XXII.
SOCIAL MOTIVE FORCE.
It belongs to no human science to assign the ultimate reason of things.
Man suffers; society suffers. We ask why? This is to ask why God has been pleased to indue man with sensibility and free will. As regards this, no one knows more than the revelation in which he has faith has taught him.
But whatever may have been the designs of God, what human science can take as its point of departure is a positive fact, namely, that man has been created free and indued with feeling.
This is so true that I defy those who are astonished at it to conceive a living, thinking, acting being indued with volition and affections—such a being, in short, as man—yet destitute of sensibility and free will.
Could God have ordered things otherwise? Reason undoubtedly answers yes, but imagination says eternally no, so radically impossible is it for us to separate in thought humanity from this double attribute. Now, to be indued with feeling is to be capable of experiencing sensations which are agreeable or painful. Hence comfort or uneasiness. From the moment, then, that God gave existence to sensibility, He permitted evil, or the possibility of evil.
In giving us free will, He has indued us with the faculty, at least in a certain measure, of shunning evil and seeking after good. Free will supposes and accompanies intelligence—what would the faculty of choosing signify if it were not allied with the faculty of examining, of comparing, of judging? Thus, every man who comes into the world brings with him mind and a motive force.
The motive force is that personal irresistible impulse, the essence of all our forces, which leads us to shun Evil and seek [p496] after Good. We term it the instinct of preservation, personal or private interest.