De l’influence qu’exerce sur les mœurs et sur les lois une analyse fausse ; ou des effets des sophis

CHAP. 3: > Of the influence exercised on morals and laws by a false analysis; or of the effects of sophisms and false systems in morality or legislation.

We have seen, in the preceding chapter, that the application of the analytical method to the study of morality and legislation has the effect of dividing human actions and institutions into two classes; of putting on one side those that produce for humanity more good than evil, and placing on the other those that produce more evil than good; of causing the latter to be condemned by all the persons they harm, by those even who do not suffer from them but who cannot hope to profit from them, and often even by those who do profit from them; of thus making these actions rarer, or causing these institutions to fall, by turning against them the opinion that supported them, or that did not condemn them.

We have seen, moreover, that the application of the same method to beneficent actions and institutions has the effect of causing them to be approved by all the persons to whom they can be useful, and by those who have no direct good to hope for from them, if, moreover, they have no harm to fear from them; of weakening the opposition of persons who have or believe they have contrary interests; and of thus multiplying the number of these actions, or bringing about the establishment of these institutions. I will render the same thought in fewer words if I say that the effect of the application of the analytical method to the study of morality and legislation is to determine the action of the greater part of the human race to proscribe the habits or institutions that are baneful to it, and to multiply or establish the habits or institutions that are advantageous to it. Men tending naturally toward their preservation and their development, analysis has the effect of showing them which road they must follow, and which they must avoid.

I must now determine what are, in the same sciences, the effects of incomplete analyses, false systems, paradoxes, and finally of all errors, under whatever name they may be designated. It will be easily conceived that in undertaking this examination, it is not possible for me to determine the influence of each error in particular; there are a thousand ways of reasoning badly, and each of them produces effects that are proper to it. Nor can it be a question here of undertaking the examination of all the false systems that have been imagined, and of following all their consequences. That would be a work that would have no end, and whose utility would not be very great. The sole object I propose for myself, at this moment, is to expound the manner in which errors act first on the minds of men, and then on their actions and on their institutions.

It would be impossible to determine the influence exercised by a false analysis or a false system, first on intelligences, and then on morals and laws, if one did not have very exact ideas of the method to be followed in the exposition of the sciences of morality and legislation. I have already observed that, whenever one proceeds according to the analytical method, one confines oneself to expounding a certain kind of fact, and to showing how they arise from one another. But what is the order that should be followed in this exposition? What are the facts that should be expounded first? The most evident ones, those that everyone is in a position to observe, and whose existence it is not possible to contest. One must begin with the observation of a fact so simple that its expression is, in a way, only a trivial truth. If it is a question of morality, for example, one must describe the characteristics by which a certain action or habit is recognized. If it is a question of a law, one must describe the material facts by which that law manifests itself [8].

Having accurately described the simplest phenomena that present themselves, one must describe with the same accuracy those they engender, and those by which they are engendered. To find those by which they are produced, one must seek them alternately in men and in things. In men, one must consider their ideas, their prejudices, their errors, their habits, their needs, their passions, their religion, their government, and finally the influence they exercise with regard to one another. In things, one must consider all the circumstances that influence the number, morals, industry, and distribution of the population, such as the nature of the soil, the temperature of the atmosphere, the course of the waters, and other analogous ones. By proceeding thus, one arrives at primitive facts or at phenomena whose causes one can no longer find; there, one must stop, because beyond that one finds only darkness. One may not always trace back until one arrives at inexplicable causes; but it is nevertheless necessary, so that the sciences are not sterile knowledge, to pass from one phenomenon to another until one arrives at facts that it is in the power of men to modify. In morality and in legislation, as in any other science, one acts effectively only insofar as one acts upon causes. The action one exercises upon effects is almost always vain, even when it is not dangerous.

The simplest phenomena and those that have engendered them being known, it remains to expound those to which they themselves give birth, and to show in what manner men and things are affected by them. To discover and describe this third order of facts, one must again seek them either in men or in things. One must consider men in their physical faculties, in their intellectual faculties, and in their moral faculties or in their passions. One must consider things in the qualities that make them fit to satisfy the needs of men. I say of men, and not of some men; of things, and not of some things; for, when one describes the consequences of an action, a habit, or a law, one must follow them as far as they extend, or at least as far as one can perceive them. There can be, in the moral sciences, no more than in the physical sciences, neither masters, nor slaves, nor kings, nor subjects, nor citizens, nor foreigners. There can only be men or aggregations of men, differing among themselves by their habits, by their prejudices, by their enlightenment, by their pretensions, acting well or ill upon one another, and bearing diverse names.

Having expounded what I mean by the analytical method, or more simply by analysis, one will easily conceive what I mean by a false or unfaithful analysis: it is what is often designated by the words sophisms, false systems, false reasonings. An analysis is false or unfaithful if it does not describe all the characteristics of the simple fact it claims to make known, or if it describes it with characteristics that are foreign to it. It is equally false if it attributes this fact to causes other than those that produced it, or if it attributes it exclusively to certain causes, while leaving unknown others that contributed to it. Finally, it is false if it attributes to this fact consequences that it does not produce, or if it presents only a part of the consequences that result from it, while affirming that no others exist.

One must not confuse an incomplete analysis with a false or unfaithful analysis. The former indicates only a part of the characteristics of the object described; but all that it describes is exact, and it does not affirm that there exist no other characteristics than those it has traced. The latter describes things other than as they are, or it presents as complete descriptions that are not. One is often obliged to confine oneself to incomplete analyses; one may not perceive all the causes or follow all the effects of a phenomenon one describes. One is never obliged to make unfaithful analyses: one must affirm only the facts one has established.

After having determined what I mean by a false analysis, it will be easy for me to expound its effects.To determine the effects produced by false systems, sophisms, or incomplete or false analyses, we must observe that all human actions and institutions necessarily fall into these three classes: several are generally considered useful to the human race, others are considered baneful, and others as doubtful or indifferent. We will simplify the reasoning if we suppose that the judgment passed by the public in this classification is just; if we set aside the actions judged indifferent; and if, instead of dealing with habits and institutions at the same time, we first deal with the former. We are all the more justified in abstaining from speaking of institutions, as everything I will say about habits can also be applied to laws.

Let us now suppose that a man who deals with morality takes one of the habits that public opinion has classed among those that are advantageous to the human race, and that he wishes to subject to analysis the effects it produces. He can err in several ways; he may fail to perceive a part of the evils that are inseparable from it, and place among its resulting effects advantages that are produced by a different cause. In other words, he may fail to expose the evils fit to turn men away from this habit, and falsely attribute to it advantages that are fit to make them contract it. By this procedure, he does not cause it to leave the class of virtuous habits; he cannot make it immediately less common; on the contrary, it is probable that he will determine some persons to contract it; if the infidelity is voluntary, it is a lie told with good intention.

But one must not believe that such an infidelity in the description of effects is followed by no bad consequence. It will happen that those who seek to contract this habit, on the faith of the description of the consequences attributed to it, will find it accompanied by evils they had not foreseen, and devoid of advantages they had hoped for. Their expectation being thus doubly deceived, they will feel disposed to reject it as bad, without taking the trouble to subject its effects to examination; the force with which they reject it will be in proportion to the disappointment they have experienced. On the other hand, those who, for whatever motive, wish to oppose the formation of this habit will not fail to direct their attacks upon the false part of the description; and, its inaccuracy being proven, they will believe, and make others believe, that they have triumphed. What a lawyer defending a bad cause can best desire is to see his adversary defend his own with bad reasons; for these reasons are for him means of excuse and sometimes even of success.

The analysis of the consequences of a habit qualified as virtuous, or useful to the human race, can be unfaithful in another way. It may fail to present all the advantageous consequences that result from it, and present, as effects deriving from it, evils that are produced by other causes. The first effect of this infidelity is to remove the habit in question from the class of useful or virtuous habits, and to cause it to pass either into the class of doubtful habits, or into that of baneful habits. The second effect that the same infidelity produces is to corrupt the morals of the persons whose judgment it has distorted. An example will make the manner in which an unfaithful analysis acts upon morals better understood.

A moralist subjects to analysis the effects of the habit of economy: he describes the privations that are inseparable from this habit; but, when he comes to make known its consequences, he does not perceive the independence it gives, either to him who possesses it or to his family; or else he does not understand how, by forming new capital, it creates means of work for the laboring classes of society. It is evident that by proceeding thus, he weakens the motives that could determine men to contract or to preserve this habit. No one consents to impose upon himself privations from which no advantage can result; and an action whose advantages are not perceived by him who performs it is, for him, the same thing as an action that produces none. On the other hand, the other persons to whom this habit is useful, not seeing the advantages that result from it for them, cease to support or encourage it; the public itself attaches no importance to it and accords no esteem to those who possess it. This habit then weakens more and more; the number of persons who possess it decreases, because it is no longer supported by opinion, and because the privations with which it is accompanied exercise a continual action fit to destroy it.

But if the moralist, after having left unnoticed a part of the good results of economy, attributes to this habit bad effects that it does not produce; if he attributes to it the inactivity of industry, the stagnation of commerce, the misery of the working class, he will turn public opinion against it; he will have it condemned by all the persons who attribute to it a part of their sufferings, and even by all disinterested persons. The public will then move it to the rank of baneful habits; it will brand it with the name of vice, and will exercise its influence to make it as rare as possible. By an inevitable consequence, it will be the contrary habit that it will encourage, and that it will cause to pass to the rank of those that are judged good. However, the judgment one passes on economy or on prodigality will change nothing, either in the nature or in the results of these habits. The first will continue to produce good effects, but it will be less practiced. The second will continue to produce baneful effects, but it will be more common.

Such are the consequences of a false analysis when it is applied to the results of a good habit. We are about to see that it produces analogous consequences when one applies it to the effects of a baneful habit.

The analysis of the effects of a bad habit can be defective in several ways; it may present as its consequences evils that do not really result from it, and fail to present all the goods it produces. This inaccuracy or this infidelity will leave the habit in the class to which it belongs. It will not have the effect of making it immediately more common; on the contrary, it is possible that it may momentarily determine some persons to abstain from it. But it will nevertheless end by producing bad consequences: the persons who give themselves over to this habit, finding in it pleasures that were said not to be there, and not finding in it all the evils that were said to result from it, will see that they have been deceived. They will be all the more disposed to abandon themselves to their inclinations, as, if they do not consider them virtuous, they will at least be very disposed to consider them innocent. By exaggerating the evils that bad habits produce, one furnishes arms to those who wish to defend them. One must abstain from slandering even vice, lest the public take it for a victim, and end by taking an interest in it.

The analysis of the effects of a bad habit can be vicious in another way. It can present it accompanied by goods it does not produce, and fail to show the evils that follow from it, or show only a part of them. The effect that such a description produces on the mind is to cause the described habit to leave the rank of baneful habits, and to cause it to pass to the rank of indifferent, or even advantageous, habits. One thus multiplies the motives that lead men to contract it, and one diminishes the motives fit to turn them away from it. Those who hesitated to indulge in it, abandon themselves to it with confidence, first because they expect to find great pleasures in it; second, because they do not foresee the evils that will result from it, either for themselves or for others; finally, because the persons who suffer from it, not seeing the cause of their evils, exercise no action upon it to make it cease. Thus, the unfaithful analysis of the effects of a bad habit necessarily tends to make it more common and to destroy the contrary habit.

This kind of infidelity, which is the most fruitful of all in bad results, has been and still is often employed. It is not employed only by individuals who wish to give themselves over to baneful passions, or who seek to seduce their fellow men to make them instruments or accomplices. It is also sometimes employed by writers who aspire to make themselves famous by the novelty and independence of their opinions, and who make a merit of placing themselves above the judgments of the vulgar. Not seeing the distant results of certain actions or certain habits, and finding that these habits or actions are immediately followed by certain privations or certain pleasures, they imagine that ignorance and caprice alone could have commanded or forbidden them, and they push men toward disorder and misery, believing they are leading them back to their natural state. It is thus that one has come to consider conjugal association and fidelity, the subordination of children to their parents, respect for property, and the social order itself, as results of violence, imposture, or caprice; it is in the name of the interests of humanity that peoples have been pushed toward a state worse than the savage state.

In legislation, an incomplete or unfaithful analysis produces effects analogous to those it produces in morality; but these effects are often more inevitable, and consequently much more extensive. An immoral work, and I give this qualification to any writing that tends to propagate or fortify bad habits, and to weaken good ones, influences immediately only the persons who read it and who have a mind weak enough not to discern its errors or its falsity; if it influences other persons, it is only after having led astray the judgment or depraved the morals of those who have read it. A writer can praise prodigality without anyone feeling forced to renounce economy; if he determines the government to make foolish expenditures, private individuals at least remain free in their private conduct. A false or incomplete analysis that causes a bad law to be established or preserved influences the fate of all the persons that this law affects, and those who see its vices best are also those who suffer from it most. Likewise, an unfaithful analysis that prevents the adoption of a salutary institution acts immediately upon the destiny of all those who would have profited from this institution; and it is again those who judge this institution best who feel its privation most keenly.

Let us suppose, for example, that a jurist investigates the surest means of arriving at the discovery of a given fact, of an opinion or an action judged baneful. He observes that, in general, when men suffer, they resign themselves to the greatest sacrifices to put an end to their pains. He observes, moreover, that by subjecting an accused person to torture, and by gradually increasing his pains, one can extract from him the confession of the fact imputed to him, and the means of knowing or convicting his accomplices. The idea of so precious a discovery inflames his imagination; he sees that, if it is adopted, one will have a sure means of arriving at the discovery of all criminals; that wrongdoers, fearing to be denounced by one another, will no longer find accomplices, and that the mere lack of accomplices will make most crimes impossible, at least those that most alarm society. If our jurist is invested with no authority, he will act only upon minds, and the force of the action he exercises will be in proportion to the ignorance of the men to whom he has addressed himself, and to the talent with which he has expounded his system. If he is invested with public power, he will employ his reason to convince the ignorant, and his authority to subdue the incredulous. But, in either case, if the system is converted into law, it will act upon the entire population, and it will be maintained until a more skillful man, subjecting the effects of the same law to a faithful analysis, has demonstrated that it does not produce the advantages that had been hoped for from it, and that it produces evils that had not been foreseen.

For the same reason that an unfaithful analysis can cause a baneful institution to be adopted, it can prevent the adoption of a good one, or bring about its overthrow. It is enough to present as consequences of this institution evils that are produced by other causes, and to be silent about the goods that result from it, or to attribute them to different causes.

Having expounded the effects produced in morality and in legislation by an incomplete or unfaithful analysis, I could dispense with speaking of the consequences produced by sophisms and false systems, since it is the same subject considered from a different point of view. Is it not clear, in effect, that all false reasoning, whatever its form, consists in attributing to a cause consequences that it does not produce, or in not attributing to it all the consequences that it does produce? And if, at bottom, all false reasonings resemble one another, do they not all lead down the same road? However, false systems and sophisms play such an important role in legislation and in morality; they are reproduced in such varied forms, and their use appears so innocent, that I will be forgiven for dwelling on them to expound their consequences.

A writer, wishing to trace back to the causes that produce servitude and liberty, examines which are the parts of the globe on which are found free peoples, and peoples subject to despotic governments. He believes he perceives that enslaved peoples are located in hot countries, and free peoples in temperate countries. From these two facts he draws the consequence that slavery is a necessary result of the climate, and that, under a certain latitude, a people cannot be free. To reason well, it would be necessary to prove how one of these facts is the consequence of the other; for it is not enough to establish that two facts exist simultaneously in the same place to conclude that the latter was engendered by the former; one must, moreover, show their lineage. But it is not a question, at this moment, of examining whether this opinion is well or ill-founded; let us admit it as it is stated, and suppose that it is expounded with enough talent, and by a man sufficiently esteemed, for it to be generally adopted. What will be its consequences?

It is evident, first, that the peoples placed under the climate supposed to be productive of slavery must despair of ever arriving at liberty. They cannot, in effect, cease to be slaves except by destroying the cause that made them so; but does it depend on them to change the nature of their climate? Can they weaken the power of the sun's rays, or displace their territory? Can a numerous nation leave its country, and carry away its riches like a family? In what part of the globe will it find a vacant territory disposed to receive it? The necessity of despotism being admitted, any attempt to diminish the ignorance, prejudices, vices, and crimes that follow from it must be considered a folly; for the consequences of despotism are no less inevitable than those of the climate. This ignorance, these prejudices, these vices, these crimes, are in a way the elements of which it is formed; if one destroyed the elements, the thing itself would no longer exist.

If despotism is an inevitable consequence of hot climates, one can reasonably believe that a cold or temperate climate will produce a contrary effect. Thus, in no position, do peoples have anything to do to become free, that is, to acquire good laws and good morals. If they are placed under a hot climate, their efforts would be in vain: they cannot conquer nature. If they are placed under a cold or temperate climate, their efforts are not necessary: the climate will act for them. The French, the Germans, and even the Russians, have no efforts to make to become as free as the citizens of the United States of America; but also the American peoples located between the tropics will struggle in vain to conquer liberty; they are condemned by nature to be as enslaved as the Persians.

Such is the effect of a system that makes the institutions and well-being of peoples depend on a false cause, a cause independent of their will and their efforts. The author of this system, an enemy of despotism by sentiment as much as by conviction, would have rendered it the greatest service it was possible to render it, had he caused his ideas on the influence of climates to be adopted; for what greater service could one render to despots, than to paralyze the efforts of all peoples toward liberty?

A system that makes all the goodness of a people's institutions depend on a cause that is within their reach, but which is not the only influential one, produces consequences less baneful than the preceding one. It does not paralyze the action that nations tend to exercise upon themselves to improve their condition; it leads them astray, but it leaves them the means to discover their errors through experience, and consequently to correct themselves. However, it can still produce many bad effects.Let an eloquent writer, seeing the evils engendered by the arbitrary power of an individual or a caste, imagine that all these evils exist only because power is not possessed by the entire body of citizens. He will be able to prove, in a manner that convinces even the most limited men, that a people cannot be the property of an individual or a family, and that the power exercised over it without its consent is merely a material force that can be destroyed by a force of the same nature. He may then imagine more or less ingenious combinations to ensure that the will of the citizens dominates in all public affairs.

But when this system has been well developed, and the public has made it a kind of gospel, what will be the result? The population, attributing immense advantages to a cause that, by itself, cannot produce them, will tend to make itself master of all powers. It may perhaps seize them, and once it possesses them, it will not know what use it ought to make of them. It will be dominated by its prejudices and its habits, led astray by its ignorance or its vices. Consequently, things will not go much better than before; the vices and corruption of a court will be replaced by popular vices and violence, and the people may perhaps return to the point from which they started, convinced that between two governments that produce as much evil as each other, the least bad is the one that requires the least trouble. To aspire a second time to obtain popular institutions, they will have to have experienced anew the excesses of despotism; they will have to have learned by experience that one can be very badly governed even when the multitude commands, and that a people which aspires to possess power must first take the trouble to learn what use it is fitting for it to make of it.

Another writer, witness to the excesses to which an ignorant and fanatical multitude can go, may, following the example of Hobbes, see the cause of all evils in popular institutions, and seek the remedy in the absolute power of a prince and his court. If this system is artfully expounded and skillfully supported, its effect will be to deceive public opinion about the causes that make a people happy or miserable. It will destroy or weaken the sentiment of contempt and hatred that the agents of despotism inspire in enlightened peoples; consequently, it will increase the number and zeal of these agents, by justifying them in their own eyes and in the eyes of unenlightenend men. It will increase the resignation or weaken the resistance of the victims of arbitrary power, and will cause the men who devote themselves to the deliverance and happiness of peoples to be considered as culprits, as enemies of the public good. Thus, a sophist can be a more malevolent man than a tyrant and his ministers. A tyrannical action may not engender a second; it is even possible that, by giving a jolt to public opinion, it may produce a happy revolution. But a bad system, artfully expounded, at the same time that it multiplies bad actions, prevents an end from being put to them: it increases the violence of the evil, and neutralizes the remedy.

There are two kinds of sophisms that produce less dangerous effects than the preceding one, but which are far from being innocent: one consists in attributing vices or misfortunes to a cause that did not produce them; the other in attributing to a cause happy effects that it does not produce. It is not rare to see these two sophisms employed simultaneously, because they are fit to lead to the same end. A man who attributes to a system a good that it does not produce feels quite disposed to attribute to the contrary system all imaginable evils. One can observe this disposition in almost all men who engage in political or religious discussions. In the eyes of some, monarchy or religion will be the cause from which will arise all the goods that peoples are permitted to enjoy; the republic or incredulity will be the cause of all calamities. In the eyes of others, it will be precisely the opposite.

These sophisms are almost as malevolent as each other, and the evil they produce is of the same nature. It is evident that by attributing to religion or to incredulity evils that they do not produce, one distorts the judgment of the public; one prevents men from seeing the true cause of these evils, and consequently from finding the remedy. It is the same if one attributes to them goods that could not be their consequence: one thus directs the attention and efforts of men toward a false cause, and diverts them from the true one. We can say the same thing of similar sophisms made with regard to the form of governments: to attribute to monarchy or to the republic goods or evils that are produced by other causes is to give minds a false direction, and to prevent peoples either from delivering themselves from the evils that afflict them, or from obtaining the goods they solicit.

It is not always with bad intentions that one permits oneself this kind of sophism; it is common, on the contrary, for the men who make use of them to be well-intentioned. A man keenly persuaded of the truth of his religion may exaggerate its good effects with a view to determining those who listen to him or who read his works to adopt it, or to observe it, if they have already adopted it. Likewise, a man persuaded that such or such a religion is false or malevolent may attribute to it evils that it has not produced, with a view to destroying it more promptly. Those who reason thus, however good their intentions may be, produce two kinds of evils; first, they prevent men from tracing back to the true causes, and consequently from obtaining or avoiding the results they desire or dread; second, they harm the cause they are defending by furnishing arms to their adversaries; in procuring for it a momentary triumph, they prepare blows against which it will be defenseless.

It results from the preceding that in morality and in legislation, unfaithful analyses, sophisms, false systems, in short, all errors, under whatever name they may be designated, are more baneful to the human race than bad actions taken in isolation; and that, if men ever measure their contempt and their aversion by the sum of evil that is done to them, they will place sophists of bad faith in the rank of the greatest malefactors. Men of talent have sometimes made a game of supporting false systems, to give proof of the force of their reasoning, and ignorant and credulous peoples have applauded their strength or their skill, as they would have applauded a combat of gladiators; they did not see that, in these contests, error was at grips with truth, and that they would pay, with long misfortunes, for each of the triumphs that the former would win.

The human race is naturally progressive; it tends, by its own nature, toward its preservation and its development; but, to take the right road, it needs to be enlightened. A good analysis sheds light on all roads, on those that lead to misery and destruction, as well as on those that lead to prosperity. An unfaithful analysis or a false system casts only a false light, and makes things appear other than as they are. The author of an unfaithful analysis is, for peoples, what a man who changed the signs placed on the roads to indicate their route would be for travelers. He makes them take a road that has no exit or that leads them to a place it was in their interest to avoid. The author of a faithful and complete analysis is, on the contrary, for peoples, what a man who went to place on a multitude of intersecting roads the exact indication of all the places to which each one leads would be for travelers. But neither the one nor the other creates the principle of activity that sets peoples in motion: they are as foreign to the creation of this principle as the individual who inscribes at the entrance of roads the names of the places to which they lead is foreign to the motives that determine men to undertake journeys.