Elements of Morals. Paul Janet
we derive from it, and for the very reason that it is good and virtuous.
There are to be distinguished, however, two other kinds of rewards, which, though they resemble recompense, are nevertheless very different from it namely, favor and remuneration.
Favor is a pleasure or an advantage bestowed on us, without our having deserved or earned it; a pure expression of the good-will of others towards us. It is thus that a king grants favors to his courtiers, that those in power distribute favors. It is thus we speak of the favors of fortune. Although theoretically there is no reason why we should understand the word favor in a bad sense, yet has it by usage come to signify not only an advantage undeserved, but unworthy; not only a legitimate preference which has its reason in sympathy, but an arbitrary choice more or less contrary to justice. However, although no such ugly signification need be attached to it, a favor, as a gratuitous gift, must always be distinguished from reward, which, on the contrary, implies a remuneration; that is to say, a gift in return for something.
Yet not all remuneration is necessarily a reward; and here we must establish another distinction between reward and remuneration. By remuneration we mean the price we pay for a service rendered us, no matter what motive may determine a person to render us this service; it is for its utility we pay, and for nothing else. The reward, on the contrary, implies the idea of a certain effort to do good. He who renders us a service from affection and devotion, would refuse being paid for it, and, vice versa, he who sells us his work does not ask us for a recompense, but for an equivalent of what he would have earned for himself if he had applied his work to his own wants.
On the contrary, we call every pain or suffering inflicted on an agent for committing a bad action, for no other reason than that it is bad, chastisement or punishment.
Punishment stands against damage or wrong; that is to say, against undeserved harm. The blows of fortune or of men are not always punishments. One may be struck without being punished.
Although we say in a general way that the ills that befall men are often the chastisements of their faults, yet this should not be taken too strictly, otherwise we should too easily transform the merely unfortunate into criminals.
Although recompenses and punishments may be only secondary means by which men may be led to do good and avoid evil, this should not be their essential office nor their real idea.
It is not that the law should be fulfilled that there are rewards and punishments in morality; it is because it has been fulfilled or violated. Such is the true principle of reward. It comes from justice, not utility.
For the same reason, chastisement, in its true sense, should not only be a menace insuring the execution of the law, but a reparation or expiation for its violation. The order of things disturbed by a rebellious will is again re-established by the suffering which is the consequence of the fault committed. In one sense it may be said that punishment is the remedy for the fault. In fact, injustice and vice being, as it were, the diseases of the soul, it is certain that suffering is their remedy; but only on condition that this suffering be accepted by way of chastisement. It is thus that grief has a purifying virtue, and that instead of being considered an evil, it may be called a good.
Another confusion of ideas which should be equally avoided, and which is very common among men, is that which consists in taking the reward itself for a good, and the punishment for an evil.
It is thus that men are often more proud of the titles and honors they have obtained, than of the real merit through which they have won them. It is thus also that they fear the prison more than the crime, and shame more than vice.
It is for this reason that the greatest courage is needed to bear undeserved punishment.
We distinguish generally four species of sanction:
1. Natural sanction; 2, legal sanction; 3, the sanction of public opinion; 4, inward sanction.
1. Natural sanction is that which rests on the natural consequences of our actions. It is natural for sobriety to keep up and establish health, for intemperance to be a cause of disease. It is natural for work to bring with it ease of circumstances, for idleness to be a source of misery and poverty. It is natural that probity should insure security, confidence, and credit; that courage should put off the chances of death; that patience should render life more bearable; that good-will should call forth good-will; that wickedness should drive men from us; that perjury should cause them to distrust us, etc. These facts have ever been verified by experience. The honest is not always the useful; but it is often what is most useful.
2. Legal sanction is above all a penal sanction. It is composed of the chastisements which the law has established for the guilty. There are, in general, few rewards established by the law, and they may be classed among what is called the esteem of men.
3. Another kind of sanction consists in the opinion other men entertain in regard to our actions and character. We have seen that it is in the nature of good actions to inspire esteem, in the nature of the bad to inspire blame and contempt. The honest man generally enjoys public honor and consideration. The dishonest man, even though the law does not reach him, is branded with discredit, aversion, contempt, etc.
4. Finally, a more exact and certain sanction is that which results from the very conscience and moral sentiment mentioned above.
16. The superior sanction: the future life.—These various sanctions being insufficient to satisfy our want of justice, there is required still another, namely, the superior religious sanction.
It is a well-known fact that virtue is not a sufficient shield to protect us against the blows of adversity, and that immorality does not necessarily condemn one to misery and grief. It is evident that a man corrupt and wicked may be born with all the advantages of genius, fortune, health; and that an honest man may have inherited none of these.
There is in this neither injustice nor blind chance; but it proves that the harmony between moral good and happiness is not of this world.
In regard to the pleasures and pains of conscience, it is also evident that they are not sufficient. In fact, the pleasures of the senses may divert and deaden the pangs of remorse; and it must also be said, though it be still more sad, that it sometimes happens that a merciless continuance of misfortune deadens in an honest soul the delight in virtue; and the painful efforts which virtue costs may finally obliterate in a man, tired of life, the calm and sweet enjoyment which it naturally brings with it.
If such is the disproportion and disagreement between the inner pleasures and pains, and the moral merit of him who experiences them, what shall we say of that wholly outward sanction which consists in the rewards and punishments distributed by the unequal justice of man? I do not speak of legal pains alone; it is well known that they often fall upon the innocent, and are spared to the guilty; that they are almost always disproportioned: the law punishing the crime, without taking note of the exact moral value of the action; but I speak also of the pains and rewards of public opinion, esteem, and contempt. Are these always in an exact proportion to merit?
From all these observations it results that the law of harmony between good and happiness is not of this world; that there is always disagreement, or at least disproportion, between moral merit and the pleasures of the senses. Hence the necessity of a superior sanction, the means and time of which are in the hand of God.
“The more I go within myself,” says a philosopher,[5] “the more I consult myself, the more I read these words written in my soul: be just and thou shalt be happy. And yet it is not so, looking at the actual state of things: the wicked prosper, and the just are oppressed. See, also, what indignation arises in us when this expectation is frustrated! The conscience murmurs and rebels against its author; it cries to him, groaning: Thou hast deceived me! I have deceived thee, oh thou rash one? Who has told thee so? Is thy soul annihilated? Hast thou ceased to exist? Oh, Brutus! oh, my son, do not stain thy noble life by putting an end to it; do not leave thy hopes and glory with thy body on the fields of Philippi. Why sayest thou: Virtue