What holy hope could we then found upon such a God? And we who have some time grovelled upon this earth, thinking only of ourselves, seeking only pleasure and a pitiable happiness, what sufferings nobly borne for justice, what generous efforts to maintain and develop the dignity of our soul, what virtuous affections for other souls, can we offer to the Father of humanity as titles to his merciful justice? The principle that most persuades the human race of the immortality of the soul is still the necessary principle of merit and demerit, which, not finding here below its exact satisfaction, and yet under the necessity of finding it, inspires us to call upon God for its satisfaction, who has not put in our hearts the law of justice to violate it himself in regard to us.[199] Now, we have just seen that the ethics of interest destroy the principle of merit and demerit, both in this world, and above all, in the world to come. Accordingly, there is no regard beyond this world,—no recourse to an all-powerful judge, wholly just and wholly good, against the sports of fortune and the imperfections of human justice. Every thing is completed for man between birth and death, in spite of the instincts and presentiments of his heart, and even the principles of his reason.
The disciples of Helvetius will, perhaps, claim the glory of having freed humanity from the fears and hopes that turn it aside from its true interests. It is a service which mankind will appreciate. But since they confine our whole destiny to this world, let us demand of them what lot so worthy of envy they have in reserve for us here, what social order they charge with our good fortune, what politics, in fine, are derived from their ethics.[200]
You already know. We have demonstrated that the philosophy of sensation knows neither true liberty nor true right. What, in fact, is will for this philosophy? It is desire. What, then, is right? The power of satisfying desires. On this score, man is not free, and right is might.
Once more, nothing pertains less to man than desire. Desire comes of need which man does not make, which he submits to. He submits in the same way to desire. To reduce will to desire is to annihilate liberty; it is worse still, it is to put it where it is not; it is to create a mendacious liberty that becomes an instrument of crime and misery. To call man to such a liberty is to open his soul to infinite desires, which it is impossible for him to satisfy. Desire is in its nature without limits, and our power is very limited. If we were alone in this world, we should even then be much troubled to satisfy our desires. But we press against each other with immense desires, and limited, diverse, and unequal powers. When right is the force that is in each of us, equality of rights is a chimera,—all rights are unequal, since all forces are unequal and can never cease to be so. It is, therefore, necessary to renounce equality as well as liberty; or if one invents a false equality as well as a false liberty, he puts humanity in pursuit of a phantom.
Such are the social elements that the ethics of interest give to politics. From such elements I defy all the politics of the school of sensation and interest to produce a single day of liberty and happiness for the human race.
When right is might, the natural state of men among themselves, is war. All desiring the same things, they are all necessarily enemies; and in this war, woe to the feeble, to the feeble in body and the feeble in mind! The stronger are the masters by perfect right. Since right is might, the feeble may complain of nature that has not made them strong, and not complain of the strong man who uses his right in oppressing them. The feeble then call deception to their aid; and it is in this strife between cunning and force that humanity combats with itself.
Yes, if there are only needs, desires, passions, interests, with different forces pitted against each other, war, a war sometimes declared and bloody, sometimes silent and full of meannesses, is in the nature of things. No social art can change this nature,—it may be more or less covered; it always reappears, overcomes and rends the veil with which a mendacious legislation envelops it. Dream, then, of liberty for beings that are not free, of equality between beings that are essentially different, of respect for rights where there is no right, and of the establishment of justice on an indestructible foundation of inimical passions! From such a foundation can spring only endless troubles or oppression, or rather all these evils together in a necessary circle.
This fatal circle can be broken only by the aid of principles which all the metamorphoses of sensation do not engender, and for which interest cannot account, which none the less subsist to the honor and for the safety of humanity. These principles are those that time has little by little drawn from Christianity in order to give them for the guidance of modern societies. You will find them written in the glorious declaration of rights that forever broke the monarchy of Louis XV., and prepared the constitutional monarchy. They are in the charter that governs us, in our laws, in our institutions, in our manners, in the air that we breathe. They serve at once as foundations for our society and the new philosophy necessary to a new order.[201]
Perhaps you will ask me how, in the eighteenth century, so many distinguished, so many honest souls could let themselves be seduced by a system that must have been revolting to all their sentiments. I will answer by reminding you that the eighteenth century was an immoderate reaction against the faults into which had sadly fallen the old age of a great century and a great king, that is to say, the revocation of the edict of Nantes, the persecution of all free and elevated philosophy, a narrow and suspicious devotion, and intolerance, with its usual companion, hypocrisy. These excesses must have produced opposite excesses. Mme. de Maintenon opened the route to Mme. de Pompadour. After the mode of devotion comes that of license; it takes every thing by storm. It descends from the court to the nobility, to the clergy even, and accordingly to the people. It carried away the best spirits, even genius itself. It put a foreign philosophy in the place of the national philosophy, culpable, persecuted as it had been, for not being irreconcilable with Christianity. A disciple of Locke, whom Locke had discarded, Condillac, took the place of Descartes, as the author of Candide and la Pucelle had taken the place of Corneille and Bossuet, as Boucher and Vanloo had taken the place of Lesueur and Poussin. The ethics of pleasure and interest were the necessary ethics of that epoch. It must not be supposed from this that all souls were corrupt. Men, says M. Royer-Collard, are neither as good nor as bad as their principles[202]. No stoic has been as austere as stoicism, no epicurean as enervated as epicureanism. Human weakness practically baffles virtuous theories; in return, thank God, the instinct of the heart condemns to inconsistency the honest man who errs in bad theories. Accordingly, in the eighteenth century, the most generous and most disinterested sentiments often shone forth under the reign of the philosophy of sensation and the ethics of interest. But it is none the less true, that the philosophy of sensation is false, and the ethics of interest destructive of all morality.
I should perhaps make an apology for so long a lecture; but it was necessary to combat seriously a doctrine of morality radically incompatible with that which I would make penetrate your minds and your souls. It was especially necessary for me to strip the ethics of interest of that false appearance of liberty which they usurp in vain. I maintain, on the contrary, that they are the ethics of slaves, and send them back to the time when they ruled. Now, the principle of interest being destroyed, I propose to examine other principles also, less false without doubt, but still defective, exclusive, and incomplete, upon which celebrated systems have pretended to found ethics. I will successively combat these principles taken in themselves, and will then bring them together, reduced to their just value, in a theory large enough to contain all the true elements of morality, in order to express faithfully common sense and entire human consciousness.