Elements of Morals. Paul Janet
soul to the goods of the body; the dignity of human nature to the servitude of animal passions; the noble affections of the heart to the inclinations of a vile selfishness.
In one word, moral good consists in man becoming truly man—that is to say, “A free will, guided by the heart and enlightened by reason.”
Moral good takes different names, according to the relations under which we consider it. For instance, when we consider it as having for its special object the individual man in relation with himself, good becomes what is properly called the honest, and has for its prime object personal dignity. In its relation with other men, good takes the name of the just, and has for its special object the happiness of others. It consists either in not doing to others what we should not wish they should do to us, or in doing to others as we should ourselves wish to be done by. Finally, in its relation to God, the good is called piety or saintliness, and consists in rendering to the Father of men and of the universe what is his due.
9. Duty.—Thus, the honest, the just, and the pious are the different names which moral good takes in its relations to ourselves, to other men, or to God.
Moral good, under these different forms, presents itself always in the same character, namely, imposing on us the obligation to do it as soon as we recognize it, and that, too, without regard to consequences and whatever be our inclinations to the contrary.
Thus, we should tell the truth even though it injures us; we should respect the property of others, though it be necessary to our existence; finally, we should even sacrifice, if necessary, our life for the family and the country.
This law, which prescribes to us the doing right for its own sake, is what is called moral law or the law of duty. It is a sort of constraint, but a moral constraint, and is distinguished from physical constraint by the fact that the latter is dictated by fate and is irresistible, whilst the constraint of duty imposes itself upon our reason without violating our liberty. This kind of necessity, which commands reason alone without constraining the will, is moral obligation.
To say that the right is obligatory is to say, then, that we consider ourselves held to do it, without being forced to do it. On the contrary, if we were to do it by force it would cease to be the right. It must therefore be done freely, and duty may thus be defined an obligation consented to.
Duty presents itself in a two-fold character: it is absolute and universal.
1. It is absolute: that is to say, it imposes its commands unconditionally, without taking account of our desires, our passions, our interests. It is by this that the commands of duty may be distinguished, as we have already said, from the counsels of an interested prudence. The rules or calculations of prudence are nothing but means to reach a certain end, which is the useful. The law of duty, on the contrary, is in itself its own aim. Here the law should be obeyed for its own sake, and not for any other reason. Prudence says: “The end justifies the means.” Duty says: “Do as thou shouldst do, let come what will.”
2. From this first character a second is deduced: duty being absolute, is universal; that is to say, it can be applied to all men in the same manner and under the same circumstances; whence it follows that each must acknowledge that this law is imposed not only on himself, but on all other men also.
To which correspond those two beautiful maxims of the Gospel: “Do to others as thou wishest to be done by. Do not do to others what thou dost not wish they should do to thee.”
The law of duty is not only obligatory in itself, it is so also because it is derived from God, who in his justice and goodness wishes we should submit to it. God being himself the absolutely perfect being, and having created us in his image, wishes, for this very reason, that we should make every effort to imitate him as much as possible, and has thus imposed on us the obligation of being virtuous. It is God we obey in obeying the law of honesty and duty.
10. Moral conscience.—A law cannot be imposed on a free agent without its being known to him; without its being present to his mind—that is to say, without his accepting it as true, and recognizing the necessity of its application in every particular case. This faculty of recognizing the moral law, and applying it in all the circumstances that may present themselves, is what is called conscience.
Conscience is then that act of the mind by which we apply to a particular case, to an action to be performed or already performed, the general rules prescribed by moral law. It is both the power that commands and the inward judge that condemns or absolves. On the one hand it dictates what should be done or avoided; on the other it judges what has been done. Hence it is the condition of the performance of all our duties.
Conscience being the practical judgment which in each particular case decides the right and the wrong, one can ask of man only one thing: namely, to act according to his conscience. At the moment of action there is no other rule. But one must take great care lest by subtle doubts, he obscures either within himself or in others the clear and distinct decisions of conscience.
In fact, men often, to divert themselves from the right when they wish to do certain bad actions, fight their own conscience with sophisms. Under the influence of these sophisms, conscience becomes erroneous; that is to say, it ends by taking good for evil and evil for good, and this is even one of the punishments of those who follow the path of vice: they become at last incapable of discerning between right and wrong. When it is said of a man that he has no conscience, it is not meant that he is really deprived of it (else he were not a man); but that he has fallen into the habit of not consulting it or of holding its decisions in contempt.
By ignorant conscience we mean that conscience which does wrong because it has not yet learned to know what is right. Thus, a child tormenting animals does not always do so out of bad motives: he does not know or does not think that he hurts them. In fact, it is with good as it is with evil; the child is already good or bad before it is able to discern between the one or the other. This is what is called the state of innocence, which in some respects is conscience asleep. But this state cannot last; the child’s conscience, and in general the conscience of all men, must be enlightened. This is the progress of human reason which every day teaches us better to know the difference between good and evil.
It sometimes happens that one is in some respects in doubt between two indications of conscience; not, of course, between duty and passion, which is the highest moral combat, but between two or more duties. This is what is called a doubting or perplexed conscience. In such a case the simplest rule to follow, when it is practicable, is the one expressed by that celebrated maxim: When in doubt, abstain. In cases where it is impossible to absolutely abstain, and where it becomes necessary not only to act but to choose, the rule should always be to choose that part which favors least our interests, for we may always suppose that that which causes our conscience to doubt, is an interested, unobserved motive. If there is no private interest in the matter either on the one side or the other, there remains nothing better to do than to decide according to circumstances. But it is very rare that conscience ever finds itself in such an absolute state of doubt, and there are almost always more reasons on the one side than on the other. The simplest and most general rule in such a case is to chose what seems most probable.
11. Moral Sentiment.—At the same time, as the mind distinguishes between good and evil by a judgment called conscience, the heart experiences emotions or divers affections, which are embraced under the common term moral sentiment. These are the pleasures or pains which arise in our soul at the sight of good or evil, either in ourselves or in others.
In respect to our own actions this sentiment is modified according as the action is to be performed, or is already performed. In the first instance we experience, on the one hand, a certain attraction for the right (that is when passion is not strong enough to stifle it), and on the other, a repugnance or aversion for the wrong (more or less attenuated, according to circumstances, by habit or the violence of the design). Usage has not given any particular names to these two sentiments.
When,