“Yes, brother, I am a sinner and a wretch!”[137]),
it is but the falsehood of virtue, and should be rejected by all manly and generous morality.
166. Duties relative to sentiment.—A last point which should not be neglected is this: has man, as far as he is endowed with moral sensibility—that is to say, as far as he is a susceptible being—capable of love, enthusiasm, affection, any duties toward himself?
Kant maintains that love cannot be an object of duty; that no one is obliged to love: that sentiment is phenomenal and belongs to the order of nature, and can neither be produced nor prevented; that, consequently, it has nothing to do with morals. The only love admitted by Kant in morals is what he calls practical love: namely, the love which consists in actions and does others good, or any kind of sentiment accompanying benevolence, provided it be a disinterested sentiment. “All other love,” he says in his odd and energetic language, “is pathological,” that is, sickly.
Kant, no doubt, is right if he means that false sentimentality or feeble softness,[138] which the poet Gilbert has so well described, and which the enervating literature of the latter part of the eighteenth century made so ridiculous. We should take care not to fall into an effeminate tenderness or a silly philanthropy which sacrifices justice to a mawkish sensibility. But all danger and defects set aside, there still remains the question whether we owe anything to our own heart, and whether the only thing directly commanded us, be action.
It is quite true that it is not an effect of our will if our heart is more or less tender, more or less sympathetic. Nature has made some souls gentle and amiable, others austere and cold, others again heroic and hard, etc.; the moralists should not forget these differences, and the degree of sensibility obligatory on all cannot be absolutely determined. But there are two facts which certainly oblige us to put some restrictions upon Kant’s too harsh doctrine. The first is that moral emotion (affection, enthusiasm for the beautiful, for our country) is never wholly absent in any human soul; the second is that sensibility does not altogether lie outside our will. We can smother our good feelings as we can smother our evil passions; we can also cultivate them, develop them, encourage them; give them a greater or less share in our lives, by placing ourselves in circumstances which favor them. For example, say such or such a person is but slightly endowed with sensibility or sympathy for the sufferings of the wretched; yet is it impossible that he be entirely deprived of them: let him overcome his repugnance and indifference; let him visit the poor, put himself at the service of human misery; the dormant sympathy will inevitably awaken in his heart. By this fact alone will he be enabled to do good with more ease, and raise his soul to a higher degree of perfection and beauty.
Not only should sentiment not be excluded from virtue, as Kant in his excessive austerity demands, but it should be considered its ornament and bloom. “The virtuous man,” says Aristotle, “is he who takes pleasure in doing virtuous acts.” One should therefore endeavor to awaken in one’s self, if one has not yet experienced it, or develop, if one has already experienced it, the noble pleasure which accompanies great sentiments. On the other hand, and for the same reason that it is a duty for man to develop within him, in the limits of the possible, the share of sensibility he may have received from nature, it is also his duty not to encourage this same disposition too much if he should be inclined this way. For sensibility should only be an auxiliary and a stimulant to virtue; it should never take its place: otherwise it will lead us astray. An exaggerated sensibility often smothers the voice of justice, enervates us, and deprives us of the robust courage we need in life. There is a reasonable limit which tact and experience alone can teach us. Morality can only give advice and directions. More precise rules are impossible, and would be ridiculous. There is no moral thermometer to indicate the degree of heart-heat each of us is allowed and is obliged to have. Let us only say, that in so delicate a matter, it is better to have too much sensibility than too little.