4th. If interest does not account for the idea of duty, by a necessary consequence, it does not more account for that of right; for duty and right reciprocally suppose each other.
Might and right must not be confounded. A being might have immense power, that of the whirlwind, of the thunderbolt, that of one of the forces of nature; if liberty is not joined to it, it is only a fearful and terrible thing, it is not a person,—it may inspire, in the highest degree, fear and hope,—it has no right to respect; one has no duties towards it.
Duty and right are brothers. Their common mother is liberty.
They are born at the same time, are developed and perish together. It might even be said that duty and right make one, and are the same being, having a face on two different sides. What, in fact, is my right to your respect, except the duty you have to respect me, because I am a free being? But you are yourself a free being, and the foundation of my right and your duty becomes for you the foundation of an equal right, and in me of an equal duty.[195]
I say equal with the exactest equality, for liberty, and liberty alone, is equal to itself. All the rest is diverse; by all the rest men differ; for resemblance implies difference. As there are no two leaves that are the same, there are no two men absolutely the same in body, senses, mind, heart. But it is impossible to conceive of difference between the free will of one man and the free will of another. I am free or I am not free. If I am free, I am free as much as you, and you are as much as I. There is not in this more or less. One is a moral person as much as, and by the same title as another moral person. Volition, which is the seat of liberty, is the same in all men. It may have in its service different instruments, powers different, and consequently unequal, whether material or spiritual. But the powers of which will disposes are not it,[196] for it does not dispose of them in an absolute manner. The only free power is that of will, but that is essentially so. If will recognizes laws, these laws are not motives, springs that move it,—they are ideal laws, that of justice, for example; will recognizes this law, and at the same time it has the consciousness of the ability to fulfil it or to break it, doing the one only with the consciousness of the ability to do the other, and reciprocally. Therein is the type of liberty, and at the same time of true equality; every thing else is false. It is not true that men have the right to be equally rich, beautiful, robust, to enjoy equally, in a word, to be equally fortunate; for they originally and necessarily differ in all those points of their nature that correspond to pleasure, to riches, to good fortune. God has made us with powers unequal in regard to all these things. Here equality is against nature and eternal order; for diversity and difference, as well as harmony, are the law of creation. To dream of such an equality is a strange mistake, a deplorable error. False equality is the idol of ill-formed minds and hearts, of disquiet and ambitious egoism. True equality accepts without shame all the exterior inequalities that God has made, and that it is not in the power of man not only to efface, but even to modify. Noble liberty has nothing to settle with the furies of pride and envy. As it does not aspire to domination, so, and by virtue of the same principle, it does not more aspire to a chimerical equality of mind, of beauty, of fortune, of enjoyments. Moreover, such an equality, were it possible, would be of little value in its own eyes; it asks something much greater than pleasure, fortune, rank, to wit, respect. Respect, an equal respect of the sacred right of being free in every thing that constitutes the person, that person which is truly man; this is what liberty and with it true equality claim, or rather imperatively demand. Respect must not be confounded with homage. I render homage to genius and beauty. I respect humanity alone, and by that I mean all free natures, for every thing that is not free in man is foreign to him. Man is therefore the equal of man precisely in every thing that makes him man, and the reign of true equality exacts on the part of all only the same respect for what each one possesses equally in himself, both young and old, both ugly and beautiful, both rich and poor, both the man of genius and the mediocre man, both woman and man, whatever has consciousness of being a person and not a thing. The equal respect of common liberty is the principle at once of duty and right; it is the virtue of each and the security of all; by an admirable agreement, it is dignity among men, and accordingly peace on earth. Such is the great and holy image of liberty and equality, which has made the hearts of our fathers beat, and the hearts of all virtuous and enlightened men, of all true friends of humanity. Such is the ideal that true philosophy pursues across the ages, from the generous dreams of Plato to the solid conceptions of Montesquieu, from the first free legislation of the smallest city of Greece to our declaration of rights, and the immortal works of the constituent Assembly.
The philosophy of sensation starts with a principle that condemns it to consequences as disastrous as those of the principle of liberty are beneficent. By confounding will with desire, it justifies passion, which is desire in all its force—passion, which is precisely the opposite of liberty. It accordingly unchains all the desires and all the passions, it gives full rein to imagination and the heart; it renders each man much less happy on account of what he possesses, than miserable on account of what he lacks; it makes him regard his neighbors with an eye of envy and contempt, and continually pushes society towards anarchy or tyranny. Whither, in fact, would you have interest lead in the train of desire? My desire is certainly to be the most fortunate possible. My interest is to seek to be so by all means, whatever they may be, under the single reserve that they be not contrary to their end. If I am born the first of men, the richest, the most beautiful, the most powerful, etc., I shall do every thing to preserve the advantages I have received. If fate has given me birth in a rank little elevated, with a moderate fortune, limited talents, and immense desires—for it cannot too often be repeated, desire of every kind aspires after the infinite—I shall do every thing to rise above the crowd, in order to increase my power, my fortune, my joys. Unfortunate on account of my position in this world, in order to change it, I dream of, and call for revolutions, it is true, without enthusiasm and political fanaticism, for interest alone does not produce these noble follies, but under the sharp goad of vanity and ambition. Thereby, then, I arrive at fortune and power; interest, then, claims security, as before it invoked agitation. The need of security brings me back from anarchy to the need of order, provided order be to my profit; and I become a tyrant, if I can, or the gilt servant of a tyrant. Against anarchy and tyranny, those two scourges of liberty, the only rampart is the universal sentiment of right, founded on the firm distinction between good and evil, the just and the useful, the honest and the agreeable, virtue and interest, will and desire, sensation and conscience.
5. Let us again signalize one of the necessary consequences of the doctrine of interest.
A free being, in possession of the sacred rule of justice, cannot violate it, knowing that he should and may follow it, without immediately recognizing that he merits punishment. The idea of punishment is not an artificial idea, borrowed from the profound calculations of legislators; legislations rest upon the natural idea of punishment. This idea, corresponding to that of liberty and justice, is necessarily wanting where the former two do not exist. Does he who obeys, and fatally obeys his desires, by the attraction of pleasure and happiness, supposing that, without any other motive than that of interest, he does an act conformed, externally at least, to the rule of justice, merit any thing by doing such an action? Not the least in the world. Conscience attributes to him no merit, and no one owes him thanks or recompense, for he only thinks of himself. On the other hand, if he injures others in wishing to serve himself, he does not feel culpable, and no one can say to him that he has merited punishment. A free being who wills what he does, who has a law, and can conform to it, or break it, is alone responsible for his acts. But what responsibility can there be in the absence of liberty and a recognized and accepted rule of justice? The man of sensation and desire tends to his own good under the law of interest, as the stone is drawn towards the centre of the earth under the law of gravitation, as the needle points to the pole. Man may err in the pursuit of his interest. In this case, what is to be done! As it seems, to put him again in the right way. Instead of that, he is punished. And for what, I pray you? For being deceived. But error merits advice, not punishment. Punishment has, in the system of interest, no more the sanction of moral sense than recompense. Punishment is only an act of personal defence on the part of society; it is an example which it gives, in order to inspire a salutary terror. These motives are excellent, if it be added that this punishment is just in itself, that it is merited, and that it is legitimately applied to the action committed. Omit that, and the other motives lose their authority, and there remains only an exercise of force, destitute of all morality. Then the culprit is not punished; he is smitten, or even put to death, as the animal that injures instead of serving is put to death without scruple. The condemned does not bow his head to the wholesome reparation due to justice, but to the weight of irons or the stroke of the axe. The chastisement is not a legitimate satisfaction, an expiation which, comprehended by the culprit, reconciles him in his own eyes with the order that he has violated. It is a storm that he could not escape; it is the thunder-bolt that falls upon him; it is a force more powerful than his own, which compasses and overthrows him. The appearance of public chastisements acts, without doubt, upon the imagination of peoples; but it does not enlighten their reason and speak to their conscience; it intimidates them, perhaps; it does not soften them. So recompense is only an additional attraction, added to all the others. As, properly speaking, there is no merit, recompense is simply an advantage that one desires, that is striven for and obtained without attaching to it any moral idea. Thus is degraded and effaced the great institution, natural and divine, of the recompense of virtue by happiness, and of reparation for a fault by proportionate suffering.[197]
We may then draw the conclusion, without fear of its being contradicted either by analysis or dialectics, that the doctrine of interest is incompatible with the most certain facts, with the strongest convictions of humanity. Let us add, that this doctrine is not less incompatible with the hope of another world, where the principle of justice will be better realized than in this.
I will not seek whether the sensualistic metaphysics can arrive at an infinite being, author of the universe and man. I am well persuaded that it cannot. For every proof of the existence of God supposes in the human mind principles of which sensation renders no account,—for example, the universal and necessary principle of causality, without which I should have no need of seeking, no power of finding the cause of whatever exists.[198] All that I wish to establish here is, that in the system of interest, man, not possessing any truly moral attribute, has no right to put in God that of which he finds no trace either in the world or in himself. The God of the ethics of interest must be analogous to the man of these same ethics. How could they attribute to him the justice and the love—I mean disinterested love—of which they cannot have the least idea? The God that they can admit loves himself, and loves only himself. And reciprocally, not considering him as the supreme principle of charity and justice, we can neither love nor honor him, and the only worship that we can render him, is that of the fear with which his omnipotence inspires us.