Elements of Morals / With Special Application of the Moral Law to the Duties of the Individual and of Society and the State

by Paul Janet

167. Are there any duties toward God?—If, as we have seen in our first book (Vol. I., last chapter), there is a God, that is to say, an author of the physical and moral universe, and its preserver and protector and father, it follows that man, as a part of this universe, and distinguished from its other creatures by the fact that he knows himself to be a child of God, is held to entertain toward this supreme father, sentiments of gratitude and respect, and toward this supreme judge sentiments of fear and hope, all of which gives rise to a whole class of duties.

Some doubts have been raised on this point by certain philosophers, and the question has been asked whether man, so out of all proportion when compared to God, could have any duties toward Him? It has been said, moreover, that there could be no duty toward a being to whom we can do neither good nor harm. God, the essence of all perfection and supreme happiness, can have nothing added to nor taken from these by us. We are therefore under no obligation to him whatsoever.

1. As for the absolute disproportion we imagine to exist between God and man, this disproportion does not prevent my having an idea of God: why should it prevent my loving him and putting myself in relation with him? Fénélon justly said: “Nothing is so wonderful as the idea of God which I carry within myself; it is the infinite contained within the finite. That which is within me is infinitely beyond me. I do not understand how it comes to be in my mind, and yet it is there, nevertheless. This indelible and incomprehensible idea of the Divine Being is what, despite my imperfection and weakness, makes me resemble him. As he infinitely knows and loves himself, so do I, according to my power, know and love him. I can love the infinite by no other means than by my finite knowledge, and love it by no other than a love as finite as myself.... I wish my love were as limitless as the perfection it loves. It is true, again, that this knowledge and this love are not equally as perfect as their object, but the man who knows and loves God according to his measure of knowledge and love is incomparably more worthy of this perfect being than the man without God in the world, caring neither to know nor to love him.”[139] Hence it can be concluded that the duties of man toward God are implied in the knowledge he has of him.

2. As to the second difficulty, it consists in saying that God being susceptible of neither benefits nor injuries, it is not quite clear what acts we could perform in his behalf. But the question is precisely to know whether we only owe duties to beings susceptible of benefits and injuries. We have, for example, to perform duties of justice, love, respect toward the dead, although we can do them neither good nor harm, since they are dead; and although we have reason to think that the dead still exist under another form, the duties we still owe them, are independent of this consideration, and notwithstanding the doubt of the immortality of souls, or their relations with the living, these duties still subsist: those souls might be so happy, and in conditions so different from those of our earthly life, that they might have become wholly indifferent to such, at least to harm. A historian, for instance, would not be justified in slandering his heroes under the pretext that, not believing in the immortality of the soul, he knew he could do them no harm. Man, even in this life, can, through patience and gentleness, so rise above all insults as to become wholly insensible to them: which fact, however, does not imply that the insults done him are innocent. The same man might be so modest as to feel no need of any homage, which would make it no less a duty of justice on the part of others to render him all the homage that is due him. Wholly inward feelings, not evidenced by any outward act whatsoever, cannot in reality do their object any good or harm; yet no one will question their being duties. It may then be seen that duty is not regulated by the good or evil which may outwardly be done, but by the order of things which requires that every being be loved and respected according to his merit. Now, from this standpoint, there can be no doubt that God, who is supreme perfection and the principle of all order and justice, is the legitimate object of the highest respect and the profoundest love.

It may be said, perhaps, that these sentiments toward the Creator are rather duties we owe ourselves than God, for it is for our own sakes that we are bound to give to our sensibility and affection the highest object they can have. Since the perfection and the dignity of the soul are enhanced by religion, it is our duty to be religious.

Fénélon is quite right when he says that “the man who knows and loves God is more worthy of him than he who lives without him.” Is it not the same as to say that religion rendering man more like God, and bringing him nearer to him, man owes it to himself to rise above himself through piety and the love of God?

But it matters very little how we explain the nature of the duties toward God, provided we recognize them. Whether they be considered a distinct class, or whether we only see in them the highest degree of man’s duties toward himself; all this is but a useless speculation. We could say conversely, and with equal justice, that our duties toward ourselves are but a part of our duties toward God: for duty itself, in its highest conception, being to reach after the highest possible perfection, we can say, with Plato, that virtue is the imitation of God; that, consequently, man owes it to himself to resemble God as much as possible, and that, conversely, he owes God, as the type of supreme perfection, to draw ever nearer to him through self-improvement. But how could he seek to draw nearer to God’s supreme perfection if he did not entertain for him the feelings of love and respect, which constitute what we, in general, call religious sentiment?

168. Duties toward God.—Analysis of the religious sentiment.—What is called duties toward God is nothing else than the different acts by which we endeavor to bring about, cultivate, develop in us, or in others, religious sentiment. When these acts are external, and take a certain definite form, they constitute what is called outward worship, and are consequent upon positive religions. When they are concentrated in the soul, and confined to sentiments, they constitute what is called inner worship. The virtue which corresponds to these inner acts and sentiments is called piety.

The duties toward God being thus blended with religious sentiment we must, in order to set them forth, first analyze this sentiment.

Religious sentiment is composed of two elements: one which may be called metaphysical;[140] the other, moral. 1. Metaphysically, the love of God is the sentiment of the infinite, the need of attaching ourselves to the absolute, the eternal, the immutable, the true in itself—in one word, to Being. The thinking man, and even the thoughtless man, looking at himself, finds himself small, feeble, miserable. “Oh!” exclaims Bossuet, “how much we are nothing!” “Man becomes vile to himself,” says St. Bernard. “Man feels that he is frail, that his life hangs but on a thread, that he is constantly passing away. The goods of the world are perishable. The fashion of this world passeth away. We neither know who we are, whence we come, whither we are going, nor what sustains us during the short period of our lives. We are suspended between heaven and earth: between two infinities; we stand as on quicksands.” All these strong expressions of mystics and religious writers admirably express the need we stand in of the absolute, the immutable, the perfect,—a need felt more particularly by devout minds, but which all men, without exception, experience in some degree or other, and which they endeavor to satisfy the best they can. All our efforts to reach the absolute in science, in art, in politics even, are but the forms in which this need of the absolute manifests itself. The insatiable pursuit of the gratification of the passions even is, also, under a vain appearance, the same need. It is this feeling of the eternal and the infinite, which the greatest metaphysicians all regarded as the ultimate foundation of morality. Plato, Plotinus, Malebranche, Spinoza, all enjoin upon us to seek eternal, in preference to perishable, goods. This sentiment, conscious of ever striving after the substance of good and not its shadow, is the profoundest, nearest, and dearest element of religious sentiment.