient en méfiance de sa propre pensée, et cherche à démêler les pures aperceptions de son entendement des fantaisies de son idéal. N’est-ce pas ainsi que nous l’avons vu, substituant d’abord, ses conceptions absolutistes et arbitraires aux données positives de l’expérience, altérer sans cesse la vérité des choses, non par amour du mensonge, mais par sa tendance à se soumettre les choses ; puis, pour se garantir contre l’usurpation de son arbitraire, appeler contre lui-même la contradiction de ses semblables ?…
La science et l’industrie, à leur tour, rendent témoignage à la liberté. Chacun sait le rôle que l’imagination joue dans les découvertes, combien elle devance la généralisation, faculté de logique pure, dont le service se réduit pour l’ordinaire à constater la justesse des hypothèses que lui livre la première. L’imagination, l’invention, part de plus haut que l’entendement : d’où peut-elle venir, sinon de la liberté ?
La propriété, enfin, le travail, l’échange, attestent, par leurs formes abusives, par leur concurrence et leur agiotage, l’action du libre arbitre. Ces ruptures d’équilibre, ces crises, pires que la guerre et ses massacres, ces liquidations révolutionnaires, le proclament assez.
XXXIX. Thus, metaphysical notions preexist in man in the free will: I speak of logical preexistence, not of chronological preexistence. But man, by his liberty, generalizing all these notions and reducing them to a single one which he idealizes and elevates, so to speak, to infinity, names God, Being of beings, Cause of causes, Universal life, Sovereign reason, Sovereign justice and Sovereign beauty, Absolute of absolutes, and worships him: by the conception of this sublime ideal, he arrives at Religion. This means that man, free by the multiplicity and opposition of his powers, will value, in the Universe and in himself, only what he has clothed, like God, with this character of sublimity and the ideal, outside of which he falls into the trivialities of nature, takes disgust at things and hates himself.
Thus, Justice, as an instinct of sociability, pre-exists free will. But it is free will that, by its power of idealization, gives to this organo-psychic feeling that character of holy majesty, that penetrating force, that spirit of devotion, which makes right a religion and the repression of crime. a sacrifice. By liberty man excites himself to do well; it is that grace that theology places, with Justice, in the divine Being, and without which virtue itself would remain unattractive for man. (K)
Thus the idea of the world pre-exists free will; with the idea of the world enters the soul the feeling of the miseries of which it is the theatre. But it is then that free will creates in us, by the idealization of life, the dream of an ultra-worldly existence, the future reward of the just and the poor. Free will does more: religion, with its sublime hopes, was only an allegory, a sign, the first manifesto of revolutionary thought. This high ideal, we must already realize it as much as it is in us, here below, through poetry and art. That is to say, man, by virtue of his free will, declares nature such as it is unworthy of him; he judges it from above, criticizes, condemns or approves of it, sings about it or denigrates it, makes idealized or sarcastic paintings of it, demolishes or recreates it, as if he wanted to rebuild the world on a better plan. And he in turn treats himself in the same way: whatever human fatuity may be, man, deep in his heart, never finds himself to his liking: he naively declares it by the charges he never ceases to make regarding his neighbor. All poetry, all art, truly has only one goal, which is to uplift man and nature, and is inspired by the same muse, Liberty. And the principle of all the utopias that will agitate society is still the same: it is the ideal, the product of liberty.
Religion, as a figurative history of the progress of Justice; art, as a representation of nature and history, are capable of a certain degree of objective truth, and can, in this respect, be formulated into dogmas and precepts: such is the object of the theology and aesthetics. As an expression of liberty, religion and art cannot be reduced to demonstrative reason; and all the recipes devised to create genius and enthusiasm in the soul of the artist only produce vulgarity and coldness.
Thus again, in philosophy, it is not enough that the demonstration be exact, the logic irreproachable: one demands of the philosopher wit, eloquence, delicacy, in a word, beauty. It is not enough to convince; it is necessary to persuade, to touch, to please, to move: as if the pure and abstract idea were only half the truth, as if the truth itself, in naturalibus, were indecent. Repeat as often as you like, with a very unattractive proverb: I love Plato, but I love the truth even more: it is certain that Plato’s oratorical genius, the charm of his dialogues, his divine language, are an essential part of his philosophy and testify for it. Every idea must have its ideal, which completes and enhances it, without which it falls below the interest and the dignity of the listener. An idea not capable of being idealized would thereby be irremissibly condemned: it would cause horror or pity. How much has the philosophy of Democritus gained by being sung by Lucretius! Certainly, Sieyes had as much understanding of the principles of the Revolution as Mirabeau. Do you believe that the Revolution would have taken place so well without Mirabeau, Vergniaud, Camille Desmoulins, and all those writers and orators who were its virtuosos? I know very well that here we have to fear abuse: by dint of cultivating the form it happens that we abandon the substance, and through verbiage the best causes are lost. Brumaire’s coup d’etat was carried out by a general whom victory had glorified against lawyers who had become ridiculous. But that itself proves the truth of my proposition: we would see fewer of these talkers who imagine, by dint of cleverness, to make at will the false and the true, darkness and light, if the talent for exposition had nothing to do with philosophy. The sophistry, to consider it well, is one of the glories of man, of which it proves the action on truth itself.
The same observation applies to science: it even seems that the ideal grows stronger in the scientist in proportion to knowledge. One of the greatest poets of the nineteenth century, in the true sense of the word, is the author of Cosmos, Alexander of Humboldt. Linné, Bonnet, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, were both champions of nature and observers. Arago was not, it is said, a calculator of the strength of M. Leverrier: does this prevent Arago from having been a scholar of genius, while M. Leverrier will never be anything more than an astronomical demonstrator?
Industry, the reign of the useful, will not be an exception to the law. The more the profession improves, the more it becomes impregnated with idealism and approaches art. Anyone who has seen only one of the industry’s exhibitions, in Paris or London, must be convinced of this. It is impossible today to distinguish the craftsman, the industrialist, from the artist. The useful, here is the modern beauty. This is what explains why France, in all that concerns trade, the production of wealth, colonization, lets herself be outdistanced at this moment by her neighboring nations: just as the prestige of eloquence, power and arms caused her to neglect principles and liberty in politics; likewise, in political economy, the seduction of the beautiful makes her forget the true goal of labor, which is production, comfort, cheapness. The French, lovers of elegance more than of opulence, prefer works that demand more taste than manpower; the English and the Germans, more industrious, more utilitarian, in this respect less artistic, display more industrial ardor, go more straight to the point: this is one of the causes that make protection more necessary in France than in any other country.
Well below industry, the most despicable professions, we should place war, the job of killing men. What, however, is more admired than those thunderbolts of war, as Virgil called the Scipios, duo fulmina belli Scipiadas? And this admiration, which would change into horror if the world could for a single moment take it upon itself to consider the things of war with the eyes of pure reason, to what is it due? It is the idealism of peoples that creates heroes and makes all these massacrers immortal; it was through the poetry of his harangues and his battles that Napoleon I intoxicated the French; and whatever justice we must render to Garibaldi’s patriotism, it must be confessed that, without a certain skill in staging, without the ideal that surrounds his person, he would hardly be anything other than an adventurer.
Ni la religion, ni la Justice, ni l’art, ni la controverse philosophique et le pyrrhonisme qu’elle enfante, ni la science et l’industrie, ni cette oscillation perpétuelle de la balance économique, ne sauraient s’expliquer par l’entendement pur, la sociabilité pure, les passions pures, ni par aucun jeu des puissances naturelles.
Let us suppose that nature had wanted to make man a simply sociable animal. All it had to do was give him the predominant instinct for sociability, like a sheep, and that was it: no more jealousies, no more of yours and mine, no more war.
Supposons qu’elle l’eût voulu créer seulement pour la science ou l’industrie : il lui suffisait d’amortir en lui la puissance imaginative, et de rendre d’autant plus expéditif et plus prompt l’esprit d’observation, d’analyse et de synthèse. Ainsi constituée dans son intelligence, notre espèce eût pu se contenter d’une langue unique, invariable comme les signes du sourd-muet, comme le chant de l’alouette et du rossignol. Une parole artistique, flexible, vivante, n’appartient qu’à un être libre.
Des phénomènes qui ne se peuvent classer dans aucune catégorie de la nature physique, sensible, intelligente, des effets qui ne se rapportent à aucune cause connue, supposent nécessairement dans le sujet qui en est l’agent une faculté supérieure : nommez-la Dieu, si vous voulez ; moi, je l’appelle libre arbitre.
Est-il besoin d’ajouter qu’un sujet qui dispose des forces de la nature, des lois de la pensée, des attractions de la vie, et qui en tire ce que nous voyons ; un sujet maître de ses moyens et de ses fins, capable de résister même au vœu de sa conscience, et de faire ce que lui-même déclare mal et honteux, un tel sujet ne fait point ce qu’il fait par une nécessité intérieure, et qu’il a toujours la faculté de s’abstenir autant que de choisir ? Les actes de la liberté sont si peu l’effet d’une nécessité du dedans, que le plus souvent elle se contente de suivre le courant des choses, s’en remettant à la décision du sort. Liberté d’option ou d’indifférence, résignation à la destinée, abandon à la providence divine, désespoir même, tous ces termes, auxquels les philosophes des différentes écoles réduisent la liberté, sont autant de corollaires de la notion que nous avons donnée du libre arbitre, hors de laquelle ils n’ont même plus de sens.
XL. — Neither respect for the gods; nor that high esteem for the just, which makes man a slave of the Law as of the Divinity itself; nor this transfiguration of man and Nature by poetry and art; nor philosophical enthusiasm, capable of creating martyrs, as well as law and religion; nor that divine aureole that surrounds the head of the scientist and the poet, and which we see already dawning on the foreheads of our workers; none of all this can be explained by pure understanding, by pure instincts, pure passions, in a word, by the simple play of our primary faculties.
Let us suppose that nature had wanted to make man a simply sociable animal. All it had to do was give him the predominant instinct for sociability, like a sheep, and that was it: no more jealousies, no more of yours and mine, no more war.
Let us suppose that it had wanted to create him only for science or industry: it was enough for it to maintain the separation between his faculties, to prevent this fusion from which was to be born in him, with Liberty, a power of the ideal, which would constantly carry him beyond sensation, beyond pure reality. Thus constituted in its intelligence, our species would confine itself to the knowledge and production of useful things; it would think, it would speak, but it would not sing; it would fulfill the strange wish of Horace, who made a virtue of the sage not to admire anything; it would have photographers, not painters; practitioners, not sculptors; masons, not architects; chroniclers, not historians. It could have realized the dream of a single language, invariable like the signs of the deaf-mute, like the song of the lark and the nightingale. An artistic, flexible, living word belongs only to a free being.
Phenomena that cannot be classified in any of the categories of nature and reason, suppose, in the subject who is their agent, a superior faculty: name it God, Genius, familiar Demon, if you will; I call it free will.
Is it necessary to add that a subject who disposes of the forces of nature, the laws of thought, the attractions of life, and who draws from them what we see; a subject master of his means and his ends, able to resist even the will of his conscience, and to do what he himself declares wrong and shameful; such a subject does not do what he does by an inner necessity, and that he always has the faculty of abstaining as much as of choosing? The acts of liberty are so little the effect of a necessity from within that most often liberty is content to follow the current of things, leaving it to the decision of fate. Liberty of choice or indifference, resignation to destiny, abandonment to divine providence, even despair, all these terms to which philosophers of different schools reduce liberty, but which only express a part of liberty, are so many corollaries of the notion that we have given to free will, apart from which they no longer have any sense.
XXXVII
Liberty is the great judge and sovereign arbiter of human destinies: it is here that its action manifests itself in all its grandeur.
Liberty would never have appeared obscure or doubtful if, instead of studying it in the individual, where its action is all the more difficult to discover as it merges into the general movement, we had been able to observe it in the species, where in time its work becomes obvious.
Could those, in fact, believe in liberty, who saw man, on the one hand pressed by the necessities of his nature, torn in all directions by the excitations of his sensibility; on the other hand, and this is the worst, smothered in a forest of beliefs of which no one took care to suspect the liberal origin, and from which ignorance created so many obstacles for liberty itself?
What might free will look like in such an environment? What was it for? What did it want? What was its role, its meaning, its purpose? Whichever way man turned, he encountered an organism that left no room for his determinations and carried him away in its movement: the organism of the universe, within which he saw himself lost like a drop of water in the ocean; the organism of his own body, on which he felt that his faculties, his passions, his feelings, his virtue and even his ideas depended; the organism of society, which he obeyed as a necessity of the second order, from which he could not free himself; the organism of religion, which he supposed to be instituted from above, and in which he was far from recognizing the first manifestation of his liberty.
Au milieu de toutes ces machines, la liberté semblait un hors-d’œuvre, un embarras, disons le mot, un ennemi. On ne savait d’elle qu’une chose, c’est qu’elle était l’auteur du péché, digne, à ce titre, de toute l’animadversion du législateur et de la méfiance du philosophe. Aussi les raisonneurs de bonne foi, de quelque école qu’ils fussent, Hobbes et Spinoza, Malebranche et Hégel, Bossuet et Kant, la niant nominativement en la nommant pour la forme, la mirent sous leurs pieds : elle ne tient pas plus de place dans leurs théories morales que dans leur cerveau.
Currently it is no longer the same: history has worked, and criticism with it. The human mind, after having admired everything, tried everything, has detached itself from everything; it denied everything, and posited itself as absolute. No prejudice henceforth stops it: if, in order to conceive of liberty and recognize its function, the preliminary condition was that it should free itself from all prejudice, that it should rise above all fatalistic influence, that it confessed to itself that it was this Absolute so long evoked under the name of God, angel or demon, we can say that at this hour the condition is fulfilled. The mind no longer believes in anything that the first thinkers adored; skepticism and analysis have purged it of its own idols. Its conceptions, more and more stripped of empiricism, more and more general and abstract, have familiarized it with the absolute: like the sexton, whose life passes in the midst of sacred vessels, it no longer feels the majesty of its God. Tell it that God is its own creature, the proposal will contain nothing that surprises it.
XLI. — Liberty is the great judge and sovereign arbiter of human destinies: it is here that its action manifests itself in all its grandeur.
Liberty would never have appeared obscure or doubtful if, instead of studying it in the individual, where its action is all the more difficult to discover as it merges into the general movement, we had been able to observe it in the species, where in time its work becomes obvious.
Could those, in fact, believe in liberty, who saw man, on the one hand pressed by the necessities of his nature, torn in all directions by the excitations of his sensibility; on the other hand, and this is the worst, smothered in a forest of beliefs of which no one took care to suspect the liberal origin, and from which ignorance created so many obstacles for liberty itself?
What might free will look like in such an environment? What was it for? What did it want? What was its role, its meaning, its purpose? Whichever way man turned, he encountered an organism that left no room for his determinations and carried him away in its movement: the organism of the universe, within which he saw himself lost like a drop of water in the ocean; the organism of his own body, on which he felt that his faculties, his passions, his feelings, his virtue and even his ideas depended; the organism of society, which he obeyed as a necessity of the second order, from which he could not free himself; the organism of religion, which he supposed to be instituted from above, and in which he was far from recognizing the first manifestation of his liberty.
In the midst of all these machines, liberty seemed an hors-d’œuvre, an embarrassment, let us use the word, an enemy. Only one thing was known of it, that it was the author of sin, worthy, as such, of all the animadversion of the legislator and the mistrust of the philosopher. Also the reasoners of good faith, of whatever school they were, Hobbes and Spinoza, Malebranche and Hégel, Bossuet and Kant, positively denying it or naming it for form, put it under their feet: it holds no greater place in their theories than in their brains.
Currently it is no longer the same: history has worked, and criticism with it. The human mind, after having admired everything, tried everything, has detached itself from everything; it denied everything, and posited itself as absolute. No prejudice henceforth stops it: if, in order to conceive of liberty and recognize its function, the preliminary condition was that it should free itself from all prejudice, that it should rise above all fatalistic influence, that it confessed to itself that it was this Absolute so long evoked under the name of God, angel or demon, we can say that at this hour the condition is fulfilled. The mind no longer believes in anything that the first thinkers adored; skepticism and analysis have purged it of its own idols. Its conceptions, more and more stripped of empiricism, more and more general and abstract, have familiarized it with the absolute: like the sexton, whose life passes in the midst of sacred vessels, it no longer feels the majesty of its God. Tell it that God is its own creature, the proposal will contain nothing that surprises it.
Quel est donc ce mouvement d’institution par lequel le libre arbitre, se mettant, si je puis ainsi dire, en équation permanente avec lui-même, crée l’histoire et la destinée ?
En vertu de sa spontanéité antagonique et dominatrice, l’homme tend d’abord à se soumettre l’homme aussi bien que les choses. Il se crée en conséquence un système d’économie féodale, qui lui semble la forme naturelle de la société, et qui, expression de la liberté pour quelques-uns, devient bientôt une servitude intolérable pour la masse. — Puis, au nom de la liberté, il nie cet organisme ; il le combat, l’efface, et travaille à lui substituer un régime de Justice et d’égalité où il ne reste rien de servile et de fatal.
Système féodal ou de hiérarchie, monument d’une liberté oppressive ; contrat social ou commutatif, monument d’une liberté égalitaire : que l’on compare ces deux produits, et je me trompe fort, ou l’on reconnaîtra que toute leur différence consiste, ici dans la restriction, là dans la généralisation de la liberté.
Pour donner un contre-fort à son système de subordination des personnes et des fortunes, le libre arbitre crée un nouvel organisme, l’organisme politique ou le régime d’État, susceptible d’une grande variété de formes, mais qui dans sa variété même n’en est pas moins, pour l’immense multitude, du fatalisme comme le précédent, de la tyrannie. — Puis il rejette tout cet échafaudage ; il se dit que la société n’a pas besoin de commandement ; qu’il lui suffit pour se conduire de la Justice, qui n’est autre que la liberté se saluant de personne à personne.
Systèmes politiques, systèmes économiques, tout cela est de la liberté, certes, puisque c’est de l’art, de la religion, de l’absolutisme. Mais de l’homme à l’homme, de l’être libre à l’être libre, la religion, l’art, l’absolu, sont inadmissibles, une offense à la dignité. La Justice pure, une équation mathématique, sans fioriture, voilà l’organique d’une civilisation libérale : elle ne supporte rien de plus.
Pour garantir à ses conceptions politiques et économiques le respect dont elles ont besoin, et sans lequel l’ordre social ne lui paraîtrait pas assuré, le libre arbitre établit encore un système de croyances et de pratiques pieuses, susceptible aussi d’une grande variété de formes, mais qui, remplaçant la Justice par une idole, n’est toujours que du fatalisme, et le plus redoutable de tous, puisqu’il est le produit de la conscience commune, le fils de la liberté publique. — Eh bien ! voici que la foi s’en va ; la religion est niée : avec elle s’écroulent toutes les prétendues synthèses transcendantales. Par quoi ce fatalisme sera-t-il remplacé ? Par rien ; je me trompe.
Sous le régime de piété, la Justice était demeurée incomplète, équivoque, pleine d’obscurités et de contradictions. Maintenant elle secoue, avec le mystère qui ne la protège plus, le pyrrhonisme qui l’étouffe ; elle apparaît sans voiles, ne traînant à sa suite ni jougs ni chaînes, ne réclamant ni profession de foi ni raison d’État. À la place du sceptre et du trône, de la croix et de la tiare, elle dresse sa balance, la balance de la liberté, libra, libido, libertas.
C’est ce sentiment profond, antiorganique, anarchique, de la liberté, sentiment plus vif de nos jours qu’il ne se montra jamais parmi les hommes, qui a soulevé, dans ces dernières années, la répugnance universelle contre toutes les utopies d’organisation politique et sociale proposées en remplacement des anciennes, et qui a fait siffler les auteurs de ces plans de fatalisme, Owen, Fourier, Cabet, Enfantin, Aug. Comte. L’homme ne vont plus qu’on l’organise, qu’on le mécanise. Sa tendance est à la désorganisation, à la défatalisation, si j’ose ainsi dire, partout où il sent le poids d’un fatalisme ou d’un machinisme. Telle est l’œuvre, la fonction de la liberté, œuvre décisive, insigne de notre gloire.
Que dirai-je de plus ? C’est pour obéir à cette haute mission que se sont produites les deux grandes révoltes de l’humanité : le christianisme, révolte contre le Destin ; et la Révolution, révolte contre la Providence. En présence de si grands efforts, est-il possible de nier l’existence dans l’humanité d’une fonction spéciale, qui n’est ni l’intelligence, ni l’amour, ni la Justice, qui, placée au foyer de l’âme, a pour mission expresse de l’exalter en l’affranchissant de toute contrainte, passion, influence et nécessité, tant du dedans que du dehors ; est-il possible de nier le libre arbitre ?
XLII. What then is this movement by which free will, proceeding both to the manifestation and to the idealization of social being, creates history and destiny?
By virtue of his militant and dominating spontaneity, man first tends to submit man as well as things to himself. Consequently, according to his first perceptions, he creates a system of feudal economy, which seems to him the natural form of society, and which, an expression of liberty for a few, soon becomes an intolerable servitude for the masses. It is not the ideal that is lacking in this creation: I attest to this by all the romantic writers, Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo. But this ideal resting on an error, the suffering of the masses gradually destroys the illusion; criticism denies feudalism in the name of liberty, and the same spirit that had founded the caste system maintains the combat and works to substitute for it a system diametrically opposed, which no longer retains anything servile or fatal.
However, as man never subscribes to the pure idea, to the pure right; as his will is ultimately determined only by his ideal, and as this ideal cannot be formed on an imperfect and purely theoretical apperception of things, it happens that equality, without an ideal, cannot initially triumph over idealized feudalism; and that the Revolution, called for by free will, is only introduced, so to speak, against the will of free will.
In the political order, we are going to see an analogous incident. To give a buttress to its system of subordination of persons and fortunes, free will creates a new organism, the political organism or the state system, susceptible of a great variety of forms, but which, in its variety even, none the less remains, for the immense multitude, a matter of fatalism like the preceding one, of tyranny. I need not recall here with what prestige, what glory the man who has become a subject has surrounded his sovereigns. Then liberty rejects all this scaffolding; it tells itself that society has no need of command; that it is enough for it to conduct itself with Justice, which is none other than liberty greeting itself from person to person. Justice, in fact, is the respect of our dignity in others: however, what makes man worthy among all creatures? Free will.
But here again the imperfection of the new ideal stops the transformation. Anarchy appears like confusion and civil war: for the people to decide to govern themselves, they will have to despair of all governments. We do not understand at first that from man to man, from free being to free being, any inequality, any command, even covered with the mantle of the ideal, is inadmissible, an offense to dignity. Pure justice, a mathematical equation, that is the whole plan of civilization: and that is precisely what the people, preoccupied with their idealism, cannot admit.
To guarantee its political and economic conceptions the respect they need, and without which the social order never seems assured to it, free will establishes a system of beliefs and pious practices, also susceptible to a great variety of forms, but which, replacing Justice with an idol, is still nothing but fatalism, fatalism all the more formidable because it is the product of the common conscience, the son of public liberty. Well, here is faith going; religion is denied and with it all so-called transcendental syntheses crumble. But again the conscience, seduced for centuries by the image of an ideal Church, hesitates and is terrified of such a great ruin: souls, still religious, protest against this development of free thought. With what, they ask, are you replacing religion? — With nothing. I am mistaken.
Under the guardianship of piety, Justice was incomplete, equivocal, full of obscurities and contradictions. Now she shakes, with the mystery that no longer protects her, the pyrrhonism that suffocates her; she appears without veils, trailing in her wake neither chains nor stakes, claiming neither professions of faith nor reasons of state. In place of the scepter and the throne, of the cross and the tiara, she erects her scales, the scales of liberty: notice again this etymology, libra, libido, libertas.
It is this deep, anti-governmental, anti-mystical feeling for liberty, a feeling more lively today than it has ever shown itself among men, which has aroused, in recent years, universal repugnance against all the utopias of political organization and social faith proposed to replace the old ones, and which caused the authors, Owen, Fourier, Cabet, Enfantin, Aug. Comte, to be abandoned. Man no longer wants to be organized, mechanized. His tendency is towards disorganization, which means defatalization, if I may use the term, wherever he feels the weight of fatalism or machinism. Such is the work, the function of liberty, a decisive work, emblem of our glory.
What more can I say? It is to obey this lofty mission that the two great revolts of humanity have occurred: Christianity, a revolt against Destiny; and the Revolution, revolt against Providence (Study IV). In the presence of such great efforts, in the face of this immense labor of a nature that searches for itself, tries itself, puts itself to the test, makes, undoes, remakes itself in another way, which changes principle, method and goal, is it possible to deny the existence in humanity of a special function, which is neither intelligence, nor love, nor Justice; which, placed at the hearth of the soul, has the express mission of exalting it by freeing it from all constraint, passion, influence and necessity, both from within and from without; is it possible to deny Free Will?
XXXVIII
Nous savons en quoi consiste la fonction de la liberté : elle a pour objet de donner aux conceptions de l’entendement, aux sentiments de l’âme, à ses jouissances, au corps lui-même et à toute la nature, qui désormais ne fait qu’un avec l’homme, l’idéal et la sublimité.
Mais quel est le but de cet idéalisme, sa tendance, sa fin ?
This question no longer involves anything that should trouble us. Since man is the summary of the universe, microcosmos; since he is simultaneously matter, life, mind, sensation-sentiment-knowledge, as Pierre Leroux says; his force of collectivity, in other words his free will, being, of all the powers that in the universe bear witness to themselves by their effects, the highest—the goal to which it tends, surpassing every idea and every thing, embracing all finality,—is none other than the very destiny of man, which implies the destiny of the universe.
Déterminée ainsi par la nature du libre arbitre, la destinée de l’homme et du monde peut se définir : une idoloplastie ou phantasmasie de l’absolu.
C’est la divinisation ou l’apothéose de l’humanité, et, par l’humanité, de toute la nature, apothéose dont il est permis de marquer ainsi les différents termes :
Progressive, indefinite emancipation of the human person, through science and labor;
Beatification of the soul by the sublime and the beautiful;
Perfectionnement de l’espèce et équilibre de la société par la Justice ;
Universal, paradisical harmony, resulting from the subordination of nature to humanity.
Beyond which thought conceives nothing, nor can it even still conceive anything.
La Justice, dans son idée la plus exaltée, tel est donc le dernier mot de la liberté ; et toutes deux finissent par se confondre.
Neither knowledge, nor labor or wealth, nor pleasure or love, can be ends for us: pursued for themselves, these forms of our activity are nothing, vanitates vanitatum. The very works of liberty, insofar as they were separated from the pivotal work for which they are given, namely Justice, would also be of no value; considered fine, they are bad. Our end is infinite Justice, this universal harmony dreamed of by Fourier, of which it is permissible for each of us to become, by the exercise of his free will, cooperator and participant, and which the Sage commands us to love and pursue exclusively, under the name of God: Amare Deum et illi soli servire.
De là ce caractère négatif qu’affecte d’ordinaire la liberté, et qui fait d’elle comme le génie de la révolte. La liberté ne connaît ni loi, ni raison, ni autorité, ni fin, ni limite, ni principe, ni cause, hormis elle. À la création qui l’environne elle dit : non ; — aux lois du monde et de la pensée qui l’obsèdent : non ; — aux sens qui la sollicitent : non ; — à l’amour qui la séduit : non ; — à la voix du prêtre, à l’ordre du prince, aux cris de la multitude : non, non, non. Elle est le contradicteur éternel, qui se met en travers de toute pensée et de toute existence ; l’indomptable insurgé, qui n’a de foi qu’en soi, de respect et d’estime que pour soi, qui ne supporte même l’idée de Dieu qu’autant qu’il reconnaît en Dieu sa propre antithèse, toujours soi.
Mais, malgré cette allure critique, exterminante, la liberté, nous le savons, est une puissance d’affirmation autant que de négation, de production autant que de destruction : c’est le moi qui, se posant dans sa suprématie, entreprend, pour sa félicité absolue, de réaliser dans la matière, dans la vie et dans l’esprit ce que ni la matière, ni la vie, ni l’esprit, consultés séparément, ne lui sauraient donner, mais ce que sa nature synthétique lui permet de concevoir, l’absolu.
XLIII. — We know in what consists the function of liberty. Its object is, first, to confer on ideas, feelings, even pleasures, on all nature, which henceforth is one with man, the ideal and sublimity; second, to allow man to vary his operations at will, and to govern his existence according to an ideal that in him plays a role analogous to that of instinct in animals.
But what is the end of all this?
This question no longer involves anything that should trouble us. Since man is the summary of the universe, microcosmos; since he is simultaneously matter, life, mind, sensation-sentiment-knowledge, as Pierre Leroux says; his force of collectivity, in other words his free will, being, of all the powers that in the universe bear witness to themselves by their effects, the highest—the goal to which it tends, surpassing every idea and every thing, embracing all finality,—is none other than the very destiny of man, which implies the destiny of the universe.
Thus determined by the nature of free will, the destiny of man and of the world can be defined: a progressive, indefinite idealization.
It is the divinization or apotheosis of humanity, and, through humanity, of all nature, an apotheosis; the various terms of which may be marked as follows:
Progressive emancipation of the human person, through science and labor;
Beatification of the soul by the sublime and the beautiful;
Perfection of the species and balance of society through Justice (see the following study);
Universal harmony, resulting from the subordination of nature to humanity.
Beyond which thought conceives nothing, nor can it even still conceive anything.
Justice, in its most excellent idea, such is therefore the last word of liberty; and both end by merging.
Neither knowledge, nor labor or wealth, nor pleasure or love, can be ends for us: pursued for themselves, these forms of our activity are nothing, vanitates vanitatum. The very works of liberty, insofar as they were separated from the pivotal work for which they are given, namely Justice, would also be of no value; considered fine, they are bad. Our end is infinite Justice, this universal harmony dreamed of by Fourier, of which it is permissible for each of us to become, by the exercise of his free will, cooperator and participant, and which the Sage commands us to love and pursue exclusively, under the name of God: Amare Deum et illi soli servire.
Hence that negative character that liberty usually affects, and which makes it like the genius of revolt. Liberty recognizes neither law, nor reason, nor authority, nor end, nor limit, nor principle, nor cause, except itself. When I say that liberty recognizes neither law, nor reason, nor principle, nor cause, nor limit, nor end, apart from itself, I do not mean to say that it denies the reason of things, nor the laws of universe, nor the causes or ends that are revealed in nature. Liberty is not absurd; it does not misunderstand the truth: on the contrary. I mean that liberty, placing itself above all existence, reserves the right to escape, as far as it is in it, from any law other than its own, to have consideration for nothing but itself, to make the world serve its whims, and the reason of things its good pleasure. To the creation that surrounds it it says: no; — to the laws of the world and of thought that obsess it: no; — to the senses that solicit it: no; — to the love that seduces it: no; — to the voice of the priest, to the order of the prince, to the cries of the multitude: no, no, no. It is the eternal contradictor, who sets its against all thought and all force that would tend to dominate it; the indomitable insurgent, who has faith only in itself, respect and esteem only for itself, who supports even the idea of God only insofar as it recognizes in God its own antithesis, always itself.
But, despite this critical, exterminating aspect, liberty, as we know, is a power of affirmation as much as of negation, of production as much as of destruction. It is the I who, posing in its supremacy, undertakes, for its absolute felicity, to realize in matter, in life and in spirit, what neither matter, nor life, nor mind, consulted separately, can give him, but what his synthetic nature allows him to conceive, the ideal, the resplendent and symbolic image of the absolute.
XXXIX
La question du libre arbitre est tout à la fois le sphinx, le nœud gordien, les Thermopyles et les colonnes d’Hercule de la philosophie.
If the reader judges that the enigma is definitively resolved, the knot untied, the step taken, the goal reached, the objections rehashed for two or three thousand years against liberty will possess nothing to stop him.
Objection. Man is sensation-sentiment-knowledge, or, following the old style, matter, life, mind. Under each of these points of view, everything in him is predetermined, fatal. How does this triple fatalism produce liberty?
Réponse. C’est une loi de la création qu’en toute collectivité la résultante diffère essentiellement en qualité de chacun des éléments qui concourent à la produire, et surpasse en puissance la somme de leurs forces. Si donc le composé est tel qu’il réunisse en soi tous les aspects de la nécessité, nécessité physique ou organique, nécessité passionnelle, nécessité intellectuelle, la résultante sera nécessairement une liberté, puisqu’elle dépassera toutes les conditions ou fatalités de la matière, de la vie et de l’esprit. C’est pourquoi la définition de l’homme, sensation-sentiment-connaissance synthétiquement unis, est incomplète ; il faut ajouter : et donnant lieu, par leur synthèse, à une puissance supérieure, la liberté.
Obj. — Faire de la liberté une résultante, puis une fonction ; lui assigner un objet, un but, une fin ; parler de ses œuvres : tout cela est du fatalisme. Admettons que l’arbitre humain soit affranchi, par sa constitution, de toute autre nécessité ; du moins ne saurait-on nier qu’à l’égard de lui-même il est serf : les mots mêmes dont on se sert pour l’expliquer impliquent servitude. Un principe, un objet, un but au libre arbitre ; une constitution du libre arbitre, une théorie du libre arbitre : tout cela est contradictoire.
Resp. — Here is the stumbling block against which all those who have dealt with the question have broken down. They did not see that their argument, being able to turn with the same advantage against all the notions of the understanding, not only did not prove anything because it proved too much, but that it became, by the universality of the phenomenon, a bias in favor of free will.
We know in fact what happens in every antinomy: as soon as the notion that bears it has been negated by a first contradiction, it is reproduced by another contradiction which that the first. Thus, having said in general terms that liberty, being a function, having an object, serving an end, is not free, we must then, after having found, in the species, that liberty is its own object and its end, that its action is superior to all necessity, its reason superior to all reason, to conclude that it is free, since the exclusive service of oneself is precisely what is meant by liberty: nemo sibi servit.
Faced with this conflict of contradictions, what remains to be done? Only one thing, to find out if liberty is a positive function of the human being; in other words, if man, composed of matter and mind, assembly of all the elements and all the powers of nature, does not possess, ipso facto, a force of collectivity that makes him absolute master of the world and of himself, and what is the object and the goal of this force. The fact recognized, analyzed, explained, all discussion becomes puerile, no contradiction being able to prevail against the fact that poses it. What, I ask you, are the arguments of the Eleatics against movement? What is proven against the existence of bodies by the difficulties raised by the infinite divisibility of matter and its non-divisibility? It would be easy to raise against necessity itself as many objections as can be raised against free will: would that destroy the certainty we have of the necessity of certain things?
Yes, liberty is backed by all the necessities of nature and of the mind: that is why it is liberty. Yes, liberty has its reason, its principle, its end: that is why it is something.
Obj. — If man is free, and if liberty is in him the resultant of the organism, image and summary of nature, how, without a continual experience of things, can he imagine anything, know anything?
Resp. – Let’s make a distinction. Liberty is the result of the physical, affective and intellectual faculties of man; it cannot, therefore, replace or precede them: in this respect, it is dependent on its origins. But what neither sensation, nor sentiment, nor science, the sublime and the ideal, give it, it produces as its own work; by this production, it establishes itself over the entire universe and makes an act of sovereignty.
Obj. — The mind is never determined without motives. So if it depends on motives, it is not free.
Resp. — Sheer ambiguity. Of all the motives that the mind seems to obey, there is never more than one that is valid, and this single motive is always taken at liberty: it is the glorification of the self, ad majorem met gloriam.
Fichte puts it this way:
“My nature ultimately tends towards independence, an absolute personality. I can only approach it through action… I must strive to make the whole world what my body is for me. The law of liberty, unique law, is therefore absolute determination of itself by itself. (Willm, vol. II, p. 315 and 367.)
Obj. All this is an abuse of terms. Liberty is liberty, or it is not: this is what logic says a priori. Now it happens, in coming to the explanations, that nothing is said of liberty that does not at the same time suppose necessity, and that every definition becomes common to them.
Resp. Always the antinomy! Necessity also is necessity, or it is not: this is what logic says a priori. How then is it, when it comes to explanations, that necessity is continually traversed by contingency; that nothing can be said about it that does not recall chance or free will, so that every definition becomes common to them?
Escape from this imbroglio. Do you know anything whose existence is more assured to you, at the same time as the opposition is more manifest, than your two hands? Well, I challenge you to give a definition of one that doesn’t, and in all respects, fit the other; I challenge you, I say, to find a word, an idea, by means of which you can distinguish, in themselves, your right from your left. If you doubt what I’m saying, try it yourself. It is only by an external, accidental sign that you will manage to understand each other, as when a man, placed on this side of the equator and with his face turned to the meridian, calls left the hand located on the side where the sun rises, right the one on the side where it sets. Does it follow from this fatal indistinction that you have only one hand, with the thumb in the middle?
Liberty is to necessity what your right is to your left: the understanding alone can tell you nothing about it, and you will always be led, if you consult only it, to deny one or the other, which is absurd. At most you will be warned by the contradiction of your ideas that there is a reality underneath that you do not know, but that the observation of the facts of nature and of the human soul in the end will reveal to you.
Obj. — At least it must be admitted that the will of man is subject to the laws of his own constitution. These laws are for him a necessity from which he cannot free himself: therefore he is not free.
Resp. — This always amounts to saying that liberty is backed by necessity, and that in this antinomy, the thesis can never radically destroy the antithesis: which, I repeat, is not an objection, but a proof. No, the mind cannot annihilate matter, the self completely remove the not-self, the free will annihilate necessity, because that would be annihilating itself, which implies contradiction. But the mind, having become free by assuming the human form, can destroy the organisms that it creates in a latent state; it could, if it wanted, make this globe a heap of dross instead of making it a garden of delights, and by the destruction of the body it inhabits go back to sleep forever: therefore it is free.
In systems where the universe is represented as a kingdom ruled from above by a suzerain deity, the suicide of a Cato and a Lucretius is not an unanswerable testimony to liberty, because these two personages are supposed to be ruled by a celestial law, to which their will only conforms. In the Leibnizian theory, which on the independence of the monads constitutes the democracy of creation and makes each individuality a summit, suicide is the supreme act of liberty, which can only be explained by liberty.
Obj. — Every faculty or function presupposes an organism, of which it is both the principle and the product, the effect and the cause: in a realistic philosophy, founded on the observation of phenomena, this principle cannot be denied. Without an organ liberty is nothing: what is the organ of liberty? With an organ, free will falls into fatalism: how to escape the difficulty?
Rép. — La liberté n’a pas d’autre organe que l’homme même, jouissant de la plénitude de ses facultés. La raison de cela est que la liberté, étant la force de collectivité de l’homme, ne peut pas avoir dans l’homme d’organe spécial sans cesser d’être. Aussi la définition de l’homme par M. de Bonald, Une intelligence servie par des organes, est-elle encore plus fautive que celle de M. Pierre Leroux : L’homme est une liberté servie par des organes, des sens, des affections et des idées.
Obj. — The history of the human race testifies to a fatalism or a providentialism, the name does not matter, that is universal. Society is subject to an evolution that philosophy has not yet fully recognized, but whose fatal character appears all the more clearly the more it is studied. Carried along by this evolution, like a drop of water by the oceanic currents, man is not free; and the more he civilizes himself, by obeying the power that leads him, the less liberty he recognizes.
Rép. — L’objection est sans valeur, attendu qu’elle ne tient compte que d’une moitié des faits. Sans doute la nécessité joue un rôle dans les évolutions de l’humanité, et ce n’est pas un médiocre travail d’en faire la détermination : nos historiens philosophes en sont aujourd’hui là. Mais le libre arbitre a aussi sa part : je n’en veux pour le moment d’autre preuve que le sentiment de toute cette école de narrateurs qui nie précisément ce qu’on est convenu d’appeler philosophie de l’histoire. Nous verrons plus tard, en traitant du Progrès, de quoi se compose cette part de la liberté.
Obj. — Qu’on distingue, si l’on veut, deux sortes d’actes humains, les uns qu’on attribue au libre arbitre, les autres qu’on rapporte à la nécessité : en fin de compte, le libre arbitre ne va pas au chaos ; ce serait une étrange liberté que celle qui aurait pour objet de créer le désordre. Or, la société, œuvre du libre arbitre, expression, incarnation du libre arbitre, ne peut pas exister sans un organisme, et cet organisme a des lois. Comment peut-elle être dite libre ?
Resp. — On the contrary, it has been demonstrated (Studies IV and VII) that the social order, such as Justice desires it and as free will pursues it, is not. an organism, a system; it is the pact of liberty, its equation from person to person, which implies, from the point of view of the ideal, the greatest possible variety of combinations, the greatest independence of individuals and groups.
Liberty, in its untamed course, denying everything it encounters and the universe itself, finally finds who speaks to it and, staring at it, says to it: No!
C’est une liberté semblable à elle, un homme.
La lutte s’engage d’abord : la liberté est le dieu de la guerre, Deus Sabaoth. Puis la liberté dit à la liberté : Nous ne pouvons nous vaincre ; nous ne saurions faire de mal qu’à nos organes : les immortels ne se tuent pas. Transigeons : que chacune fasse pour l’autre comme pour elle-même, et jurons par notre souveraineté consolidée.
Ainsi le droit, écrit dans les entrailles de l’homme, se constitue par la liberté : c’est ce qu’expriment nos déclarations révolutionnaires, qui toutes, celle de Robespierre exceptée, placent la liberté en tête de la formule sacramentelle : Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. Changez l’ordre de ces mots, la Révolution est à l’envers, et son édifice croule.
XLIV. — The question of free will is both the sphinx and the Gordian knot, the Thermopylae and the Pillars of Hercules of philosophy.
If the reader judges that the enigma is definitively resolved, the knot untied, the step taken, the goal reached, the objections rehashed for two or three thousand years against liberty will possess nothing to stop him.
Objection. Man is sensation-sentiment-knowledge, or, following the old style, matter, life, mind. Under each of these points of view, everything in him is predetermined, fatal. How does this triple fatalism produce liberty?
Response. It is a law of creation that in any collectivity the resultant differs essentially in quality from each of the elements that contribute to produce it, and surpasses in power the sum of their forces. If therefore the compound is such that it unites in itself all the aspects of activity, physical or organic activity, passionate activity, intellectual activity, the resultant will necessarily be a liberty, since it will dominate all the impressions and spontaneities of matter, of life and mind. This is why the definition of man, sensation-feeling-knowledge synthetically united, is incomplete; we must add: and giving rise, by their synthesis, to a superior power, liberty.
Obj. — To make liberty a resultant, then a function; to assign it an object, a goal, an end, to speak of its works: all that is fatalism. Let us admit that the human arbiter is freed, by his constitution, from all other necessity; at least it cannot be denied that with regard to himself he is a serf: the very words used to explain him imply servitude. A principle, an object, a goal to free will; a constitution of free will, a theory of free will: all that is contradictory.
Resp. — Here is the stumbling block against which all those who have dealt with the question have broken down. They did not see that their argument, being able to turn with the same advantage against all the notions of the understanding, not only did not prove anything because it proved too much, but that it became, by the universality of the phenomenon, a bias in favor of free will.
We know in fact what happens in every antinomy: as soon as the notion that bears it has been negated by a first contradiction, it is reproduced by another contradiction which that the first. Thus, having said in general terms that liberty, being a function, having an object, serving an end, is not free, we must then, after having found, in the species, that liberty is its own object and its end, that its action is superior to all necessity, its reason superior to all reason, to conclude that it is free, since the exclusive service of oneself is precisely what is meant by liberty: nemo sibi servit.
Faced with this conflict of contradictions, what remains to be done? Only one thing, to find out if liberty is a positive function of the human being; in other words, if man, composed of matter and mind, assembly of all the elements and all the powers of nature, does not possess, ipso facto, a force of collectivity that makes him absolute master of the world and of himself, and what is the object and the goal of this force. The fact recognized, analyzed, explained, all discussion becomes puerile, no contradiction being able to prevail against the fact that poses it. What, I ask you, are the arguments of the Eleatics against movement? What is proven against the existence of bodies by the difficulties raised by the infinite divisibility of matter and its non-divisibility? It would be easy to raise against necessity itself as many objections as can be raised against free will: would that destroy the certainty we have of the necessity of certain things?
Yes, liberty is backed by all the necessities of nature and of the mind: that is why it is liberty. Yes, liberty has its reason, its principle, its end: that is why it is something.
Obj. — If man is free, and if liberty is in him the resultant of the organism, image and summary of nature, how, without a continual experience of things, can he imagine anything, know anything?
Resp. – Let’s make a distinction. Liberty is the result of the physical, affective and intellectual faculties of man; it cannot, therefore, replace or precede them: in this respect, it is dependent on its origins. But what neither sensation, nor sentiment, nor science, the sublime and the ideal, give it, it produces as its own work; by this production, it establishes itself over the entire universe and makes an act of sovereignty.
Obj. — The mind is never determined without motives. So if it depends on motives, it is not free.
Resp. — Sheer ambiguity. Of all the motives that the mind seems to obey, there is never more than one that is valid, and this single motive is always taken at liberty: it is the glorification of the self, ad majorem met gloriam.
Fichte puts it this way:
“My nature ultimately tends towards independence, an absolute personality. I can only approach it through action… I must strive to make the whole world what my body is for me. The law of liberty, unique law, is therefore absolute determination of itself by itself. (Willm, vol. II, p. 315 and 367.)
Obj. All this is an abuse of terms. Liberty is liberty, or it is not: this is what logic says a priori. Now it happens, in coming to the explanations, that nothing is said of liberty that does not at the same time suppose necessity, and that every definition becomes common to them.
Resp. Always the antinomy! Necessity also is necessity, or it is not: this is what logic says a priori. How then is it, when it comes to explanations, that necessity is continually traversed by contingency; that nothing can be said about it that does not recall chance or free will, so that every definition becomes common to them?
Escape from this imbroglio. Do you know anything whose existence is more assured to you, at the same time as the opposition is more manifest, than your two hands? Well, I challenge you to give a definition of one that doesn’t, and in all respects, fit the other; I challenge you, I say, to find a word, an idea, by means of which you can distinguish, in themselves, your right from your left. If you doubt what I’m saying, try it yourself. It is only by an external, accidental sign that you will manage to understand each other, as when a man, placed on this side of the equator and with his face turned to the meridian, calls left the hand located on the side where the sun rises, right the one on the side where it sets. Does it follow from this fatal indistinction that you have only one hand, with the thumb in the middle?
Liberty is to necessity what your right is to your left: the understanding alone can tell you nothing about it, and you will always be led, if you consult only it, to deny one or the other, which is absurd. At most you will be warned by the contradiction of your ideas that there is a reality underneath that you do not know, but that the observation of the facts of nature and of the human soul in the end will reveal to you.
Obj. — At least it must be admitted that the will of man is subject to the laws of his own constitution. These laws are for him a necessity from which he cannot free himself: therefore he is not free.
Resp. — This always amounts to saying that liberty is backed by necessity, and that in this antinomy, the thesis can never radically destroy the antithesis: which, I repeat, is not an objection, but a proof. No, the mind cannot annihilate matter, the self completely remove the not-self, the free will annihilate necessity, because that would be annihilating itself, which implies contradiction. But the mind, having become free by assuming the human form, can destroy the organisms that it has created in a latent state; it could, if it wanted, make this globe a heap of dross instead of making it a garden of delights, and by the destruction of the body it inhabits go back to sleep forever: therefore it is free.
In systems where the universe is represented as a kingdom ruled from above by a suzerain deity, the suicide of a Cato and a Lucretius is not an unanswerable testimony to liberty, because these two personages are supposed to be ruled by a celestial law, to which their will only conforms. In the Leibnizian theory, which on the independence of the monads constitutes the democracy of creation and makes each individuality a summit, suicide is the supreme act of liberty, which can only be explained by liberty.
Obj. — Every faculty or function presupposes an organism, of which it is both the principle and the product, the effect and the cause: in a realistic philosophy, founded on the observation of phenomena, this principle cannot be denied. Without an organ liberty is nothing: what is the organ of liberty? With an organ, free will falls into fatalism: how to escape the difficulty?
Resp. — Liberty has no other organ than man himself, enjoying the plenitude of his faculties. The reason for this is that liberty, being man’s collective force, cannot have a special organ in man without ceasing to be. So the definition of man by M. de Bonald, An intelligence served by organs, is even more faulty than that of Pierre Leroux: reported above, man is sensation-feeling-knowledge indivisibly united. It must be said: Man is a liberty served by organs, by senses, by affections and by ideas.
Obj. — The history of the human race testifies to a fatalism or a providentialism, the name does not matter, that is universal. Society is subject to an evolution that philosophy has not yet fully recognized, but whose fatal character appears all the more clearly the more it is studied. Carried along by this evolution, like a drop of water by the oceanic currents, man is not free; and the more he civilizes himself, by obeying the power that leads him, the less liberty he recognizes.
Resp. — The objection is worthless, since it only accounts for half the facts. Undoubtedly necessity plays a role in the evolutions of humanity, and it is not a mediocre task to make the determination: our philosopher historians are there today. But free will also has its part: I want no other proof of it for the moment than the feeling of this whole school of narrators who deny precisely what we have agreed to call the philosophy of history.
Obj. — Let us distinguish, if you will, two sorts of human acts, one that we attribute to free will, the others that we refer to necessity; in the end, free will does not lead to chaos: it would be a strange liberty that would have the object of creating disorder. However, society, a work of free will, expression of free will, cannot exist without an organism, and this organism has laws. How can it be said to be free?
Resp. — On the contrary, it has been demonstrated (Studies IV and VII) that the social order, such as Justice desires it and as free will pursues it, is not. an organism, a system; it is the pact of liberty, its equation from person to person, which implies, from the point of view of the ideal, the greatest possible variety of combinations, the greatest independence of individuals and groups.
Liberty, in its untamed course, denying everything it encounters and the universe itself, finally finds who speaks to it and, staring at it, says to it: No!
The struggle begins first: liberty is the god of war, Deus Sabaoth. Then liberty says to liberty: We cannot overcome ourselves; we can only harm our organs: immortals do not kill themselves. Let us compromise: let each do for the other as for itself, and let us swear by our consolidated sovereignty.
Thus right, written in the entrails of man, is constituted by liberty: this is what our revolutionary declarations express, all of which, except that of Robespierre, place liberty at the head of the sacramental formula: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Change the order of these words, the Revolution is upside down, and its edifice crumbles.
XL
Minister of Justice, executive power and legislative power, liberty, according to the Declaration of 1789, is superior to the law.
Art. 11. Citizens cannot be subject to laws other than those that they have freely consented to.
Art. 12. Everything that is not forbidden by law is permitted, and no one can be compelled to do what it does not order.
Art. 13. The law may never be invoked for facts prior to its publication; if it were rendered to determine the judgment of these prior facts, it would be oppressive and tyrannical.
This is repeated by the formula engraved on the first coins of the Revolution: La Nation, la Loi, le Roi;
Which the Civil Code and the Penal Code confirm:
Code civil. Art. 1er. Les lois sont exécutoires du jour de leur promulgation.
Art. 2. La loi ne dispose que pour l’avenir et n’a point d’effet rétroactif.
Code pénal. Art. 4. Nulle contravention, nul délit, nul crime, ne peuvent être punis de peines qui n’étaient pas prononcées par la loi avant qu’ils fussent commis.
Such maxims, it must be admitted, from the point of view of an eternal, immutable order, superior to man, to whom it only remains to conform his will to it, are scandalous, immoral. They totally change the notion of law, by making law no longer the relation or the reason of things, but the arbitral status of man’s will. To be right, the legislator, theist, pantheist, fatalist or optimist, should say:
“Every law of nature, that is to say every natural and necessary relation of things, is law for man, and that alone is law.
“Now, the relation of things being invariable, at whatever time the debate arises, this relation obliges, independently of the knowledge of the man and of his acquiescence.
“Thus any dispute will be settled, any crime or misdemeanor repressed and repaired according to the law of things: free will has nothing to do with it, society nothing to complain about.”
Why then does the legislator proceed in a contrary way? Why does he lay down the law as _his own_, an act of his pure will, prescribed by his good pleasure and a commandment of his authority?
Ah! It is because liberty is superior to the world and its laws, and because it can only be held to state these laws insofar as it is committed to them with regard to itself by a free oath.
Voilà pourquoi, dans la question des bulletins électoraux, la Cour de cassation, généralisant là où le texte de la loi n’avait fait que spécifier, fut irréprochable quant à la logique, qui répugne à admettre des exceptions dans une loi, mais fautive quant à la pratique législative et judiciaire, qui, tout en marchant à l’universel, ne statue cependant que sur des cas spéciaux, et ne reconnaît comme défendu que ce qui a été déclaré tel par la loi, expression synallagmatique de toutes les libertés individuelles.
What, in fact, is the law or the social contract?
A declaration of exception with regard to a specific object, the contracting parties reserving full liberty for the rest; a limit placed, for a special case, on free will. Bertrand du Gueselin and Olivier de Clisson, making between them a pact of chivalry against all those who can live and die, except the King of France and the Duke of Brittany, are an image of this absolutism of liberty.
You speak of a social system: what system could ever emerge from such a contract? None. As liberty treats, it multiplies by right: that is all.
Previously, each of the two warriors, isolated on the earth, was worth one; now he can call himself strong as two. Whether there comes a third, a fourth, a thousandth, it will always be the same thing: liberty will only ensure that this repeated equation, which multiplies its power, does not degenerate into a fatalism that subordinates it…
XLV. — Minister of Justice, executive power and legislative power, liberty, according to the Declaration of 1789, is superior to the law:
Art. 11. Citizens cannot be subject to laws other than those that they have freely consented to.
Art. 12. Everything that is not forbidden by law is permitted, and no one can be compelled to do what it does not order.
Art. 13. The law may never be invoked for facts prior to its publication; if it were rendered to determine the judgment of these prior facts, it would be oppressive and tyrannical.
This is repeated by the formula engraved on the first coins of the Revolution: La Nation, the Law, the King;
Which the Civil Code and the Penal Code confirm:
Civil Cod, Art. 1. The laws are enforceable from the day of their promulgation.
Art. 2. The law disposes only for the future and has no retroactive effect.
Penal Code. Art. 4. No contravention, no misdemeanor, no crime, can be punished with penalties that were not pronounced by law before they were committed.
Such maxims, it must be admitted, from the point of view of an eternal, immutable order, superior to man, to whom it only remains to conform his will to it, are scandalous, immoral. They totally change the notion of law, by making law no longer the relation or the reason of things, but the arbitral status of man’s will. To be right, the legislator, theist, pantheist, fatalist or optimist, should say:
“Every law of nature, that is to say every natural and necessary relation of things, is law for man, and that alone is law.
“Now, the relation of things being invariable, at whatever time the debate arises, this relation obliges, independently of the knowledge of the man and of his acquiescence.
“Thus any dispute will be settled, any crime or misdemeanor repressed and repaired according to the law of things: free will has nothing to do with it, society nothing to complain about.”
Why then does the legislator proceed in a contrary way? Why does he lay down the law as his own, an act of his pure will, prescribed by his good pleasure and a commandment of his authority?
Ah! It is because liberty is superior to the world and its laws, and because it can only be held to state these laws insofar as it is committed to them with regard to itself by a free oath.
This is why, in the question of electoral ballots, the Court of Cassation, generalizing where the text of the law had only specified, was irreproachable as to the logic, which is reluctant to admit exceptions in a law, but faulty as to to legislative and judicial practice, which, while proceeding to the universal, rules however only on special cases, and recognizes as forbidden only what has been declared such by law, a synallagmatic expression of all individual liberties.
What, in fact, is the law or the social contract?
A declaration of exception with regard to a specific object, the contracting parties reserving full liberty for the rest; a limit placed, for a special case, on free will. Bertrand du Gueselin and Olivier de Clisson, making between them a pact of chivalry against all those who can live and die, except the King of France and the Duke of Brittany, are an image of this absolutism of liberty.
You speak of a social system: what system could ever emerge from such a contract? None. As liberty treats, it multiplies by right: that is all.
Previously, each of the two warriors, isolated on the earth, was worth one; now he can call himself strong as two. Whether there comes a third, a fourth, a thousandth, it will always be the same thing: liberty will only ensure that this repeated equation, which multiplies its power, does not degenerate into a fatalism that subordinates it.
XLI
Let us summarize this whole theory:
1. The principle of necessity is not sufficient to explain the universe: it implies contradiction.
2. La conception de l’Absolu absolu, qui sert de motif à la théorie spinoziste, est inadmissible : elle conclut au delà de ce que les phénomènes permettent de conclure, et ne peut être considérée tout au plus que comme une donnée métaphysique attendant les confirmations de l’expérience, mais qui doit être abandonnée pour peu que l’expérience lui soit contraire, ce qui est précisément le cas.
3. La conception panthéistique de l’univers, ou d’un monde le meilleur possible servant d’expression (nature naturée) à l’Absolu absolu (nature naturante), est également illégitime : elle conclut en sens contraire des rapports observés, qui, par leur ensemble et surtout par leur détail, nous montrent le système des choses sous un aspect tout différent.
Ces trois négations fondamentales appellent un principe complémentaire, et ouvrent le champ à une théorie nouvelle, dont il ne s’agit plus que de trouver les termes.
4. La liberté, ou le libre arbitre, est une conception de l’esprit, formée en opposition de la nécessité, de l’Absolu absolu et de l’harmonie préétablie ou du meilleur monde, dans le but de rendre raison des faits que le principe de la nécessité, assisté des deux autres, n’explique pas, et de rendre possible la science de la nature et de l’humanité.
5. Or, comme toutes les conceptions de l’esprit, comme la nécessité elle-même, ce nouveau principe est frappé d’antinomie, ce qui veut dire que seul il ne suffit pas non plus à l’explication de l’homme et de la nature : il faut, suivant la loi de l’esprit, qui est la loi même de la création, que ce principe soit adossé à son contraire, la nécessité, avec laquelle il forme l’antinomie première, la polarité de l’univers.
Ainsi la nécessité et la liberté, antithétiquement unies, sont données à priori, par la métaphysique et l’expérience, comme la condition essentielle de toute existence, de tout mouvement, de toute fin, partant de tout savoir et de toute moralité.
6. Qu’est-ce donc que la liberté ou le libre arbitre ? La puissance de collectivité de l’homme. Par elle l’homme, matière, vie, esprit, s’affranchit de toute fatalité physique, affective et intellectuelle, se subordonne les choses, s’élève, par le sublime et le beau, au delà des limites de la réalité et de l’idée, se fait un instrument des lois de la raison comme de celles de la nature, assigne pour but à son activité la transfiguration du monde d’après son idéal, et se donne à lui-même sa gloire pour fin.
7. D’après cette définition de la liberté on peut dire, en raisonnant par analogie, qu’en tout être organisé ou simplement collectif, la force résultante est la liberté de l’être ; en sorte que plus cet être, cristal, plante ou animal, se rapprochera du type humain, plus la liberté en lui sera grande, plus le libre arbitre aura de portée. Chez l’homme même le libre arbitre se montre d’autant plus énergique que les éléments qui l’engendrent par leur collectivité sont eux-mêmes plus développés en puissance : philosophie, science, industrie, économie, droit. C’est pour cela que l’histoire, réductible en système par son côté fatal, se montre progressive, idéaliste, supérieure à toute théorie, par le côté du libre arbitre, la philosophie de l’art et la philosophie de l’histoire ayant cela de commun que la raison des choses qui leur sert de critère est néanmoins impuissante à expliquer la totalité de leur contenu.
XLVI. — Let us summarize this whole theory:
1. The principle of necessity is not sufficient alone to explain the universe: it would imply contradiction.
2. The concept of the Absolute absolute, which serves as the ground for the spinozist theory, is inadmissible: it reaches conclusions beyond those that the phenomena admit, and can be considered all the more as a metaphysical given awaiting the confirmation of experience, but which must be abandoned for fear that experience is contrary to it, which is precisely the case.
3. The pantheistic conception of the universe, or of a best possible world serving as the expression (natura naturata) of the Absolute Absolute (natura naturans), is equally illegitimate: it comes to conclusions contrary to the observed relations, which, as a whole and especially in their details, show us the systems of things under an entirely different aspect.
These three fundamental negations call for a complementary principle, and open the field to a new theory, of which it is now only a question of discovering the terms.
4. Liberty, or free will, is a conception of the mind, formed in opposition to necessity, to the Absolute Absolute, and to the notion of a preestablished harmony or best world, with the aim of making sense of facts not explained by the principle of necessity, assisted by the two others, and to render possible the science of nature and of humanity.
5. Now, like all the conceptions of the mind, like necessity itself, this new principle is afflicted by antinomy, which means that alone it is no longer sufficient for the explanation of man and nature: it is necessary, according the law of the mind, which is the very law of creation, that this principle be balanced against its opposite, necessity, with which it forms the first antinomy, the polarity of the universe.
Thus necessity and liberty, antithetically united, are given a priori, by metaphysics and experience, as the essential condition of all existence, all movement, of every end, starting from every body of knowledge and every morality.
6. What then is liberty or free will? The power of collectivity of the individual. By it, man, who is at once matter, life and mind, frees himself from all fatality, whether physical, emotional or intellectual, subordinates things to himself, raises himself, by the sublime and the beautiful, outside the limits of reality and of thought, makes an instrument of the laws of reason as well as those of nature, sets as the aim of his activity the transformation of the world according to his ideal, and devotes himself to his own glory as an end.
7. According to this definition of liberty, one can say, reasoning by analogy, that in every organized or simply collective being, the resultant force is the liberty of the being; in such a way the more that being—crystal, plant or animal—approaches the human type, the greater the liberty in it will be, the greater the scope of its free will. Among men themselves free will shows itself more energetic as the elements that give rise to it are themselves more developed in power: philosophy, science, industry, economy, law. This is why history, reducible to a system by its fatal side, shows itself progressive, idealistic, and superior to theory, on the side of free will, the philosophy of art and of history having in common that the reason of things that serves as their criterion is nevertheless powerless to explain all of their content.
XLII
There it is, that revolutionary liberty, cursed for so long, because it was not understood, because its key was sought in words instead of in things; there it is, as a philosophy inspired by it alone should in the end furnish it. In revealing itself to us in its essence, it gives us, along with the reason of our religious and political institutions, the secret of our destiny.
Oh! I understand, Monseigneur, that you do not like liberty, that you have never liked it. Liberty, which you cannot deny without destroying yourself, which you cannot affirm without destroying yourself still, you dread it as the Sphinx dreaded Oedipus: it came, and the riddle of the Church was answered; Christianity is no longer anything other than an episode in the mythology of the human race. Liberty, symbolized by the story of the Temptation, is your Antichrist; liberty, for you, is the Devil.
Come, Satan, come, slandered by priests and kings! Let me embrace you, let me clutch you to my breast! I have known you for a long time, and you know me as well. Your works, oh blessed of my heart, are not always beautiful or good; but you alone give sense to the universe and prevent it from being absurd. What would justice be without you? An instinct. Reason? A routine. Man? A beast. You alone prompt labor and render it fertile; you ennoble wealth, serve as an excuse for authority, put the seal on virtue. Hope still, proscript! I have at your service only a pen, but it is worth millions of ballots. And I wish only to ask when the days sung of by the poet will return:
Vous traversiez des ruines gothiques :
Nos défenseurs se pressaient sur vos pas ;
Les fleurs pleuvaient, et des vierges pudiques
Mêlaient leurs chants à l’hymne des combats.
Tout s’agitait, s’armait pour la défense ;
Tout était fier, surtout la pauvreté.
Ah ! rendez-moi les jours de mon enfance,
Déesse de la Liberté !
XLVII. — There it is, that revolutionary liberty, cursed for so long, because it was not understood, because its key was sought in words instead of in things; there it is, as a philosophy inspired by it alone should in the end furnish it. In revealing itself to us in its essence, it gives us, along with the reason of our religious and political institutions, the secret of our destiny.
Oh! I understand, Monseigneur, that you do not like liberty, that you have never liked it. Liberty, which you cannot deny without destroying yourself, which you cannot affirm without destroying yourself still, you dread it as the Sphinx dreaded Oedipus: it came, and the riddle of the Church was answered; Christianity is no longer anything other than an episode in the mythology of the human race. Liberty, symbolized by the story of the Temptation, is your Antichrist; liberty, for you, is the Devil.
Come, Satan, come, slandered by priests and kings! Let me embrace you, let me clutch you to my breast! I have known you for a long time, and you know me as well. Your works, oh blessed of my heart, are not always beautiful or good; but you alone give sense to the universe and prevent it from being absurd. What would justice be without you? An idea, an instinct perhaps. Reason? A routine. Man? A beast. You alone prompt labor and render it fertile; you ennoble wealth, serve as an excuse for authority, put the seal on virtue. Hope still, exile! I have at your service only a pen, but it is worth millions of ballots. And I wish only to ask when the days sung of by the poet will return:
You crossed gothic ruins;
Our defenders pressed at your heels;
Flowers rained down, and modest virgins
Mingled their songs with the war-hymn.
All stirred, and armed themselves for the defense;
All were proud, above all the poor.
Ah! Give back to me the days of my childhood,
Goddess of Liberty!
[Béranger, La Déesse]
APPENDIX.
NOTES AND CLARIFICATIONS.
Note (A), page 8.
Condemnation of proper virtue. — Fénelon insists on this distressing doctrine in his dialogue between Ulysses and Grillus. “I believed,” he said, “that this subject, imitated from Plutarch, would be calculated to show that men would be worse than beasts, if solid philosophy and true religion did not support them.”
After a long and tedious parallel between the condition of man and that of swine, Grillus, having become more sophistic after his metamorphosis than he had certainly been before, concludes in these terms: “Do not hope, eloquent Odysseus, to dazzle me with a false appearance of immortality. I want something more real, or else I will persist in the brutal sect that I have embraced. Show me that man has in him something nobler than his body and which is exempt from corruption; show me that what thinks in man is not the body, and always subsists after this coarse machine is unsettled; in a word, show that what remains of man after this life is a true and truly happy being; establish that the gods are not unjust, and that there is beyond this life a solid reward for virtue, always suffering here below: immediately, divine son of Laertes, I run after you through dangers; I leave Circe’s stable happy, I am no longer a pig, I become a man again, and a man on guard against all pleasures. By any other way you will never lead me to your goal. I would rather be nothing but a big, fat pig, content with my filth, than a weak, vain, frivolous, cunning, deceitful and unjust man, who only hopes to be a sad shadow after his death, and a ghost displeased with his condition.”
It is always the same reasoning, denounced by Voltaire: If my religion is false, I no longer have any reason to be an honest man. And if, in spite of this falsity of my religion, I persisted in practicing virtue, thus affecting, by my own justice, to assimilate myself to the Divinity, I would be the most profound of hypocrites.
On this entirely Christian point, every religious man agrees with Fénelon. But admire the inconsistency of human reason: the condemnation of one’s own virtue, so strongly expressed in Telemachus and the Dialogues of the Dead and universally regarded as orthodox, starts from the same principle as pure love, taught by Fénelon in his book of the Maximes des saints, and condemned by the Church on the indictment of Bossuet. What, indeed, is pure love? “Love for God alone, considered in itself and without any mixture of interested motives, neither of fear nor of hope.” (Explication des Maximes des Saints, Avertissement). Fénelon, in his logic, was irreproachable. — “If we have virtue only in God; if we are only worthy by God; if of ourselves we are only dead and sinful, we must tend with all our strength to the pure love of God, without any consideration of ourselves, which are only bestiality and concupiscence. In this consists the perfection of our charity, and consequently of our religion.”
This is what Fénelon said. The doctrine of pure love and that which reproves one’s own virtue are one and the same doctrine: how could it be blameworthy to support the one, while it was approved to defend the other? There was nothing to reply to that. So there was nothing answered at all.
Certainly Bossuet, pressing the consequences of the principle laid down by Fénelon in his book Maximes des Saints, had no difficulty in showing that this principle opened the door to all the abominations of Molinos; that not only did the practice of pure love end in the cessation of the acts of religion, but also in the annulment of the precepts of morality. Without worrying about inconsistency, Bossuet therefore denied the principle of pure love, in which he certainly showed himself to be a more exact moralist, but a less logical Christian than Fénelon, and threw himself, with such a skilful adversary, into inextricable difficulties.
It is conceivable, said Bossuet, that in certain moments of exaltation the lover, out of heroism of love, renounces possession of the loved object. But this sacrifice must never be considered except as a hyperbolic and momentary expression of charity, or the effect of an invincible impediment. In itself, love is inseparable from the desire to possess; this desire is of the very essence of love, and develops in the soul in proportion to love. — Bossuet could have made use of a comparison drawn from Justice. It is conceivable, at certain times, that the Just, strong in his conscience, shows himself indifferent to persecution and calumny: it is pure justice that he then practices, and to which he sacrifices himself. But it would be distorting Justice to pretend to make such a sacrifice of the self the habitual state of the soul, or the summit to which it must tend. The more justice there is in us, the more we want it in others; our zeal for the repression of iniquity grows in our hearts in proportion to our own justice, so that the most just man is at the same time the sternest and most inexorable judge of avengers, just lik the most powerful love is the most ardent in possession.
Very well, replied Fénelon: but then you give great importance to the human element; you rehabilitate proper virtue, you bring back selfishness, you pass from the sphere of religious things into the sphere of pure humanity; you annul, according to the expression of Saint Augustine, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ; you deny God. By thus making the self the pivot of justice and love, you give up your faith; you are in contradiction with the tradition of all our mystical saints, of all our ascetics; in contradiction with the spirit of the Gospel, with religion itself.
Fénelon was condemned: his condemnation was one of the wisest and happiest acts of the Holy See. The Church, by this condemnation, as well as by that of Jansenius, has evidently contradicted itself; but it saved mores. It is not the only time that it has shown, in the course of its history, the impossibility of reconciling morality with gnosis.
Note (B), page 16.
Powerlessness of theories in morality. — We are told that, in the passage quoted, Aristotle declares theory powerless over the multitude who cannot understand it, but not over enlightened men. We believe we have captured Aristotle’s true thought.
He says first, Bk. X, ch. X, §. 3: “If speeches and writings alone were capable of making us honest, they would well deserve, as Theognis said, to be sought after by everyone and paid for at the highest price; we would just have to procure them. But, unfortunately, all that precepts of this kind can do is to determine and urge a few generous young people to persevere in good, and to make of a well-born and spontaneously honest heart an unshakable friend of virtue. — §. 4. But for the crowd, the precepts are absolutely powerless to lead them to good. It does not obey out of respect, but out of fear; it does not abstain from evil out of a sense of shame, but out of fear of punishment. As it lives only on passions, it only pursues the pleasures that are its own, and the means of procuring these pleasures; it hastens to flee contrary punishments. What discourse, what reasoning could correct these coarse natures?…”
In this whole passage, it is not a question of enlightened people, nor of the ignorant multitude: but of generous souls, well born, spontaneously inclined to good, and whom it is a question of making persevere in opposition to the coarse multitude, living on passions, which pursues only pleasure, in which therefore the senses and their appetites dominate. It follows that, according to Aristotle, the inclination to good does not come from the precepts, although the precepts can fortify it, but from a certain natural generosity, from a mental predisposition, if not, as Aristotle says below, of divine influence. — “Men,” he adds, § 6, “so it is claimed, become and are virtuous, sometimes by nature, sometimes by habit, sometimes finally by education. As for the natural disposition, it obviously does not depend on us; it is by a sort of entirely divine influence that it is found in certain men who really have, one might say, a happy chance. On the other hand, reason and education do not have a hold on all characters; and it is necessary that the soul of the student has been prepared for a long time, so that he knows how to place his pleasures and his hatreds well, as one prepares the ground that must nourish the seed that one entrusts to him. The being who lives only by passion cannot listen to the voice of reason, which diverts him from what he desires; he can’t even understand it. Passion, in general, does not obey reason; it yields only to force. (Translation of Barthélemy St.-Hilaire.)
Thus Aristotle had clearly perceived this principle, which is too often forgotten today, that Justice is not only a matter of intelligence, that it is above all a thing of innateness, a faculty of the soul, that education will develop and make master of the passions; but that, without this faculty, or if this faculty lacks energy, if it is oppressed by passion, it is in vain that one will lavish precepts and demonstrations, one will obtain no change in the soul of the pupil, he will perish.
This inneity of the soul is what we call Justice. Aristotle was not far from regarding it as a divine influence; Christianity was bolder, it made God the subject of morality.
Note (C), page 24.
Social dignity. — See previous Study, pages 33 and 184, and note (L), page 185. —
Note (D), page 27.
Weakening of religiosity. — We have already touched on this subject in the preceding study, note (I), page 181; we will come back to it again. The importance of the question obliges us to do so.
We are told: “Religiousness is an attribute of the soul; you recognize it yourself. As such, it is fundamentally indestructible; it can at most weaken momentarily or change form. You, on the contrary, you affirm this weakening of our religious faculty in a general way, and that, by the very reason of the progress of Justice. Perhaps you would be right if religion only represented Justice, if it responded only to Justice. But…”
Religion, that is indisputable, does not respond only to Justice, it also responds to other things, it has roots in all the functions of the soul. If we therefore suppose that, separated from Justice, it retains its influence over the other parts of its domain, it will certainly not weaken; it will regain on the points preserved what it will have lost in the order of morality: one could even foresee that, by a natural reaction, sooner or later it will be reestablished there. But, by a similar reasoning, one can also say that once expelled from Justice, it will soon and infallibly be expelled everywhere: this is what we have to examine.
Separated from Justice, religion gradually weakens in all things that pertain to the juridical order: this is proven by theory and by history; it is even one of the essential characteristics of progress. But there does not stop the decadence: the same backward movement manifests itself in all the categories of knowledge, politics, ideas, work and social security.
Religion has always had, under the name of theology, one foot in knowledge. It has been reputed to be the first of the sciences; it marched, as such, at the head of all the faculties. To allow itself to be sequestered from knowledge, as it has been from morality, religion cannot consent to it; to admit that it is outside of all that can be observed, understood, conceived, would be to admit its own nothingness. Theology will therefore continue to assert itself as science, knowledge, gnose, if you will: but on what condition? On condition of paying homage to science properly speaking, of bowing before reason, of recognizing the right and freedom of examination, consequently of submitting to the rules of philosophical criticism, which are none other than the very laws of common sense. So religion, formerly queen because she was the justice-bringer, because she bore within herself the subject and the sanction of Justice, now that she distinguishes herself from Justice, having become its sovereign, is still obliged to salute as her superior the Reason, to keep pace with profane science, just not to be science and to fail Justice. Here, then, are already two powers that surpass the religious faculty in us, which subordinate it and make it bend, Justice and reason. Isn’t that falling and weakening?
And notice where this submission to reason leads us: to a theory of the formation and use of concepts, to this Kantian critique, which allows nothing to subsist as positive knowledge, of theology. It is modern philosophy, it is Descartes, it is Kant above all, that have given modern generations this anti-absolutist, anti-religious initiation. Abandon this criticism, you renounce all the conditions of certain knowledge; retain it, on the contrary, as scientific rigor, through the mouth of M. Babinet, commands you, you lose your religion.
After science comes politics. It is from religion that the government formerly borrowed its principle of authority and hierarchy, the basis of its strength; it was by religion that peoples were bent under the majesty of power and obedience to law. All that has disappeared from our revolutionized souls: theocracy has long since been overthrown, and no one, even among the Orthodox, dreams of raising it again. The remnants of papal power are attacked from all sides, to the acclamations of Christendom. The ancient faith in royalty has died out, nobility is no more than an odious memory, respect for authority is nothing. I obey the law, they tell you, not the man; and the law, it is I or my representative, duly elected and always revocable, who make it. The modern mind no longer knows veneration, obedience, respect; it has become a debater, calculator, jurist, economist: all things incompatible with the idea or feeling of religion. Religion itself, in order to preserve a remnant of influence in this order of politics, had to become liberal, egalitarian, as it became philosophical: in place of the old divine right, it uncovered in the Gospel liberty and equality. If it decides against this formula, Liberty — Equality — Fraternity, it lacks justice, reason, and she loses it popularity. So, a new retreat, a new weakening. We saw, in 1848, the bishops sitting in the national assembly alongside the workers who had become their colleagues: what religion can subsist with such institutions?
In the past, poetry and art joined hands with religion. They owe it most of their masterpieces. The divine marvelous aided idealistic power: it was, under another name, always the ideal. The poems of Homer are so ravishing only because the influence of the gods, who swarm there, makes itself felt everywhere; just as the masterpieces of Phidias reached such a high degree of perfection only through the feeling of superhuman beauty that intoxicated him. Since Virgil, one could even say since Aeschylus, art tends more and more to be humanized: it abandons the gods and attaches itself to man. The renaissance of the arts in the sixteenth century, insofar as it renewed the alliance of religion and the ideal, provided only a short career; the Dutch school of Rembrandt, entirely realistic, equaled that of Raphael, and we are leaning more and more in this direction. Already even a more radical transformation is revealed: palaces and temples increasingly desolate, art goes to the studio. It is no longer to trace the image of gods and princes, to embellish their dwellings, that modern genius applies the power of its ideal, it is to the objects of its industry. The masterpieces of the 19th century are no longer paintings, nor statues, nor epic poems; they are neither temples, nor coliseums, nor cathedrals; they are not even hotels or country houses. Industrial genius has a poor understanding of these objects of ancient magnificence. Our masterpieces are machines, precision instruments, telescopes, timepieces, iron ships, docks; they are all our tools, they are our products. In the category of the fine arts, represented by the muses, antiquity had left us to pick one palm, that of music. It was the affair of a generation: the opera had the best part of it; the Church has remained with its plainsong. Currently, music is in its turn declining, like tragedy and comedy: industry, on the contrary, is becoming ever greater and more beautiful. Certainly, from the point of view of humanity, there is here an immense progress; for religion, it is an irreparable decline. Labor having become the object and the material of the ideal: what a reversal of divine things!
At least, say the religionists, religion remains more than ever indispensable, as a moral sanction, reparation for the miseries and iniquities of present life. — In this again, contemporary religiosity seems to us to be completely deluded. Doubtless for a generation or two, pauperism, hypocrisy and crime have redoubled among civilized nations: the evil is such that the human conscience once again cries out to heaven for vengeance. But, without examining whether this redoublement of perversity does not have its cause in religion itself, in the reaction of the Church, of the governments and of the classes interested in the status quo, without investigating whether the healthy part of society does not have to blame itself for its inertia and indifference, it is certain for us that an energetic tendency to the organized repression of vice and crime, to the abolition of pauperism, manifests itself in the masses. We no longer want to wait for reparations from beyond the grave; what is demanded is instant, lightning justice. The ideal of society is that no act be committed there against the law and mores with impunity. To refer the culprits to the tribunal of God, while waiting to allow them to enjoy the fruit of their crimes, is more than ever to outrage the conscience of mortals. On the contrary, to complete the Revolution, to create economic right, to consolidate political right, to give to Justice, to morality, liberty as guarantor and as organ: this is what universal feeling demands on all sides. With this, we shall have less and less to resort to the hopes and terrors of religion.
On other no less essential points, religion, obliged to put itself in unison with public opinion, is led to condemn itself with its own mouth and to undo itself. Can we conceive, for example, of a religion without dogma and without unity? Not at all; to such an extent that the new religionists, reformed, neo-Christian or anti-Christian, all strive to constitute, as Catholicism had done, the unity of their church on a dogma. Now, facts have proven that religious dogma, whatever one does, not directly and exclusively pertaining to pure science, to pure right, is unstable, whence it follows that unity is impossible. Despairing therefore of achieving this unity, which would be the religious demonstration par excellence, we decided to substitute another principle, not at all religious, the principle of tolerance, which every church is bound to profess and observe, on pain of exclusion for itself. It is in the name of the Gospel, despite the anathemas with which it abounds against the authors and instigators of heresy, that tolerance is imposed today on the followers of the various cults: is this not the case to say, Si Satanas in seipsum divisus est, quomodo stabit? Thus Voltaire dictates the law to the infamous; thus the Papacy with its Inquisition, Louis XIV and Bossuet, authors of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, are denied by the religion imposed on them by the Concordat. In good faith, is this religious progress or decadence?
After the inviolability of dogma and the unity of the Church, what constitutes the soul of religion is worship, prayer, adoration; it is, as we have reported elsewhere (Sixth Study, Note (A), page 187), mental prayer and contemplation. But what do we see? The Church herself, the Church, without waiting for her to be called upon by the imperious march of the century, has taken care to restrict mental prayer and the contemplative life within the narrowest limits. It clipped the wings of mysticism, forbidding, so to speak, all illuminism and all quietism; it has adopted the popular tune: Who works, prays. So we hardly know anymore what it is to pray: religion is all outside and in words; the most fervent are occupied with religious speculation, they are incapable of contemplation. Isn’t it clear here that religion affected at its source?
What proves this is the character of illuminism as it occurs today outside the Church. Listen to the writers of spiritism: independently of the manifestations of which they take advantage, and of which we leave them, of course, the responsibility, they confess that the spirits are not all of equal quality and morality; that there are good ones and bad ones, learned and illiterate; that all are subject to the passions of pride, of concupiscence and falsehood that one notices in the living; in short, that the spiritist world is made like the real world, mixed with good and evil, juggling and illusion. This is what causes the contradiction to exist within spiritualism as among Christians and philosophers; that revelations are opposed by other revelations; that the peasant of Figuières is contradicted by others, etc. Also, however little the spiritists are pressed, they recognize that spiritism is incapable, by itself, of revealing anything true, just and useful, that we cannot learn without its help, by the good use of our reason, by following the torch of our conscience, and by developing in practical and rational ways our science and our industry. It is even by this criterion of common sense that communications from beyond the world should ultimately be judged, on pain of falling into immorality and madness. Isn’t this precisely how the Church has always used it with the gnostics, the possessed, the sorcerers, the enlightened, the devotees of the deacon [François de] Pâris, etc.? So that spiritism, like theism, not being, according to its own confession, anything but an anthropomorphism, an overshadowing of society and of consciousness, the conclusion, supposing everything that has been said to be true, would be that it has nothing to give to men and that the wisest thing is to do without it. Let us reason about spiritualism as we like; whether we reject its phenomena or whether we admit them, I say, as for me, that there is a flagrant testimony against religiosity: it is religiosity that breathes its last.
Will we be told, finally, what is expected of a power obliged to divest itself each day of one or another of its prerogatives, and to which, after having reigned supreme over society, only crumbs of the feast remain? Religion, formerly, bent everything under its scepter; now it bows to a chorus of powers it once called vagabonds: Justice, Liberty, Equality, Science, Labor, Tolerance, Temporal Sanction, Realism in the arts, finally Common Sense and Experience, which impose themselves in turn, as a condition of credibility, on the marvelous itself. Is that enough falls? Is more needed to conclude that God is man, and religiosity the vague and idealistic feeling of our own virtue?
If religion were to recover, it could only be through the effect of a tyrannical compression, which would arrest the natural development of civilization and drive back its immortal principles: law, liberty, philosophy, industry, tolerance, the prosecution of misdemeanors and crimes, morals and common sense. Such, in fact, is the work that the Empire and the Church seem to have been pursuing for nearly ten years. Religious restoration would therefore be social decay. We do not know how long this monstrous attempt must last, but we are sure that it will only be an attempt; that no punishment will ever expiate.
Note (E), page 28.
Utilitarianism. — We call Utilitarianism the system that consists in reducing the notion of the just to that of the useful, consequently in making interest the principle of right and morals. This system seems as old as the State, here is how the theory was formed.
Everywhere society, or the collective being, has been considered as a great proprietor of which each citizen is a client, tenant or servant, and whose eminent domain takes precedence over all private interests, For the State to subsist, for it to be prosperous, all interests must be subordinate to its own, which is, more or less fictitiously, that of everyone. This subordination of particular interests to the common interest is the object of the law: whence this equivocal proposition, that Justice is born of general utility. But we go further, and we add that obedience to the law or justice is identical to the interest (of course) of each citizen. So that a man who, from greed, avarice or any other shameful motive, commits a felony, is simply a fool, who does not understand his interests.
There is a double sophism here, which we will have no difficulty in disentangling. On the one hand, it is true that the law is the greatest interest of society: it does not even have any other interest than that. Society neither drinks nor eats: it is a spiritual collectivity, which subsists solely from the legal relationship which binds citizens together, and which cannot in any way be assimilated, in terms of interest, to merchants and laborers. To say that Justice is an interest, the interest of society, the common interest, is to make what in rhetoric is called a metaphor. The system of interest based on a figure is therefore ruinous, and all the subtleties of the world cannot make it solid.
It is not true that, fundamentally, right is reduced for everyone to interest: right and interest are two things as radically distinct from each other as lewdness and marriage. Doubtless there is, in certain cases, an advantage in being just; in other cases, there is a positive loss: the choice then depends on the conscience of the subject, on the state of the opinion whose judgment he may have to fear, and on the risk to be run. If the risk is nil, or if it is largely covered by the benefit, it can be predicted that the immense majority, if they are not held back by other considerations, will risk themselves; if, moreover, public opinion is lax, as for example, in matters of gallantry or smuggling, selfishness will prevail all the better; finally, as to the motive of conscience, if one manages to pass it off as a prejudice, we can predict that once reassured, on the side of risk and opinion, we will not find three individuals in a hundred who take it into account. It is claimed, said a usurer, that the property of others does not profit; this is when there is not enough of it.
Despite the sophism on which it is established, Utilitarianism, favored by the uncertainties of morality and the arbitrariness of the State, has nonetheless made a great fortune in the world. Horace makes Utility the mother of justice and right:
Atque ipsa Utilitas justi prope mater et æqui.
Horace, to say it in passing, was the son of a freedman, that is to say, of a utilitarian who had made his fortune by trafficking; and he was writing for a society of traffickers and business people, who had nothing left of the old republic except in name and language. What is useful in Athens is honest, said Themistocles, contrary to the opinion of Aristides; the Carthaginians, the Spartans themselves, in the end, thought the same. Among the moderns, it is to be observed that utilitarianism developed with mercantilism, and that the more mercantile mores penetrated society, the more it became utilitarian. This observation is especially true of the English nation.
Hobbes, quoted by Burlamaqui, says that the foundation of natural right is this proposition that Everyone should preserve his body and his limbs as much as is in his power. From which he concludes that, as the right to seek an end is useless and void without the right to employ the means, each having the right to preserve himself, it is a necessary consequence that each also has the right to employ all the means and to do all the acts without which he cannot preserve itself. Hence war. “The first law of nature is therefore this: That peace must be sought where it can subsist; that when, on the contrary, we cannot have peace, we must resort to war. Now, in the state of nature, all men have rights over all things. But since this right of everyone cannot be applied to its full extent, without which we would always be at war, a state directly contrary to our preservation, it is in keeping with nature to cede one’s rights and transfer them to others. Hence pacts and contracts.
“This action is therefore just, which is in conformity with the right that we have preserved; that one is unjust, which is contrary to the right we have ceded.”
Reduced to its simplest expression, this verbiage means that the laws of morality are the laws of our preservation, nothing more. First, our interest leads us to war: but, war not being conservative, we are led to deal with peace. As long as peace is useful, it will be observed: if not, not. From this principle, the foundation of natural right and of nations, Hobbes then deduces the system of civil laws: no one knows how, by virtue of his pretended principle of conservation, he concludes with the despotism of the state. Hobbes, however original his theory, is basically a utilitarian. He is English.
I am not in a position to verify what Bacon de Vérulam says about the principle of morality, to which he makes all the sciences converge. May the diligent reader kindly make up for my lack of erudition.
Cumberland, another Englishman (his Latin treatise Des lois naturelles was translated by Barbeyrac), refutes Hobbes’s system, but without abandoning the principle of utility, to which he holds even more strongly than Hobbes. He had deduced natural right from the necessity of avoiding the greatest evil, and thereby of providing as well as possible for our preservation. Cumberland deduces it from the advantage that there is for each one to seek the good of all, our own good, according to him, having to result from this research. It is therefore still the greatest profit posited as the principle and motive of virtue. Unfortunately, as self-interest is incompatible with the common interest, as communism is universally rejected, while industrial and commercial liberty, and free competition are considered economic laws, Cumberland’s theory is reduced to an empty hypothesis, which only serves to attest once more to the difficulty, for an English conscience, of conceiving the true notion of right.
Selden, also English, wrote a treatise On the Law of Nature and Nations, According to the Doctrine of the Hebrews. A work of scholarship rather than of right, said de Félice, from which nothing can be drawn. I have not read, nor probably will ever read Selden’s book: I only note that, according to him, the Hebrews deduce all natural law from the words of Genesis, ch. II, 15. 16: And the Lord God commanded Adam, saying, Of every fruit of the garden shalt thou eat.…..; but you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, etc. Ancient Hebrew is known for its utilitarian piety, and no nation has drawn more inspiration from the Bible than the English nation. You will eat, you will not eat! What an epigraph to a work on natural law!
Wollaston, Anglican bishop, published a Sketch of Natural Religion: it is in the notion of truth that he seeks the formulas of right. “The truth,” he says, is the rule of our actions; the nature of things (the reason of things) is the basis of this truth, of which God is the principle, and our reason the contemplator.” — Very good: the truth is a rule for our mind, that is to say a means of distinguishing and choosing between the things that exist, that have reality, and those that have only the appearance. But the nature or the reason of things teaches us nothing by itself about the just and the unjust: what, in the nature of things, proves that the punishment of a malefactor is just, and that the murder of an honest man is unjust? Of course, to enlighten us on this, it is necessary to have recourse to a reason other than that of things, to conscience. Then, assuming that the nature of things answers the question, what proves that I, who am not a thing, but a free, sovereign person, must conform in all my actions to what will this nature dictate to me? — It is, replies Wollaston, that the truth is the shortest way which leads us even to felicity. — So Wollaston, like Hobbes and Cumberland, assigns the useful as the principle and motive of morality; although a man of the Church, he is a utilitarian.
Ashley Sykes, another Anglican theologian, follows Wollaston’s principles, further proving that, on this capital point of Justice, revealed religion agrees with natural religion.
As for Jeremy Bentham, the true patron of utilitarianism, he is well known.
From these examples, and from many others that it would be easy to collect, one can conclude that there is in the English race, judaizing, trafficking and bourgeois, a natural disposition to consider interest, interest well understood, no doubt, but finally interest, as the principle and the end of Justice. I am far from saying that English probity is not equal to French or German probity; according to many people, it is even better. But anyway, we speak better than our neighbors: and we know that man is always taken by his tongue. Make money, my son, says a well-known English proverb, honestly, if you can; but make money. — Glory to you, said an Englishman to a Frenchman after the Crimean campaign; the profit is ours. English missionaries are generally traffickers; they mix the useful with the sacred, always on the same principle. Study English policy in recent years: all its tergiversations are explained by the same cause. Depending on the interest, more or less of course, the weather vane turns. Napoleon III took them there more than once; he will take them there again.
Note (E), page 41.
Right of war. — We will develop, in a special treatise, the principles of the Law of War and of Peace, so necessary for the education of modern Democracy, and the obscuring of which is in large part the cause of the international trouble that agitates Europe.
Note (G), page 47.
Private life. — We said above, page 38, that “If man were alone on earth, his dignity having no correlative, no equal, there would be no reason for him to seek the rule of his obligations: his morality would be reduced to liberty.” These words in no way contradict those on page 47, where we say that the purity of private life matters to society itself. This is because the maxim of liberty is indeed different in the hypothesis of an absolute independence or solitude of man on earth, and different in the case, which is ours, where private life, if walled in as we want it to be, is in permanent contact with the society that surrounds it. Here the duty of man is no longer a simple obligation towards himself; it is also, and already, an obligation towards others. The habit of certain individual licenses, without consequence in the case of absolute solitude, becomes dangerous to the social state, by the opposition they make in the soul to Justice.
Note (H), page 80.
Liberty: Mr. Jules Simon. — Since the first edition of the book of Justice, M. Jules Simon has published a new and considerable work, La Liberté, two vol. in-80, Paris, Hachette, 1859. It was permissible to suppose that after having only touched on the question of free will in his book on Devoir, Mr. Jules Simon would engage in a thorough discussion in a work of nearly 1100 pages, and whose title is La Liberté. Mr. Jules Simon was not of this opinion: we do not dream of reproaching him for it. He thought that in a time like ours it is less theory that needs to be spoken to the public than practice; and, under the title of Liberté, like M. Dunoyer under that of Liberté du Travail, like M. Vacherot under that of Démocratie, M. Jules Simon has reviewed some of the questions of public morals, economic and domestic, that the agitation of recent years has raised.
Appreciated from this point of view, the enterprise of M. Jules Simon is nothing but laudable, and if we have formerly criticized it on the principles, we believe it our duty to declare that at least as far as concerns morality, we almost agree with Mr. Jules Simon on everything. We wanted to note this fact, first because it is not the only one of the same kind; then, because this competition of the most divergent opinions on the ground of Justice constitutes a beginning of certainty, a hope of philosophical unity, which must strike all the minds of good faith.
Let M. Jules Simon therefore persist in his deism à la Jean-Jacques; let him cling to his natural Religion, let him profess the double dogma of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. What does it matter to us? These formulas are necessary to his thought, to his conscience, to his talent; they are due to the nature of his mind; they are part of his language; he needs them as necessary hypotheses for his reasoning, rubrics for his discourse, milestones to link his ideas. Are we therefore going to condemn a writer for his metaphysics, when his morality is beyond reproach? All we want to see in M. Jules Simon today is the energetic defender of liberty, the irreconcilable adversary of old and new despotism, the austere censor of contemporary immorality, the despiser of false and ill-gotten glories, the accuser of triumphant crime. In philosophy, M. Jules Simon is less a pupil of the Academy than of the Portico; in politics, he is a Republican. Would to God we had enough men of his kind! On the very ground of the Revolution, M. Jules Simon separates himself from Jacobinism; he has no excuses for the Terror; demagogy as much as militarism is repugnant to him, his disgust with communism has made him unfavorable to the aspirations of socialism. Well, M. Jules Simon’s antipathies are for the most part our own, and it is not we who will be frightened by colors, any more than by articles of faith. If I speak the language of angels, said the Apostle, if I don’t have charity, I am nothing. Let us therefore try to have between us charity, or better said Justice, and believe that the surplus will be given to us in addition.
Here are some of the thoughts we caught on the fly in Mr. Jules Simon’s latest book:
“We spend our lives arguing about everything, questioning everything, raising systems that this one loves and another knocks down like houses of cards. There is only one point on which we agree, and that is the existence of the moral law.”
And M. Jules Simon, renouncing disputes, has written his book to reduce everything to the moral law. Isn’t this precisely our point of view and our goal?
“It is absurd to say that there are two morals, since the most obvious character of the moral law is to be invincible, universal, absolute.”
In the times in which we live, these two propositions are perhaps the finest profession of political and social faith that can be demanded of a man.
“When a cause is just, sooner or later it must triumph: this is the true, the definitive.
“Whoever does not feel in his conscience that he would a thousand times prefer the role of Cato to that of Caesar, must mistrust his heart.”
He says elsewhere: “There is no progress except by Justice.” This is also our thesis.
“Govern the citizen, since it is necessary, no more than it is necessary. Don’t touch the man.”
Examining the principle of authority, M. Jules Simon says that authority can only take place in the family, where it is tempered by love. For the rest, he concludes by saying: “I stick to liberty.”
Note (I), page 81.
Liberty: M. Ch. Renouvier. — M. Renouvier having reproached us for not having understood him, we owe it to him to quote his words:
“M. Proudhon reproaches me with betraying liberty, because I still admit, according to him, a certain cosmic absolute, except to introduce into the perfect universal order, into the cog of the facts that I recognize in principle, possibilities, exceptions, novelties, which is unsustainable. If it were true that I had sought liberty in the world of optimists, where all is beauty, perfection, without shock or discord, I would have fallen into an inevitable contradiction. That is certain.
“The contradiction could be attributed to Mr. Proudhon. He seems to acknowledge it, under the specious name of antinomy, when he admits the simultaneous existence of liberty and necessity. Unless, however, he does makes for each its portion, which I believe I understand. But then the universal necessity is denied; there is no longer room for antinomy. Let us strike out this word: the contradiction it covers will vanish.
“The contradiction, I also admitted it, but by declaring the question insoluble, at the time when I began to speculate on these matters. I believed then in antinomies. I came back well from it. For we must beware of giving this name to simple oppositions which, not bearing on the same subject, at the same moment, under the same relation, are the matter and not the embarrassment of Science.
“I come to the cosmic absolute, with which I am charged. If it is to admit a cosmic absolute to surrender to the general laws of the world, then I agree with it, cosmic absolute. These laws, liberty itself supposes them; it is their emancipation in some respects; it applies them, turns them, opens them, and does not suppress them: in their turn, they imply nothing for liberty, and they find a limit there.
“The Pyrrhonians themselves did not deny, as phenomena, the laws of phenomena, the fact of a constant order of physical, vital, sensitive, rational, passionate facts. I see with them this order, this cosmic absolute. Only, I call it Cosmos, in French relation; and the Absolute, if it is somewhere, I don’t see it. The order is in my eyes multiple, diverse, compound. None of its great parts, that I know, is exempt from alterations at the points where its products encounter liberty and partake of it.
“And when I recognize possibilities, exceptions, novelties in the Cosmos, it is that I formally deny the thesis of a single, total, eternal, necessary, absolute law. Exceptions and laws are very compatible ideas, or to say more and more precisely, to acknowledge the exception is to acknowledge the law. (Essais de critique générale, bk. II., p. 362.)
The cosmic absolute seems to annoy M. Renouvier. It wasn’t worth it. The cosmic absolute is a synonym for the best possible world, of which Voltaire made so much fun, and for Spinoza’s God-Universe. In such matters, the most baroque expression is also the fairest; I would not dare to say that it is mine here: but let us leave these trifles.
M. Renouvier defends himself from the reproach of contradiction by distinguishing the general laws of the world, which he affirms, from a unique, total, universal, necessary, absolute law of the world, which he denies. I would accept Mr. Renouvier’s explanation if he were willing to explain further what he meant by exceptions, because that is precisely what earned him my criticism. In good philosophy, there are no exceptions to any law; every law is universal or is nothing: this is the principle, it seems to me, in physics and mathematics. Grammarians, encountering words and forms of language that did not fit into their rules, have decided to regard these words and these forms as exceptions But every day a deeper study brings these so-called exceptions back to more general laws, so that a perfect grammar would be one that, explaining everything, reducing everything to laws, would no longer recognize exceptions. It is also said of a man, of an object that departs from the common measure, that he is exceptional: an ill-chosen expression, to designate the minima and the maxima of forces and magnitudes, rarity, etc. In the final analysis, what is called exception is nothing other than the meeting of two laws that modify each other, the reciprocal influence of two natures, meeting, influence from which is born a new, complex law, and which, relative to the first law, which is changed, our ignorance very badly calls for an exception. I therefore insist, and I ask M. Renouvier if this is also what he means by exceptions to the general laws of the world? If yes, he will be led to admit in the world as many exceptions as there are laws, which means that, everything being law, and, as a result of the distinction of principles, everything being at the same time an exception, the world is established, as I say so in the text, on a system of oppositions or antagonisms. Everywhere independence, and everywhere reciprocal influence: it is thus, for my part, that I conceive the Cosmos, and such is the basis on which I establish the theory of liberty and necessity. Now, it seems to me to follow from the words of M. Renouvier quoted above that this is not what he means by exception to a law. The law, for him, as for everyone else, is always the general fact, which is explained by its very generality; the exception is the particular, rare fact which, not coming within the law, contradicting the law, is not explained by anything.
Moreover, M. Renouvier could dispense with taking sides on the question of free will. After having fought, by the reasoning known to everyone, the dogma of necessity; after having shown that this dogma is contradicted by the feeling of the human race, by social institutions, etc., he concludes with these words: “The thesis of liberty is not demonstrable.” We believe in liberty, involuntarily, spontaneously, invincibly: but that’s all. We cannot know more. M. Renouvier, as we see, is not one of those who think that any problem posed by reason implies a solution by reason. He considers himself a critical philosopher; deep down, he is a mystic.
These explanations, such as they are, once given, M. Renouvier takes the offensive. He argues that the theory of liberty proposed by us is itself contradictory. For, says M. Renouvier, “only antinomy can save M. Proudhon from contradiction. Now, I deny the antinomy; I believed in it once, I have come back to it.”
Indeed, since the publication of his Manuel, M. Renouvier seems to have changed his philosophy from top to bottom. I say, appears, because it is just as difficult to account for the present thought of M. Renouvier, as to say in what his old thought consisted. Mr. Renouvier gets along with himself, we are convinced of that; but he is the only one to understand himself: so we regard his criticism as invincible.
To deny the antinomy is to blow on the philosophy of Kant, of Fichte, of Hegel, on all the philosophy of the nineteenth century. The thing was worth discussing, and M. Renouvier would have done the human mind a service by disabusing it of this illusion. To analyze this phenomenon of the understanding that since Kant has been called antinomy, and on which, I confess, everything does not seem to me to have been said yet; to show that it is only a chimera, born from the overheated brain of metaphysicians : such a result would have been more useful perhaps than the two volumes of criticism by M. Renouvier. Until then, we will ask to persist in our opinion.
I said to M. Renouvier, with regard to free will, and to the philosophers who had preceded him: You claim to prove liberty with the help of exceptional facts, and there are no exceptions to the general laws of the world; you use, to support this thesis of free will, reasonings, and any reasoning applied to the question of free will implies contradiction, which, in your system, destroys the thesis. For me, on the contrary, I begin by showing that the contradiction that is encountered in the notion of free will is only apparent; that it is reduced to an antinomy, something which in no way implies the impossibility of existence; then, this observation made, I say that Liberty is in us a fact, more than a fact, a faculty, a power, a function, of which I assign the role, the character and the product. Now, such a liberty escapes from abstraction; it is a concrete, real thing, which can be seen and touched, an essence of a new species, which has no equal in the universe, and cannot be reduced to any other category. By reasoning about liberty in this way, it is no longer just a metaphysical notion that I am analyzing, it is a fact of psychology that I am noting. Did M. Renouvier even pay attention to what I said to him? Not at all: he says that he knows, by experience, how much difficulty a writer who quotes another has in understanding him, and he proves it, by paying no attention either to the objections that I make to him, or to the theory that I propose.
Since I have begun to reply to M. Renouvier, I will be forgiven for noting, in the general appreciation that he was good enough to make regarding my book, one last word:
“It must be admitted that in this book, which contains so many beautiful things, so many true, strong, bold things, among them the very idea which inspired it, there are a thousand other inapprovable ones, which are veritable idiosyncrasies of the author, not to mention many judgments that escaped his imagination, and which he would be embarrassed to support, if he were not to have forgotten them tomorrow. The whole thing is launched at full steam, with a great deal of eloquence, too often invective, rather than composed with a severe method, and matured in detail as for the whole. This amazing book is not a scientific book. It is difficult to anticipate the time when morality and politics will finally be sciences.”
In short, we see that M. Renouvier’s judgment is not in my favour. But I find benevolence in it, and that is enough for me to thank my critic. The little good that he says of my work rewards me beyond my pains. I confess that my book was done quickly, that even I put a little temper in it. If one of my readers took the fancy to compare the present edition with the first, he would find there, independent of numerous passages clarified, added or deleted, whole chapters redone and dubbed, perhaps more than ten thousand corrections, as much for the idea as for the style. One can judge from this that I am no less severe towards myself than my Aristarchi. Despite my efforts, I far from believing that my work has become irreproachable: I have found too many things there that are obscure, weak or in bad taste, for me to think that there are not still more that remain.
This settled, I ask to reply to one of the reproaches of my honorable critic. He says that I composed my book, a book of philosophy, with great help from the methods of eloquence. Take away what is unobliging in the expression, the fact remains that M. Renouvier does not allow a philosopher to allow himself, on occasion, oratorical development, and to bring into his reasoning, as a means of conviction, the resources of art.
Here, we no longer understand each other, and M. Renouvier would be very surprised if I told him in my turn that the reason why, in my opinion, he, despite all his knowledge, will never be a true philosopher, is he can’t write. In expressing this somewhat paradoxical judgment, I agree with myself, agree with my theory of liberty. Liberty has the function of producing the ideal; it intervenes in all things that concern conscience and society, theology, legislation, literature, dialectics, logic; in a word, in what is called the moral and political sciences. It follows that, in this order of knowledge, eloquence, poetry, all the resources that human speech can furnish, are as necessary, for the demonstration of truth, as logic itself. Mr. Renouvier resembles that algebraist who, attending the opera, asked what that proves. That proves, my dear mathematician, everything that cannot be proven by figures or demonstrative reason, as M. Jourdain said; and the things that need this kind of proof are innumerable. Many of those even for which you make use of theorems would only be half proven without the help of eloquence. It is not that I mean to say that a writer can make up for the lack of reasoning by phraseology, and dispense, by speaking well, with thinking correctly: correctness of thought, in my opinion, is always required, and cannot be can be replaced by anything. I say that the idea, in philosophy, is not everything; that reasoning, even the most conclusive, if it is alone, is not always enough: that truth thus emaciated has nothing human about it, that it lacks something, otherwise it will never take hold of people’s minds. I say that we will never succeed in exposing with dignity the truths of morality, politics, philosophy and art, a fortiori in popularizing them, if we do not mix with them considerably this eloquence that M. Renouvier disdains.
Art, whatever one may say, or, to speak more exactly, the ideal, is a part of truth; if it is a question of the things that interest man the most, the ideal counts in science for half. Things that touch the heart, the conscience, taste can only be demonstrated by outpourings of sensibility, movements of consciousness, manifestations of our ideal. Why, in the newspapers, the reviews, the public courts, the writers and the professors responsible for giving an account of the dramatic works, the musical compositions, the paintings and the statues of the masters, do they put, in their reports, so much talent, so much eloquence? There does not appear to be a masterpiece, in painting, in music, in dramatic art, which does not cause critics, what we could call here the demonstrators of beauty, to writehundreds of beautiful pages. It is that eloquence is, so to speak, only a translation of the work of art, a way of reproducing it, of explaining it, of analyzing it, of making felt its principle, reason and law. Would a logical analysis, as they say at school, suffice to make the peroration of the great Condé’s funeral oration understood? And do you believe that a technical description, the most complete and the most faithful possible, is worth a painting, a statue or a symphony, or ten lines of Diderot?
I very much fear, as far as I am concerned, having been as unfortunate in my style as in my thoughts, since my eloquence did not obtain the approval of M. Renouvier. But I did my best: in any case I maintain the principle, outside of which, in my opinion, there is no salvation for literature, poetry, morals, liberty, I would even dare to say, no salvation for philosophy. Well! How does M. Renouvier not realize that the expulsion of eloquence, that is to say the reduction of the works of thought to the pure idea, to the skeleton, is the principal force of the imperial government? What worse could this government do against thought, against liberty, philosophy, art, morals, than to gag the tribune and bridle the press? Do we believe that in discussing political and economic matters, to deal with the questions of daily politics in the style of Cujas or Alciat, we can act on consciences and endanger despotism? Something else is needed, of course: ask all those talented men who did not rally to the 2nd of December, but whom it forced to be silent, if they better not like to put mittens on their pens. Let go of the verve of speakers and writers, I mean, because it is exactly the same thing, let go of the truth, naked if you will, but not in a skeleton state, let Justice speak, and you will see, in a few weeks, what will become of this formidable power, when all that remains to defend itself is its flatness and its bayonets.
Note (J), page 99.
Force of collectivity. — We have spoken of this principle, Study IV, chap. VII, page 111, and note (E), page 176. The antinomy and the force of collectivity are the two principles on which rests the whole theory of liberty. In a treatise on Justice, we had the right to assume these two principles admitted by everyone: the first is a phenomenon of the understanding on which there is no more to discuss than on the law of causality; it’s a fact, and that is all. The second is none other than the very law of the division of labour, so well known in political economy, but considered under a new aspect, far more fertile in consequences. M. Renouvier, it seems, denies the one as much as the other: it is almost as if, in the physical sciences, one denied the attraction and the distinction of bodies into simple and compound; astronomy, chemistry, a part of physics would be toppled.
Note (K), page 105.
Jansenism. — We will return to the union of Justice and the Ideal in our next Study, when we have to examine in what way the increase and decrease of Justice operate in society, in other words, the progress and the decadence of nations. In the meantime, our most studious readers will be grateful to us for reminding them here, by a new and striking example, of the truth of the principle laid down by us and already confirmed so many times, namely that Christianity is from one end to the other other, in its dogma and in its history, nothing but a mythology of Justice. We want to talk about Jansenism.
Jansenism was born from the feeling, as clear as it was deep, of the danger that the Church was running, dishonored on the one hand by the lax morality and the superstitious practices of the Jesuits, on the other inclined more and more to human virtue, to personal justice, to liberty and philosophical reason, that is to say, to the abandonment of the very principle of Christian theology. Jansénius, St.-Cyran, Arnault, Pascal and their friends thought they were warding off the danger, first by reminding the Church of the true principles of Christianity, which are the original decline, the radical incapacity of man to rise by himself to the good and to reconquer with the love of God eternal felicity, the consequent necessity of a supernatural help which is grace; — then, by building on these principles a better morality.
Everyone knows that on the second point, the reform of morals, the Jansenists won their case easily. The entire French episcopate applauded their efforts; Rome had to decide, and it condemned the famous casuists. France owed to this controversy one of its first literary masterpieces, the Provinciales.
On the point of dogma, the Jansenists were less fortunate, not that their doctrine deviated in any way from the principles of Christianity, but precisely, on the contrary, because, in spite of certain softenings; it was still too Christian.
If there is one fact which must appear demonstrated to any man of good faith, it is, first, that Jansenism is the pure doctrine of Saint Augustine; second, that this doctrine constitutes true Christianity. To admit that man can do something by himself, however little, in the sense of justification and without the help of grace, is, in fact, to find in favor of Pelagius’ cause and compromise the whole of religion.
But from Saint August to Jansenius twelve centuries had elapsed; civilization had marched, and marched outside the Christian path; the feeling of human potentiality had become general. A return to true Christianity, at the time when Port-Royal was inaugurating its reform, had become impossible: it would have been nothing less than a demotion. Humanity had risen; it had faith in itself: a condemnation would have brought about an uprising. Instinctively, and without understanding what it was all about, Richelieu and Louis XIV opposed the progress of Jansenism: persecution aside, they did well. In this, they were the representatives of civilization, the defenders of liberty, I would even say, true revolutionary precursors. Any man who knows what principles can and are worth, cannot think without fear of what the Catholic world would have become if the King of France and the Pope had taken it into their heads to return to the Christianity of Saint Augustine. The French clergy, in the majority, and Rome in its train condemned, in terms, the new sect, even if it meant retaining, for the government of the Church and the direction of consciences, the spirit and the method. But the blow was nonetheless struck: nothing could compensate for the check given to Christianity by this terrible controversy. The Church did not clearly know what she was doing, any more than the royalty: she was caught as in a vise, and could not do otherwise. The condemnation of Jansenism, that of quietism, both obtained at the entreaties of the Most Christian King, were for the Church like a double suicide, which gave rise to the philosophy of the 18th century.
To understand in what anguish the Church must have found itself, forced to tear itself apart with its own hands, let us recall in a few words what the difficulty was.
Justice, we have said, is immanent in humanity.
It consists at once, first, in the idea of a relationship that unites man to man; second, in a feeling that pushes us to conform our actions to this idea, and makes this conformity an obligation for us.
But man can be diverted from Justice by self-interest and by passion, which is called selfishness or concupiscence; and it is in order to make it triumph over the suggestions of passion and interest that it has been given a power of the ideal that, applying itself to Justice, makes it more precious than all the satisfactions of the senses and passions, and definitively assures its triumph. This power of the ideal, product of liberty, is what theology calls grace.
We will see in the next Study how, as a result of the insufficiency of the notions of right, Justice and the ideal are separated from each other; how, therefore, there is eclipse of the first, sin, decay, and finally dissolution. The study of this phenomenon, of which the theory of progress is nothing more than the exposition, is the most arduous of all ethics.
What is important to notice here is that everything happens in the human soul: Justice as well as selfishness; ideal delight as well as carnal delight. Nothing comes from outside; no contradiction between the attractions of man and his destiny can arise; provided that the intelligence of social relations does not stop, there will be no stop either in Justice: progress in good will be continuous.
According to the Christian theology, laid down by Saint Paul, developed by Saint Augustine, confirmed by Calvin, and last taken up by Jansenius, the phenomenon is quite different. Man has only concupiscence as his basis: Justice, as a precept; grace, as an incentive to the fulfillment of the precept, comes to him from God. It follows that man, abandoned by God, abandoned to himself, deprived of grace, is incapable of any virtue and produces only evil; that, to do good, the help of God is indispensable to him; that this help is given to him gratuitously, when it is given; that once given, this same help does not fail in its effect: so that man is never free, whether he falls into sin or walks in virtue, since in the first case he only follows his nature which he cannot resist, and in the second he is carried away by grace which is invincible. Hence the prodigious, appalling, immoral consequences, against which the Church in all times has protested, maintaining, on the one hand, that grace is necessary, but that man is free to obey his impulse or not to obey it: which amounts to saying, either that the principle of virtue is in man, or that the grace of God, considered sufficient, is not enough; precisely what Jansenius reproached the semi-Pelagians. The semi-Pelagians, in fact, as we see by the 4th proposition of Jansenius, admitted “the necessity, for all acts, even for the beginning of faith, of a prevenient interior grace; and they were heretics in holding that this grace was such that the will of man could resist or obey it.” Take care, says Jansenius on this subject: If you grant a bit to Pelagius, you must grant him everything; if you warm up the serpent, it embraces you and kills you.
The Church extricated itself in the same way as it later did in the dispute over quietism between Fénelon and Bossuet (See Study VI, p. 137, and Study VII, p. 147). Unable to sacrifice its dogma, not knowing how to justify it, it took the middle ground: Inter utrumque tene. It affirmed both freedom and grace at the same time: as for their reconciliation, it added, it is a mystery. Anyone who wants to know more is anathema! Caliph Harounal-Raschid could not have decided better. And certainly, it is not we who will reproach the Church for having preferred the risk of inconsistency to that of immorality; it preferred to be semi-Pelagian, rather than Augustinian: in this it showed more moral sense than Calvin and Jansenius. For the theoretician who speculates in his study, logic is obligatory; for the man of government, logic must give way to justice and lliberty. Now, the Church is a government. Thanks be therefore returned to it for the condemnation of Jansenius as for that of Fénelon: but let us tell it, after these two condemnations, it is no longer the Church of Christ the Redeemer, it is the defrocked godmother of the revolution.
NEWS OF THE REVOLUTION.
BOURGEOISIE AND PLEBES. — CONTINUED.
We are witnessing a sort of dance of the dead. Like a man poisoned by ergot of rye, the old world is going to shreds. All the parts come off one after the other. The priesthood is long over: is the Protestant minister a priest? Are the Anglican clergy, so well paid, and the Catholic clergy, public functionaries, state employees, semi-rationalists, infected with the spirit of Voltaire and the Revolution, a priesthood?… The nobility is over: apart from Russia, where moreover the emancipation of the serf is imminent, nobility no longer exists anywhere, in the political and feudal sense of the word. The bourgeoisie is finished, and lacking this last refuge for royalty, royalty ends in its turn: what remains after that?
Hooray! cry the Democrats; our kingdom is coming, at last!…
Poor friends! I wish I could leave you with this last illusion. But I see you pale as death and already covered with the shroud. The plebs are also over, and that is fortunate for them. The sovereignty of the people was never anything but a myth: the fatal myth must in its turn vanish before reality. So let’s sing, let’s celebrate this last funeral. No more democracy, no more ochlocracy, no more demagoguery: this has never had a real political life, it will never live, not even in the United States. There is no other reign than that of law and science, Despotès ho nomos: which is not the same thing, believe me, as universal suffrage.
What are the Plebs?
In the beginning, all men being equal, each one obliged to go about his business on his own account in domestic labour, hunting, fishing, gathering, grazing, all could equally be called industrialists or producers. When the secret of making the prisoner, kidnapped in the hunt or in war, an instrument of exploitation was found, society was divided into two classes, one of the privileged, priests and nobles, especially devoted to the service of the altar and the profession of arms; the other slaves, servants or serfs, responsible for the care of the household, the provision of supplies, in a word, of all that concerns industry and production.
Later, the bourgeois having formed between the privileged class and the servile class, a distinction analogous to that of the lords and the slaves was established between the industrialists: it was that of the capitalists-owners-entrepreneurs, or Bourgeoisie, on the one hand, and workers, laborers, wage-earners, proletarians, on the other. Then, the former serfs, having gradually improved their condition, merged with the wage-workers of the bourgeois: this is what we will call by the generic name of Plebs.
Just as the bourgeoisie, in other words the third estate, had its raison d’etre in the existence of the old orders, clergy, nobility, and serfs, between which it placed itself as an intermediate class, so the modern plebs, the wage-earning class or proletariat, which is no longer the same thing as serfdom, has its raison d’etre in the bourgeoisie.
Observe first that this distinction of bourgeois and plebeian is no better founded in nature, no more rational and legitimate than that of lord and serf. This had its principle in a double prejudice, worship and war; the second rests on the no less arbitrary separation of labor and capital. The state of religion or of war — it is all one — drawing to an end, the abolition of the clergy and the nobility could not fail to occur; likewise, the separation of labor and capital, imagined only for theory, disappearing from practice, the social distinction of bourgeoisie and plebs disappearing like the other; a single category of citizens henceforth embraces the totality of the people, that of the Producers. After a huge gap, civilization, as regards the rights of persons, returns to its principle, which is to say to its destiny.
The bourgeoisie being able at any moment, by the considerations that we have previously developed, to break down, as the priesthood and the nobility did before it, it follows that the plebs, antithesis of the bourgeoisie, is on the verge of its ruin; the same catastrophe awaits them both. We could stick, with regard to the plebs, to this simple prognosis: however, since it is a question of rebuilding society on other principles, and since it seems natural at first sight to regard the plebeians as the natural successors and the heirs of the bourgeois, it is appropriate, before proceeding further, to show what are the causes of dissolution which trouble the last and most numerous of the classes of society, and what contradiction condemns it. When dissolution takes hold of a company, it attacks everything: the head, the trunk, the limbs, the whole body is under attack. Non est in eo sanitas, said Isaiah of the Jewish people, Thus wills the law of revolutions.
The plebeian, substitute or substitute for the ancient slave, is always, at bottom, this vivacious savage, who, whether in town or in the fields, preserves himself by his very savagery, and from whom the upper classes are constantly recruited, decimated by luxury, softness, pleasures and all the diseases of civilization. The plebeian thus represents to us primitive man, more or less domesticated, I mean denatured by the law of labor and bourgeois exploitation, but retained in his crudeness by the economic and political constitution of society, a constitution made, in large part, against him. What distinguishes the plebeian from the serf and the slave is that the condition of the latter was entirely one of constraint, his labor forced, his misfortune imposed; depending exclusively on a foreign will, he lived in a perpetual state of revolt and hatred. The plebeian, wage earner, master of his person, enjoying civil rights, sometimes exercising certain political rights, is in a completely different position. His labor is a kind of exchange; he accepts his condition, at least he is more or less convinced of its necessity, and he submits to it without complaining too much. Little inclined to revolt, he asks only to earn his bread and his pittance by labor and to live in peace. From slavery to wage labor the improvement was above all moral; as for comfort, things have remained more or less the same: one can even say that in a thousand circumstances the fate of the wage earner is worse than that of the slave. But for the operator the advantage of this so-called emancipation of the worker has been enormous: in reality it is he, rather than the worker, who was freed. The upkeep of the slave was a far more inconvenient burden than wage-earning; it cost more, returned less, left little profit: it was not really until the day when serfdom was converted into wage labor that we knew what labor, production and wealth were.
From this fact, which may be regarded as constitutive, are derived the character, the mores, and the ideas of the plebeian.
As he possesses neither territorial property nor industrial funds, he works for others: master, boss, bourgeois, entrepreneur, this is the name he gives to the individual who buys his service from him. A mercenary worker, he has initiative, no genius for combination, no disposition to change his fortune. If he reasoned, speculated, combined, realized, he would no longer be himself; he would pass, ipso facto, into the bourgeois category. He would possess a beginning of capital, the most precious of all capitals, invention, autonomy; he would no longer truly belong to the plebs.
The proletarian understands one thing: it is that manual labor is his lot; that its function is; purely mechanical, that he obeys a higher direction, that in exchange for his labor he receives almost enough to subsist, and that it is so, because it has always been so, and it cannot be otherwise. He does not wonder if his salary really represents the value of his work; why there are proletarians and owners; why, among the latter, there are some larger than the others: all that is speculation, philosophy, and exceeds the average range of mind of the plebs. Imagine the beast of burden, not reasoning about his position, as in the fables, but simply being aware of his position and giving his assent to it in good faith: there you have the plebeian.
Man, then, or animal of work, as he appears in the condition which the nobility and the bourgeoisie have made for him by wage-earning, the worker is generally of a gentle nature, resigned, peaceful, patient, full of long-suffering, supporting the insults of the master, forgetting them at the first caress, difficult, in a word, to push to the limit. Liberty and independence alone can sustain resentment, and lead man to revenge. In this respect the plebeian is far below the barbarian: he does not have the dignity, the pride; and many times the bourgeoisie itself has been able to regret having succeeded too well, by its harsh discipline, in transforming the lion into a sheep. The people rarely resent the despot who mistreats them. Robespierre had more sans-culottes guillotined than aristocrats, and the people religiously preserve the memory of Robespierre. Napoleon I caused the death on the battlefield of more than two million men taken from the plebs, and Napoleon remained for them a great man. Napoleon III uses the same with the Marianne; not only did he not respond to socialist hopes, he suppressed socialism, made the condition of the people harder, and Napoleon III had his popularity.
Like the child and the woman, like all weak or ignorant creatures, the people seek protection and patronage; they have the instinct of obedience; they find it quite simple, therefore, that there are masters and servants, employers and wage-earners, rich and poor, sovereigns and subjects. The first article of their political and social faith is the inequality of conditions and fortunes: how could they be a republican? Provided they do not endure too much misery, subordination does not shock them, does not weighs on them at all. They must be badly abused, or some frenzy, some extraordinary idea has taken hold of them and disturbed their brains, for them to rebel, for them to cry out. Like the horse, the donkey, the dog, and all tamed animals, the plebeian naturally attaches himself to his boss, the servant to his master, the workman to his bourgeois. It is not popular bonhomie that inspired these two verses:
Our enemy is our master;
I tell you in good French.
On the contrary, the man of the people thinks, in his wisdom, that his master is his true friend; he wholeheartedly believes in this friendship, he doesn’t understand how it would happen. Let a leader of industry show himself, a little more than the others, benevolent and gentle; let him not flay the worker until they bleed: he is the Father of the people, the Father of the workers; a civic crown is braided for him. How many times, in 1848, did we hear these poor people say to us: Well! Good God, what would become of us if no one made us work? Certainly, it was worth the effort to spare such a benign, useful subject, and it would have cost little. The author of Les Ouvriers Européens, M. le Play, understood this well when he began to find out at what price the worker, married, father of six children, would agree to keep quiet. Work, more work and always work, from morning until evening, Monday until Sunday, from New Year until New Year’s Eve, and that, at the price of 35 centimes per day and per head, here is the Eldorado of the worker. If the Legislature, which made a law in the interest of animals, had had the idea of extending it to workers, it would have been extolled. Instead of that, we made rigor, summonings, cannon, and business has been spoiled. What a pity!
The people, laborers by birth and by destination, so they believe, identify themselves so well with their position, with their leader, that they do not envy the wealth they create and of which they barely attain the crumbs. They enjoy, as an idea, all that they do not have, and that is enough for they. The imagination, among the people, is a prodigious faculty, which makes it happy with all the felicities which it witnesses. M. Jean Reynaud, who treats the common people as inferior souls, never approached, with all his metaphysics, this idealism. The man of the plebs says chez nous, to say, my country, a country where he does not own a plot, not an inch of land. He says chez nous, to say, with my master; nos enfants, our children, for the children of the master, little ones who will show him one day that they do not regard him as their father nor their brother; our house, our fields, our vineyards, etc., for the master’s house, fields, vineyards. This us, he brings to the army: his regiment is still chez nous. Don’t you want to cry with tenderness? What did the French plebeian gain from Napoleon’s conquests? A Te Deum, fireworks. But he identified himself with the conqueror, and that is why the fall of the empire was so painful to him. So, he said, Belgium was ours, the Rhine was ours, Italy was ours, Holland, up to Hamburg, was ours. It does not enter his brain that the effect of this immense possession was quite simply to make despotism, exploitation, conscription, war and misery common to Belgians, Italians, Dutch, Germans and French. It was ours! See the English proletarian, glorious for the riches of his country, his navy, his colonies, his docks, his mines, his railways. For him too all this is ours; and he has no money to drink a glass of ale to the health of merry Albion. I imagine these two men, the Frenchman and the Englishman, disputing among themselves the pre-eminence of their country and forgetting nothing in their inventory, except to take the measure of their poverty. It would be a scene of high comedy… To enjoy in the idea the richness of the master; to associate oneself, by thought, with one’s pleasures; eating his dry bread in the smoke of his kitchen: this is the life of the people, a true Pythagorean life. And it must be said that, provided that this frugality does not lead to exhaustion, it is sufficient for his happiness. He works hard; but he gains therein that strength of body and that health, the feeling of which constitutes for the people a positive liberty, a liberty that makes them forget all the others. He knows nothing, but his soul is sound; he lives on little, but to such a well-disposed nature everything is excellent, everything profits; his pleasures are rare, but they are only the keener; he does not know boredom, his passions are chained, and his sleep so deep, so restorative!… I say it without hyperbole: the poverty of the plebs, unless it becomes misery, is better than the luxury of its masters: this consideration singularly lightens, in the eyes of philosophy, the weight of bourgeois and feudal iniquity. Ah! if priests, nobles, bourgeois, and kings had ever been able to come to an understanding; if, coming to an agreement among themselves on the vanities of hierarchy and politics, they had been moved, for the people, by charitable sentiments, there would never have been any revolutions. One would never have seen these jacqueries, these septembrisades, these massacres that above all put democracy in horror; the people would have served their masters, kissing their hands, until the end of time.
Human dignity, the progress of civilization, did not want it. The system was unfair: it was not to last. But the initiative for the movement did not come from the people, friends by nature of the status quo; it came from the upper classes, more and more greedy, and fatally divided. Every popular insurrection has had its Gracchi, privileged people calling on the people to witness against other privileged people and calling them to arms. The French Revolution began with the assemblies of notables, with the remonstrances of Parliament, with the notebooks of the bourgeoisie: the people did not set themselves in motion until the fire at the Réveillon factory. And it will always be the same: when iniquity has risen to the limit, when indignation sets fire to privilege, there is no reason for prudence, it is necessary to come to the assizes of the people.
Here begins the political role of the multitude, a role full of the unexpected, which has constantly turned into mystification for it. While nobles, priests, bourgeois and kings compete for the support of the masses, lavishing flattery and promises on them, the more determined come forward, who say to them: Why, people, would you do other people’s business? Aren’t you the ruler? Is not the king your representative; public officials, magistrates, nobles, priests, your servants? Arise, and reign. Long live democracy!
There is thus formed a party of the plebs, a party of the proletarians, as there was before a noble party, a clerical party, a bourgeois party. Naturally, this party of the plebs, for so long exploited, takes liberty for its sign, and announces itself as having to make the Revolution. And certainly, if all that was needed for that was arms and bulletins, the thing would soon be done. But as much as the Church and despotism have a horror of philosophy, so little are the people made for political dissension; let us add, as much the so-called men of action who lead it, and who also aspire to become its masters, are wary of minds with ideas. Affecting to take literally the dogma of the sovereignty of the people, it is from the people alone, from their instincts, that they claim to receive their inspirations; it is from their infallibility that they seek counsel; it is their virtue that they judge. So much so that the last analysis of the Briarée with millions of arms, who was to do such great things, after having broken a few windows and having given himself, with his powerful hand, a superb boss, returns bewildered to his stable.
To realize this inevitable denouement, it is necessary to place oneself in the true point of view of the plebeian, to penetrate into his intimate sense, to recognize his ideal, to see closely in what circle his reason turns.
From what we have already said of the mores, habits and prejudices of the working man, it is easy to understand that this plebs, of whom we want to make a sovereign, more than that, a power of revolution, does not in no way pose itself as a disinherited class, which must be reintegrated into its rights, and whose condition, role, must be quite different from what they have been until then. Such a thought does not enter the heart of the plebeian, and there are bare reasons why it does not enter there, it is that it is not in the mind of anyone, it is that the question is not even raised, and that, if it were raised, it would immediately appear insoluble. The people, incapable, as it is commonly said, of seeing further than their nose, of conceiving anything beyond their sphere, therefore affirms itself as a people, that is to say, working class, wage-earning, proletarian, without capital or property, without initiative or leadership. In principle, as we have said, it accepts its traditional condition, does not ask to leave it, and, like the dog without a master, seeks with its eyes to whom he will belong. Ask the donkey to become a miller, he won’t agree. But give it sound and not too many blows, it’s satisfied. So with the people: they think little of becoming landlords, entrepreneurs, capitalists, bankers, merchants; all they want is for their wages to be increased, for their working hours to be reduced, for the price of bread and rent to be lowered, for the rich to be made to pay taxes: as for the rest, they leave it to you.
Starting from this principle, you have the secret of popular movements; you know politics, political economy, and the whole philosophy of the plebs.
In times of agitation, the maxim of the bourgeois is, as we have said: Save the interests. That of the people responds to it, but as an antithesis: War to the castles, peace to the cottages! That is to say, war on the bourgeois, war on the bosses, war on the owners, war on the rich! Not, note this well, that the people dream of abolishing the privileged castes; they only want to make them contribute. And that is conceivable: All political debate basically covers an economic interest; now, every economic question is reduced, for the people, to a question of wages and subsistence. It is their subsistence, it is their labor, their wages that they intend to safeguard by this vulgar phrase: War to the castles, peace to the cottages.
The people have a confused sense of the difference of spirit that exists between them and the bourgeois. Working with his own hands, the man of the people works for his own consumption, a little more, a little less: in this he follows the law of nature, which has regulated the consumption and well-being of nations according to their labor. Disinterestedness is a natural, even easy virtue for the proletariat. The bourgeois, on the contrary, who uses the laborer’s fat to produce himself, labors not only for his own consumption, but for his fortune: he is parsimonious, a hoarder, avaricious; his interest is never completely identical to the general interest. In times of trouble, bourgeoisie and plebs find themselves in antagonism: one can predict, according to the known character of one and the other, how the debate will arise and what will be the solution.
Thus, just as he is instinctively attached to his boss, to his master, the man of the people is attached to his work, to his tool, to his place. It is his own heritage, his privilege; he does not want it to be taken from him, and with all the more reason since, his work lost, no one gives him bread. The people therefore hate the machine, quite simply because it competes with them, because it takes away their work, because for them it is a supplanter. It will never make this reasoning: That the machine should benefit the one it replaces, as well as the one who bears the cost of it; that consequently, when a machine is established, replacing fifty, a hundred men, two hundred, three hundred women, the workman has the right, in good social justice, to obtain not only another employment, but a small salary increase, or else a reduction in the hours of labor, or a reduction in the price of commodities, in a word, a share in the profit which the machine brings with it. No, the proletarian doesn’t know enough to reason like this as far as the eye can see: all that is politics, metaphysics; he knows nothing about business. Society he does not know; for him, it is a word. The government he could not know better; for him, it is the policeman. He cannot change his profession, learn another skill, downgrade himself: one might as well tell the rabbit to become a hare, the goat to become a sheep. What he knows is his labor, his trade, the trade that he was made to learn and that is taken away from him. He clings to his packsaddle, his yoke, his ride; he doesn’t want to be pulled out, unless it’s to go to the rack. Claiming guarantees, invoking social solidarity, claiming compensation, a share of profit: this is not part of his jurisprudence. Hey what, he said, doesn’t the boss earn enough with his workers? Did they refuse to serve him? Do they ask him to account for his profits? Can’t he be satisfied with a fortune already so round, so pretty? Couldn’t he at least wait?… We guess the master’s answer: I am free to do what I please; I use my right; I could close my establishment, I prefer to set up a machine there: that’s nobody’s business, etc. Obtaining nothing, the ousted consult each other, and break the machine. How they would like, by destroying this fatal tool, to procure for the master a profit double that which they had given him before! For it is not him, it is not his fortune that they are after: it is this accursed machine that takes away their work. Our enemy, they say to themselves, parodying the verses of Lafontaine that they have not read, is the machine, I tell you in good French.
Another example. A pay cut occurs, an effect of free competition, internal and external. So, an economist worker would observe, if political economy were the work of the workers, the price of bread, rent, coffee, candles, soap, meat, sugar, beer, etc. must also be reduced. For if the competition comes from abroad, it is right that the whole nation supports it; and if it comes from within, as it can normally only result from two causes, either from the insufficiency of outlet, or from a progress natural to domestic industry, it is still fair to carry out compensation. This is what a wise worker would say, who had learned to relate facts to their causes. But the logic of the people does not go so far, it does not cast its probe so low. There’s too much abstraction in there, too much clutter. The workers coalesce and go on strike. They refuse the labor; that is to say, they further reduce both the national wealth and their own income: a double absurdity, which only serves to make the situation worse and the people more unhappy. This is so palpable that in several countries the legislator has been unable to refrain from severely repressing the coalitions of workers: the only satisfaction that the liberal economists demand for them is to make the law equal for the masters. What an effect, however, would be produced by petitions strongly reasoned and presented to power, one after the other, by thousands of men! What would one have to say to intelligent masses, invoking economic science and the law? The people will do no such thing. In England, where workers have the right to assemble, coalitions against lower wages are organized regularly. By means of slowly accumulated contributions, the workmen form reserve funds, and when the reduction of wages arrives, they retire to their tents, live on their reserve, until it pleases the heads of the factories to pay the asking price. Is it clear from this example that the worker is not claiming his release? He was born a worker, a worker he wants to die: that the masters manage among themselves, that the government do its job, that is their business. But let’s not reduce his wage, otherwise…! he goes on strike. The strike, supported by a reserve fund, is the ratio ultima of popular politics.
The people are for maintaining the categories. The man of the people does not want to rise or change; he would protest against a transformation that, in his mind, would annihilate him. We have seen the Modaires in Lyons, the porters in Marseilles, more attached to the privileges of their corporations than ever were the nobles and the priests before August 4th. The people, Napoleon said very well, do not ask that there be no more nobles; they only wants those among the people who will have the merit to be able to become noble. Likewise, they do not ask that there be no bourgeois either, they are just very happy to see sometimes one worker, sometimes another, become bourgeois. This makes him proud, but not jealous. Provided that the upstart does not show himself too forgetful of the caste from which he came, it will be one of the glories of the plebs.
Also see how logical the people are in their system.
The people do not dream of the abolition of wage labor, of the extinction of pauperism and misery; they simply believe, according to the Gospel, that, as there have always been poor people, there always will be. Establish hospitals, crèches, asylums, retirement funds; that we draw lotteries for the poor, that we give largesse: they are happy.
The people are not egalitarian, they are philanthropists. They do not dream of Justice, but of love and charity.
The people understand nothing of thrift, a bourgeois virtue, which it is very fortunate for their masters that they do not practice. They adore luxury and magnificence. Louis XIV with his prodigalities will always be dearer to them than a Sully, a Colbert, with their savings. Like Louis XIV, they are convinced that the more a king spends, the more good he does.
The people are in favor of the maximum, of the progressive tax, of the sumptuary tax, why? Because they regard, in they heart of hearts, the maximum, the progressive tax, the sumptuary tax, and all the measures of this kind, as corollaries of wage-earning. Just as the tribe of Levi, among the Hebrews, having had no share in the soil, subsisted on the tithe, so the people, having neither capital, nor property, nor mastery, nor power, subsisting exclusively on wages, must keep their wages: in the thought of the proletarian, the laws of maximum, the progressive tax, are the consecration of the rights of his caste. They will never understand that the tax is necessarily paid by the producer, and that it implies a contradiction that it should be otherwise; that consequently every producer is condemned, by political economy and by justice, to become a landlord, capitalist, entrepreneur, in a word, master and bourgeois, barely paying the tax alone and seeing his wage reduced still further, which means that all these old distinctions of bourgeoisie and plebs, entrepreneur and wage earner, are absurd and must perish. I repeat: for the proletarian, such conclusions, as certain as the theorems of geometry, represent chaos, emptiness, death.
The politics of the people is modeled on its economy.
First, the man of the people was in no way an admirer of self-government and direct legislation. His liberty, as we have said, is in his blood, in his muscles, in the strength of his temperament, in that health of a working man, so well intertwined with good sleep and good appetite. He seems, it is true, to have taken his sovereignty seriously: but it is only an honorary sovereignty, a trinket. The people, idealistic, love honors; they cares little about realities. It pleases them to put their ballot in the ballot box, to act, it seems to them, as sovereign. This innocent pride came to them from the Social Contract and from 93. Of course, moreover, that in naming their deputies, their president, their emperor, they will not choose among their equals; they will address the luminaries of property, industry, commerce, finance, the army, of the clergy itself. In 1848, the people named pell-mell MM. Thiers, Berryer, O. Barrot, V. Hugo, Lamoricière, Lamartine, Fould, Montalembert, Béranger, Father Lacordaire, Dupin, Lamennais, Monsignor Parisis, etc. Out of nine hundred representatives, we were not thirty proletarians. You speak of universal suffrage: it is ready made, the elected are designated in advance. The workman will name his boss, the servant his master, the farmer his landlord, the shopkeeper his banker, the soldier his general, the parishioner his priest. Get the women to vote, as Pierre Leroux wanted, each one will name her husband, unless she cuckolds him; make the children vote, they will name their papas; make the horses and oxen vote, they will nominate their coachmen and their herdsmen. It is nature’s instinct, which the voting ceremony only highlighted. The most flagrant bad faith alone could claim that Louis-Philippe or Charles X were not elected by the people, because this ceremony, a thousand times more stupid than that of the Sainte-Ampoule, failed in their installation. Until then, everything goes smoothly: the lords appointed by their servants, the patricians by their clientele, we are not breaking the ancient order. But the two classes, bourgeoisie and plebs, placed, by the very fact of the election, facing each other, a divergence was bound to break out sooner or later, resulting from the opposition of their ideas much more than from their interests.
The bourgeois, according to the study we have made of it, inclines to parliamentarism; it is doubtful, skeptical, suspicious; it seeks guarantees, at the same time as it lends itself to transactions, compositions and accommodations. It rejects extreme parties, swears by no one and by nothing, adapts to things and men as long as they suit its interest, this infallible and pitiless criterion, which makes it constantly control and judge the acts of power, without distinction of friend or foe.
The plebs, having become anti-bourgeois, take the opposite view of the caste that exploits them. It therefore rejects federalism moderation, middle ground; parliamentarianism overwhelms it; without fire or place, it is perfectly exempt from parochialism. No respect for legality and form: the people, like Petitjean of the Plaideurs, do not understand that to do good justice and govern well so many ways are needed; — no concern for the interests of the state: that, thinks the people, concerns the bourgeoisie, not the proletarians. On the other hand, it is all about fantasy, brilliance, noise, fame.
The people have no idea of municipal, departmental or corporate liberties, of individual guarantees of liberty, of domicile, any more than of procedure: that is outside their sphere and feels to them like a labyrinth. They like big pieces: centralization, the indivisible republic, the unitary empire. For the same reason, collectively, they are communist. French unity, Italian unity, Germanic unity, Scandinavian unity: unity everywhere goes to the people, and even better, as you might imagine, to the governments. Switzerland, a confederation made up of twenty-two small states, all sovereign: that does not exist. Tell me about France, with its 40,000 communes and its ninety prefects! Thus reason of all the people. The pyramid of Cheops will seem more marvelous to him than Notre-Dame de Paris, and that more beautiful than the Parthenon. He won’t look at a cameo, he raves about the colossi. The people, I borrow this picturesque expression from them, have eyes bigger than their stomachs: in this respect again they are the opposite of the bourgeois, meticulous at first, but whose appetite grows constantly as they eat.
The people have never known the first thing about the representative system. Two chambers, ministers acting in the name of a king who himself does not act, ponderations, incompatibilities, etc.: the people do not see in this anything more than in troubled water, and are wary of it. But an emperor, who wants everything, who can do everything, who does everything, whom the law does not restrain, whom no opposition stops: that is what is clear. A state is worthy only by its extent, says the people; a power only by its strength. M. Thiers, who in his academicism has preserved the instinct of the proletarian, recounting the coup d’état of 18 Brumaire, smiles at the words of General Bonaparte, who did not want, he said to Sieyès, to be a pig in the fertilizer. M. Louis Blanc applauded this gross impertinence of the warrior. What do you want the multitude to think, when its leaders give it such lessons? The people, who because of their inferior condition, their low horizon, their subordinate interests, dream ceaselessly of a good master, a good patron, a good bourgeois, of a good lord, a good prince, a good sovereign; the people who in the sixth century before our era dreamed throughout Greece of a good tyrant, this people whom three thousand years of civilization have modified so little, because their servitude has remained more or less the same, has therefore made the empire. In this they followed their instinct; on top of that, they displeased the bourgeoisie. Shout Long live the Emperor, said a workman to his comrade; it enrages the bourgeois. And the emperor responded, as far as he was in him, to plebeian thought. Neither parliamentarian nor ideologist, just at the level of the ideas of the people: such is Napoleon III. It has not been sufficiently remarked that the principal cause of the success of Louis Bonaparte is that he personally showed himself to be in perfect conformity of ideas, sentiments, style, with his people. It may be that in the end this modesty of talent will turn out badly for him: on the day when the multitude will take him for a fool, he is lost.
In the meantime, see how they understand each other.
In political economy, Napoleon III and the people are of the same opinion. Above all, the people want wages to be maintained. The Emperor, through his unofficial communications to the heads of establishments, insisted that wages should not be reduced. In vain the bosses alleged the distress of business, their penury: His Majesty did not trouble himself with that. It was necessary to make people work and pay: there was imperial blame at stake.
In 1854 and 1855 supplies were scarce. — The Emperor established a maximum on bread, even if it meant having the bakers compensated at the expense of the city of Paris.
The meat was overpriced: the Emperor had soup kitchens established at 5 centimes, of which some poor people took advantage; if the mass did not become fatter, at least the intention was good.
Rents were expensive: a police bureau was responsible for resolving the rents of insolvents evicted by their landlords, and for raising their hands to them. At the same time workers’ housing estates were founded, a sort of barracks, from which the workers who valued their dignity moved away in terror.
While the government purveyors were causing a shortage of cattle and vegetables for the supplies of the army of Crimea, some merchants who dared to compete with them were accused of monopolizing them. The people do not like hoarders. The Emperor gained a new title to esteem by condemning these hoarders.
Business being worse and worse, trade stagnating, the Emperor himself undertook to give labor to the workers. It was then that he began to demolish and rebuild the capital. Then also began at all points of the empire this system of unproductive expenditure, the result of which was, it is true, to give bread to a hundred thousand men, but which put the city of Paris, the departments and the communes, perhaps a billion in debt. A king court his subjects, said Louis XIV, by spending a lot. Our political economy is that of Louis XIV.
In order to bring back the good market, the Emperor made a commercial treaty with England. It reduces customs duties on English goods; then, to cover the deficit which this reduction causes to the budget, it raises 25 fr. per hectolitre the duties on the spirits consumed in the interior, so that the French proletarian, thanks to the paternal solicitude of his emperor, pays for the spirits of his country double what it costs abroad. This is called free trade. What does it matter, if Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden applaud?
The people counted on the Emperor to wage war: the genius of one had guessed that of the other. The Napoleonic idea came from the bowels of the people; Napoleon III was only the editor: Cantabam quidem ego, scribebat Homerus. But here is where the disappointment begins.
The people, who change so little, do not imagine that the world is moving, while they themselves remain motionless. Why, on both sides of the Channel, is the antipathy between plebeians the same as in the time of Du Guesclin and Joan of Arc, if it is not because on both sides of the Channel John Bull is always John Bull, and Jacques Bonhomme always Jacques Bonhomme? Between bourgeois, it is something else. The interests became almost solidary, almost common: also, from 1815, the entente was more and more cordial.
In the thought of the people, a thought immutable like its fortune, history is a kind of myth. There the antagonisms drag on, the relationships remain the same; events always retain the same meaning. Only the names change; because, alas! men are mortal.
Does the people suspect that the coup d’état of Brumaire, the acts of 1804, 1814, 1830, 1848, 1851 and 1852, have changed the situation of France, and consequently its relations with Europe? Not at all. Napoleon I, II or III, whatever the number, it is always, for the people, the Revolution. Now, the Revolution has the Coalition as its natural enemy; and that is why Napoleon had to make war, why he made it and why he will make it. But the Coalition must be defeated, and the tricolor cockade, as predicted by its author, go around the world; that is why the people admit without the slightest difficulty that the Empire is conquest, why they are ready to follow their leader in all his undertakings.
The bourgeois, homebody, has furnished the type of M. Prudhomme; the proletarian, conqueror, gave that of Jean Chauvin.
The people rejoiced, with Barbès, in the Crimean expedition. But their amazement was great when they saw the war end in a return to the status quo. They do not understand these wanderings of balance, purely political, like the Antwerp expedition; it is no longer there. Of course the Counter-Revolution, which has agents even in the Emperor’s cabinet, had tied its arms to Napoleon.
The people applauded the Italian campaign: but they have been even more surprised, after Solferino, when they saw the affair reduced to a simple displacement of provinces in favor of Victor-Emmanuel. They awaited the Coalition.
One of the great astonishments of the people was to see the principle of nationality, eminently revolutionary, according to them, turn against the emperor. They had become accustomed to the idea that the peoples, being friends of the Revolution, should enter into the French family. Italy, they said to themselves, is calling us; Poland and Hungary await our signal; Belgium is reaching out to us. And now they hear it said that Italy, by virtue of the principle of nationality, does not want to join France; that Belgium, by virtue of the same principle of nationality, protests against any thought of incorporation; much better, that they accuse them, the people of the Revolution, of being unfaithful to their principles, and of sacrificing liberty to glory!…
Nothing does more harm to a head of state, to a dynasty, than these disappointments of the plebs, suddenly torn from their legend, from their ideal. Napoleon I had himself crowned emperor at Notre-Dame by the Pope. It was no less than the restoration of divine right. But the people do not look so closely at it. For them, this strange ceremony, which caused the crown of the guillotined king to pass over the brow of a Jacobin soldier, was the Revolution. Today, nothing like it. Napoleon III attends mass in his chapel, like Charles X; he stinks of coronation, like Louis-Philippe, whose wanderings he is even forced to follow, by making campaigns without conquests, by protecting the Jews, the bancocrats and the priests, by policing France for the count of Europe and muzzling the Revolution.
Napoleon I had surrounded himself with a court of kings: Napoleon III was reduced to a few rare handshakes. What a difference between the interview at Erfurt and that at Baden!
Napoleon I had had an archduchess given in marriage. The bourgeoisie augured ill of this Austrian nuptials: but the people clapped their hands when they saw their hero in the bed of a princess. It was magical, a real romance of chivalry. In 1853, Napoleon III conquered Mademoiselle de Téba. I have nothing to say about the person, one of the prettiest women, they say, who have captivated an emperor. But the marriages of princes are above all political marriages, and it must be admitted that Napoleon III was even more unfortunate, more misguided than the Duke of Orleans. So the people are silent: the people, who adore upstart emperors, have little taste for upstart empresses.
On the side of the masses, Napoleon III has nothing to fear from conspiracy; he will only perish through disappointment. The people, whose life is up in the air, care little for guarantees and political liberties; it is not they who will ever discuss the budget, nor who will speak of refusing the tax. Neither extravagance nor loans cause them anxiety. The questions of finance, they consider them under quite another aspect than the bourgeois. At the time of the first national loan, seeing the crowd of subscribers thronging to the door of the Treasury, they said, rubbing their hands: The republic would not have given us an income like that!… What does it matter to them that the debt grows? To produce the wherewithal to pay the tax, and the rent, and the dividends of the companies, and the discount of the banks, and the commissions of brokers and stockbrokers, and insurance premiums, it will always be necessary to resort to the fathom of the people. It will therefore always be necessary to pay it beforehand, since without it we would have nothing. Now, with their emperor, the people are counting on their salaries not to fall any further: for them, that is the whole question. Let the State, the owners, the capitalists, the bankocrates, dispute the rest: that is none of their business. It is up to them. In the meantime, the money is rolling, spending goes well: bravo! A bankruptcy of the State, a universal, social bankruptcy, would make the people laugh and would not shake the government. With the support of 600,000 bayonets, the applause of the multitude, the silent adherence of part of the bourgeois, the resignation of the others, the heroic remedy, which the Republic of 1848 rejected with virtuous indignation, would pass. Those who, according to the poorly applied memories of 89, count on the deficit to shake the empire, are on the wrong track.
In the matter of government, the people have their own idea and their ideal, which keep them in submission. The idea is that the prince should be the protector of the people against the abuses of bourgeois exploitation: the ideal, that this same prince should unite in his person the conditions of power, greatness and glory, without which the people cannot conceive supreme power. Caesar and Napoleon I realized to the highest degree this popular conception of the sovereign.
According to this principle, one can predict, with sufficient certainty, that the present empire, so far as it rests on the suffrage of the multitude, will not be sustained. And it is not so much the man who is lacking in the situation, as the situation which is lacking in the man. As an idea, Napoleon III did his best; savior of bourgeois interests, proscriber of socialism, social reason for contemporary reaction, friend of the Jesuits, accomplice of stockbrokers and bankocrats, he is a living contradiction. His seesaw policy is already seen through, even in the eyes of the last. His diplomacy can be summed up in one threat: 600,000 soldiers! This can make the people clap their hands once, twice: at the third performance they will find it stupid. As an ideal, Napoleon III, by the effect of the same causes, is devoid of prestige. First of all, he was neither a general nor even a soldier: Mac-Mahon, Bosquet, Pellissier, Canrobert, the first Zouave to come along, if he had been to Malakoff or Solferino, were more popular than him. Then his government, devoted all the same to bourgeois politics, badly disguised under the rigidity of the uniform, drags itself along in vulgarity and prosaism; his harangues, his epistles, too often repeated, in which imitation is betrayed, become insipid; the last letter to Persigny, written after drinking, would have produced a frightful scandal, if the silence imposed on the press had not protected the august missive from all criticism. Dominated by a superior law, forced to renounce conquests, to let the plebs struggle in their pauperism, to lie to the Napoleonic Idea, Napoleon III is in all his existence only a crowned Master Jacques, both coachman and cook. His reign was defined from day one, the empire without the emperor.
Under the influence of these disappointments, the feeling of which, mingled with shame, is very strong among the people, what was bound to happen does happen. The rapprochement is gradually taking place between the proletariat and the class of craftsmen, small industrialists, small landowners, petty bourgeois, the most mistreated portion of the present regime, and the healthiest of the social body. Around this nucleus, already so powerful, the remnants of the old parties will come to be grouped; and the ideas of 1789, of 1830, of 1848, causing the whole mass to ferment, we will only have to wait for one of those occasions which never fail friends of right and liberty.
It is in vain that the empire, making common cause with the Church, will have undertaken to uplift, by religion, the monarchical faith, and to support, as we used to say, the throne on the altar. It is in vain that, delivering the instruction of the people to the clergy, it will have claimed to remake its education, and to bring it back to feudal manners. This double restoration will only have served to accelerate the dissolution of the multitude.
In matters of religion, the plebeian, even in centuries of fervor, is unsound, his faith being founded neither in the idea nor, a fortiori, in the ideal. Of dogma he does not know the first word; as for supernatural things, revelations and miracles, they just slip through his mind, by the very ease with which he lends himself to them. Since he has no knowledge of the laws of nature and of the mind and of the limits of the possible, it is equally true to say that he is surprised at everything and that he is surprised at nothing. He believes in prophets and thaumaturges, for the same reason that he believes in sorcerers. A miracle, said J.-J. Rousseau, if I were to witness it, would drive me mad: the people, whose life is full of nothing but miracles, are not moved by it. Let them witness the resurrection of a dead person today, tomorrow they will no longer think about it. As for inner worship, adoration in spirit and in truth, in mental prayer, the people know even less. They are psychic, as the Gnostics said; they do not rise to spirituality: their work is their prayer, they do not go beyond it.
The people, foreign to theology, incapable of any spiritual exercise, to whom the catechism is unintelligible, are open to all novelties, accessible to all influences. In 93, in Paris, under the Terror, we saw them one day parading the shrine of Saint Geneviève to obtain good weather, and the next day following the procession of the Goddess of Liberty. It is the pearl created by this inextricable Greek mythology, the shame of the human spirit, if, by a unique prodigy, it were not as full of poetry as of unreason. When religious Greece wished to give satisfaction to her piety, she hid herself from the people, and founded the mysteries. To speak of religion to the people is to provoke the explosion of all superstitious follies. We saw it, after the coup d’état, in the multitude of miracles and apparitions which were talked about on all sides.
The religion of the people revealed itself one day, however, by a happy saying, which has remained: It was they who invented the Good God. The well-educated man, noble or bourgeois, simply says God, or the Lord God (Adonai lehovah), or even the Lord: this is the principle of Authority. That God, the God of the masters, is not the true God of the people; it is even the bad God. In the centuries of servitude, the slave did not worship the same God as his master; he had his divinity, his particular idol: we see this in Roman history and in the Bible, which names Schaddai the god of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt. The slave transformed into a proletarian, become free, if you like, but remaining poor, his god is still a bad god: who to turn to then?… The Good God is he who feeds the multitude in the desert; who said, Blessed are the poor, and woe to the rich; who had charity, commanded alms, ordered his disciples to sell their goods and distribute the price to the poor; who forgave the sinner, because she had loved very much, who, finally, was crucified by the Pharisees and the Sadducees, that is to say, the false devotees and the bad rich. This is the God of the people, this is their whole theology. Now they have lost their God; the priests took it from them; they made him the God of the privileged, of the rich, of the bourgeois, an exploitative and reactionary god. Add that the people have come to protest against the perpetuity of their proletariat, that consequently there is no longer any good God possible for them. They call for Justice, no longer mercy. What good God can forge citizens, independent by law, enjoying civil and political rights, and forced, by needless poverty, arbitrary pauperism, chance poverty, to load and carry by hand, at a distance of 150 meters, a cubic meter of earth, for a salary of 24 centimes?… The nobility, in the 18th century, annulled, degraded by despotism, fell into irreligion and licentiousness; the bourgeoisie, from 89, became Voltairean; the people followed the example of their masters. The man of the people is the perverted peasant, without religion or conscience, hence without a reason for existence.
As for the education of the people, limited, as much as it depends on the Church and the power, to apprenticeship and the elements of human knowledge, it has taken, in recent years, a singular direction.
The vulgar have always been odious to poets, Odi profanum vulgus el arceo, to philosophers, scholars, politicians, men of letters and artists, to all who pride themselves on genius, talent, wit, distinction, elegance. Vulgarity, a word that serves to designate the essence of the plebeian, as humanity serves to designate the quality of man, is synonymous with coarseness, triviality, banality, vileness, stupid reality, flat, ridiculous, worn, threadbare, everything as little ideal one can imagine, in this respect, something below barbarism itself. The Mode, which has its temple in Paris, as everyone knows, bon ton, fashion, what is it other than war on vulgarity? But here’s what happens. On the one hand vulgarity, scourge of letters and arts, shameful stigma of the vile multitude, ascending from bottom to top as the bourgeoisie supplants the nobility, invades power, whence it then falls with all its heaviness upon civilization which it withers and crushes. Such is the immediate cause of the decadence of letters and the arts among all peoples. Under the Caesars, Latin tragedy and comedy quickly disappeared, driven out by the boredom of the people, who preferred gladiator fights. The same movement in France: the seventeenth century delighted in tragedy and comedy; the 18th century replaced it with bourgeois drama, now abandoned for plays that everyone knows.
During this time, the man of the people, who will not be able to descend, who on the contrary aspires to ascend, has become a thinker, freed from prejudice, displaying pretensions to dilettantism, fleeing vulgarity, that is to say, fleeing himself, strives to make a new skin, and succeeds only in refining his depravity. An unequivocal symptom of the decadence of a people, when the working classes, bent under despotism, set about cultivating the muses instead of claiming their rights. The workman becoming a man of letters, the man of labor seeking the life of an artist, the workshop producing in droves poor poets, amateur painters, choreographers, playwrights; the bulk of the proletariat only asking for bread and spectacles; the plebs, finally, once dignified, not vulgar, now mimicking the aristocracy, fleeing labor, degenerating into bohemianism, idleness, dereliction and rabble: what to expect from such a metamorphosis? We are told about the initiation through art to liberty. Turn over, please, the sentence, Initiation through liberty to art, and you will be right. Strange initiators, really, these Zouaves who have returned from the Crimea and are playing their little comedy around the world! Those orpheonists, who last month went, to the number of 3,000, to give England a monstrous serenade, and did not even have the courage to sing the Marseillaise!
Hold your rank, said a Burgundy winegrower to his son, whom he saw with displeasure keeping company with petty clerks. To leave the hoe for the pen, in the judgment of this rough old man, was a breach. He who drinks well, sings well and dances well, says a national proverb, does a trade that advances little. The fashionable arts put on the same level as drunkenness and debauchery: this is the true Gallic spirit. These mores made the Revolution: they are no longer our own. The heads of State give the signal for the gaudriole: didn’t the Emperor attend the performance of Mimi Bamboche the other day, gloating and giving the signal for applause. It is asserted that this piece, first discarded by the modesty of the censor, was performed by order of His Majesty. The excitement of debauchery coming from so high and so publicly, what do you expect of the unfortunate plebs? Flattered in his vanity, the French worker devotes himself to luxury items, abandons useful professions, which are less well off. The number of workmen of all nations who practice in Paris the trades of bootmaker, shoemaker, tailor, carpenter, etc., reaches 80,000. Desertion begins in the countryside: the class of day laborers disappearing, through the effect of luxury and high prices, the owner converts wheat land into meadows. Instead of grain, the land will produce meat, and the population, important to the security of rent and of the empire, will thin out. The daughters of the people, disgusted with the needle which gives them nothing to talk about, disgusted with the workers, their fellows, drunks, lazy and rude, fornicate with the sons of the bourgeois, who much prefer them, for love, to the bourgeoises. It happened thus on the eve of the Deluge: Videntes filii Dei filias hominum quid essent pulchræ… Since the end of the old wars, in 1815, these mores have been those of Europe: is it not that the cataclysm is approaching?
The empire, believing itself to be eternal, has sown hypocrisy and corruption; it will reao indignation and the pillory. The decadence, of which the triumph of the plebs once gave the signal, cannot be sustained today. The conditions of Caesarism, of the physical and moral death of nations, no longer exist. Napoleon III, whatever he does, has nothing to put in the teeth of the proletariat. Should he become a conqueror, should he possess half of Europe, but as each nation ultimately produces only what is necessary, the imperial shortage would be the same. Caesarism is driven to labor: now, labor is economic right, political liberty, the parliamentary system, industrial association, international mutuality. The world cannot see the funeral of a great people again.
Until 1789, society being established on the principle of inequality of conditions, politics was reduced to the best way to exploit and contain the plebs. The latter, admitting itself the principle of its inferiority, seeking in times of crisis only an alleviation of its misery, the subalternization of the working classes could seem eternal. More than once, in dynastic quarrels, the people had been called as arbiter, a democratic party had been formed in opposition to the patriciate, and it had been thought that, with the plebs politically emancipated, society would find its definitive constitution and would walk in righteousness. But we had always seen this democracy, after a whirlwind of short duration, end in a Caesarism worse than the previous feudalism; then society collapsing and perishing. It resulted from this that the problem of civilization, linked to the constitution of economic right and consequently to the emancipation of the plebs, presented itself as a sort of impassable vicious circle.
Now the fatal circle is broken, demagogy thrown off course, tyranny in despair. Conditions of government are imposed that make democratic fantasy and Caesarism impossible. Ideas hitherto unheard of have begun to penetrate the masses and change the turn of their intelligence. Modern society will owe its salvation, and the people its emancipation, at the same time to the constitutional mores that a dictatorship, whatever it may be, is no longer allowed to wipe out; to the principles of international right that have governed Europe since the treaties of Vienna, and to the economic and social problems posed by the February Revolution.
END OF THE EIGHTH STUDY.
