De deux éléments essentiels au progrès des sciences morales ; et de l’opposition qu’on a cru observe

CHAP. 4: > Of two elements essential to the progress of the moral sciences; and of the opposition that has been thought to be observed between the analytical method and the action of the moral sense or of conscience.

Men, like all animate species, tend, by their own nature, toward their preservation and their development. This tendency manifests itself in us by two opposite sentiments: by the pain caused us, whenever a particular interest does not blind us, by the sight of a malevolent action, and by the admiration we feel at the spectacle of a fine action. These sentiments are produced in us with such rapidity that they almost always precede reflection: we consider as an offense that is in some way personal to us the action of a man who, in our presence, outrages one weaker than himself, without having a legitimate excuse; and the action of a man who voluntarily exposes himself to a great danger to rescue another inspires in us movements of admiration over which we have no control. These sentiments even seem so natural to us that we would feel a kind of antipathy for a man who, finding himself in the same position as us, did not feel them with the same vivacity, and who needed it to be demonstrated to him that such an action is good or bad, to find it worthy of praise or blame.

The rapidity with which we judge or feel that an action is useful or malevolent has led to the belief that sentiment alone could guide us, and that we had no need of judgment. It has been taken further: it has been observed that, in certain cases, we have a repugnance for certain actions judged bad, and that the mind furnishes us with reasons or sophisms to indulge in these actions; it was then believed that sentiment was an infallible guide, and that reasoning was fit only to lead us astray. Finally, it has been observed that our sentiments are inseparable from our nature, and develop at the same time as the individual, while our intellectual development almost always depends on accidental circumstances. From these two facts the consequence has been drawn that all men have the sentiment of what is good or bad, although the intelligence of all is not equally developed. This sentiment has been given the name of moral sense or of conscience, and it has been considered as the basis of the science of morality.

There are just observations in this system, but there are others that lack truth; it is a matter of clearly disentangling the one from the other, if one does not wish to fall into error. There would perhaps be as much danger in rejecting this system entirely as in admitting it without restriction.

A science, by itself, creates nothing; it is only the exposition of what things are. Thus, analysis applied to legislation and to morality cannot, by itself, either create a good law or destroy a bad one; it can neither cause a good action to be performed, nor prevent a baneful action. The only effect that is proper to it, and that it produces without the concurrence of any other agent, is to make known the good and the evil that result from such an action or such a law. It is necessary, therefore, for the knowledge it gives not to be sterile, that there exist in man a principle of action that pushes him toward what is good, and that turns him away from what is bad; that determines him to approve the habits or institutions useful to the human race, and to reprove those that are baneful to it. If man carried within himself no principle of action, science would be without effect, for it could not create one; it could not impress upon the human race a movement it did not have. If man carried within him a principle of action that directed him toward the ruin of his species, science would hasten his destruction by showing him the shortest path by which he could arrive at it. There must therefore exist in man a tendency that carries him toward what is useful to his fellow men, and that diverts him from what is baneful to them.

Suppose, in effect, men to be susceptible of intelligence as they are; suppose, moreover, that one exposes to their eyes all the good and bad consequences that such habits or such institutions can produce: you will have individuals knowing good and evil, but you will not yet have individuals acting to produce the one and to destroy the other; and if they do not act, their knowledge will be useless. But, if you place in an individual a sentiment of aversion or hatred for what is baneful to their species, and a sentiment of sympathy or affection for what is useful to it, the effects of knowledge will at once be remarked in the direction that the same individuals give to their efforts. Now, this sentiment is incontestable; it manifests itself through a multitude of facts; it is inherent in human nature; it is for man a principle or a cause of action; it contributes to forming his morals. In this respect, it is one of the foundations of morality and of legislation; it is, in a way, their first cause. I give no name to this principle: let some give it the name of moral sense or of conscience; let others call it self-love, well-understood interest, it matters little: the essential thing is to agree on the things themselves and to avoid disputes over words.

But, if this principle of action is an incontestable fact, there is another fact that seems to me no less evident: it is that the intelligence that is proper to man is as necessary for him to conduct himself well as the very principle that sets him in motion. Deprive him of his principle of action, and his knowledge will be useless to him: you will have only a passive being. Deprive him of his knowledge, and his principle of action will be no less useless to him, if indeed it is not baneful. To walk with sureness, it is not enough to have the desire and to possess legs; one must, moreover, have eyes to guide oneself.

The supposition that the principle of action that determines our judgments in legislation or in morality is sufficient for men to direct themselves well in all the circumstances of life is belied by the very history of the human race, and by a multitude of facts that take place daily before our eyes.

We can observe first that the sentiment that directs man toward what is useful to his fellow men, and that makes him reject what is baneful to them, does not manifest itself only in legislation and in morality; it is the principle that gives life to all the sciences and to all the arts. A man who conducts research on medicine, on surgery, on physics, on chemistry, on mechanics, can, like him who conducts research on legislation and on morality, only expound the discoveries he has made; his power is limited to placing before the eyes of his readers or his audience the facts he has observed and that had not been noticed before him. Having communicated his knowledge, it is necessary, for it to become useful, that there exist in the men who have appropriated it a principle of action that leads them to make use of it in the interest of their species. If this principle did not exist, the knowledge one would have given to men of the arts or sciences would be as sterile in their minds as it would be if it remained consigned to books that were read by no one.

But, although there exists in men a principle that leads them to make the most useful application of the discoveries of scholars, can one say that this principle is sufficient to direct oneself well, and that the research of scholars is useless? Can one say that this principle of action, to which one gives the name of moral sense or of conscience when one considers its effects in morality and in legislation, is sufficient to make a physician, a chemist, a mechanic, or an astronomer? Will it be enough for a ship's captain to have a conscience, and to consult his inner sentiment, to avoid the reefs and guide his ship to port?The rapidity with which we approve or condemn certain actions leads us to believe that reasoning and habit have nothing to do with the feelings of pleasure or pain we experience at the sight of a good or a bad action; but there are a multitude of things that habit allows us to execute with just as great a facility, and which we had great difficulty in learning. When we walk, we do not need to direct our attention alternately to one leg and then the other to make them advance: they carry us where we wish to go, without our needing to think of them. A musician, in executing the most difficult piece, has no need to think of his fingers; he directs them with a sureness and a rapidity that astonish us, without paying them the slightest attention. We read, we write, we speak with the same facility, and without it being necessary to direct our attention to the organs with whose help we execute these various operations; they move, in a way, of their own accord, and without our thinking of directing them. If we did not witness every day the difficulty children have in learning to walk, to speak, to read, to write, we would believe that we execute all these operations without ever having learned them, and that our organs move in this or that direction, as our blood circulates, without the participation of our will. We notice less the manner in which our moral ideas are formed, precisely because our education begins earlier, and because we give or receive lessons in it, at every moment and without thinking about it. It is with these ideas as it is with the atmosphere that surrounds us; we do not pay attention to the manner in which they strike us, because they penetrate us from all sides, and because our character is formed before we have lived long enough to reflect.

The persons who claim that the principle of action we have recognized in ourselves is sufficient to make us distinguish what is good from what is bad, and who think that intelligence is fit only to lead us astray, show themselves, in their conduct, to be little convinced of the truth of their system; if they have children, they are far from relying on inner sentiment to make them discern good from evil; they never cease to inspire in them an aversion for falsehood, a love for truth; they repress in them the small movements of vanity, of malice, that they allow to be seen; they approve, they encourage the sentiments of goodness or benevolence that they show; they choose their small social circles with a precaution they do not always take in the choice of their own; they remove from them, with extreme care, all books that could give them false ideas, or inspire bad sentiments in them; they place in their hands the books they believe most fit to give them just ideas, to inspire in them pure and generous sentiments; these cares, which begin with the first infancy, are pursued in youth; children, on leaving the hands of their parents, pass into the hands of tutors, professors, ministers of religion, who give them, or are supposed to give them, the same lessons. Finally, we receive lessons in morality, from the moment we have the faculty of receiving an impression or an idea, until the moment when men can no longer act upon us; schools, the writings that are published every day, the discussions that take place in society, religious establishments, and even judicial debates and decisions, serve to instruct us at all moments of our life [9].

If the sentiment that makes man approve or seek what is useful to his species, and that makes him reprove or avoid what may be baneful to it, did not need to be directed by habit or enlightened by intelligence, the morals of men would not have been subject to any variation; we would find them in the savage state, such as we see them among the most civilized peoples; and, among the same people, one would notice no difference in morals between the various classes of society. One would have to admit that the human race, perfectible in every other respect, is not so in respect of morals; that intelligence can teach us to make better use of our physical organs; that it can serve to form a farmer, a mechanic, a musician or a dancer; but that it is powerless to form an honest man, a good magistrate or a good citizen. If, in this regard, the moral sense suffices, one can do without books, professors, preachers, and especially the writers who create systems of morality.

Men who consider as a science sentiments common to all individuals who make up the human race, and who nevertheless recognize the necessity of writing and teaching this science, affirm a true contradiction. If the writer, the professor, or the preacher, no matter the name, can tell his readers or his audience nothing but what they feel as he does, he has nothing to teach them; they are just as learned as he is. If he has sentiments that are particular to him and that he proposes to communicate to them, he must recognize that the moral sense or conscience does not speak equally to everyone. It is then necessary to seek the causes of the difference, and to find, without the help of intelligence, reasons capable of making consciences that are silent speak. Or else one must determine men to let themselves be guided by a moral sense that is not their own, after having persuaded them that they can find no surer guide than their own conscience. One must prove to them that the moral sentiment, inherent in human nature, receiving no direction from intelligence, has always guided men equally well, and yet that Christianity has changed the morals of a part of the nations that have adopted it, while nations that are not Christian give themselves over, as a matter of conscience, to actions that our moral sense reproves.

It almost always happens that when men establish an exclusive system that rejects incontestable truths, other men are found who, to overthrow it, seek to found a system that is equally exclusive, and who place among the errors the very truths that the contrary system may contain. Thus, when scholars have brought calculation into the moral sciences, and have wished to direct our attention toward the study of facts, they have incontestably made the human mind take great progress. But perhaps they have delayed the effects of a good method by refusing to recognize the existence of a fact without which all our knowledge would be sterile: the sentiment that makes us approve what we judge useful to the human race, and condemn what we believe to be baneful to it. If this sentiment did not exist, what use would it be, I repeat, to expose to the eyes of men the good and bad consequences of our institutions and our habits? What would be the cause that could determine peoples to prefer the one to the other [10]?

The analytical method is not at all exclusive of this sentiment; on the contrary, it can be effective only because it admits or supposes its existence. By enlightening ignorant men on the nature, causes, and consequences of their actions or their habits, it awakens their moral sense in cases where, for want of enlightenment, it could not make itself heard. By enlightening men who are mistaken in the judgments they pass on human institutions or habits, it delivers them from ill-founded fears, or makes them condemn what they previously approved. By enlightening men who have received good habits, but who have little enlightenment, it gives them motives for perseverance, and adds their personal approval to the approval of the public. Thus, the conscience of each individual rises to the level of his enlightenment, and it becomes all the more extensive, and all the more imperious, the better one sees the consequences of all that one does. It would therefore be a grave error to believe that one of the effects of analysis applied to the moral sciences is to silence the moral sense. The effect it produces is, on the contrary, to give this sense a surer direction, and to increase its energy.

One would equally be in error if one believed that analysis is an obstacle to the formation of good habits. The enlightenment it gives has, on the contrary, a great influence on us only insofar as it is not contradicted by vicious habits. Most men, even among the most enlightened peoples, can be guided only by their habits, and by the impressions they have received in their childhood; they have neither the time nor the means to learn to calculate the consequences of each of their actions. Even those who have received a certain education are often obliged to act without it being possible for them to calculate in advance the results of their conduct: they then obey their moral sense, according to the ideas and habits that have been given to them. They conduct themselves well, if they have received just ideas and good habits; they conduct themselves badly, if they have contracted bad habits or received false ideas. When an individual's habits are completely formed, the enlightenment that analysis gives him rarely results in reforming him: it generally produces no other effects on him than to excite his remorse for actions he previously executed in all security of conscience, and to make him reprove in others facts from which he no longer has the power to abstain. Thus, parents who have had the misfortune of contracting bad habits, and who no longer have enough energy to deliver themselves from them, can still preserve their children from them.

Having expounded, in the preceding chapter, the general effects produced by false systems, I have little left to say of those produced by the system that rejects the examination of facts, to admit only the decisions of the moral sense or of conscience. This system, like all the others, has the result of being an obstacle to the moral perfection of man, by attributing to a cause more numerous effects than those it produces, and by causing to be considered as a source of errors the only method that can lead to the discovery of truth. But it has, moreover, some effects that are particular to it, and which it is therefore suitable to expound.

It is evident, in the first place, that a man who excludes reasoning from the moral sciences, and who takes only inner sentiment as his judge, recognizes no authority to which it is possible to appeal in case of discussion. Science is useless whenever men are in agreement, and when they are of different opinion, it offers them no means of enlightening themselves; which leads them to anarchy.

In the second place, this system is the justification of all the vices and all the crimes to which the fanatics of all religions and all parties have given themselves over and may yet give themselves over. If it is enough, for an action to be useful to the human race, to find madmen whom it is possible to persuade that it is commanded to them by their conscience, there is no crime that cannot be considered a duty; for there is none that, at some epoch, has not been executed in all security of conscience.

Finally, in the social order, each is led to consider as the expression of his moral sense the principle that serves as the basis for his trade or his profession; in almost all the countries of the world, the moral sense of a soldier commands him passive obedience; the moral sense of the minister of any creed commands him to conform to the books of his religion, as they are interpreted by the sect to which he belongs; the moral sense of a jurist commands him to conform to the laws of his country, whatever they may be; the moral sense of a philosopher commands him to make his systems triumph; and the moral sense of a peasant, to obey the directions of his parish priest. If we examine, in a word, what generally happens in the world, we will find that everyone executes in conscience all that he believes he can execute without any danger; and that the moral sense reproves only those actions that, at one time or another, may be baneful, either to ourselves, or to beings for whom we have affections. To show the bad consequences of an action or an institution is to show a danger; it is to disturb the security of those who are its authors, and of those who may suffer from it. To show, on the contrary, its good consequences, is to give motives of security to those who are its authors, or who may profit from it. In both cases, it is to make the moral sense of all pronounce upon this action or this institution, and to determine them, either to condemn it, or to approve it.

All this appears simple to the point of evidence; and yet, among the men who wish to give nations no other guide than conscience, there are some who consider the enlightenment fit to illuminate it as the most baneful gift it is possible to give them: to hear them, one would think that it is the spirit of darkness that has given birth to light. But let one look closely; let one follow the conduct of most of these men, and one will see that their continual efforts tend only to form consciences according to their own understanding. They want everyone to obey the voice of his own conscience; but it is on the condition that it is they who will teach it to speak, and who, alone, will form its language.