Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good Part 25

Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good Part 25

[240] Lecture 12.

[241] See 4th Series, vol. i., p. 40.

[242] See our pamphlet ent.i.tled _Justice and Charity_, composed in 1848, in the midst of the excesses of socialism, in order to remind of the dignity of liberty, the character, bearing, and the impa.s.sable limits of true charity, private and civil.

[243] See on the theory of penalty, the _Gorgias_, vol. iii. of the translation of Plato, and our argument, p. 367: "The first law of order is to be faithful to virtue, and to that part of virtue which is related to society, to wit, justice; but if one is wanting in that, the second law of order is to expiate one's fault, and it is expiated by punishment. Publicists are still seeking the foundation of penalty.

Some, who think themselves great politicians, find it in the utility of the punishment for those who witness it, and are turned aside from crime by fear of its menace, by its preventive virtue. And that it is true, is one of the effects of penalty, but it is not its foundation; for punishment falling upon the innocent, would produce as much, and still more terror, and would be quite as preventive. Others, in their pretensions to humanity, do not wish to see the legitimacy of punishment except in its utility for him who undergoes it, in its corrective virtue,--and that, too, is one of the possible effects of punishment, but not its foundation; for that punishment may be corrective, it must be accepted as just. It is, then, always necessary to recur to justice.

Justice is the true foundation of punishment,--personal and social utility are only consequences. It is an incontestable fact, that after every unjust act, man thinks, and cannot but think that he has incurred demerit, that is to say, has merited a punishment. In intelligence, to the idea of injustice corresponds that of penalty; and when injustice has taken place in the social sphere, merited punishment ought to be inflicted by society. Society can inflict it only because it ought.

Right here has no other source than duty, the strictest, most evident, and most sacred duty, without which this pretended right would be only that of force, that is to say, an atrocious injustice, should it even result in the moral profit of him who undergoes it, and in a salutary spectacle for the people,--what it would not then be; for then the punishment would find no sympathy, no echo, either in the public conscience or in that of the condemned. The punishment is not just, because it is preventively or correctively useful; but it is in both ways useful, because it is just." This theory of penalty, in demonstrating the falsity, the incomplete and exclusive character of two theories that divide publicists, completes and explains them, and gives them both a legitimate centre and base. It is doubtless only indicated in Plato, but is met in several pa.s.sages, briefly but positively expressed, and on it rests the sublime theory of expiation.

[244] As it is perceived, we have confined ourselves to the most general principles. The following year, in 1819, in our lectures on Hobbes, 1st Series, vol. iii., we gave a more extended theory of rights, and the civil and political guaranties which they demand; we even touched the question of the different forms of government, and established the truth and beauty of the const.i.tutional monarchy. In 1828, 2d Series, vol. i., lecture 13, we explained and defended the Charter in its fundamental parts. Under the government of July, the part of defender of both liberty and royalty was easy. We continued it in 1848; and when, at the unexpected inundation of democracy, soon followed by a pa.s.sionate reaction in favor of an absolute authority, many minds, and the best, asked themselves whether the young American republic was not called to serve as a model for old Europe, we did not hesitate to maintain the principle of the monarchy in the interest of liberty; we believe that we demonstrated that the development of the principles of 1789, and in particular the progress of the lower cla.s.ses, so necessary, can be obtained only by the aid of the const.i.tutional monarchy,--6th Series, POLITICAL DISCOURSES, _with an introduction on the principles of the French Revolution and representative government_.

LECTURE XVI.

G.o.d THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD.

Principle on which true theodicea rests. G.o.d the last foundation of moral truth, of the good, and of the moral person.--Liberty of G.o.d.--The divine justice and charity.--G.o.d the sanction of the moral law. Immortality of the soul; argument from merit and demerit; argument from the simplicity of the soul; argument from final causes.--Religious sentiment.--Adoration.--Worship.--Moral beauty of Christianity.

The moral order has been confirmed,--we are in possession of moral truth, of the idea of the good, and the obligation that is attached to it. Now, the same principle that has not permitted us to stop at absolute truth,[245] and has forced us to seek its supreme reason in a real and substantial being, forces us here again to refer the idea of the good to the being who is its first and last foundation.

Moral truth, like every other universal and necessary truth, cannot remain in a state of abstraction. In us it is only conceived. There must somewhere be a being who not only conceives it, but const.i.tuted it.

As all beautiful things and all true things are related--these to a unity that is absolute truth, and those to another unity that is absolute beauty, so all moral principles partic.i.p.ate in the same principle, which is the good. We thus elevate ourselves to the conception of the good in itself, of absolute good, superior to all particular duties, and determined in these duties. Now, can the absolute good be any thing else than an attribute of him who, properly speaking, is alone absolute being?

Would it be possible that there might be several absolute beings, and that the being in whom are realized absolute truth and absolute beauty might not also be the one who is the principle of absolute good? The very idea of the absolute implies absolute unity. The true, the beautiful, and the good, are not three distinct essences; they are one and the same essence considered in its fundamental attributes. Our mind distinguishes them, because it can comprehend them only by division; but, in the being in whom they reside, they are indivisibly united; and this being at once triple and one, who sums up in himself perfect beauty, perfect truth, and the supreme good, is nothing else than G.o.d.

So G.o.d is necessarily the principle of moral truth and the good. He is also the type of the moral person that we carry in us.

Man is a moral person, that is to say, he is endowed with reason and liberty. He is capable of virtue, and virtue has in him two princ.i.p.al forms, respect of others, and love of others, justice and charity.

Can there be among the attributes possessed by the creature something essential not possessed by the Creator? Whence does the effect draw its reality and its being, except from its cause? What it possesses, it borrows and receives. The cause at least contains all that is essential in the effect. What particularly belongs to the effect, is inferiority, is a lack, is imperfection: from the fact alone that it is dependent and derived, it bears in itself the signs and the conditions of dependence.

If, then, we cannot legitimately conclude from the imperfection of the effect in that of the cause, we can and must conclude from the excellence of the effect in the perfection of the cause, otherwise there would be something prominent in the effect which would be without cause.

Such is the principle of our theodicea. It is neither new nor subtle; but it has not yet been thoroughly disengaged and elucidated, and it is, to our eyes, firm against every test. It is by the aid of this principle that we can, up to a certain point, penetrate into the true nature of G.o.d.

G.o.d is not a being of logic, whose nature can be explained by way of deduction, and by means of algebraic equations. When, setting out from a first attribute, we have deduced the attributes of G.o.d from each other, after the manner of geometricians and the schoolmen, what do we possess,[246] I pray you, but abstractions? It is necessary to leave these vain dialectics in order to arrive at a real and living G.o.d.

The first notion that we have of G.o.d, to wit, the notion of an infinite being, is itself given to us independently of all experience. It is the consciousness of ourselves, as being at once, and as being limited, that elevates us directly to the conception of a being who is the principle of our being, and is himself without bounds. This solid and single argument, which is at bottom that of Descartes,[247] opens to us a way that must be followed, in which Descartes too quickly stopped. If the being that we possess forces us to recur to a cause which possesses being in an infinite degree, all that we have of being, that is to say, of substantial attributes, equally requires an infinite cause. Then, G.o.d will no longer be merely the infinite, abstract, or at least indeterminate being in which reason and the heart know not where to betake themselves,[248] he will be a real and determined being, a moral person like ours and psychology conducts us without hypothesis to a theodicea at once sublime and related to us.[249]

Before all, if man is free, can it be that G.o.d is not free? No one contends that he who is cause of all causes, who has no cause but himself, can be dependent on any thing whatever. But in freeing G.o.d from all external constraint, Spinoza subjects him to an internal and mathematical necessity, wherein he finds the perfection of being. Yes, of being which is not a person; but the essential character of personal being is precisely liberty. If, then, G.o.d were not free, G.o.d would be beneath man. Would it not be strange that the creature should have the marvellous power of disposing of himself, and of freely willing, and that the being who has made him should be subjected to a necessary development, whose cause is only in himself, without doubt, but, in fine, is a sort of abstract power, mechanical or metaphysical, but very inferior to the personal and voluntary cause that we are, and of which we have the clearest consciousness? G.o.d is therefore free, since we are free. But he is not free as we are free; for G.o.d is at once all that we are, and nothing that we are. He possesses the same attributes that we possess, but elevated to infinity. He possesses an infinite liberty, joined to an infinite intelligence; and, as his intelligence is infallible, excepted from the uncertainties of deliberation, and perceiving at a glance where the good is, so his liberty spontaneously, and without effort, fulfils it.[250]

In the same manner as we transfer to G.o.d the liberty that is the foundation of our being, we also transfer to him justice and charity. In man, justice and charity are virtues; in G.o.d, they are attributes. What is in us the laborious conquest of liberty, is in him his very nature.

If respect of rights is in us the very essence of justice and the sign of the dignity of our being, it is impossible that the perfect being should not know and respect the rights of the lowest beings, since it is he, moreover, who has imparted to them those rights. In G.o.d resides a sovereign justice, which renders to each one his due, not according to deceptive appearances, but according to the truth of things. Finally, if man, that limited being, has the power of going out of himself, of forgetting his person, of loving another than himself, of devoting himself to another's happiness, or, what is better, to the perfecting of another, should not the perfect being have, in an infinite degree, this disinterested tenderness, this charity, the supreme virtue of the human person? Yes, there is in G.o.d an infinite tenderness for his creatures: he at first manifested it in giving us the being that he might have withheld, and at all times it appears in the innumerable signs of his divine providence. Plato knew this love of G.o.d well, and expressed it in those great words, "Let us say that the cause which led the supreme ordainer to produce and compose this universe is, that he was good; and he who is good has no species of envy. Exempt from envy, he willed that all things should be, as much as possible, like himself."[251]

Christianity went farther: according to the divine doctrine, G.o.d so loved men that he gave them his only Son. G.o.d is inexhaustible in his charity, as he is inexhaustible in his essence. It is impossible to give more to the creature; he gives him every thing that he can receive without ceasing to be a creature; he gives him every thing, even himself, so far as the creature is in him and he in the creature. At the same time nothing can be lost; for being absolute being, he eternally expands and gives himself without being diminished. Infinite in power, infinite in charity, he bestows his love in exhaustless abundance upon the world, to teach us that the more we give the more we possess. It is egoism, whose root is at the bottom of every heart, even by the side of the sincerest charity, that inculcates in us the error that we lose by self-devotion: it is egoism that makes us call devotion a sacrifice.

If G.o.d is wholly just and wholly good, he can will nothing but what is good and just; and, as he is all-powerful, every thing that he wills he can do, and consequently does do. The world is the work of G.o.d; it is therefore perfectly made, perfectly adapted to its end.

And nevertheless, there is in the world a disorder that seems to accuse the justice and goodness of G.o.d.

A principle that is attached to the very idea of the good, says to us that every moral agent deserves a reward when he does good, and a punishment when he does evil. This principle is universal and necessary: it is absolute. If this principle has not its application in this world, it must either be a lie, or this world is ordered ill.

Now, it is a fact that the good is not always followed by happiness, nor evil always by unhappiness.

Let us, in the first place, remark that if the fact exists, it is rare enough, and seems to present the character of an exception.

Virtue is a struggle against pa.s.sion; this struggle, full of dignity, is also full of pain; but, on one side, crime is condemned to much harder pains; on the other, those of virtue are of short duration; they are a necessary and almost always beneficent trial.

Virtue has its pains, but the greatest happiness is still with it, as the greatest unhappiness is with crime; and such is the case in small and great, in the secret of the soul, and on the theatre of life, in the obscurest conditions and in the most conspicuous situations.

Good and bad health are, after all, the greatest part of happiness or unhappiness. In this regard, compare temperance and its opposite, order and disorder, virtue and vice; I mean a temperance truly temperate, and not an atrabilarious asceticism, a rational virtue, and not a fierce virtue.

The great physician Hufeland[252] remarks that the benevolent sentiments are favorable to health, and that the malevolent sentiments are opposed to it. Violent and sinful pa.s.sions irritate, inflame, and carry trouble into the organization as well as the soul; the benevolent affections preserve the measured and harmonious play of all the functions.

Hufeland again remarks that the greatest longevities pertain to wise and well-regulated lives.

Thus, for health, strength, and life, virtue is better than vice: it is already much, it seems to me.

I surely mean to speak of conscience only after health; but, in fine, with the body, our most constant host is conscience. Peace or trouble of conscience decides internal happiness or unhappiness. At this point of view, compare again order and disorder, virtue and vice.

And without us, in society, to whom come esteem and contempt, consideration and infamy? Certainly opinion has its mistakes, but they are not long. In general, if charlatans, intriguers, impostors of every kind, for some time surrept.i.tiously get suffrages, it must be that a sustained honesty is the surest and the almost infallible means of reaching a good renown.

I regret that upon this point time does not allow of any development. It would have afforded me delight, after having distinguished virtue from happiness, to show them to you almost always united by the admirable law of merit and demerit. I should have been pleased to show you this beneficent law already governing human destiny, and called to preside over it more exactly from day to day by the ever-increasing progress of lights in governments and peoples, by the perfecting of civil and judicial inst.i.tutions. It would have been my wish to make pa.s.s into your minds and hearts the consoling conviction that, after all, justice is already in this world, and that the surest road to happiness is still that of virtue.

This was the opinion of Socrates and Plato; and it is also that of Franklin, and I gather it from my personal experience and an attentive examination of human life. But I admit that there are exceptions; and were there but one exception, it would be necessary to explain it.

Suppose a man, young, beautiful, rich, amiable, and loved, who, placed between the scaffold and the betrayal of a sacred cause, voluntarily mounts the scaffold at twenty years of age. What do you make of this n.o.ble victim? The law of merit and demerit seems here suspended. Do you dare blame virtue, or how in this world do you accord to it the recompense that it has not sought, but is its due?

By careful search you will find more than one case a.n.a.logous to that.

The laws of this world are general; they turn aside to suit no one: they pursue their course without regard to the merit or demerit of any. If a man is born with a bad temperament, it is in virtue of certain obscure but undeviating physical laws, to which he is subject, like the animal and the plant, and he suffers during his whole life, although personally innocent. He is brought up in the midst of flames, epidemics, calamities that strike at hazard the good as well as the bad.

Human justice condemns many that are innocent, it is true, but it absolves, in fault of proof, more than one who is culpable. Besides, it knows only certain derelictions. What faults, what basenesses occur in the dark, which do not receive merited chastis.e.m.e.nt! In like manner, what obscure devotions of which G.o.d is the sole witness and judge!

Without doubt nothing escapes the eye of conscience, and the culpable soul cannot escape remorse. But remorse is not always in exact relation with the fault committed; its vivacity may depend on a nature more or less delicate, on education and habit. In a word, if it is in general very true that the law of merit and demerit is fulfilled in this world, it is not fulfilled with mathematical rigor.

What must we conclude from this? That the world is ill-made? No. That cannot be, and is not. That cannot be, for incontestably the world has a just and good author; that is not, for, in fact, we see order reigning in the world; and it would be absurd to misconceive the manifest order that almost everywhere shines forth on account of a few phenomena that we cannot refer to order. The universe endures, therefore it is well made. The pessimism of Voltaire is still more opposed to the aggregate of facts than an absolute optimism. Between these two systematic extremes which facts deny, the human race places the hope of another life. It has found it very irrational to reject a necessary law on account of some infractions; it has, therefore, maintained the law; and from infractions it has only concluded that they ought to be referred to the law, that there will be a reparation. Either this conclusion must be admitted, or the two great principles previously admitted, that G.o.d is just, and that the law of merit and demerit is an absolute law, must be rejected.

Now, to reject these two principles is to totally overthrow all human belief.

To maintain them, is implicitly to admit that actual life must be, elsewhere terminated or continued.

But is this continuation of the person possible? After the dissolution of the body, can any thing of us remain?

In truth, the moral person, which acts well or ill, which awaits the reward or punishment of its good or bad actions, is united to a body,--it lives with the body, makes use of it, and, in a certain measure, depends on it, but is not it.[253] The body is composed of parts, may decrease or increase; is divisible, essentially divisible, and even infinitely divisible. But that something that has consciousness of itself, that says, _I_, _me_, that feels itself to be free and responsible, does it not also feel that there is in it no division, even no possible division, that it is a being one and simple? Is the _me_ more or less _me_? Is there a half of _me_, a quarter of _me_? I cannot divide my person. It remains identical to itself under the diversity of the phenomena that manifest it. This ident.i.ty, this indivisibility of the person, is its spirituality. Spirituality is, therefore, the very essence of the person. Belief in the spirituality of the soul is involved in the belief of this ident.i.ty of the _me_, which no rational being has ever called in question. Accordingly, there is not the least hypothesis for affirming that the soul does not essentially differ from the body. Add that when we say the soul, we mean to say, and do say the person, which is not separated from the consciousness of the attributes that const.i.tute it, thought and will. The being without consciousness is not a person. It is the person that is identical, one, simple. Its attributes, in developing it, do not divide it. Indivisible, it is indissoluble, and may be immortal. If, then, divine justice, in order to be exercised in regard to us, demands an immortal soul, it does not demand an impossible thing. The spirituality of the soul is the necessary foundation of immortality. The law of merit and demerit is the direct demonstration of this. The first proof is called the metaphysical proof, the second, the moral proof, which is the most celebrated, most popular, at once the most convincing and the most persuasive.

What powerful motives are added to these two proofs to fortify them in the heart! The following, for example, is a presumption of great value for any one that believes in the virtue of sentiment and instinct.