Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good

by Victor Cousin

Virtue without happiness, and crime without unhappiness, are a contradiction, a disorder. If virtue supposes sacrifice, that is to say, suffering, it is of eternal justice that the sacrifice, generously accepted and courageously borne, have for a reward the very happiness that has been sacrificed. So, it is of eternal justice that crime be punished by the unhappiness of the culpable happiness which it has tried to obtain by stealth.

Now, when and how is the law fulfilled that attaches pleasure and pain to good and evil? Most of the time even here below. For order rules in this world, since the world endures. If order is sometimes disturbed, and happiness and unhappiness are not always distributed in right proportion to crime and virtue, still the absolute judgment of the good, the absolute judgment of obligation, the absolute judgment of merit and demerit, subsist inviolable and imprescriptible,—we remain convinced that he who has put in us the sentiment and the idea of order cannot in that fail himself, and that sooner or later he will re-establish the sacred harmony between virtue and happiness by the means that to him belong. But the time has not come to sound these mysterious prospects.[229] It is sufficient for us, but it was necessary to mark them, in order to show the nature and the end of moral truth.

We terminate this analysis of the different parts of the complex phenomenon of morality by recalling that one which is the most apparent of all, which, however, is only the accompaniment, and, thus to speak, the echo of all the others—sentiment. Sentiment has for its object to render sensible to the soul the tie between virtue and happiness. It is the direct and vital application of the law of merit and demerit. It precedes and authorizes the punishments and rewards that society institutes. It is the internal model according to which the imagination, guided by faith, represents to itself the punishments and rewards of the divine city. The world that we place beyond this is, in great part, our own heart transported into heaven. Since it comes thence, it is just that it should return thither.

We will not dwell upon the different phenomena of sentiment; we have sufficiently explained them in the last lecture. A few words will replace them under your eyes.

We cannot witness a good action, whoever may be its author, another or ourselves, without experiencing a particular pleasure, analogous to that which is attached to the perception of the beautiful; and we cannot witness a bad action without feeling a contrary sentiment, also analogous to that which the sight of an ugly and deformed object excites in us. This sentiment is profoundly different from agreeable or disagreeable sensation.

Are we the authors of the good action? We feel a satisfaction that we do not confound with any other. It is not the triumph of interest nor that of pride,—it is the pleasure of modest honesty or dignified virtue that renders justice to itself. Are we the authors of the bad action? We feel offended conscience groaning within us. Sometimes it is only an importunate reclamation, sometimes it is a bitter agony. Remorse is a suffering the more poignant on account of our feeling that it is deserved.

The spectacle of a good action done by another also has something delicious to the soul. Sympathy is an echo in us that responds to whatever is noble and good in others. When interest does not lead us astray, we naturally put ourselves in the place of him who has done well. We feel in a certain measure the sentiments that animate him. We elevate ourselves to the mood of his spirit. Is it not already for the good man an exquisite reward to make the noble sentiments that animate him thus pass into the hearts of his fellow-men? The spectacle of a bad action, instead of sympathy, excites an involuntary antipathy, a painful and sad sentiment. Without doubt, this sentiment is never acute like remorse. There is in innocence something serene and placid that tempers even the sentiment of injustice, even when this injustice falls on us. We then experience a sort of shame for humanity, we mourn over human weakness, and, by a melancholy return upon ourselves, we are less moved to anger than to pity. Sometimes also pity is overcome by a generous anger, by a disinterested indignation. If, as we have said, it is a sweet reward to excite a noble sympathy, an enthusiasm almost always fertile in good actions, it is a cruel punishment to stir up around us pity, indignation, aversion, and contempt.

Sympathy for a good action is accompanied by benevolence for its author. He inspires us with an affectionate disposition. Even without knowing it, we would love to do good to him; we desire that he may be happy, because we judge that he deserves to be. Antipathy also passes from the action to the person, and engenders against him a sort of bad will, for which we do not blame ourselves, because we feel it to be disinterested and find it legitimate.

Moral satisfaction and remorse, sympathy, benevolence, and their opposites are sentiments and not judgments; but they are sentiments that accompany judgments, the judgment of the good, especially that of merit and demerit. These sentiments have been given us by the sovereign Author of our moral constitution to aid us in doing good. In their diversity and mobility, they cannot be the foundations of absolute obligation which must be equal for all, but they are to it happy auxiliaries, sure and beneficent witnesses of the harmony between virtue and happiness.

These are the facts as presented by a faithful description, as brought to light by a detailed analysis.