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 A SKETCH OF MORALITY 
 INDEPENDENT OF 
 
 OBLIGATION OR SANCTION.
 
 A SKETCH OF MORALITY 
 
 INDEPENDENT OF 
 
 OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 BY 
 
 M. GUYAU. 
 
 Translated from the French (Second Edition) by 
 GERTRUDE KAPTEYN. 
 
 LONDON : 
 WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET ST. 
 
 1898.
 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I'AGt 
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE . . . . vii 
 
 PREFACE . i 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Criticism of the Different Attempts to Justify Obligation from the 
 Physical Point of View. 
 
 1*1 CHAPTER I. The Morality of Metaphysical Dogmatism . 7 
 
 i. The Hypothesis of Optimism . . .8 
 
 r" ii. The Hypothesis of Pessimism . . .26 
 
 iii. The Hypothesis of the Indifference of Nature . 38 
 
 S II. 
 
 i. Morality of Practical Certitude . . -45 
 
 ii. Morality of Faith . . . 52 
 
 $O ' Morality of Doubt . -64 
 
 ts- 
 
 t 
 
 FIRST BOOK. 
 
 On the Motive Force of Morality from a Scientific Point of View. 
 First Equivalents of Duty. 
 
 CHAPTER I. Intensity of Life is the Motive Force of Action . 71 
 ,, II. The Highest Intensity of Life has for its Necessary 
 
 Correlative the Greatest Expansion . .81 
 
 III. To what Extent Inward Power creates a Sort of 
 
 Obligation. Power and Duty . . .89 
 
 ,, IV. The Sentiment of Obligation from the Point of 
 
 View of Mental Dynamics as Impulsive or 
 
 Repressive Force . . . -98 
 
 284219
 
 vi CONTENTS. 
 
 PACE 
 
 SECOND BOOK. 
 Last Possible Equivalents of Ditty for the Maintenance of Morality. 
 
 CIIAITEK I. Fourth Equivalent of Duty Derived from Love of 
 
 Risk and of Struggle . . . .116 
 
 II. Fifth Equivalent of Duty, Derived from Meta- 
 physical Risk. The Hypothesis. 
 
 i. Metaphysical Risk in Speculation . . 135 
 
 ii. Metaphysical Risk in Action . . 147 
 
 THIRD BOOK. 
 TTie Idea of Sanction. 
 
 CHAPTER I. Criticism of Natural Sanction and of Moral 
 
 Sanction . . . . 152 
 
 i. Natural Sanction . . . 154 
 
 ii. Moral Sanction and Distributive Justice . 158 
 
 ,, II. The Principle of Penal or Defensive Justice in 
 
 Society . . . . . . 169 
 
 ,, III. Criticism of Inward Sanction and of Remorse . 186 
 ,, IV. Criticism of Religious and Metaphysical Sanction. 
 
 i. Religious Sanction .... 193 
 
 ii. The Sanction of Love and of Fraternity . 197 
 
 iii. Conclusion .... 208
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 THERE can be little doubt that the present moment offers a 
 fit opportunity for introducing to a large circle of English 
 readers this book of Guyau's, which, in his own country, 
 is rightly considered his masterpiece. Guyau is already 
 known in England by his remarkable and suggestive work 
 on Education and Heredity and The Irreligion of the Future; 
 and another work from him, on so important a subject 
 as Morality, may furnish a much-needed source of inspira- 
 tion and encouragement, at a time when moral science is 
 evidently entering upon a period of renewed energy and 
 wider interest. 
 
 Stimulated by the great difficulties of an ever-increasing 
 complexity of life, under circumstances which render many 
 of the old creeds and religions incompetent to grapple with 
 the problems demanding solution ; distressed by a mental 
 chaos which threatens to retard all progressive efforts by 
 fitful reactions : the lovers of freedom and social ameliora- 
 tion turn to Morality for the support and the strength- 
 giving quality without which life is doomed to decay and 
 destruction. 
 
 But, in order to make the influence of morality a living 
 reality, instead of a shadowy and conventional dogma, the 
 study of its principles should be approached with a deep
 
 viii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 reverence for human nature and truth, and a broad-minded 
 sympathy, which alone can achieve success in so arduous an 
 undertaking. 
 
 In this sphere of moral science, which includes all that is 
 of most vital importance to man, the author of Morality 
 Independent of Sanction or Obligation is a master-spirit. 
 He merits the study of all men and women who look for 
 the development of the highest and best from germs which 
 lie hidden in the human breast itself. 
 
 That Guyau is one of ourselves, born in the central life 
 of the nineteenth century, gives all the more significance 
 and actuality to his thoughts, and fills his writings with a 
 convincing interest which the utterances of authors belonging 
 to earlier times cannot possess in the same degree and 
 intensity. For to each generation the hope and the light 
 of the future must necessarily spring from its own present. 
 The past may give us the eternal essence of human thought, 
 which has an historical and unquestionable value ; but the 
 present alone can fully express its own needs, capacities, 
 and forces. The present must work out its own salvation. 
 
 Neither Socrates nor Christ, neither Aristotle nor Buddha, 
 neither Luther nor Kant, can give us the keys to the 
 problems of an age which was unknown to them. Our 
 springs of life, the energies of our new birth, take their 
 rise in the most highly-gifted minds of our own era. And 
 among these finely-organized and superior natures Guyau 
 stands one of the foremost. 
 
 Born in 1856, a typical offspring of the second part of 
 our century, we find in him a personality specially endued 
 with a genius for reflecting the intellectual and moral evolu- 
 tion of the age. His are the very doubts and negations 
 which we experience, and his are the very hopes and ideals
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. ix 
 
 which shall lift us out of the depths of mechanical materialism. 
 Exclusive attention to physical and external phenomena has 
 occupied our minds, and shut us out from the sphere of 
 reflective and emotional activity, which is none other than 
 the sphere of morality. 
 
 Guyau, in no way hampered by an antiquated education, 
 found himself, from the very 'beginning of his intellectual 
 life, at the point which even now a great many enlightened 
 minds only reach after a severe struggle. He possessed the 
 great advantage of which Emerson speaks in his essay on 
 "Worship ": " For a great nature it is a happiness to escape 
 a religious training religion of character is so apt to be 
 invaded." We should like to add : Religion of thought 
 that is to say, the loyalty to truth is so apt to be lost. 
 From this danger Guyau escaped, his first and only 
 religion having been the idealism of a Plato and a Kant. 
 These were the masters from whose lofty conceptions he 
 gradually evolved the standpoint whence the royal road to 
 human self-direction lies open before his vision and his 
 efforts. And his nature was such as to unite the qualities 
 of the thinker and moralist with those of the artist and 
 poet. While acting as the mirror of all the conflicting ten- 
 dencies and characteristics of his age, it remained a witness 
 to the higher unity which underlies all existence. 
 
 The great discoveries of modern science, the works of 
 Darwin and Spencer, only half understood or wrongly 
 applied by many of their would-be followers, found in 
 Guyau an intelligence capable of recognising their golden 
 grains of truth, a mind open to accept some of their funda- 
 mental verities, but also a mind aware of their limitations 
 and shortcomings. It was given to this young and aspiring 
 poet-philosopher to add to the sound and healthy naturalism
 
 X TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 of his day an idealism without which moral evolution lacks 
 its vital spring and its fullest meaning. In him lived, from 
 him went forth, an idealism which, while rooted firmly in 
 nature, could nevertheless soar upwards into the higher 
 regions of thought and imagination. He believed in the 
 doing of goodness for its own sake ; in virtue free from any 
 material or outward obligation or sanction ; in duty relying 
 solely upon its own incentives and forces ; in a morality 
 living and growing from its own seeds. This belief was 
 inspired by the expansion and development of life itself. 
 This new faith, freed from the bonds and chains which but 
 too often doom lower conceptions of morality or religion 
 to sterility, opened up the prospect of a future in which it 
 should become possible to realize the ideal of a sane, healthy, 
 and strong race directing its powers and capacities to their 
 highest use. Instead of the external authority of a God, 
 or the equally external authority of categorical imperatives 
 imposed upon our freedom (as even the great Immanuel 
 Kant still more or less conceived morality), Guyau con- 
 structed a kind of natural determinism of impulses and 
 sentiments, which, disciplined through reflection and expe- 
 rience, are a law unto themselves. 
 
 Morality is thus conceived as a natural, internal energy 
 for good, translating itself into action by its own exuberance 
 of vitality. It is an abundance of force in natural overflow, 
 and thus the life of a moral agent is mingled with that of its 
 fellow-creatures. Instead of an outer law of restraint, which 
 incessantly struggles with an unwilling individual (and it is 
 this which forms the basis of ordinary morals), we here 
 find a moral power, which may be so trained and increased 
 as to subdue evil tendencies far more successfully than is 
 possible under categorical imperatives or apodictic rules.
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xi 
 
 The great merit of the book is that it unfolds this 
 ideal of the loveliness of the natural moral ideal, and renders 
 it so vivid as to create the desire for its realization. The 
 display of this ideal as a possibility is an invaluable 
 service in a period which is threatened on the one side by 
 moral dissolution, and on the other by a return to mental 
 chaos and superstition. Guyau perceived that the situation 
 was critical. Morality must justify itself, or it must cease 
 to exist. The latter alternative was not possible to a soul 
 such as his, which loved virtue, and therefore already 
 believed in it, and in the possibility of its realization on 
 earth. 
 
 If no ready-made theory, no system, no dogmas, can be 
 got out of this book, there remains the great merit of its 
 bringing home to us the conviction that to our time 
 belongs the task of creating a new mental and moral 
 guidance, which shall enable the individual and the race to 
 steer a happier course. 
 
 " This is a great task, and it is our task." So ends 
 a book which gives to the serious and open-minded 
 student many suggestions as to the best way of fulfilling this 
 task. It is thus both a call and a sign-post. Guyau threw 
 light on whatever problem he touched, and, by virtue of his 
 large-hearted sympathy and singularly gifted nature, his soul 
 realized the possibility of ultimate harmony and peace 
 between those conflicting tendencies in human nature which 
 give rise to the riddles of existence. 
 
 As an artist he felt, as a thinker he discovered, as a 
 moralist he taught, that only the harmonizing of the 
 different spheres of human thought, emotion, and will 
 could banish sorrow and pain. In him the aesthetic and 
 moral qualities were so mixed that his conception of
 
 xii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 morality was lit up by the ardour and enthusiasm of art, and 
 his conception of art was strengthened by steadfast moral 
 aspiration. The intensity of his life-impulse and force drove 
 his nature to go out towards others, thus exemplifying that 
 action and re-action of the individual and his surroundings 
 which may solve the problem of conflicting altruism and 
 egoism. 
 
 No nobler task than the one set by Guyau could be given 
 to the twentieth century ; and to those who believe in its 
 mission he should no longer be a stranger. In Guyau, who 
 has not unjustly been called " the Spinoza of France," they 
 will find the inspiration needed for the carrying on of all 
 social efforts and reforms. His high-souled sincerity and 
 his ceaseless striving after truth and virtue mark him out as 
 a standard-bearer in the struggle for the emancipation of 
 humanity. 
 
 GERTRUDE KAPTEYN. 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 44 ; six lines from bottom. For "antagnostic " read " antago- 
 nistic." 
 
 Page 135 ; middle of page. For " KivSvrjos" read " 
 Page 172 ; eleven lines from top. Delete "guilty."
 
 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF 
 OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 AN ingenious thinker has said that the aim of education 
 was to give to man "a bias towards goodness."* This 
 saying clearly shows the foundation of morality as 
 generally accepted. To the philosopher, on the contrary, 
 there may not be in conduct one single element for the 
 presence of which the mind cannot account, one obligation 
 which does not explain itself, one duty the necessity for 
 which is not clearly shown. 
 
 We intend, therefore, to investigate the character and 
 extent of a conception of morality in which " bias " 
 should have no part ; in which everything would be sup- 
 ported by reason, and appreciated at its true value, whether 
 with regard to certainties or with regard to merely probable 
 opinions and hypotheses. If the majority of philosophers 
 even those of the utilitarian, evolutionist, and positive 
 schools have not completely succeeded in their task, this 
 is because they wanted J:o put forward their rational moral 
 philosophy as nearly adequate to the ordinary moral philo- 
 sophy, as having the same scope, and also pretending 
 to have rendered it as imperative in its precepts. This is not 
 
 * " Le prijugt du bien " (Vinet).
 
 2 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 possible. When Science has overthrown the dogmas of 
 the different religions, she has not pretended to replace 
 them all, nor to immediately supply a distinct object, a 
 definite food, for the religious need; her position with 
 regard to morality is the same as with regard to religion. 
 Nothing indicates that a conception of morality which is 
 purely scientific that is to say, based solely on that which is 
 known must agree with the general conception of morality, 
 composed for the most part of feelings and prejudices. To 
 make these two conceptions of morality coincide, Bentham 
 and his followers have too often violated facts. They were 
 wrong. One can, moreover, understand very well that the 
 sphere of intellectual demonstration does not equal in range 
 the sphere of moral action, and that there are cases in which 
 a definite and rational rule happens to fail. Till now, in 
 cases of that kind, habit, instinct, sentiment, have guided 
 man ; these may still be followed in the future, provided it 
 is done with clear knowledge, and that, in following them, 
 one is conscious of obeying, not some mysterious obligation, 
 but the most generous impulses of human nature, together 
 with the most just necessities of social life. 
 
 One does not undermine the truth of a science for 
 instance, of moral science by showing that its object as a 
 science is limited. On the contrary, to limit a science is 
 often to give a greater stamp of certitude ; chemistry is but 
 alchemy limited to observable facts. Likewise we believe 
 that a purely scientific morality should not pretend to 
 embrace everything, and that, far from wanting to exag- 
 gerate the extent of her domain, it should endeavour to 
 settle its limits itself. It must consent to say, frankly : 
 In such and such a case I am unable to prescribe impera- 
 tively in the name of duty. Thus the sense of obligation
 
 PREFACE. 3 
 
 and of sanction can no longer exist. Consult your deepest 
 instincts, your most vivid sympathies, your most normal and 
 most human aversions ; after that you may make meta- 
 physical hypotheses about the foundation of things, about 
 your own destiny, and that of your fellow-creatures. 
 Starting from this precise point, you are left to yourself 
 in other words, to your " self-government." This is freedom 
 in morals consisting, not in absence of rule, but in absence 
 of scientific rule, wherever such cannot justify itself with 
 sufficient rigour. Here begins in morality the part of philo- 
 sophic speculation which positive science can neither suppress 
 nor entirely replace. In climbing a mountain there comes 
 a certain moment when we are wrapped in clouds, which 
 hide the summit ; we are lost in darkness. It is the same 
 on the heights of thought : one part of morality, which is 
 mingled with metaphysics, may be forever hidden in clouds, 
 but there must also be a solid basis, and we must know with 
 precision the points where man should resign himself to 
 enter cloudland. 
 
 Among recent works on morality, the three which, for 
 different reasons, have appeared to us to be the most 
 important are: in England, "The Data of Ethics," by 
 Spencer ; in Germany, " The Phenomenology of the Moral 
 Conscience," by Hartmann ; in France, " The Criticism of 
 Contemporary Moral Systems," by M. Alfred Fouillee. It 
 seems to us that by the reading of these works, so different 
 in character, two points are brought forward at the same 
 time. On the one hand, the conception of morality of the 
 Naturalist and Positivist schools furnishes no unchangeable 
 principles, either in the way of obligation or in the way of 
 sanction ; on the other hand, if an idealistic conception of 
 morality can provide any, it is of a purely hypothetical and
 
 4 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 not of an assertive nature. In other words, what comes 
 within the order of facts is not universal, and whatever is 
 universal is a speculative hypothesis. The result is that the 
 imperative, in so far as it is absolute and categorical, dis- 
 appears on both sides. We accept, on our own account, 
 this disappearance ; and, instead of regretting the moral 
 variability, which is the result of it within certain limits, we 
 consider it, on the contrary, as the characteristic of the 
 future conception of morality. In many respects this con- 
 ception will not only be " autonomous," but " anomos." In 
 contrast with the transcendent speculations of M. de 
 Hartmann on the folly of the will to live and on the nirvana 
 imposed logically by reason as a duty, we admit, with 
 Spencer, that conduct has for motive power the most 
 intense, the fullest, the most varied life ; whereas our con- 
 ception of the conciliation of individual and social life is 
 other than of Spencer. On the other hand, we recognise, 
 with the author of the " Critique des Systemes de Morale 
 Contemporains " (M. Alfred Fouillee), that the English 
 school and the Positivist school, which admit an " unknow- 
 able," have been wrong in expelling every individual hypo- 
 thesis from this subject ; but we do not think, as does this 
 author, that the unknowable itself can contribute a 
 " principle practically limiting and restricting conduct," a 
 principle of mere justice, which would be, as it were, a 
 medium between the categorical imperative of Kant and 
 the free metaphysical hypothesis. The only admissible 
 " equivalents " or " substitutes " of duty, to use the same 
 language as the author of " La Liberte" et le Determinisme," 
 appear to us to be : 
 
 i. The consciousness of our inward and superior power, 
 to which we see duty practically reduced.
 
 PREFACE. 5 
 
 2. The influence exercised by ideas over actions. 
 
 3. The increasing fusion of the sensibilities, and the 
 increasingly social character of our pleasures and sorrows. 
 
 4. The love of risk in action, of which we will show the 
 importance hitherto ignored. 
 
 5. The love of metaphysical hypothesis, which is a sort 
 of risk in thought. 
 
 These different incentives combined are, for us, all that a 
 conception of morality, reduced to facts only and to hypo- 
 theses founded upon them, would be able to offer in the 
 place of the categorical obligation of past times. As to the 
 moral sanction, so called, distinct from social sanctions, it 
 will be seen that we purely and simply suppress it, because 
 as " atonement " it is fundamentally immoral. Our book 
 should, therefore, be regarded as an attempt to determine 
 the compass, the extent, and also the limits of an exclusively 
 scientific conception of morality. Its value, therefore, exists 
 independently of any opinions which may be held as to the 
 absolute and metaphysical basis of morality.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 CRITICISM OF THE DIFFERENT ATTEMPTS TO 
 JUSTIFY OBLIGATION FROM THE META- 
 PHYSICAL POINT OF VIEW. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Morality of Metaphysical Dogmatism. I. The Hypo- 
 thesis of Optimism. II. The Hypothesis of Pessimism. 
 III. The Hypothesis of the Indifference of Nature. 
 
 THE morality of realistic metaphysics admits a "good 
 in itself" (un bien en soi), a natural good distinct from 
 pleasure and from happiness, a possible hierarchy of what 
 is good in nature, and, for that very reason, a hierarchy 
 of the different beings. It returns to the old maxim, " To 
 conform one's self to nature." Is it not illusive thus to seek 
 in nature a type of good to be realized by us, and to which 
 we are under obligation ? Is it possible to know the basis 
 of things, and the true meaning of nature, so as to work in 
 the same direction ? Has nature, scientifically considered, 
 any meaning at all ? There are three hypotheses before 
 us optimism, pessimism, the indifference of nature. Let us 
 examine them in turn, to see if they, from the point of 
 view of metaphysics, justify the absolute, imperative, and 
 categorical obligation of moral philosophy as ordinarily 
 accepted.
 
 8 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 THE HYPOTHESIS OF OPTIMISM. PROVIDENCE AND IMMOR- 
 TALITY. 
 
 i. Such men as Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Spinoza, Leibnitz, 
 have supported optimism, and have tried to found an 
 objective morality in conformity with this conception of 
 the world. One knows all the objections to which this 
 system has given rise. In reality, absolute optimism is 
 rather immoral than moral, for it involves the negation of 
 progress. When once it has penetrated the mind, it pro- 
 duces, as correspondent sentiment, satisfaction with things 
 as they are : from the moral point of view, justification of 
 everything ; from the political point of view, respect for all 
 authority, passive resignation, voluntary stifling of every 
 feeling of right, and consequently of every feeling of duty. 
 If all that exists is good, no change is wanted ; there must 
 be no interference with the work of God that great artist. 
 Likewise, everything that happens is equally good ; every 
 event justifies itself, since it is part of a divine work, com- 
 plete in all its details. In the end this brings about, not 
 only the exculpation, but the deification, of all injustice. 
 To-day we are astonished at the temples which the ancients 
 raised to men such as Nero and Domitian ; not only did 
 they refuse to understand crime, but they adored it. Are 
 we doing anything else, if we shut our eyes to the reality of 
 evil here below in order afterwards to declare this world 
 divine and bless its author? The worshipping of the 
 Caesars was with the Romans the sign of an inferior moral 
 state ; reacting on that very state, it debased and degraded 
 it still more. As much can be said of the worship of a 
 creative god, who should be responsible for everything, and 
 who, in reality, is irresponsibility itself. Devout optimism 
 is a state analogous to that of the slave, who is happy of 
 the sick man, who is not conscious of his illness ; the latter, 
 at least, does not attribute a divine character to his illness.
 
 THE HYPOTHESIS OF OPTIMISM PROVIDENCE. 9 
 
 Charity itself, in order to exist, needs to believe in the 
 reality and indignity of the miseries which it relieves. If 
 poverty, if sorrow, if ignorance (blessed are the poor in 
 spirit !), if all the evils in this world are not real evils, and 
 are, at bottom, wrongs and absurdities of nature, how will 
 charity be able to keep the rational character which is the 
 condition of existence of every virtue ? And if charity, like 
 a flame without food, is extinguished, what will be the value 
 of your world, which you imagine as a work of absolute 
 charity, of absolute and all-powerful goodness ? 
 
 Even' pessimism can often be superior in moral value to 
 exaggerated optimism : it does not always fetter effort in the 
 direction of progress ; if it is painful to see everything in 
 black, it is sometimes more useful than to see everything in 
 rose colour. Pessimism may be the symptom of an un- 
 healthy over-excitement of the moral sense greatly hurt by 
 the evils of this world ; optimism, on the contrary, too often 
 indicates an apathy, a numbness of all moral feeling. Who- 
 ever does not reflect, and is actuated merely by habit, has a 
 strong tendency to optimism ; the people, being ignorant, 
 taken in a mass, are especially in the country pretty 
 nearly satisfied with the present state of things ; they live 
 by routine ; the greatest evil in their eyes is change. The 
 more inferior a population is, the more blindly conservative 
 it is : this is the political form of optimism. Nothing is 
 more dangerous than the desire to give to optimism a 
 religious and moral sanction to thus make it a guiding 
 principle of thought and of conduct ; the human mind may 
 thus be paralyzed in all its activities man may be demora- 
 lized by his God. Permit me to relate a dream. One night 
 had some angel or seraph taken me on his wings to 
 transport me to the paradise of the Gospels, near the 
 " Creator " ? one night I felt myself soaring in heaven, far 
 above the earth. As I rose higher and higher, I heard a 
 sad and weary sound ascending from the earth, a sound 
 similar to the monotonous song of the torrents heard amid
 
 10 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 the solitude and silence of the mountain summits. I dis- 
 tinguished human voices sobs, mingled with thanksgiving ; 
 groans, interrupted by benedictions ; I heard despairing 
 supplications, the sighs of the dying, rising with the fumes 
 of incense. All this melted into one intense groan into a 
 symphony so heart-rending that my soul filled with pity. 
 The sky seemed obscured by it, and I no longer saw the 
 sun, nor the joy of the earth. I turned round to him who 
 was with me. "Do you not hear?" I asked him. The 
 angel looked at me with a serene and peaceful look. 
 " These are," he said, " the prayers of men, ascending from 
 the earth to God." While he spoke, his white wing glittered 
 in the sun ; but it seemed to me quite black, and full of 
 horror. " What tears I should shed were I that God !" I 
 exclaimed ; and I began, indeed, to cry like a child. I 
 loosened the hand of the angel, and let myself fall down 
 again to the earth, thinking there remained in me too much 
 humanity to make it possible for me to live in heaven. 
 
 If optimism, instead of considering the world as actually 
 good, tried to re-establish the notion of a continual progress, 
 regulated by a Divine law, would it succeed better in solving 
 the problems of this world, and in laying the foundation of 
 human morality ? We do not believe it. 
 
 If, with the optimists, one postulates a remote aim, which 
 should be the same for all beings, the means of attaining 
 this aim are so opposite in character that the moralist will 
 be unable to deduce from the knowledge of the aim a 
 practical rule of conduct. All roads lead to Rome; 
 perhaps many roads lead to the universal aim, and injustice 
 may serve the same purpose as justice. Even for humanity 
 strife is sometimes as sure a means of progress as agree- 
 ment ; and, from a universally optimistic point of view, it is 
 not evident why the human good will should be more con- 
 formable than the evil will to the hidden ends of nature or 
 of God. All conscious will is often even useless, and good 
 seems to be able to work itself out at least partially
 
 THE HYPOTHESIS OF OPTIMISM PROVIDENCE. II 
 
 without the intervention of man. A rock on which a child 
 has just split its forehead may be of more service to the 
 future well-being of this globe than that child, since the 
 rock has been concentrating in itself, during thousands of 
 years, a portion of the solar heat, and thus helps in some 
 degree to retard the cooling of the earth. 
 
 The morality of optimist dogmatism commands us 
 to contribute to the good of the whole ; but there 
 are too many possible ways. Everything can be useful. 
 The teacher of gymnastics, who placed in the same room a 
 portrait of Jesus Christ and of himself, believed that he 
 was doing as much as Jesus for humanity. Perhaps he was 
 not wrong with regard to universal and providential evolu- 
 tion. The greatest nations have been those whose people 
 were strongest and had the most robust appetite. The 
 Romans astonished the world by their gluttony ; the English, 
 the Germans, the Russians (who will have so very important 
 a part to play in the future), are great eaters ; even the egoist 
 himself can work for universal perfection he can produce 
 a healthy, vigorous, hardy generation. Egoism has made 
 the English race great. In many respects Erasmus Darwin 
 was a naive egoist the genius of his grandson has justified 
 it. Everything becomes merely relative, when viewed with 
 regard to the total results for the whole universe. Which 
 point of the Christian teaching do travellers tell us has most 
 strongly impressed the minds of the negroes ? The religious 
 law, with which one wanted to inspire them ? No ; but the 
 propriety of the Sunday. And the African and Asiatic people, 
 what did they adopt from Mohammedanism ? The drinking 
 of water. 
 
 In the great organism of the universe the microbe of 
 typhoid fever and cholera has a duty to perform, which it 
 cannot, and dare not, cease to perform; man, also, has 
 special functions the man of evil as well as the man of 
 good. Seen from a certain distance, good comes out of 
 evil. It is thus that great defects, great sacrifices of men,
 
 12 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 are often useful to a nation. It is told that Spinoza, when 
 ill, laughed at the sight of his favourite spider devouring 
 the flies which he threw at him. Perhaps then, applying it 
 to himself, he thought of the internal complaint which was 
 destroying him ; perhaps he smiled to feel himself likewise 
 enveloped in some invisible spider's web, which paralysed 
 his will, silently devoured by a multitude of infinitely small 
 monsters. 
 
 Once more, in the immensity of the universe, the paths 
 and roads followed by each being, instead of running parallel 
 or of being concentric, cross one another intersect in 
 every way. He who finds himself, by chance, at the point 
 of intersection is naturally bruised. Thus there is at the 
 root of nature which it is pretended is " as good as 
 possible "a fundamental immorality, which is caused by 
 the opposition of functions between living beings, by the 
 quality of space and matter. In absolute optimism the 
 universal good is an end which employs and justifies all 
 means. 
 
 Moreover, nothing tells us that the line which leads to 
 this universal good passes directly through humanity, and 
 demands of all individuals that devotion to humanity usually 
 considered by moralists as the practical foundation of moral 
 obligation. If a tiger believed that, by saving one of his 
 fellow tigers, he was working for the advancement of the 
 univeisal good, he might be mistaken ; it is better for all 
 that tigers do not spare each other. Thus, everything 
 blends and grows smooth, viewed from the heights of 
 metaphysical contemplation ; good and evil, individuals 
 and species, species and environment. Nothing base is 
 left, as Spinoza, the optimist, said, " in the house of 
 Jupiter." 
 
 A last hypothesis has been tried to, in a measure, save 
 optimism, to excuse the creating cause or the eternal sub- 
 stance, without compromising the moral sense and the 
 instinct of progress. An effort has been made to point
 
 THE HYPOTHESIS OF OPTIMISM PROVIDENCE. 13 
 
 out in physical evil (suffering) and in intellectual evil (error, 
 doubt, ignorance) a condition sine qua non of moral good. 
 In this way an attempt is made to justify them. It is said 
 that the purpose of the universe is not outside the human 
 will. The purpose of the universe is morality ; but morality 
 presupposes choice and struggle that is to say, it pre- 
 supposes the reality of evil, physical or intellectual, and 
 the possibility of moral evil. From this it follows that all the 
 evil so liberally diffused in this world has but one object 
 to place an alternative before man. According to that 
 doctrine, in which Platonism is blended with Kantism, the 
 world itself should be nothing but a sort of living formula 
 of the moral problem. Vega in the Lyre or Arcturus, all 
 the suns, the stars, and their satellites might roll for ever in 
 space, in order that here below, on some one day, in one 
 hour (which, perhaps, has never yet come, according to 
 Kant), a small impulse of disinterestedness might be pro- 
 duced, or that a glass of water might be given, with truly 
 kind intention, to some one who is thirsty. That is beauti- 
 ful ; but how to deduce " a categorical duty " from an hypo- 
 thesis so uncertain, so contrary, it seems, to facts ? If the 
 universe has value only as a simple opportunity for charity, 
 its existence seems difficult to justify, and the ways of God 
 are very tortuous. 
 
 The hypothesis which we are examining presupposes 
 the existence of freewill, of a power of choice (at least, 
 noumenal). Without absolute liberty there is no absolute 
 responsibility ; neither is there merit or demerit. Let us 
 accept, without examination, all these notions. Even then 
 we can prove to their partisans that this world, made 
 according to their opinion with a view to morality, is far from 
 being the best possible world even in this respect. Indeed, 
 if merit stood in direct ratio to suffering, I can very well 
 imagine a world where the suffering would be still much 
 more intense than in this one ; where the contest between 
 right and wrong would be much more heartrending ; where
 
 14 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 duty, meeting more obstacles, would be more meritorious. 
 Let us even suppose that the Creator heaps up so many 
 obstacles for his creature that it becomes very difficult for 
 him not to give in not to be carried away by evil. The 
 merit of the creature, if he triumphs in a supreme effort, will 
 be infinitely greater. If that which is most beautiful to 
 God in the world is the resignation of Job or the devotion 
 of Regulus, why are the occasions for those high virtues so 
 rare, and why does progress make them, day by day, still 
 more rare ? In our century a general of an army who 
 behaved like Decius would not in the least assist the victory 
 of his soldiers ; on the contrary, his heroism would be a 
 mistake in tactics. The level of virtue falls every day. 
 We do not, in these days, experience those powerful 
 temptations which made the vigorous bodies of St. Jerome 
 and St. Antoine tremble. Progress most frequently runs 
 counter to the development of true morality that morality 
 which is not born ready made, but makes itself. Perhaps I 
 have in me an energy of will which, fifteen centuries ago, 
 might have transformed me into a martyr. In our days I 
 remain willingly or unwillingly an ordinary mortal, for want 
 of hangmen. In short, how poor is our age in true merit ; 
 what decline in the eyes of a partisan of liberty and of 
 absolute morality ! If the only aim of the world is to put 
 the moral problem before us, we must admit that barbarism 
 puts it much more forcibly than civilization. We are too 
 happy to-day to be deeply moral. We are generally able 
 to satisfy our desires so easily while doing good that it is 
 hardly any longer worth while to commit evil at least, 
 not on a large scale. When Christ was tempted, it was 
 in a desert, on the mountain; he was almost naked, 
 exhausted by fasting. In these days, when the majority 
 of people are well dressed and do not fast any more, the 
 devil is not seen from so near; but then, if there is 
 no longer a tempter, there is no longer a Christ. To 
 explain the world, you establish a sort of contradiction
 
 THE HYPOTHESIS OF OPTIMISM PROVIDENCE. 15 
 
 between perceptible happiness and virtue. You say, the 
 world is all the more perfect as it is less happy, while 
 perfection lies in the will triumphing over grief and 
 desire.* Well, exactly in the terms of this same con- 
 tradiction it is possible to condemn the world. Each 
 of its steps towards progress may be considered as a 
 step backward. Every hereditary quality which we acquire 
 in course of time suppresses something of the absolute 
 character of the primitive will. For every other being but 
 God the only means of approaching the Absolute is poverty, 
 grief, and labour ; all that which limits externally the power 
 of a being enables him more successfully to unfold it 
 inwardly. The Stoics liked to repeat that Eurystheus had 
 not been the enemy of Hercules, neither had he envied 
 him ; but that, on the contrary, he had been his friend and 
 benefactor. They said that every one of us has also a 
 divine Eurystheus, who trains us continuously in the contest ; 
 they represented the whole world, the great living Being, as 
 a sort of Alcides in labour. It may be so ; but, I repeat 
 once more, our Eurystheus is not very ingenious in multi- 
 plying our trials and labours. Fate spoils us to-day, as the 
 grandparents of a family spoil their grandchildren. We live 
 in an environment too large, too expansive; and the per- 
 petual growth of our intelligence gradually chokes our will. 
 You must be logical ; you can only justify the world by 
 placing the good, or the condition of good, exactly in that 
 which till now everybody has considered an evil. The con- 
 sequence is that all creatures, labouring to avoid what they 
 consider as an evil, are labouring at the same time against 
 your theory, and the evolution of the universe goes on in a 
 direction diametrically opposed to your pretended good. 
 Thus you condemn the very work which you wanted to 
 exculpate. Everyone is free to find the good where he under- 
 stands it ; but, in whatever way he understands it, he cannot 
 
 * See those ideas summed up in Vallier's De F intention Morale. 
 (G. Bailliere ; 1882.)
 
 1 6 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 make this world truly good. We cannot even console our- 
 selves by thinking that it is the worst possible of worlds, 
 and that it therefore constitutes the supreme trial to our 
 will. The universe is not an extreme, either for evil or for 
 good ; it would be something to be absolutely bad but the 
 absolute is not of this world. Nothing here below causes 
 us to experience that satisfaction of seeing an aim pursued 
 and gained. It is impossible to trace a plan in the universe 
 not even that of abandoning all to the meritorious sponta- 
 neity of created beings. The world has not its end in us, 
 any more than we have our end in the world fixed for us 
 beforehand. Nothing is fixed, arranged, or pre-determined ; 
 there is no primitive and preconceived mutual adaptation 
 of things. That adaptation would suppose firstly, a 
 world of ideas pre-existent to the real world ; secondly, a 
 demiurge, arranging things according to the given plan, as an 
 architect does. The universe would then resemble certain 
 exhibition buildings, of which all parts are constructed 
 separately, so that afterwards they need only to be adjusted 
 to each other. But no ; it is more like one of those strange 
 buildings for the construction of which everybody works in 
 his own way, without considering the whole ; there are as 
 many ends and plans as there are workmen. It is a superb 
 disorder; but such a work lacks too much unity to be 
 either absolutely blamed or praised. To look upon it as 
 the complete realization of an ideal of any sort is to lower 
 our ideal consequently to lower ourselves; it is an error 
 which may become a grave mistake. Whoever believes in 
 a God ought to respect him too highly to make him Creator 
 of the world. 
 
 2. The refuge of optimism is personal immortality, which 
 would be the great excuse of God. The belief in immor- 
 tality suppresses all definite sacrifice, or at least reduces that 
 sacrifice to very little. Before the infinity of duration 
 suffering does not seem more than a point, and the whole 
 actual life diminishes strangely in value.
 
 THE HYPOTHESIS OF OPTIMISM PROVIDENCE. 17 
 
 The idea of absolute duty and that of immortality are 
 intimately connected ; the consciousness of duty constitutes 
 for the spiritualists the distinctive mark of the individual in 
 the flux of animal generations, his seal of sovereignty, his 
 title to a place apart in the " kingdom of ends." If, on the 
 contrary, absolute duty is brought back to an illusion, 
 immortality loses its principal claim to existence ; man 
 becomes a being like any other his head is no longer 
 enveloped in a mystic light, like Christ on the mountain, 
 who was transfigured in ascending, and seemed on a level 
 with the divine prophets soaring in heaven. Besides, 
 immortality has always been the principal problem in the 
 conception of morality, as well as in that of religion. 
 Hitherto it has been badly presented, being confused with the 
 problem of the existence of God. In reality, humanity 
 cares little enough about God ; not one martyr would have 
 sacrificed himself for that recluse of the skies. What was 
 looked for in him was the power to make us immortal. 
 Man has always been wanting to scale the heavens, and he 
 cannot do it quite alone. He has invented God in order 
 that God may stretch out a hand to him ; next he attached 
 himself in love to this divine Saviour. But if to-morrow one 
 were to say to the four hundred millions of Christians, 
 " There is no God ; there is only a paradise, a man-Christ, 
 a virgin mother, and saints," they would very quickly be 
 consoled. 
 
 In reality, immortality is enough for us. As to myself, I 
 do not ask for a "reward." I do not beg to be united 
 with those I have loved the eternity of love, of friendship, 
 of disinterestedness ! I remember my great despair one 
 day when, for the first time, it came into my head that 
 death might be the loss of love, a separation of hearts, an 
 eternal coldness ; that the cemetery', with its tombstones 
 and its four walls, might be the truth ; that, from day to day, 
 those who were to me like my moral life would be taken 
 from me, or that I should be taken away from them, and 
 
 c
 
 1 8 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 that we should never be given back to one another. There 
 are certain cruelties which we do not believe because they 
 surpass our understanding. We say to ourselves, " It is 
 impossible," because inwardly we think, " How could I do 
 that ?" Nature becomes a personality to us ; her light 
 seems a favour especially extended to us; there is in all 
 her creatures such a superabundance of youth and hope 
 that we, even we, also are dazed by this flood of universal 
 life. Thus the ancient form of the religious and moral 
 problem of the existence of God is brought back to this new 
 form immortality. This problem, in its turn, comes back 
 to the question whether from this moment I exist myself, or 
 whether my personality is an illusion, and if, instead of 
 saying me, I ought to say we the world. In the case of 
 there being in nature a single creature, however mean in 
 appearance, who could say, "I exist," without doubt he 
 would be eternal. Here we are face to face with two great 
 hypotheses. First, real fusion of all apparent selves one with 
 the other; real penetrability of all that which possesses 
 consciousness in nature ; reduction of all units supposed to 
 be substantial to phenomenal multiplicities ; never-ending 
 vistas, in which the eye loses itself, opened within ourselves 
 as well as outside ourselves. Instead of this, there is 
 another hypothesis nature having an end, the individual. 
 Like an immense tree, the sap of which is finally concen- 
 trated in a few kernels, perhaps also the sap of nature 
 collects together at one point, so as to expand later on. In 
 that case, individuals would form lasting groups. Are there 
 not also islets in the ocean ? What is more, some of these 
 individuals would keep together, would get so much 
 attached to one another as never to separate. If only to 
 love were sufficient reason for union, such union would be 
 eternity. Love would make us eternal. 
 
 Unfortunately there are many objections to immortality. 
 The first, and one of the most serious, may be deduced 
 from the doctrine of evolution. The character of all
 
 THE HYPOTHESIS OF OPTIMISM PROVIDENCE. 19 
 
 integration, of all individuation, must be provisional, serving 
 only to prepare a larger integration, an individuation more 
 rich. For nature an individual is nothing but a phase of 
 halting, a pause, which cannot be definitive, without which 
 nature would be arrested in her course. The ancients, who 
 with Plato imagined nature to be dominated by immovable 
 types to which she eternally conforms her creations, were 
 able to suppose that those works in which she had succeeded 
 most, and which came nearest to the eternal type, partici- 
 pated in eternity; if nature operated according to types, 
 species, ideas, we might hope, by fashioning ourselves 
 according to these ideas, also to become immortal. But in 
 our days a very different conception prevails. In the 
 beginning of this century it was still possible to believe that 
 the immobility of the animal species points to the existence 
 of a preconceived plan an idea for ever after imposed upon 
 living nature. Since Darwin we see in the species them- 
 selves transitory types, which nature transforms through 
 the ages, moulds which she herself accidentally casts, and 
 which she does not hesitate to destroy one after the other. 
 If the species is provisional, what then is the individual ? 
 There is between the individual and the species a solidarity 
 which has not always been understood. It has been 
 incessantly repeated that the individual and the species 
 have contrary interests, that Nature sacrifices one to the 
 other. Would it not be equally and more true to say that 
 she sacrifices both, and that whatever condemns the 
 individual is precisely the condemnation of his species ? If 
 the species were immovable, we might hope to be saved by 
 our conformity to it. But no ; everything is swept away by 
 the same whirlwind, species and individuals ; all passes away, 
 rolling on towards infinity. The individual is a compound 
 of a certain number of thoughts, of remembrances, of wills 
 corresponding one to the other, and of forces in equilibrium. 
 This equilibrium can only exist in a certain intellectual 
 and physical environment which is favourable to it. Now,
 
 20 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 this environment can only be supplied during a certain 
 time. Man, as he is constituted, cannot predict eternity. 
 There is no indefinite progress in every sense, either 
 for the individual or for the species ; individual and 
 species are only middle terms between past and future. 
 The complete triumph of the future requires their dis- 
 appearance. 
 
 Let us pass on to a second objection which can be made 
 to immortality. If thought, if will were immortal, they 
 would possess a power superior to nature, capable of ruling 
 and subjugating it. According to this hypothesis, life 
 becomes a sort of struggle of the spirit against nature ; 
 death would be victory. But why, then, do these trium- 
 phant souls stand aside, far from the eternal battle, which 
 continues to be fought without them? Why do they 
 forsake us? And while their power cannot be diminished 
 by death, why do they not use that power in serving man, 
 their brother? How profound, although to themselves 
 unconsciously so, was that belief of the ancients, who saw 
 the souls of their forefathers move and act everywhere 
 around them ; who felt the dead revive at their sides ; who 
 peopled the world with spirits, and endowed these spirits 
 with a more than human power ! If thought conquers 
 death, it should become a providence to others. It seems 
 that humanity would have the right to count upon her dead 
 as she counts upon her heroes, her geniuses, upon all those 
 who lead the others. If there are immortals, they ought to 
 stretch out a hand to support and to protect us. Why do 
 they hide themselves from us? What strength would it 
 not give to humanity to be, like the armies of Homer, 
 conscious of a race of gods, ready to fight on her side? 
 And these gods would be their sons, their own sons conse- 
 crated by death ; their number would continually increase 
 for the fertile earth never ceases to produce life and life 
 would blend with immortality. Nature would thus create 
 beings intended to become a providence over her own self.
 
 THE HYPOTHESIS OF OPTIMISM PROVIDENCE. 21 
 
 That conception is perhaps the most primitive, and, at the 
 same time, the most attractive which has ever tempted the 
 human mind. According to our view, it is impossible to 
 separate it from the conception of immortality. If death 
 kills not, it releases ; it cannot throw the soul into in- 
 difference or impotence. Hence, according to ancient 
 belief, there must be spirits scattered everywhere active, 
 powerful, and providential. The mythology of the ancients 
 and savages, the superstitions of our country people, must 
 be true. Who, nevertheless, would dare to affirm it to-day, 
 or even to consider the thing as probable ? Science has 
 never once proved the existence of a good or bad intention 
 behind one phenomenon of nature. It tends to the negation 
 of spirits, of souls, and consequently of immortal life. To 
 believe in science seems to be to believe in death. 
 
 There is a third objection that illusive thing, the familiar 
 induction of life : I am ; therefore I shall be. This illusion 
 is not less natural. Even to-day there are tribes found in 
 Africa who do not seem able to conceive that it is absolutely 
 necessary for man to die. Among this people the induction 
 based on life still outweighs that based on death. We 
 civilized people are no longer at that stage. We know that 
 our present life has an end. We nevertheless always hope 
 that it will be resumed in another form. Life feels repug- 
 nance in representing and acknowledging death. Youth 
 is full of hope. It is difficult for an overflowing and 
 vigorous existence to believe in non-existence. Whoever 
 feels in himself treasures of energy and activity, an ac- 
 cumulation of living forces, is inclined to consider that 
 treasure as inexhaustible. Many men are like children; 
 they have not yet felt the limit of their forces. A child 
 said to me seeing a horse gallop in a cloud of dust : " I 
 could run as fast if I liked "; and he believed it. A child 
 understands with difficulty that what we wish to do with 
 all our heart we, however, cannot do. Astonished at the 
 things he does, he concludes that he can do everything.
 
 22 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 There is nothing so rare as the right understanding of what 
 is possible. Yet every man, when he comes to grapple 
 with certain events of life, feels himself suddenly so 
 dominated, so subjugated, that he loses even the con- 
 sciousness of struggle. Can our fight be against the earth, 
 which carries us round the sun ? It is thus that he who 
 approaches death feels himself reduced to nought -becomes 
 the toy of a power incommensurate with his own. His will, 
 the strongest force in him, resists no more, collapses like a 
 broken bow, dissolves gradually, and slips away from him. 
 To understand how weak life is in face of death, we must 
 have passed, not through those violent and brutal illnesses 
 which stun like a heavy blow, but through those recurrent 
 maladies, which do not directly attack consciousness, which 
 advance with slow and measured progress, and follow a sort 
 of rhythm, seem sometimes to retire, allowing us to renew 
 our acquaintance with life in apparent health, but again 
 throw themselves upon us and hold us fast. In this way 
 the patient successively undergoes the impressions of one 
 who is born into life, and of one who goes to meet death. 
 He has, for a time, the ardour of youth, followed by the 
 exhaustion and prostration of an old man. And while he 
 is young, he feels full of faith in himself, and in the power of 
 his will. He thinks himself capable of ruling the future, 
 ready to conquer in the struggle of life. His heart over- 
 flows with hopefulness, which is diffused over all things ; 
 everything smiles upon him from the rays of the sun to 
 the foliage of the trees, to the face of men. He sees in 
 Nature the Indifferent, only a friend, an ally, a mysterious 
 will in harmony with his own. He believes no longer in 
 death, for complete death would be a kind of failure of the 
 will ; and a will truly strong believes it cannot fail. Thus 
 it seems to him that, through force of will, he will be able 
 to conquer eternity. Then, without his clearly perceiving 
 it, that fulness of life and youth, which was his hope, 
 gradually expends itself, subsides, disappears like water in
 
 THE HYPOTHESIS OF OPTIMISM PROVIDENCE. 23 
 
 a vase, which continually gets lower without our knowing 
 whither it goes. At the same time, his faith in the future 
 grows weaker and becomes dim. He asks himself if faith 
 and hope may not be the fugitive consciousness of an 
 activity, powerful for the moment, but all too quickly 
 subjugated by superior forces. His will then awakens, 
 vainly makes an effort to rise up again, but falls back ere 
 long with all its weight, giving way under the ruined con- 
 stitution like a broken-down horse under its harness. Then 
 the mind darkens. A kind of twilight seems to descend 
 and to spread over all our thoughts ; evening is coming. 
 The slow, sad labour of dissolution, which necessarily 
 follows evolution has set in. Life relaxes, and disappears 
 by degrees. The unity of life is destroyed. The will 
 vainly exhausts itself, trying to re-combine, to maintain 
 under the same law that bundle of life which is being 
 divided, the union of which constituted the individual. 
 Everything is loosened, is dissolved into dust. Then, at 
 last, death becomes less improbable, less inconceivable to 
 the mind. The eye gets used to it, as it does to the 
 darkness, which descends when the sun has set below 
 the horizon. 
 
 Death appears only as it really is an extinction of vitality, 
 a drying up of the internal energy. And death, thus con- 
 ceived, leaves less hope. We recover from an accidental 
 stupor ; but how is it possible to recover from complete 
 exhaustion ? If the agony is long enough, it will be sufficient 
 to make us understand that death is eternal. A torch burnt 
 to its very end cannot be re-lighted. That is really what is 
 most sad in those slow diseases which leave us conscious to 
 the end it is that they first take away all hope ; that we 
 feel existence undermined in its very depth; it is that we 
 feel like a tree seeing its very roots torn to pieces like a 
 mountain assisting at its own overthrow. In this way one 
 acquires a sort of experience of death ; one approaches it 
 near enough by this ''passage a la limite" familiar to mathe-
 
 24 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 maticians, to obtain an approximate knowledge. Annihila- 
 tion or, at least, dispersion, dissolution if that is the 
 secret of death, it is, no doubt, heart-rending to know it; 
 but, still, it is better to become aware of it ! 
 
 Truly eternal life would be that which should not need 
 to disunite itself in order to pass through the divisions of 
 time, which would be in evidence at all the points of duration, 
 and could with one stroke embrace all the differences which, 
 for us, constitute that very duration. We should then be 
 able to imagine a class of beings, immovable, yet constantly 
 changing, in the same way as, on a meteorological chart, 
 we prognosticate, and we represent by fixed lines the cyclone 
 of the passing storm. But this eternal life, now thought 
 enviable, would, perhaps, constitute our greatest sorrow ; for 
 the contrast between ourselves and our surroundings would 
 be greater the anguish would be perpetual. Everything 
 would fly before we could attach ourselves to it. The God 
 of religions who, himself eternal, imagines human beings 
 swept away by time could be nothing else but supreme 
 indifference or supreme despair, the realization of moral 
 monstrosity or unhappiness. 
 
 Notwithstanding all the objections of philosophers, man 
 will ever aspire, if not to an eternity without limit, at least 
 to one of indefinite duration. The sadness caused by the 
 idea of time will always exist : to lose one's self, to forget 
 one's self, to leave something behind along the road, 
 as the sheep leave their tufts of wool in the bushes. 
 To feel that all one's possessions are passing away 
 is despair, said Pascal. Turning and looking back, the 
 heart breaks, like that of the traveller carried off upon a 
 never-ending voyage, who watches the coasts of his native 
 country disappear. Poets have felt this hundreds of times. 
 It is not a selfish despair ; it concerns the whole of humanity. 
 The desire for immortality is merely the consequence of 
 memory ; life, being apprehended by the power of memory, 
 instinctively projects itself into the future. We want to
 
 THE HYPOTHESIS OF OPTIMISM PROVIDENCE. 25 
 
 find ourselves again, and to meet again those whom we 
 have lost ; we want to make up for lost time. In the tombs 
 of the ancients everything dear to the dead was gathered 
 together his arms, his dogs, his wives. Even his friends 
 committed suicide on his grave ; they would not allow that 
 affection could be broken off like bonds. Man becomes 
 attached to all his surroundings to his house, to a piece of 
 land ; he attaches himself to living persons he loves them. 
 Time robs him of all this, thereby cutting him to the quick. 
 And, whereas life continues its course, healing his wounds, 
 as the sap of the tree repairs the ravages of the axe, memory, 
 working in the contrary direction memory, that thing which, 
 unknown throughout the whole material universe, preserves 
 his bleeding wounds, and from time to time renews them. 
 
 In the end this remembrance of past efforts and their 
 uselessness makes us dizzy. Pessimism then succeeds 
 optimism. Pessimism leads back to a feeling of impotence, 
 and time gives us, at last, that feeling. Life, the Stoics 
 pretended, is a great feast. If that is the case, answers the 
 pessimist, a human feast lasts but a day, and the universe is 
 eternal. It is, after all, a sad thing to imagine an everlasting 
 feast, an everlasting game, an everlasting dance like that of 
 the spheres. That which was at first a joy and a reason for 
 hope becomes at last a burden ; great fatigue overpowers 
 us ; we should like to step aside to be at peace ; we can 
 go on no longer. Yet we must live. Who knows that 
 death even means repose ? We are hurried on in the great 
 machine, carried away by the universal movement, like 
 those foolhardy persons who entered the mysterious circle 
 formed by the Korigans. A great ring entwined them, 
 entranced them, fascinated them; so that, panting, they 
 whirled round and round, until both life and death failed 
 them. But the ring was not broken. It formed itself again 
 more quickly ; and the unhappy creatures, while dying, still 
 saw through the veil of death the everlasting ring whirling 
 them round.
 
 26 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 It is easy to understand how excessive optimism has 
 produced the reaction tending towards pessimism. The 
 germ of pessimism is in every man ; to know and to esti- 
 mate life it is not necessary to have lived long it is sufficient 
 to have suffered much. 
 
 ii. 
 
 THE HYPOTHESIS OF PESSIMISM. 
 
 PESSIMISM is equally difficult to prove as optimism ; it is 
 equally impossible to base a sound and objective conception 
 of morality on the one system as on the other. Pes- 
 simism has as its principle the possibility of scientific 
 comparison between pain and pleasure a comparison in 
 which pain would turn the scale. This system can be 
 expressed thus : the sum of sufferings in the whole of 
 human life forms a total higher than that of its pleasures 
 whence is deduced the moral philosophy of nirvana. But 
 this formula, which pretends to be scientific, has hardly any 
 sense. Should one compare the pains and pleasures with 
 respect to their duration, this reckoning would evidently be 
 against the pessimists ; for, in a healthy organism, suffering 
 is generally short. Should one compare pain and pleasure 
 with regard to intensity ? But these are not fixed values of 
 the same kind one positive, the other negative ; one expres- 
 sible by the sign + , the other by the sign - . 
 
 It is all the more impossible to establish an arithmetical 
 balance between such-and-such a particular pleasure and 
 such-and-such a pain ; since pleasure, varying in function 
 with the intensity of desire, is never the same for two 
 moments of life, and since pain varies equally according to 
 the resistance of the will. Besides, when we recall a past 
 sorrow or pleasure the only ones of which we have had
 
 THE HYPOTHESIS OF PESSIMISM. 27 
 
 experience we can only do it with all kinds of alterations, 
 and with countless psychological illusions. 
 
 In general, pessimists are inclined to compare these two 
 extremes pleasure (volupte) and pain ; hence the predomi- 
 nance which this latter takes in their eyes. Pleasure, 
 properly speaking, is after all a rarity and a luxury ; many 
 people prefer to do without it, and thus to avoid suffering. 
 The refined enjoyment of drinking out of a crystal cup 
 cannot be compared with the pain of thirst. 
 
 But a pessimistic conception of morality takes no account 
 of the permanent and spontaneous pleasure of living ; that is 
 because this pleasure, being continuous, shrinks, is reduced 
 in remembrance. It is a law of memory that sensations 
 and emotions of the same nature blend confusedly, collect 
 into a vague mass, and at last become nothing but an 
 imperceptible point. I live, I enjoy ; and this enjoyment 
 of living appears to me, at the actual moment, worth the 
 price. But, if I go back in memory, the indefinite series of 
 pleasant moments forming the thread of life become mixed, 
 reduced to insignificance, because they are all alike uninter- 
 rupted. On the other hand, in contrast with these, the 
 moments of intense pleasure and pain increase in signi- 
 ficance ; they seem isolated, and stand out prominently from 
 the uniform line of existence. 
 
 But intense pleasure, thus detached from the general 
 pleasure of living, is not in my remembrance sufficient to 
 counterbalance suffering ; this is also proved by other 
 psychological laws. 
 
 Intense pleasure very soon weakens in remembrance 
 (above all, if it no longer awakens the desire, which forms a 
 part of every sensation and pleasant experience). On the 
 contrary, there is in pain an element which does not weaken 
 with time, and often grows stronger that is, what is called 
 the sentiment of intolerability. A violent pain which, after 
 cessation, is proved to have been bearable, may be abso- 
 lutely unbearable in remembrance, and so much so that, at
 
 28 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 the cost of that pain, all preceding and ensuing pleasures 
 lose their value ; hence a new optical illusion which has to 
 be taken into consideration. Pain produces a sort of 
 anguish of the whole organism, an instinctive feeling of 
 danger, which re-awakens at the least remembrance. Even 
 a vague representation of pain will, therefore, always affect 
 the organism more deeply than a picture of intense pleasure 
 not actually desired. Fear is in general more easily roused 
 than desire, and in some temperaments fear is so powerful 
 that some people have preferred death to a painful opera- 
 tion. This preference did assuredly not arise from contempt 
 of life, but from the fact that pain sometimes seems un- 
 bearable, and beyond human strength to endure ; in other 
 respects simply a sign of weakness of character, of cowardice. 
 Even in a brave man the anticipation or the memory of 
 intense pain will re-echo more strongly than that of pleasure. 
 A soldier, recalling his sensations in cold blood, will picture 
 to himself with far more lively emotion the internal lacera- 
 tion of a sword-cut than any great pleasure in his life ; yet 
 in the midst of action the wound may have seemed scarcely 
 noticeable, compared to the joy of victory. But the joy of 
 victory was connected with an excitation of mind, which has 
 disappeared ; whereas the thought of his wound still makes 
 him tremble even to-day. We are always prepared to suffer ; 
 whereas enjoyment demands conditions so much more 
 complex that we can only with difficulty recall them to our 
 mind. In remembrance, therefore, pleasure and pain are 
 not equal. 
 
 We must mention another cause of error in the com- 
 parison of happy and unhappy times of life. It is this, that 
 the happy days are those which seem shortest and pass 
 most quickly ; the unhappy days, on the contrary, lengthen, 
 so to speak, and thus occupy a larger place in our memory. 
 Pessimism, after all, explains itself by psychological laws. 
 Some of these laws make past pleasures, with which we are 
 satiated, seem of less significance than the pains endured.
 
 THE HYPOTHESIS OF PESSIMISM. 29 
 
 There are others, however, according to which future 
 pleasures always seem to have a value superior to the 
 pains which we shall have to endure to attain them. 
 These laws balance one another. This explains the fact 
 that mankind in general are not at all pessimistic, and that 
 the most convinced pessimists rarely commit suicide. We 
 always hope something from the future, even when contem- 
 plation of the past impels us to despair. There is a pleasure 
 which dies, so to speak, after every accomplished action, 
 which vanishes without leaving a trace in the memory ; yet 
 it is nevertheless the pre-eminently fundamental pleasure 
 it is the very pleasure of action. It constitutes in great 
 measure the attraction of all objects desired by man, only 
 this attraction withdraws itself when once ends are attained, 
 when once the action is accomplished. Hence, the 
 astonishment of him who tries to judge life by his 
 recollections, and who does not find in his past pleasures 
 a cause sufficient to justify his efforts and his trouble. It is 
 in life itself, in the nature of our activity, that we must look 
 for the justification of our efforts. The rain-drops of a cloud 
 do not all fall into the calyx of a rose. Our actions do not 
 all lead to definite and attainable pleasure ; but we act for 
 the sake of action, like the raindrop falls by its own weight ; 
 the raindrop itself, if it were conscious, would experience a 
 kind of intense pleasure in going through space, to glide 
 into the vast unknown. This pleasure lies at the root of 
 life, only it disappears from memory, which is no longer the 
 unknown, but the known, and which altogether offers us 
 only what is past and passive. 
 
 The pessimistic conception of morality rests, therefore, not 
 on scientific reasoning, but on a purely individual apprecia- 
 tion, in which may enter many elements of error. We 
 perpetually exchange pains for pleasures, and pleasures for 
 pains ; but, in this exchange, the only rule as to value is 
 that of demand and supply, and we can rarely say a priori 
 such-and-such pains are greater than such-and-such plea-
 
 30 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 sures those of love, wealth, glory, etc. There is no end 
 to the number of people offering themselves to undergo 
 suffering and pain, even without being urged thereto by the 
 necessities of life. We may conclude, therefore, that suffering 
 is not the evil most dreaded by man that inaction is often 
 still worse ; that there is, moreover, a particular kind of 
 pleasure which springs from conquered sorrow, and, in 
 general, from every expended energy. 
 
 Unhappiness, like happiness, is, in a great measure, an 
 afterthought. We should therefore equally mistrust those 
 who boast of having been perfectly happy, and those 
 who maintain that they have been absolutely unhappy. 
 Complete happiness is formed by memory and desire ; 
 absolute unhappiness is formed by memory and fear. We 
 rarely ever, consciously, have been perfectly happy, and 
 yet we remember having been so. Where, then, is absolute 
 happiness to be found if it is not in our own consciousness? 
 Nowhere ; it is a dream in which we dress up reality ; it is 
 the embellishment of memory, as absolute unhappiness is 
 the darkening of memory. Happiness, unhappiness is 
 merely the past that is to say, that which cannot return. 
 It is also everlasting desire, which will never be satisfied, 
 or fear ever ready to reappear at the slightest thrill of alarm. 
 
 Hence, happiness or unhappiness, in the accepted sense 
 of the words, results from a comprehensive view of life, 
 which is often an optical illusion. Certain rivers of America 
 seem to roll along a mass of black water, and yet, if one 
 takes some of this water in the hollow of the hand, it is 
 clear as crystal. Its blackness, which almost looked appal- 
 ling, was an effect due to the mass of water and the bed 
 in which the river runs. In the same way, each moment 
 of our life, taken separately, may have this pleasant lack of 
 cohesion, this fluidity, which scarcely leaves a perceptible 
 trace in the memory. Yet the whole seems gloomy because 
 of certain luminous hours which seem to penetrate all the 
 others.
 
 THE HYPOTHESIS OF PESSIMISM. 31 
 
 In all these questions we are thus surrounded by in- 
 numerable illusions. Nothing is real and absolutely certain 
 except the sensation of the moment. We should compare 
 only simultaneous sensations of pleasure and pain; but 
 each time that the comparison bears upon past or future 
 sensations, it implies error. The preponderance of pain 
 over pleasure cannot therefore be proved either by experi- 
 ence or by calculation ; on the contrary, experience is against 
 the pessimists, for humanity incessantly proves a posteriori 
 the value of life, because it incessantly is looking for it. 
 
 Does the pessimist conception of morality attempt to 
 prove its principle by some argument drawn, not from 
 mathematical calculation, but from the very nature of 
 pleasure itself? One of the theses of pessimism is that, 
 pleasure presupposing desire, and desire springing chiefly 
 from want and consequently from suffering, pleasure thus 
 implies suffering, and is nothing but a fugitive moment 
 between two painful situations. Hence that condemnation 
 of pleasure which we find again and again, ever since the 
 time of Buddha, in the conception of morality. But it is 
 very incorrect to represent pleasure as thus connected with 
 pain, because it is connected with desire, and even with 
 want. It is only up to a certain point that want becomes 
 suffering. Hunger, for instance, is painful, but appetite 
 may be a very pleasant sensation. The spur of want is, 
 then, no more than a kind of pleasant irritation. The 
 general law is this want becomes pleasant to every intelli- 
 gent being, when it is not too violent, and when there is 
 the certainty or the hope of its near satisfaction. It is then 
 accompanied by the anticipation of enjoyment. Certain 
 so-called sufferings, preceding pleasure like hunger, thirst, 
 the thrill of passion enter as elements into the idea formed 
 by us of pleasure ; without them the enjoyment is incom- 
 plete. Nay, more ; taken by themselves, they are accom- 
 panied by a certain enjoyment, provided they do not last 
 too long. Where the lover recalls his impressions, the
 
 32 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 moments of desire seem pleasant to the very highest degree. 
 They encircle the moment of keenest pleasure, which, with- 
 out them, would be much too short and too fugitive. 
 
 Plato was right in saying that pain can enter into the 
 composition of pleasure; but pleasure, on the contrary, 
 does not enter into the composition of pain. The loathing 
 which follows the abuse of certain pleasures is not at all 
 inseparable from their use ; it does not appear as an element 
 in the conception we form of them. Pleasure, therefore, 
 has this superiority over pain that it not always produces 
 the latter ; whereas pain, at least physical pain, by its mere 
 disappearance, cannot fail to give rise to pleasure, and, 
 indeed, sometimes is so associated with pleasure that it 
 represents in itself an agreeable moment. 
 
 Sufferings of intellectual origin are not themselves abso- 
 lutely incompatible with intellectual pleasures. When not 
 very vivid, they mingle. The former give only the latter 
 less striking colours make them paler, so to speak 
 which is not unbecoming to them. Melancholy may make 
 certain enjoyments keener. From all sides, therefore, not- 
 withstanding gloomy moralists, pleasure surrounds pain, and 
 even mingles therewith. 
 
 Besides, those pleasures which rarely correspond to any 
 painful need i.e., aesthetic and intellectual pleasures 
 develop, and become more and more an important element 
 in our lives, the longer we live. Art is, in modern life, a 
 considerable source of enjoyment, which has, so to speak, 
 no counter-weight in pain. Its aim is to succeed in filling 
 with pleasure the dullest moments of life that is to say, 
 those in which we rest from action ; it is the great consola- 
 tion of the idler. Between two expenditures of physical 
 force, the civilized man instead of sleeping, like the savage 
 does can enjoy himself in an intellectual and aesthetic 
 manner. And this enjoyment can be prolonged more than 
 any other. We hear, inwardly, certain symphonies of 
 Beethoven a long time after having heard them with our
 
 THE HYPOTHESIS OF PESSIMISM. 33 
 
 ears. We enjoy them beforehand by anticipation ; we 
 enjoy them at the moment, and afterwards as well. 
 
 In order to solve (if this be possible) the question 
 posed by pessimistic morality, we believe that we must 
 address ourselves not only to psychology, but to biology, 
 and find out whether the actual laws of life do not 
 imply a surplus value of welfare over pain. In this case 
 the positive morality which we uphold would be right in 
 wanting to conform human actions to the laws of life, 
 instead of aiming at final annihilation of life, and of the 
 desire to live, as pessimistic morality does. 
 
 In the first place, how are the different senses affected 
 by pain ? The sense of sight is hardly affected at all by it. 
 So also with the sense of hearing, for the discords which 
 reach the ear, and all the ugliness which hurts the eye, 
 are slight mortifications, which we cannot possibly weigh 
 against the keen enjoyments of harmony and beauty. 
 Pleasure also predominates very largely in the sensations 
 springing from taste and smell, as we generally eat that 
 which pleases these two senses ; and, as we must eat in 
 order to live, the very conservation of life presupposes a 
 periodical satisfaction of the organs of taste and of smell the 
 two being intimately connected. Lastly, very few real 
 sufferings are caused by the sense of touch, if we localize 
 that sense in the hand. All, or nearly all, our physical pain, 
 therefore, originates in our tactile feeling, or in our internal 
 sensibility. Even when more pain than joy comes to us from 
 both these sources, we may still ask ourselves if the suffering 
 would counterbalance the pleasures of all kinds given us 
 by our other senses. But the question arises from a 
 biological standpoint : Is it possible, with respect to internal 
 sensibility, that the feelings of discomfort and suffering, on 
 an average, preponderate over those of comfort and well- 
 being ? 
 
 We believe it is possible to give a decisive answer to this 
 question. If, in living beings, the feelings of discomfort
 
 34 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 really prevailed over those of comfort, life would be impossible. 
 In fact, our vital power does but translate into the language 
 of consciousness that which takes place in our organs. 
 The subjective discomfort of suffering is only a symptom of 
 a wrong objective state of disorder, of the beginning of an 
 illness : it is the translation of some functional or organic 
 trouble. On the contrary, the feeling of well-being is like the 
 subjective aspect of a right objective state. In the rhythm 
 of existence well-being thus corresponds to evolution of 
 life, pain to dissolution. Not only is pain the consciousness 
 of a vital trouble, but it tends to increase that very trouble. 
 In illness it is not good to feel our ailment too deeply, or 
 the sensation exaggerates it. Pain may be regarded as the 
 echo of mischief in the brain. A sympathetic trouble carried 
 into the brain itself is then a fresh evil added to the first, 
 re-acting on it, and finally increasing it. In this way pain, 
 which just before appeared only as the consciousness of 
 partial disintegration, now herself appears as an agent of 
 disintegration. Excess of pain over pleasure is, therefore, 
 incompatible with the conservation of the species. When 
 with certain individuals the balance of suffering and enjoy- 
 ment is upset, and the former prevails, this is an anomaly, 
 which usually causes death to the individual without delay. 
 A being who suffers too much is unfit for life. It is neces- 
 sary for the existence of an organism that, taken as a whole, 
 it should keep up a certain regularity in its functions ; pain 
 should be banished, or, at least, be reduced to the lowest 
 degree. Besides, the more natural selection works without 
 restraint, the more does it tend to eliminate the sufferers ; in 
 killing the diseased it also stamps out the disease. If in 
 these days philanthropy succeeds in saving a certain number 
 of invalids, it has not yet been able to save their race, which 
 generally extinguishes itself. Let us imagine a ship in a 
 storm, rising and falling on the crest of the waves. The line 
 it follows may be indicated by a series of curves, of which 
 one bend marks the direction of the trough, the other that
 
 THE HYPOTHESIS OF PESSIMISM. 35 
 
 of the surface of the water. If at one moment of the passage 
 the descending curve bears the ship down, and she does not 
 rise again, it would be a sign that she is sinking deeper and 
 deeper, and beginning to founder. Even so is it with life, 
 tossed about on waves of pleasure and of pain : if one 
 marks these undulations with lines, and if the line of pain 
 lengthens more than the other, it means that we are going 
 down. The outline stamped on our consciousness by 
 sensation is only a figure representing the very course of 
 our life ; and life, in order to exist, needs to be a perpetual 
 victor) 7 of pleasure over pain. 
 
 What we here say of physical life, as revealed by our 
 inner sense, is also true of moral life. In moral as well 
 as in physical life suffering always marks a tendency to 
 dissolution a partial death. For example, to lose a 
 beloved one is to lose something of one's self, to begin 
 dying oneself. Moral suffering, if really triumphant, kills 
 morally crushes the intelligence and the will. Besides, 
 he who, after some violent moral crisis, continues to think, 
 to will, to act in every sense, may indeed suffer, but his 
 suffering will soon be counterbalanced will gradually be 
 stifled. Life will prevail over the dissolving tendencies. 
 
 In moral as in physical life the superior being is he who 
 unites the most delicate sensibility with the strongest will. 
 In him, no doubt, suffering is very vivid, but it provokes a 
 still more vivid reaction of the will. He suffers much, but 
 he acts the more ; and as action is always a joy, his joy 
 generally exceeds his pain. Excess of suffering over 
 pleasure indicates weakness or exhaustion of the will, 
 consequently of life itself. The reaction within no longer 
 responds to the outward action. All sensation is a sort of 
 demand addressed to each sentient being. Will you be 
 happy or unhappy ? Will you accept or reject me ? It is 
 the will which must answer ; and the will which gives way 
 to weakness condemns itself begins a sort of suicide. 
 
 In moral suffering one must distinguish between the
 
 36 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 purely affective and the purely intellectual. One must 
 distinguish between those who are pessimists upon system 
 e.g., Schopenhauer and those who are pessimists owing to 
 heartrending anguish. The life of the first-named may 
 resemble that of us all, and they may after all be very 
 happy ; for it is possible to be sad intellectually without 
 being so in the very depths of our heart. No tragedy goes 
 on in the intellect only ; or, if for some hours it is acted 
 there, it is not long ere the curtain falls softly of itself, as 
 it were, on this scene still too entirely outside our real 
 selves, and we go back into ordinary life which generally 
 has nothing so dramatic to offer. The pessimists upon 
 system may therefore live long and have a long posterity ; 
 that is because they are, so to speak, happy in spite of 
 themselves. But it is not the same with those who find 
 the world miserable because they are really miserable with 
 those whose pessimism is only an abstract of their own 
 sufferings ; these deserve the most pity. But they are 
 condemned beforehand by nature, and, so to say, by them- 
 selves. The full consciousness of their unhappiness is but 
 the vague consciousness of their unfitness for life. All 
 physical or moral sufferings, hypochondria, disappointed 
 ambitions, broken affections, are like an atmosphere more or 
 less unfit for respiration. Those who are greatly distressed, 
 the sufferers from spleen, from true melancholy (many 
 people are melancholy only as a matter of pose or system), 
 have neither lived nor taken firm root in life. They are 
 sensitivists injured by a slight shock. . 
 
 The artists of suffering, like de Musset, Chopin, Leopardi, 
 Shelley, Byron, Lenau, were not made for life; and their 
 sorrows, which have given us their masterpieces, were but 
 the result of a bad adaptation to environment, of an almost 
 factitious existence, which could maintain itself for a certain 
 time, but which could not last long. It is possible to lend 
 a kind of artificial life to the head of a decapitated man. 
 If in such a case the mouth could open and articulate
 
 THE HYPOTHESIS OF PESSIMISM. 37 
 
 sounds, surely these would be only screams of pain. In 
 our society there is a certain number of people in whom 
 the nervous system predominates to such a degree that 
 they are, so to speak, brains, heads, without body. Such 
 beings live only by deception, by artifice. They can speak 
 only to lament, sing only to sigh, and their wailing is so 
 sincere that it goes straight to our heart. 
 
 Yet we cannot judge humanity by such as these 
 humanity, which is full of life, and from which the future 
 will come forth. Their shrieks of pain are but the beginning 
 of the pangs of death. 
 
 We come to this conclusion that a certain amount of 
 happiness is a necessary condition of existence. M. von 
 Hartmann supposes that, if pessimistic morality one 
 day triumphs among mankind, all people will agree to 
 return to nothingness of their own will. A universal 
 suicide will put an end to life. This naive conception, 
 however, encloses this truth, that if pessimism planted itself 
 deeply enough in the human heart, it would, by degrees, 
 diminish its vitality and lead, not to the rather burlesque 
 theatrical event of which von Hartmann speaks, but to a 
 slow and continuous subsidence of life a race of pessimists 
 actually realizing its pessimism that is to say, increasing 
 the sum of its woes by imagination ; such a race could not 
 survive in the struggle for existence. If the human race 
 and the other animal species survive, it is precisely because 
 life is not too bad for them. This world is not the worst 
 of all possible worlds, since definitively it exists and remains 
 in existence. A moral philosophy of annihilation, to what- 
 ever living being it is proposed, is like a contradiction. 
 In reality, it is the same reason which makes existence 
 possible and which makes it desirable.
 
 38 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 III. 
 HYPOTHESIS OF THE INDIFFERENCE OF NATURE. 
 
 IF dogmatic moral philosophy searches for the most probable 
 hypothesis in the present state of science, it will find that it 
 is neither optimism nor pessimism ; it is that of the indiffer- 
 ence of nature. This nature to whose end dogmatism wishes 
 us to conform shows, in fact, an absolute indifference : 
 (i) with regard to sensibility; (2) with regard to the pos- 
 sible directions of the human will. 
 
 The optimist and the pessimist, instead of simply trying to 
 understand, feel like poets are moved, grow angry, rejoice, 
 attribute to nature good or ill, beauty or ugliness qualities, 
 in short. Listen, on the other hand, to the man of science ; 
 for him there are only quantities, always equivalent. Nature, 
 from her standpoint, is neutral as unconscious of pleasure 
 as of suffering, of good as of evil. 
 
 The indifference of nature to our pains or our pleasures 
 is, for the moralist, an hypothesis not to be taken into 
 account, because it is without practical effect. The absence 
 of a Providence relieving our suffering will change nothing 
 in our moral conduct, once we have admitted that the pains 
 of life, taken on an average, do not exceed the joys, and 
 that existence in itself remains desirable for every living 
 being. But it is the indifference of nature to good or to 
 evil which is of interest to morality. Now, a great many 
 reasons can be given for this indifference. The first is 
 the powerlessness of the human will with regard to the 
 whole universe the direction of which it cannot change in 
 any appreciable way. What will be the result to the universe 
 of such-and-such a human action ? We do not know. 
 Good and evil do not appear to nature to be more 
 essentially opposed to one another than cold and heat 
 to tne student of physical science ; they are degrees of 
 moral temperature, and it is, perhaps, necessary that, like 
 heat and cold, they should balance each other in the
 
 HYPOTHESIS OF THE INDIFFERENCE OF NATURE. 39 
 
 universe. Perhaps good and evil neutralize each other in 
 the world at the end of a certain time, as in the ocean the 
 different movements of the waves neutralize each other. 
 Each one of us makes his own track, but nature little heeds the 
 direction of that track ; it is destined to be effaced, to dis- 
 appear rapidly in the great, aimless tumult of the universe. 
 Is it really true that the sea still heaves with the wash of 
 Pompey's ship ? Has the ocean itself one more wave to-day 
 than of yore, in spite of all the ships which now travel over 
 its waves ? Is it certain that the consequences of a good 
 action, or of a crime committed a hundred thousand years 
 ago by a man of the tertiary age, can have modified the 
 world in any single respect ? Confucius, Buddha, or Jesus 
 Christ will they have any effect on nature after a thousand 
 million years ? Let us imagine the good deed of an 
 ephemera ; it dies, together with the insect, in a ray of the 
 sun. Can the good deed retard for the millionth part of a 
 second the coming of the night which will kill the insect ? 
 
 Once there was a woman whose harmless madness was to 
 believe herself to be a bride, and on the eve of her wedding. 
 Waking up in the morning, she asked for a white dress, and 
 a bride's crown ; smiling, she adorned herself. " To-day 
 he will come," she said. In the evening sadness over- 
 mastered her, after the idle waiting ; she then took off her 
 white dress. But the following morning, with the dawn, her 
 confidence returned. " It is for to-day," she said. And her 
 life passed in this tenacious, although ever-deceiving, certi- 
 tude taking off her gown of hope, only to put it on again. 
 Humanity resembles this woman, oblivious of all deception ; 
 it awaits each day the coming of its ideal. Probably it has 
 said, for hundreds of centuries : " To-morrow it will come." 
 Every generation in turn puts on its white dress. Faith is 
 eternal, like the spring and the flowers. The whole of 
 nature has, perhaps, such a faith at least, the whole of con- 
 scious and intelligent nature. Perhaps, an infinite number of 
 centuries ago, on some now dissolved planet, the mystical
 
 40 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 bridegroom was already expected. Eternity, in whatever 
 way it be conceived, seems to be an everlasting deception. 
 It matters not; faith bridges the infinite chasm. Between 
 the two gulfs of the past and the future it ceases not to 
 delight in its dream ; it sings always the same hymn of joy 
 and of appeal, believing it new each time, although it has 
 lost itself already so many times without being heard. It 
 continues to stretch its arms towards the ideal, which is all 
 the more attractive because it is vague ; and it puts on its 
 forehead its crown of flowers without noticing that it has 
 been faded for hundreds of thousands of years. 
 
 M. Renan has said : " In the pyramid of goodness raised 
 by the successive efforts of living beings every stone counts." 
 The Egyptian of the time of Khephren still exists by means 
 of the stone he laid. Where does he exist ? In a 
 desert, in the midst of which his work is reared, as useless 
 in its hugeness as the smallest grain of sand at its base. 
 Will not the " pyramid of goodness " undergo the same 
 fate ? Our earth is lost in the desert of the skies ; humanity 
 itself becomes lost on earth ; our individual action is lost in 
 humanity. How shall we give unity to this universal effort, 
 how concentrate the infinite radiation of life towards the 
 same point ? Each work is isolated ; there is an infinite 
 number of small, microscopic pyramids, of solitary crystal- 
 lizations of Lilliputian monuments, which cannot form them- 
 selves into a whole. Probably the just man and the unjust 
 man weigh neither one more than the other on this terrestrial 
 globe, which pursues its way through the ether. The par- 
 ticular exercise of their will can no more affect the whole of 
 nature than the beating of the wings of a bird soaring above 
 a cloud can refresh my forehead. The celebrated formula, 
 ignorabimus, may be transformed into this one illudemur ; 
 humanity speeds on, enveloped in the inviolable veil of its 
 illusions. 
 
 A second reason which " indifferentism " can oppose to 
 optimism is that the great whole, whose direction we are
 
 HYPOTHESIS OF THE INDIFFERENCE OF NATURE. 41 
 
 unable to change, has itself no moral direction there is 
 absence of aim, complete non-morality of nature, neutrality 
 of the infinite mechanism. Indeed, the life of the universe 
 shows very little signs of regular labour with an aim. Long 
 ago Heraclitus compared it with a game. This game is that 
 of the see-saw, which calls forth such shouts of laughter from 
 children. Each being counterbalances another. My part in 
 the universe is to paralyze someone whom I do not know 
 to prevent him from ascending too high, or descending too 
 low. None of us will carry away the world ; its tranquillity 
 is assured by our tumult. 
 
 At the basis of the universal mechanism we may 
 imagine a sort of moral atomism, an infinite number of 
 egoisms set to struggle each against the other. There might 
 be thus in nature as many centres as there are atoms, as 
 many aims as individuals, or at least as many ends as there 
 are conscious groups or societies ; and these ends might 
 be opposed. Egoism would be the essential and universal 
 law of nature. In other words, there would be coincidence 
 between what we call the immoral will in man and the 
 normal will of every being. This, perhaps, would be the 
 deepest moral scepticism. Each individual would then be 
 no more, and worth no more, than a soap-bubble. 
 All the difference between the you and me would be 
 that in the first case we are outside the bubble, in the 
 second case inside it. Personal interest would only be a 
 point of view ; right would be another ; but it is natural 
 to prefer the point of view within our compass to that which 
 is not. My soap-bubble is my fatherland ; why should I 
 destroy it? 
 
 The love of every limited being would be, according to 
 this doctrine, as illusive as the love of self may be. 
 Rationally, love has no more value than egoism. The 
 egoist, in fact, deceives himself as to his own importance, 
 which he exaggerates ; the lover or the friend as to that of 
 the beloved one. Again, from this point of view, moral
 
 42 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 good and evil remain for " the indifferentist " things quite 
 human, quite subjective, without fixed relation to the whole 
 of the universe. 
 
 Perhaps there is nothing which offers to the eye and the 
 mind a more complete and more sorrowful representation of 
 the world than the sea. In the first place, it is a picture of 
 force in its wildest and most unconquerable form ; it is a 
 display, a luxury of power, of which nothing else can give 
 an idea ; and it lives, moves, tosses, everlastingly without 
 aim. Sometimes we might say that the sea is animated, 
 that it palpitates and breathes, that it is an immense heart, 
 whose powerful and tumultuous heaving we see ; but what 
 makes us despair here is that all this effort, this ardent life, 
 is spent to no purpose. This heart of the world beats 
 without hope; from all this rocking, all this collision of 
 the waves, there results only a little foam stripped off by 
 the wind. 
 
 I remember that, sitting on the beach once, I watched 
 the serried waves rolling towards me. They came without 
 interruption from the expanse of the sea, roaring and white. 
 Behind the one dying at my feet I noticed another ; and 
 further behind that one, another ; and further still, another 
 and another a multitude. At last, as far as I could see, 
 the whole horizon seemed to rise and roll on towards me. 
 There was a reservoir of infinite, inexhaustible forces there. 
 How deeply I felt the impotency of man to arrest the effort 
 of that whole ocean in movement ! A dike might break 
 one of these waves ; it could break hundreds and thousands 
 of them ; but would not the immense and indefatigable 
 ocean gain the victory ? 
 
 And this rising tide seemed to me the image of the whole 
 of nature assailing humanity, which vainly wishes to direct its 
 course, to dam it in, to master it. Man struggles bravely ; 
 he multiplies his efforts. Sometimes he believes himself to 
 be the conqueror ; that is because he does not look far 
 enough ahead, and because he does not notice far out on
 
 HYPOTHESIS OF THE INDIFFERENCE OF NATURE. 43 
 
 the horizon the great waves which, sooner or later, must 
 destroy his work and carry himself away. In this universe, 
 where worlds rise and fall like the waves of the sea, are we 
 not surrounded, unceasingly assailed, by the multitude of 
 beings ? Life whirls round us, envelopes us, submerges us. 
 We speak of immortality, of eternity ; but only that is eternal 
 which is inexhaustible, that which is blind enough and rich 
 enough to be always giving without measure. That man 
 becomes acquainted with death who feels the need of rest, 
 who after work lets his hands fall in his lap, for the first 
 time learns that his strength has a limit. Only nature is 
 so untiring as to be eternal. We speak in the same way of 
 an ideal ; we believe that Nature has an aim, that she is 
 going somewhere ; that is because we do not understand 
 her. We take her for a stream which flows towards its 
 mouth, and will arrive there some day ; but nature is like 
 the ocean. To give an aim to Nature would be to narrow 
 her ; for an aim means an end. That which is immense 
 has no aim. It is often said that " nothing exists in 
 vain." That is true in detail. A grain of corn is 
 made to produce other grains of corn. We cannot 
 imagine ci field which should not be fertile. But nature, as 
 a whole, is not compelled to be fertile. It is the great 
 balance between life and death. Perhaps its grandest 
 poetry lies in its superb sterility. A field of corn does not 
 equal the ocean. The ocean neither works nor produces ; 
 it moves. It does not give life ; it contains it, or rather it 
 gives and takes it with the same indifference. It is the 
 grand, eternal cradle rocking its creatures. If we look 
 down into its fathoms, we see its swarming life. There is 
 not one of its drops of water which does not hold living 
 creatures, and all fight one another, persecute one another, 
 avoid and devour one another. What does it matter to the 
 whole, of what consequence to the deep ocean, are these 
 inhabitants, wandering at random in its briny waves ? The 
 ocean itself gives us the spectacle of a war, a struggle
 
 44 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 without truce ; its breakers, the strongest of which cover 
 over and sweep away the weaker ones, represent to us the 
 abridged history of the worlds, the history of the earth and 
 of humanity. It is, so to speak, the universe become trans- 
 parent to our eyes. This tempest of the water is but the 
 continuation, the consequence, of the tempest of the air ; is 
 it not the shudder of the winds which communicates itself 
 to the sea ? The air-waves in their turn find the explana- 
 tion of their movements in the undulations of light and of 
 heat. If our eyes could embrace the immensity of the 
 ether, we should see everywhere nothing but an amazing 
 clash of waves, a struggle without end, because it is without 
 reason a war of all against all. There is nothing which is 
 not carried away by this whirlpool. Earth itself, man, 
 human intelligence, nothing can offer us anything fixed to 
 which it would be possible to hold on all these are swept 
 away in slower, but not less irresistible, undulations ; ever- 
 lasting war also reigns there, and the right of the strongest. 
 As I thus reflect, the ocean seems to rise around me, to 
 invade all, to sweep away all ; it seems that I am no longer 
 myself, but part of the waves, a drop of the water of those 
 waves ; that the earth has disappeared, that man has dis- 
 appeared, and that there remains only nature with its endless 
 undulations, its ebb and flow, its perpetual changes of surface, 
 which hide its deep and monotonous uniformity. 
 
 Between, the three hypotheses of a benevolent nature, 
 an antag/rkjstic nature, or an indifferent nature, how can one 
 choose ana decide ? It is an idle fancy to give man the law : 
 Conform to nature. We do not know what this nature 
 is. Kant was right, therefore, in saying that we must 
 not ask dogmatic metaphysics to give us a sure law of 
 conduct.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Morality of Practical Certitude. Morality of Faith. 
 Morality of Doubt. 
 
 MORALITY OF PRACTICAL CERTITUDE. 
 
 THE morality of practical certitude is that which admits 
 that we are in possession of a positive, absolute, apodictic, 
 and imperative moral law. Some represent this law to 
 themselves as containing a substance a good in itself 
 which we grasp by intuition, and whose value to our mind 
 is superior to everything else. Others, with Kant, represent 
 this law to themselves as purely formal, and as not con- 
 taining in itself any matter, any good, any definite end; 
 but only bearing a character of universality, which makes it 
 possible to distinguish the ends as conformable or non- 
 conformable to the law. Thus, according to the intuitionists, 
 we discern, by immediate intuition, the worth and the 
 dignity of actions, faculties, virtues such as temperance, 
 purity, etc. According to the followers of Kant, on the 
 contrary, the moral character of a deed is only proved if we 
 can generalize the principle of that deed, and thus show it 
 to be disinterested in its nature. 
 
 Against the first conception of the morality of certitude 
 stands, above all, the old sceptical argument of the contra- 
 dictions of the moral judgment of its relativeness and its 
 uncertainty. This argument has a dissolvent influence on 
 the conception of the law itself, so far as it imposes in an 
 absolute way such or such deeds, such or such virtues. It 
 is difficult to remain faithful to the rites of an absolutist
 
 46 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 religion if these rites begin to appear supremely indifferent, 
 and if you no longer believe in the particular god which is 
 worshipped by them. 
 
 The problem put by Darwin on the changeableness of 
 duty does not cease, therefore, to be alarming to anyone 
 admitting an absolute, imperative, certain, universal good- 
 Would the formula of duty change totally for us if we were 
 descendants of the bees ? 
 
 There is in every society work of different kinds 
 to be done, which implies, in general, division of the 
 common task of the labour of the community. Now, the 
 duties of one class of workers will surely differ from those 
 of another class, and may become as strange as the morals 
 of men-bees would be. Even in our present society there 
 are neutrals, as in the society of the bees and ants. These 
 are the monks, whose morals were not in the Middle Ages, 
 nor are yet to-day, perhaps, the same as those of the rest of 
 society. Under Charles VII. an act was committed which 
 is the counterpart of the extermination of the males after 
 fecundation. Companies of mercenaries, become useless, 
 were exterminated ; it was believed to be a righteous act. 
 Corporations might exist on the planet Mars quite different 
 from ours ; they might have mutual duties very contrary to 
 ours, but imposed by an obligation quite as categorical in 
 form. On our planet on the earth even we sometimes 
 see conscience change the character of its guidance. There 
 .are cases in which the individual feels an obligation in a 
 wrong way an obligation to commit deeds usually con- 
 sidered to be immoral. 
 
 Let us name, among many other examples, that fact 
 related by Darwin of the conception of certain duties in 
 Australia. The people in Australia attribute the death of 
 their kinsmen to a spell cast by some neighbouring tribe ; 
 they consider it, moreover, a sacred duty to avenge the 
 death of any relative by killing a member of one of 
 .the neighbouring tribes. Dr. Landor, a magistrate in
 
 MORALITY OF PRACTICAL CERTITUDE. 47 
 
 Western Australia, relates that a native employed on his 
 farm lost one of his wives through illness. He announced 
 to the doctor his intention to start on a journey, in order to 
 go and kill the wife of a man belonging to a far distant 
 tribe. " I answered him that, if he committed such an act, 
 I would put him in prison for the rest of his life." There- 
 upon he did not depart, but remained on the farm. But, 
 from month to month, he wasted away; remorse 
 consumed him. He could neither eat nor sleep ; the 
 spirit of his wife haunted him reproached him for his 
 neglect. One day he disappeared. At the end of a year 
 he returned, in perfect health ; he had fulfilled his duty. 
 Thus one sees that a sentiment more or less similar to moral 
 obligation serves as an incentive to evil, or purely instinctive 
 acts. Thieves and murderers may possess the sentiment of 
 professional duty ; animals may vaguely feel it. The feeling 
 of having to do a thing penetrates the whole of creation, as 
 far as consciousness and voluntary movement penetrate. 
 
 We know what happened to Alfred de Musset when he 
 was young (the same fact is told of Merimee). Once, being 
 very much scolded for a childish freak, he went away in 
 tears, deeply penitent, when he heard his parents say, after 
 the door was shut : " Poor boy, he thinks himself quite a 
 criminal !" The thought that his misdeed was not so very 
 serious, and that his repentance was mere childishness, 
 wounded him deeply. This small matter remained engraved 
 on his memory for ever. The same thing is happening to 
 humanity to-day. If it comes to imagine that its moral 
 ideal is a childish ideal changeable, according to the whim 
 of custom ; that the end and reason of many duties are 
 puerile, superstitious, humanity will become inclined to 
 smile at itself, to bring no longer into its actions that 
 seriousness without which absolute duty disappears. This 
 is one of the reasons why the sentiment of obligation is 
 now losing its sacred character. We find it brought to bear 
 on too many objects ; we hear it applied to too many worth-
 
 48 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OK OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 less creatures (sometimes even to animals). This variability 
 in the objects of duty proves the error of all intuitionist 
 morality, which pretends to be in absolute possession of an 
 unchanging reason for good. This moral philosophy, for- 
 merly adopted by V. Cousin, by the Scotch, and the Eclectics> 
 maybe considered as untenable in the present state of science. 
 
 There remains the formal and subjective moral philosophy 
 of the followers of Kant, which admits as absolute only the 
 imperative, and considers as secondary the idea formed 
 of its object and application. Against a morality of 
 that sort every objection drawn from facts seems to lose 
 its worth ; for is it not always possible to find an answer by 
 making a distinction between the intention and the act ? 
 If the act is practically harmful, the intention may have 
 been morally disinterested, and that is all that the moral 
 philosophy of Kant demands. But a new problem presents 
 itself. Is there attached to the good intention a feeling of 
 obligation truly supra-sensible and supra-intellectual, as 
 Kant will have it ? 
 
 The feeling of obligation, if exclusively considered from 
 the point of view of mental dynamics, is brought back to 
 a feeling of resistance, felt each time that one wants to 
 take such or such a course. This resistance, being of such 
 a nature as to be apprehended by the senses, cannot arise 
 from our relation to a moral law, which hypothetically would 
 be quite intelligible and independent of time. It arises 
 from our relation to natural and empiric laws. 
 
 The feeling of obligation, therefore, is, properly speaking, 
 not moral ; it is sensible. Even Kant himself is obliged to 
 acknowledge that the moral sentiment is, like any other, 
 pathological; only he believes this sentiment to be 
 roused by the mere form of the moral law, without regard 
 to its subject-matter. There results from this, in his eyes, 
 a mystery, which he avows an intelligible and supra- 
 natural law, which, however, produces a pathological and 
 natural sentiment, respect.
 
 MORALITY OF PRACTICAL CERTITUDE. 49 
 
 " It is absolutely impossible to understand a priori how 
 a pure idea, not containing in itself anything sensible, pro- 
 duces a sensation of pleasure or of pain We are abso- 
 lutely unable to explain why and how the universality of a 
 maxim as such, and, consequently, why morality interests 
 us." There is somewhat of a mystery here. The projection 
 of morality into the domain of sensibility under the form 
 of moral sentiment would be possible without a " why," 
 and Kant nevertheless asserts it to be evident a priori. 
 " We are obliged," he says, " to be content with thus clearly 
 seeing a priori that this sentiment (produced by a pure 
 idea) is inseparably united to the representation of the 
 moral law in every reasonable finite creature." The truth 
 is, we believe, that we really do not see at all any reason 
 a priori to join sensible pleasure or pain to a law which, 
 hypothetically, would be supra-sensible and heterogeneous 
 to nature. Moral sentiment cannot be explained rationally 
 and a priori. Besides, it is impossible to prove by fact in 
 the human conscience the act of respect for a pure form. 
 In the first place, an unapplied and purely formal duty 
 does not exist. The sentiment of obligation, it is clear, 
 can only be seen to arise when there is some subject- 
 matter given for duty, and even the followers of Kant 
 are obliged to acknowledge this. Hence duty is never 
 grasped by consciousness, except as having relation to 
 certain contents from which it cannot be detached. There 
 is no duty independently of the thing we have to do, of the 
 doing of the act. Moreover, there is no duty unless it be 
 towards somebody. The theologians were only half wrong 
 in representing duty as addressing itself to the divine will ; 
 there, at least, was some one behind the obligation. Now, in 
 this synthesis of the real indissolubility of matter and form, 
 is the sentiment of obligation still only formal? We 
 believe, from experience, that the sentiment of obligation 
 is not connected with the representation of law as formal 
 law, but is connected with law by reason of its evident
 
 50 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 subject-matter and of its aim. Law as law can only be 
 grasped by our mind through its universality ; but to this 
 precept, " Act in such a way that your maxim may become 
 a universal law," no sentiment of obligation whatever will 
 attach itself, so long as there is no question of social life 
 and the deep inclinations awakened by it, so long 
 as we do not conceive the universality of something, 
 some end, some good, which may be the object of a 
 sentiment. 
 
 The universal, as universal, can but produce a logical 
 satisfaction, which itself is still a satisfaction of the logical 
 instinct in man ; and this logical instinct is a natural ten- 
 dency, an expression of life in its higher form, which is 
 intelligent, favourable to order, to symmetry, to similitude, 
 to unity in variety, to law, therefore of universality. Will 
 it be said that the universal law itself contains at bottom 
 will pure will ? The reduction of duty to the will of law, 
 which itself would still be a purely formal will, far from 
 building up morality, seems to us to produce a dissolvent 
 effect on the will itself. The will to do a certain deed 
 cannot be based on any law which is not founded on the 
 practical and logical value of the deed itself. The old 
 doctrine of Ariston, for instance, did not admit any differ- 
 ence of worth, any degree between things ; but a human 
 being will never be content to pursue his aim, saying that 
 the aim is entirely indifferent, that its moral value lies only 
 in his will to pursue it. This will would at once give way, 
 and indifference would pass from the object to himself. 
 Man needs to believe always that there is something good 
 not only in the intention, but also in the act. The con- 
 ception of a morality exclusively formal, independent of 
 everything else, is a demoralizing one ; it is the analogy of 
 the labour which the prisoners in English prisons are 
 obliged to do, and which is without aim to turn a handle 
 merely for the sake of turning it ! No one can be resigned 
 to this. It is necessary that the intelligence should approve
 
 MORALITY OF PRACTICAL CERTITUDE. 51 
 
 of the imperative, and that a feeling should attach itself to 
 its object. 
 
 The other day a little girl, whose mother had entrusted 
 her with a penny for some small purchase, was crushed in 
 the streets. She did not drop the penny. Recovering from 
 a fainting fit, dying, she opened her firmly-closed fist, and 
 handed her mother the humble penny, whose small value 
 she did not realize, saying to her, " I have not lost it." 
 There is something sublime in this bit of childishness ; for 
 this little one life was of less importance than the penny 
 which had been entrusted to her care. Well, whatever 
 may be the moral merit which a stoic or a follower of 
 Kant can reasonably discover in this fact, he would be 
 absolutely incapable of imitating it he, the philosopher, 
 knowing the worth of a penny. Faith would fail him, 
 perhaps not the faith in his own possible merit, but faith 
 in the penny. 
 
 Hence it is absolutely necessary, where the question of 
 moral merit is concerned, to transfigure in one's own eyes the 
 subject-matter of the meritorious act, and often to attribute a 
 value superior to its real one. A comparison is necessary, not 
 only between the will and the law, but also between the 
 moral effort and the value of the object pursued. If the 
 merit itself still seems good, whatever the object, it is 
 because we recognise in it a power capable of being trans- 
 ferred to a superior object, because we see in it a reservoir 
 of living force, which is always precious, even although this 
 force in a particular case may be wrongfully used. It is, 
 therefore, the possible use which we approve of in the actual 
 use ; but it is always its use, and not the power in itself, the 
 will in itself, which we approve. The eagle, soaring upwards 
 to the sun, finally sees all things on the earth on a level. 
 Let us suppose that we, from a sufficiently high point of 
 view, could see all our actions become level as far as the 
 universe is concerned : a good many human interests and 
 acts of disinterestedness would then appear to us equally
 
 52 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 simple ; their object would not seem to us superior to the 
 penny of the child. In spite of Zeno and Kant, we should 
 then no longer have courage to will and to merit : we do 
 not use our will for the mere sake of willing. 
 
 It is, therefore, very difficult to admit that duty, variable 
 and uncertain in all its applications, remains certain and 
 apodictical in its law, in universality for the sake of univer- 
 sality, or, if one prefers it, in the will for the will's sake only, 
 as an end in itself. The sentiment which, according to 
 Kant, is attached either to pure reason or to pure will is 
 the quite natural interest we experience in our superior facul- 
 ties or functions, in our intellectual life. We cannot be in- 
 different to the rational exercise of our reason, which, after 
 all, is a more complex instinct, nor to the exercise of the 
 ze'/y/, which, indeed, is a fuller force and a potentiality of 
 effects anticipated in their cause. The tree is valuable to us, 
 because we think of the many fruits of the tree at least, 
 if the tree does not already seem to us beautiful in itself; 
 but even then the tree itself appears to be a production, a 
 work, a living fruit ; it satisfies certain of our tendencies, 
 our love of "unity in variety," our aesthetic instinct. In 
 the impression produced by " pure reason " or " pure will " 
 are found all these elements of pleasure, use, and beauty. 
 
 If the pureness were pushed to its utmost limit, the result 
 would be the indifference of the senses and the intellect, 
 and not at all that definite state of the intelligence and the 
 senses which is called the affirmation of a law and the 
 respect of a law. There would be nothing for our judgment 
 and our sentiment to work upon. 
 
 ii. 
 
 MORALITY OF FAITH. 
 
 NEXT to the moral dogmatism of Kant, for whom the form 
 of the law in itself is apodictically positive and practical, we 
 find a somewhat altered Kantism, which makes of duty
 
 MORALITY OF FAITH. 53 
 
 itself an object of moral faith, no longer an object of 
 certitude. Kant made faith begin only with the postulates 
 following the positive affirmation of duty. To-day faith has 
 itself been magnified into duty. 
 
 If, in these days, religious faith, properly so-called, has a 
 tendency to disappear, it is replaced in a great many minds 
 by moral faith. The absolute has changed its abode ; it 
 has passed from the domain of religion to that of ethics ; 
 but it still has lost nothing of the power which it 
 exercises over the human mind. It has remained capable 
 of raising the masses ; an example of this is found in the 
 French Revolution. It can call forth the most generous 
 enthusiasm ; it may also produce a certain kind of fanaticism, 
 much less dangerous than religious fanaticism, but not without 
 its inconveniences. Fundamentally, there is no essential 
 difference between moral faith and religious faith. They each 
 contain the other ; but, in spite of the presumption to the con- 
 trary, still too prevalent in these days, moral faith has a more 
 primitive and more universal character than the other. If the 
 idea of God has ever had a metaphysical value and a practical 
 utility, it is in so far as it appeared to unite the ideas of 
 power and justice. In reality, the following affirmation was 
 contained in the deliberate affirmation of the divinity : The 
 highest force is moral force. If we no longer adore the 
 gods of our ancestors Jupiter, Jehovah, even Christ it is 
 because, among other reasons, we find ourselves in many 
 respects morally above them. We judge our gods, and, in 
 denying them, we often do no more than condemn them 
 morally. The "irreligion" which seems to predominate 
 to-day is, therefore, in many respects at least, the provisional 
 triumph of a purer faith, of a religion more worthy of the 
 name. In becoming exclusively moral, faith does not alter ; 
 on the contrary, it casts off all foreign elements. The old 
 religions appealed not only to inward faith, they invoked 
 fear, the misleading evidence of miracles and of revelation ; 
 they pretended to rest in something positive, plain, tangible.
 
 54 MORALITV INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 All these means of gaining, of " cadging " for confidence 
 ("piper " la confiance, as Montaigne would say), have now 
 become useless. Everything becomes simpler. The formula 
 which has had so much influence in the world, " It is a 
 duty to believe in God," resolves itself into this, which it 
 presupposed : It is a duty to believe in duty. The simple 
 and -definite expression of faith is thus formulated, and, at 
 the same time, a new religion is founded. The temples 
 having lost their idols, the law takes refuge in the " sanctuary 
 of conscience." The great Pan, the nature-god, is dead ; 
 Jesus, the humanity-god, is dead. There remains the 
 inward and ideal god, Duty, whose destiny it is, perhaps, 
 also to die some day. 
 
 If we seek to analyze this faith in duty as it is presented 
 by the followers of Kant, and even by those of Jouffroy, we 
 observe in it several assertions which differ widely, although 
 connected with one another, and which are to be found, 
 moreover, in every sort of faith, forming the distinctive 
 character of religion as compared with science (i) full and 
 complete affirmation of a thing which cannot be positively 
 proved duty, with its principle of modern freedom, and all 
 its consequences ; (2) another assertion confirming the first : 
 namely, that it is better morally to believe this thing rather than 
 any other, or than not to believe at all ; (3) a fresh assertion 
 by which belief is placed above discussion, for it would be 
 immoral to hesitate for a moment between the better and 
 the less good. At the same time, one's faith is declared to 
 be immovable, because it is above all discussion. Moral 
 faith, thus defined, rests on this postulate : there are prin- 
 ciples which must be asserted, not because they are logically 
 demonstrated or materially evident, but because they are 
 morally good ; in other words, goodness is a criterion of 
 objective truth. Such is the postulate contained fundamen- 
 tally in the moral philosophy of neo-Kantians like MM. 
 Renouvier and Secretan. 
 
 To justify this postulate it should be noted that it is
 
 MORALITY OF FAITH. 55 
 
 characteristic of goodness to appear as inviolable, not only 
 in act, but even in thought. Is it not injustice, not only to 
 do evil, but even to think it ? Now, evil is in our thought 
 the moment we doubt the good. We must, therefore, 
 believe in what is good more than in anything else; 
 not because it is more evident than anything else, but 
 because not to believe in it would be to commit evil. 
 Between a simply logical proposition and its opposite there 
 is always an alternative ; the mind remains free between the 
 two and chooses. In this case the alternative is suppressed ; 
 choice would be wrong. The truth can no longer be sought 
 on either side. All problem disappears, for a problem would 
 imply many different solutions calling for verification ; so 
 one does not verify duty ; there are questions which we 
 may not address even to ourselves ; there are questions we 
 must not raise. What becomes, for example, of the 
 doctrines of the utilitarian moralists, of the evolutionists, 
 of the partizans of Darwin, in the presence of the belief in 
 absolute duty ? They are rejected with the greatest pos- 
 sible energy sometimes without having been seriously 
 examined. Moral consciousness always takes that side ; it 
 represents in the human soul the blindly conservative part. 
 A convinced believer will never ask himself the question : Is 
 not duty merely an empirical generalization ? It would seem 
 to him that such a question would cast a doubt on his "con- 
 scienceas an honest man "; before doing this, he will declare 
 science incapable of treating this problem. The scientific 
 spirit which is always ready to examine the For and Against, 
 which sees everywhere a twofold way, a double issue for the 
 mind has thus, in the case of the believer, to give way to 
 quite another spirit ; for him duty in itself is sacred, and 
 commands with so much force that even the thinker himself, 
 face to face with it, can but obey. The belief in duty is, 
 therefore, placed once more above the region in which science, 
 and even nature, moves. He who believes in duty is always 
 such as Horace sang of, Impavidum ferient mince. Moral
 
 56 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 faith would in this way find itself guarded by its very 
 essence, which is to compel the individual to bow before it. 
 
 The belief in duty, however, when attacked, seeks support 
 on various grounds. The most superficial minds invoke a 
 sort of internal evidence, others moral duty, others a social 
 necessity. 
 
 i. There is, in the first place, the internal evidence 
 the " oracle " of our conscience which will allow no reply 
 or hesitation. We hear duty speak within us with a voice ; 
 we believe in duty as in something which lives and palpitates 
 in us as a part of ourselves ; even more, as that which 
 is highest in us. The Scotch and the Eclectics tried 
 only a few years ago to found a philosophy on common 
 sense that is, in fact, on prejudice. This unscientific 
 philosophy has been opposed with energy by the neo- 
 Kantians ; and yet their system is also founded on 
 a simple fact of common sense, on the simple belief that 
 the impulse called duty is of quite another order than all the 
 natural impulses. These sentences recurring so often in 
 Cousin and his followers, and at which to-day we are inclined 
 to smile "conscience proclaims," "evidence proves," 
 "common sense requires " are they much less convincing, 
 each in themselves, or in their generality, than these : 
 " duty commands," " the moral law demands," etc. ? This 
 inner evidence of duty proves nothing. Evidence is a sub- 
 jective state, for which one may often account by subjective 
 reasons. Truth is not only that which is felt and seen, but 
 that which is explained and connected. Truth is a synthesis ; 
 therein lies its distinction from sensation from brute fact. 
 Truth is a bundle of facts. It does not draw its evidence 
 and its proof from a simple state of conscience, but from 
 the whole of the phenomena which hold and support each 
 other. One stone does not make an arch, nor do two nor 
 three stones ; all are wanted. They have to rest the one 
 on the other. Even when the arch is constructed, it will 
 fall to pieces completely if a few stones are taken away. It
 
 MORALITY OF FAITH. 57 
 
 is the same with truth ; it consists in a solidarity of all 
 things. It is not enough that a thing should be evident ; 
 it must be explicable, so as to acquire a truly scientific 
 character. 
 
 2. As for the "duty to believe in duty," this is a pure 
 tautology, or vicious circle. It might be said as well : It is 
 religious to believe in religion, moral to believe in morality, 
 etc. Very well ; but what is understood by duty, by 
 morality, by religion ? Is it all true that is, does it all 
 correspond with reality ? That is the question ; and we 
 must examine it, for fear of turning everlastingly in the 
 same circle. While I believe it to be my sovereign and self- 
 governed liberty, commanding me to do such and such an 
 act, what if it were hereditary instinct, habit, education, 
 urging me to the pretended duty? Am I, according to 
 Darwin's remark, only a hunting-dog, chasing the game 
 instead of arresting it? Has duty, to which I attach so 
 much importance, after all only so much value as the 
 duty of the dog who fetches, or gives a paw ? Can you be 
 indifferent to the analysis which science makes of the object 
 of your faith ? 
 
 Perhaps science has difficulty in founding an ethical creed 
 on its own account, strictly speaking ; but science can 
 destroy every moral creed which believes itself to be positive 
 and absolute. Science has an incalculable power for destruc- 
 tion, although it is not always sufficiently able to recon- 
 struct. The believers in moral faith would not even 
 prove their thesis if they succeeded in proving that their 
 ethical creed is the most complete, is that which responds 
 best to all interrogations of the moral agent, that which 
 has least to fear from the exceptions and subtleties of 
 casuistry, which may push the moral agent, without re- 
 sistance, to the extreme of absolute devotion. 
 
 When the believers in the moral creed shall have proved 
 all this, they will still have done nothing no more than the 
 believers in such and such a religion, if they could prove
 
 60 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 selves there are likewise similar perspectives which may be 
 so only in appearance. As to social life, it rests for the 
 most part on artifice ; and by artifice we do not mean 
 anything opposed to nature. Not at all ; nothing deceives 
 us better than nature. There we find the great art that is 
 to say, the deception, the innocent conspiracy of all against 
 one. The relations between different beings are a series of 
 illusions ; the eyes, the ears, deceive us why should the 
 heart alone not deceive us ? Moral philosophy, which tries 
 to formulate the most manifold and complex relations exist- 
 ing between the creatures of nature, is, perhaps, also founded 
 on the greatest number of errors. Many beliefs related by 
 history, which have inspired to self-sacrifice, may be com- 
 pared with those magnificent mausoleums erected in honour 
 of a name. If these mausoleums are opened, nothing is 
 found ; they are empty. But their beauty alone is sufficient 
 to justify their existence, and, in passing, you bow before 
 them. You do not ask if the unknown dead is worth these 
 honours ; you think that he was loved, and that this love 
 is the real' object of our respect. It is the same with the 
 heroes whom faith often urged to great deeds for small 
 causes. They are sublime spendthrifts. These prodigalities 
 have undoubtedly been one of the indispensable elements 
 of progress. 
 
 The social necessity for morals and for faith, the sceptics 
 will add, can only be provisional. There was a time when 
 religion was absolutely necessary. It is no longer so at 
 least for a very great number of people. God has become, 
 and will become more and more, useless. Who knows if it 
 will not be the same with the categorical imperative ? The 
 first religions have been imperative, despotic, hard, inflexible. 
 They were systems of iron discipline. God was a violent 
 and cruel chief, checking his subjects by iron and fire. 
 People bowed and trembled before him. At the present 
 time religions are growing milder. Who believes very 
 much in these days in hell ? That is a worn-out scarecrow.
 
 MORALITY OF FAITH. 6 1 
 
 Likewise the different conceptions of moralities are softening 
 down. Even disinterestedness will perhaps not always have 
 the character of social necessity which it seems to have 
 to-day. Long ago it was remarked that there existed 
 illusions which were provisionally useful. If Decius had 
 not been as superstitious as his soldiers, if Codrus had been 
 a freethinker, Athens and Rome would probably have been 
 conquered. Religions which, to the philosopher, are only 
 a collection of organized and systematized superstitions, are 
 also made for a time, for an epoch. Their gods are but 
 various forms of that Greek divinity, Kairos, to serve the 
 purpose of the moment. Humanity needs to adore some- 
 thing, then to burn that which it has adored. At present 
 the most elevated minds among us adore duty. Will not 
 this latest religion, this last superstition, disappear like the 
 others ? 
 
 The brass idol to which the Carthaginians sacrificed 
 their children is for us an object of horror. Perhaps we 
 have kept in our hearts some brass idol from whose 
 dominion our descendants will escape. Already "our 
 rights " have become very much a matter of suspicion in 
 this century. The socialists have maintained that there is 
 no right over against pity, and " rights " can hardly be 
 maintained, except on condition of giving them a new 
 extension, and nearly blending them with the principle of 
 brotherhood. Perhaps, by contrary evolution, duty will 
 have to transform itself and to blend itself more and more 
 with normal and regular development of self. Do we not 
 still conceive duty in the image of our imperfect society ? 
 We picture it stained with blood and tears. This still 
 barbaric notion, necessary in our days, is perhaps destined 
 to disappear. Duty will then be equivalent to an epoch 
 of transition. 
 
 Such are the doubts which a complete scepticism may 
 oppose to this half-scepticism hidden under the faith which 
 invokes social necessities. The question remains undecided,
 
 62 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 and faith cannot get out of it otherwise than by a kind of 
 wager. In fact, the doctrine of moral faith of duty freely 
 accepted by the will, of incertitude decided by an act of 
 inward energy recalls to our mind, as has been said, the 
 wager of Pascal. But this wager can no longer have motives 
 such as those of Pascal. We are certain, in these days, 
 that God, if he exists, is not at all the vindictive and cruel 
 being which Port Royal imagined him to be. His existence 
 would necessarily be an advantage to me, and I wish for 
 it with all my heart, while wagering against it. Although 
 improbable in my eyes, it remains infinitely desirable. 
 This is not a reason for sacrificing my whole life to him. 
 
 Doubt has long enough been accused of immorality, but 
 the immorality of dogmatic faith can be equally maintained. 
 To believe is to assert as real to myself that which I simply 
 conceive as possible in itself, sometimes as impossible. 
 This is seeking to build up an artificial truth, a merely 
 apparent truth. At the same it is shutting one's eyes to 
 the objective truth, thrusting it aside beforehand without 
 knowing anything about it. The greatest enemy of human 
 progress is the presupposition. To reject not only the 
 more or less doubtful solutions, which everyone may 
 bring forward, but the problems themselves that is flatly 
 arresting the forward movement. Faith from that point of 
 view becomes indolence of thought. 
 
 Indifference even is often superior to dogmatic faith. 
 One who is indifferent says : " I do not care to know." But 
 he adds : " I will not believe." The believer wants to 
 believe without knowing. The first remains at least per- 
 fectly sincere towards himself, while the other tries to 
 ensnare himself. Therefore, whatever may be the question, 
 doubt is better than the perpetual affirmation, better than the 
 renunciation of all personal initiative, which is called faith. 
 This kind of intellectual suicide is inexcusable, and that 
 which is still more strange is the pretension to justify it, 
 as is constantly done, by invoking moral reasons. Morality
 
 MORALITY OF FAITH. 63 
 
 should command the mind to search without resting that 
 is to say, precisely to guard itself against faith. " The dignity 
 of believing !" you reply. Man has too often, all through 
 history, rested his dignity upon errors, and truth has at first 
 appeared to him to be a lessening of himself. The truth is 
 not always so fair as the dream, but its advantage is that 
 it is true. In the domain of thought there is nothing more 
 moral than truth ; and when truth cannot be secured through 
 positive knowledge, nothing is more moral than doubt. 
 Doubt is dignity of mind. We must therefore drive out of 
 ourselves the blind respect for certain principles, for certain 
 beliefs. We must be able to question, scrutinize, penetrate 
 everything. Intelligence should not cast down its eyes 
 even before the object of its adoration. A tomb in Geneva 
 bears this inscription: "Truth has a face of brass, and those 
 who have loved truth will have faces of brass like her." But, 
 it will be said, if it is irrational to affirm in our thoughts 
 as true that which is doubtful, still it will sometimes 
 have to be affirmed in action. May be ; but it is always 
 a provisional situation and a conditional affirmation : 
 I do this, supposing it to be my duty, even supposing 
 that I can have an absolute duty. A thousand acts of that 
 kind cannot establish a truth. A great number of martyrs 
 have made Christianity triumph ; a little reason may be 
 sufficient to overthrow it. Besides, how much humanity 
 would gain if all self-sacrifice were done out of regard 
 for science, and not for faith if one died not to defend a 
 belief, but to discover a truth, however small it might be. 
 That was what Empedocles and Pliny did, and what in 
 our time men of science, physicians, explorers do. How 
 many lives were lost of old to assert objects of an unsound 
 faith, which might have been utilized for humanity and 
 science !
 
 62 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 and faith cannot get out of it otherwise than by a kind of 
 wager. In fact, the doctrine of moral faith- of duty freely 
 accepted by the will, of incertitude decided by an act of 
 inward energy recalls to our mind, as has been said, the 
 wager of Pascal. But this wager can no longer have motives 
 such as those of Pascal. We are certain, in these days, 
 that God, if he exists, is not at all the vindictive and cruel 
 being which Port Royal imagined him to be. His existence 
 would necessarily be an advantage to me, and I wish for 
 it with all my heart, while wagering against it. Although 
 improbable in my eyes, it remains infinitely desirable. 
 This is not a reason for sacrificing my whole life to him. 
 
 Doubt has long enough been accused of immorality, but 
 the immorality of dogmatic faith can be equally maintained. 
 To believe is to assert as real to myself that which I simply 
 conceive as possible in itself, sometimes as impossible. 
 This is seeking to build up an artificial truth, a merely 
 apparent truth. At the same it is shutting one's eyes to 
 the objective truth, thrusting it aside beforehand without 
 knowing anything about it. The greatest enemy of human 
 progress is the presupposition. To reject not only the 
 more or less doubtful solutions, which everyone may 
 bring forward, but the problems themselves that is flatly 
 arresting the forward movement. Faith from that point of 
 view becomes indolence of thought. 
 
 Indifference even is often superior to dogmatic faith. 
 One who is indifferent says : " I do not care to know." But 
 he adds : " I will not believe." The believer wants to 
 believe without knowing. The first remains at least per- 
 fectly sincere towards himself, while the other tries to 
 ensnare himself. Therefore, whatever may be the question, 
 doubt is better than the perpetual affirmation, better than the 
 renunciation of all personal initiative, which is called faith. 
 This kind of intellectual suicide is inexcusable, and that 
 which is still more strange is the pretension to justify it, 
 as is constantly done, by invoking moral reasons. Morality
 
 MORALITY OF FAITH. 63 
 
 should command the mind to search without resting that 
 is to say, precisely to guard itself against faith. " The dignity 
 of believing !" you reply. Man has too often, all through 
 history, rested his dignity upon errors, and truth has at first 
 appeared to him to be a lessening of himself. The truth is 
 not always so fair as the dream, but its advantage is that 
 it is true. In the domain of thought there is nothing more 
 moral than truth ; and when truth cannot be secured through 
 positive knowledge, nothing is more moral than doubt. 
 Doubt is dignity of mind. We must therefore drive out of 
 ourselves the blind respect for certain principles, for certain 
 beliefs. We must be able to question, scrutinize, penetrate 
 everything. Intelligence should not cast down its eyes 
 even before the object of its adoration. A tomb in Geneva 
 bears this inscription: "Truth has a face of brass, and those 
 who have loved truth will have faces of brass like her." But, 
 it will be said, if it is irrational to affirm in our thoughts 
 as true that which is doubtful, still it will sometimes 
 have to be affirmed in action. May be ; but it is always 
 a provisional situation and a conditional affirmation : 
 I do this, supposing it to be my duty, even supposing 
 that I can have an absolute duty. A thousand acts of that 
 kind cannot establish a truth. A great number of martyrs 
 have made Christianity triumph ; a little reason may be 
 sufficient to overthrow it. Besides, how much humanity 
 would gain if all self-sacrifice were done out of regard 
 for science, and not for faith if one died not to defend a 
 belief, but to discover a truth, however small it might be. 
 That was what Empedocles and Pliny did, and what in 
 our time men of science, physicians, explorers do. How 
 many lives were lost of old to assert objects of an unsound 
 faith, which might have been utilized for humanity and 
 science !
 
 64 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 III. 
 MORALITY OF DOUBT. 
 
 WE have seen the certitude of duty, as admitted by Kant, 
 resolve itself into faith, even with the followers of Kant, and 
 faith itself become a doubt which will not declare itself. 
 Very well ; there remains a third attitude of mind, this time 
 absolutely sincere with itself and with others ; it consists in 
 replacing the morality of certitude and the morality of faith 
 by the morality of doubt in founding morality partly on the 
 very consciousness of our metaphysical ignorance, joined to 
 that which we have learned from positive science. 
 
 This attitude of mind has lately been analyzed and put 
 forward as the best (see "La Critique des Systemes de 
 Morale," par A. Fouillee, conclusion and preface). 
 
 The author of " 1' Idee Moderne du Droit," and of the 
 " Critique des Systemes de Morale Contemporaine," has 
 tried to unite in one synthesis the legitimate results of the 
 philosophy of evolution and of the philosophy of criticism. 
 Its point of experimental departure, which no doctrine can 
 deny, is the fact that we have consciousness. This fact, 
 rightly interpreted, is, according to him, the first foundation 
 of right and the duty of justice. What, in reality, is the object 
 of consciousness in its widest sense, and what is its limit ? 
 It realizes itself, realizes the consciousness of others, realizes 
 the whole world ; in consequence it has both "an individual 
 character and an universal range "; it does not assume its 
 own consciousness without assuming the consciousness of 
 others similar to its own ; it does not grasp itself but in 
 association with others. By this very fact, consciousness 
 " comprehends its own limitation, its own relativity, as a 
 means of knowledge," for it cannot completely explain itself, 
 " either its own nature as a thinking subject, or the nature of 
 the object which it realizes, or the transition of the subjective 
 to the objective." From this springs the principle of the
 
 MORALITY OF DOUBT. 65 
 
 "relativity of knowledge,'' 1 which is of a moral import 
 hitherto disregarded. 
 
 " A true positivist, like a true critic and a true sceptic, 
 must keep in the depth of his mind a ' what do I know T 
 
 and a 'perhaps? He must not assert that science or his 
 
 brain is adequate to comprehend reality, but only that they 
 are adequate to comprehend reality so far as it is known. 
 Our very experience teaches us that our mind is not made 
 so as to always represent all things as they are, indepen- 
 dently of that mind On the one hand, therefore, the 
 
 object, as felt and pictured, is not conceived as capable of 
 being entirely penetrated by science, or by the feeling and 
 thinking subject ; on the other hand, the subject is, perhaps, 
 in his turn, not wholly penetrable to himself." 
 
 This principle of the relativity of all knowledge, built up 
 by the ideas of our consciousness, is the preliminary condition 
 of right, as of the duty of justice. In fact, such a principle 
 is, in the first place, " limitative and restrictive of theoretical 
 egoism," which is intolerant dogmatism ; moreover, it is " re- 
 strictive of practical egoism," which is injustice. To make 
 of one's egoism and of one's self an absolute formula is to 
 dogmatize in action as well as in thought ; it is to act as if 
 one possessed the absolute formula of being ; it is as much 
 as to say : " The world mechanically knowable is all ; force 
 is all ; self-interest is all. Injustice, therefore, is absolutism 
 
 in action, and hurtful to others Now, there will always 
 
 remain something which cannot be explained mechanically, 
 if it were only movement and sensation, the element of 
 consciousness. Joined to all the other considerations, the 
 idea of that something irreducible which constitutes our 
 consciousness, while restricting the knowledge gained by 
 means of our senses ( ' connaissance sensible), also imposes on 
 us rationally the limitation of our motives derived from the 
 senses (mobiles sensibles), and that with regard to others, 
 and with regard to everything. Solipsism, as the English 
 say, is no more to be admitted in morality than in meta-
 
 66 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 physics, although it is, perhaps, logically irrefutable in both 
 spheres." 
 
 This doctrine, we must own, contains a great deal of 
 truth. But it is necessary to exactly calculate to what point 
 this morality leads us, and also where it leaves us. It is an 
 attempt to found a primary equivalent to obligation upon 
 doubt itself, or at least upon the relativity of human know- 
 ledge, and to rid the assertion of moral justice of a certain 
 metaphysical scepticism. In the first place, we must agree 
 that the practical formula of doubt is really abstinence. It 
 is from action in general, not only from injustice, that 
 complete doubt would have to abstain. All action is an 
 affirmation ; it is also a kind of choice, of election. While 
 acting, I always seize something from the midst of the meta- 
 physical mist, from the thick cloud which envelopes the 
 world and myself. The perfect equilibrium of doubt is, 
 therefore, rather an ideal than a real state an almost imper- 
 ceptible moment of transition. If there is no true morality 
 but in action, and if to abstain is still to act, that is, by this 
 very reason, departure from equilibrium. Besides, metaphysi- 
 cal doubt is in most concrete cases not an entire and thorough 
 doubt, a perfect equivalent created in the mind by different 
 possibilities which counterbalance one another ; it most 
 often envelopes a vague belief, which is unconscious of itself, 
 or, as M. Fouillee owns, at least one or more hypotheses ; 
 hence it can have a practical influence. Man, placed 
 between the different hypotheses concerning the world, has 
 always some instinctive preference for a certain one among 
 them; he does not remain hanging in the ?ox>) of 
 Pyrrho he chooses according to his own habits of thought. 
 These vary in different individuals, according to their creeds 
 and hopes, not according to their doubts. 
 
 But, it will be said, there is in all sincere doubt a precise 
 and lasting element ; it is the consciousness of our ignorance 
 of the foundation of things ; it is the conception of a simply 
 possible reality, which goes beyond our thought, a wholly
 
 MORALITY OF DOUBT. 67 
 
 negative and restrictive conception, being nevertheless of 
 sovereign importance in restricting our " intellectual pride." 
 Quite so ; but the question is to know if this conception 
 is of the same importance in restricting our conduct. In 
 the first place, be it noted that this conception could not 
 produce an imperative, and this is shown by the very author 
 of the theory which we are examining. That which is in 
 itself indeterminable cannot determine and regulate conduct 
 by a law which commands ; an order and a rule are a 
 determination. The unknowable cannot even limit conduct 
 in a categorical manner ; a limitative principle, as such, 
 cannot have an absolute character at least not unless an 
 absolute behind the limit be presupposed. 
 
 But let us go further. Would doubt, with regard to the 
 unknowable, in itse//a.nd in so far as it is a mere suspension 
 of judgment, be able to limit conduct in any way ? A limit 
 cannot, it seems, have practical influence on us as long as we 
 move inside this limit. Now, we are unable to move out- 
 side phenomena. The glass of a bowl has no direct effect 
 on the conduct of the fish, so long as the fish does not 
 hurt itself against the side of the bowl. Even the future 
 has influence on me only in two ways : firstly, in so far as I 
 pictured to myself in my mind in pure supposition; secondly, 
 in so far as by my acts I produce, or help to produce, 01 
 believe to produce, the future. So long as the future is not, 
 in some form or other, represented in my imagination, it 
 remains strange to me, and cannot in any way modify my 
 conduct. It is in the same way necessary, we believe 
 and M. Fouillee undoubtedly admits this also that, if 
 the unknowable is to have a positive and determined 
 effect on our conduct, it should not only be conceived as 
 possible, but be represented under some form or other in its 
 relation to my act, and under forms which do not contradict 
 or destroy each other. It is, moreover, necessary that I 
 imagine I can exercise some influence on the unknow- 
 able and its realization ; in short, it is necessary that it
 
 68 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 becomes, as M. Fouillee says, an " ideal " more or less 
 determinable for me, a future which I am more or less able 
 to realize. The idea of a moral rule, even of a restrictive 
 one, presupposes, therefore, as positive principle, not the 
 mere conception or the possibility of the unknowable, but a 
 representation of its nature, an imaginary determination of its 
 nature ; and, lastly, it presupposes the belief in a possible 
 influence of the will on it, and on its realization in the 
 future.* And once it is clearly shown that these are so 
 many hypotheses, morality justice and right even included 
 appears metaphysically hypothetical, considerations drawn 
 from positive science, evolution, happiness, utility, etc., being 
 omitted. 
 
 The theory of doubt as limiting egoism corresponds to a 
 somewhat subtle point which thought and act pass by 
 without stopping at. Surely it is important to deter- 
 mine this point, to make room in morality for our posi- 
 tive ignorance, our positive doubt, and, so to speak, for 
 the certainty of our incertitude. This M. Fouillee has 
 done. While waiting till he has developed the positive part 
 of his doctrine, we must allow that he has logically reduced 
 the idea of the imperative to its true value. Kant, we have 
 said, saw in it a certainty; his followers raised it to an 
 object of faith ; now it is reduced to a formula of our doubt, 
 to a limitation of our conduct by a limitation of our thought. 
 After having been an imperative order, the unknowable is 
 nothing but an interrogation. This interrogation presents 
 itself to each one of us ; but the answer which each one of 
 us can give to it varies with individuals, and is left to their 
 own initiative. One remembers the plank of safety of 
 which Cicero speaks, upon which a man walks trying 
 to save himself. Metaphysical doubt alone would be of 
 little use to prevent me taking, if I can, the place of that 
 
 * Besides, the author of the " Critique des Systemes de Morale " 
 himself makes of the ideal " a hypothetical formula of the unknowable" 
 an ideal which itself can only have a conditional influence.
 
 MORALITY OF DOUBT. 69 
 
 man. The unknowable, in the midst of which we live and 
 breathe, and which envelopes us, so to speak, intellectually, is 
 very much like the empty space which surrounds us physically. 
 Now, the empty space means for us absolute freedom of 
 direction. It can only act on us and rule our course by the 
 bodies it contains, which are revealed to us by our senses. 
 For him who believes the depth of things to be inaccessible 
 to our thought it will always be doubtful if it be accessible 
 to our acts. The supreme unknowable can, therefore, 
 in relation to our own will, remain without contradiction 
 supreme indifference, as long as it remains for our 
 intelligence a mere object of doubt and of suspension of 
 judgment. 
 
 The theory sketched in the " Critique des Systemes de 
 Morale" will only become sufficiently clear and fruitful 
 when its author shall have succeeded in drawing, as he 
 intends to do, a restrictive rule, and, above all, a "per- 
 suasive ideal " not out of our doubts about the unknowable 
 (mere " preliminary condition " of morality), but out of our 
 knowledge itself, and out of " the known depth of human 
 consciousness." According to his own words, we must be 
 able to make the moral ideal " immanent," and to show that 
 it is derived from experience itself. 
 
 That is, moreover, what he already tries to do in one of 
 the important pages of his work (Preface, ix.). 
 
 In his opinion, there exists, in the very constitution 
 of the intelligence, a kind of altruism, which explains 
 and justifies altruism, in conduct. There is, he says, 
 an "intellectual altruism, an intellectual disinterested- 
 ness, which makes us able to understand others to put 
 ourselves in their place ; to put ourselves into them by 
 thought. Consciousness, projecting itself in this way into 
 other beings, and into the whole, is joined to others, and to 
 the whole, by an idea, which is at the same time a force." 
 We believe, in fact, that a sort of " intellectual altruism " 
 does exist ; only, in our opinion, this disinterestedness of
 
 70 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 the intelligence is only one of the aspects of moral altruism, 
 instead of being its main principle. To be able to conceive 
 the consciousness of others well to put ourselves in their 
 place, and enter into their consciousness, so to speak we 
 must, above all, be in sympathy with them ; sympathy of 
 feeling is the germ of the extension of consciousness. To 
 understand is really to feel ; to understand others is to feel 
 ourselves in harmony with others. This communicability 
 of emotions and of thoughts which, on its psychological 
 side, is a phenomenon of nervous contagion is explained 
 to a great extent by the fecundity of life, the expansion of 
 which is almost in direct ratio to its- intensity. It is from 
 life that we will demand the principle of morality.
 
 FIRST BOOK. 
 
 ON THE MOTIVE FORCE OF MORALITY FROM A 
 
 SCIENTIFIC POINT OF VIEW. FIRST 
 
 EQUIVALENTS OF DUTY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Intensity of Life is the Motive Force of Action. 
 
 BY no means do we reject the part of metaphysical specula- 
 tion in moral philosophy, provided that it presents itself as 
 it really is i.e., as speculation, and the importance of it we 
 ourselves will show later on. But a strict method obliges 
 us to examine first what a moral philosophy may be which 
 is founded exclusively on farts, and which in consequence 
 does not start from an a priori thesis, nor from an a 
 priori law, which itself would be a metaphysical thesis. 
 The question which we have to examine is : Which is the 
 point of departure and the goal, and what is the exact 
 domain of science in moral philosophy ? 
 
 A moral philosophy which only invokes facts cannot 
 from the very beginning represent to the individual, as first 
 spring of action, ^the good or the happiness of society, for 
 the happiness of society is often in opposition to that of 
 the individual. In these cases of opposition social happi- 
 ness, as such, can only become for the individual a thought- 
 out end by virtue of pure disinterestedness ; but it is 
 impossible to prove this pure disinterestedness as fact, 
 and its existence has always been a subject of contro- 
 versy. Besides, scientific morality, in order not to include
 
 72 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 from its very beginning an inverifiable postulate, must be 
 first individualistic. It should preoccupy itself with the 
 destiny of society only in so far as it more or less includes 
 that of the individual. The first mistake of utilitarians 
 like Stuart Mill, and even of evolutionists, has been to 
 confuse the social aspect and the individualistic aspect of 
 the moral problem. 
 
 It is important to add that an individualistic morality, 
 founded on facts, is not the negation of a metaphysical 
 or religious morality, founded, for example, on some im- 
 personal ideal ; it does not exclude this latter it is simply 
 constructed in a different sphere. It is a small house, 
 built at the foot of the Tower of Babel. It does not in the 
 least prevent the Tower of Babel raising itself to heaven, if 
 it can. Nay, more ; who knows if the small house will not 
 in the end need shelter itself under the shadow of the 
 tower? Therefore we will not try either to deny or to 
 exclude any of the ends put forward as desirable by meta- 
 physicians ; but we will at present leave alone the notion 
 of the desirable, and we will limit ourselves to first showing 
 what in reality is desired* Before introducing metaphysical 
 speculation into moral philosophy it is, in fact, essential to 
 determine first precisely how far an exclusively scientific 
 conception of morality can go. This is what we now pro- 
 pose to do. 
 
 The ends pursued in reality by mankind and by all living 
 creatures are extremely numerous. However, in the same 
 way as life everywhere shows characters in common, and of 
 a similar type of organization, it is probable that the ends 
 sought by different individuals can be in reality more or less 
 led back to unity. This unique and profound goal of action 
 could not be the good a vague conception, which, when 
 one wants to determine it, dissolves in metaphysical hypo- 
 
 * On the distinction of the desired and desirable see our " English 
 Contemporary Moral Philosophy," second edition, part ii., " De la 
 Methode Morale."
 
 INTENSITY OF LIFE IS THE MOTIVE FORCE OF ACTION. 73 
 
 theses nor duty, which none the more appears to science 
 as a primitive and irreducible principle ; nor, perhaps, hap- 
 piness in the fullest meaning of the word, which Volney has 
 called an object of luxury, and the conception of which 
 presupposes, moreover, a very advanced development of the 
 intelligent being. 
 
 What, then, will be the natural aim of human actions ? 
 When a marksman has for a long time practised shooting at 
 a target, one sees, in looking at- the numerous holes which 
 he has made in the piece of cardboard, that these holes are 
 distributed pretty uniformly round the white at which he 
 aimed. Not one of these balls, perhaps, will have hit the 
 geometrical centre of the circle of the target, and some will 
 be grouped round this centre, according to a very regular law, 
 which Quetelet has ascertained and named "the binomial law." 
 Even without knowing this law, one would not be deceived 
 by the mere aspect of the holes ; one would put a finger in 
 the centre of the place where these holes are most frequent, 
 and one would say : " That is the point of the target aimed 
 at." This searching for the point aimed at by the marks- 
 man may be compared to that which the purely positive 
 science of morals undertakes when it endeavours to deter- 
 mine the ordinary aim of human conduct. Which is the 
 target constantly aimed at by humanity, and which must 
 also have been the target for all human beings, for to-day 
 man is no longer regarded by science as a being separate 
 from the rest of the world, and the laws of life are the same, 
 from the top downwards, on the ladder of animal life ? 
 Where is the centre of the universal effort of beings towards 
 which the strokes of the great hazard of things have been 
 directed, perhaps without one perfectly exact stroke, without 
 the aim having ever been fully attained ? 
 
 According to the " Hedonists," the natural direction of 
 every act would be the minimum of pain and the maximum 
 of pleasure ; in its evolution " conscious life always follows 
 the line of the least suffering." Hardly anyone can dispute
 
 74 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 this direction of our desire, and we, for our part, admit it ; 
 but the preceding definition is too narrow, for it can only be 
 applied to the conscious and more or less voluntary acts, and 
 not to the unconscious and automatic acts, which are simply 
 accomplished according to the line of the least resistance. 
 Now, to believe that most of our movements spring from 
 consciousness, and that a scientific analysis of the springs of 
 conduct has only to reckon with conscious motives, would 
 undoubtedly mean being dupe of an illusion. For Dr. 
 Maudsley and Professor Huxley consciousness is, in life, but 
 an epi-phenomenon, in the absence of which everything would 
 go on in the same way. Without wishing to solve, or even 
 to raise, this question which in England, as well as in 
 France, is a great point of controversy we must own that 
 consciousness embraces a rather restricted portion of life 
 and action. Even those acts achieved in full conscious- 
 ness have generally their beginning and first origin in dumb 
 instincts and reflex movements. Consciousness is, therefore, 
 only a luminous point in the great obscure sphere of life ; 
 it is a small lens, gathering in bundles some rays of the 
 sun, and imagining too readily that its focus is the 
 very focus from which the rays start. The natural spring 
 of action, before appearing in consciousness, must have 
 already acted from underneath in the obscure region of the 
 instincts. The constant end of action must primarily have 
 been a constant cause of more or less unconscious move- 
 ments. In reality, the ends are but habitual motive 
 causes become conscious of themselves. Every movement of 
 the will has begun by being a spontaneous movement blindly 
 executed because it presented less resistance. Every con- 
 scious desire, therefore, has first been an instinct. The 
 sphere of finality coincides, at least in its centre, with the 
 sphere of causality (even if, with the metaphysicians, one 
 regards finality as primitive). The problem : What is the 
 end, the constant target, of action? becomes, therefore, 
 from another point of view, this problem : What is the
 
 INTENSITY OF LIFE IS THE MOTIVE FORCE OF ACTION. 75 
 
 constant cause of action ? In the circle of life the point 
 aimed at blends with the very point from which the action 
 springs. 
 
 We believe that an exclusively scientific morality 
 must, to be complete, admit that the pursuit of pleasure is 
 only itself the consequence of the instinctive effort to 
 maintain and enlarge life. The aim which, in fact, 
 determines every conscious action is also the cause which 
 produces every unconscious action. It is, then, life itself 
 life in its most intense and, at the same time, its most varied 
 forms. From the first bound of the embryo in the womb 
 of its mother, to the last convulsion of old age, every move- 
 ment of the creature has, as cause, life in its evolution. This 
 universal cause of our acts is, from another point of view, 
 its constant effect and end. 
 
 The preceding analysis agrees in its result with the 
 analysis of the evolutionist school, which we will not re- 
 produce here (see our " Morale Anglaise Contemporaine," 
 second edition). 
 
 Life, as the motive underlying all our actions, is even 
 admitted by the mystics, for they generally suppose a pro- 
 longation of existence beyond this world ; and timeless 
 existence itself is but life concentrated in a punctum stans. 
 The tendency to persist in life is the necessary law of life, 
 not only for man, but for all living creatures perhaps even 
 for the last atom of ether ; for force is probably only an 
 abstract of life. This tendency is undoubtedly, as it were, 
 the residuum of the universal consciousnesss, the more so 
 because it goes beyond and envelopes consciousness itself- 
 It is, therefore, both the most radical of realities and the 
 inevitable ideal. 
 
 The part of morality founded solely and systema- ., 
 tically on positive facts may be thus defined : the 
 science which has for object all the means si preserving 
 and enlarging material and intellectual life. The supreme 
 laws of this morality will be identical with the deepest laws
 
 76 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION" OR SANCTION. 
 
 of life itself, and in some of its most general theorems, this con- 
 ception of morality will be of value for all living creatures. 
 
 If it be said that the means of preserving physical life 
 belong to hygiene more than to morality, we answer that 
 temperance, which for a long time has been placed among 
 the virtues, is practically an application of hygiene ; and 
 that, moreover, an exclusively scientific conception of 
 morality can, in its physical aspect, oblivious of all other 
 aspects, hardly differ from an enlarged hygiene. 
 
 If we are asked what to increase the intensity of life 
 means, we reply that it is to enlarge the range of activity 
 under all its forms (in such a measure as is compatible with 
 the renewal of force). 
 
 The inferior creatures act only in a certain direction, 
 after which they rest and sink into absolute inertia ; as, for 
 example, the hunting dog, which goes to sleep until the 
 very moment when he will again begin to hunt. The 
 superior being, on the contrary, rests by variety of action, 
 like a field by variety of production. The aim pursued in 
 the culture of human activity is, therefore, the reduction to 
 the strict limits of necessity of what might be called the 
 periods of lying falloiv. To act is to live ; to increase 
 action is to increase the fire of inward life. The worst of 
 vices would be, from that point of view, laziness, inertia. 
 The moral ideal will be activity in all its variety of mani- 
 festations at least, of those which do not contradict each 
 other, or which do not produce a permanent loss of force- 
 To take an example : thought is one of the principal forms 
 of human activity, not, as Aristotle believed, because 
 thought would be action when pure and detached from all 
 matter (an unverifiable hypothesis), but because thought is, 
 so to speak, condensed action and life at its maximum 
 development. 
 
 It is the same with love. 
 
 After having stated in very general terms the foundations 
 of a moral philosophy of life, let us see what place it allows
 
 INTENSITY OF LIFE IS THE MOTIVE FORCE OF ACTION. 77 
 
 within its range to hedonism, or to the moral philosophy of 
 pleasure. 
 
 Pleasure is a state of consciousness which, according to 
 psychologists and physiologists, is connected with an 
 increase of life (physical or intellectual), from which it 
 follows that the precept, " Persistently increase the inten- 
 sity of your life," will finally be confounded with this: 
 " Persistently increase the intensity of your pleasure." 
 Hedonism, therefore, may stand, but in the second place, 
 and more as consequence than as principle. All the 
 English moralists say, "Pleasure is the only lever by 
 which people can be moved." Let us understand one 
 another. There are two kinds of pleasure. At one time 
 pleasure corresponds with a particular and superficial form 
 of activity (the pleasure of eating, drinking, etc.) ; at another 
 time it is connected with the very root of that activity (the_ i 
 pleasure of living, of willing, of thinking, etc.). In the one 
 case, it is purely a pleasure of the senses ; in the other, it 
 is more deeply vital, more independent of exterior objects 
 it is one with the very consciousness of life. The utilitarians 
 or the hedonists take too great a delight in considering the 
 first sort of pleasure ; the other kind has a greater impor- 
 tance. One does not always act with the view of seeking a 
 particular pleasure limited and exterior to the act itself. 
 Sometimes we act for the pleasure of acting ; we live for 
 the pleasure of living ; we think for the pleasure of thinking. 
 There is in us accumulated force which demands to be 
 used. If its expenditure is impeded, this force becomes 
 desire or aversion: if the desire is satisfied, there is pleasure; 
 if it is opposed, there is pain. But it does not follow from 
 this that the stored-up activity unfolds itself solely for the 
 sake of pleasure with pleasure as motive. Life unfolds 
 and expresses itself in activity because it is life. In all 
 creatures pleasure accompanies, much more than it pro- 
 vokes, the search after life. Before all we must live ; enjoy- 
 ment comes after.
 
 78 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 For a long time it was believed that the organ created the 
 function ; it was also believed that the pleasure created the 
 function. " A creature goes," said Epicurus, " where his 
 pleasure calls him." These words, according to modern 
 science, contain a very incomplete truth, and are mingled with 
 error. In the beginning the creature did not possess any 
 organ already complete ; neither did he possess, in any way, 
 a fully-developed pleasure. He himself, by -action, has 
 created his organ and his pleasure. The pleasure, as well 
 as the organ, proceeds from the function. Moreover, 
 afterwards, like the organ itself, it reacts on the function. 
 Finally, one acts in such-and-such a way because one has 
 an organ developed after such a fashion, and because one 
 finds pleasure in going in such a direction. But the 
 pleasure does not come first ; that which is first and last is 
 the function, is life. If, for the direction of nature, it is not 
 necessary to appeal to an impulse which is foreign or 
 superior to her ; if nature is, so to speak, self-moved and 
 self-governed, neither is it any the more necessary to appeal 
 to an inferior and particular motive, such as any special 
 pleasure. 
 
 The point on which we can agree with the Hedonists 
 is that consciousness could not exist without some vague 
 pleasure or pain. Pleasure and pain might be considered 
 as the very principle of consciousness ; on the other hand, 
 consciousness is the lever necessary to produce all action 
 other than purely reflex action. The English theory is, 
 therefore, true in this sense, that every voluntary action, 
 being, so to speak, always obliged to pass through conscious- 
 ness, necessarily becomes impressed with either a pleasant 
 or an unpleasant character. To act and react is always to 
 enjoy or to suffer ; it is, moreover, always to desire or to 
 fear. 
 
 But this pleasant or unpleasant character of action is not 
 sufficient to completely explain it. Enjoyment, instead of 
 .being the deliberate end of action, is often, like conscious-
 
 INTENSITY OF LIFE IS THE MOTIVE FORCE OF ACTION. 79 
 
 ness itself, only an attribute of it. Action springs naturally 
 from the working of life, which is, to a considerable extent, 
 unconscious. It enters immediately into the domain of 
 consciousness and enjoyment, but it does not spring from 
 it. The tendency of the creature to continue in existence 
 is at the root of all desire, without forming in itself a deter- 
 minate desire. A body in motion, carried on through 
 space, ignores its direction, and yet it possesses an acquired 
 speed, ready to transform itself into heat, and even into 
 light, according to the resistant medium through which it 
 passes. It is thus that life becomes desire or fear, pain or 
 pleasure, precisely in virtue of its acquired force, and of the 
 primitive directions in which evolution has flung it. If the 
 intensity of life in a being, having different issues open to 
 its activity, is once fully known, one can predict the direc- 
 tion which this being will feel itself inwardly obliged to 
 take. It is as if an astronomer could predict the course of 
 a star merely by the knowledge of its bulk, its speed, and 
 of the action of the other stars. 
 
 One sees now the only position which can be taken up 
 by a science of morals without metaphysics in the question 
 of the moral end, independent of all the hypotheses which 
 metaphysics could add later on. Given on the one hand 
 the unconscious sphere of instincts, habits, and dumb 
 perceptions, on the other hand the conscious sphere of 
 reasoning and of thoughtful will, morality is placed on the 
 limit of these two spheres. It is the only science thus 
 having for its object neither facts purely unconscious nor 
 facts purely conscious. It must, therefore, search for a 
 tendency which should be common to these two orders 
 of facts, and which might be able to connect the two 
 spheres. 
 
 Classical psychology was always restricted to conscious 
 phenomena, leaving alone the study of pure mechanism. 
 It was the same with classical moral philosophy. But both 
 supposed it to be proved that mechanical life does not act
 
 8o MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 upon the conscious region of mind (or thought), does not 
 give rise sometimes in that region to more or less inexplicable 
 disturbances. To suppose that the independence of the 
 conscious with regard to the unconscious was thus demon- 
 strated, was to begin with a postulate which is sanctioned 
 by nothing. We believe that, in order to avoid this postu- 
 late, scientific morality must look for a spring of action 
 which should be able to work at the same time in the two 
 spheres, and move in us both the unconscious and the 
 conscious being. The object of the science of morals is 
 to show how action, produced by the mere effort of life, 
 springs incessantly from the unconscious depths of being, 
 to enter into the domain of consciousness ; and how, next, 
 action may be weakened in this new sphere, often even be 
 suspended ; for example, when there is struggle between 
 the instinct of life and such or such a belief in the rational 
 order. In that case, the sphere of consciousness may furnish 
 a new source of actions, which in their turn may become 
 principles of habit or instincts, and thus re-enter the uncon- 
 scious depth of the creature, there to undergo numberless 
 alterations. Instinct deviates in becoming consciousness 
 and thought ; thought deviates in becoming action and the 
 germ of instinct. Moral science has to reckon with all 
 these deviations. It looks for the meeting point where 
 the two great forces of our being, instinct and reason, 
 touch and mutually transform themselves without ceasing. 
 Moral science has to study the action of these two forces 
 on each other, to regulate the double influence of instinct 
 on thought, of thought and of mind on instinctive and 
 reflex actions. We shall see how life, by becoming 
 conscious of itself, and without rationally contradicting 
 itself, may give rise to an indefinite variety of motives 
 derived from it. The universal instinct of life now uncon- 
 scious, now conscious in the different aspects in which we 
 shall see it clothed, supplies moral science with the only 
 positive end ; which, moreover, does not mean that no other
 
 INTENSITY OF LIFE IS THE MOTIVE FORCE OF ACTION. 8 1 
 
 end is possible, or that our experience is adequate to every 
 imaginable reality. The moral philosophy, founded on 
 facts, let it be said once more, can but " show " one thing 
 that is, that life has a tendency to maintain itself, and to 
 increase among all beings, first unconsciously, and later 
 with the help of spontaneous and thinking consciousness ; 
 that life is thus, in fact, the primitive and universal form of 
 every good thing which is desired. It does not follow that 
 the desire of life absolutely exhausts the idea of the desirable, 
 with all the metaphysical, and even mystical, notions which 
 can be attached to it. It is a reserved question, which will 
 no longer be properly an object of positive affirmation, but 
 of metaphysical hypothesis. It is important for science to 
 mark the exact point of separation of the certain and the 
 uncertain, in moral philosophy as well as in other branches 
 of science. Certitude has never injured speculation, nor 
 even dreams ; neither has the knowledge of the real facts 
 injured the impulse towards the ideal, nor has science 
 injured metaphysics. The reaper, carefully gathering 
 together into his barn sheaves which he has himself 
 collected and counted, has never prevented the sower 
 going round with open hands, his eyes fixed on far-off 
 harvests, throwing out to the winds the present the known 
 so as to see a future germinate which he knows not, but 
 hopes for. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Highest Intensity of Life has for its Necessary 
 Correlative the Greatest Expansion. 
 
 FROM the physiological point of view, existence and life 
 imply nutrition, consequently appropriation, transformation 
 for itself of the forces of nature. Life is a kind of gravita- 
 tion upon itself. But a being always needs to accumulate a 
 
 G
 
 82 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 surplus of force to ensure the amount necessary to maintain 
 life. Thrift is a very law of nature. What will become of 
 this surplus of force which is accumulated by every healthy 
 being, of this superabundance which nature succeeds in 
 producing ? 
 
 In the first place, it will be able to expend itself in 
 generation, which is simply a case of nutrition. " Repro- 
 duction," says Haeckel, " is an excess of nutrition and of 
 growth, in consequence of which a part of the individual 
 is created independent in everything " (" Morphologic," 
 ii. 1 6). In the elementary cellule generation takes the 
 form of simple division. Later, a kind of distribution of 
 labour takes place, and reproduction becomes a special 
 function, carried out by the germ-cells ; this is sporogony. 
 Finally, later, two cells one ovular, the other spermatic 
 unite and blend together to form a new individual. There 
 is nothing mysterious in this conjunction of two cells. The 
 muscular tissue and the nervous tissue result, to a great 
 extent, from these cellular fusions. Nevertheless, with this 
 sexual generation or amphigony begins, we may say, a new 
 moral phase for the world. The individual organism ceases 
 to be isolated, its centre of gravity changes its place by 
 degrees, and it will change its place more and more. 
 
 Sexuality is of capital importance in moral life. If against 
 all possibility a non-sexual generation had been prevalent 
 among the animal species, and finally among human 
 beings, society would hardly exist. It was noticed long 
 since that spinsters, bachelors, and eunuchs fall into the 
 habit of being more selfish. Their centre has always 
 remained in the depths of themselves without ever fluc- 
 tuating. Children also are selfish ; they do not yet possess 
 a surplus of life to pour forth from themselves ; it is about 
 the period of puberty that their characters transform them- 
 selves. The young man is full of enthusiasm ; he is ready 
 for every sacrifice because, in point of fact, it is necessary 
 that he should sacrifice something of himself that he
 
 THE HIGHEST INTENSITY OF LIFE. 
 
 should diminish himself to a certain extent ; he is too full 
 of life to live only for himself. The period of generation is 
 also that of generosity. The old man, on the contrary, is 
 often inclined to become selfish again. People who are ill 
 have the same tendency. Each time that the fount of 1 
 is diminished a need is felt in the whole of ones being t< 
 save-to spare one's self. One hesitates to allow one drop 
 of internal sap to filter through. . 
 
 The first effect of generation is to produce a grouping o 
 organisms, to create the family, and, through the family, tc 
 create society; but this is only one of its most visible and 
 most evident effects. The sexual instinct, as we have 
 seen, is a superior but particular form of the genera need 
 of fecundity. Now, this need, symptom of a surplus oi 
 force, does not only act on the special organs of generation 
 -it acts on the whole organism. It exercises a kind of 
 pressure on our being, the different forms of which we are 
 going to enumerate. 
 
 i Intellectual Fecundity. -K is not without reason that 
 the works of a thinker have been compared to his children. 
 The artist also is, by an inward force, driven to cast forth 
 his inmost self, to give us of his innermost, like Mussets 
 
 pelican. 
 
 Let it be added that this fecundity is somewhat in oppo: 
 tion to physical generation. The organism cannot, without 
 suffering, accomplish this double expenditure. It seems 
 that in the animal species also, physical fecundity decreases 
 with the development of the brain. Very great geniuses 
 have generally had children only under the average, whose 
 race was soon exterminated. These geniuses undoubtedly 
 still live by their ideas in the minds of the human race, but 
 their blood could not mingle with that of mankind. 
 
 Intellectual fecundity also admits of a kind of debauchery. 
 The mind can be abused. The young man is sometimes 
 exhausted for the whole of his life by premature excess of 
 intellectual labour. The American girl may, in the same
 
 84 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 way, imperil her future maternity, or the fate of the genera- 
 tion which she will bring into the world. It is the duty of 
 morality to restrain here, as elsewhere, the instinct of pro- 
 duction. As a general rule, we may say that the expenditure 
 should only be an excitation and not an exhaustion of life. 
 Be that as it may, the need of intellectual fecundity, more 
 even than of sexual fecundity, deeply modifies the condi- 
 tions of life in humanity. Thought, in fact, is impersonal 
 and disinterested. 
 
 2. Fecundity of Emotion and of Sensibility. Sensibility 
 must be exercised as well as intelligence. Of ourselves, we 
 are not sufficient for ourselves. We have more tears than 
 are wanted for our own sufferings, more joys in reserve than 
 our own happiness would justify. We really need to go out 
 of ourselves to others ; we want to multiply ourselves by 
 communion of thoughts and sentiments. 
 
 Hence the kind of unrest in a too solitary creature, an 
 unsatisfied desire. If, for instance, we feel some artistic 
 pleasure, we would rather not enjoy it alone. We like 
 others to know that we exist, feel, suffer, love. We would 
 like to tear the veil of individuality. Vanity ? No ; vanity 
 is far from our thought. It is rather the antithesis of egoism. 
 Very inferior pleasures are sometimes selfish. If there is 
 only one cake, the child wants to be the only one to eat it. 
 But the true artist does not wish to be alone in seeing some- 
 thing beautiful, in discovering something true, in feeling a 
 generous sentiment.* There is in these higher pleasures a 
 force of expansion, ever ready to burst the narrow shell of 
 self. In face of these we are not sufficient to ourselves ; 
 we are only made to transfer them, like the vibrating atom 
 of ether transfers from place to place the sideral beam of 
 
 * One has, however, here to distinguish between the enjoyment of 
 the artist which is always fruitful, consequently generous and the 
 enjoyment of the amateur in art, which can be narrow and selfish, 
 because it is always barren. See our " Problems of Contemporary 
 Esthetics."
 
 THE HIGHEST INTENSITY OF LIFE. 
 
 light whJf traverses it, and of which it retains nothing but 
 the momentary thrill. 
 
 Yet here, also, we have to avoid an exaggerated expans 
 of life, a kind of altruistic debauchery. There are people, 
 although rare, who have lived too much for others, who 
 have not retained enough of themselves; the English 
 moralists blame these with some reason. Is it quite certain 
 that a great man always has the right to risk his life to save 
 that of an imbecile ? The woman-a mother-who forget 
 herself too much may, in advance, condemn the child she 
 is bearing to a sickly and ailing life. The father of a family 
 who submits himself and his family to daily privations m 
 order to leave the children some small competency will, ir 
 the end, really only succeed in leaving a small sum to b 
 ill-born, and without value to the species. 
 
 3 Fecundity of Will We need to bring forth and to 
 impress the form of our activity upon the world. Action 
 has become a necessity for the greater part of mankind. 
 The most constant and the most regular form of action is 
 -mark, with the attention which it demands. The savage i 
 incapable of true work-all the more incapable as he is 
 more degraded. These organisms among us which are 
 still living fragments of ancient man-the criminals-have 
 generally, as a distinctive feature, a horror of work. icy 
 2o not get tired of doing nothing. We may say that enn^ 
 is, in man, a sign of superiority-of fecundity of will. 
 nation which has known -the spleen" is the most active 
 
 o will in time become more and more necessary 
 for mankind. Now, work is at the same time the most 
 economical and the most moral phenomenon, in which 
 .egoism and altruism are most easily reconciled. To work 
 is to produce, and to produce is to be useful both to one s 
 self and to others. Work can only become dangerous by 
 its accumulation in the form of capital ; it may then take a 
 frankly selfish character, and, by virtue of an inherent con-
 
 86 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 tradiction, may tend to its own suppression by the very 
 idleness which it allows. But, in its living form, work is 
 always good. It belongs to the domain of social laws to 
 prevent the bad results of the accumulation of work excess 
 of idleness for oneself and excess of power over others as 
 one takes care to isolate batteries which are too powerful. 
 
 It is necessary for us to will and work, not only for our- 
 /selves, but also for others. We want to help others, to give 
 a lift to the coach which toilsomely draws humanity along ; 
 in any case, we buzz round it. One of the inferior forms of 
 this need_is " ambition," which must be recognised, not 
 merely as a desire for honours and for fame, but as a thing 
 which is also and before all else a need of action or of 
 speech, an abundance of life under its rather coarse form 
 of motive power, of material activity, of nervous tension. 
 
 Certain characters have, above all, this fecundity of will ; 
 .^-for example, Napoleon I. They upset the surface of the 
 world, with the object of impressing their mark upon it. 
 They want to substitute their will for that of others, but 
 they possess a poor sensibility an intelligence incapable of 
 creating, in the largest sense of the word; an intelligence 
 which is worth nothing in itself, which does not think for 
 the sake of thinking, and which they make the passive 
 instrument of their ambition. Others, on the contrary, 
 have a highly-developed sensibility, like women (who have 
 played so great a part in human evolution and in the 
 founding of morality) ; but in these intelligence and will 
 are too often lacking. 
 
 Finally, life has two aspects. According to the one, it is 
 ** jnutrition and assimilation ; according to the other, produc- 
 
 tion and fecundity. The more it takes in, the more it needs 
 
 to give out; that is its law. Expenditure is not an evil 
 physiologically ; it is one of the conditions of life. It is 
 expiration following inspiration. 
 
 Thus, the expenditure for others which social life demands 
 is not everything taken into account a loss for the indi-
 
 THE HIGHEST INTENSITY OF LIFE. 
 
 vidual; it is a desirable enlargement, and even a necessity. 
 Man wishes to become a social and moral being ; he remains 
 constantly agitated by that idea. The delicate cells of 
 his mind and his heart aspire to live and to develop in tl 
 same way as those "homunculi" of which M. Renan some- 
 where speaks ; every one of us feels in himself a kind of 
 pushing of moral life, like that of the physical sap. l^. 
 fecundity, and, reciprocally, fecundity is abundance < 
 that is true existence. 
 
 There is a certain generosity which is inseparable 1 
 existence, and without which we die-we shrivel up inter- 
 nally We must put forth blossoms ; morality, disinterest 
 ness is the flower of human life. Charity has always been 
 represented under the guise of a mother, holding ; out : to -her 
 children her breast, overflowing with milk lhat is sc 
 because, in reality, charity is but one with overflowmg 
 fecundity; it is like a maternity too large to be confined 
 within th y e' family. The mother's breast needs life eager to 
 empty it; the heart of the truly humane creature needs to 
 ^gentle and helpful to all. Within the benefactor himself 
 dwells the incentive towards those who suffer 
 
 We have verified, even in the life of the blind cell, a pnn- 
 ciple of expansion, which prevents the individual being suffi- 
 c ent unto himself ; the richest life is found to be that which 
 mos "ends to spend itself lavishly, to sacrifice itself wrthin 
 TrSin limits, toshare itself with other, Whence it follows 
 thai the mos perfect organism will be also the most sociable, 
 and "at the id'eal of individual life is the life in common 
 Thus we find replaced in the very depths of our being that 
 spring of all these instincts of sympathy and sociability 
 which the English school has too often shown us as more or 
 as artificially acquired in the course of evolution, and m 
 sequencers more or less adventitious. We are far 
 dS f om Bentham and the utilitarians, who everywhere 
 *yTavoid pain, who see in pain the irreconcilab e enemy ; 
 is as if one would not breathe too strongly, for fear of t
 
 88 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 great expenditure. Even in Spencer there is still too much 
 utilitarianism. Besides, he too often looks at things from the 
 outside, and does not see in the unselfish instincts anything 
 but a product of society. There is, we believe, in the heart 
 of individual life itself an evolution corresponding to the 
 evolution of social life, which makes the latter possible, and 
 which is the cause of it, instead of the result.* 
 
 * "The objection has been made to us that the fecundity of our 
 different inward forces could find its satisfaction as well in the disagree- 
 ment as in the agreement with others, in the crushing of other per- 
 sonalities as well as in the raising of them. But, in the first place, one 
 forgets that the others do not let themselves be so easily crushed ; the 
 will which seeks to impose itself necessarily meets the resistance of 
 others. Even if it conquers this resistance, it cannot conquer it quite 
 alone it must lean on its allies, and in this way re-constitute a social 
 group, and impose on it, with regard to this friendly group, the 
 very servitudes from which it tried to get free with regard to the other 
 men, its natural allies. Therefore all struggle always in the end exter- 
 nally limits the will ; in the second place, it changes it internally. The 
 violent man stifles the whole sympathetic and intellectual part of his 
 being that is to say, that in him which is most complex and most 
 elevated from the point of view of evolution. By brutalizing others he 
 more or less brutalizes himself. Violence, which thus seemed a 
 victorious expansion of internal power, becomes in the end a restriction 
 of this power ; to make the humiliation of others the object of one's 
 will is to give it an inadequate aim, and to impoverish one's self. At last, 
 by a final and deeper disorganization, the will itself loses its equilibrium 
 completely by the use of violence ; if the will has become used to meet 
 no obstacle whatever from outside, as happens with despots, every one 
 of its impulses becomes irresistible ; the most contradictory inclinations 
 succeed each other ; it is a complete ataxy. The despot becomes a 
 child again ; he is given up to contradictory whims, and his objective 
 omnipotence ends in bringing about a real subjective impotency" 
 (" Education and Heredity," p. 58).
 
 THE CREATION OF OBLIGATION. 
 
 8 9 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 To what Extent Inward Power creates a Sort of Obli- 
 gation. Power and Duty. (I " can," therefore 
 "must.") \ 
 
 AFTER having established this principle of moral fecundity^ 
 which to us seems essential, there remains for us to s 
 what manner, and under what psychological form, 
 manifests itself. Is a creature impelled, by its very nature 
 and the normal expansion of its will, to spend itself foi 
 others? or is it simply prompted thereto by the attract 
 of a special pleasure-the pleasure of sympathy, of praise, 
 etc ? We see that here, also, the study of "mental 
 dynamics" in the English and Positivist schools has ol 
 been elementary and incomplete. 
 
 Kantism has this great merit, which no naturalistic theory 
 would be able to dispute, of having considered the primitive 
 impulse, which constitutes one of the essential elements of 
 duty, as anterior to all philosophical reasomng on goodr 
 in fact, no demonstrative reason could suddenly change 
 either the direction or the intensity of this spontaneous 
 impulse. The theory of the categorical imperative is there- 
 fore psychologically exact and deep, as the expression of , 
 fact of consciousness; only Kant had no right, without 
 proof, to consider this imperative as transcendental. A 
 practical internal necessity" can be a more or less instinc- 
 tive and even mechanical necessity. In morality, as in 
 eenius, there can exist a kind of natural power, preceding 
 knowledge-a power which impels us to act and to produce. 
 Is it not precisely the characteristic of natural inclinations, 
 habits, customs, to command the individual without giving 
 any reason? Custom is respected in individual conscious- 
 ness or in the state, as Pascal has said, "for this one reason, j 
 that it is accepted." 
 ' The authority of the law is sometimes " entirely based upo!
 
 90 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 itself," without attaching itself to any principle. "The law 
 is law, and nothing more." In the presence of every power 
 which is anterior to it, of every force which is not that of 
 rational ideas, the understanding always plays the secondary 
 part, as Kant's philosophy has so well shown. It feels 
 itself in the presence of a mystery. Yet it does not follow 
 that the understanding gives up trying to explain this mystery, 
 even in a somewhat superficial way. On the contrary, 
 there is nothing for which human intelligence finds so many 
 explanations as for a thing which is for it inexplicable. How 
 many theories on goodness ! How many reasons given for 
 this irrational affirmation : / must, or, as the ancients used 
 to put it, // must be Set / 
 
 In reality, reason in the abstract is incapable of ex- 
 plaining a power, an instinct, of accounting for a force 
 which is infra-rational in its very principle. Observation, 
 experience, is necessary. The fact of duty imposing itself 
 on consciousness as a superior force once being admitted 
 with Kant, let us try to clearly show this fact in its essential 
 variations, and in its relations with the other similar facts of 
 consciousness. We will afterwards see if to us it seems to 
 offer anything supernatural. Kant himself has stated the 
 
 problem in the celebrated prosopopoeia " Duty ! where 
 
 is the root of thy noble stem to be found which proudly 
 repudiates all alliance with the inclinations ?" Kant, 
 however, has not really answered this question ; he has not 
 discovered what bond of relationship might, in spite of 
 appearances, connect this " noble " and " proud " duty with 
 the other inclinations. 
 
 " The law of duty," Confucius has also said in a sense 
 quite like that of Kant, " is a shoreless ocean ; the world 
 cannot hold it." But sometimes a distance of three 
 hours from the shore gives a lesser mass of water the 
 appearance of an ocean. Sailing on the river of the 
 Amazon, one believes oneself on the sea. To distinguish 
 the river from the sea, we must not try to look into the
 
 THE CREATION OF OBLIGATION. 
 
 distance-we must bend over the water and taste it 
 Inward analysis is also the only way to appreciate 
 or imaginary infinity of our moral horizon. 
 
 We will place ourselves successively at the three points o: 
 view of the will, the intelligence, and the sensibility. 
 
 x The existence of a certain impersonal duty is created by 
 the power-of-acting itself. First equivalent of 'duty. -Firstly, 
 how to move the will without appealing either to a myst 
 duty, or to such-and-such a particular pleasure ? tt hatever 
 is true and deep in the badly elucidated notion of moral 
 dutv can, we believe, subsist even after the purification 
 which it has undergone by the theory sketched above. 
 Duty will be reduced to the consciousness of a 
 inward power, by nature superior to all other powers, Ip 
 feel inwardly the greatest that one is capable of doing is 
 really the first consciousness of what it is one's duty to do. 
 Duty, from the point of view of facts-metaphysical notions 
 being left on one side-is a superabundance of life which 
 demands to exercise, to impart itself. Duty has been too 
 much interpreted until now as the sentiment of a necessity 
 or compulsion. It is, above all, the sentiment of a power. 
 Every force which accumulates creates a pressure on t 
 obstacles placed before it. Every ability (power), con- 
 sidered separately, produces a kind of obligation which is 
 proportionate to itself. To have the power to act is to t 
 obliged to act. Among inferior beings, whose intellect 
 life is fettered and smothered, there are few duties ; b 
 this means that there is little power. Civilized man has 
 countless duties, because he possesses a very rich activity 
 to be expended in a thousand ways. From this point of 
 view which is in no way mystical, moral obligation is 
 reduced to this great law of nature : life can maintain itself 
 only on the condition of diffusing itself. It is impossible to 
 compass one's aim with certainty unless one has the power 
 to go beyond it ; and if one holds that the self is, in itself, 
 its own aim, this is still a reason why it cannot suffice for
 
 92 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 itself. The plant cannot prevent itself from flowering. 
 Sometimes to flower means for it to die. No matter, the 
 sap still rises. Nature does not look back to see what it 
 abandons ; it goes its way, always forward, always upward. 
 
 2 . The existence of a certain impersonal duty is created by the 
 conception-of-action itself. Second equivalent of duty. In 
 the same way as the power of activity creates a kind of 
 natural obligation or imperative impulse, so intelligence 
 has, in itself, a motive-power. 
 
 If we raise ourselves high enough, we may find incentives 
 to action which do not only work as springs of action, but 
 which are, in and through themselves, without direct inter- 
 vention of the sentiments, the moving power of activity and 
 of life. Here again may be applied that important theory 
 of ideas as forces (les idees forces) which a contemporary 
 philosopher has broached.* 
 
 Intelligence and activity seem no longer separated by 
 an abyss. To understand is already the beginning in us 
 of the realization of that which we understand. To con- 
 ceive something better than that which exists is the first labour 
 in realizing it. Action is but the extension of the idea. 
 Thought is almost a word ; we are urged with so much 
 force to express what we think that the child and the old 
 man, less capable of resisting this compulsion, think aloud ; 
 the brain naturally makes the lips move. In the same way, 
 the mind will make the arms and the whole body work and 
 move ; it will direct life. Conception of aim, effort to 
 attain-^hese are not two things. The conception itself, 
 let us repeat it, is a first effort. We think, we feel, and 
 action follows. Hence, there is no need whatever to call 
 for the intermediate agent of outward pleasure, no need of 
 a middle term or bridge to pass from one of these two 
 
 * See M. Alfred FouilleVs " La Liberte et le Determinisme " (2nd 
 edition), and " La Critique des Systemes de Morale Contem- 
 poraine."
 
 THE CREATION OF OBLIGATION. /,, 93 
 
 things to the other. Thought, action they are funda- 
 mentally identical. 
 
 That which is called obligation or moral restraint is, in 
 the sphere of" intelligence, the sentiment of this radical 
 identity. Obligatiojijs_jin_jn^ejna!^^ 
 complete our ideas by converting them into action. - 
 who does not act as he thinks, thinks incompletely. ' He 
 feels, moreover, that something fails him ; he is not com- 
 plete; he is not himself. Immorality is an internal- 
 mutilation. Every movement of the mind lifts the body 
 up. Not to act in accordance with that which we believe 
 to be the best is to be like one who can neither laugh 
 when he is joyful, nor weep when he is sad ; who, in short v 
 can neither outwardly express nor translate anything of that 
 which he feels. That would be supreme torture. 
 
 The distinction between thejwill and themtelligence has 
 been made too great, and has~"been of sucTTTkind as to 
 immediately bring into evidence the need of moving the 
 will exclusively by means of motives of sentiment or feeling. 
 But exterior motives need not be called in so long as the 
 inner mechanism of thought and of life is sufficient. It 
 may be said that will is but a superior degree of intelligence, \ 
 and that action is but a superior degree of will. 
 
 From that moment morality is nothing else than mi^LOi 
 being. Immorality, on the contrary, is a dividing into two 
 C^rT opposition of different faculties, which limit each 
 other. Hypocrisy consists in checking the natural expres- 
 sion of thought, and in substituting a contrary expression 
 for it ; in this sense it could be said that, in essence, immo- 
 rality 'is hypocrisy, and, consequently, a check on the 
 development of the being.* 
 
 3 . The existence of a certain impersonal duty created by the 
 
 * This theory has been completed by important passages in " Educa- 
 tion and Heredity," translated by W. J. Greenstreet, M.A and put 
 lished in the Contemporary Science Series. (See pp. 75-79-)
 
 94 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 growing fusion of the sensibilities, and by the more sociable 
 character of the higher pleasures. Third equivalent of duty. 
 A new kind of obligation is derived from the very nature 
 of sensibility, which tends to transform itself by the effect 
 of evolution. The superior pleasures which daily form a 
 greater part of human life pleasures of art, pleasures of 
 reasoning, of learning, and of understanding, of rinding out 
 things, etc. require far less, as regards external conditions, 
 and are much more accessible to all, than the really selfish 
 pleasures. The happiness of a thinker or of an artist is a 
 happiness which costs little. With a piece of bread, a book, 
 or a landscape, you may taste a pleasure infinitely superior 
 to that of an imbecile in a carriage with armorial bearings, 
 drawn by four horses. The superior pleasures are, therefore, 
 both more intimate, deeper, and more free of expense 
 (without always being completely so). They tend to separate 
 beings far less than do the inferior pleasures. 
 
 Thus, by a natural evolution, the origin of a great many 
 of our pleasures seems to ascend from the outward to the 
 inward. The man of feeling possesses, in his own activity, 
 .a source of very varied enjoyment, and that sometimes 
 independently of outward things. Does it follow from this 
 that he will shut himself up in himself, and will suffice unto 
 himself, like the stoic sage ? Far from it ; intellectual 
 pleasures have this remarkable characteristic that they are 
 both the most inward and the most communicative, the most 
 individual and the most social, pleasures of our being. 
 Bring together thinkers, or lovers of the beautiful (as long 
 as there is no personal rivalry between them) ; they will like 
 each other more quickly, and in any case more truly, than 
 other people ; they will at once recognise that they live 
 in the same sphere that of thought ; they will feel them- 
 selves as of the same country. This bond which will be 
 established between them will also link their conduct, and 
 will impose on them, in their mutual relations, a particular 
 kind of obligation ; it is an emotional bond a union
 
 THE CREATION OF OBLIGATION. 95 
 
 produced by the complete, or partial, harmony of sentiments 
 and of thoughts. 
 
 The higher we rise in the scale of evolution, the more do 
 the pleasures of mankind seem to partake of a social and 
 sociable character. The idea becomes one of the essential 
 sources of pleasure. Now, the idea is a kind of contingent 
 common to all human brains ; it is a universal conscious- 
 ness, more or less made up of individual consciousness. As 
 the part played by ideas in the life of every one of us 
 increases, we find that the part of the universal increases 
 also, and tends to predominate over the individual. Con- 
 sciousness then becomes more easy of penetration. He who 
 is born to-day is meant for a much more intensely intel- 
 lectual life than he who was born a hundred thousand years 
 ago ; and yet, notwithstanding the intensity of his individual 
 life, his intelligence will be found to be, so to speak, much 
 more socialized; precisely because of its being so much 
 richer, it will possess much less for itself alone. It is the 
 same with sensibility. We have already asked, in com- 
 menting on Epicurus, what, after all, would a purely personal 
 and selfish pleasure be ? Do pleasures of that kind exist, 
 and what share in life do they have ? To this ever-present 
 question we answer, as we did before : We see, in descending 
 the scale of beings, that the sphere in which each of them 
 moves is small, and almost shut off; if, on the contrary, we 
 ascend towards superior beings, we see their sphere of action 
 open out, become larger, lose itself in the sphere of action 
 of other beings. The self distinguishes itself less and less 
 from the other selves or, rather, it has more and more need 
 of them, in order to form itself and exist. Now, this sort 
 of scale, along which human thought moves, has already been 
 partly travelled over by the human species in its evolution. 
 Its point of departure was, it is true, selfishness ; but selfish- 
 ness, by virtue of the very fecundity of all life, was obliged 
 to enlarge itself, to create outside of itself new centres for 
 its own action. At the same time, sentiments correlative to
 
 96 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 this centrifugal tendency are born from time to time, and, 
 so to speak, overlap the selfish sentiments which served 
 them as principles. We are on the way to an epoch in 
 which primitive selfishness will recede more and more, be 
 driven back, and become more and more unknown to us. 
 
 In this ideal era a being will, so to speak, no longer be 
 able to enjoy himself alone ; his pleasure will be like a 
 concert, in which the pleasure of others must form a. part, 
 by virtue of its being a necessary element ; and is it not 
 already so in many cases at present ? If, in life generally, 
 the part left to mere selfishness is compared with that which 
 belongs to " altruism," it will be seen how relatively small 
 the first is ; even the most selfish pleasures, being entirely 
 physical such as the pleasure of eating and drinking 
 acquire their full charm only when we share them with 
 others. We shall find this predominant part played by the 
 social sentiments in all our enjoyments and all our pains. 
 Moreover, pure selfishness would not only be, as we have 
 shown, a kind of self-mutilation ; it would be an impossibility. 
 Neither my sufferings nor my pleasures are absolutely my 
 own. The thorny leaves of the aloe, before being fully 
 developed and spread out in enormous bands, remain for a 
 long while folded one over the other, forming, as it were, 
 one single heart. In that stage the thorns of every leaf are 
 imprinted on the neighbouring leaf. Later on all these 
 leaves grow freely, and spread themselves out ; yet this mark 
 remains, and even grows with their growth. It is a seal of / 
 pain, stamped upon them for life. The same thing happens 
 in our heart, in which all the joys and pains of mankind 
 are imprinted from the very moment of its birth. On each 
 one of us, whatever we may do, this mark remains stamped. 
 In the same way, in short, as the self is, for contemporary 
 psychology, an illusion ; as there is no separate personality ; 
 and as we are composed of an infinite number of beings, 
 and of small consciences and states of consciousness; so 
 selfish pleasure may be said to be an illusion. My own 

 
 CREATION OF OBLIGATION. 97 
 
 pleasure does not exist without the pleasure of others ; I 
 feel that the whole community has, more or less, to con- 
 tribute to it, from the small family circle which surrounds us 
 to the large community in which I live.* 
 
 Thus, then, a truly positive moral science may, to a certain 
 extent, 'speak of obligation ; and that, on the one hand, 
 without intervention of any mystical idea, and on the other 
 without appealing (as Bain does) to an exterior and social 
 compulsion, or to an inward "fear." No ; it is sufficient t< 
 consider the normal directions of psychic life. There will 
 always be found a kind of inner pressure exercised by the 
 activity itself in these directions ; the moral agent will, 
 by a both natural and rational inclination, feel itself driven 
 in that sense, and it will recognise that it has to make a 
 kind of inner coup Mtat to escape that pressure. It is this 
 coup d'etat which we call fault, or crime. In committing i 
 the individual does wrong to himself; he decreases and 
 voluntarily extinguishes something of his physical or mental 
 
 life. 
 
 Moral obligation, which has its root in the very function-) 
 of life, therefore happens to come in principle before thinking 
 consciousness, and springs from the obscure and unconscious 
 depths of our being-or, if one prefers to put it so, from 
 the sphere of spontaneous and synthetical consciousness. 
 The sentiment of natural obligation may, in a great measure, 
 be brought back to this formula : I ascertain in myself, by 
 means of reflective consciousness, certain powers and modi- 
 fications, which, however, do not spring therefrom, but 
 which spring from unconscious and sub-conscious depths ir 
 myself and which urge me in a certain fixed direction. 
 Thus across the luminous sphere of consciousness are 
 flashing rays of heat from that obscure fire which constitute 
 the inner life. 
 
 * See our " Morale d'Epicure" (second edition), p. 288. 
 
 H
 
 98 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Sentiment of Obligation from the Point of View of 
 Mental Dynamics as Impulsive OP Repressive Force. 
 
 IN whatever manner duty may be metaphysically or morally 
 represented, it is not, with regard to other motives and 
 springs of action, without a certain psycho-mechanical 
 power. Dynamically considered, the sentiment of obliga- 
 tion is a force acting in time according to a determinate 
 direction with more or less intensity. We, therefore, have 
 to find out how these powers of action have been born 
 in us these impulsive forces which are, at the same time, 
 ideas and sentiments. We should like to sketch here the 
 dynamic genesis of the sentiment of obligation and of its 
 dynamic action, so that in future we may look upon it, 
 not as a limitation or restriction of activity, but as the very 
 consequence of its expansion. A man celebrated for his 
 courage and integrity (Daumesnil) said, one day, to a 
 minister of Charles X. : "I do not follow my conscience ; I 
 am driven by it." According to this very delicate distinction, 
 the impulses of the moral and social order may be divided 
 into two classes. By the one, we are literally driven forward 
 by the sentiment of duty without having time to discuss, 
 to deliberate, to reason ; by the other, we allow ourselves 
 to be dragged along in its course with a more precise 
 consciousness of a possible and already real resistance of a 
 certain independence. 
 
 A characteristic example of impulsive and spontaneous 
 sentiment is given us by some poor labourers in a 
 lime-kiln in the Pyrenees. One of them, having to 
 descend into the kiln to look after something which 
 had gone wrong, fell down suffocated. Another, hurry- 
 ing to his assistance, also fell. A woman, witnessing the 
 accident, called for help. Other labourers hastened to 
 the spot. For the third time a man went into the burning
 
 THE SENTIMENT OF OBLIGATION. 99 
 
 kiln and immediately succumbed. A fourth, a fifth man 
 jumped into it, and succumbed. Only one man remained ; 
 he approached, and was ready to jump, when the woman 
 who standing on the spot, clutched ^him ***** 
 and half mad with terror, kept him back on the edge 
 \Le later, when the magistrates arrived at the place of 
 fh leaded to hold an inquest, the only survivor was 
 questioned on his thoughtless self-sacrifice, and one of 
 magistrates began very gravely to point out to him the 
 irrationality of his conduct. The man gave this admirable 
 answer- "My comrades were dying; I felt driven to go 
 In Th s' example the sentiment of moral obligation and 
 human solidarity had, in appearance, lost its rational basis. 
 It was, however, still sufficiently powerful to successively 
 drive five men to the useless sacrifice of their lives It wiU 
 not be disputed that, in this case, the sentiment of duty 
 appeared more in the form of a spontaneous impulse-of a 
 Sudden overflow of inward life towards others, than in the 
 form of a deliberate respect for an abstract "moral law or 
 of a search for "pleasure" or "utility" Moreover let it 
 be noted that, with the development of human ^teffig*K* 
 and sentiment, it is impossible to discover the moral ftto 
 in an almost reflex state without there being mixed up with 
 it general and generous, even metaphysical, ideas. 
 
 \t other times the spontaneous sentiment of duty instead 
 of inciting to action, stops it suddenly. Then may develop 
 what Messrs. Maudsley and Ribot, with the physiologists, 
 would call a power of suspension or of "inhibition" not les 
 sudden and violent than the power of impulse. I was 
 still a little fellow in skirts," the American preacher Parker, 
 tells us, " and only four years old. I had never killed the 
 smallest creature; yet I had seen other &**"* 
 themselves by killing birds, squirrels, and other htt 
 
 animals One day I discovered, m a ^.^^ 
 
 pond, a small speckled tortoise warming itself in the sun. 
 I lifted my stick to give it a knock Suddenly something
 
 100 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 held back my arm, and I heard a strong, clear voice within 
 me saying, That is wicked ! Quite surprised at this new 
 sensation, this unknown power which in me, and in spite 
 of me, opposed my actions, I kept my stick lifted up in the 
 
 air until I had lost sight of the tortoise I must own that 
 
 no other event of my life has left such a deep and lasting 
 impression upon me." In this second example the sudden 
 action of feeling is still more remarkable than in the pre- 
 ceding one, because it suspends action already begun, and 
 opposes a sudden obstacle to the nervous discharge ready 
 to be sent forth. It is a coup de theatre, a sudden revela- 
 tion. The power of the sentiment is made more evident 
 by suspension than by impulsion ; by prohibition rather 
 than by command. Moreover, after an experience of that 
 kind, the sentiment of what must be done may, to the 
 thoughtful conscience, at once assume a mystic character 
 which it does not always have in other cases. When the 
 intelligence is, in so sudden a way, confronted with a deep, 
 strong instinct, it tends towards a kind of religious respect. 
 Thus, from the restricted point of view of pure mental 
 dynamics which we adopt, duty can already produce a 
 sentiment of respect which it owes, partly to its great power 
 of arrest, partly to its mysterious origin. 
 
 The force of the moral sentiment acquires a more and 
 more remarkable character, if it shows itself in the form, 
 not of sudden impulse or repression, but as an inward 
 pressure, a constant tension. In most cases, and with 
 most people, the sentiment of what must be done is not 
 violent, but it is durable. In default of intensity, it has 
 its advantage in time, which is as yet the most powerful of 
 factors. 
 
 A tension not very strong, but acting continuously and 
 always in the same direction, must necessarily conquer 
 resistances which are much stronger, but which neutralize 
 each other. When, for the first time, the idea of helping 
 France entered the soul of Joan of Arc, this idea did not
 
 THE SENTIMENT OF OBLIGATION. 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 . - ' 
 
 
 A
 
 102 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 of an impersonal and generous inclination, the experience of 
 its indestructibility" There is, moreover, no distinct con- 
 sciousness of the bonds of obligation until there has been 
 more or less a feeling of remorse that is to say, persistence 
 of the instinct in spite of its violation. Mistake is a 
 necessary element in the formation of thoughtful moral 
 consciousness. In reality, it is the idea of time which 
 begins to give its particular character to that instinct of 
 duty in which Kant saw only the manifestation of the 
 intemporal. Under the sway of passion the actual intensity 
 of the inclinations alone enters into the sum of forces which 
 act on the mind. The future and the past have no influence. 
 Now, the past and the future, remembered or foreshadowed, 
 are a condition of morality. The pressure of the great 
 instincts, useful to the species, grows infinitely greater and 
 greater if in our imagination it becomes multiplied by 
 every moment of time. A being to become moral must 
 possess consciousness of the duration of time. 
 
 One knows the examples by which Darwin shows that, if 
 animals had our intelligence, their instinct would be replaced 
 by a sentiment of obligation. This sentiment of obligation 
 feeling from the point of view of dynamics, is inde- 
 pendent of effectively moral or non-moral direction of the 
 instinct ; it depends solely on its intensity, its duration, and 
 on the resistance or assistance which it meets in its environ- 
 ment. " Let us suppose," Darwin says, " to take an extreme 
 case, that, if men had been born under the same conditions 
 of life as the bees, without doubt our non-married females, 
 following the example of the work-bees, would consider it 
 their sacred duty to kill their brothers, and the mothers 
 would try to kill their pregnant daughters, without anyone 
 interfering."* 
 
 * See "The Descent of Man " and our " Morale Anglaise Con tern - 
 poraine." An empirical verification of these theories on the relation 
 of instinct and of obligation may be sought. To accomplish this it 
 would be necessary- to continue in a methodical way the experiments
 
 THE SENTIMENT OF OBLIGATION. IO3 
 
 Now, why is it impossible to satisfy the moral instinct 
 which in man is found to really coincide with the social 
 and humanitarian instinct and why does it not take the 
 periodical form of the other instincts ? There are two 
 sorts of instincts the one tends to repair the expenditure 
 of force, the other to produce this expenditure. The first 
 are limited by their very object ; they disappear when once 
 the want is satisfied ; they are periodical and non-continuous. 
 Polyphagy, for instance, is rare. The others tend very often 
 
 commenced by Messrs. Charcot and Richet, on what we will call moral 
 S2iggestions, made in a state of somnambulism. According to these 
 experiments, a command given to someone in a state of somnambulism 
 during his sleep is executed by the person, sooner or later, when he 
 wakes up, without his being able to himself interpret the reasons which 
 have urged him to do the action. The magnetizer thus seems to have 
 been able to create at all points an inward tendency, an inclination 
 persistent in the background, and imposing itself on the will of the 
 patient. In these curious examples the dream of the somnambulist 
 still dominates and directs his life after his awakening ; it is like an 
 artificial instinct in its birth. Here is, for instance, a curious case 
 observed by Mr. Richet. It deals with a woman who had the mania 
 of not taking sufficient food. One day, during her sleep, Mr. Richet 
 told her that she ought to eat a good deal. When awakened, she had 
 completely forgotten the injunction. However, one of the following 
 days, the nursing sister of the hospital took Mr. Richet aside, to tell 
 him that she could not make out the change which had taken place in 
 the patient. " She now always asks for more food than I give her," the 
 sister said. If these facts were carefully observed, we have here, not 
 only the execution of a particular order, but unconscious impulse, 
 approaching very closely to natural instinct. In short, every natural or 
 moral instinct is derived, as Cuvier remarks, from a sort of somnam- 
 bulism, because it gives us an order of which we ignore the reason ; we 
 hear the " voice of conscience " without knowing whence it comes. To 
 vary the experiment, one ought to order the patient, not only to eat, but, 
 for instance, to get up early every day, to work steadily. One might in 
 this way succeed in modifying the moral character of persons by degrees, 
 and the state of somnambulism might become important as a means 
 of action in the moral hygiene of some sick people. If it were possible 
 thus to create an artificial instinct, undoubtedly a kind of mystical 
 obligation would attach to it provided it did not meet with resistance
 
 104 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 to become continuous and unsatisfied. Thus, in certain 
 depraved organisms the sexual instinct may lose its habitual 
 character of periodicity and regularity, to become nympho- 
 mania or satyriasis. Every instinct urging to an expen- 
 diture of force may thus become insatiable intel- 
 lectual debauch, love of money, - of play, of fighting, of 
 travel, etc. We have to distinguish, therefore, between 
 instincts demanding varied expenditure of force and those 
 
 from other pre-existent and more vivid inclinations. An inverse experi- 
 ment might also be made, to see if it would not be possible to annul, 
 by a repeated series of orders, such or such a natural instinct. It is 
 said that a somnambulist can be made to lose his memory, for instance, 
 with regard to names ; he can even be made to lose his whole memory, 
 according to Mr. Richet (Rev. Pkzlos., October 8th, 1880). He adds: 
 " This experiment must only be attempted with the utmost prudence ; 
 I have, in such a case, seen so great a terror and such a disorder of the 
 intelligence caused, persisting for about a quarter of an hour, that I 
 should not like to re-commence this dangerous attempt often." If one 
 identifies memory, as most of the psychologists do, with habit and instinct, 
 one would think it would be also possible in a somnambulist to provision 
 ally annihilate, or at least weaken, instincts even of the most fundamental 
 or most obligatory kind, such as the maternal instinct, modesty, etc. 
 It remains to be known if this suppression of instinct would not leave 
 some traces after the awakening. Then the power of resistance of 
 diverse instincts might be tested for instance, of the moral instincts ; 
 and it might be shown which are the deepest and most tenacious, the 
 selfish or the altruistic impulses. Anyway, the experiment of destroying 
 bad habits or hereditary manias might be attempted ; it might be seen 
 if a series of orders or advice often repeated during sleep could, for 
 instance, lessen delusions of grandeur and persecutions. The madman, 
 believing himself to be an object of hatred, could be commanded to 
 love his enemies ; prayer might be forbidden to the madman who 
 believed he was thus entering into direct communication with God, etc. 
 In other words, one would try to counterbalance a natural mania by an 
 artificial impulse, created during sleep. Somnambulism would thus be 
 found to be a subject of richer psychological and moral observation than 
 insanity. Both are derangements of the mental mechanism ; but in 
 the state of somnambulism this derangement can be calculated and 
 regulated by the magnetizer. Since the first edition of this book many 
 experiments of this kind have been made, and with success .
 
 THE SENTIMENT OF OBLIGATION. 
 
 demanding always the same expenditure. Jho- jhfch 
 belone to one particular organ are very easily exhau, 
 Those which include a series of indefinite tendencies 
 (as for instance, love of exercise, of movement, of action) 
 can naumlly be satisfied less easily, because the variety of 
 xpenditure y gives a kind of res, ?*%*** 
 nstinct belongs, as mental force, to this land ; it is ther. 
 "those which easi!y become insatiabl, .and I continuous 
 What happens if some instinct or other has *"* *> 
 insatiable /Every time an instinct is exercised which is b 
 Me vatd in its manifestations there follows such an exhaus- 
 tion of the organism that it is unable to repair the expend* 
 The nymphomaniac has no children. A too great expenditure 
 oTbra n-Le also checks fecundity-even causes untimely 
 death. The exaggerated love of danger and of war rnul- 
 tiplies the risks and diminishes the chances of life. But 
 there are some rare tendencies which may become insatiable 
 without checking the multiplication of the species but, ^on 
 the contrary, favouring it. First m the list ^[ 
 the altruistic sentiment-that is, the one which could 
 produce a strong feeling which persists after a %*** 
 fication. Even from the physiological point of view, it is 
 pTssMe to thus show the necessary formation of the soc,al 
 
 Tht instinct, which prompts the artist to seek 
 beautiful forms, to act according to a certain order and 
 niure to perfect everything he does-this mstmct is very 
 mu"h like moral inclinations, and, like these , n g 
 to a certain sentiment of rudimentary obligation The artist 
 feels inwardly obliged to produce, to ^' and '^J* 
 harmonious works j he is as vividly wounded by an 
 
 aste as many conscientious people by a mistake 
 conduct he incessantly feels, with regard to forms and 
 
 "o the moral judgment. Even the artizan, the skilled work-
 
 106 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 man, does whatever he works at with satisfaction ; loves his 
 work; cannot consent to let it remain unfinished and 
 unpolished. This instinct, which is to be traced even 
 in the bird building its nest, and which has burst forth with 
 extraordinary power in certain artistic temperaments, might 
 undoubtedly, in a people like the Greeks, in its development, 
 give rise to an (esthetic obligation similar to moral obligation ; 
 but the aesthetic instinct was only indirectly connected with 
 the propagation of the species ; for this reason it has neither 
 become sufficiently general, nor has it acquired sufficient 
 intensity. It has only become of real importance where it 
 was in touch with sexual selection. In the relation of the 
 sexes the aesthetic inclination becomes something like a 
 moral bond ; the aversion, if violated, ends in a kind of 
 remorse. The aesthetic aversion which an individual feels 
 with regard to certain individuals of the other sex is noticed 
 even among animals ; it is known that a stallion will disdain 
 to be coupled with too coarse mares. 
 
 In man we find that this same sentiment connected, 
 moreover, with many others, social or moral will produce 
 far more marked effects. The negro women whom their 
 masters want to pair like animals, and so marry by force 
 to the males chosen for them have even gone so far as to 
 strangle the children of this enforced union (and yet pro- 
 miscuousness is frequent among negroes). A man who 
 tries to gratify his brutal desire with a woman physically 
 and aesthetically too much below him feels afterwards an 
 inward shame ; he has the feeling of it being a degradation 
 of the race. The young girl who, in obedience to her 
 parents, marries a man who displeases her, may afterwards 
 feel a disgust strong enough, near enough to moral remorse, 
 to throw herself out of the window of the nuptial chamber. 
 In all these instances the aesthetic sentiment produces the 
 same effect as the moral sentiment. Genius and beauty 
 bring obligations. Like every power discovered in our- 
 selves, they clothe us in our own eyes with a certain dignity,
 
 THE SENTIMENT OF OBLIGATION. I7 
 
 and they impose on us a duty. If genius were absolutely 
 necessary to every individual in order to conquer in t 
 struggle for life, it would undoubtedly have become general. 
 Art would be to-day a groundwork common to man 
 
 no those instincts which, apart from the moral and 
 esthetic instinct, has been able to so sufficiently develop 
 itself in certain individuals as to make it possible for 
 English school to regard it as an analogue to the sentiment 
 of obligation is the inclination so often given as an mstan. 
 by this' school-viz, avarice. But, even from this narrow 
 and still gross point of view which we here take, let us 
 nodce J inferiority of this impulse in "* 
 the moral instinct. Avarice, while diminishing the comfc 
 of life, has the same effect as poverty ; it does not promote 
 fecundity, for the miser is afraid of having children. Besides 
 inTe ch Id, whose development has been cramped by the 
 paternal Avarice, a reaction is very often produced which 
 ompt *t to prodigality. In short-and this is a decisive 
 ^son-lricl no? having any social utility, not b- 
 encouraged by opinion. Let us imagine a society of misers 
 EvTy one of them will have but one aim-to transform hi 
 neighbour into a spendthrift, so as to be able to lay hand 
 on his gold. If, nevertheless, against all possibility, miser 
 could five with perfect mutual understanding and mutual 
 ncitement to avarice, it would not be long bete we s . uld 
 see a duty of parsimony " spring up-a sentiment as 
 
 for having Wrf in this obligation than in e,ther of the 
 the foregoing it may already be concluded, inde-
 
 108 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 pendently of many other considerations, that it is impossible 
 that the different moral duties, divers forms of the social or 
 altruistic instinct, should not be born ; and hardly any 
 others could spring up. A fresh reason, which ought to 
 assure the triumph of the moral instinct, is the impossi- 
 bility of satisfying remorse, of satisfying it by a good action 
 as one satisfies hunger. When once hunger is stilled, 
 the pain felt becomes but a vague remembrance, which we 
 at last completely lose. It is not the same with remorse ; 
 the past seems indelible, and is ever smarting. For the rest, 
 no wants which are not too merely animal admit of such 
 compensations as hunger and thirst allow. Thus it is with 
 love. You may everlastingly regret the supreme hour of 
 love which the beloved woman offered you, and which you 
 allowed to slip away, without having ever been able to win 
 it back again. The lover cannot, as in a comedy of Shake- 
 speare, replace one woman by another. 
 
 " Je ne vis qu'elle etait belle 
 
 Qu'en sortant des grands bois sourds 
 
 Soit, n'y pensons plus, dit-elle, 
 Et mot, fypense tonjours" 
 
 In short, the most considerable advantage of the moral 
 instincts, as instincts, is that to them belongs the last word. 
 If I have sacrificed myself, I am either dead, or I survive 
 with the satisfaction of duty fulfilled. The selfish instincts 
 are those which are always thwarted in their triumph. To 
 enjoy the satisfaction of fulfilled duty is to forget the trouble 
 we took in fulfilling it. On the contrary, the thought that 
 we have failed in our duty somehow embitters even our 
 pleasure. In general the remembrance of work, of strain, 
 of effort employed for the satisfaction of any instinct, is 
 soon effaced ; but the remembrance of the unsatisfied 
 instinct persists as long as the instinct itself. Leander 
 soon forgot with Hero the great effort made in crossing the 
 Hellespont ; he would not have been able to forget Hero 
 in the embrace of another lover.
 
 THE SENTIMENT OF OBLIGATION. 
 
 The moral instinct being once established in its generality 
 with its power in constant application, in what order has it 
 riven rise to the different particular moral mstmcts, the 
 
 inward dignity ; next, they place the duties of justice befoi 
 
 social and derived virtues. Temperance for 
 
 by means of sexual ^ selecuo imdenttnd them 
 
 lTa ni, be reduced to duties towards 

 
 HO MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 obligatory character. To throw one's self into a fight to 
 help a comrade will seem to a savage (and to many civilized 
 men) more obligatory and more honourable than to abstain 
 from robbing him of his wife. The people in Australia, 
 Cunningham says, think no more of the life of a man than 
 of that of a butterfly ; they are, for all that, none the less 
 susceptible, when the moment comes, of charity, or even of 
 heroism. The Polynesians commit child-murder without a 
 shadow of remorse ; but they can very tenderly love the 
 children whom they thought fit to spare. There is, in the 
 effort demanded by abstention, an often greater working of 
 the will than in acting, only it is less visible ; hence moralists 
 have been inclined to attribute a secondary importance to 
 abstention. One does not see the effort of Hercules in 
 lifting up a heavy burden with outstretched arm, precisely 
 because the arm is motionless, and does not tremble ; but 
 this immobility costs more inward energy than many move- 
 ments. 
 
 to this point we have considered the moral sentiment 
 only as a sentiment conscious of its relations to the other 
 sentiments of the human soul, but unconscious of its source 
 and its hidden causes as non-philosophic, in short. What 
 is going to happen when the sentiment becomes reflective, 
 rational when the moral man wants to explain the 
 causes of its action and to justify it ? If we must believe 
 Mr. Spencer, moral obligation, which implies resistance and 
 effort, must some day disappear to make room for a kind 
 of-flaoral spontaneousness. The altruistic instinct will be 
 so incomparably strong that without struggle it will bear 
 us along. We shall not even estimate its power, because 
 we shall not feel tempted to resist it. We might say that 
 at that time the force of tension which the idea of duty 
 possesses will transform itself into a living force as soon as 
 there shall be an opportunity, and we shall, so to speak, 
 only become conscious of it as a living force. Mr. Spencer 
 even says the day will come when the altruistic instinct
 
 THE SENTIMENT OF OBLIGATION. HI 
 
 will be so powerful that men will vie with each other in 
 finding opportunities of exercising it- opportunities of self- 
 sacrifice and death. Mr. Spencer goes too far. He forgets 
 that while civilization tends to indefinitely develop the 
 altruistic instinct, while it gradually changes the higher 
 rules of morality into mere rules of social propriety, of 
 civility almost, on the other hand civilization infinitely 
 developes thoughtful intelligence, habits of inward and 
 outward observation the scientific spirit, in short. _ Now, 
 the scientific spirit is the great enemy of all instinct; it 
 is the dissolving force par excellence of all that which 
 Nature herself has bound. It is the revolutionary spirit 
 It incessantly struggles against the spint^authority which 
 is at the root of societies ; it will also struggle against the 
 authority in the depths of conscience. Whatever .origin 
 one attributes to the impulse of duty, if this impulse is not 
 iustified by reason it will find itself seriously modified by 
 the continuous development of reason in man. Hum ^ 
 nature, said a Chinese sceptic to Mencius, *e farthfa 
 disciple of Confucius, is so pliant and so flexible that 
 it resembles the branch of the willow. Equity and justice 
 are like the basket woven out of this willow But the 
 moral being needs to believe himself an oak with a sound 
 heart, needs to feel himself not giving way like the willow 
 to the chance stroke of the hand which touches him. If 
 his conscience is but a basket woven by instinct with 
 bending branches, reflection might easily undo what instinct 
 had done. The moral sense will then lose all its resistance 
 and all its solidity. We believe it is possible to scientifically 
 prove the following law: " Ever^Jm^ncLtend^Jo its < 
 destruction when it becomes conscious?* 
 
 * See our "Morale Anglaise Contemporaine (part ii., book in,). 
 This* wha M. Ribot concedes to us (' L'Heredite Psychology 
 Edition p 342); but he adds: "Instinct only disappears 
 ? a form' of mental activity, which takes its place by doing 
 ...Intelligence could only kill the moral sentiment by finding
 
 112 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 In France, as well as in England, a certain number of 
 objections have been brought forward against us, which tend 
 to make out that moral theories are without influence in 
 practical life. We had shown that the moral sense, if hypo- 
 thetically it is robbed of all truly rational authority, finds 
 itself reduced to the role of a constant obsession, or halluci- 
 nation. The answer was made to us that the moral sense 
 has nothing in common with hallucination ; for it is in no 
 sense a judgment, neither is it an opinion. " Conscience 
 does not affirm, it commands-; and a command may be wise 
 or foolish, but not true or false."* But we, in our turn, 
 say that what precisely constitutes the dogmatic character 
 of a command is that it does not explain itself at all by 
 plausible reasons that is to say, that it corresponds with a 
 false view of the reality. Every command thus includes an 
 "affirmation," and implies, not only "foolishness" or 
 "wisdom," but error or truth. In the same way, every 
 affirmation implicitly includes a rule of conduct. A mad 
 person is not only " deceived " by the ideas which possess 
 him he is directed by them ; our illusions command and 
 rule us. The moral sentiment which keeps me from killing 
 acts on me as a sentiment, by means of the same springs as 
 the immoral impulse which urges a maniac to kill ; we are 
 both moved in the same way, but according to opposite 
 motives or springs. One has, therefore, always to examine 
 if this, my motive, possesses more rational value than that 
 
 something better." Assuredly, on the condition that the word better 
 be taken in quite a physical and mechanical sense. For example, it is 
 better it is preferable for the cuckoo to lay her eggs in the nest of 
 other birds ; but this does not seem to be better, speaking absolutely, 
 nor, above all, does it seem so for the other birds. An amelioration 
 from the point of view of the individual, and even of the species, might 
 therefore not always be identical with what we call " moral ameliora- 
 tion." There is here, at least, a question which deserves to be 
 examined ; it is precisely this question which we examine in this 
 volume. 
 
 * Mr. Pollock, in Mind(\v\. iv., p. 446).
 
 THE SENTIMENT OF OBLIGATION. 113 
 
 of the murderer. That is the question. If, now, to 
 appreciate the rational value of motives, one trusts to a 
 purely positive and scientific criterion, a certain number of 
 conflicts will be produced between public utility and per- 
 sonal utility conflicts which it is right to foresee. As to 
 the hope that instinct will be able to decide in these con- 
 flicts quite alone, we do not believe in it ; on the contrary, 
 instinct will be more and more altered in man by the 
 progress of reflection. 
 
 We should not, therefore, be able to agree with our 
 English critics on this essential point. Has the science of 
 ethics, which is a systematization of moral evolution in 
 humanity, no influence on this very evolution; and is it 
 unable to modify its meaning in any important way ? In 
 more general words, does not every phenomenon, in becom- 
 ing conscious of itself, change under the very influence of 
 this consciousness ? Elsewhere we have made the remark 
 that the instinct of suckling, so important in mammifers, 
 to-day tends to disappear in many women. There is a still 
 much more essential phenomenon the most essential of 
 all that of generation, which tends to modify itself accord- 
 ing to the same law. In France (where the majority of the 
 people are not held back by religious considerations) the 
 personal will becomes, in the sexual act, a partial substitute 
 for the instinct of reproduction. Hence, in our country, 
 the very slow increase in population, which causes both 
 numeral inferiority to the other continental nations and 
 our economic superiority (very provisional, however, and 
 already compromised). Here, then, is a striking instance 
 of the intervention of the will in the sphere of instinct. 
 Instinct, being no longer protected by a religious or moral 
 creed, becomes powerless to furnish a rule of conduct. The 
 rule is borrowed from purely rational considerations, and 
 generally from considerations of mere personal utility by 
 no means of social utility. Yet the most important duty of 
 the individual is generation, which assures the duration of 
 
 i
 
 114 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 the race. Likewise, in many of the animal species, the 
 individual lives only to breed, and death follows imme- 
 diately on fecundity. To-day this duty, first in the animal 
 scale, finds itself consigned to the lowest rank in the French 
 nation, which, with deliberate purpose, seems to follow the 
 maxim of in-fecundity. This is not the place to blame, but 
 merely to state. The gradual and necessary disappearance 
 of religion and absolute morality has many such surprises 
 in store for us. If there is nothing in this to terrify us, at 
 least we must try to foresee them in the interest of science. 
 
 Another remark. The mere excess of scruples may go so 
 far as to dissolve the moral instinct in the case of confessors 
 and their penitents. Bagehot remarks also that in reasoning 
 excessively about modesty one may weaken, and even 
 gradually lose, that very sentiment. Every time that 
 reflection is steadily fixed on an instinct, on a spontaneous 
 impulse, it tends to alter the same. This fact might, perhaps, 
 be physiologically explained by the moderating action of the 
 grey matter of the brain on the secondary nervous centres, 
 and on every reflex action. For instance, if a pianist plays 
 by heart a piece studied mechanically, it is necessary that he 
 should play with confidence and smoothness, without paying 
 too close an attention to himself, and without wanting to 
 account for the instinctive movement of his fingers. To 
 reason about a system of reflex actions or habits always 
 means to upset them.* 
 
 The moral instinct, which evolution tends to strengthen 
 in so many ways, might, therefore, undergo some alteration 
 by the excessive development of thoughtful intelligence. 
 Undoubtedly one has to carefully distinguish, in moral 
 philosophy, between metaphysical theories and practical 
 morality. We have ourselves elsewhere made this distinc- 
 tion ; but we cannot agree with the English philosophers 
 
 * See on this point the "Problemes de 1'Esthetique Contemporaine," 
 P- 137.
 
 THE SENTIMENT OF OBLIGATION. 
 
 that theories never influence practice, or at least influence 
 it as little as they maintain is the case. Messrs. Pollock and 
 Leslie Stephen compare moral philosophy with geometry. The 
 hypotheses relative to the reality of duty, Mr. Pollock tells us, 
 have no more influence on conduct than the hypotheses 
 relative to the reality of space and its dimensions. Messrs. 
 Pollock and Leslie Stephen forget that, if space has four 
 dimensions instead of three, this is of no interest either 
 to my legs or to my arms, which will always move within 
 the three known dimensions. If, on the contrary, there 
 exists for me the means to move according to new dimen- 
 sions, and if that might be an advantage to me in some way 
 or other, I should hasten to try, and I should work with all 
 my strength to destroy my primitive intuition of space. 
 This is precisely what happens in moral philosophy; a 
 whole field of activity, closed until now by the phantom 
 of the idea of duty, sometimes opens before me. If I 
 notice that there is no real harm in my exercising myself 
 freely in it, but that, on the contrary, it would be beneficial 
 to me, how should I not take advantage of it? The differ- 
 ence between ordinary scientific speculations and speculations 
 in moral philosophy is, that the first indicate mere alternatives 
 for thought, while the second indicate, at the same time 
 alternatives for action. All the possibilities discovered by 
 science can be here realized for ourselves. It is for me to 
 realize the hyperspace. 
 
 The result predicted to us by Mr. Spencer gradual dis- 
 appearance of the sentiment of obligation could, therefore, 
 be obtained in a way quite other than the one of which he 
 speaks. MralcadQJy_ d is a Pr (aar ' rmt_becaus.e y 
 
 _ 
 
 moral instmctTwould liave become irresistible, but, on the 
 contrary, because man, no longer taking into account 
 any instinct, would absolutely conform his conduct to 
 reason would unfold his life like a series of theorems. It 
 may be said that for Vincent de Paul moral obligation, 
 in so far as it is painful and austere, had disappeared. He
 
 Il6 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 was spontaneously good ; but it may also be said that for 
 Spinoza it had equally disappeared. He had forced himself 
 to combat every moral prejudice ; he did not obey any 
 instinct unless he could accept it after deliberate reasoning. 
 He was more of a rational than a moral being. He sub- 
 mitted, not to the constantly obscure, and, so to speak, 
 opaque obligation springing from his moral nature, but to 
 the clear and transparent obligation springing from his 
 reason. And where this obligation imposed on him any 
 kind of suffering, he must have experienced that stoic 
 sentiment of intellectual origin resignation rather than the 
 Christian sentiment of mystic origin, the overflowing joy of 
 duty accomplished. 
 
 Anyone analyzing himself to excess is necessarily unhappy. 
 Therefore, if it is possible that the analytical spirit be one 
 day used by some at the cost of their morality, it will, at 
 at the same time, cost them their happiness. These are 
 sacrifices too great ever to tempt a great many people. 
 Yet it is the task of the philosopher to examine even his 
 instincts ; he must endeavour to justify obligation, although 
 the very effort to justify the moral sentiment risks its impair- 
 ment by making the instinct conscious of itself, by making 
 deliberate that which was spontaneous. 
 
 Let us search in the domain of facts, to which we have 
 methodically confined ourselves, for all the forces which 
 would contend against moral dissolution, and thus supply 
 the obligation absolute of the ancient moralists.* 
 
 * As complement of the above chapters, it is necessary to read the 
 parallel chapters in " Education and Heredity " (by Guyau) on the 
 "Genesis of the Moral Instinct."
 
 SECOND BOOK. 
 
 LAST POSSIBLE EQUIVALENTS OF DUTY FOR THE 
 MAINTENANCE OF MORALITY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Fourth Equivalent of Duty Derived from Love of Risk 
 and of Struggle. 
 
 THE PROBLEM. 
 
 LET us recall the chief problem which presents itself to 
 every exclusively scientific conception of morality. To . 
 how great an extent can deliberate consciousness feel itself S 
 bound by an impulse, by an inward pressure which has,/ 
 hypothetically, only a natural character not a mystical nor 
 even a metaphysical one and which, moreover, is not com- 
 pleted by the prospect of any extra- social sanction ? To 
 what extent must deliberate consciousness rationally obey 
 an " obligation " of this sort ? 
 
 A positive and scientific morality, we have said, can give 
 the individual this commandment only : Develop your life 
 in all directions, be an " individual " as rich as possible in 
 intensive and extensive energy ; therefore be the most social 
 and sociable being. In the name of this general rule, which 
 is the scientific equivalent of the imperative, a positive 
 morality can enjoin upon the individual certain partial and 
 moderate sacrifices ; it can formulate the whole series of
 
 Il8 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 average duties to which ordinary life is confined. In all 
 this, be it understood, there is nothing categorical, nothing 
 absolute, only excellent hypothetical advice. If you pursue 
 this aim ihe-Jiighest intensity of life then do this ; in 
 short, it is a good average In oral ity. 
 
 How will this morality manage to obtain from the 
 individual, in certain cases, a definite sacrifice not a 
 mere partial and provisional one ? Charity urges us 
 to forget that which the right hand has given excellent ; 
 but reason advises us to watch well what we give. The 
 altruistic instincts invoked by the English school are open 
 to all sort of restrictions and alterations ; to rely solely on 
 them for securing disinterestedness is to introduce a kind 
 of struggle between them and the selfish impulses. Now, 
 the latter are sure to get the best of the majority of people, 
 because they have a visible and tangible root ; while the 
 others appear to the individual reason as a result of 
 hereditary influences by which the race tries to make the 
 individual its dupe. Selfish reasoning is always ready to 
 intervene, and to paralyze the first spontaneous movements 
 of the social instinct. 
 
 It belongs really to the part of the superior nerve-centres 
 to moderate the action of the inferior centres to regulate 
 the instinctive movements. If I walk along a mountain- 
 path at the top of a precipice, and a noise or a sudden 
 fear makes me start, the mere reflex action will urge me to 
 fling myself again to the other side ; but then reason will 
 moderate my movement by warning me that there is a 
 precipice near. The hedonist finds himself in a somewhat 
 similar situation, when it is a question of throwing himself 
 blindly into some sort of self-sacrifice. It is reason's part 
 to show him the abyss, to prevent him throwing himself 
 down without due consideration under the impulse of the 
 first instinctive movement ; and the " preventive action " 
 of reason will be, in that case, as logical, as powerful, with 
 regard to the altruistic impulses as it can be with regard to
 
 EQUIVALENT OF DUTY. 1 19 
 
 the merely reflex action. That is what we have elsewhere 
 raised as an objection to the English school. 
 
 The self and the not-self, therefore, are both present. 
 They seem, indeed, to be two values without a common 
 measure. There is in the self something sui generis 
 irreducible. If the world is, for the hedonist, superior 
 in quantity to his self, his self must always seem to 
 him superior in quality to the world the quality resting 
 for him in the enjoyment. "I am," he says, "and 
 you exist for me only in so far as I exist and as I main- 
 tain my existence ; this is the principle which dominates 
 both the reason and the senses." So long, therefore, as 
 one keeps to hedonism, one cannot logically be obliged 
 to detach one's interest from one's self. Now, hedonism 
 in its fundamental principle, which is the obstinate con- 
 servation of self, cannot be refuted from the point of view 
 of facts. Only the metaphysical hypothesis may attempt 
 to make the will overcome the transition of the self to the 
 non-self. From the positive point of view, and with all 
 hypothesis left aside, the problem which we have just 
 presented seems, at first, theoretically insoluble. And yet 
 this problem can receive, in practice, at least an approxi- 
 mate solution. 
 
 n. 
 
 FOURTH EQUIVALENT OF DUTY, DERIVED FROM THE LOVE OF 
 RISK AND OF STRUGGLE. 
 
 IT is rare that real sacrifices present themselves in life as 
 certain. The soldier, for instance, is not certain of falling 
 in the fight ; far from it : there is here only a mere possibility. 
 In other words, there is danger. Now, it is necessary to 
 see if danger, even independently of all idea of moral 
 obligation, is not a medium useful for the development of 
 life itself a powerful stimulant of all the faculties, capable
 
 120 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 of carrying them to their maximum of energy, and capable 
 also of producing a maximum of pleasure. 
 
 Primitive humanity lived in the midst of danger, hence 
 there must still exist in many people a natural predisposition 
 to face it. Danger was, so to speak, the sport of primitive 
 men, as sport is to-day, for many people, a kind of sham 
 danger. This taste for peril, faced for its own sake, is to 
 be met with even among animals. We find on this subject a 
 curious tale of a traveller in Cambodia. 
 
 As soon as a troup of monkeys notice a crocodile with its 
 body sunk in the water, its mouth wide open, so as to 
 seize anything which may pass within reach, they seem to 
 plan together, approach little by little, and begin their sport, 
 being by turns actors and spectators. One of the most 
 agile, or of the most imprudent, passes from branch to 
 branch, to within a respectful distance of the crocodile, 
 suspends himself by a paw, and with the dexterity of his 
 race advances, goes back, now striking its adversary with 
 its paw, now merely pretending to hit him. Some of the 
 others, amused by this game, want to be of the party ; but, 
 the other branches being too high, they form a chain by 
 holding one another hanging by their paws. They balance 
 themselves in that way, while he who is nearest the 
 amphibious animal torments it as much as possible. 
 Sometimes the dreadful jaw shuts itself, but without 
 catching the audacious monkey. There are screams of joy 
 and merry antics ; but sometimes also a paw is caught in 
 the vice, and the leaping monkey is drawn down under 
 water with the quickness of lightning. The whole troup 
 then disperses moaning and howling, which, however, does 
 not prevent them beginning again the same sport several 
 days, perhaps even several hours, later."* 
 
 The pleasure of danger is derived chiefly from the pleasure 
 of victory. One likes to conquer, no matter whom, even an 
 
 * Mouhot, " Voyage dans le Royaume de Siam et de Cambodge."
 
 EQUIVALENT OF DUTY. 121 
 
 animal. We like to prove to ourselves our superiority. 
 Baldwin, an Englishman, who went to Africa only with the 
 intention of shooting, one day put this problem to himself, 
 after having been very nearly felled by a lion: "Why 
 does man risk his life without having any interest in 
 doing so?" "It is a question which I will not try to 
 solve," he answered. " All I can say is that in victory one 
 finds an inward satisfaction for which it is worth while to run 
 a risk, even if there is nobody to applaud." Moreover, 
 even after having lost the hope of conquest, one obstinately 
 goes on struggling. Whosoever may be the adversary, every 
 fight degenerates into a desperate duel. Bombonnel, having 
 rolled with a panther close to the edge of a precipice, pulled 
 his head out of the open mouth of the animal, and threw him, 
 by a stupendous effort, into the ravine. He lifted himself 
 up, blinded, spitting quantities of blood, not being able to 
 account clearly for the situation. He thought only of one 
 thing namely, that probably he must die from his wounds, 
 and that before dying he must revenge himself on the 
 panther. " I did not think of my pain. Being completely 
 carried away by fury, I pulled out my hunting-knife, and, 
 not knowing what had become of the animal, I looked for 
 it everywhere to begin the struggle over again. It was in 
 this condition that the Arabs found me when they arrived." 
 This need of danger and of victory, which carries away 
 the soldier and the huntsman, is found also in the traveller, 
 the colonist, the engineer. A French manufacturer of 
 dynamite, not long ago, sent an engineer to Panama ; he 
 died on arriving there. Another engineer went, arrived safely, 
 but died eight days after. A third immediately set sail. 
 Most professions, like that of medicine, would furnish a 
 great many instances of the same kind. The invincible 
 attraction of the sea lies, to a great extent, in the constant 
 danger which it presents. It tempts in succession each 
 generation which is born on its shores, and if the 
 English nation has acquired an intensity of life and force
 
 122 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 of expansion so great that it has spread itself over the 
 whole world, we may say that this is due to its education by 
 the sea that is to say, to its education by danger. 
 
 Let us note that the pleasure of contest alters its form with- 
 out disappearing, be it in the struggle with an animated being 
 (war or chase), or in the struggle with visible obstacles 
 (sea, mountain), or in the struggle with invisible things 
 (illness to be cured, difficulties of all sorts to be conquered). 
 The struggle always partakes of the same character that 
 of a passionate duel. In truth, the doctor who starts for 
 Senegal has decided upon a kind of duel with the yellow 
 fever. The struggle passes from the domain of things 
 physical to the intellectual domain, without losing anything 
 of its ardour or of its fascination. The struggle may also 
 pass into the special domain of morals. There is an inward 
 struggle between the will and the passions, as captivating as 
 any other, and in which the victory brings an infinite joy, as 
 was well understood by Corneille. 
 
 In short, man needs to feel himself great, in order now and 
 again to have full consciousness of the sublimity of his will. 
 This consciousness he gets in struggle struggle with him- 
 self, with his passions, or with material and intellectual 
 obstacles. Now, this struggle to satisfy our reason must 
 have an aim. Man is too rational a being to fully approve 
 of the monkeys of Cambodia playing for fun with the jaws 
 of the crocodile, or of the Englishman Baldwin going into the 
 heart of Africa for the pleasure of hunting. The intoxication 
 of danger exists at times in everyone of us, even in the 
 most timid ; but this instinct of danger requires to be more 
 reasonably exercised. Although, in many cases, there 
 is only a superficial difference between temerity and courage, 
 he who, for instance, dies for his country is conscious of not 
 having accomplished an idle deed. The need of danger 
 and of struggle, on condition of it being thus directed and 
 utilized by reason, assumes a moral importance all the 
 greater, as it is one of the rare instincts which have no fixed
 
 EQUIVALENT OF DUTY. I2 3 
 
 direction. It may be used without resistance for any social 
 
 end. . , 
 
 There was, therefore, in Pascal's bet an element which h 
 did not bring to light. He saw only the fear of risk ; he 
 did not see the pleasure of risk. To well understand 
 attraction of risk, even when the chances of misfortu 
 are very numerous, many psychological considerations 
 be brought forward. 
 
 i. In calculating we must not take into account only tl 
 good and bad chances, but also the pleasure of running 
 these chances the pleasure of adventure. 
 
 2 A pain simply possible and far distant, and, above all, 
 when it has never yet been felt, corresponds to a state quite 
 other than that in which we actually are, while a desired 
 pleasure is more in harmony with our present state, and 
 thus acquires, in our imagination, a considerable value. In 
 so far as the remembrance of pain may be painful to certain 
 characters, so far may the vague and indeterminate possi- 
 bility of pain leave them indifferent. It is also rare (above 
 all in youth that optimistic age par excellence) that he 
 chance of pain seems to us equivalent to the chance . 
 great pleasure. This explains, for instance, the fearlessness 
 which lovers have at all times shown in confronting a 
 kinds of peril in order to meet again. One finds this te 
 lessness also among animals. Pain seen from afar, above 
 all when it has not yet been repeatedly experienced, s 
 generally negative and abstract to us; pleasure seems 
 positive and palpable. Besides, every time that pleasure 
 responds to a want, the representation of future enjoyment i 
 accompanied by the sensation of an actual pain ; the enjoy- 
 ment seems then not merely a kind of superfluity, but a reh 
 from real pain, and its value still increases. These psycho- 
 logical laws are the very condition of life and activity. As 
 most actions bring both a chance of pain and a chance c 
 pleasure, it is, from a purely mathematical point of view, 
 abstention which ought most often to prevail ; but in reality
 
 124 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 it is action and hope which prevail all the more so as the 
 action itself is the foundation of pleasure. 
 
 3. Another psychological fact is : He who has twenty 
 times escaped a danger for instance, a bullet concludes 
 that he will go on escaping it. In this way a habit of dis- 
 regarding danger is produced which the calculation of 
 probabilities could not justify, and which nevertheless 
 forms an element in the bravery of veterans. Moreover, 
 the habit of disregarding danger induces a habit of dis- 
 regarding death itself a sort of admirable familiarity with 
 this neighbour who has been seen, as the saying is, " very 
 close at hand."* 
 
 To the pleasure of risk is often added that of responsi- 
 bility. One likes to be responsible not only for one's own 
 destiny, but for that of others to manage the world on 
 one's own account. This intoxication of danger mixed with 
 the joy of commanding, this intensity of physical and intel- 
 lectual life exaggerated by the very presence of death, has 
 been expressed with mystic barbarity by a German marshal, 
 von Manteuffel, in a speech made in Alsace-Lorraine : 
 " War ! yes, gentlemen. I am a soldier. War is the 
 element of the soldier, and I should like to taste it. 
 That elevated sentiment of commanding in battle, of 
 knowing that the bullet of the enemy may call you any 
 moment before God's tribunal, of knowing that the fate 
 of the battle, and consequently the destiny of your country, 
 may depend on the orders which you give this tension of 
 mind and of feelings is divinely great !" 
 
 The love of danger and of risk plays its part, more or less 
 degenerated, in a great many social circumstances. It is 
 of considerable importance in the economic sphere. 
 Capitalists who risked their savings in the enterprise of 
 
 * Even in the heart of most criminals may be traced an instinct of 
 importance, from a social point of view, and which should be utilized 
 the instinct of adventure. That instinct might find its use in the 
 colonies, in the return to savage life.
 
 EQUIVALENT OF DUTY. 125 
 
 the Suez Canal imitated, in their way, the engineers who 
 risked their lives in it. Speculation has its dangers, and 
 in these very dangers lies its fascination. The simple trade 
 of the shopkeeper at the corner of the street still admits of 
 a certain amount of risk. If we compare the number of 
 failures (bankruptcies) with the number of establishments, we 
 shall find that this risk is of importance. Moreover, danger 
 in endless shades and degrees from the danger of losing 
 one's life to the danger of losing one's money remains one 
 of the important features of social existence. There is not 
 a movement in the social body which does not imply a risk. 
 And intelligent boldness to run this risk identifies itself up 
 to a certain point with the very instinct of progress, and 
 liberalism ; while the fear of danger identifies itself with 
 the conservative instinct, which, after all, is always doomed 
 to be beaten as long as the world exists and progresses. 
 Thus, in the danger incurred on behalf of somebody 
 (myself or some one else), there is nothing contrary to 
 the deep instincts and laws of life. Far from it ; to expose 
 one's self to danger is something normal in a morally well- 
 constituted individual ; to expose one's self to danger for 
 the sake of others is but going a step further on the 
 same road. 
 
 From this side self-sacrifice again takes its place among the 
 general laws of life, from which it at first seemed to com- 
 pletely escape. The peril confronted for oneself or for 
 others intrepidity or self-sacrifice is not a mere negation 
 of self and of personal life ; it is this life itself raised into 
 sublimity. The sublime in ethics, as well as in aesthetics, at 
 first seems to be in contradiction to the order constituting 
 the beautiful ; but this is only a superficial contradiction. 
 The roots of the sublime and the beautiful are the same, 
 and the intensity of feeling which it pre-supposes does not 
 prevent a certain inward rationality. 
 
 When we accept risk we have also accepted possible 
 death. In every lottery one has to take the bad numbers
 
 126 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 as well as the others. Moreover, he who under such circum- 
 stances sees death approaching feels himself, so to speak, 
 linked to it. He had foreseen and willed it, although 
 hoping to escape it ; he will, therefore, not retreat except 
 from inconsistency, from weakness of character to which is 
 generally given the name of cowardice. Undoubtedly he 
 who has left his country to escape military service will not 
 necessarily be an object of horror to every one (we must 
 state it, while regretting it) ; but he who, having agreed to 
 become a soldier who, having accepted his task, flees from 
 danger and turns his back on it at the supreme moment 
 he will be called a coward and a worthless wretch. With all 
 the more reason the same will be said of the officer who had 
 consented, not only to meet death face to face, but to be 
 the first to march towards it, to set the example. In the 
 same way, no doctor can morally refuse his services in an 
 epidemic. Moral obligation takes the form of a professional 
 obligation, of a contract freely undertaken, with all the con- 
 sequences and all the risks which it implies.* The further 
 we advance, the more will political economy and sociology 
 be brought back to the science of risks, and of the means of 
 compensating them in other words, to the science of 
 assurance. And the more will social morality be brought 
 back to the art of using to advantage, and for the good of 
 all, this need of " risking one's self" which is experienced by 
 every individual life with any power at all. In other words, we 
 shall endeavour to make those who are economic of themselves 
 feel assured and undisturbed, and to make those who are, so 
 to speak, prodigal of themselves useful. 
 
 * The risks can be multiplied incessantly in this way, and may 
 surround one with an even tighter ring, from which one can neither 
 logically nor morally retreat. "The exaltation of sentiments of anger 
 and of generosity increases in the same proportion as the danger," 
 rightly remarks M. Espinas in the objections which he has addressed to 
 us without knowing that we were fundamentally of the same opinion on 
 all these points (Revue Philosophique, 1882, vol. ii.).
 
 EQUIVALENT OF DUTY. I27 
 
 But let us go further. The moral agent may be placed 
 not face to face with mere risk, but before the certitude of 
 definite sacrifice. 
 
 ^ In certain countries, if the labourer wants to fertilize his 
 fields, he sometimes uses very energetic means ; he takes 
 his horse, opens his veins, and, whip in hand, drives him 
 into the furrows. The bleeding horse drags himself across 
 the field which lies under his tottering legs ; the earth 
 ecomes red as he passes, each furrow drinking its share of 
 the blood. When, exhausted, he falls down with rattling 
 throat he is still forced to get up again, to give the last drop 
 of his blood to the greedy earth. At last he sinks down 
 he is buried in the field, which is still red; his whole life' 
 his whole being, passes to the revived earth. This sowing 
 with blood becomes a source of wealth; the field thus fed 
 will yield corn in abundance-a great benefit to the labourer 
 Things do not happen differently in the history of humanity 
 The legion of the great unfortunate ones, of the unknown 
 martyrs-all these men, whose very misfortune has conduced 
 to the welfare of others; all those who have been forced to 
 self-sacrifice, or have freely sought it; all have passed 
 through the world sowing their lives, shedding their blood 
 They have made the future pregnant. Often they have 
 been mistaken, and the cause defended was not always 
 worth their sacrifices ; nothing so sad as to die in vain 
 But to him who considers the mass, and not the individuals 
 self-sacrifice is one of the most precious and the most 
 powerful forces in history. To make humanity-this great 
 indolent body-progress one step, there has always been 
 needed a shock which has crushed individuals The 
 humblest, the most ordinary of men, may, therefore, find 
 himself placed before the alternative of the certain sacrifice 
 his life or of an obligation to be fulfilled. He may be 
 not only soldier, but policeman, fireman, etc.; and these 
 callings, which we designate as humble, are of the kind which 
 sometimes demand sublime actions. Now, how can we
 
 128 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 demand from anyone the sacrifice of his life, if morality is 
 based only on the regular development of this very life? 
 There is contradiction in the terms. It is the chief objection 
 which we have elsewhere made to all naturalistic moral 
 philosophy, and to which the necessity of things has again 
 brought us. 
 
 From the naturalistic point of view at which we place 
 ourselves, even the act of merely watching over the interests 
 of others is superior to the act of watching our own interests 
 only in so far as it indicates a greater moral capacity, a 
 surplus of inward life. In any other sense it would only be 
 a kind of monstrosity, as in those plants which have hardly 
 any leaves or roots nothing but a flower. To be at all 
 able to command self-sacrifice, something more precious 
 than life must be found. Now, empirically speaking, there 
 is nothing more precious ; nothing else has the same value 
 as life ; everything else acknowledges this, and borrows its 
 value from it. It is impossible to convince the English 
 utilitarian that morality, maintained by the sacrifice of life, 
 is not analogous to a miser dying to save his treasure. 
 Nothing more natural than to ask a person to die for you, or 
 for an idea, when he has entire faith in immortality, and 
 already feels the growing of his angel's wings ; but what if 
 he does not believe this ? If we had faith, there would be no 
 difficulty ; it is so easy to be blindfolded ! A man exclaims : 
 " I see, I know, I believe." He sees nothing he knows 
 still less ; but he has the faith which takes the place of it 
 all. He does what faith commands; he goes to the 
 sacrifice, looking up to heaven. Cheerfully he lets oneself 
 be crushed by the wheels of the big social machine and 
 sometimes even without distinct aim for a dream, for an 
 error, as the Hindus did, who threw themselves at full 
 length under the bloody wheels of the sacred chariot, happy 
 to die under the weight of their gigantic and empty idols. 
 But how, not having faith, can we demand from the indi- 
 vidual a definite sacrifice, without basing this demand on
 
 EQUIVALENT OF DUTY. I2Q 
 
 some principle other than the development of this very life 
 which is to be wholly or partly sacrificed ? 
 
 Let us begin by recognising that in some extreme cases 
 -moreover, very rare ones-this problem has no rational 
 and scientific solution. In those cases in which morality is 
 impotent morality must leave it wholly to the spontaneity 
 of he individual. The fault of the Jesuits is not so much 
 their having wanted to enlarge morality as their having 
 brought in the detestable element of hypocrisy. Before all 
 one has to be frank with one's self, and with others- a 
 paradox is not dangerous if it presents itself boldly to 'all 
 eyes Every action may be considered as an equation to 
 e solved. Now, there are always, in a practical decision 
 nown terms and unknown terms, which have to be found 
 t scientific morality cannot always find these. Some 
 equations, therefore, are insoluble-or, at least, do not allow 
 01 an undeniable and categorical solution. The mistake 
 of moralists is to pretend to solve in a definite and universal 
 way problems which may have a great many peculiar 
 solutions. Let us add that the fundamental unknown some- 
 ung, the x, to be sought in a certain number of problems 
 is death. The solution of the equation presented depends 
 therefore, on the variable value attached to the other terms 
 which are-(i) physical life to be sacrificed; ( 2 ) some 
 moral act to be accomplished. 
 Let us examine these two terms. 
 
 The solution depends chiefly, let us say, on the value 
 attached to life. Undoubtedly life is for everyone the most 
 precious of all blessings, because it is the condition of all 
 others; nevertheless, if the others are reduced almost to 
 naught, life itself loses its value it then becomes a con- 
 temptible thing. If there are two individuals, the one 
 having lost those he loved, the other having a large family 
 whose welfare depends on him, these two are not equal 
 before death. 
 
 To fairly present this great problem of contempt of life,
 
 130 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 it must be compared with another important consideration. 
 Self-sacrifice presents, in more than one point, an analogy with 
 "suicide, since in both cases death is consented to, and even 
 desired, by the will of an individual who knows what life means. 
 To explain suicide, we must admit that the duration of the 
 average enjoyments of life is of little value compared to 
 the intensity of certain sufferings ; and the converse will be 
 equally true viz., that the intensity of certain enjoyments 
 seems preferable to the whole duration of life. Berlioz 
 represents an artist who kills himself after having known 
 the highest aesthetic joy which he thinks it possible to feel 
 once in his life. This is not so mad an action as one might 
 think. Suppose it were granted to you to be for an instant 
 a Newton discovering his law, or a Jesus preaching love on 
 the mountain the rest of your life will then seem colourless 
 and empty ; you would purchase this instant at the price of 
 all the rest. Give anyone the choice between living over 
 again the monotonous round of his whole life, or living 
 over again the small number of hours which he remembers 
 as having been perfectly happy ; few people will hesitate. 
 Let us extend the question to the present and the future. 
 There are hours in which the intensity of life is so great 
 that, placed in balance with the whole possible series of 
 years, these hours will turn the scale. One passes three 
 days in climbing to a high summit of the Alps ; one finds 
 that the short moment passed on the white summit, in the 
 great calm of the sky, is worth these three days of fatigue. 
 There are also moments in life when we seem to be on a 
 mountain-top when we soar; compared with these moments, 
 everything else becomes indifferent. 
 
 Life, therefore, even from the positive point of view at 
 which we now place ourselves, has not that measureless 
 value which at first it seemed to have. Sometimes, without 
 being irrational, the totality of existence may be sacrificed 
 for one of its moments, as one single verse may be preferred 
 to the whole poem.
 
 EQUIVALENT OF DUTY. j^! 
 
 So long as suicide persists among men, it would be 
 inexplicable that there should not be self-sacrifice definite 
 and without hope. Only one thing is to be regretted ; that 
 is, that society should not try to transform suicide into 
 self-sacrifice as much as possible.* 
 
 A certain number of perilous enterprise^_ou^t^w^yiJa--v44^ 
 be offered to those who are discouraged with life. Human 
 progress will always need for its fulfilment so many indi- 
 vidual lives that watch should be kept that no one might 
 lose it in vain. In the philanthropic institution called the 
 Dams du Calvaire widows devote themselves to the 
 nursing of repugnant and contagious illnesses. This use, 
 for the advantage of society of lives more or less broken 
 and become useless by widowhood is an instance of what 
 might be done, of what certainly will be done in the society 
 of the future. There are thousands of persons for whom 
 life has lost its greatest value. These persons could find a 
 true consolation in self-sacrifice; use should be made of 
 them. In the same way, all capacities should be employed. 
 Now, there are special capacities for perilous and dis- 
 interested occupations, temperaments born to self-forgetful- 
 ness and always ready to risk themselves. This capacity 
 for self-sacrifice has its source in a superabundance of moral 
 life. Every time that the moral life of an individual is , 
 checked or repressed by its environment, another environ- ^ 
 ment must be discovered for it in which it may recover the 
 possibility of its unlimited extension, and of its untiring 
 employment in the service of humanity. 
 
 Besides, life not always being an object of preference, it 
 
 * Lately, on the Place des Invalides, at the very moment when a 
 mad dog was about to attack some children, a man ran up to him 
 knocked him down, broke his backbone, and threw him into the Seine' 
 As people wanted this man to have the many wounds which he had 
 received attended to, he escaped from the crowd, saying that he wished 
 to die because " his wife had broken his heart." There ought to be no 
 other kind of suicide.
 
 132 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 may become, in certain cases, an object of disgjtst and of 
 horror. There is a sentiment peculiar to man which has 
 hitherto not been well analyzed. We have already called it 
 the sentiment of intolerability. Through the influence of 
 attention and of reflection, certain physical, and, above all, 
 certain moral sufferings, increase in our consciousness to 
 such a degree as to obscure everything else. One single 
 pain is sufficient to efface all the many pleasures of life. 
 Probably man has this privilege of being able, if he chooses, 
 to be the most unhappy animal in creation, because of the 
 tenacity he can communicate to his pains. Now, one of 
 the sentiments which possesses to the highest degree this 
 character of intolerability is that of shame, of moral 
 failure. Life, for instance, bought at the cost of shame 
 may seem unbearable. The objection will be made that 
 a truly epicurean or utilitarian philosopher can afford 
 to look with a certain disdain at those sentiments of moral 
 shame which are always rather conventional. But we would 
 reply that they are far less conventional than a great many 
 others for instance, the lust of money. Daily you see 
 ruined people to whom life becomes unbearable, and 
 philosophy is of small service to them. Besides, there is 
 a kind of moral ruin far more terrible in every way than 
 the other. That which is merely pleasant as this or that 
 pleasure of life, and even as the sum of life's pleasures, can 
 never compensate for that which rightly or wrongly seems 
 to be intolerable. 
 
 Certain particular spheres of activity become finally so 
 important in life that they cannot be attacked without 
 touching life at its very source. We cannot imagine Chopin 
 without his piano ; to have forbidden him music would have 
 meant killing him. Likewise, existence would probably 
 not have been bearable for Raphael without forms, colours, 
 and a brush to reproduce them. If art becomes in this 
 way as important as life itself, it need not astonish that 
 morality should have, in the eyes of man, a still higher value.
 
 EQUIVALENT OF DUTY. 
 
 Here there is really a still wider-reaching sphere of activity 
 than in art. If the sceptic finds some vanity and illusion 
 m the moral sentiment, he will find yet more in the 
 artistic sentiment. Those whom art has killed are more 
 completely dead than if they had died for humanity, and 
 nevertheless those whom art has killed and will yet kill are 
 many. There ought to be a greater number of those who 
 sacrifice themselves for a moral ideal. Let us suppose a 
 tree, a branch of which becomes enormously developed, 
 and even takes root in the surrounding earth as happens 
 m the case of the giant tree of India. In the long run, the 
 branch will even hide the very trunk ; it is the branch 
 which seems to support and to sustain the trunk. Likewise 
 the moral and intellectual life is a kind of shoot, a powerful 
 branch of the physical life. It developes to such an extent 
 in the social environment that an individual killed, so to 
 speak, in his moral life seems by that to be more com- 
 pletely crushed ; it is like a trunk having lost all its strength 
 and foliage a true corpse. "To lose, in order to live, 
 the very motives of life!" The lines of Juvenal are 
 eternally true even for him who rejects the stoic doctrines. 
 The most disabused sceptic still imposes on himself a cer- 
 tain rule of conduct which dominates his life at any rate a 
 practical ideal. Life at certain moments may not seem to 
 him worthy of being preserved by the renunciation of this 
 last trace of the ideal. 
 
 If m no single doctrine the moral sentiment, in itself 
 alone, can give true positive happiness to our sensibility, it is 
 nevertheless capable of making happiness without it impos- 
 sible, and this is practically sufficient. For beings who have 
 arrived at a certain degree of moral evolution happiness is 
 no longer desirable outside the sphere of their ideal. 
 
 Therefore, the moral sentiment has still greater value by 
 reason of its destructive than of its creative power. 
 It may be compared with a great love extinguishing all other 
 passions ; without this love life is intolerable and impossible
 
 134 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OK SANCTION. 
 
 to us. On the other hand, we know that it will not be 
 returned, neither can it be, nor should it be so. It is 
 customary to pity those who in their hearts feel such love 
 a love without hope, which nothing can satisfy ; and yet we 
 all cherish quite as powerful a love for our moral ideal, from 
 which we cannot rationally expect any sanction. This love 
 will always seem vain, from an utilitarian point of view, 
 since it must not hope for satisfaction, for reward ; but, 
 from a higher point of view, these satisfactions and pre- 
 tended compensations may, in their turn, disappear as mere 
 vanity. 
 
 To sum up, the value of life is something quite variable, 
 which may sometimes be reduced to nought to less 
 v/ J than nought. Moral action, on the contrary, has always a 
 * certain value. It is rare that a being falls low enough to 
 
 , do, for instance, an act of cowardice with perfect indifference, 
 
 \or even with pleasure. 
 
 Now, to form an idea of the value which the moral act 
 may acquire in certain cases, we must remember that man 
 is a thinking animal or, as we have said before, a philosophic 
 animal. Positive morality cannot take into account all the 
 metaphysical hypotheses which it pleases man to make on 
 the basis of things. Moreover, an exclusively scientific 
 moral philosophy cannot give a definite and complete 
 solution of moral obligation. One has always to get beyond 
 mere experience. The luminous vibrations of the ether pass 
 from Sirius to my eye, that is a fact ; but have I to open my 
 eye or to shut it to receive them ? Simply to open it 
 will not reveal the law of the vibrations of light. In 
 the same way, my consciousness gets to understand 
 that of others ; but have I to completely open myself to 
 others, or have I to keep myself partly shut up? This is 
 a problem, the practical solution of which will depend on 
 the personal hypothesis which I shall have made of the 
 universe, and of my relation to other beings. Only these 
 hypotheses must remain absolutely free and personal, and
 
 METAPHYSICAL RISK IN SPECULATION. 135 
 
 it is impossible to systematize them into a metaphysical 
 doctrine, which would impose itself universally on human 
 reason. We will see how, thanks to the strength of the 
 individual hypothesis, there is no absolute sacrifice which 
 may not become, not only possible, but, in certain cases, 
 almost easy. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Fifth Equivalent of Duty, derived from Metaphysical 
 Risk. The Hypothesis. 
 
 METAPHYSICAL RISK IN SPECULATION. 
 
 have shown the considerable practical influence which 
 the pleasure of danger or risk has ; there remains for us to 
 see the influence, no less great, of that which Plato called the 
 KaXos KivSuJjiRs, of the great metaphysical risk in which the 
 mind loves to disport itself. 
 
 In order that I may reason out to the very end certain 
 moral acts which go beyond the average and scientific 
 morality, in order that I may strictly deduct them from 
 philosophical or religious principles, these principles them- 
 selves should be settled and determined. But this can only 
 be done by hypothesis ; therefore, I myself must establish 
 the metaphysical reasons of my actions. Given the un- 
 knowable, the x of the essence of things, I must represent 
 this to myself in some way, and conceive it according to 
 the image of the act which I wish to accomplish. If, for 
 instance, I want to do an act of pure and definite charity, 
 and if I should wish to justify this act rationally, I must 
 imagine an eternal charity inherent in the very heart of 
 things, and of myself; I must render the sentiment which
 
 136 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 induces me to act objective. The moral agent here plays 
 the same part as the artist ; he must convey to others the 
 tendencies which he inwardly feels, and, out of his love, 
 create a metaphysical poem. The unknowable and neutral 
 x is the counterpart of the marble shaped by the sculptor, 
 of the inert words which, in the poet's stanza, are arranged, 
 and become alive. The artist shapes but the form of 
 things ; the moral being which is always a metaphysician, 
 either spontaneous or deliberate shapes the very essence of 
 things, builds up eternity upon the model of his conception 
 of the act of one day, and gives to this act, which otherwise 
 would seem to hang in the air, a root in the world of 
 thought. 
 
 The noumenon, in the moral and not purely negative 
 sense, we ourselves make ; it acquires a moral value only 
 by virtue of the type according to which we represent it to 
 ourselves ; it is a construction of our mind of our meta- 
 physical imagination. 
 
 Will it be said that there is something like child's play in 
 this effort to give type and form to that which is essentially 
 without form or hold ? From a narrowly scientific point of 
 view this is possible. In heroism there is always a kind of 
 simple and grand artlessness. Every human action contains 
 an element of error, of illusion. Perhaps this element 
 increases in proportion as the action rises above the average. 
 The most loving hearts are those which have been most 
 deceived ; the greatest geniuses are those which exhibit the 
 most inconsistencies. The martyrs were often sublime 
 children. What childishness in the ideas of the alchemists, 
 who nevertheless, in the end, created a science ! It was partly 
 in consequence of an error that Christopher Columbus 
 discovered America. Metaphysical theories must not be 
 judged according to their absolute truth, which can never 
 be verified ; but one of the ways of judging them is to 
 appreciate their fecundity. Do not, therefore, ask them to 
 be true independently of ourselves and our actions, but to
 
 METAPHYSICAL RISK IN SPECULATION. 137 
 
 become true. A fertile error may, in this sense, be more 
 true from the point of view of universal evolution than a 
 top narrow and barren truth. It is sad, says M. Renan, to 
 think that M. Homais is right, and that he has recognised 
 the truth from the very beginning, without effort and without 
 merit, by simply looking at his feet. Well, no ; M. Homais 
 is not right, shut up as he is in his small circle of positive 
 verities. He may have been quite able to cultiver son 
 jardin, but he looked upon his garden as the world, and he 
 was mistaken. It would perhaps have been much better 
 for him if he had fallen in love with a star, or been 
 haunted by some kind of absolutely visionary chimera 
 which, at least, would have made him realize something 
 great. Undoubtedly Vincent de Paul had his mind filled 
 with more idle dreams than M. Homais ; but it has been 
 found that the small portion of truth contained in his 
 dreams was more fruitful than the number of common-sense 
 truths apprehended by M. Homais. 
 
 Metaphysics is, in the domain of thought, what luxury 
 and outlay are, with regard to art, in the domain of 
 economics. It is a thing all the more useful, as it seems at first 
 less necessary. We might do without it, but we should lose 
 much by it. We do not know exactly where it begins, still less 
 do we know where it ends ; and yet humanity will always 
 move in that direction along an irresistible and easy slope. 
 Moreover, there are certain cases, as economists have shown, 
 in which luxury suddenly becomes a necessity ; in which we 
 need, in order to face life, that which before was super- 
 fluous. Similarly, there are circumstances in which practice 
 suddenly needs metaphysics. We can neither live, nor, 
 above all, die without it. Reason gives us glimpses of two 
 different worlds the real world, in which we live, and 
 a certain ideal world, in which we also live, in which our 
 mind incessantly acquires new vigour, and which it is 
 impossible not to take into account. Only, in regard to the 
 ideal world people no longer agree ; everyone has his own
 
 138 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 conception of it ; some deny it altogether. Yet on the 
 conception we have of the metaphysical essence of things 
 depends the way in which we compel ourselves to act. 
 In fact, a great number of the most noble human actions 
 have been accomplished in the name of religious or meta- 
 physical morality. It is, therefore, impossible to neglect 
 this very fruitful source of activity. But it is none the 
 less impossible to impose upon activity a fixed rule derived 
 from one single doctrine ; instead of absolutely regulating the 
 application of metaphysical ideas, it is only of importance 
 to fix their boundaries, to assign to them their legitimate 
 sphere, without allowing any encroachment upon that of 
 positive morality. In moral philosophy it is necessary 
 to reckon with metaphysical speculation, as it is necessary in 
 politics and sociology to take economical speculation into 
 account. Only it is, in the first place, necessary to be quite 
 certain that its domain is that of sacrifice, practically unpro- 
 ductive for the individual, of absolute devotion, from an 
 earthly point of view. The domain of economic speculation 
 is, on the contrary, that of reproductive sacrifice of risk run 
 with some interest as its aim. In the second place, it is 
 necessary to leave it its hypothetical character. In fact, 
 I know a thing by hypothesis, and according to a personal 
 calculation of probability I infer from it another thing for 
 instance, that disinterestedness is the root of my being, and 
 selfishness merely the surface, or vice versa. By deduction 
 I derive from this a rational law of conduct. This law is a 
 simple consequence of my hypothesis, and I feel rationally 
 obliged to follow it, only as long as the hypothesis seems 
 to me the most probable, the most true for me. In this 
 way a kind of rational and non-categorical imperative is 
 obtained, dependent on an hypothesis. 
 
 In the third place, it must be admitted that this hypo- 
 thesis may vary according to individuals and to intellectual 
 temperaments. It is the absence of fixed law which may be 
 designated by the word anotny, in opposition to the autonomy
 
 METAPHYSICAL RISK IN SPECULATION. 139 
 
 of the followers of Kant. By the suppression of the cate- 
 gorical imperative, disinterestedness and self-sacrifice are 
 not suppressed ; but their object will vary. One person 
 will devote himself to this cause, another to a different one. 
 Bentham devoted his whole life to the idea of self-interest ; 
 that is one way of devoting one's self. He subordinated 
 all his faculties to the study of that which was useful to 
 himself, and necessarily also useful to others. The result is 
 that he has been really very useful as useful, and even 
 more so, than many an apostle of disinterestedness, such as 
 St. Theresa. 
 
 Hypothesis produces practically the same effect as faith 
 even gives rise to a subsequent faith ; which, however, is 
 not affirmative and dogmatic like the other. Moral philo- 
 sophy, which at its bases is naturalistic and positive, rises 
 at its summit into the sphere of free metaphysic. There is 
 one unchangeable moral philosophy that of facts ; and, to 
 complete it, when it is not sufficient, there is a variable and 
 individual moral philosophy that of hypotheses. 
 
 Thus the old apodictic law is shaken. Man, freed by the 
 doubt of all absolute obligation, partly recovers his liberty., 
 Kant began a revolution in moral philosophy when he 
 wanted to make the will " autonomous," instead of making it 
 bow before a law exterior to itself ; but he stopped halfway. 
 He believed that the individual liberty of the moral agent 
 could be reconciled with the universality of the law ; that 
 everyone must conform to a fixed type; that the ideal 
 " reign " of liberty would be a regular and methodical 
 government. But in the " reign of liberty " good order is 
 maintained, simply because no order is imposed beforehand, 
 nor any preconceived arrangement. Consequently, starting 
 from the point where positive moral philosophy stops, there 
 may be the greatest possible diversity of action and the 
 greatest variety of ideals pursued. The true " autonomy " 
 must produce individual originality, and not universal 
 uniformity. If everyone establishes a law for himself, why
 
 140 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 should there not be several laws possible for instance, that 
 of Bentham and that of Kant ?* 
 
 The greater the number of different doctrines which offer 
 themselves to the choice of humanity, the greater will be 
 the value of the future and final agreement. The evolution 
 of mind, as well as material evolution, is always a transition 
 from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. If the intelli- 
 gence is reduced to complete uniformity, the intelligence 
 itself will be annihilated. Shape all minds in the same 
 rpould, give them the same creeds, the same religion, the 
 same metaphysics, pull the human brain by a string, and you 
 will go precisely against the essential tendency of progress. 
 Nothing is more monotonous and insipid than a town with 
 all its streets alike, and laid out in straight lines ; and those 
 who imagine the intellectual city to be of that type suffer 
 from a misconception. It is said : " Truth is one ; the ideal 
 of thought is this very unity, this uniformity" Absolute 
 truth is an abstraction, like the perfect triangle or the 
 perfect circle of the mathematicians. In reality, everything 
 is infinitely multiplex. Besides, the greater the number of 
 people who think differently, the greater is the sum of truth 
 
 v - which they finally will apprehend, and over which they will 
 
 at last be reconciled to one another. Diversity of opinion 
 must not be feared, therefore ; on the contrary, itlhust be 
 encouraged. Two men have a different way of thinking, 
 perhaps ; all the better, they are much nearer to truth than 
 if they both thought the same. If several persons want to 
 see the whole of a landscape, there is only one way, and 
 
 * Let it be well understood that we have never dreamed of con- 
 sidering, as Messrs. Boirac, Lauret, and other critics have reproached 
 us for doing, all metaphysical hypotheses as equal for human thought. 
 There is an abstract logic of the hypotheses from which point of view 
 they may be classified or arranged according to the scale of probabili- 
 ties. All the same, their practical force will not, for a long time to 
 come, correspond exactly with their theoretical value. (See the chapter 
 on " The Progress of Metaphysical Hypotheses " in our volume, 
 " L'Irreligion de 1'Avenir.")
 
 METAPHYSICAL RISK IN SPECULATION. 141 
 
 that is, to turn their back to one another. If soldiers are sent 
 out as scouts, and all turn the same way, observing only 
 one point of the horizon, they will most likely return without 
 having discovered anything. 
 
 JTruth is like light. It does not come to us from one 
 point ; it is reflected by all objects at the same time ; it 
 strikes us from every direction, and in a thousand ways. 
 We should want a hundred eyes to catch all its beams. 
 
 Humanity as a whole has millions of eyes and ears. Do 
 not advise it to shut them, or to listen on one side only. 
 It must open them all at the same time turn them in all 
 directions. The infinity of the points of view ought to 
 correspond with the infinity of things. The variety of 
 doctrines proves the wealth and the power of thought. 
 Moreover, this variety, far from decreasing with time, 
 must increase in details, so that it may end in chords 
 of harmony. Division of thought and diversity of 
 intellectual labour are as necessary as division and 
 diversity of manual work. This division of labour is the 
 condition of all wealth. In bygone times thought was 
 infinitely less divided than in our days; all had imbibed 
 the same superstitions, the same dogmas, the same false- 
 hoods. If one met an individual, one could beforehand, 
 and, without knowing it, say: "Such is his creed;" one 
 could count up the absurdities of his brain, draw up the 
 balance-sheet of his mind. Even in our days many people, 
 both of the inferior and superior classes, have not got 
 beyond this ; their intelligence is of the conventional type. 
 Happily, the number of these minds, inert and without 
 spring, diminishes daily; the role played by initiative 
 increases ; almost everyone shows a tendency to make his 
 own law and his own creed. If only we could once get so 
 far as that, there would no longer be any orthodoxy what- 
 ever I mean no general faith, lumping all minds together. 
 Oh, that faith might become wholly individual that 
 heterodoxy might become the true and universal religion I
 
 142 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 Religious society (and every absolute moral philosophy 
 seems to be the last form of religion) this society, united 
 solely by community of superstitions, is a social form 
 belonging to ancient times, which tends to disappear, and 
 which it would be strange to take as ideal. Kings are dis- 
 appearing ; and priests go also. Theocracy may well try to 
 bring about some compromise with the new order of things 
 to establish concordats of some other kind : constitutional 
 theocracy can no more definitely satisfy reason than consti- 
 tutional monarchy. The French spirit, above all, is not 
 easily satisfied with arrangements of compromise, with half- 
 measures, with anything which is but partially just and 
 true. In any case, it will not look in that direction for its 
 ideal. With regard to religion and to metaphysics, the true 
 ideal is absolute independence of mind and free diversity 
 of doctrines. 
 
 To wish to rule minds is still worse than to wish to rule 
 bodies ; we must shun every kind of " authority over con- 
 ,-gcien.ce " or " authority over thought " as a veritable~curse. 
 Authoritative metaphysics and religions are leading-strings 
 fit for childish people. It is time that we should walk alone, 
 that we should have a horror of sham apostles, of mis- 
 sionaries, of preachers of all kinds ; it is time that we should 
 be our own guides, and that we should look for " revelation " 
 within ourselves. There is no Christ now. Let every one 
 of us be his own Christ, bind himself to God according to 
 his own choice and abilities, or even deny God. Let every 
 one conceive the universe according to a type which appears 
 to him the most probable monarchy, oligarchy, republic, 
 or chaos. All these hypotheses can be maintained, therefore 
 they must be maintained. It is not absolutely impossible 
 that one of them will some day collect together on its side 
 the greatest probabilities, and, by means of them, turn the 
 scale in the most cultivated human minds ; it is not impos- 
 sible that this privileged doctrine should be a doctrine of 
 negation. But we must not encroach upon so problematic
 
 METAPHYSICAL RISK IN SPECULATION. 143 
 
 a future, and believe that, by doing away with revealed 
 ehgion or categorical duty, humanity will be suddenly 
 thrown into atheism and moral scepticism. 
 
 In the intellectual order there can be no violent and 
 sudden revolution, but only an evolution, more accentuated 
 every year. It is just this slowness of the mind in running 
 through the whole chain of reasoning from one -end to the 
 other which, in the social order, makes too sudden revolu- 
 tions come to nothing. Likewise, when it concerns pure 
 speculation, the men whom we have to fear least, and who 
 are most useful, are the most revolutionary those whose 
 thoughts are boldest. We ought to admire them without 
 dread ; they can do so little ! The storm which they raise 
 in a small corner of the ocean will hardly produce any 
 perceptible undulation on the immense mass. On the other 
 hand, in practical matters the revolutionary spirits always 
 make mistakes, because they always believe truth to be too 
 simple, because they are too confident of themselves, and 
 imagine that they have found and fixed the end and aim of 
 human progress. Whereas real progress is to have no end; 
 is to reach those ends which one has put before one's self 
 only to transform them ; to solve problems only by changing 
 their given terms. 
 
 Happy, therefore, are those to-day to whom a Christ 
 would say, "Oh, ye of little faith !" if that means sincere 
 men who do not want to allure their reason and debase 
 their dignity as intelligent beings ; men of a truly scientific 
 and philosophic mind, who distrust appearances, who distrust 
 their eyes and their minds, who incessantly begin over again 
 to test their sensations and to examine their reasonings ; the 
 only people who might possess some particle of the eternal 
 truth, precisely because they never imagine they have the 
 whole truth ; people who have sufficient real/a//^ to always 
 go on searching, instead of resting and exclaiming, "I 
 have found it !" brave people, who walk on when others 
 stop or go to sleep. It is such as these who have the future
 
 144 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 before them ; it is they who will mould the humanity of 
 the ages to come. 
 
 The morality of to-day understands its partial impo- 
 tence to rule the whole of human life absolutely, and in 
 advance ; it leaves a larger sphere to individual liberty ; it 
 does not threaten except in a sufficiently rare number of 
 cases, and only when the absolutely necessary conditions of 
 all social life are concerned. Philosophers no longer agree 
 with the rigorous moral philosophy of Kant, who regulated 
 everything by the tribunal of conscience, who forbade every 
 transgression, every free interpretation of moral command- 
 ments. It was a moral philosophy similar to the ritualist 
 religions, which count any failure in ceremonial as a 
 sacrilege, and which forget the essence for the sake of the 
 form ; it was a kind of moral despotism, creeping every- 
 where, wanting to rule everything. 
 
 At present the rigorous law of Kant's philosophy still 
 reigns in many minds, but no longer makes itself felt 
 in details ; it is recognised in theory, but in practice it is 
 often necessary to deviate from it. It is no longer the 
 Jupiter whose frown was sufficient to move the world ; it is 
 a liberal prince, whom we may disobey without much 
 danger. Is there not something higher than this mock 
 royalty, and must not man, when he reaches the borders of 
 moral philosophy and of metaphysics, reject all absolute 
 supremacy, in order to frankly approach individual specu- 
 lation ? 
 
 The coarser a mechanism, the greater the need of a 
 violent and coarse motive-power to set it in motion ; in a 
 more delicate mechanism the finger-tip is sufficient to 
 produce considerable effect. It is the same with humanity. 
 To make the ancient nations move, enormous promises had 
 at first to be made by religion, and the veracity of these 
 promises had to be guaranteed. It spoke to them of 
 mountains of gold, and streams of milk and honey. Would 
 Ferdinand Cortez have conquered Mexico if he had not
 
 METAPHYSICAL RISK IN SPECULATION. 145 
 
 believed he should see the glitter of the supposed golden 
 domes of Mexico in the distance ? In order to excite 
 people, brilliant images, glittering colours, were dangled 
 before their eyes, as scarlet is held out before a bull. At 
 that time a robust faith was needed to conquer the natural 
 inertia. 
 
 Something certain was wanted. One touched one's god 
 with one's ringer; one ate, one drank him. Then one 
 could quietly die for him, and with him. Later on, duty 
 seemed, and still seems to many, a divine thing a voice 
 from heaven, which is heard within us, which speaks to us, 
 commands us. The Scotch even talked of moral "sense" 
 of moral " tact" This coarse conception was still needed 
 to conquer coarse instincts. To-day a mere hypothesis, a 
 simple possibility, is sufficient to attract and fascinate us. 
 The martyr no longer requires to know if he will receive 
 palms in heaven, or if a categorical law commands his 
 self-sacrifice. One dies, not to conquer the whole truth, but 
 the least of its elements ; a man of science sacrifices himself 
 for a calculation. Ardour in research supplies the place of 
 certainty in the object sought ; enthusiasm takes the place 
 of religious faith and moral law. 
 
 The loftiness of the ideal which we want to realize 
 supersedes the energy of faith in its immediate reality. 
 If we hope for something very great, we derive from the 
 beauty of the aim the courage to defy obstacles; if the 
 chances of its attainment decrease, the desire to do so 
 increases in proportion. The further the ideal is removed 
 from reality, the more desirable it seems ; and, as the desire 
 itself is the supreme force, it has command over the 
 maximum of force. 
 
 The vulgar gifts of life are worth so little that, in 
 comparison with these, the conceived ideal must seem 
 immense ; all our little enjoyments become as nothing 
 before the supreme one of realizing a noble thought. This 
 thought, even if it has no meaning with regard to nature or
 
 146 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 science, may mean everything with regard to ourselves ; it 
 is the farthing of the poor. " To__search_for Truth " this 
 action no longer contains anything conditional, doubtful, or 
 fragile. We have got hold of something, not of the truth 
 itself, undoubtedly (who will ever get hold of it completely ?), 
 but at least of the spirit which enables us to discover it. 
 If we obstinately stop at some doctrine, which is always too 
 narrow, it is like a shadow, disappearing with every change 
 of light ; but always to advance steadily, always to search, 
 always hope this alone is no mere shadow. The truth is 
 to be found by moving forward, by hoping ; and it is not 
 without reason that a " philosophy of hope " has been 
 suggested as a complement to positive moral philosophy.* 
 
 A child saw a blue butterfly resting on a blade of grass ; 
 the butterfly was benumbed by the north wind. The child 
 picked the blade of grass, and the living flower at the end 
 of it, still benumbed, could not fly away. The child 
 returned, holding up its chance prize. A sunbeam touched 
 the wing of the butterfly, and suddenly, revived and gay, the 
 living blossom flew away towards the light. We all, seekers 
 and workers we are like the butterfly : our strength is made 
 only of a ray of light ; nay, only of the hope of a ray of 
 light. We must, therefore, know how to hope ; hope is the 
 force which bears us upward and forward. But it is an 
 illusion ! How do we know that ? Must we not move 
 a step, for fear that some day the earth will disappear from 
 under our feet? It is not sufficient to look far into the 
 future, or into the past ; we must look into ourselves. We 
 must note there the vital forces which demand to be spent ; 
 and we must act. 
 
 See M. Fouillee, " La Science Sociale Contemporaine," livre v.
 
 METAPHYSICAL RISK IN ACTION. 
 
 II. 
 METAPHYSICAL RISK IN ACTION. 
 
 of (-!, j -ff . J ' Tt Ulj u it aiso 
 
 f our actions are in accordance with our 
 uugms, \ve may also say that our thought*; 
 exactly to the expansion of our activity. The most abstr^ 
 metaphysical systems are themselves but formulas of feeling 
 and feeling corresponds to the greater or lesser tension of 
 inward activity. There is a middle term between doubt and 
 faith, between incertitude and categorical affirmation-it is 
 By it only can the uncertain realize itself and 
 
 ideal; I ask you to work towards its realization ^it'hou" 
 believing m it, so as to believe in it. You will believe 
 it if you have striven to produce it. 
 
 b Ineam of dem reHgi nS haVC Wanted to make us believe 
 God in flesh and bone. Saint Thomas ami thaTresemWi^ 
 
 him have touched him with their fingers, and they have been 
 convinced In these days we can no longer be convincedln 
 
 his way. We should look, we should listen, we should even 
 touch with our finger, only to deny yet more obstinately One 
 
 s not convinced of an impossible thing because one thinks 
 one sees or touches it. Our reason is now strong enough 
 to scoff at the need to actually see things ; and^iracfes 
 no longer convince anybody. Therefore, a new way of 
 persuasion is wanted, which even religions have already 
 used to their benefit. This way is action; you believe in 
 proportion as you work. But action must not consist of 
 outward practices and coarse rites; it must have a wholly 
 inward source; then only will O ur faith come truly from 
 withm-not from without. Its symbol will be not the 
 routine of a rite, but the infinite variety of invention, of 
 
 dividual and spontaneous creation. 
 
 Humanity has lon^aheTfoTcod to appear, and when
 
 148 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 at last he appeared it was not God. The time of waiting 
 is over ; now is the time for work. If the idea is not ready 
 built like a house, it depends on us to labour together 
 towards its construction. 
 
 Religions all say : " I hope because I believe, and because 
 I believe in an external revelation." We must say: I believe 
 because I hope, and I hope because I feel in myself a 
 wholly internal energy, which will have to be taken into 
 account in the problem. Why look only at one side of 
 the question ? If there is the unknown world, there is 
 the known self. I do not know what I am capable of 
 with regard to outward things, and I have received no 
 revelation whatever. I hear no " word " echoing in the 
 deep silence of things, but I do know that which I 
 inwardly will, and it is my will which constitutes my power. 
 It is action alone which gives us confidence in ourselves, 
 in others, and in the world. Abstract meditation, solitary 
 thought, in the end weaken the vital forces. If we remain 
 too long on the mountain-tops, a kind of fever of infinite 
 weariness takes hold of us ; we wish never to descend again, 
 we wish to stop where we are, to rest. The eyelids droop ; 
 but, if we give way to sleepiness, we cannot easily wake 
 up again. The penetrating cold of the summits freezes the 
 very marrow of our bones. The indolent and painful 
 ecstasy which threatened to take possession of us was really 
 the beginning of death. 
 
 Action is the true remedy for a pessimism, which may, after 
 all, have its share of truth and utility, if taken in the highest 
 sense of the word. Pessimism, in reality, consists of com- 
 plaining, not so much of what life is, as of what life is 
 not. That which exists in life but rarely constitutes the 
 principal object of human sorrow, and life in itself is not 
 an evil. As to death, it is simply the negation of 
 life. It is not death itself that men would ever desire, 
 either for themselves or those dear to them ; but through 
 death they seek after truth, and to see God, etc. The
 
 METAPHYSICAL RISK IN ACTION. I 49 
 
 child wishing to reach the moon cries for a quarter- 
 af-an-hour, and then consoles itself. Man, wishing to 
 sess eternity, cries also at least, inwardly ; if he is a 
 philosopher he writes a big book ; if he is a poet, he writes 
 a poem ; if he is incapable, he does nothing at all. At last 
 ie consoles himself, and begins life once more, indifferent to 
 everything. Indifferent no, for he cares for life ; after all, 
 is in the main pleasant. True pessimism is really but 
 the desire for the infinite ; noble despair is but infinite hope ; 
 is precisely because it is infinite and inextinguishable 
 that it changes into despair. What does the consciousness 
 >f suffering for the most part amount to in the end ? To 
 the thought that it will be possible to escape from it to the 
 conception of a better state of things that is to 'say to 
 a kind of ideal. Evil is the feeling of impotence. It 
 would prove the impotence of God if one granted the 
 existence of God ; but, with regard to man, it, on the 
 Contrary, proves his relative power. Suffering becomes 
 the mark of a kind of superiority. The only being who 
 speaks and thinks is also the only one capable of crying 
 A poet has said the ideal takes its rise among those who 
 suffer." May it not be this very ideal which gives rise to 
 moral suffering, which gives man full consciousness of his 
 Brings? In fact, certain sufferings are a mark of 
 superiority ; it is not everyone who is thus able to suffer 
 Great souls with broken hearts resemble the bird struck by 
 an arrow in its highest flight. It gives a shriek which fills 
 the skies ; it is dying, and yet it soars. Leopardi, Heine, or 
 Lenau would probably not have exchanged those hours of 
 anguish in which they composed their finest songs for the 
 greatest possible enjoyment. Dante suffered, as much as it 
 is possible to suffer, from pity, when he wrote these lines on 
 Francesca de Rimini. Which of us would not undergo a 
 similar suffering? Some heartaches are infinitely sweet 
 There is likewise a point at which keen pain and keen 
 pleasure seem to mingle. The spasms of agony and those
 
 150 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 of love are not without analogy. The heart breaks with joy 
 as well as with pain. Sufferings productive of good are accom- 
 panied by ineffable joy ; they resemble those sobs which, 
 rendered by the music of a master, become harmony. To 
 suffer and to create is to feel in one's self a new power 
 called forth by pain. It is like the Aurora sculptured by 
 Michael-Angelo which, opening its eyes filled with tears, 
 seems but to see the light through its tears. Yes ; but this 
 light of sorrowful days is yet light ; it is worth being looked 
 at. 
 
 Action, in its productiveness, is also a remedy for scep- 
 ticism ; it forms in itself, as we have seen, its own inward 
 certitude. How do I know if I shall be alive to-morrow, if 
 I shall be alive within an hour, if my hand will be able to 
 finish this line which I begin ? Life from all sides is sur- 
 rounded by the unknown. Nevertheless, I act, I work, I 
 undertake ; and in all my acts, in all my thoughts, I pre- 
 suppose that future upon which nothing gives me a right to 
 count. My activity extends every minute beyond the 
 present instant projects into the future. I expend my 
 energy without fearing that this expenditure may be pure 
 loss ; I impose privations on myself, counting on the future 
 to compensate me for them ; I go my way. This incertitude, 
 which is pressing on me equally from all sides, is, for me, 
 equivalent to a certitude, and makes my liberty possible ; it 
 is one of the foundations of speculative moral philosophy* 
 with all its risks. My thought goes before it, so does my 
 activity ; it sets the world to rights, disposes of the future. 
 It seems to make me master of the infinite, because my 
 power has no equivalent in any other fixed quantity ; the 
 more I achieve, the more I hope. Action, in order to 
 possess the advantages which we have just attributed to it, 
 should undertake some precise work, and, to a certain 
 extent, some work which lies near at hand. 
 
 To do good, not so much to the whole world or the world 
 of humanity, as to certain definite people ; to relieve actual
 
 METAPHYSICAL RISK IN ACTION. 
 
 misery, to lighten someone's burden such things cannot 
 deceive. We know what we are doing; we know that the aim 
 will be worth our efforts-not in the sense that the result 
 obtained will be of considerable importance in the mighty 
 stream of things, but in the sense that there certainly will be a 
 result, and a good result ; that our action will not be lost in 
 the infinite, like a small cloud in the monotonous blue of the 
 atmosphere. To do away with some suffering, that is in 
 itself a sufficient aim for a human being. By so doing we 
 change an infinitesimal part of the total sum of pain in 
 the universe. Pity remains inherent in the heart of man, 
 vibrating in his deepest instincts even when purely rational 
 justice and universalized charity sometimes seem to lose 
 their foundations. Even while doubting, one may love 
 even in the intellectual night, which prevents our pursuing 
 any far-reaching aim, we may stretch out a helping hand to 
 those around us who suffer.
 
 THIRD BOOK. 
 
 THE IDEA OF SANCTION. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Criticism of Natural Sanction and of Moral Sanction. 
 
 HUMANITY has nearly always considered the moral law as 
 inseparable from its sanction. In the eyes of most moralists 
 vice rationally brings in its train suffering ; virtue constitutes 
 a kind of right, or happiness. The idea of sanction, more- 
 over, has, till now, been one of the primitive and essential 
 notions of all morality. According to the Stoics and the 
 followers of Kant, sanction, it is true, does not by any 
 means serve to lay down the law ; nevertheless, it is the 
 necessary complement of the law. According to Kant, 
 every reason, being a priori, unites by synthetic judgment 
 misfortune to vice, and happiness to virtue. Such is, in the 
 opinion of Kant, the force and the legitimacy of this judg- 
 ment that, if human society dissolved itself of its own free 
 will, it would first, before the dispersion of its members, 
 have to execute the last criminal shut up in its prisons. It 
 ought to pay off this debt of punishment, which is firstly 
 its own debt and afterwards that of God. Even certain 
 determinist moralists, while in the main denying merit and 
 demerit, seem still to see a legitimate intellectual need in 
 this tendency of humanity to consider every act as followed 
 by sanction. Lastly, the utilitarians for instance, Mr. 
 Sidgwick also seem to admit some mystical link between 
 such and such a kind of conduct and such or such a happy,
 
 THE IDEA OF SANCTION. 
 
 or unhappy, state of sensibility. Mr. Sidgwick believes it 
 possible, in the name of utilitarianism, to make an appeal 
 to the pains and rewards of a future life. Moral law, without 
 definite sanction, would seem to him to end in a " funda- 
 mental contradiction."* 
 
 As the idea of sanction is one of the principles of human 
 morality, it is also to be found in the essence of every 
 religion Christian, Pagan, or Buddhist. There is no 
 ehgion which has not a Providence; and a Providence is 
 but a kind of distributive justice, which, after having acted 
 incompletely in this world, takes its revenge in another ! 
 ^^distributive justice is what the moralists understand by 
 sanction. It may be said that religion consists essentially 
 this belief that it is a sanction metaphysically linked to 
 every moral act; in other terms, that in the profound 
 order of things there must exist a proportion between the 
 good or bad state of will and the good or bad state of the 
 sensibility. On this point, therefore, religion and morality 
 seem to coincide their mutual demands seem to agree; 
 and, moreover, morality seems to be completed by religion.' 
 The idea of distributive justice and of sanction, generally 
 given the first place in our moral conceptions, in fact 
 naturally appeals, under one form or another, to a divine 
 justice. 
 
 We wish to sketch here a criticism of this important idea 
 of sanction, so as to purify it of any kind of mystical alliance. 
 Is it true that there exists a natural and rational link between 
 the morality of the will and a reward or a su/ering caused 
 to the sensibility? In other terms, is it right to associate 
 merit with enjoyment, demerit with suffering ? This is the 
 problem, which can be also put in the form of an example, 
 if we ask : Does there exist any sort of reason (exclusive 
 of social considerations) that the greatest criminal should 
 receive, because of his crime, a simple pin-prick, and the 
 
 * See our " Morale Anglaise Contemporaine " (second edition).
 
 154 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 virtuous man a prize for his virtue ? Has the moral agent 
 itself the right (exclusive of questions of utility or moral 
 hygiene), having regard to itself, to punish for the sake of 
 punishing, or to reward for the sake of rewarding 1 We 
 should like to show how morally condemnable is the idea 
 which ordinary morality and religion give of sanction. 
 From the social point of view, the truly rational sanction of 
 a law could only be a defence of this law, and this defence, 
 useless with regard to every past act, we shall find bears 
 only on the future. From the moral point of view, sanction 
 seems simply to mean, according to its actual etymology, 
 consecration, sanctification. Now, if for those who admit a 
 moral law it is really the holy and sacred character of the 
 law which gives it force as law, this must imply, according 
 to the idea which we have to day of holiness and of ideal 
 divinity, a sort of supreme renunciation and of disinterested- 
 ness. The more sacred the law, the more disarmed it 
 must be ; so that, taken in the absolute and apart from 
 social conventions, true sanction must seem to be the 
 complete impunity of the thing done. We shall also see 
 that all penal justice, properly so called, is unjust. More- 
 over, all distributive justice has an exclusively social char- 
 acter, and can only be justified from the point of view of 
 society. In a general way, that which we call justice is a 
 completely human and relative notion ; only charity or pity 
 (without the pessimistic significance which Schopenhauer 
 gives it) is a truly universal idea which nothing can limit or 
 restrict. 
 
 i. 
 
 NATURAL SANCTION. 
 
 THE classic moralists are accustomed to see in natural 
 sanction an idea of the same order as that of expiation ; 
 nature begins, according to them, that which human con-
 
 NATURAL SANCTION. 
 
 155 
 
 science and God have to continue. Whosoever violates 
 natural laws, therefore, finds himself already punished in a 
 way, if we may believe them, which forewarns of, and pre- 
 pares, the punishment resulting from moral laws. 
 
 In our eyes nothing is more inexact than this conception. 
 Nature punishes no one (in the sense in which classic 
 moral philosophy uses this word), and nature has nobody 
 to punish, for the reason that nobody is truly guilty with 
 respect to nature. One does not violate a natural law, or it 
 would not be, in that case, any longer a natural law. The 
 pretended violation of a natural law is never anything else 
 but a verification, a visible demonstration. Nature is a 
 great mechanism which always goes on, and which the 
 will of the individual is unable to impede for a moment. 
 She calmly crushes him who falls between her cog-wheels. 
 To be, or not to be she hardly knows any other punishment 
 or any other reward. If we attempt to violate the law of 
 gravity while bending too far over on the tower of St. 
 Jacques, we shall at once give the painful verification of 
 this law by falling down with broken bones. If, like a 
 certain personage of a modern novelist, we wish to stop a 
 locomotive at its highest speed by holding an iron spear in 
 front of it, we shall prove, at our own expense, the inferiority 
 of human force to that of steam. 
 
 In the same way, the indigestion of a glutton and the 
 drunkenness of a tippler have by nature no kind of moral 
 and penal character whatever ; they simply allow the patient 
 to calculate the force of resistance which his stomach or his 
 brain can offer to the hurtful influence of a certain mass of 
 food or a certain quantity of alcohol. It is still a mathe- 
 matical equation, this time a more complicated one, which 
 serves as verification for the general theorems of hygiene 
 and of physiology. Besides, this force of the resistance of 
 the digestion or the brain varies a great deal according to 
 individuals. Our drinker will learn that he is not able to 
 drink like Socrates, and our glutton that he has not the
 
 156 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 digestion of the Emperor Maximin. Let us note that the 
 natural consequences of an act are never linked to the 
 intention which dictated the act ; if you throw yourself into 
 the water without knowing how to swim, whether it be from 
 self-sacrifice or merely from despair, you will be drowned 
 equally quickly. If you have a good digestion and no dis- 
 position to gout, you will be able to eat to excess almost 
 with impunity ; on the contrary, if you are dyspeptic, you 
 will be condemned to incessantly undergo the torment of 
 comparative starvation. Another example : you have given 
 way to a fit of intemperance, you are awaiting with anxiety the 
 " sanction of nature " ; some drops of a medical mixture 
 will turn it off by changing the terms of the equation put 
 before your organism to solve. The justice of things, there- 
 fore, is at the same time absolutely inflexible from a mathe- 
 matical point of view, and absolutely corruptible from the 
 moral point of view. 
 
 To better express it, the laws of nature, as such, are 
 immoral or, if you like, a-moral precisely because they 
 are necessary ; they are the less holy and sacred, they have 
 the less veritable sanction, as they are really the more 
 inviolable. Man sees in them only a movable fetter which 
 he tries to remove. All these bold acts against nature are 
 but happy or unhappy experiments, and the result of these 
 experiments has a scientific, but by no means a moral, 
 value. 
 
 The attempt has, nevertheless, been made to maintain 
 natural sanction by establishing a kind of secret harmony 
 made visible by aesthetics, between the course of nature and 
 that of the moral will. Morality necessarily imparts to those 
 who possess it a superiority even in the order of nature. 
 " Experience, it has been said, shows such a dependency 
 between the morally and the physically good, between the 
 beautiful and the ugly expressed materially, and between 
 the beautiful and the ugly in the sphere of passions and 
 ideas ; one sees the organs become so distinctly modified
 
 NATURAL SANCTION. 
 
 and modelled according to their habitual functions, that 
 there is little doubt that prolonged human life (if it could 
 only be sufficiently prolonged) would show us, in the long run, 
 on the one side monsters, on the other true human beings 
 and this, according to the more and more instinctive aban- 
 donment of certain people to every vice, and the acquired 
 domination of certain others, or according to their faculties 
 turned to right purposes."* 
 
 First of all let it be noted that this law of harmony 
 between nature and morality, to establish which such 
 strenuous efforts have been made, is certainly more valid for 
 the species than for individual life, even if that were pro- 
 longed. A succession of generations and of specific modifi- 
 cations is wanted for a moral quality to express itself by a 
 physical quality, and a defect by some deformity. More- 
 over, the believers in aesthetic sanction seem to entirely 
 confound immorality with what may be called animalism 
 that is to say, the Absolute abandonment to the coarser ^ 
 instincts, the absence of any elevated idea, of any subtle 
 reasoning. Immorality is not necessarily like this ; it may 
 coincide with refinement of mind, and it does not always 
 lower the intelligence. Now, what is expressed by means of 
 the body is rather more the lowering of the intelligence than 
 the degradation of the will. A Cleopatra and a Don Juan 
 do not necessarily cease to be types of physical beauty, nor 
 would they even if their existence were prolonged. The 
 instincts of cunning, anger, and revenge which we find 
 among the Italians of the South have in no wise changed 
 the rare beauty of their race. Besides, many of the types 
 of conduct which to us, in our advanced social state, seem 
 vices are virtues in the state of nature. No really shocking 
 ugliness, no marked alteration of the human type, can 
 therefore be the consequence of it. On the contrary, the 
 qualities, and sometimes the virtues, of civilization, if carried 
 
 * M. Renouvier, "Science de la Morale," i. 289.
 
 158 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 to excess, may easily become physical monstrosities. It is 
 clear on how frail a basis is built the attempt to deduce 
 moral and religious sanction from natural sanction.* 
 
 n. 
 
 MORAL SANCTION AND DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. 
 
 BENTHAM, Mill, MM. Maudsley, Fouillee, and Lombroso 
 have already grappled with the idea of moral punishment ; 
 they wanted to take away from pain all character of expia- 
 tion, and have reduced it to a simple means of social repres- 
 sion and compensation. To reach this conclusion they 
 have, in general, relied on determinist and materialistic 
 doctrines, which are still under discussion. M. Janet, also, 
 in the name of classical spiritualism, has, notwithstanding all 
 this, thought it to be his duty to maintain, in his last work, 
 the principle of redemptory atonement of freely-committed 
 crimes. " Punishment," he says, " must not only be a threat, 
 which assures the execution of the law, but a reparation, or 
 an expiation, which serves as a corrective to the violation of 
 the law. The order, upset by a rebellious will, is re- 
 established by the suffering which is the consequence of the 
 fault committed.''! 
 
 * M. Renouvier, for instance: "It is permissible to see in future 
 reward a natural prolongation of the series of phenomena which, from 
 this very moment, make the fundamental conditions, and even the 
 physical conditions of happiness, depend on morality" ("Science de 
 la Morale," p. 290). 
 
 t M. Janet, "Traitede Philosophic" (p. 707): "The first law of order, 
 V. Cousin has said, is to be faithful to virtue ; if one fails in this, the 
 
 second law of order is to expiate one's fault by punishment In the 
 
 intelligence the idea of pain corresponds to that of injustice." Two of 
 the philosophers who have in France most strongly protested against 
 the doctrine that social laws should be laws of expiation instead of laws 
 of defence, MM. Franck and Renouvier, seem nevertheless to admit 
 as evident the principle of remuneration as attached to the moral law.
 
 MORAL SANCTION AND DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. 159 
 
 ^nct^M H-atr *r e m r 
 
 p. ,). .. It is . ^ **, ,^ons de 
 the condmon of ^^ being attached ,o its vSion 
 VV fr"" a K ttaChed ' the Care take " to ^serve * " 
 
 all That ofT th!S d Ctrine f ta ^ ibk -ward-above 
 all, that of atonement, is untenable-frora whatever point of 
 v.ew ,t ,s regarded, even from the point of view 
 posing -. moral law ,, (0 fixist J y ' e r d 
 
 Hsef to bangs gifted with freedom It is 
 t^^ PP Sed t0 "* 
 Let us free from all prejudice, from all 
 
 evident a ^^; we a 
 before a grossly empirical and physical deduction 
 fr the pnnciple of well-undersJod 
 
 deserved a punishment," and thenceforth expresses a sLte 
 -en. made by the inner nature to the worl/ouSe ?Ws" 
 
 Droit 
 
 and t
 
 160 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 sudden passing from the moral to the visible, from the 
 depth of our being to the outside, seems to us unjustifiable. 
 It is still more so in the hypothesis of freewill than in the 
 others. According to that hypothesis, the different faculties 
 of man are, in fact, not truly linked together and mutually 
 defined. The will is not the pure product of the intelligence, 
 itself sprung from the sensibility. Sensibility is, then, no 
 longer the true centre of our being, and it becomes difficult 
 to understand how it can be responsible for the will. If 
 the will has freely wanted to commit the evil, it is not 
 the fault of the sensibility, which has only played the 
 part of mover, and not of cause. Join the tangible evil 
 of the punishment to the moral evil of the fault, under 
 pretext of expiation, and you will have doubled the sum of 
 evils without mending anything. You will be like the doctor 
 in Moliere who, called in to cure a diseased arm, would 
 have cut off his patient's other arm. Without the grounds of 
 social defence (of which we shall speak later on) the punish- 
 ment would be as blameworthy as the crime, and the prison 
 would be f\o better than those who live in it. Let us say 
 further that the lawgivers and the judges, by deliberately 
 condemning the guilty to punishment, would become their 
 fellows. 
 
 Theoretically speaking that is, putting aside the social 
 utility what difference will there be between the murder 
 committed by the murderer and the murder committed 
 by the executioner ? The last-named crime has not 
 even, as an extenuating circumstance, some reason or other 
 of personal interest or revenge ; the legal murder becomes 
 more wholly absurd than the illegal murder. The executioner 
 imitates the murderer ; other murderers will imitate him ; 
 submitting, in their turn, to that kind of fascination which 
 murder exercises, and which practically makes the scaffold 
 a school of crime. It is impossible to see in the " sanction 
 of expiation " anything resembling a rational consequence of 
 the fault. It is simply a mechanical sequence, or, better, a
 
 MORAL SANCTION AND DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. l6l 
 
 material repetition, and imitation, the model for which is the 
 fault itself. 
 
 2. Shall we, with V. Cousin and M. Janet, invoke this 
 strange principle of order which a " rebellious will " disturbs, 
 and which only suffering can re-establish ? Here the distinc- 
 tion between the social and the moral question is forgotten. 
 
 Social order has been really the historical origin of punish- 
 ment, and/a/ was at first, as Littre has shown, but a com- 
 pensation a material indemnity demanded by the victim 
 or by his relatives; but when we place ourselves at the 
 social point of view, can pain really compensate anything ? 
 It would be too convenient if a crime could be physically 
 redeemed by punishment, and if it were possible to pay the 
 penalty for a bad act by a certain amount of physical 
 suffering, as the indulgences of the Church may be bought 
 for chinking crowns. No; that which is done remains 
 done. The moral evil persists, notwithstanding all the 
 physical evil which is added to it. It would be as rational 
 to attempt, with the Determinists, the cure of the criminal 
 as it is irrational to look for punishment or compensation of 
 his crime. This idea is the result of a kind of childish 
 mathematics and infantile judgment. " An eye for an eye, 
 a tooth for a tooth."* 
 
 * M. Renouvier, one of the principal representatives in France of 
 the moral philosophy of duty, after having himself severely criticised 
 the vulgar idea of punishment, has yet made great efforts to save the 
 principle of retaliation by interpreting it in a better sense. " Taken by 
 itself, and as an expression of a sentiment of the soul with regard to 
 crime, retaliation would be far from deserving the disgust or the indig- 
 nation with which the publicists regard it, whose penal theories are 
 often worse founded upon the basis of strict justice" ("Science de la 
 Morale," vol. ii., p. 296). According to M. Renouvier, it would not be 
 undesirable that the guilty should undergo the effect of this maxim if 
 turned into a general rule ; that which is impracticable is the mathe- 
 matical equivalence which retaliation supposes between the suffering 
 and the wrong done. But, will be our reply, if this equivalence were 
 realizable, the retaliation would not, therefore, be more just ; for we 
 cannot, whatever M. Renouvier may say, convert into a general law the 
 
 M
 
 1 62 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 For him who admits the hypothesis of free-will, one of the 
 scales of the balance is in the moral world, the other in the 
 visible world ; the one in heaven, the other on earth. In 
 the first is a free will, in the second a wholly limited sensi- 
 bility. How is equilibrium to be established between them ? 
 Free-will, if it exists, is quite intangible to us ; it is some- 
 thing absolute, and we have no hold on the absolute. Its 
 resolutions are, therefore, in themselves irreparable, inex- 
 piable. They have been compared with flashes of lightning ; 
 and, in fact, they dazzle us for a moment, and disappear. 
 The good or evil act mysteriously descends from the will 
 into the sphere of the senses ; but, after that, it is impos- 
 sible to re-ascend from this sphere into that of free-will, so 
 as to get hold of it and punish it. The flash of lightning 
 descends, but does not re-ascend. Between free-will and 
 the objects of the visible world there does not exist any other 
 rational link than the will itself of the agent. Therefore it 
 
 maxim and the immoral intention of him who has provoked the retalia- 
 tion ; neither can we convert into a general law the maxim of revenge, 
 which gives back the blows received we can only generalize the physical 
 evil and the painful effect. But the generalization of an evil is morally 
 an evil in itself ; therefore only personal or social reasons of defence 
 remain reasons of precaution, of utility. According to M. Renouvier, 
 retaliation, once purified, may be expressed in this formula, which he 
 declares to be acceptable : " Whosoever has violated the freedom of 
 others has deserved to suffer in his own." But this very formula is, in 
 oUr opinion, not admissible from the point of view taken by Kant and 
 his followers with regard to intention. The guilty one must neither be 
 made to suffer, nor be restricted in his liberty, in so far as he has in the 
 past violated the freedom of others, but in so far as he is capable of 
 violating it again. It cannot, therefore, be said that no act of the past 
 whatever deserves suffering, and pain is never justified but by the antici- 
 pation of similar acts in the future. It does not cling to realities, but 
 to simple possibilities, which it tries to modify. If the guilty person 
 went by his own free will into exile to a desert island, from which 
 return would be impossible, human society (and, in general, every 
 society of moral beings) would find itself disarmed ; no moral law 
 would then possibly demand that, having violated the freedom of others, 
 he should suffer in his own.
 
 MORAL SANCTION AND DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. 163 
 
 is necessary, so as to make punishment possible, that free- 
 itself should desire punishment; and it can only desire 
 t when an already sufficiently deep improvement has taken 
 place, which, in its turn, renders the punishment partly 
 undeserved. * 
 
 Such is the antinomy in which the doctrine of expia- 
 ends if it undertakes, not only to simply correct but 
 to punish. As long as a criminal remains really criminal 
 this very tact places him below any moral sanction He 
 ought to be converted before being struck ; and, if he is 
 converted, what reason is there for striking ? Guilty or not 
 the will endowed with freedom would at this point go so far 
 beyond the visible world that the only way of behaving in 
 regard to it would be to bow down to it. A will of this 
 kind is an irresponsible Caesar, whom it is well enough to 
 condemn and to execute in effigy, so as to satisfy popular 
 passion, but who really escapes every external action 
 During the Terreur blanche" live eagles were burned in 
 efault of him whom they symbolized. Human judges in 
 their hypothesis of an expiation to be inflicted on free-will 
 do nought else; their cruelty is as vain and as irrational' 
 ^hile the innocent body of the accused struggles in their 
 hands, his will, which is the real eagle, the supreme eagle 
 free in flight, soars out of their reach high above them 
 
 3- If one tries to investigate this naive or cruel principle 
 of order brought forward by the spiritualists, which reminds 
 us a little too much of the order reigning at Warsaw it 
 becomes transformed into that of a pretended distri- 
 butive justice. "To everyone according to his works" 
 -such is the social ideal of St. Simon; such is also the 
 moral ideal according to M. Janet ("La Morale? p c 77 ) 
 Sanction in this case is merely a question of the general 
 proportion fixed between all labour and its remuneration 
 
 (1) he who does a great deal must receive a great deal 
 
 (2) he who does but little must receive little ; (3) he who 
 commits evil must receive evil. Let it first be noted that
 
 164 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 this last principle can in no way be deduced from the 
 two preceding ones. If a smaller benefit seems to call for 
 smaller recompense, it does not follow that an offence 
 should call for revenge. Besides, the two other principles 
 seem to us to be open to controversy at least in so far as 
 they pretend to be formulas of the moral ideal. 
 
 Here, again, the two points of views the one moral, the 
 other social are confounded with one another. The prin- 
 ciple, " To each one according to his works" is a purely 
 economic principle. It sums up well enough the ideal of 
 equal exchange and of social contracts, but not at all that 
 of an absolute justice which should give to everyone 
 according to his moral intention. It means only this : 
 independently of intention, the objects exchanged in society 
 ought to be of the same value, and an individual who 
 produces a thing of considerable value must not receive 
 in exchange an insignificant recompense. This is the rule 
 of exchange ; it is that of all self-interested labour ; it is 
 not the rule of disinterested effort, which virtue should 
 hypothetically demand. There is, and must be, in social 
 relations a certain tariff of the actions, not of the intentions. 
 We all watch that this tariff may be duly observed ; that a 
 merchant who gives sham goods, or a citizen who does 
 not fulfil his civic duty, may not receive in exchange the 
 normal quantity of money or of reputation. Nothing can 
 be better ; but what tariff can be put on virtue, which should 
 be truly " moral "? Where economic contracts and material 
 exchanges are no longer under consideration, but the will 
 itself, this law loses all its worth. Distributive justice, so far 
 as it is plausible, is therefere a purely social, purely utilitarian 
 rule, which has no longer any sense outside some sort of 
 society. Society rests entirely on the principle of reciprocity 
 that is to say, if one produces that which is good and 
 useful, one expects good in exchange ; and if one produces 
 what is harmful, one expects something harmful. From this 
 entirely mechanical reciprocity, which we find in the social
 
 MORAL SANCTION AND DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. 165 
 
 body, as in all other organisms, results a rough proportion 
 etween the visible welfare of one individual and the visible 
 welfare of the others, a mutual solidarity which takes the form 
 >f a sort of distributive justice. But, once more, this is a 
 natural equilibrium, rather than a moral equity of distribution. 
 The unrewarded righteous act, which is, so to speak, not 
 valued at its right worth, the evil which is not punished, 
 simply shocks us as an anti-social occurrence, as an economic 
 and political monstrosity, as a relation between individuals 
 which is harmful ; but, from a moral point of view, this is 
 no longer so. The principle" to everyone according to his 
 works "is, in fact, an excellent form of social encourage- 
 ment for the worker or the moral agent. It imposes on 
 him, as his ideal, a kind of "piece-work," which is always 
 much more productive than "day-work," and, above all, 
 more productive than work for "a sum down." It is pre- 
 eminently a practical rule, not a sanction. The essential 
 characteristic of a true moral sanction should really be never 
 to become a fixed end or aim in itself. The child who 
 says his lessons correctly merely for the sake of afterwards 
 receiving some sweets, no longer deserves these sweets from 
 the moral point of view, exactly because he has made 
 them his aim. The sanction must, therefore, be found 
 entirely outside the regions of finality, and with still more 
 reason outside the regions of utility. Its claim is to reach 
 the will, in so far as it is a cause, without wishing to direct 
 it with reference to an aim. Nor can any contrivance alter 
 the practical principle of social justice, " Expect to receive 
 from men in proportion to what you will give to them," into 
 this metaphysical principle : " If the mysterious cause acting 
 within you is good in itself and by itself, a pleasant effect 
 will be produced on your sensibility. If it is bad, your 
 sensibility will be made to suffer." 
 
 The first formula proportion in exchange was rational, 
 because it formed a practical motive for the will, and con- 
 cerned the Juture. The second, which does not contain
 
 1 66 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 any motive for action, and which, by a retro-active effect, 
 bears on the past, instead of modifying the future, is prac- 
 tically barren and morally empty. The idea of distributive 
 justice is, therefore, only valuable in so far as it expresses 
 an entirely social ideal, the economic laws of which them- 
 selves tend to bring about its realization. It becomes an 
 immoral idea if, by giving it an absolute and metaphysical 
 character, one wants to turn it into a principle of punishment 
 or reward. 
 
 There certainly is nothing more rational than that the 
 moral judgment of every being should be in favour of virtue 
 and be opposed to crime ; but this judgment cannot pass the 
 limits of the moral world to be transformed into the least kind 
 
 O>< * 
 
 of coercive and penal action. This affirmation " You a*e 
 good, you are bad " ought never to become this : "You must 
 be made to enjoy or to suffer." The guilty should not be 
 allowed the privilege of forcing the righteous man to do him 
 harm. Both vice and virtue are therefore, responsible only to 
 themselves, and, in many cases, only to the conscience of 
 others. After all, vice and virtue are but forms of the will, and 
 under these forms the will itself continues to exist, whose 
 nature it seems to be to aspire to happiness. We do not 
 see why this eternal desire should not, in all of us, find 
 satisfaction. The human wild beasts must be, in the 
 absolute, treated with indulgence and pity, like other 
 beings. It matters little if their ferocity be considered as 
 fatal or free ; they are morally always to be pitied. Why 
 should one want them to become physically pitiful also ? A 
 little girl was once shown a large coloured picture representing 
 martyrs. In the arena lions and tigers were feasting on Chris- 
 tian blood. On one side another tiger was left locked up in 
 its cage, and looked on with a woeful air. The child was 
 asked : " Dont you pity these unhappy martyrs ?" She 
 answered : " And what about the poor tiger which has no 
 Christian to eat !" A sage, free from all prejudice, would 
 surely have pitied the martyrs ; but this would not have
 
 MORAL SANCTION AND DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. 167 
 
 prevented him likewise pitying the starving tiger. We re- 
 member the Hindoo legend which tells us how Buddha gave 
 his own body to a wild animal dying of hunger. This is 
 the supreme pity, the only one which does not conceal some 
 hidden injustice. Such conduct, absurd from the practical 
 and social standpoint, is the only legitimate one from the 
 standpoint of pure morality. 
 
 For the narrow and entirely human justice which refuses 
 kindness to him who is already unhappy enough to be 
 guilty must be substituted another larger justice, which 
 gives kindness to all a justice which not only ignores the 
 hand with which it gives, but will not even know the hand 
 which receives it. 
 
 This kind of claim to a happiness which is reserved for the 
 good man only, and to which should correspond a veritable 
 right to unhappiness among all inferior individuals, is the 
 relic (in the etymological sense of the word) of ancient 
 aristocratic prejudices. Reason may please itself by sup- 
 posing a certain relation between sensibility and happiness ; 
 for every sentient being, by its very nature and definition,' 
 desires enjoyment and hates pain. Reason may also suppose 
 a relation between all will and happiness, for every being 
 susceptible of will spontaneously aspires to feel itself happy. 
 The differences in will show themselves only when there is 
 a question of choosing the ways and means of arriving at 
 happiness. Some people believe their happiness to be 
 incompatible with that of others, some try to find their 
 happiness in that of others ; this it is which distinguishes 
 good men from bad men. 
 
 To this difference in direction of such or such a will 
 would correspond, according to orthodox morality, an 
 essential difference in its very nature, in the deep and 
 independent cause which it manifests outwardly. It may 
 be so ; but this difference cannot do away with the per- 
 manent relation between the will and happiness. Even 
 now, under our present laws, criminals retain a certain
 
 1 68 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 number of rights ; they maintain all these rights in the 
 absolute (for him who admits an absolute). In the same 
 way that a man cannot sell himself as a slave, so he cannot 
 take away from himself this kind of natural title to ultimate 
 happiness which every sentient being believes himself to 
 possess. So long as beings, evil by deliberate choice or 
 forced to it by necessity, will persevere in wishing for hap- 
 piness, I see no reason which can be urged for withholding 
 it from them. 
 
 There is, you will say, this reason sufficient in itself 
 that they are bad. Is it, then, only to make them better 
 ^ that you have recourse to pain ? No ; that is for you but a 
 secondary aim, which might be attained by other means. 
 Your principal aim is to produce expiation in them that is 
 to say, unhappiness, without utility and without object. As 
 if it were not enough for them to be wicked ! Our moralists 
 have not yet got beyond the arbitrary distribution which the 
 Gospel seems to admit : " To him that hath shall be given ; 
 to him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he 
 hath." The Christian idea of grace would, however, be 
 acceptable on one condition that of its being universal, 
 given to all men and all beings. In this way it would 
 become, instead of a grafe, a kind of divine debt. That 
 which is deeply shocking in all morality that is more or 
 less borrowed from Christianity, is the idea of election of 
 choice, of favour, of a distribution of grace. A god ought 
 not to choose between beings, to see which he will in the 
 end make happy. Even a human legislator, if he pretended 
 to give an absolute and truly divine worth to his laws, would 
 be forced to renounce everything which would indicate any 
 " election " or " preference," any pretended distribution and 
 sanction. Every partial gift is necessarily also biassed, and 
 neither on earth nor in heaven ought there to be such a 
 thing as favour.
 
 PENAL OR DEFENSIVE JUSTICE IN SOCIETY. 169 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Principle of Penal or Defensive Justice in Society. 
 OUR present society can surely not realize the far distant 
 ideal of universal forbearance, but it can far less take 
 as its type of conduct quite the opposite ideal of orthodox 
 morality namely, the distribution of happiness and unhap- 
 piness, according to merit and demerit. As we have seen, 
 there is no purely moral reason whatever to suppose any 
 distribution of pain to vice and of reward to virtue. We have 
 to acknowledge with even greater reason that, taken as a 
 pure question of right, there is no social sanction, and that 
 the facts called by this name are mere phenomena of social 
 defence.* 
 
 Now, we have to come down from the purely theoretical 
 standpoint at which we have hitherto placed ourselves, to 
 the more confused sphere of sentiments and the association 
 of ideas, where our opponents may be able to again take 
 advantage of us. The majority of mankind does not at all 
 agree with the ideas of the Hindus, and of every true philo- 
 sopher, about absolute justice being identical with universal 
 charity. It has strong prejudices against the starving tiger 
 for which Buddha sacrificed himself; it has natural pre- 
 ferences with regard to sheep. It does not seem satisfactory 
 to them that the wrong action should not be punished, and 
 virtue be quite gratuitous. Mankind is like those children 
 who do not like stories in which the good little boys are 
 
 * Doubtless the old objection will be made : " If punishments were, 
 on the part of society, only a means of defence, they would be blows, 
 not punishments" (M. Janet, " Cours de Philosophic," p. 30). On 
 the contrary, when punishments do not find their justification in 
 defence, it is precisely these punishments which are the real blows, 
 by whatever euphemism they may be called. Outside the reasons, 
 of social defence, for instance, the act of administering a hundred 
 strokes of a stick on the soles of the feet as punishment to a thief will 
 never be transformed into a moral act.
 
 170 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 eaten up by wolves, and who, on the contrary, would like to 
 hear that the wolves were eaten up. Even on the stage the 
 general demand is that virtue should be rewarded, vice 
 punished ; and if this is not the case the spectators go away 
 discontented, with a feeling of disappointed expectation. 
 Why this tenacious sentiment, this persistent need of sanction, 
 in the sociable being this psychological impossibility of 
 being reconciled to the idea of unpunished evil ? 
 
 In the first place, it is because man is an essentially 
 practical and active being, who tends to deduce a rule of 
 action from all he sees, and for whom the life of others is 
 a perpetual moral lesson given in examples. Withthat 
 wonderful social instinct which man possesses, he feels 
 directly that an unpunished crime is an element of social 
 destruction ; he feels a presentiment of danger, both to 
 himself and all others, such as a citizen feels in a besieged 
 town when he discovers an open breach. 
 
 In the second place, this bad example is like a kind of 
 personal exhortation to evil, whispered in his ear, against 
 which his highest instincts revolt. This is due to the popular 
 common sense, which always believes sanction to enter into 
 the very formula of the law, and regards reward and punish- 
 ment as motive forces. Human law has the double character 
 of being utilitarian and obligatory, which is exactly the 
 opposite of a moral law commanding a free-will without 
 a motive power. 
 
 There is a third and still more profound reason for the in- 
 dignation with which impunity is met. Human intelligence 
 finds it difficult to stop at the idea of moral evil ; it is re- 
 volted by it to a far higher degree than is possible by a want of 
 material symmetry or mathematical exactitude. Man, being 
 essentially a sociable animal, " Zwov iroXiriKov" cannot resign 
 himself to the definite success of anti-social actions, when such 
 actions seem, humanly speaking, to be successful. The very 
 nature of man's mind urges him to turn to the superhuman, 
 to demand reparation and compensation. If bees, suddenly
 
 PENAL OR DEFENSIVE JUSTICE IN SOCIETY. 171 
 
 chained, were to see the order of their cells destroyed before 
 their very eyes, without any hope of ever being able to set 
 them right again, their consternation would be extreme, and 
 they would instinctively expect some intervention or other 
 to re-establish that order, which is to them as immutable 
 and sacred as that of the stars would be to a higher 
 intelligence. The very soul of man is penetrated by the 
 idea of sociability. We think, so to speak, within the limit 
 of society, as within that of time and space. 
 
 Man, by his moral nature ("^h as J5-trammittcd to him 
 by heredity), is thus induced to believe that the last word 
 in the universe cannot remain with the wicked. He is 
 always indignant at the triumph of evil and of injustice. 
 This indignation manifests itself in children even before they 
 can properly talk, and numerous traces may be found of it 
 even among animals. The logical result of this protest 
 against evil is the refusal to believe in the definitive char- 
 acter of its triumph. Completely dominated by the ideal 
 of progress, it cannot allow any being to remain for any length 
 of time arrested in its onward course. 
 
 Finally, we have also to estimate the work of those 
 aesthetic considerations which are inseparable from social 
 and moral reasons. An immoral being possesses an ugliness 
 which is much more repulsive than physical ugliness, and on 
 which our eye does not care to dwell. We, therefore, want 
 to correct, to remove, to improve, or to suppress it. Let us 
 recall the precarious position of the leper and the unclean 
 in ancient society. They were treated as we in these days 
 treat criminals. Novelists and dramatic authors do not 
 generally leave crime too evidently unpunished, neither do 
 they as a rule, be it here noted, represent their principal 
 personages, above all their heroines, as entirely ugly (with 
 goitre, hump-backed, or one-eyed, etc.). If they sometimes 
 do so, as Victor Hugo in his Quasimodo, their aim in 
 that case is to make us forget the deformity during all the 
 rest of the work, or to make use of it as an antithesis. Most
 
 172 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 often, the novel ends with a transformation of the hero or 
 the heroine (as in Petite Fadette or Jane Eyre). Ugliness, 
 therefore, produces with certainty, although in a less degree, 
 the same effect as immorality, and we feel the need to 
 correct the one as the other ; but how are we to correct 
 immorality from outside ? The idea of pain inflicted as a 
 re-agent at once presents itself to the mind. Punishment 
 is one of those old popular remedies, like the boiling oil into 
 which, before the time of Ambroise Pare", the limbs of the 
 wounded were plunged. Really the desire to see the guilty 
 gniky one punished comes from good nature. It is chiefly 
 explained by the impossibility for man to remain inactive, 
 indifferent in the presence of any kind of evil. He wants to 
 try and do something, to touch the wound, either to heal 
 it or to apply a revulsive ; and his intelligence is enticed 
 by the apparent symmetry offered by the proportionality of 
 moral and physical evil. He does not know that there are 
 certain things which it is better not to touch at all. The 
 first people who made excavations in Italy, and who found 
 statues of Venus with an arm or a leg wanting, felt the same 
 indignation which we still feel in these days in presence 
 of a badly-balanced will. They wanted to mend the evil, 
 to put back an arm borrowed from elsewhere, to put on 
 Another leg. Now, more resigned and more timid, we leave 
 the masterpieces as we find them, superbly mutilated. Our 
 very admiration for the great works of art is, in that case, 
 not without some pain ; but we prefer to suffer, rather than 
 commit an act of profanation. This suffering, when we are 
 brought face to face with evil, this sentiment of the 
 irreparable, we feel far more deeply still in the presence of 
 moral evil. The^ inward will can be efficaciously corrected 
 only by its own self, just as it is only the long-departed 
 creators of the marble statues who can mend these 
 smooth, white, broken limbs. We are thus reduced to that 
 which is hardest for man to await the future. Real 
 progress can only spring from the inner nature of the
 
 PENAL OR DEFENSIVE JUSTICE IN SOCIETY. 173 
 
 individual. The only means which we can use are all in- 
 directeducation, for instance. As to the will itself, it 
 ought to be sacred precisely to those who consider it free, 
 or at least spontaneous ; they cannot, without contradiction 
 and injustice, attempt to lay hold of it. 
 
 ^ Thus the feeling which urges us to desire a sanction is 
 partly immoral. Like many other sentiments, it has a very 
 legitimate principle and wrong applications. Between human 
 instinct and the scientific theory of morality exists, therefore, 
 a certain opposition. We are going to show that this oppo- 
 sition is provisional, and that instinct will, in the end, be 
 conformable to scientific truth. With this object we will try 
 to analyse still more deeply than we have hitherto done 
 that psychological want of sanction which we find in the 
 being living in society. We will sketch the genesis of this 
 want, and we shall see how it is produced, in the first place, 
 by a natural and legitimate instinct, and then tends to restrict 
 and limit itself more and more as the course of human evo- 
 lution continues. 
 
 If there is any general law of life, it is the following : _ 
 Every animal (we might extend the law even to the 
 vegetable kingdom) answers to an attack by a defence, 
 which is itself most often an attack in answer, a kind of 
 shock in return. This is a primitive instinct, which has 
 its source in the reflex movement, in the irritability of 
 living tissues, and without which life would be impossible. 
 Do not even animals, deprived of their brain, still try to 
 bite him who pinches them ? Those beings in which this- 
 instinct was keenest and most developed have more easily 
 survived, like the rose-trees provided with thorns. Among 
 the superior animals such as man this instinct is modified, 
 but continues to exist. In us there is a spring ready U> 
 unbend against him who touches it, as in those plants- 
 which throw darts. This was originally a mechanical, 
 unconscious phenomenon ; but this instinct does not, like 
 so many others, weaken when it becomes conscious. (See
 
 174 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 on this point "La Morale Anglaise Contemporaine" part ii., 
 sec. Hi.). It is, in fact, necessary for the life of the individual. 
 In every primitive society one must be able, in order to live, 
 to bite when bitten, to strike when struck. And to-day a 
 child is discontented when he has received a blow, even 
 in play, which he cannot return ; he has a feeling of 
 inferiority. On the contrary, when he has returned the 
 blow, with even additional energy, he is satisfied. He feels 
 no longer inferior, no longer unequal to the struggle for life. 
 We find the same feeling among animals. When we play 
 with a dog, we must from time to time let him take our 
 Tiand in his mouth, if we do not want him to take it in anger. 
 In the games of grown-up men we also find the same 
 need of a certain equalization of chances, the players always 
 desiring, according to the popular expression, to find them- 
 selves even. Undoubtedly, 'with man new sentiments inter- 
 vene, and are added to the primitive instinct self-love, 
 vanity, care about the good opinion of others. It does not 
 much matter what is underneath all this ; something deeper 
 may be perceived the sentiment of the necessities of life. 
 In uncivilized society a being who is not capable of 
 returning the evil done to him, and of even more than that, 
 is a being badly equipped for existence, meant to disappear 
 sooner or later. Life itself is, in its essence, a revenge a 
 permanent revenge for the obstacles which fetter it. 
 Revenge is, moreover, a physiological necessity for all living 
 beings, so deeply rooted in them that the brutal instinct 
 remains until the moment of death. There is a well- 
 known story of a Swiss who, mortally wounded, seeing an 
 Austrian chief pass near him, found strength to catch hold 
 of a piece of rock, and to knock his brains out, killing him- 
 self by this last effort. A great many more facts of this 
 kind could be related, in which revenge is no longer justified 
 by personal defence, and, so to speak, extends beyond the 
 question of life, by one of those numerous and sometimes 
 fruitful contradictions which produce in the social being
 
 PENAL OR DEFENSIVE JUSTICE IN SOCIETY. 175 
 
 wrongful sentiments, like avarice, or useful sentiments, like 
 the love of glory. 
 
 Let it be noted that the moral notion of justice or of 
 merit is still unknown throughout this whole mechanism. If 
 an animal without its brain bites him who hurts it, there is 
 here no idea of sanction. If you ask a child or an uncul- 
 tured man why he strikes someone, he will think himself 
 fully justified when he tells you that he himself was first 
 struck. Ask him no more. Really, for him who only 
 considers the general laws of life, this is a sufficient reason. 
 We are here at the very origin, and almost at the point 
 'f physical emergence, of this pretended moral need of 
 sanction, which so far does not offer us anything moral, but 
 which will soon modify itself. Let us suppose a man who, 
 instead of being himself the object of an attack, is simply 
 the onlooker. He sees the aggressor vigorously driven 
 back ; he cannot fail to applaud, for in his thought he 
 will put himself in the place of the one who defends himself, 
 and, as the English school has demonstrated, he will sym- 
 pathize with him. Every blow given to the aggressor will, 
 therefore, seem a just compensation, a legitimate revenge, 
 a sanction.* 
 
 * Why does he put himself in the place of him who defends himself 
 and not in the place of the other? For several reasons, which yet do 
 t imply that sentiment of justice which has to be explained (i) 
 Because the attacked and abused man is always in an unfortunate 
 position, more fit to excite interest and pity. If we are present at a 
 struggle, do we not always take the side of the weakest, even without 
 nowmg if it is he who is in the right? (2) The situation of the 
 aggressor is anti-social, contrary to the mutual security which all asso- 
 ciation allows ; and, as we always are part of some society or other, we 
 sympathize all the more with the one of the two adversaries who is in 
 ie most similar situation to our own the most social. But let us 
 suppose that the society of which a man is a part may not be the great 
 human association, and happens to be, for instance, an association of 
 
 In that case rather strange facts will arise in his conscience 
 
 -e will approve of a thief defending himself against another thief and 
 
 hmg him ; but he will not approve of a policeman defending him-
 
 176 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 Stuart Mill is, therefore, right in thinking that the desire 
 to see every attack on the individual punished comes back 
 to the mere instinct of personal defence ; only he has too 
 decidedly confounded defence with revenge, and he has not 
 shown that this very instinct is reduced to a reflex action, 
 called forth either directly or sympathetically. If this reflex 
 action is roused by sympathy, it seems to adopt a moral 
 character by taking a disinterested character. That which 
 we call penal sanction is therefore fundamentally only a 
 defence exercised by individuals in whose place we can put 
 ourselves in thought, a defence against others in whose place 
 we do not want to put ourselves. 
 
 The physical and social need of sanction bears a double 
 aspect since sanction is at one time punishment, at another 
 reward. If reward seems as natural as pain, this is because 
 it has its origin also in a reflex action, in a primitive instinct 
 of life. Every caress calls for and expects another caress in 
 response ; every expression of kindness calls forth in others 
 a similar expression. This is true all up the scale of animal 
 life. A dog which comes softly forward, wagging its tail, to 
 
 self against a thief in the name of society at large. He will feel an 
 invincible repugnance to put himself in the place of the policeman, and 
 to sympathize with him, for that will falsify his moral judgments. It is 
 in this way that the people of the lower classes take sides against the 
 police in ever}- squabble, without even inquiring what is going on ; and in 
 foreign lands Frenchmen would feel inclined to take the side of the 
 French, etc. Conscience is full of phenomena of this kind, complex to the 
 very point of contradiction which, however, fall under the one law. 
 Sanction is essentially the conclusion of a struggle which we witness as 
 spectators, and in which we take the part of one or other of the oppo- 
 nents. If we are a policeman or quiet citizen, we shall approve of 
 the handcuffs, the prison, if need be of the gallows. If we are a thief 
 or lazzaroni, or, perhaps, simply one of the common people, we shall 
 approve of the pistol-shot fired from behind a bush, of the dagger 
 mysteriously thrust into the back of the carabinieri. The only 
 thing that remains identical in all these moral or immoral judgments is 
 the statement of this fact of experience. He who strikes must 
 naturally and socially expect to be struck in his turn.
 
 PENAL OR DEFENSIVE JUSTICE IN SOCIETY. 177 
 
 lick his mate is indignant if he finds himself received with 
 a growl, just as a good man is indignant when he receives 
 evil in return for his benefactions. By means of sympathy 
 xtend and generalize this impression, which was at first 
 entirely personal, and you will arrive at this theory it is 
 natural that every being working for the happiness of his 
 ellow-creatures should receive, in exchange, the means of 
 >eing happy. Considering ourselves mutually responsible 
 we feel ourselves bound by a kind of debt with regard to 
 every benefactor of society. To the natural determinism 
 which connects benefit with benefit is therefore added a 
 *lmg of sympathy, and even of gratitude, towards the 
 benefactor. Now, in virtue of an inevitable illusion, hap- 
 piness seems to us always to be more deserved by those 
 with whom we are in sympathy.* 
 
 After this rapid glance at the genesis of the sentiments 
 aroused in man by the punishment of evil or the reward of 
 goodness, we can understand how the notion of a distributive 
 and inflexible justice was formed-a justice which propor- 
 tions good to good and evil to evil. It is but the meta- 
 physical symbol of a deep-rooted physical instinct, which in 
 reality is part of the instinct of the preservation of life.t 
 
 * Will some pessimist, perhaps, deny this natural instinct of gratitude 
 and object that, on the contrary, man is by nature ungrateful? Nothing 
 B more inaccurate. Man ^forgetful; that is all. Children and animal! 
 are still more forgetful. There is a great difference between these two 
 things. The instinct of gratitude exists in all beings, and subsists as 
 long as the remembrance of the benefit remains vivid and intact But 
 this remembrance changes very rapidly. Far stronger instincts, such as 
 personal interest, pride, etc., fight against it. It is for this reason that 
 if we put ourselves in the place of others, we are so shocked not to see 
 a good action rewarded ; whereas we often feel as little remorse when 
 we ourselves forget to respond to some kind action. The sentiment of 
 gratitude is one of those natural altruistic sentiments which, finding 
 themselves in opposition to an equally strong selfishness, are stronger 
 when the appreciation of somebody else's conduct, and not the ruling 
 of our own, is concerned. 
 
 t This instinct, after having created the complex system of social
 
 178 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 It remains for us to see how, in the partly artificial environ- 
 ments of human society, this instinct gradually becomes 
 modified in such a way that one day the notion of distri- 
 butive justice will lose even the practical support which it 
 still derives from popular sentiment. 
 
 Let us, in fact, follow the course of penal sanction, 
 together with the evolution of societies. Originally punish- 
 ment was much greater than the fault ; the defence was in 
 excess of the attack. If you provoke a wild animal, it will 
 tear you to pieces ; if you attack a man of the world, he 
 will answer you humorously; if you offend a philosopher, 
 he will not answer at all. It is the law of economy of force 
 
 punishments and rewards, has been fortified by the very existence of 
 this system of protection. We have not been long in recognising 
 that, if we should injure somebody in any way, we must expect a 
 more or less quick repression. In this way a natural and rational 
 association is established (already pointed out by the English school) 
 between a certain kind of conduct and a certain punishment. We 
 find in the Revue Philosophique a curious instance of a dawning 
 association of this kind in an animal. " I have not," says M. Delbceuf, 
 " ever seen an account of any fact so significant in its meaning. The 
 hero is a small dog, a cross between a wolf-dog and a spaniel. He was 
 at the age when, among his species, the serious duties of social life begin. 
 As he was allowed to choose my study as a favourite resting-place, he often 
 misbehaved himself there. Being a very strict master, I made him feel 
 each time the horrors of his behaviour, and carried him quickly into the 
 court-yard and made him sit up in a corner. After making him stop there 
 for a longer or shorter time, according to the importance of the offence, I 
 allowed him to come back. This education made him pretty quickly 
 understand certain articles of the code of canine civility little rascal as 
 he was ; so that at last I believed him to be quite cured of his 
 tendency to forget the rules of propriety. Oh deception ! One day, 
 coming into my study, I found myself face to face with a fresh 
 instance of his wrongdoing. I looked for my dog to make him feel 
 all the shame of his relapse ; he was not there. I called him, but he 
 
 did not appear. I went down to the court -yard there he was, sitting 
 
 in the corner, holding his front paws pitifully over his chest, looking 
 distressed, ashamed, and full of repentance. I was disarmed " 
 (Revtie Philosophique, April, 1881). See also in Romanes more or 
 less similar facts.
 
 PENAL OR DEFENSIVE JUSTICE IN SOCIETY I?9 
 
 
 * 
 
 -ore recognised t ha, re are 
 nnocent : ( t) , o strike him 
 
 o ,
 
 l8o MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 images for him immediately associates the action of the 
 throwing of the stone with the thought of the child ; which 
 causes the dog to be angry, and to grind his teeth. Hatred 
 has, therefore, had its utility, and is rationally justifiable in 
 a state of society which is but little advanced. It was a 
 valuable stimulant to the nervous system, and, through it, to 
 the muscular system. In the superior social state, in which 
 the individual no longer needs to defend himself, hatred has 
 no longer any sense. 
 
 If one is robbed, one complains to the police ; if one 
 is struck, one asks for damages and costs. Already, in 
 our own time, only an ambitious or an ignorant man, or a 
 fool, feels hatred. The duel that piece of absurdity will 
 disappear ; moreover, it is at present treated in its details 
 like the visit of an official, and very often the fighting is 
 mere form. Capital punishment will either disappear, or be 
 only maintained as a means of prevention, for the purpose 
 of mechanically frightening hereditary criminals, or habitual 
 criminals. Prisons and gallows will probably be demolished, 
 to be replaced by transportation, which is elimination in its 
 simplest form ; even the rigour of prison-life has already 
 been mitigated.* 
 
 More air and light are allowed to enter into the prison. 
 The iron bars, which confine the prisoner without shutting 
 out the rays of sunlight too much, symbolically represent 
 the ideal of penal justice, which may be expressed by this 
 
 * For all offences which do not entail transportation M. Le Bon has 
 rightly proposed a. fine, or compulsory labour (industrial or agricultural), 
 or, finally, forced military service under severe discipline {Revue 
 Philos., May, 1881). It is known that our prisons are rather places of 
 perversion than of conversion. They are places of reunion and of 
 association for the evil-doers " anti-social clubs." One of the presi- 
 dents of the Court of Appeal, M. Beranger, wrote that every year a 
 hundred thousand individuals " there (in prison) plunge deeper into 
 crime." It may be a million in ten years. Hence the considerable 
 increase of relapses. (This increase is, on an average, over two thousand 
 per annum. )
 
 PENAL OR DEFENSIVE JUSTICE IN SOCIETY. i8l 
 
 scientific formula The maximum of social defence with the 
 minimum of individual suffering. 
 
 In this way, the more we progress the more the theoretical 
 truth imposes itself even on the masses, and lessens the 
 popular need of punishment. If, in these days, society 
 punishes, it is never on account of the deed which has been 
 committed; it is because of those which the evil-doer or 
 Jthers following his example, may commit in the future 
 /JBancfaon has value only as a promise or a threat preceding 
 the act, and tending mechanically to produce it If this 
 act is accomplished, it entirely loses its value. It is simply 
 a shield or a simple, deterministic spring, and nothing more 
 It is really for this reason that, for instance, madmen are no 
 longer punished. The punishment was given up, after it had 
 been recognised that the fear of punishment had no appre- 
 ciable effect upon them. It was barely a century before the 
 time of Pmel that popular instinct wanted to punish mad 
 people like all other criminals ; which proves how vague 
 the ideas of responsibility or irresponsibility are in the 
 vulgar and utilitarian conception of social sanction. When 
 in bygone times, the people demanded cruel punishments 
 in harmony with the morals of their day, they did so 
 not in the name of metaphysical ideas, but rather in the 
 xiame of social interest. Neither ought our legislators, who 
 in the present day are labouring to reduce pain to the 
 strictly necessary amount, to put forward these metaphysical 
 ideas any more. Free-will ' and absolute responsibility " 
 in themselves, no more justify social punishment than 
 metaphysical irresponsibility and metaphysical determinism 
 That which alone justifies pain is its efficacy, from the point 
 of view of social defence.* 
 
 * We must, therefore, approve of the new school of jurists, which is 
 particularly numerous and brilliant in Italy, and which endeavours to 
 place penal right outside all moral and metaphysical considerations 
 Let us however, remark that this school is wrong when, after having 
 put aside every idea of metaphysical responsibility, it considers itself
 
 1 82 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 In the same way as social punishments are in our time 
 being reduced to that which is strictly necessary, social 
 rewards (titles of nobility, honorary posts, etc.) also become 
 
 obliged by its own principles to equally put aside " the intentional and 
 voluntary element." According to Messrs. Lombroso, E. Ferri, and 
 Garofalo, legal judgment must only bear upon the action, and the 
 social or anti-social motives which produced it, without even pretending 
 to appreciate the greater or lesser power and the intrinsic quality of the 
 will. Messrs. Garofalo and Ferri bring forward an example which 
 argues against them ; they quote the article of the Italian and French 
 codes which punishes " murder, involuntary blows, and wounds" with 
 imprisonment and fines (Garofalo, " Di un Criterio Positive della 
 Penalita," Naples, 1880 ; E. Ferri, " II Diritto di Punire," Turin, 
 1882). According to them, this article of the law, not taking into 
 account the will of the criminal, considers the brutal act as entirely 
 detached from the intention which dictated it. This law, in their eyes, 
 is one of the types with which the laws of the future should conform. 
 But it is a great omission that the article in question should take no account 
 of the will of the criminal. If the blows and the wounds said to be 
 involuntary (or, rather, said to be committed by imprudence) were 
 absolutely so, they would not be punished, because the punishment 
 would be ineffective. The truth is that they are caused by lack of 
 attention. Now, attention, being an act of the will, can be mechani- 
 cally roused or sustained by the fear of pain, and that is why pain 
 intervenes. Social life demands precisely from man, over and above all 
 other qualities, a certain amount of attention, a power and stability of 
 will, of which the savage, for instance, is incapable. It is the aim of 
 penal law, among other things, to develop the will in this direction. 
 It is, therefore, also wrong that Messrs. Carrara and E. Ferri do not 
 find ' ' any social responsibility " in him who has committed a crime, 
 not on his own initiative or from an anti-social motive, but because 
 somebody else has forced him to strike with a dagger or give the poison. 
 Such a man, whatever modern Italian jurists may think, constitutes a 
 certain danger to society undoubtedly, not because of his passions, or 
 even of his personal actions, but simply because of his weakness of will. 
 He is an instrument instead of being a person. Now, it is always 
 dangerous in a State to have instruments instead of citizens. Some- 
 thing anti-social may exist, not only in the exterior motives which act 
 on the will, but even in the nature of this will. Now, in all cases in 
 which something anti-social may be found there is cause for legal 
 sanction. Human penal law, therefore, must not be considered as- 
 being absolutely of the same order as the pretended natural sanction
 
 PENAL OR DEFENSIVE JUSTICE IN SOCIETY. 183 
 
 much more rare and more exceptional. Formerly, if a 
 general was conquered, he was sentenced to death ; he was 
 even crucified sometimes. If he was the conqueror, he was 
 
 which deduces the consequences of a given act for instance, that of 
 ilhng into the water without ever concerning itself about the will and 
 intention which preceded the act (E. Ferri, II Diritto di Punire," 
 p. 25). No, the inward determinism of the individual should not 
 entirely escape legal appreciation ; and, because a judge is not compelled 
 to ask himself if an act is morally or metaphysically free, it does not 
 follow that he is in any case whatever right to neglect to examine the 
 amount of attention and intention m short, the degree of conscious 
 will-with which this act was accomplished. By degrees punishment 
 has now-a-days become only a measure of social precaution ; but this 
 precaution must aim, not only at the act and its motives, but also at the 
 will which is hidden behind these. This will, whatever may be its 
 ultimate and metaphysical nature, is mechanically a force the greater or 
 less intensity of which must be reckoned with in social calculations It 
 would be absurd for an engineer, wanting to dam in a river, to consider 
 only the volume of its water, without taking into account the force of 
 the current sweeping it along. Let it be well understood, however, that 
 we in no sense make the will " a mysterious faculty placed behind the 
 motives. The will of which I wished to speak is for us simply character 
 -the system of tendencies of all kinds which the individual is accus- 
 tomed to obey, and which constitute his moral self; in short, the greater 
 or lesser resistance which this fund of inward energy is able to present to 
 anti-social motives. We believe that the appreciation of the courts of 
 justice will always take into consideration, not only the statement of the 
 determinating motives of * given act, but also the person himself, and 
 the character of the accused. Not only will the motives and 
 springs of action have to be more or less judged, but the persons (who 
 are themselves but complicated systems of motives and springs, which 
 counterbalance each other, and form a living equilibrium). In other 
 terms, there exists only a social responsibility, not in any sense a moral 
 one ; but I may add that the individual is not only responsible for such or 
 such an anti-social act and passing motives which may have urged him 
 to this act : he is responsible for his very character ; and it is, above 
 all, this character which penal law must try to reform. The jurymen 
 always want to judge the person, and allow themselves to be influenced 
 by good or bad antecedents. They often carry this to excess ; but I 
 eheve they are not wrong in principle, because an act is never isolated, 
 but is simply a symptom ; and, therefore, social sanction ought to bear 
 on the individual as a whole.
 
 184 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 called imperator, and carried about in triumph. In our 
 days a general need not expect either such honours or so 
 lamentable an end. Society is based on a system of exchange. 
 He who renders a service counts upon receiving, by virtue 
 of economic laws, not a sanction, but simply another service ; 
 an honorarium, or salary, takes the place of the reward, 
 properly so called. One good deed calls forth another by 
 a kind of natural equilibrium. In reality, reward as it 
 existed, and still exists to-day, in non-democratic societies 
 always leads to privilege. The author, for instance, formerly 
 chosen by the king to receive a pension, was surely a 
 privileged writer ; while now-a-days the author whose books 
 sell is simply a writer who is read. Reward was formerly 
 considered so entirely as a privilege that it very often 
 became hereditary, like fiefs or titles. In this way pre- 
 tended distributive justice really produces most shocking 
 injustice. Moreover, the very man who was rewarded lost 
 thereby in moral dignity ; for that which he received 
 appeared to himself only as a gift, instead of being a 
 legitimate possession. It is a remarkable thing that the 
 economic system which tends to predominate among us 
 has, in some respects, a much more moral aspect . than the 
 system of pretended distributive justice ; for, instead of 
 making us liegemen, it makes us legitimate and absolute 
 possessors of all which we earn by our works and our 
 labour. Everything which in the past was obtained by 
 reward or by favour will be obtained more and more by 
 competition. Competition, in which M. Renan sees a 
 degrading agent in modern society to-day, allows the man of 
 talent to create his own position, and to own the place which 
 he attains to his own efforts. Now, competition is a means of 
 superseding reward and largess by payment due. The further 
 we go, the more everyone is conscious of what is due to him, 
 and claims it ; but that which is due to everyone loses more 
 and more the character of a sanction, and takes that of an 
 engagement binding both on society and on the individual.
 
 PENAL OR DEFENSIVE JUSTICE IN SOCIETY. 185 
 
 In the same way as certain social rewards, which we 
 mentioned just now, so the other more vague rewards of 
 public esteem and of popularity, also tend to lose their 
 importance as civilization goes on. Among savages a 
 popular man is a god, or at least very nearly one- 
 Among partly-civilized peoples he still is a man of super- 
 human form, " an instrument of Providence." In time he 
 will become, in the eyes of all, a man and nothing more. 
 The infatuation of nations for Caesars and Napoleons will 
 gradually pass. Already, in these days, the only truly great 
 and durable fame seems to be that of the men of science ; 
 and, these being, above all, admired by people who under- 
 stand them, who are but a very small number, their glory 
 will always be limited to a small circle. Lost in the rising 
 tide of human heads, men of talent or of genius will, there- 
 fore, get accustomed to need only their own esteem and 
 that of a small number to sustain them in their labours. 
 They will pave the way in the world for themselves and for 
 humanity, urged onward more by inward force than by the 
 attraction of rewards. The further we go, the more we feel 
 
 that the name of a man comes to be of little importance 
 
 we still cling to it from a kind of conscious childishness ; 
 
 but the deed, for ourselves as well as for all others, is the 
 
 essential thing. The people of high intelligence, while 
 
 working almost silently in loftier spheres, must rejoice to 
 
 see the small ones, the lowest, those who are without name 
 
 or merit, take a growing part in the pre-occupations of 
 
 humanity. In these days many more efforts are made to 
 
 alleviate the fate of those who are unhappy, or even guilty, 
 
 than to overwhelm with benefactions those who are happy 
 
 enough to be on the top rung of the human ladder. For 
 
 instance, a new law concerning the masses or the poor has 
 
 more interest for us than any event which may happen to 
 
 some high personage ; in the past it was just the contrary. 
 
 Personal questions will be effaced to leave room for the 
 
 abstract ideas of science, or for the concrete sentiment of
 
 1 86 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 pity and philanthropy. The misery of a social group will 
 more invincibly attract attention and kind deeds than the 
 merit of a certain individual. We shall wish more to 
 help those who suffer than to reward in a brilliant and super- 
 ficial way those who have acted well. For distributive 
 justice, which is an entirely individual and personal justice, 
 a justice of privilege (if such words are not a paradox), must, 
 therefore, be substituted a justice of a more absolute char- 
 acter, and which at bottom is really charity. Charity for all 
 men, whatever may be their moral, intellectual, or physical 
 worth, should be the final aim to be pursued even by 
 public opinion. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Criticism of Inward Sanction and of Remorse. 
 
 EVERY exterior sanction, punishment, or reward, has 
 appeared to us sometimes as a cruelty, sometimes as a 
 privilege. If there is no purely moral reason for thus 
 establishing outside the individual an absolute proportion 
 between happiness and virtue, is there a moral reason for 
 seeing this proportion realized within the individual through 
 his sensibility ? In other words, must there and can there 
 exist in conscience, to use the words of Kant, a pathological 
 state of pleasure or pain, a kind of moral pathology which 
 sanctions the moral law ; and must morality a priori have 
 consequences in which the passions play a large part ? 
 Let us imagine, by hypothesis, a virtue so heterogeneous 
 to nature that it would neither have any perceptible character, 
 nor find itself in conformity with any social or personal 
 instinct, or with any natural passion, any 7ra#os, but only 
 with pure reason. Let us imagine, on the other hand, an 
 immoral direction of the will which, while being the 
 negation of the "laws of pure practical reason," would, at 
 the same time, not meet with resistance from any natural
 
 CRITICISM OF INWARD SANCTION AND OF REMORSE. 187 
 
 impulse, any natural passion (not even, hypothetical!* the 
 natural pleasure of exact reasoning, the pleasant feeling of 
 logical exercise according to rule). Would it, in this 
 case (which, after all, is not to be found in humanity), be 
 rational that to a merit and a demerit having no relation 
 to the visible should be added perceptible pain or pleasure 
 -a pathology 1 Moral satisfaction and remorse also as 
 much as pleasure, pain, and the passions-that is to say, 
 as much as all the simple phenomena of sensation-seem 
 Kant not less inexplicable than the idea of duty itself. 
 He sees in it a mystery.* 
 
 But this mystery resolves itself into an impossibility If 
 moral merit were pure conformity to rational law as such 
 pure rationality, pure formalism, and if it were the deed of 
 pure transcendental liberty foreign to every natural impulse 
 it would produce no joy in the order of nature, no expansion 
 living being, no inward warmth, no throbbing of the 
 heart. In the same way, if the evil will, the source of 
 dement, could hypothetically find itself, at the same time 
 not contrary to any of the natural impulses of our being 
 but was serving them all, it could not produce any 
 suffering. Demerit would, in that case, naturally have to 
 end m perfect happiness of the senses and of the passions 
 ihat this does not happen is because the moral or immoral 
 act, even when one supposes it to be intentionally supra- 
 sensible, still meets aids or obstacles in our pathological 
 nature. If we enjoy or suffer, it is no longer in so far as 
 
 Lnt.de la Aaison Pratique, tr. Barni, p. 121. M. Janet, inspired 
 
 without doubt by Kant, and perhaps by the theologians, also 
 
 :cts to deducing the sentiment of remorse from immorality. He 
 
 eei ^!- 1 ^t 6 m " the pr f f a kind of mysterious harmony pre- 
 established between nature and the moral law. "Remorse," he says ''is 
 the smarting pain, the sting which tortures the heart after a guilty deed 
 This suffering has not any moral character, and must be considered as a 
 kind rf punishment inflicted upon crime by nature herself" (Tr de 
 Pntlos., p. 673).
 
 1 88 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 our intention is conformable or contrary to a rationally 
 fixed law, to a law of supranatural liberty, but in so far as it 
 finds itself, at the same time, conformable or contrary to our 
 always more or less variable sense-nature. 
 
 In other words, moral satisfaction or remorse does not 
 proceed entirely a priori from our relation to a moral law, 
 but from our relation to the natural and empirical laws. 
 
 Even the mere pleasure of reasoning, which we may 
 feel in generalizing a maxim of conduct, can yet only be 
 explained by the natural tendency of the mind to go 
 beyond every personal limit, and, in a general way, by 
 the tendency of all activity to everlastingly continue a 
 movement once begun. If empirical considerations are 
 not made to intervene, all moral, or even rational, or even 
 purely logical enjoyment will not only become unexplain- 
 able, but a priori impossible. A superiority of the order 
 of reason over that of sensation and of nature might well 
 enough be admitted, but not a possible echo of these two 
 orders, the one mingling with the other echo, which is 
 entirely a posteriori. 
 
 To render inward sanction truly moral, it should have 
 naught of the sensible or the pathological that is to say, it 
 should have nothing which is pleasant and nothing which 
 is painful to the passions. It should be like the apathy of 
 the Stoics, which means a perfect serenity, an ataraxy, a 
 supra-sensible and supra-passionate satisfaction. It should 
 be, with regard to this world, the nirvana of the Buddhists, 
 the complete detachment from all 7ra0os. It should, 
 therefore, lose all character of sensible sanction. A 
 supra-sensible law can only have a supra-sensible sanction, 
 which is consequently unknown to that which is called 
 natural pleasure and pain ; and this sanction is as indeter- 
 minate for us as the supra-sensible order itself. 
 
 The sanction called moral and truly sensible is really 
 a particular case of that natural law according to which 
 every development of activity is accompanied by pleasure. This
 
 CRITICISM OF INWARD SANCTION AND OF REMORSE. 189 
 
 pleasure diminishes, disappears, or gives place to suffering, 
 according to the inward or outward resistances which the 
 activity meets. In the inward self of the individual the 
 activity may meet this resistance either in the nature of 
 the mind and the intellectual temperament, or in the character 
 and the moral temperament. Evidently the aptitudes of the 
 mind differ according to the individual. It will be 
 difficult for a poet to be a good lawyer ; and one under- 
 stands the sufferings of Alfred de Musset as a clerk in an 
 office. It will be also difficult for an imaginative poet to be 
 a mathematician ; and one understands the protestations of 
 Victor Hugo against the "torture of the X's and Y's." 
 Every intelligence seems to have a certain number of direc- 
 tions, in which hereditary habit pushes it by preference. If it 
 deviates from these directions, it suffers. This suffering may, 
 in certain cases, become truly heartrending, and very 
 nearly " moral " remorse. Let us, for example, think of an 
 artist who feels genius stirring in him, and who is con- 
 demned to manual labour for the whole of his life. This 
 feeling of a lost life, of an unfulfilled task, of an unrealized 
 ideal, will beset and haunt his sensibility more or less in 
 the same way as would the consciousness of a moral failure. 
 Here, therefore, we have an instance of the pleasure or pain 
 which attends every development of activity in any environ- 
 ment whatever. Let us now pass on from the intellectual 
 temperament to the moral temperament. Here, again, we 
 are in the presence of a great many instinctive impulses, 
 which will produce joy or pain, according as the will is 
 obedient or resistant impulses of avarice, of charity, of 
 theft, of sociability, of savagery, of pity, etc. Such diverse 
 impulses may exist in one and the same character, and pull 
 it about first in one direction, then in another. The joy 
 which the righteous man feels in following his social 
 instincts will, therefore, find its counterpart in the joy which 
 the evil man feels in following his anti-social instincts. The 
 saying of the young evil-doer, whom Maudsley mentions,
 
 1 90 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 is well known : " By Jove ! how nice it is to steal ! Even if 
 I had millions, I should still want to steal !" When this joy 
 in evil-doing is not compensated by any subsequent regret 
 or remorse (and this is what would happen, according to the 
 writers on criminal law, to nine-tenths of the criminals by 
 heredity), a complete derangement follows in the direction 
 of conscience, similar to that which is produced in the 
 magnetic needle. The evil instincts stifling all the others, 
 it is almost entirely from these alone that the pathological 
 sanction comes. If the young thief, of whom Maudsley 
 speaks, had missed an opportunity for theft, he would 
 certainly have suffered inwardly ; he would have had a 
 twinge of remorse. 
 
 The pathological phenomenon designated by the name 
 of inward sanction may, therefore, be considered as in itself 
 indifferent to the moral quality of actions. Sensibility, in 
 which phenomena of this kind happen, has by no means 
 the stability of reason ; it belongs to those things, "ambiguous 
 and of double usage," of which Plato speaks. It may 
 befriend evil as well as good. Our instincts, our impulses, 
 our passions, do not know what they want they must be 
 guided by reason ; and the joy or suffering which they may 
 cause us hardly ever arises from their conformity with the 
 end which reason proposes to them, but from their con- 
 formity with the end towards which they themselves would 
 naturally turn. In other words, the joy in well-doing and 
 the remorse for evil-doing are never proportional in us to 
 the triumph of the moral good or evil, but to the struggle 
 which they have had in fighting against the impulses of our 
 physical and psychical temperament. 
 
 Although the elements of remorse and of inward joy thus 
 springing from the sensibility are generally variable, there is, 
 however, one which presents a certain fixity, and which may 
 exist in all elevated minds ; we mean that satisfaction which 
 an individual always feels in being classed with superior beings 
 beings conformable with the normal type of his species, and
 
 CRITICISM OF INWARD SANCTION AND OF REMORSE. 191 
 
 adapted, so to speak, to his own ideal. This satisfaction 
 corresponds to the intellectual pain of feeling himself fallen 
 from his rank and his species, sunk to the level of inferior 
 Unfortunately, this kind of satisfaction and this 
 kind of intellectual remorse only clearly manifest themselves 
 m philosophic minds. Moreover, this sanction, limited to 
 a small number of moral beings, admits of a certain 
 provisional antinomy. In fact, the pain caused by the 
 contrast between our ideal and our real state must be 
 all the greater to us, as we are more fully conscious of the 
 ideal ; for in that case we get a clearer perception of the 
 distance separating us from it. Susceptibility of conscience, 
 therefore, increases in proportion to the development of 
 conscience, and the vividness of remorse is a measure of 
 our very efforts towards morality. In the same way, as 
 superior organisms are always more sensitive to all kinds' of 
 pain coming from outside, and as, on the average, a white 
 man, for instance, suffers in his life more than a negro, so i 
 
 the more highly organized beings are morally more exposed 
 than others to that suffering arising from inward causes 
 whose cause is always in action the suffering from the 
 unrealized ideal. True remorse, with its subtlety, its painful 
 scruples, its inward tortures, may strike men, not in inverse 
 but in direct, ratio to their perfection. 
 
 As a matter of fact, popular morality, and even morality as 
 understood by Kant, tend to turn remorse into expiation, a 
 mysterious and inexplicable relation between moral will and 
 nature. They tend, in the same way, to find a reward in 
 moral satisfaction. As to ourselves, we have tried to bring 
 back sensible remorse to a simple natural resistance of the 
 deepest impulses of our being, and sensible satisfaction to a 
 natural sentiment of facility, of ease, of liberty, which we 
 experience when yielding to these impulses. If there is a 
 supra-sensible sanction, it must be let us repeat it, it must 
 be unknown to the senses properly so-called, to the passions, 
 to the 7TO00S. All the same, we are far from denying the
 
 I Q2 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 practical utility of what are called moral pleasures and moral 
 sufferings. Suffering, for instance, if not justifiable as penal 
 law, is very often justifiable as utility. Remorse becomes 
 valuable if it can serve some definite purpose, if it is the 
 consciousness of some remaining imperfection, whether in 
 its causes or its effects, of which the past act was simply the 
 sign. It does not then bear upon the act itself, but upon 
 the imperfection revealed by the act, or upon the conse- 
 quences following in its train ; it is an incentive urging us 
 forward. From this point of view, which is not that of 
 sanction in the proper sense, the suffering caused by remorse, 
 even all suffering in general, and every austerity, acquires a 
 moral value which must not be neglected, and which has 
 but too often been neglected by pure utilitarians. Bentham's 
 horror of anything reminding him of the " ascetic principle," 
 or of anything which seemed to him the least sacrifice of 
 pleasure, is well known. He was wrong. Suffering may 
 sometimes be morally like bitter medicine a powerful 
 tonic. The patient himself feels the need of it. He who 
 has abused pleasure is the first to wish for, and to relish, 
 pain. It is for a similar reason that, after having made 
 undue use of sweets, one comes to relish an infusion of 
 quinine. The vicious man will not only get to hate his vice, 
 but also the very enjoyments it yielded him ; he despises 
 them so deeply that, in order to give himself evidence of 
 this, he likes to feel himself in pain. Every stain needs a 
 kind of biting remedy to efface it. Pain can be this biting 
 remedy. If it can never constitute a moral sanction patho- 
 logical evil and moral evil being heterogeneous it may 
 sometimes become a useful caustic. Under this new aspect 
 sanction has an unquestionable remedial value ; but first, for 
 it to be truly moral, the individual himself must consent to 
 it must demand it. Moreover, it must be remembered that 
 remedial treatment should neither last too long nor, above 
 all, be eternal. All religions and classic morality h*ave under- 
 stood the value of pain, but they have abused it. They 
 have acted like surgeons who, wonder-struck at the results
 
 RELIGIOUS SANCTION. 193 
 
 of their operations, ask nothing but to cut off arms and 
 legs. " Cutting off" should never be an aim in itself; and 
 to " sew up again " should be the very last resource of all. 
 Remorse is only of value in so far as it leads more surely to 
 definitely good resolution. 
 
 We have shown that remorse may be considered under 
 two aspects sometimes as the painful and relatively passive 
 statement of a fact (disobedience to a more or less deeply- 
 rooted impulse of our being, a falling below the ideal of the 
 individual, either with relation to the species or to his own 
 conception), sometimes as an effort still more or less painful, 
 but active and energetic, an effort to rise out of this state of 
 failure. Under its first aspect remorse may be logically and 
 physically necessary ; but it only becomes morally good by 
 assuming its second character. Remorse, therefore, is the 
 more moral the less it resembles true sanction. There are 
 temperaments in which the two kinds of remorse are clearly 
 enough divided. There are some which feel a very stinging, 
 and yet a perfectly useless, pain; there are others which 
 (reason and will being predominant in them) need no very 
 acute pain to recognise their evil-doing, and to impose 
 reparation on themselves. These latter are superior from a 
 moral point of view, which proves that the so-called inward 
 sanction, like all others, justifies itself only in so far as it is 
 a means of action. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Criticism of Religious and Metaphysical Sanction. 
 
 RELIGIOUS SANCTION. 
 
 THE further we advance in this criticism, the more does 
 sanction, properly so-called that is to say, moral "pathology " 
 seem to us a kind of fence, being of use only when 
 there is a path marked out, and someone walking in it. 
 
 o
 
 194 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 Beyond life, in the eternal void, the fences become entirely 
 superfluous. If once the probation of life is ended, 
 there is no coming back to it, unless it be, let it be well 
 understood, for the sake of deriving experience and wise 
 lessons from it, in the case of our having to begin fresh 
 trials. Such is not the idea of the principal human religions. 
 Religions, in so far as they command a certain rule of 
 conduct, obedience to certain rites, faith in such and such a 
 dogma, all need a sanction to strengthen their commands. 
 They all agree in calling upon the most formidable sanction 
 imaginable ; to those who have transgressed their orders, in 
 one way or another, they promise eternal suffering, and 
 threaten them with horrors far beyond any which the imagi- 
 nation of the most furious man dreams of inflicting upon 
 his most deadly enemy. In this, as in many other points, 
 religions are in total disagreement with the spirit of our 
 time ; but it is strange to think that they are still followed 
 by a great many philosophers and metaphysicians. Imagining 
 God as the most terrible of all powers, one comes to the 
 conclusion that, in his anger, he must inflict the most terrible 
 of punishments. One forgets that God this supreme ideal 
 should simply be incapable of hurting anyone, and, with 
 still more reason, be unable to return evil for evil. Precisely 
 because God is conceived as the maximum of power, he 
 should be able to inflict only the minimum of pain ; for the 
 greater the force over which one has command, the less 
 need is there to use it to obtain a certain effect. Besides, 
 as he is believed to be the highest goodness, it is impos- 
 sibile to picture him inflicting even this minimum of pain. 
 The " Heavenly Father " should at least have this supe- 
 riority over earthly fathers, of not flogging his children. 
 Finally, as he is hypothetically the supreme intelligence, we 
 cannot believe that he would do anything unreasonable. 
 Now, for what reason would he cause the evil-doer to surfer ? 
 God is above all insult, and need not defend himself; 
 therefore he should not strike.
 
 RELIGIOUS SANCTION. 
 
 Religious systems always have a tendency to represent the 
 bad man as a Titan engaged in a struggle against God him- 
 self. It is quite natural that Jupiter, once being the 
 conqueror, should in future guard himself, and crush his 
 opponent under a mountain. But it is a strange idea to 
 imagine God as being thus materially able to fight evil- 
 doers, without losing his majesty and his sanctity. From 
 the moment when the personified "Moral Law" thus 
 undertakes a physical struggle with evil-doers, it inevitably 
 loses its character of law, it lowers itself to the level of its 
 victim it fails. A god cannot fight with a man he 
 exposes himself to being overthrown, like the angel by 
 Jacob. Either God, this living law, is all-powerful and 
 then we cannot truly offend him, nor should hejunisA us- 
 er we really can offend him ; but in that case we in some 
 way influence him, and he is not all-powerful, not "the 
 absolute," not God. The founders of religions have 
 imagined that the most sacred law should be also the strongest 
 law ; it is absolutely the reverse. The idea of force logically 
 resolves itself into the relation between power and resist- 
 ance ; every physical force is, therefore, morally a weakness. 
 What a strange and very anthropomorphic conception to 
 imagine God as keeping a gaol, or a "hell," and having for 
 his servant and gaol-keeper the Devil ! In fact, the Devil is 
 more responsible for hell than the executioner is for the 
 instruments of torture which are put into his hands ; maybe 
 he should even be very much pitied for the sort of work he 
 is made to do. The real responsibility is not his. He is 
 only the executioner of high and divine works ; and a philo- 
 sopher might maintain, not without likelihood, that the true 
 Devil here is God. If a human law, if a civil law, cannot do 
 without physical sanction, the reason is as we have seen 
 precisely because it is civil and human. It is not the same 
 with the " Moral Law," which is supposed to protect only a 
 principle, and which is represented as immovable, eternal 
 to a certain extent passive; it is impossible to be moved
 
 196 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 before an immovable law. Force being powerless in the 
 presence of it, it is not necessary that the law should answer 
 by force. He who thinks to have overthrown moral law 
 will always find it confronting him again, as Hercules saw 
 the giant, whom he thought he had finally felled to the 
 ground, rise up time after time from under his grip. To 
 be eternal, that is the only possible revenge of goodness 
 with regard to those who violate it. 
 
 If God had created beings with natures so perverse as to 
 always act contrary to his commands, he would, in their 
 presence, be reduced to impotence. He could only pity 
 them, and pity himself for having created them. His duty 
 would not be to strike them, but to alleviate their mis- 
 fortune as much as possible ; to show himself all the more 
 gentle and better, in proportion as they were worse. Those 
 who are doomed, if they were really incurable, would, after 
 all, be more in need of the delights of heaven than the 
 chosen ones themselves. One of two things : either the 
 evil-doers may be converted to goodness in that case the 
 so-called hell will only be a school on a very large scale, in 
 which an attempt will be made to open the eyes of all the 
 outcasts, and to enable them to ascend to heaven as quickly 
 as possible ; or the evil-doers are beyond cure, like incurable 
 maniacs (which is absurd) ; in that case they also will be 
 everlastingly pitiful, and a supreme goodness must try 
 to compensate them for their misery by all imaginable 
 means, by the sum of all possible happiness. In whatever 
 manner it be understood, the dogma of hell thus appears the 
 very reverse of truth. 
 
 Besides, by damning a soul that is to say, by turning 
 it away for ever from his presence, or, in less mysterious 
 words, by shutting it out for ever from the truth God 
 would turn himself away from his soul, would limit his own 
 power, and would, so to say, damn himself also to a certain 
 extent. The pain of damnation recoils on him who inflicts 
 it. As to the physical suffering singled out by theologians,
 
 THE SANCTIOX OF LOVE AND OF FRATERNITY. 197 
 
 it is evidently far less bearable when taken in a meta- 
 
 ncal sense. Instead of damning those who have gone 
 
 wrong God should only everlastingly call them back to him. 
 
 We should say, with Michael Angelo, it is, above all for 
 
 S ***y on the 
 
 smhf e 
 
 symbol of the cross. We picture him as looking on every. 
 
 thing from so great a height that in his eyes outcasts are 
 never an ythlng but fortunate , ^ JJ ^ ^ * e 
 
 are unhappy, as such, if not from all other standpoints, be 
 the favountes of the infinite goodness ? 
 
 ii. 
 
 THE SANCTION OF LOVE AND OF FRATERNITY. 
 
 THUS far we have considered the two aspects of sanction 
 -pumshment and reward-** if bound together 
 perhaps, it is possible to consider them" sep^ate^' 
 Certain philosophers, for instance, seemed disposed to 
 reject reward properly so-called, and the right to reward 
 to admit pumshment only as being legitimate * 
 
 can bd IT P Siti0n iS ' WC bdieVe ' th " G m St dfficult w hich 
 be taken up m examining the question. There i- 
 
 ^^2^ t0 * Whichanoth - philosopher 
 
 s taken up, and which, in order to be thorough, we also 
 
 must examine. It is to entirely reject punis^lutlo 
 
 try, nevertheless, to maintain a rational relation between 
 
 is its own 
 

 
 198 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 merit and happiness. (M. Fouillee, "La Liberte et le Deter- 
 minisme.") 
 
 This doctrine renounces the idea of Kant, which makes 
 merit conform to an entirely formal law. The universe 
 is represented as an immense community, in which all duty 
 is always a duty towards an active, a living being. In this 
 community " he who loves must be loved "; what is 
 more natural ? To say that the virtuous man deserves 
 happiness " is to say that everybody with a good will 
 wishes to do good to him in return for the good which he 
 
 has tried to do The relation of merit to happiness thus 
 
 becomes a relation of will to will, of person to person, a 
 relation of gratitude, and consequently of fraternity and 
 moral love " (ibid). The link sought for between good 
 actions and happiness would thus be found in the idea 
 of return and gratitude. Loving-kindness would be the 
 new principle of sanction a principle which, while ex- 
 cluding punishment, would be sufficient to justify a kind 
 of reward, non-material, but moral. Let us note that this 
 sanction is not valid for an individual, who, hypothetically, 
 might be considered absolutely solitary. But, according 
 to the doctrine we are examining, there nowhere exists 
 such an individual. One cannot get outside society, 
 because one cannot get outside the universe. Moral law is, 
 therefore, fundamentally only a social law, and that which we 
 have said with respect to the actual relations between men 
 holds good also for the ideal relations of all beings one with 
 another. From this point of view, reward becomes a 
 kind of " response " of love. Every good action is like 
 an " appeal " addressed to all beings of the vast universe. 
 It seems against all law that this appeal should not be 
 listened to, and that love should not produce gratitude. 
 Love presupposes mutuality of love, consequently co-opera- 
 tion and helpfulness, consequently satisfaction of desire and 
 happiness. As to the evident unhappiness of any one 
 person, it would be explained in accordance with this
 
 THE SANCTION OF LOVE AND OF FRATERNITY. 199 
 
 doctrine by the presence of some blind will opposing him 
 from the midst of nature, from the midst of universal 
 society. Now, if, hypothetically, a being is truly loving, he 
 will become lovable not only in the eyes of men, but in the 
 eyes of all the elementary wills which make up nature. It 
 will thus acquire a kind of ideal right to be respected and 
 assisted by them consequently to be made happy by 
 them. All tangible evils pain, illness, death may be con- 
 sidered as being brought about by a kind of war and blind 
 hatred of inferior wills. If this will takes for its victim love 
 itself, we become indignant, and what could be more just ? 
 If the love of others can be requited only with love, we 
 at least have the consciousness that this must be done with 
 the love of the whole of nature, not only with the love of 
 such or such an individual. This love of the whole of 
 nature thus generalized may become happiness for him 
 who receives it, outward happiness included. The link 
 between goodwill and happiness, which we desired to break, 
 will be re-established. 
 
 This hypothesis, we admit, is the last and only resource 
 for metaphysically justifying that empirical sentiment 
 of indignation which pain produces in us if it accom- 
 panies goodwill. Only let us note well what the hypothesis 
 involves. 
 
 In this doctrine it will finally have to be admitted, without 
 proof, that all the wills constituting nature are analogous in 
 essence and direction, in such a way as to converge towards 
 the same point. If, for instance, the good pursued by a 
 society of wolves were fundamentally as different from the 
 good pursued by human society as it apparently seems to be, 
 the goodness of a man would rationally have no connection 
 with that of a wolf, nor the goodness of a wolf with that of 
 a man. The preceding hypothesis must, therefore, be com- 
 pleted by this other very seductive and hazardous one, which 
 we ourselves have elsewhere defined as possible. " Is there 
 not a tendency, an inward aspiration, eternally the same, and
 
 200 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 at work in all beings, which corresponds with that exterior 
 evolution, of which the forms are so varied ? Should there 
 not be between them a connection of tendencies and efforts 
 similar to the anatomical connection in organisms pointed 
 out by G. Saint-Hilaire ?" (see our " Morale Anglaise Con- 
 temporaine," p. 370, and M. Fouillee, " La Science Sociale 
 Contemporaine," book v.). 
 
 According to this doctrine, the idea of sanction becomes 
 blended with the moral idea of " co-operation." He who 
 does good universally labours at so great a task that he has 
 ideally a right to the co-operation of all beings, since 
 they are members of the same whole, from the first cell 
 . to the grey brain-matter of the highest organism. He, 
 on the contrary, who commits evil ought to receive from all 
 a " refusal of co-operation," which would be a kind of 
 negative punishment ; he ought to find himself morally 
 isolated, whereas the other should be in communion with 
 the universe. 
 
 Thus restricted, purified, saved by metaphysics this 
 idea of final harmony between the morally good and hap- 
 piness certainly becomes admissible. But, in the first place, 
 it is no longer truly the sanction of a formal law ; all that 
 remains of the ideas of necessary or imperative law, of 
 equally necessary sanction, properly so-called, has dis- 
 appeared. It is no longer even the formal law of Kant, 
 nor the synthetical a priori judgment by which legality 
 should be united to happiness as reward. In one word, it 
 is no longer a system of legislation, nor, consequently, of 
 true sanction. We can even say that we are here transported 
 to a sphere higher than that of justice, properly so-called ; 
 it is the sphere of brotherhood. It is no longer the justice 
 of equal exchange, for the idea of brotherhood excludes 
 that of mathematical exchange, of a balance of services 
 exactly measurable, and equal in quantity. Goodwill does 
 not measure its return according to what it has received ; it 
 returns two, and even tenfold, for one. It is no longer even
 
 THE SANCTION OF LOVE AND OF FRATERNITY. 2OI 
 
 distributive justice in its exact sense, for the idea of an 
 exact, or even moral, distribution is no longer that of 
 brotherhood. The prodigal son might be received even 
 more warmly than the good son. An evil-doer might be 
 loved, and perhaps the evil-doer may need to be loved, 
 more than any other. I have two hands one to clasp the 
 hand of those with whom I go through life, the other to 
 raise those who fall. To the latter I might even stretch forth 
 both my hands together. 
 
 Thus, in this sphere, purely rational relations, purely 
 intellectual harmonies, and with even greater reason legal 
 relations seem to disappear ; thus even the truly rational, 
 logical, and even quantitative relation vanishes, which should 
 bind the good will to a certain proportion of outward good 
 and of inward love. From this results a kind of antinomy. 
 Love is either a particular grace, and an election, which 
 bears hardly any resemblance to sanction, or it is a kind of 
 general grace, and an ideal, far-reaching equality between 
 all beings, which even less resembles sanction. If I love 
 one man better than another, it is not certain that my love 
 must be in direct ratio to his merit ; and if I love all men 
 for their humanity if I love them universally, equally 
 the proportion between merit and love seems still more to 
 disappear. Besides, men of " goodwill " would undoubtedly 
 themselves dislike, according to ideal justice, to be the object 
 of any mark of preference ; the voluntary victims of love 
 would not consent to be placed in any way before others in 
 the case of any redistribution of material goods. They 
 would object that, after all, voluntary suffering is less to be 
 pitied than imposed suffering ; to him who admits the 
 superiority of the ideal over the real, the good man is the 
 rich one, even when this supra-sensible wealth has given 
 him material inconvenience and suffering. 
 
 Such are the difficulties to which we believe this theory 
 will give rise. These difficulties are, perhaps, not insoluble ; 
 but their solution will surely mean a thorough modification
 
 202 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 of the traditional idea of sanction for, as far as pain goes, 
 punishment will have disappeared ; and, as to reward, the 
 compensation belonging to pure justice will seem to vanish 
 before more elevated relations of brotherhood, which shall 
 be free from precise limitations. On the one hand, physical 
 suffering (death included) always rouses indignation morally, 
 whatever may be the good or bad character of the will 
 which causes it. Suffering shocks us in itself, independently 
 of its point of application ; a distribution of suffering is, 
 therefore, morally unintelligible. On the other hand, as to 
 happiness we want all to be happy. These notions cause 
 great trouble in the balance of sanction. Proportionality, 
 rationality, law, vo/zos (derived from vf/tw, to allot), are only 
 applicable to the relations of social order and utility, of 
 defence and of exchange, of commutation and of mathe- 
 matical distribution. Sanction, properly so-called, is there- 
 fore an entirely human idea, which enters as a necessary 
 element into the conception of our society, but which might 
 be expelled without contradiction from a highly-elevated 
 society composed of sages like Buddha and Jesus. 
 
 In short, the utilitarians and the followers of Kant, placed 
 at the two opposite poles of moral philosophy, are never- 
 theless victims of the same error. The utilitarian, who 
 sacrifices as little as may be of his existence in the hope that 
 this sacrifice will bring him something in return in the life 
 beyond, reckons irrationally from his point of view ; for, in 
 the absolute, nothing more is due to him for his interested 
 sacrifice than would be due to him for an evil act of self- 
 interest. On the other hand, the disciple of Kant who 
 sacrifices himself, with his eyes shut, for the sake of the law 
 only, without calculating, without demanding anything, has 
 none the more any veritable right to compensation or 
 indemnity. Of course, if we have no aim in view, we should 
 give up all reference to aim, and the disciple of Kant does not 
 aim at happiness. It may be objected that, if the moral law 
 constrains us, it is itself bound to do something for us. It
 
 THE SANCTION OF LOVE AND OF FRATERNITY. 203 
 
 may be said that there may be an " appeal from the agent 
 to the law; that if, for instance, the law demands the 
 annihilation of self without compensation, this is supreme 
 cruelty ; and is a cruel law just ?" (M. Janet, " La Morale," 
 p. 582). We answer that it is here necessary to distinguish 
 between two things the fatal circumstances of life, and the 
 law which rules our conduct under these circumstances. 
 The fatal situations of life may be cruel ; let nature be 
 accused of this ; but a law can never appear cruel to him 
 who believes in its legitimacy. He who considers every 
 stain a crime cannot feel it cruel to remain chaste. For him 
 who believes in a " moral law " it is impossible to judge 
 this law, while regarding it from a human point of view, 
 because this law is hypothetically unconditional, irrespon- 
 sible, and is believed to be speaking to us from the very 
 depths of the absolute. It makes no contract with us, the 
 clauses of which we might quietly debate, weighing the 
 advantages and disadvantages. At bottom even in the 
 moral philosophy of Kant sanction is really only a supreme 
 expedient to rationally and materially justify the formal 
 law of sacrifice, the moral law. Sanction is added to the 
 law to render it legitimate.* 
 
 This question-begging, disguised under the name of postulate, 
 is really still more evident in those systems of morality which try more 
 openly to keep the mean between egoistic utilitarianism and the 
 absolute disinterestedness of Stoicism. The moral philosophy of M. 
 Renouvier in France, and of Sidgwick in England, seems to be of 
 this kind. " Reason" says M. Renouvier (and the English moralist 
 entirely agrees on this point), " is only of value and makes itself only 
 known in so far as it is supposed to be conformable with the final cause, 
 
 the principle of the passions, and happiness The postulate of a final 
 
 conformity of the moral law with happiness is the induction, the 
 
 proper hypothesis of moral philosophy. Is this postulate denied? 
 
 Then the moral agent might oppose to the obligation of justice another 
 obligation that of his own preservation, and to duty the idea of in- 
 terest such as he represents it to himself. In the name of -what shall 
 
 we urge him to make choice of duty?" ("Science de Morale," vol. i., 
 p. 17). M. Renouvier, very cautious and circumspect, tries afterwards
 
 204 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 The doctrine of the disciples of Kant, even more than 
 that of the utilitarians, if pushed to extremes, would logically 
 end in a complete antinomy between the purely " moral 
 merit" and the idea of a reward, or even of some sort of 
 tangible hope. It might be summed up in the story of an 
 Eastern woman, told us by the Sieur de Joinville : Yves, 
 a preaching friar, one day saw at Damascus an old woman 
 
 to somewhat diminish the importance of this acknowledgment by a 
 scholastic distinction. Sanction, he says, is less a postulate of moral 
 philosophy than a postulate of the passions ' ' necessary to legitimatize 
 them and to make them enter the sphere of science." Unfortunately, 
 he happens to recognise that there cannot exist a moral science 
 independently of the passions, and that the obligation of self-interest 
 is a power logically equivalent to moral obligation. If the passions 
 postulate a sanction, on the other hand moral philosophy postulates 
 the passions ; it is a circle. In moral philosophy thus conceived, duty 
 finds itself, at least from the logical point of view, put on equal footing 
 with self-interest. Bentham and Kant are placed on the same level ; it is 
 owned that both are right, and it is made to appear as if they want the 
 same things in the name of contrary principles. Sanction serves as their 
 common meeting-ground, and the supreme principle of remuneration as 
 magistrate. It is not for us here to appreciate the value of these moral 
 systems. We only state that the formal law of Kant has disappeared 
 in this arrangement ; that " the obligation of doing one's duty solely 
 from duty " no longer exists, and is considered as a mere paradox 
 (" Science de la Morale," vol. i., p. 178) ; that sanction is no longer a 
 consequence of duty, but simply a condition. In that case this idea 
 entirely changes its aspect. Punishment and reward are no longer 
 considered as bound to moral conduct by an a priori synthetic 
 judgment ; but they are demanded beforehand by the agents, so as 
 to justify the commandment of the "law" from the reasonable point 
 of view. The moral act no longer constitutes in and for itself a 
 right to happiness ; but every sensible being is considered as having 
 naturally a right to hope for happiness, and as unwilling to renounce 
 it in the moral act. M. Renouvier and Mr. Sidgwick, no longer 
 maintaining that duty deserves a reward, simply say that the moral 
 agent, expecting a reward, would be duped if one day it was not 
 rewarded. They invoke, so to speak, as their only argument, the 
 veracity of the desire, in the same way as Descartes invoked the 
 veiacity of God ; but the one, as well as the other, may with good 
 right be suspected by every truly scientific moral philosopher.
 
 THE SANCTION OF LOVE AND OF FRATERNITY. 205 
 
 carrying in her right hand a brazier containing fire, and in 
 her left a phial of water. Yves asked her : " What are 
 you going to do?" She answered that with the fire she 
 wanted to burn paradise, and with the water to extin- 
 guish hell. And he asked her : " Why do you want to do 
 this ?" " Because I do not want anybody ever to do good 
 for the sake of gaining paradise as a reward, nor for fear of 
 hell, but simply for love of God." 
 
 One thing would seem to reconcile everything ; this 
 would be to demonstrate that, analytically, happiness lies 
 enfolded in virtue ; that to choose between it and pleasure 
 is still to choose between two joys the one inferior, the 
 other superior. The Stoics believed this; Stuart Mill 
 also ; and even Epicurus himself. This hypothesis may 
 undoubtedly prove true fora small number of elevated souls, 
 but its complete realization is indeed " not of this world." 
 Virtue itself is by no means, here on earth and in itself, 
 a perfect tangible reward, a full compensation (prcemium ipsa 
 virtus). There is little likelihood that a soldier, standing at 
 the outpost and struck down by a bullet, would experience, in 
 the sentiment of duty fulfilled, a sum of enjoyment equivalent 
 to the happiness of a whole life. Let us, therefore, acknow- 
 ledge it virtue is not tangible happiness. Nay, more ; 
 there is no natural reason, nor any purely moral reason, 
 that it should ever become so. Besides, when certain alter- 
 natives arise, the moral being has the feeling of being caught 
 in a snare ; he is bound, he is confined, by " duty." He 
 cannot free himself, and can but await the working of the 
 great social or natural mechanism which must crush him. 
 He gives way while, perhaps, regretting that he should 
 have been the victim chosen. The necessity of self-sacrifice 
 is, in a good many cases, the drawing of a bad lot. Never- 
 theless, one draws it, binds it on one's brow not without 
 some pride and departs. Duty, in its acute state, forms parts 
 of the tragic events which burst on life. There are lives which 
 very nearly escape it ; they are generally considered happy.
 
 2O6 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 If duty can thus make real victims, do these victims 
 acquire exceptional rights to a material compensation, rights 
 to a material happiness, superior to that of other unfor- 
 tunates, of other martyrs of life ? It does not appear to be 
 so. All suffering, involuntary or voluntary r , always appears 
 to us as demanding an ideal compensation, and this solely 
 because it is suffering. Compensation that is to say, a 
 balancing is a word which indicates an entirely logical and 
 material, but in no sense a moral, relation. It is the same 
 with the words " reward " and " punishment," which have 
 the same sense. They are terms which belong to the 
 sphere of the passions, and are wrongly transferred to 
 moral language. The ideal compensation of material benefits 
 and evils is all that one can observe in the popular ideas 
 of punishment and reward. We must remember that the 
 ancient Nemesis punished, not only the wicked, but also 
 those who were happy those who had had more than their 
 share of enjoyment. In the same way, Christianity, in 
 primitive times, considered the poor, the weak in mind or 
 body, as having the best chance of one day being the chosen 
 ones. The rich man of the Gospel is threatened with hell, 
 without any other apparent reason than his very wealth. 
 The first shall be last. Even in the present day the pair- 
 of-scales method seems to us desirable for this world of 
 ours. The ideal seems to be absolute equality of happiness 
 for all beings, whatsoever they may be ; life, on the contrary, 
 is a perpetual consecration of inequality. The majority of 
 living beings, good or evil, might, therefore, ideally pretend 
 to a reparation a sort of balance of joys, a universal level- 
 ling. The ocean of things would have to be levelled. No 
 induction whatever drawn from nature leads us to suppose 
 that this would ever happen quite the contrary ; and, on 
 the other hand, from no moral system whatever can one 
 strictly deduce recognition of a true moral right to any 
 definite compensation for actual suffering. This compensa- 
 tion, desired by the senses, is by no means demanded by
 
 THE SANCTION OF LOVE AND OF FRATERNITY. 207 
 
 reason. It is entirely doubtful, as far as science is concerned 
 perhaps even impossible.* 
 
 * "We do not think that the belief in religious sanction works any 
 great change in the aspect which a being, morally unsound, pre- 
 sents to every healthy being. Crime can offer man but one single attrac- 
 tion that of having the chance of procuring wealth for himself. But 
 wealth, whatever may be its popular value, is nevertheless not without 
 common measure as regards everything else. Propose to a poor man 
 to make him a millionaire, at the same time inflicting gout upon him, 
 and he will refuse, if he has any shadow of common sense. Propose 
 to him to be rich upon condition of being bandy-legged or hump-backed, 
 and he will probably refuse this also, especially if he is young ; every 
 woman would refuse. The difficulty experienced in filling certain posts, 
 even well paid posts such as that of executioner still shows that, in 
 the popular judgment, money is not everything. If it were everything, 
 no religious threats could ever prevent a universal assault upon riches. 
 I know women, and men also, who would refuse a fortune if it had to 
 be gained by becoming a butcher ; so strong are certain aversions, even 
 purely sentimental and aesthetic ones. The moral horror of crime 
 more powerful in most hearts than any other aversion will, therefore, 
 always drive us away from criminals, whatever may be the prospects of 
 life hereafter. This horror will only become stronger when, for the 
 usual sentiments of hatred, anger, and revenge, which the presence of 
 a criminal causes us, there will, by degrees, be substituted the sentiment 
 of pity of that pity which we feel for inferior or ill-born beings, for 
 the involuntary monstrosities of nature. The only enduring element 
 worthy of respect in the idea of sanction is neither the notion of pain 
 nor that of reward ; it is the conception of the ideal good, as neces- 
 sarily having a sufficient force of realization to impose itself on nature, 
 to invade the whole world. It would seem to us right that the just 
 and gentle man should one day have the last word in the universe. 
 But this reign of goodness dreamt of by humanity does not need the 
 operations of human legislature in order to establish itself. The moral 
 sentiment may consider itself as being of necessity the great force and 
 the mainspring of the universe. This ambition of morality to progres- 
 sively invade nature, through the medium of humanity, is the highest 
 thing in the domain of philosophy ; it is also that which is most fit to 
 foster the missionary spirit. No myth whatever is here necessary 
 to arouse the ardour for goodness and the sentiment of universal 
 fraternity. That which is great and beautiful suffices in itself carries 
 in itself its light and its flame" (" L'Irreligion de 1'Avenir," p. 358).
 
 208 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 IN conclusion, it will not be without value to sum up the 
 principal ideas which we have developed in this work. 
 
 Our aim was to find out what a moral philosophy would be 
 without any absolute obligation, and without any absolute 
 sanction ; how far positive science can go in this direction, 
 and where does the sphere of metaphysical speculations 
 begin ? 
 
 Systematically putting aside every law anterior or superior 
 to the facts, consequently a priori and categorical, we have 
 had to start from the facts themselves in order to deduce a 
 law; to start from reality, to build up an ideal, and to extract 
 a moral philosophy from nature. Now, the essential and 
 constitutive fact of our nature is that we are living, feeling, 
 and thinking beings. It is from life, both in its physical 
 and moral form, that we have had to demand a principle of 
 conduct. 
 
 It is indispensable that this principle should present a 
 double character, for life, so to speak, divides itself into 
 two parts in man into unconscious and conscious life. 
 Most moralists see only the sphere of conscious life. 
 It is, nevertheless, the unconscious or sub-conscious life 
 which is the true source of activity. Conscious life, it is 
 true, may, in the long run, react upon and gradually 
 destroy, by the acuteness of its analysis, that which the 
 obscure synthesis of heredity has accumulated among 
 individuals or nations. Consciousness has a dissolving force, 
 which the utilitarian and even the evolutionist school 
 has not taken sufficiently into account. Hence the 
 necessity of re-establishing the harmony between the 
 reflection of consciousness and the spontaneity of the 
 unconscious instinct. A principle of action must be found 
 wnich shall be common to the two spheres, and which,
 
 CONCLUSION. 209 
 
 consequently, while becoming conscious of itself, tends more 
 to fortify than to destroy itself. This principle we believe to 
 have found in life the most intensive and the most extensive 
 possible, with regard to its physical and mental manifestations. 
 Life, in becoming conscious of itself, of its intensity and its 
 extension, does not tend to its own destruction ; it but 
 increases its own force. 
 
 However, there are also antinomies in the sphere of 
 life which are produced by the struggle between in- 
 dividualities, by the competition of all beings for happi- 
 ness, and sometimes for existence. In nature the anti- 
 nomy of the struggle for life is nowhere solved ; it is the 
 dream of the moralist to solve it or, at least, to reduce it 
 as much as possible. For this reason the moralist is tempted 
 to appeal to a law superior to life itself an intelligible, 
 eternal, supernatural law. We have given up appealing 
 to this law at least as law. We have relegated the intelli- 
 gible world to the region of hypothesis, and a law cannot 
 spring from an hypothesis. Once more, therefore, we are 
 obliged to appeal to life to regulate life. But then it is a 
 more complete, a larger life, which is able to regulate a less 
 complete and smaller life. Such, in fact, is the only possible 
 rule for an exclusively scientific moral philosophy. 
 
 The characteristic of life which has enabled us to unite, 
 to a certain extent, egoism and altruism a union which is the 
 philosopher's stone of morality is that which we have 
 called moral fecundity. The individual life should diffuse 
 itself for others, in others, and, if necessary, should 
 yield itself up ; and this expansion is not contrary to 
 its nature ; on the contrary, it is in accordance with its 
 nature; nay, more, it is the very condition of true life. 
 The utilitarian school has been obliged to stop short with 
 more or less hesitation before this perpetual antithesis of Me 
 and Thee, of Mine and Thine, of personal interest and general 
 interest. But living nature does not stop short at this cut- 
 and-dried, this logically inflexible division. Individual life
 
 210 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 is expansive for others because it is fruitful, and it is 
 fruitful by the very reason that it is life. We have seen, with 
 regard to physical life, that it is the need of each individual 
 to beget another individual ; so much so that this other 
 becomes a necessary condition of our being. Life, like fire, 
 only maintains itself by communicating itself ; and this is 
 none the less true with regard to the intelligence than 
 with regard to the body. It is as impossible to shut up the 
 intelligence as to shut up flame ; it exists in order to radiate. 
 We find the same force of expansion in sensibility. We 
 need to share our joy ; we need to share our sorrow. It is 
 our whole nature which is sociable. Life does not know the 
 absolute classifications and divisions of the logicians and the 
 metaphysicians ; it cannot be entirely selfish, even if it wished 
 to be. We are open on all sides, on all sides encroaching 
 and encroached upon. This springs from the fundamental 
 law which biology teaches us : Life is not only nutrition ; it is 
 production and fecundity. To live is to spend as well as to gain. 
 After having stated this general law of physical and 
 psychical life, we have tried to find out how some sort of 
 equivalent to obligation might be derived therefrom. What 
 does obligation actually mean to him who does not admit 
 either an absolute imperative or a transcendental law ? A 
 certain form of impulsion. In fact, analyse " moral obliga- 
 tion," " duty," " the moral law " : that which gives them 
 their character of action is the impulsion which is inseparable 
 from it ; it is the force demanding exercise. Well, it is this 
 impulsive force which has appeared to us to be the first 
 natural equivalent of supernatural duty. The utilitarians are 
 still too much absorbed by considerations of finality. They 
 think of nothing but the aim, which to them is utility, itself 
 reducible to pleasure. They are Hedonists that is to say, 
 they make of pleasure, be it in a selfish or sympathetic form, 
 the great spring of mental life. We, on the contrary, place 
 ourselves at the point of view of efficient causality, and not 
 of finality. We declare that there is a cause in us which
 
 CONCLUSION. 211 
 
 operates as an aim, even before any attraction of pleasure ; 
 this cause is life, tending by its very nature to grow and to 
 diffuse itself, thus finding pleasure as consequence, but not 
 necessarily taking it as an end in itself. The living being is 
 not purely and simply a calculation a la Bentham, a banker 
 putting down in his big book the balance of profit and loss. 
 To live is not to calculate, it is to act. There is in the living 
 being an accumulation of force, a reserve of activity, which 
 spends itself not for the pleasure of spending itself, but 
 because spending is a necessity of its very existence. It is 
 impossible that a cause should not produce its effects, even 
 if there be no consideration of aim or object. 
 
 We have thus reached our fundamental formula. Duty 
 is but an expression detached from the power which neces- 
 sarily tends to pass into action. By duty we do but desig- 
 nate that power which, passing beyond reality, becomes with 
 respect to it an ideal ; becomes that which it ought to be, 
 because it is that which it can be, because it is the germ of 
 the future already bursting forth in the present. There is 
 no supernatural principle whatever in our morality ; it is 
 from life itself, and from the force inherent in life, that it all 
 springs. Life makes its own law by its aspiration towards 
 incessant development ; it makes its own obligation to act 
 by its very power of action. 
 
 As we have already explained, instead of saying, / must, 
 therefore lean, it is more true to say, I can, therefore I must. 
 Hence a certain impersonal duty is created by the very power to 
 act. Such is the first natural equivalent of the mystical and 
 transcendental duty. 
 
 The second equivalent we have found in the theory of the 
 idea-forces upheld by a contemporary philosopher (Fouillee). 
 The very idea of the superior action, as that of every action, is 
 a force tending to its realization. The idea itself is already the 
 commenced realization of the superior action. Obligation 
 is, from this point of view, but the sense of the profound 
 identity which exists between thought and action. It is, for
 
 212 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 this very reason, the sense of the unity of being, of the unity 
 of life. He who does not, by his action, conform to his 
 highest thought is at war with himself, is inwardly divided 
 against himself. Here, again, we have got beyond Hedonism. 
 It is not a question of calculating pleasures, of making up 
 accounts, and of finality. It is a question of being and of 
 living, of feeling oneself be, of feeling oneself live ; to act 
 as we are and as we live ; to be, not a sort of lie in action, 
 but a truth in action. 
 
 A third equivalent of duty is borrowed from the sensi- 
 bility ; not, like the preceding ones, from the intelligence 
 and the activity. It is from the growing fusion of sensibili- 
 ties, and from the increasingly sociable character of elevated 
 pleasures, that a kind of duty or superior necessity springs, 
 which moves us, quite naturally and rationally, towards others. 
 By virtue of evolution our pleasures become wider and 
 more and more impersonal. We cannot enjoy ourselves 
 in ourselves as on an isolated island. Our environment, 
 to which we better adapt ourselves every day, is human 
 society, and we can no more be happy outside this environ- 
 ment than we can breathe beyond the atmosphere of the 
 earth. The purely selfish happiness of certain epicureans 
 is an idle fancy, an abstraction, an impossibility. The 
 truly human pleasures are all, more or less, social. Pure 
 selfishness, as we have said, instead of being a real affirma- 
 tion of self, is a mutilation of self. Thus, in ^>nr__actiyity, 
 in our intelligence, in our sensibility, there is a pressure 
 which exercises itself in the altruistic sense. There is a 
 force of expansion as powerful as the one which acts on 
 the stars ; and it is this force of expansion which, becoming 
 conscious of its power, gives to itself the name of duty. 
 This, then, is the treasure of natural spontaneousness, which 
 is life, and which, at the same time, creates moral wealth. 
 
 But, as we have seen, reflection may find itself in anti- 
 thesis with natural spontaneousness ; it may work in such a 
 way as to restrain both the power and the duty of sociability,
 
 CONCLUSION. 213 
 
 when by chance the force of expansion towards others finds 
 itself in opposition to the force of gravitation to self. The 
 struggle for life may be diminished by the progress of evo- 
 lution; it re-appears under certain circumstances, which 
 are still frequent in our day. In such case, without impera- 
 tive law, what will urge the individual to definite dis- 
 interestedness, and sometimes to self-sacrifice? 
 
 Besides these motives, which we have previously examined, 
 and which, under normal conditions, are constantly being 
 brought into action, we have found others, which we called 
 the love of "physical risk " and the love of " moral risk." 
 Man is a being fond of speculation not only in theory, but in 
 practice. Neither his thought nor his action stops at the point 
 where his certitude ends. A purely speculative hypothesis 
 can, without danger, be substituted for the categorical law ; 
 in the same way, a mere hope can be substituted for dog- ~" 
 matic faith, and action for affirmation. The speculative 
 hypothesis is a risk of the mind ; the action which conforms 
 to this hypothesis is a risk of the will. The superior being 
 is he who undertakes and risks the most, either by his 
 thought or by his actions. This superiority springs from a 
 greater treasure of inward force ; he has more power. For 
 this very reason, he has a higher duty. 
 
 Even the sacrifice of life may still be, in certain cases, an 
 expansion of life, which has become sufficiently intense to 
 prefer an impulse of sublime exaltation to years of mere 
 grovelling existence. There are hours, as we have seen, 
 in which it is possible to say at one and the same time: " I 
 live; I have lived." 
 
 If certain physical and moral agonies last for years, 
 and if one can, so to speak, die to self during a whole 
 existence, the reverse is also true, and it is possible to con- 
 centrate a whole life into one moment of love and sacrifice, j 
 
 Lastly, in the same way that life creates its obligation to 
 act by its very power to act, it also creates its sanction by 
 its very action ; for, in acting, it takes joy in its own capacity.
 
 214 MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF OBLIGATION OR SANCTION. 
 
 Acting less, it finds less enjoyment ; acting more, it enjoys 
 more. Even in sacrificing itself life finds itself again ; even 
 in dying it is conscious of its plenitude, which will reappear 
 elsewhere, indestructible under other forms, since nothing 
 in the world is lost. 
 
 To sum up, it is action and the power of life which alone 
 can solve if not entirely, at least partially those problems 
 to which abstract thought gives rise. The sceptic, in 
 morality as well as in metaphysics, believes that he deceives 
 himself and all others ; believes that humanity will always 
 deceive itself; that the pretended progress is merely a "mark- 
 ing-time." He is wrong. He does not see that our fathers 
 have spared us the very errors into which they fell, and that 
 we will spare those who follow us our own errors ; he does 
 not see that, after all, in all grrors^ there is some truth, and 
 that this particle of truth graduany~~gTDWs~an6^confirms 
 itself. On the other hand, he who has a dogmatic faith 
 believes that he possesses, to the exclusion of allotriervthe 
 whole definite and imperative truth. He is wrong. He 
 does not see that errors mingle with every truth, that there 
 is nothing as yet in the thought of man which is perfect 
 enough to be final. The first believes that humanity does 
 not advance ; the second, that it has already arrived at its 
 goal. There is a mean between these two hypotheses : we 
 must say to ourselves that humanity is marching forward, 
 and we must march forward ourselves. Work, as has been 
 said, is as good as prayer. It is even better than prayer ; 
 or, rather, it is the true prayer the true human providence. 
 Let us act instead of praying. Let us have hope only in our- 
 selves and in other men ; let us count on ourselves. Hope, 
 like Providence, sees sometimes far ahead (providere). The 
 difference between supernatural Providence and natural 
 hope is that the one pretends to directly modify nature by 
 supernatural means, like itself; while the other from the first 
 modifies only ourselves. It is a force which is not superior 
 to us, but interior ; it is we ourselves whom it carries
 
 CONCLUSION. 215 
 
 onward. It remains to be seen if we are going alone, if 
 the world is following us, if thought will ever be able to 
 carry nature along. Let us go on all the same. 
 
 We stand as if upon the deck of some great vessel, whose 
 rudder had been torn away by a wave, and whose mast had 
 been broken by the wind. It had been lost on the sea, as our 
 planet was in space. It went on thus at random, driven on 
 by the storm, like a great wreck carrying people ; never- 
 theless, it arrived at its destination. Perhaps our planet, 
 perhaps humanity, will also arrive at an unknown goal, 
 which it will have created for itself. No hand directs us, no 
 eye looks out for us. The rudder has long since been 
 broken or, rather, there never was one ; it has to be made. 
 This is a great task, and it is our task.
 
 UNIVrn<4IIV OF ILLINOIS URBANA 
 
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