III.
In its positive form the enunciation of the moral problem is as much as possible to make the sympathetic instincts predominate over the selfish impulses, “sociability over personality.”[327]
That human nature admits of sympathetic instincts, or, according to the name given them by Comte, altruistic instincts, is not a postulate but a fact. Positive psychology proves it. It is one of the solid portions of Gall’s doctrine. To be convinced of this it is enough to observe men, children, and even animals. Without these instincts, moreover, society would not subsist. Metaphysicians who considered man as a being acting chiefly through reasoning, may have imagined a society founded upon the expressed or tacit consent of the contracting parties. In reality, before all things men obey their inclinations. If they live in society, it is assuredly because their affective faculties lead them to it. Without inborn altruistic tendencies there can be no society and no morality.
But biology has proved that, since organic life preponderates over animal life, the selfish instincts are naturally stronger than the sympathetic ones. How could the latter succeed first in counter-balancing and then in dominating the former? This problem would have no solution if the progressive ascendency of the altruistic instincts, very weak originally, were not favoured by two orders of conditions, the one subjective, the other objective, whose action is unceasingly felt.
The following development of domestic and social affection is, in the first place, the result of the fact that man lives in society, and, consequently, in continual relation with his neighbours and his fellows. For, as we know, habitual exercise favours the development of organs and of functions. Further, the natural inferiority of the altruistic inclinations is compensated for by their aptitude for “indefinite extension.” They can grow in all the members of a group at the same time. Far from their being obstacles in each other’s way, the stronger altruism in one awakens and encourages nascent altruism in others. On the contrary, forms of selfishness tend to exclude each other. Save in the case of a more or less durable coalition, their rival claims clash with each other, to the peril of social peace. They are bound to make mutual concessions. They are never altogether repressed; however, social life obliges them to dissimulate and to restrain their most violent outbursts.
Add to this that the benevolent affections find in themselves their own satisfaction, and that this satisfaction is inexhaustible. We tire of acting, said Comte, we even tire of thinking; we never tire of loving. The affections which it is sweetest to experience have also a tendency to occupy a larger and larger place in the heart of man. Moreover the question for them is not to take the place of egoism but to hold it more and more in check. If human nature evolves it is, as we know, without any essential transformation. The preponderance of selfishness in us is connected with organic reasons which are beyond our power and which will never change. To wish to uproot egoism is folly; qui veut faire l’ange fait la bête. Whatever efforts we make, we cannot permanently change the relations between our altruistic and egoistic instincts. The latter will always be the strongest. But we can regard this change as an ideal which we shall approach always without ever actually reaching it.[328]
Finally, it is rare that our selfish instincts do not awaken some altruistic feeling as a counter-result. For example, the sexual instinct determines the development of maternal love. The desire to impose one’s will generates devotion to the common weal. Once the benevolent affection has arisen it persists and grows, and, after the selfish instinct has ceased to operate, it is sometimes sought after for its own sake. This fact, says Comte, greatly facilitates the “solution of the great human problem.”[329]
This solution would however remain exceedingly uncertain and very precarious if its only guarantee were the whole of the subjective conditions which have just been analysed. For, in order that it may become established and last, this group of conditions itself requires what Comte calls an “objective basis.” The moral order within us must be united to the order of the world outside ourselves.
It is true that, including the altruistic ones, our inclinations tend to become spontaneously developed. But it is also true that the external world tends constantly to modify them, through the medium of the impressions which it makes upon us. For the development of these inclinations is necessarily affected by the direction of our conceptions and by the success of our undertakings. Now both are ever becoming more subordinated to external order, since the end of science is to know this order, and that of the useful arts is to modify it. In this way, independently of ourselves, order tends in a twofold manner to regulate our instincts, “either by the excitement resulting from the notions which it procures, or by exercise corresponding to the efforts which it demands.”[330] In a word, the laws of the “milieu” in which we live act like a regulation upon our inclinations. Although an indirect one, the influence of these laws upon them becomes in the long run irresistible.
And further, in order to be felt, this action does not require that we should have a more or less clear knowledge of it. Even at the time when man knew almost nothing of the laws of nature, his activity was more or less controlled by them. The ends sought after by man have always depended upon his moral and physical nature: the reason of the failure or the success of his efforts have always been found in the natural laws. Gradually positive knowledge was developed. Man became conscious of the order by which he is himself surrounded, of which he feels himself to be a portion, and in which his intellect collaborates in a measure difficult to determine but yet certain. The external regulator which, whatever our will may be, imposes itself upon our activity is thus revealed to our mind. The last degree to be reached is that it should finally be accepted by our feeling. This is precisely the result obtained by positive philosophy. For it makes us know our individual and social nature. It has shown us that humanity must not be explained by man, but man by humanity. It has explained the growing development of social life and that of altruism, which is at once its condition and its consequence. We now understand that our benevolent affections find themselves “spontaneously in conformity with the natural laws which govern the development of society.”[331]
Thus it is the continual pressure of external order which makes our egotistic instincts capable of being trained. They would undoubtedly get the mastery, if our sympathetic inclinations did not find without, in the laws of nature, a constant support which reason ends by understanding.
Moral perfection would be harmony realised among all men, by their mutual goodwill, according to the principle: Live for others, and, at the same time, harmony realised in each individual soul, by the subjection of egoism to the altruistic sentiments. But this harmony is not what is produced in the first place. On the contrary, war rages between the social groups, discord between the members of the same groups, the passions in each individual soul. Sometimes one, sometimes another of our tendencies influences us, according to circumstances whose details vary to infinity. No stable order of subordination is established among our tendencies: human nature, considered by itself, does not contain any principle which could maintain such an order. Left to itself, the human soul would remain in the state called by Spinoza “fluctuation.” The moral problem would have no durable solution. Hence the necessity of a “universal brake,” to make sure of the development of the altruistic tendencies. This brake is no other than the inevitable and continual pressure of the order of the world upon our conduct, and in the long run, upon our motives.
When the human mind wishes to direct its own phenomena, it instinctively seeks, in the general system of intelligible facts which constitutes the world, a group of well combined data, in order to refer its own less stable phenomena to it. We have already seen an example of this kind in the formation of language. Man “consolidates” his thought by coordinating it with a combination of signs which themselves are movements, and, as such, are subject to the general laws of the universe. In ethics we find something analogous. The main artifice in moral perfection, writes Comte, lies in diminishing the inconsistency, indecision and divergency in our purposes, by connecting our moral and practical intellectual habits with external motives. The mutual links between our various tendencies are incapable of securing their stability, until they have found an immovable fulcrum outside themselves. To endure, the harmony of the soul must be realised by itself as founded on reason, that is to say, upon the order of the world.