Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good

by Victor Cousin

Desire is so little will, that it often abolishes it, and leads man into acts that he does not impute to himself, for they are not voluntary. It is even the refuge of many of the accused; they lay their faults to the violence of desire and passion, which have not left them masters of themselves.

If desire were the basis of will, the stronger the desire the freer we should be. Evidently the contrary is true. As the violence of desire increases, the dominion of man over himself decreases; and as desire is weakened and passion extinguished, man repossesses himself.

I do not say that we have no influence over our desires. That two facts differ, it does not follow that they must be without relation to each other. By removing certain objects, or even by merely diverting our thoughts away from the pleasure that they can give us, we are able, to a certain extent, to turn aside and elude the sensible effects of these objects, and escape the desire which they might excite in us. One may also, by surrounding himself with certain objects, in some sort manage himself, and produce in himself sensations and desires which for that are not more voluntary than would be the impression made upon us by a stone with which we should strike ourselves. By yielding to these desires, we lend them a new force, and we moderate them by a skilful resistance. One even has some power over the organs of the body, and, by applying to them an appropriate regimen, he goes so far as to modify their functions. All this proves that there is in us a power different from the senses and desire, which, without disposing of them, sometimes exercises over them an indirect authority.

Will also directs intelligence, although it is not intelligence. To will and to know are two things essentially different. We do not judge as we will, but according to the necessary laws of the judgment and the understanding. The knowledge of truth is not a resolution of the will. It is not the will that declares, for example, that body is extended, that it is in space, that every phenomenon has a cause, etc. Yet the will has much power over intelligence. It is freely and voluntarily that we work, that we give attention, for a longer or a shorter time, more or less intense, to certain things; consequently, it is the will that develops and increases intelligence, as it might let it languish and become extinguished. It must, then, be avowed that there is in us a supreme power that presides over all our faculties, over intelligence as well as sensibility, which is distinguished from them, and is mingled with them, governs them, or leaves them to their natural development, making appear, even in its absence, the character that belongs to it, since the man that is deprived of it avows that he is no longer master of himself, that he is not himself, so true is it that human personality resides particularly in that prominent power that is called the will.[193]

Singular destiny of that power, so often misconceived, and yet so manifest! Strange confounding of will and desire, wherein the most opposite schools meet each other, Spinoza, Malebranche, and Condillac, the philosophy of the seventeenth century, and that of the eighteenth! One, a despiser of humanity, by an extreme and ill-understood piety, strips man of his own activity, in order to concentrate it in God; the other transfers it to nature. In both man is a mere instrument, nothing else than a mode of God or a product of nature. When desire is once taken as the type of human activity, there is an end of all liberty and personality. A philosophy, less systematic, by conforming itself to facts, carries through common sense to better results. By distinguishing between the passive phenomenon of desire and the power of freely determining self, it restores the true activity that characterizes human personality. The will is the infallible sign and the peculiar power of a real and effective being; for how could he who should be only a mode of another being find in his own borrowed being a power capable of willing and producing acts of which he should feel himself the cause, and the responsible cause?

If the philosophy of sensation, by setting out from passive phenomena, cannot explain true activity, voluntary and free activity, we might regard it as demonstrated that this same philosophy cannot give a true doctrine of morality, for all ethics suppose liberty. In order to impose rules of action on a being, it is necessary that this being should be capable of fulfilling or violating them. What makes the good and evil of an action is not the action itself, but the intention that has determined it. Before every equitable tribunal, the crime is in the intention, and to the intention the punishment is attached. Where, then, liberty is wanting, where there is nothing but desire and passion, not even a shade of morality subsists. But we do not wish to reject, by the previous question, the ethics of sensation. We proceed to examine in itself the principle that they lay down, and to show that from this principle can be deduced neither the idea of good and evil, nor any of the moral ideas that are attached to it.

2d. According to the philosophy of sensation, the good is nothing else than the useful. By substituting the useful for the agreeable, without changing the principle, there has been contrived a convenient refuge against many difficulties; for it will always be possible to distinguish interest well understood from apparent and vulgar interest. But even under this somewhat refined form, the doctrine that we are examining none the less destroys the distinction between good and evil.

If utility is the sole measure of the goodness of actions, I must consider only one thing when an action is proposed to me to do,—what advantages can result from it to me?

So I make the supposition that a friend, whose innocence is known to me, falls into disfavor with a king, or opinion—a mistress more jealous and imperious than all kings,—and that there is danger in remaining faithful to him and advantage in separating myself from him; if, on one side, the danger is certain, and on the other the advantage is infallible, it is clear that I must either abandon my unfortunate friend, or renounce the principle of interest—of interest well understood.

But it will be said to me:—think on the uncertainty of human things; remember that misfortune may also overtake you, and do not abandon your friend, through fear that you may one day be abandoned.