I respond that, at first, it is the future that is uncertain, but the present is certain; if I can reap great and unmistakable advantages from an action, it would be absurd to sacrifice them to the chance of a possible misfortune. Besides, according to my supposition, all the chances of the future are in my favor,—this is the hypothesis that we have made.
Do not speak to me of public opinion. If personal interest is the only rational principle, the public reason must be with me. If it were against me, it would be an objection against the truth of the principle. For how could a true principle, rationally applied, be revolting to the public conscience?
Neither oppose to me remorse. What remorse can I feel for having followed the truth, if the principle of interest is in fact moral truth? On the contrary, I should feel satisfaction on account of it.
The rewards and punishments of another life remain. But how are we to believe in another life, in a system that confines human consciousness within the limits of transformed sensation?
I have, then, no motive to preserve fidelity to a friend. And mankind nevertheless imposes on me this fidelity; and, if I am wanting in it, I am dishonored.
If happiness is the highest aim, good and evil are not in the act itself, but in its happy or unhappy results.
Fontenelle seeing a man led to punishment, said, "There is a man who has calculated badly." Whence it follows that, if this man, in doing what he did, could have escaped punishment, he would have calculated well, and his conduct would have been laudable. The action then becomes good or ill according to the issue. Every act is of itself indifferent, and it is lot that qualifies it.
If the honest is only the useful, the genius of calculation is the highest wisdom; it is even virtue!
But this genius is not within the reach of everybody. It supposes, with long experience of life, a sure insight, capable of discerning all the consequences of actions, a head strong and large enough to embrace and weigh their different chances. The young man, the ignorant, the poor in mind, are not able to distinguish between the good and the evil, the honest and the dishonest. And even in supposing the most consummate prudence, what place remains, in the profound obscurity of human things, for chance and the unforeseen! In truth, in the system of interest well understood, there must be great knowledge in order to be an honest man. Much less is requisite for ordinary virtue, whose motto has always been: Do what you ought, let come what may.[194] But this principle is precisely the opposite of the principle of interest. It is necessary to choose between them. If interest is the only principle avowed by reason, disinterestedness is a lie and madness, and literally an incomprehensible monster in well-ordered human nature.
Nevertheless humanity speaks of disinterestedness, and thereby it does not simply mean that wise selfishness that deprives itself of a pleasure for a surer, more delicate, or more durable pleasure. No one has ever believed that it was the nature or the degree of the pleasure sought that constituted disinterestedness. This name is awarded only to the sacrifice of an interest, whatever it may be, to a motive free from all interest. And the human race, not only thus understands disinterestedness, but it believes that such a disinterestedness exists; it believes the human soul capable of it. It admires the devotedness of Regulus, because it does not see what interest could have impelled that great man to go far from his country to seek, among cruel enemies, a frightful death, when he might have lived tranquil and even honored in the midst of his family and his fellow-citizens.