Kitabı oku: «Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2)», sayfa 39

Conformably to these principles we may clearly and exactly determine the ideas of morality.

239. Absolute morality, and consequently the origin and type of the moral order, is the act by which the infinite Being loves his infinite perfection. This is an absolute fact of which we can give no reason a priori.

In God there is, strictly speaking, no duty; there is the absolute necessity of being holy.

240. The act essentially moral in creatures is the love of God. It is impossible to found the morality of this act on the morality of any other act.

241. The acts of creatures are moral in so far as they participate of this love, explicitly or implicitly.

242. Creatures which see God intuitively, love him necessarily; and thus all their acts, stamped with this august mark, are necessarily moral.

243. Creatures which do not see God intuitively necessarily love good in general, or under an indeterminate idea; but they do not love necessarily any object in particular.

244. In this love of good in general, these free acts are moral, when their will wills the order which God has willed, without mingling with this order foreign or contrary combinations.

245. In order that an act may be moral, it is not necessary that the one who performs it should think explicitly of God, nor that his will should love him explicitly.

246. The act is more moral, in proportion as it is accompanied with greater reflection on its morality and its conformity to the will of God.

247. Moral sentiment was given us in order that we might perceive the beauty of the order willed by God; it is, so to speak, an instinct of love of God.

248. As this sentiment is innate, indelible, and independent of reflection, even atheists experience it.

249. The idea of moral obligation or duty results from two ideas: the order willed by God, and the physical freedom to depart from this order. God granting us life, wills us to try to preserve it; but man is free, and sometimes kills himself. He that preserves his life fulfils a duty; he that destroys himself, infringes it. Thus the idea of duty contains the idea of physical freedom, which cannot be exercised, in a certain sense, without departing from the order which God has established.

250. Punishment is a sanction of the moral order; it serves to supply the necessity which is impossible in free beings. Creatures that act without knowledge, fulfil their destiny by an absolute necessity; free beings do not fulfil their destiny by an absolute necessity, but by that kind of necessity produced by the sight of a painful result.

251. Here may be seen the difference between physical evil and moral evil even in the same free being; physical evil is pain; moral evil is the departure from the order willed by God.

252. Unlawful is what is contrary to a duty.

253. Lawful is what is not opposed to any duty.

254. The eternal law is the order of intelligent beings, willed by God conformably to his infinite holiness.

255. Intrinsically moral acts are those which form a part of the order which God (supposing the will to create such or such beings) has willed necessarily, by force of the love of his infinite perfection. Such actions are commanded because they are good.

256. The actions which are good because they are commanded are those which form a part of the order which God has willed freely, and of which he has given creatures knowledge.

257. The command of God is his will communicated to creatures. If this will is necessary, the precept is natural, if free, the precept is positive.

258. Regarding the natural only, the order willed by God is that which leads to the preservation and perfection of created beings. Actions are moral when conformed to this order.

259. The natural perfection of beings consists in using their faculties for the end for which their nature shows them to be destined.

260. Nature has charged each individual to take care of his own preservation and perfection.

261. The natural impossibility of man's living alone, shows that the preservation and perfection of individuals must be obtained in society.

262. The first society is the family.

263. Parents must support and educate their children; for without this the human race could not be preserved.

264. Conjugal duties arise from the order necessary for the preservation and perfection of the society of the family, which is indispensable for the preservation of the human race.

265. The more necessary the connection of an act with the preservation and perfection of the family, the more necessary is its morality, and consequently the less subject to modifications.

266. The immorality of acts contrary to chastity, and especially of those against nature, is founded on great reasons of an order indispensable for the preservation of the individual and the species.

267. Passions, because they are blind, are evidently given us as means, not as ends.

268. Therefore, when the gratification of the passions is taken, not as a means, but as the end, the act is immoral. A simple example will explain this idea. The pleasure of eating has a very useful object in the preservation of the individual; thus to eat with pleasure is not evil, but good; to eat for the pleasure of eating is to invert the order: the act is not good. The same action which in the first case is very reasonable, in the second, is an act of gluttony. Common sense renders any proof of this superfluous.

269. If a man lived all alone, the use of his physical freedom could never injure any one but himself; the moral limit of his freedom would be to satisfy his wants and desires in conformity to the dictates of reason. But as men live in society, the exercise of the physical freedom of one necessarily interferes with the freedom of others; to prevent disorder it is necessary that the physical freedom of each one should be restricted a little, and that all should be subjected to an order conformed to reason and conducive to the general good; hence the necessity of civil legislation. But as the legislation cannot be established or preserved by itself alone, a public power becomes necessary. The object of society is the general good, in subjection to the principles of eternal morality; the same is the object of the public power.

270. This theory explains satisfactorily the double character presented by the moral order: the absolute, and the relative. The heart, reason, and common sense force us to acknowledge in the moral order something absolute and independent of the consideration of utility; this is explained by rising to an absolute act of absolute perfection, and regarding the morality of creatures as a participation of that act. Reason and experience teach that the morality of actions has useful results; this is explained by observing that the absolute act includes the love of the order which must rule among created beings in order that they may fulfil their destinies. This order, then, is at the same time willed by God, and conducive to the special end of each creature; therefore it is at the same time both moral and useful.

271. But these two characters are always kept essentially distinct; the first we perceive; the second we calculate. When the first is wanting, we are evil; when the second fails, we are unfortunate. The painful result is punishment when our will has knowingly violated the order; otherwise, it is simply misfortune.

272. I hope I may flatter myself that this theory is somewhat more satisfactory than those invented by some modern philosophers for the purpose of explaining the absolute nature of morality. I had need of the idea of God, it is true; but I conceive no moral order, if God be taken from the world. Without God morality is nothing but a blind sentiment, as absurd in its object as in itself; the philosophy which does not found it on God, can never explain it scientifically; it must confine itself to establishing the fact as a necessity whose character and origin they know nothing of.

273. I shall add one observation which is an epitome of my whole theory, and will show wherein it differs from others which likewise acknowledge that the foundation of the moral order is in God, and that the love of God is the first of all duties. The systems to which I refer, suppose the idea of morality to be distinct from the idea of the love of God; but I say that the love of God is the essence of morality. Thus I assert that the infinite holiness is essentially the love with which God loves himself; that the first and essentially moral act of creatures is the love of God; that the morality of all their actions consists in explicit or implicit conformity to the will of God, which is the same as the explicit or implicit love of God.

One of the most remarkable results of this theory which places the essence of morality in the love of God, or of the infinite good, is that it destroys the difference of form of moral and metaphysical propositions, showing that the must and ought of the former is reduced to the absolute is of the latter.⁹⁷ The explanation of this important result is the following. The proposition: to love God is good morally, is an absolute and identical proposition; for moral goodness is the same thing as the love of God.

The proposition: to love our neighbor is good, is reduced to the former, since to love our neighbor is, in a certain sense, to love God.

The proposition: to help our neighbor is good, is reduced to the last, for to help is to love.

The proposition: man ought to preserve his life, is explained by this absolute proposition: the preservation of man's life is willed by God. Thus the word ought expresses the necessity that man should preserve his life, if he does not mean to oppose the order willed by God.

These examples are enough to show how easily moral propositions may be reduced to an absolute form. I cannot see how this is possible, if instead of saying that the love of God is morality, we distinguish between morality and love, saying that the love of God is a moral act.

274. Whatever judgment may be formed of this explanation, it cannot be denied that by it, a profound wisdom, even in the natural and philosophical order, is recognized in that admirable doctrine of our divine Master, in which he calls the love of God the first and greatest of the commandments; and in which, when he wishes to point out the character of the moral good, he especially designates the fulfilment of the divine will.

275. If we place the essence of morality in love, that which is moral must appear beautiful, since nothing is more beautiful than love; it must be agreeable to the soul, since nothing is more pleasing than love. We see also why the ideas of disinterestednessss and sacrifice seem so beautiful in the moral order, and make us instinctively reject the theory of self-interest; nothing more disinterested than love, nothing more capable of great sacrifices.

276. Thus egotism is banished from the moral order: God loves himself, because he is infinitely perfect; outside of him there is nothing to love which he has not created. The love which he has for creatures is completely disinterested, since he can receive nothing from them. The creature loves itself and also others; but what it loves in itself and in other creatures, is the reflection of the infinite good. It desires to be united to the supreme good, and in this it places its last happiness; but this desire is united with the love of the supreme good in itself, which the creature does not love precisely for the reason that thence results its own happiness.

CHAPTER XXI.
A GLANCE AT THE WORK

277. I have approached the term of my labor; and it is well to cast a glance over the long path which I have travelled.

I proposed to examine the fundamental ideas of our mind, whether considered in themselves, or in their relations to the world.

278. With regard to objects, we have found in our mind two primitive facts; the intuition of extension, and the idea of being. All objective sensibility is founded on the intuition of extension; all the pure intellectual order in what relates to indeterminate ideas, is founded on the idea of being. We have seen that from the idea of being proceed the ideas of identity, distinction, unity, number, duration, time, simplicity, composition, the finite, the infinite, the necessary, the contingent, the mutable, the immutable, substance, accident, cause, and effect.

279. We find in the subjective order, as facts of consciousness, sensibility, or sensitive being, (including, in this, sentiment as well as sensation,) intelligence, and will; whence we have intuitive ideas of determinate modes of being, distinct from extended beings.

280. Thus all the elements of our mind are reduced to the intuitive ideas of extension, sensibility, intelligence, and will, and the indeterminate ideas which are all founded on the idea of being.

281. From the idea of being, combined with not-being, springs the principle of contradiction, which of itself produces only indeterminate cognitions. In order that science should have an object that could be realized, the idea of being must be presented under some form. Our intuition gives two: extension, and consciousness.

282. Consciousness presents three modes of being: sensibility, or sensitive being; intelligence, and will.

283. Extension, considered in all its purity, as we imagine it in space, is the basis of geometry.

284. The same extension modified in various ways, and placed in relation with our sensibility, is the basis of all the natural sciences, of all those which have for their object, the corporeal universe.

285. Intelligence gives rise to ideology and psychology.

286. The will, in so far as moved by ends, gives rise to the moral sciences.

287. The idea of being begets the principle of contradiction; and, by this principle, the general and indeterminate ideas, whose combination produces ontology, which circulates, like a life-giving fluid, through all the other sciences.

288. Such I conceive the tree of human science: to examine its roots was the object of the Fundamental Philosophy.

NOTES TO BOOK SEVENTH

ON CHAPTER I

There are not wanting those who have believed that time is a thing very easily explained. Such is the opinion of Buffier in his celebrated Traité des premières verités.⁹⁸ After explaining in his own way in what duration and time consist, he adds:

"J'admire donc que tant de philosophes aient parlé du temps et de la durée comme de choses inexplicables ou incompréhensibles: si non rogas, intelligo, leur fait-on dire, et selon la paraphrase de Locke, plus je m'applique à découvrir la nature du temps, moins je la conçois. Le temps qui découvre toutes les choses ne saurait être compris lui-même. Cependant, à quoi se réduisent tous ces mystères? A deux mots que nous venons d'exposer."

It is strange that so distinguished a writer should not have known, or should not have remembered, that the difficulty of explaining time was acknowledged not only by the philosophers of whom he speaks, but even by so eminent a man as St. Augustine. The words to which he alludes are from St. Augustine, and are found in the fourteenth chapter of the second book of his confessions:

"Quid enim est tempus, quis hoc facile, breviterque explicaverit? Quis hoc ad verbum de illo proferendum vel cognatione comprehenderit … quid ergo est tempus? Si nemo ex me quærat scio, si quærenti explicare velim nescio."

"What is time? If no one ask me, I know, but if I wish to explain it, I know it not."

The great doctor discovered here a profound question, and like all great geniuses when they find themselves in sight of a deep abyss, he felt a strong desire to know what was hidden in its bottom. Full of a holy enthusiasm, he turns to God, and begs him to explain this mystery:

"Exarsit animus meus nosse istud implicatissimum enigma. Noli claudere, Domine Deus, bone pater; per Christum obsecro, noli claudere desiderio meo ista et usitata, et abdita, quominus in ea penetret, et dilucescant allucente misericordia tua, Domine! Quem percunctabor de his? et cui fructuosius confitebor imperitiam meam nisi tibi, cui non sunt molesta studia mea flammantia vehementer in scripturas tuas? Da quod amo; amo enim, et hoc tu dedisti. Da, pater, qui vere nosti data bona dare filiis tuis. Da, quoniam suscepi cognoscere te; et labor est ante me donec aperias.

"Per Christum obsecro, in nomine ejus sancti sanctorum nemo mihi obstrepat. Et ego credidi propter quod et loquor. Hæc est spes mea, ad hanc vivo, ut contempler delectationes Domini. Ecce veteres posuisti dies meos, et transeunt; et quomodo, nescio. Et dicimus, Tempus et tempus, tempora et tempora. Quamdiu dixit hoc ille; quamdiu fecit hoc ille; et quam longo tempore illud non vidi; et duplum temporis habet hæc syllaba; ad illam simplam brevem. Dicimus hæc, et audimus hæc: et intelligimur, et intelligimus. Manifestissima et usitatissima sunt, et eadem rursus nimis latent, et nova est inventio eorum. (Lib. XI., cap. xxii.)

"Video igitur tempus quamdam esse distensionem, sed video an videre mihi videor? Tu demonstrabis lux, veritas. (Cap. xxiii.)

"Et confiteor tibi (Domine) ignorare me adhuc quid sit tempus; et rursus confiteor tibi (Domine) scire me in tempore ista dicere, et diu me jam loqui de tempore, atque idipsum diu, non esse nisi moram temporis. Quomodo igitur hoc sciam, quando quid sit tempus nescio? an forte nescio quemadmodum dicam quod scio? Hei mihi qui nescio saltem quid nesciam! Ecce Deus meus coram te, quia non mentior; sicut loquor ita est cor meum. Tu illuminabis lucernam meam, Domine Deus meus; illuminabis tenebras meas." (Cap. xxv.)

To present as easy things which seemed difficult to the greatest men, is, to say the least of it, rather bold. The author flatters himself, in such instances that he has settled the question when he has not penetrated beyond its surface. It often happens that objects seem very clear at first, and we only discover the difficulty which they present, when we examine them more closely. Ask a man unskilled in questions of philosophy, what extension is, or space, or time, and he will wonder that you find any difficulty in things so clear. And why? Because his first reflex act does not go beyond the ordinary idea of these objects, or rather, the use of this idea. Father Buffier says, in the chapter from which we quoted before:

"Dans toutes ces recherches de métaphysique, si embarassées en apparence, il ne faut, comme je l'ai dit d'abord, que distinguer les idées les plus simples que nous avons dans l'esprit d'avec les noms qui y sont attachés par l'usage, pour y découvrir ce qui nous doit tenir lieu de première vérité à leur sujet."

I do not deny that this observation presents a useful criterion; but I cannot see in it so simple a means of solving the most difficult questions of philosophy. For the difficulty is in distinguishing with exactness these simple ideas, which, because they constitute the foundation of our knowledge, are, for this very reason, generally placed at a greater depth, and covered over with a thousand different objects, which hinder us from perceiving them clearly and distinctly, Father Buffier was led astray by the very clearness of his explanation of time, and believed he saw the bottom of the abyss, when he only saw the reflection on its surface:

"Qu'est-ce que durer? C'est exister sans être détruit: voilà l'explication la plus nette qu'on puisse donner de la durée; mais le simple mot de durée fait comprendre la chose aussi clairement que cette explication.

"Outre l'idée de la durée, nous avons l'idée de la mesure de la durée, qui n'est pas la durée elle-même, bien que nous confondions souvent l'une avec l'autre; comme il arrive d'ordinaire de confondre nos sentiments ou avec leurs effets, ou avec leurs causes, ou avec leurs autres circonstances.

"Or, cette mesure de la durée n'est autre chose que ce que nous appelons le temps; et le temps n'est que la révolution régulière de quelque chose de sensible, comme du cours annuel du soleil, ou du cours mensuel de la lune, ou diurnal d'une aiguille sur le cadran d'une horloge.

"L'attention que nous avons à cette révolution régulière fait précisément en nous l'idée du temps. L'intervalle de cette révolution se divisant en de moindres intervalles forme l'idée des parties du temps, auxquelles nous donnons aussi le nom de temps plus long ou plus court, selon les divers intervalles de la révolution.

"Quand nous avons une fois acquis cette idée du temps, nous l'appliquons à toute la durée que nous concevons ou que nous supposons répondre à tel intervalle de la révolution régulière, et par là nous donnons à la durée même le nom de temps, appliquant le nom de de la mesure à la chose mesurée; mais sans que la durée qu'on mesure soit au fond le temps auquel on la mesure, et qui est une révolution. Ainsi, Dieu a duré avant le temps, c'est-à-dire a été sans cesser d'être avant la création du monde, et avant la révolution régulière d'aucun corps."

Here follows the passage already quoted, where the author shows his surprise that the explanation of time has been found so difficult. After giving his rule that the simplest ideas must be separated from the terms which custom has joined to them, he concludes with these words:

"Par ces deux moyens nous trouvons tout d'un coup l'idée ou la notion de durée et de temps: j'ai l'idée d'un être en tant qu'il ne cesse pas d'être, c'est ce qui s'appelle durée; j'ai l'idée de cette durée en tant qu'elle est mesurée par la révolution régulière d'un corps ou par les intervalles de cette révolution, c'est ce que j'appelle temps. Il me semble que ces notions sont aussi claires qu'elles peuvent l'être, et celui qui cherche à les éclaircir davantage est à peu près aussi peu sensé que celui qui voudrait éclaircir comment deux fois deux font quatre et ne font pas cinq."

What explanation is contained in these passages? I can see none. Duration, says Buffier, is uninterrupted succession, and time is the measure of this duration. But he ought to have reflected that only what has quantity can be measured; and consequently duration cannot he measured, unless he supposes a length before the measure. This is precisely what the difficulty consists in. It is well known that time is measured by reference to the revolution of some quantity. But what he ought to have explained was, the nature of that which is measured, of this quantity, or length, independently of the measure. Measure requires a greater and a less, and this greater and less exists independently of all measure. What, then, is the nature of this quantity, of this greater and less?

Father Buffier observes, that although there were no succession of thought in us, and we should have only one thought, we should still have the idea of duration as much as ever. This is true, if we make the idea of duration the same as the idea of uninterrupted existence. But on this hypothesis we could not measure this duration, and consequently could not have the idea of time.

"In God," says Buffier, "there is no succession, for, does not his being endure always?" No doubt of it; but this argument instead of confirming his doctrine, only shows its weakness. The duration of God cannot be measured unless we suppose a greater and less in the duration of necessary and infinite being. Therefore, the idea of duration, or uninterrupted existence, does not give us the idea of time, or of a duration that can be measured.