(B) Duties to Others. These have regard to the only Aim or End of others that a man can make a duty of, viz., their Happiness; for their Perfection can be promoted only by themselves. Duties to others as men are metaphysically deducible; and application to special conditions of men is to be made empirically. They include (a) Duties of LOVE, involving Merit or Desert (i.e., return from the objects of them) in the performance: (1) Beneficence, (2) Gratitude, (3) Fellow-feeling; (b) Duties of RESPECT, absolutely due to others as men; the opposites are the vices: (1) Haughtiness, (2) Slander, (3) Scornfulness. In Friendship, Love and Respect are combined in the highest degree. Lastly, he notes Social duties in human intercourse (Affability, &c.)—these being outworks of morality.
He allows no special Duties to God, or Inferior Creatures, beyond what is contained in Moral Perfection as Duty to Self.
V.—The conception of Law enters largely into Kant's theory of morals, but in a sense purely transcendental, and not as subjecting or assimilating morality to positive political institution. The Legality of external actions, as well as the Morality of internal dispositions, is determined by reference to the one universal moral Imperative. The principle underlying all legal or jural (as opposed to moral or ethical) provisions, is the necessity of uniting in a universal law of freedom the spontaneity of each with the spontaneity of all the others: individual freedom and freedom of all must be made to subsist together in a universal law.
VI.—With Kant, Religion and Morality are very closely connected, or, in a sense, even identified; but the alliance is not at the expense of Morality. So far from making this dependent on Religion, he can find nothing but the moral conviction whereon to establish the religious doctrines of Immortality and the Existence of God; while, in a special work, he declares further that Religion consists merely in the practice of Morality as a system of divine commands, and claims to judge of all religious institutions and dogmas by the moral consciousness. Besides, the Postulates themselves, in which the passage to Religion is made, are not all equally imperative,—Freedom, as the ground of the fact of Duty, being more urgently demanded than others; and he even goes so far as to make the allowance, that whoever has sufficient moral strength to fulfil the Law of Reason without them, is not required to subscribe to them.
The modern French school, that has arisen in this century under the combined influence of the Scotch and the German philosophy, has bestowed some attention on Ethics. We end by noticing under it Cousin and Jouffroy.
VICTOR COUSIN. [1792-1867.]
The analysis of Cousin's ethical views is made upon his historical lectures Sur les Idees du Vrai, du Beau et du Bien, as delivered in 1817-18. They contain a dogmatic exposition of his own opinions, beginning at the 20th lecture; the three preceding lectures, in the section of the whole course devoted to the Good, being taken up with the preliminary review of other opinions required for his eclectical purpose.
He determines to consider, by way of psychological analysis, the ideas and sentiments of every kind called up by the spectacle of human actions; and first he notes actions that please and displease the senses, or in some way affect our interest: those that are agreeable and useful we naturally choose, avoiding the opposites, and in this we are prudent. But there is another set of actions, having no reference to our own personal interest, which yet we qualify as good or bad. When an armed robber kills and spoils a defenceless man, we, though beholding the sight in safety, are at once stirred up to disinterested horror and indignation. This is no mere passing sentiment, but includes a two-fold judgment, pronounced then and ever after; that the action is in itself bad, and that it ought not to be committed. Still farther, our anger implies that the object of it is conscious of the evil and the obligation, and is therefore responsible; wherein again is implied that he is a free agent. And, finally, demanding as we do that he should be punished, we pass what has been called a judgment of merit and demerit, which is built upon an idea in our minds of a supreme law, joining happiness to virtue and misfortune to crime.
The analysis thus far he claims to be strictly scientific; he now proceeds to vary the case, taking actions of our own. I am supposed entrusted by a dying friend with a deposit for another, and a struggle ensues between interest and probity as to whether I should pay it. If interest conquers, remorse ensues. He paints the state of remorse, and analyzes it into the same elements as before, the idea of good and evil, of an obligatory law, of liberty, of merit and demerit; it thus includes the whole phenomenon of morality. The exactly opposite state that follows upon the victory of probity, is proved to imply the same facts.
The Moral Sentiment, so striking in its character, has by some been supposed the foundation of all morality, but in point of fact it is itself constituted by these various judgments. Now that they are known to stand as its elements, he goes on to subject each to a stricter analysis, taking first the judgment of good and evil, which is at the bottom of all the rest. It lies in the original constitution of human nature, being simple and indecomposable, like the judgment of the True and the Beautiful. It is absolute, and cannot be withheld in presence of certain acts; but it only declares, and does not constitute, good and evil, these being real and independent qualities of actions. Applied at first to special cases, the judgment of good gives birth to general principles that become rules for judging other actions. Like other sciences, morality has its axioms, justly called moral truths; if it is good to keep an oath, it is also true, the oath being made with no other purpose than to be kept. Faithful guarding as much belongs to the idea of a deposit, as the equality between its three angles and two right angles to the idea of a triangle. By no caprice or effort of will can a moral verity be made in the smallest degree other than it is.