It is on the condition that the good may be an object of reason, that ethics can have an immovable basis. We have therefore insisted on the rational character of the idea of the good, but without misconceiving the part of sentiment.
We have distinguished that particular sensibility, which is stirred in us in the train of reason itself, from physical sensibility, which needs an impression made upon the organs in order to enter into exercise.
All our moral judgments are accompanied by sentiments that respond to them. The sight of an action which we judge to be good gives us pleasure,—the consciousness of having performed an obligatory act, and of having performed it freely, is also a pleasure; the judgment of merit and demerit makes our hearts beat by taking the form of sympathy and benevolence.
It must be avowed that the law of duty, although it ought to be fulfilled for its own sake, would be an ideal almost inaccessible to human weakness, if to its austere prescriptions were not added some inspiration of the heart. Sentiment is in some sort a natural grace that has been given us, either to supply the light of reason that is sometimes uncertain, or to succor the will wavering in the presence of an obscure or painful duty. In order to resist the violence of culpable passions, the aid of generous passions is needed; and when the moral law exacts the sacrifice of natural sentiments, of the sweetest and most lively instincts, it is fortunate that it can support itself on other sentiments, or other instincts which also have their charm and their force. Truth enlightens the mind; sentiment warms the soul and leads to action. It is not cold reason that determines a Codrus to devote himself for his countrymen, a d'Assas to utter, beneath the steel of the enemy, the generous cry that brings him death and saves the army. Let us guard ourselves, then, from weakening the authority of sentiment; let us honor and sustain enthusiasm; it is the source whence spring great and heroic actions.
And shall interest be entirely banished from our system? No; we recognize in the human soul a desire for happiness which is the work of God himself. This desire is a fact,—it must then have its place in a system founded upon experience. Happiness is one of the ends of human nature; only it is neither its sole end nor its principal end.
Admirable economy of the moral constitution of man! Its supreme end is the good, its law is virtue, which often imposes on it suffering, and thereby it is the most excellent of all things that we know. But this law is very hard and in contradiction with the instinct of happiness. Fear nothing,—the beneficent author of our being has placed in our souls, by the side of the severe law of duty, the sweet and amiable force of sentiment,—he has, in general, attached happiness to virtue; and, for the exceptions, for there are exceptions, at the end of the course he has placed hope.[230]
Our doctrine is now known. Its only pretension is to express faithfully each fact, to express them all, and to make appear at once their differences and their harmony.
Beyond that there is nothing new to attempt in ethics. To admit only a single fact and to sacrifice to that all the rest,—such is the beaten way. Of all the facts that we have just analyzed, there is not one that has not in its turn played the part of sole principle. All the great schools of moral philosophy have each seen only one side of truth,—fortunate when they have not chosen among the different phases of the moral phenomenon, in order to found upon them their entire system, precisely those that are least adapted to that end!
Who could now return to Epicurus, and, against the most manifest facts, against common sense, against the very idea of all ethics, found duty, virtue, the good, on the desire of happiness alone? It would be proof of great blindness and great barrenness. On the other hand, shall we immolate the need of happiness, the hope of all reward, human or divine, to the abstract idea of the good? The Stoics have done it,—we know with what apparent grandeur, with what real impotence. Shall we confine with Kant the whole of ethics to obligation? That is straitening still more a system that is already very narrow. Moreover, one may hope to surpass Kant in extent of views, by a completer knowledge and more faithful representation of facts; one cannot hope to be more profound in the point of view that he has chosen. Or, in another order of ideas, shall we refer to the will of God alone the obligation of virtue, and found ethics on religion, instead of giving religion to ethics as their necessary perfection? We still invent nothing new, we only renew the ethics of the theologians of the Middle Age, or rather of a particular school which has had for its adversaries the most illustrious doctors. Finally, shall we reduce all morality to sentiment, to sympathy, to benevolence? It only remains to follow the footsteps of Hutcheson and Smith, abandoned by Reid himself, or the footsteps of a celebrated adversary of Kant, Jacobi.[231]
The time of exclusive theories has gone by; to renew them is to perpetuate war in philosophy. Each of them, being founded upon a real fact, rightly refuses the sacrifice of this fact; and it meets in hostile theories an equal right and an equal resistance. Hence the perpetual return of the same systems, always at war with each other, and by turns vanquished and victorious. This strife can cease only by means of a doctrine that conciliates all systems by comprising all the facts that give them authority.