ETHICS signified of old the whole of Moral Philosophy in general, and this was also called the system of the offices ( de officiis ). But in modern times the name Ethics came to be confined to that part of Moral Philosophy which treats of duties not cognisable by an external and positive legislation. Whence it has come that the general system of the offices falls into Jurisprudence, treating of law external; and into Moral Philosophy, which is independent on any outward legislation.
The notion Duty implies, in the very essence of it, the further notion Necessitation, i.e., co-action exercised by the law upon the choice; and this co-action may be either foreign or proper (self-command). The ethical imperative announced, by its categorical behest (an absolutely unconditioned shall ), this co-action, which, however, cannot be extended to all Intelligents whatsoever (for of these some may be “ holy ”); but is valid for mankind only, as physical beings endowed with reason, who are unholy * enough to be seduced into the transgression of the law, even while they recognise and acknowledge its authority, and, when they do obey it, obey unwillingly ( i.e., by withstanding inclination); in which point indeed self co-action properly consists. But since man is at the same time a free (moral) agent, the notion “duty” can involve no more than self-co-action ( i.e., by the naked representation of the law), at least when regard is had to the inward mobile of the will; for, if the case were otherwise, it would be impossible to reconcile any such co-action with man’s liberty of choice. But where the constraint is inward, the notion “duty” comes within the sphere of morals.
The instincts of man’s physical nature give birth to obstacles which hinder and impede him in the execution of his duty. They are in fact mighty opposing forces, which he has to go forth and encounter: these he must deem himself able to overcome by his reason, and that not at some future period, but even now,—not bit by bit, but to beat all down at one single blow. He must judge that he can do, what things soever the law ordains that he ought and should.
But the consciousness of the power, and the predeterminate resolve, to withstand a strong and unjust enemy, is valour; and, in regard of that which opposes the advancement of the moral sentiments within us, moral valour, i.e., virtue. Whence it has resulted, that the general system of the offices is, in that part which brings not the outward but the inward freedom under control, a doctrine or theory of virtue.
Jurisprudence treated singly of the formal conditions of man’s outward freedom (viz., that freedom should remain consistent with itself, in the event of its maxims being elevated to the rank of law universal), i.e., it investigated Law only. But Ethic presents matter to man’s free choice, an end given by pure reason for him to aim at, and which is represented as an objectively-necessary end, and so, consequently, as a “duty.” For since the appetites and instincts of the sensory mislead the will to ends subversive of morality, legislative reason can in no other manner guard against their inroad, than by presenting to the will an opposite and contrary and moral end, given independently of the sensory, and so à priori. *
An end is the object of the choice of a reasonable being; by the representation of which, the Intelligent is determined to an act tending to obtain and realize such object. Now, it is undoubted that I may be forced to act so as to be merely an instrument towards some ulterior and foreign end; but I never can in any event be constrained to propose to myself my end. I alone can assign and fix to myself the end I will to aim at. But, on the hypothesis that I stand under an obligation to constitute, as my end, somewhat presented by reason to my intellectual regards, that is, that I ought, over and above the formal determination of will (treated of in law), to superadd to it a material determinator, i.e., an end, contrary and opposed to the ends brought forth by sensitive excitement; then there emerges the notion of an end, which is in itself a ground of duty; and the doctrine of such an end cannot fall under the sphere of law, but it belongs to morals, which alone involve in their very notion that of self-co-action, according to ethic laws.
Upon this account Ethics may, in this part, be defined to be the system of the ends of pure practical reason. Physical co-action and self-co-action mark or determine the boundary obtaining betwixt Law and Morals, the two grand stems of the science of Ethics; and that Ethics must comprehend duty, to observe which, no one can be constrained physically by others, is just a corollary from the position, that it is a doctrine of the ends of reason; it being absurd to talk of force, when question is made of the practical autonomy of the agent himself.
Again, that Ethics is a doctrine of the offices of virtue, results from the definition given above of virtue, taken in conjunction with that peculiar obligation, the nature of which has just been stated. In fact, there is no other determination of will, except the determination and design to adopt an end, which carries already in the very notion of it, that the person cannot be co-acted to it physically by the will of another. No doubt another person may force me to do what is contrary to my own design, and such deed may be a mere mean or instrumental toward gaining the ends of that other person; but this he cannot force me to, that I should make his ends my own; and it is clear that no end can be mine, unless I make it so by proposing it to myself. Indeed, an end imposed by any other would be a contradiction—an act of freedom devoid of liberty: but there is no contradiction in designing an end, to have which end is the person’s duty; for here I co-act myself, and this is quite consistent with my freedom.
But now the question arises, How is such an end possible ? for the logical possibility of the notion of a thing is insufficient to enable us to conclude upon the objective reality of the thing itself. *
The relation of an end to duty may be cogitated in a twofold manner,—either beginning with the end to assign the maxim of actions in harmony with duty, or beginning with the maxim to determine that end, which it is a duty incumbent on mankind to propose to himself. Jurisprudence advances by the first method. Every one is free to give his actions what end he will, but the principle regulating the causality of the will is fixed à priori, viz., that the freedom of the agent must be exercised in such a manner as to consist with the freedom of every other person, conformably to law universal.
But Moral Philosophy strikes into an opposite march: here we cannot commence with the ends man may design, and from them determine and statute the maxims he has to take, i.e., statute the duty he has to follow; for in this latter event the grounds of his maxims would be experimental, which we know beget no obligation, the idea Duty and its categorical imperative taking their rise in pure reason only. Nor could we indeed even talk of duty, were the will’s inward principles based on tentative and experimental ends, these being all selfish and egotistical. In this branch of Ethics, then, the idea Obligation must guide to ends which we ought to aim at, and constitute maxims pointing to those ends conformably to ethic laws.
Postponing for the present the investigation into what these ends are which man ought to propose to himself, and how such ends come to be possible, we must remark, that a material duty of this kind is called a moral duty or virtuous office; and it may be requisite to state upon what accounts it is so.
To every duty there corresponds a right, considered as a title in general; but every duty does not import that the other has a right (a legal title) juridically to co-act the execution of duty from the obliged; but where duties are coercible, they are, strictly speaking, legal duties (duty-in-law). Exactly in the same way, to every obligation there corresponds the notion Virtue; but every ethic duty is not upon that account one of the offices of virtue: that obligation, for instance, is not, which abstracts from all given ends, and regards the bare formal of the will’s determination, viz., that the incumbent action be performed out of regard had to duty. It is only in the case where an action is at once both an end and a duty, that a virtuous office can be constituted: of this latter sort there may be several, and so different virtues; whereas of the former, as there can be but one ethical obligement, so only one duty, i.e., one virtuous sentiment extending to all actions, of whatever kind.
Further, another essential distinction obtaining betwixt juridical and moral obligements is, that the former are coercible, whereas the latter depend singly upon free self-co-action. Further, for finite holy beings (incapable of being tempted to swerve from duty), there can be no Doctrine of Virtue, but a Science of Ethics singly, which is an autonomy of practical reason; whereas a system of virtues treats not only of the autonomy, but also, at the same time, of the autokraty of the will, i.e., is a doctrine of the force reason has to vanquish and beat down all the appetites which oppose the execution of the law. A force not, indeed, immediately given in an intuition, but rightly inferred from the categorical imperative. Whence it results, that man’s morality is, at its highest grade, nothing more than virtue, even admitting that such morality were altogether pure ( i.e., separated thoroughly from every admixture of foreign springs); a state and tone of soul which fancy has impersonated in the character of the sage, an ideal whitherwards mankind ought in unremitting progression to advance.
Nor can virtue be explained to be a habit, as Cochius has done in his prize essay, where he treats of it as an aptitude in morally good actions, acquired by long-continued custom; for when such use and wont is not effectuated by stable, firm, and ever more and more clarified first principles, then is the habitude—like any other mechanism brought about by technical reason—neither fortified against all assailants, nor has it any guard against the sudden fits and starts new enticements and unforeseen circumstances may occasion.
Remark. —Virtue = + a, is opposed to non-virtue (moral weakness) = 0, as its logical antipart; but to vice = - a, as its real antagonist. And it is a question not only devoid of meaning, but even offensive, to inquire if great crimes may not demand and display more strength of soul than even great virtues; for by strength of soul we understand the steadfastness of man’s will, as a being endowed with freedom, i.e., in so far as he is in a healthy state of intellect, and retains his command over himself. Great crimes are on the contrary paroxysms, at whose aspect the same part of mankind stand aghast. In fine, this sort of question may be compared to the question, whether a person may not have greater physical power in a fit of frenzy, than when in his right wits; and this question may be answered in the affirmative, without allowing him upon that account to be possessed of greater strength of soul: for as crimes take their rise from the inverted domination of the passions and appetites over reason, where no strength of soul is at all conceivable, this question is like asking if a man in a fever may not exhibit more strength than when in health, which may unhesitatingly be denied, because the want of health, which last consists in the due equilibrium and adjustment of all a man’s bodily powers, is a weakening of the system of his forces, according to which system only it is, however, that we can state any estimate of his absolute health.
End is an object of free choice, which determines itself by the representation of this object to an action whereby this end is brought forth. Every action has consequently its own end; and since no one can design an end except by himself constituting the object chosen his end, it results that man’s aiming at any particular end is an act of his own freedom, and no effect operated by constitutional mechanism of his system. But because an act fixing an end is a practical principle, ordaining not a means (which were a hypothetical commandment), but the end itself ( i.e., unconditionally), it follows that there is a categorical imperative of pure practical reason, connecting the idea Duty with that of an End in general.
That there must be such an end, and a categorical imperative corresponding to it, is apparent from this, that where there are free actions, there must also be ends, whitherwards they tend, as their object; and among these ends, there must be some, whereof it is of the very essence to be duties. For were none such given, then, because no action can be aimless, would every end be only valid in the eye of reason as a means instrumental and conducive towards some further end, and a categorical imperative would be impossible; a position which would overthrow all Ethics.
Accordingly we do not here treat of ends which mankind proposes to himself by force of the physical instincts of his system, but of such ends as he ought to aim at. The former might found a technical (subjective) doctrine of ends, and would contain the dictates of prudence in choosing one’s ends; but the latter must be called the ethical (objective) doctrine of ends,—a distinction which we do not insist upon, because the science of ethics is in its very notion contradistinguished from anthropology, the latter rising upon experimental principles, the former again, i.e., the ethical doctrine of ends, treating of duties founded upon à priori principles of pure practical reason.
Such ends are one’s own perfection,—our neighbour’s happiness.
These ends cannot be inverted, and we cannot state as such,—one’s own happiness,—our neighbour’s perfection.
For his own happiness is an end which all mankind has by force of the physical constitution of his system; consequently this end cannot be regarded as a duty, without stating a contradiction. What every one inevitably wills, cannot fall under the notion duty, —duty importing necessitation to an end unwillingly adopted. So that it is a contradiction to say a man is obliged to advance his own happiness with all his might.
And there is the like contradiction in saying that we ought to design the perfection of another, and to hold ourselves obliged to further it; for the perfectness of another, when considered as a person, consists in this, that he can impose upon himself his own end, agreeably to his own understanding of his duty; and it is a repugnancy to impose on me, as a duty, the doing that which singly the other person can accomplish.
The word perfection is open to many an interpretation. Thus, when used in ontology, perfection denotes the totality of the multifarious, which, taken together, do in the aggregate compose one thing. Then, again, when used in teleology, it is so understood as to signify the exact proportionateness of means to ends. Perfection, taken in the first sense, might be called quantitative, in the second qualitative ( formal ). The material and quantitative perfection is one only (for the total of the parts of anywhat is one whole); but of the formal there may be many sorts in the same thing, and it is of this last alone that we here treat.
When it is said that the perfecting of his nature is an end which it is man’s duty to propose to himself, this perfection must be placed in that which is the effect of his own activity, not any gift of nature, upon which account this duty can be nothing else than the culture of his natural faculties, the principal whereof is the understanding, as the power of dealing with notions and ideas, — among others, with the ideas of duty; and then, next, of his will to discharge all his duty.
It is, then, a duty incumbent upon mankind,—
I. To develop himself more and more from the animal characters stamped upon him by his brute nature, and to advance and evolve his humanity, which alone renders him capable of designing anywhat as his end. He ought to strip off his ignorance, by learning to correct and renounce his errors; and this is not a counsel given him by technically practical reason, but ethico-active reason ordains it unconditionally, in order that he may be worthy of the humanity he represents.
II. To clarify, and to carry the culture of his will to the purest grade of ethic sentiment, a state and tone of soul where the law itself is the immediate mobile of the will, and where duty is discharged because it is so. And this state and tone of soul is an inward ethical perfection, and is called the moral sense, because it is a feeling of the effect wrought by legislative reason upon man’s active power of conforming to the law. And although this feeling has been too often fanatically abused, as if it were a peculiar emotion astir in the mind antecedently to reason, and able (like the genius of Socrates) to dispense with her tardy determinations, it is notwithstanding an ethical accomplishment, enabling mankind to make every end his own, when that end is also his duty.
Happiness, i.e., contentment and satisfaction with one’s external lot, in so far as its permanence is secured, is the inevitable desire and wish of every human nature; but it is not upon that account an end affording the groundwork of any duty. Again, since a distinction has been made by some, betwixt what they term physical and moral happiness, whereof the former is stated to consist in man’s enjoyment and acquiescence in the goods and bounties bestowed on him, in free gift, by nature, but the latter in his own self-contentment and acquiescence in his own ethical deportment, it is needful for me to remark (omitting all censure of the misuse of such terms, which enclose a contradiction) that the latter kind of state belongs to the other head, that of perfection; for he who is to be happy in the bare consciousness of his honesty, possesses that very perfection treated of in the former title, as that end which it was man’s duty to pursue.
That happiness, then, which it is my end and my duty to further, can be the happiness of another singly, whose ends and interests I ought to make my own. What others may deem most conducive to their interests and happiness, rests upon their determination; it stands, however, always at my option to decline the pursuit of ends others would willingly obtain, if I hold them hurtful and pernicious. But to resist or evade this virtuous office of beneficence, by alleging a pretended obligation incumbent on me to study my own physical happiness, is in plain fact just to convert my private and subjective end into an objective one; and yet such pretended obligation has repeatedly been urged as an objection to the foregoing division of duties (No. IV.): the objection is merely plausible and apparent, and the following remark may serve to clear the matter up.
Grief, poverty, want, and pain, are unquestionably mighty temptations to the transgression of one’s duty; and hence it seems as if wealth, strength, health, which keep out the inroad of the first, were ends incumbent on mankind to pursue, i.e., it looks very like as if it were his duty to advance and study his own interests as much as those of others. But what is overlooked is this, that in such event a man’s general welfare is not the end aimed at, but is no more than a means allowed as instrumental towards removing the obstacles which might stand in the way of the person’s own morality; and this last it is which is the true and real end of his exertions, and must needs be permitted, no one having a right to demand that I should sacrifice for him my proper end. To acquire wealth is thence directly and in itself no duty; but indirectly it may become so, viz., in order to guard against poverty, and that wretchedness which might come accompanied by vice. But then it is not my happiness, but my morality, which, to uphold in its integrity, is at once my end and my duty.
The notion Duty relates immediately to Law, even when I abstract from every end which might become the matter of it. This indeed was indicated by the supreme formal principle of ethics expressed in the categorical imperative: “So act that the maxim of thy conduct might be announced as law universal.” But in this part of ethics this formula denotes the law of thy own special individual will, not the law emanating from will in genere; in which latter case there would be room for the will of some other person, and the duty resulting from it would be a juridical obligation, and so fall beyond the domain of morals. In this part of ethics the maxims are regarded as such subjective principles as are not unfit to be elevated to the rank of law in a system of universal moral legislation; but this gives them only a negative character, * viz., not to be repugnant to law in genere. The question, therefore, is, How can there be a law ordaining positive maxims of conduct?
The notion of an end in itself a duty —peculiar to this branch of ethics—is what founds a law commanding maxims of conduct, by subordinating the ends which all mankind have to the objective ends which all mankind ought to have. The imperative, Thou shalt make to thyself, this or that, thy end, points to the matter (the object) of choice; and since no free action is possible, where the agent does not design by it some end as the object chosen, a maxim tending to such end need only be fit for law universal; whereas, if that end be in itself a duty, such end-duty would found a law ordaining me to adopt the maxim taken from and belonging to it. For man’s practical maxims may be adopted arbitrarily, and it is always in his option to execute them or not, they being no otherwise fettered than by standing under the restrictive condition of being fit for law universal, this being the formal principle regulating the whole conduct of life. But a law takes away the whole optional part of action, and so differs widely from all expediential dictates, which counsel what means conduce best to certain ends.
This position is a corollary from the foregoing (No. VI.); for where the law ordains not the action, but its maxim only, that implies that it leaves to free choice a latitude in the execution of it, that is to say, that the law does not rigidly determine how much ought to be done toward the end which is our duty, but an indeterminate obligation must not be so understood as if it left a space open for exceptions from the maxim itself; it means only our title to limit one rule of duty by another ( e.g., to limit the general social duty by the fraternal or filial), which virtually enlarges the field for the practical exercise of virtue. The more an obligation is extensive, the more indeterminate is the person’s obligement to act; nevertheless, the more he narrows the maxim of its observance, so as to make it approach to the nature of a strict and forensic obligation, the more complete is the virtue of his conduct.
Duties of indeterminate obligation are therefore the only offices of virtue. To discharge them is merit = + a; their transgression is not straightway guilt = - a, but simply moral unworth = 0. Unless, indeed, the person omitted upon system the observance of these duties. Steadfastness of purpose in carrying the first of these into action is what is properly styled virtue. Weakness in the second is not so much vice, as rather non-virtue, i.e., want of moral strength (defectus moralis). Every action repugnant to duty is transgression; but deliberate transgression, done upon system, is that only which properly is to be termed vice.
Although the conformity of a man’s actions to the law is nothing meritorious, yet to observe one’s juridical obligations as duties is; i.e., reverence for the rights of mankind is meritorious, for hereby a person makes the rights of man his end, and so extends his notion of obligation beyond that of mere debt (officium debiti). Another may, in consequence of his rights, demand from me actions tallying with the law, but he cannot likewise insist that the representation of the law should itself be the ground determining my will to action. A similar remark holds good of that more general ethic precept, Act duteously out of regard had to duty. To engrave such a sentiment deep in one’s heart, and often to revivify its impression, is meritorious, for it goes beyond the mere act incumbent to be done, and makes the law itself the spring of conduct.
Upon the same account, those duties must be reckoned as of indeterminate obligation, which are observed to be attended by an inward ethical reward; or rather, to bring the parallel yet nearer to the case of forensic obligations,—followed by a susceptibility for such rewards according to the moral law; viz., a susceptibility for an ethical complacency, surpassing the mere simple self-approbation (which is only negative) consequent on the fulfilment of the law; and this complacency it is which is meant when it is said that virtue is by such a consciousness her own reward.
This merit, which a man may have in regard of his kind, by advancing their common and known ends, and so making their happiness constitute his, may be called a sweet merit, and the consciousness of it brings forth an ethical delight, at which ecstatic banquet others may even sympathetically feast. Whereas the bitter merit of advancing the true weal of the ignorant and unthankful has in general no such reaction, and brings forth no more than self-approbation, although this last is in such a case likely to be more pure and more exalted.
A. Physical Perfection, i.e., culture of all our faculties in general, in order to attain the ends presented to us by reason. That this is our duty, and an end of our being, and that this culture rises on an unconditionate imperative, independently of any advantages to which such culture may perhaps conduce, may appear from what follows. The ability to propose to one’s self an end, is the characteristic of humanity, and distinguishes it from his brute nature. Along with the ends of the humanity subsisting in our person, goes hand in hand the rational will, and, together with that, the obligation to make one’s self well-deserving of mankind by general culture, in carrying to higher and higher degrees of perfection the powers intrusted to him, i.e., to develop the latent energies dormant in the unhewn substratum of his nature, whereby the brute animal is first of all changed and transformed into the man; all which is in itself an imperative duty.
But this duty is simply moral, i.e., of indeterminate obligation: how far any one ought to carry the improvement and the progression of his faculties, is left undetermined by reason. Besides, the difference of occasions and circumstances one may come into, renders quite arbitrary the choice of the kind of calling to which he will devote his talent; so that there can be no commandment of reason ordaining given actions, but ordaining only a maxim regulative of conduct; the tenor of which principle may be thus conceived: “Evolve betimes thy corporeal and mental faculties, that thou mayest be fitted for any kind of ends, it being uncertain which of them may come one day to be adopted by thee.”
B. Ethical perfection. The highest grade of ethical perfection possible to be attained by man, is to discharge his duty because it is so,—where the law is at once the rule and the mobile of the will. Now, at first sight, it seems as if this were a strict obligation, and that the supreme principle of duty called, not only for the legality, but likewise for the morality of every act, and that it must do so with the whole rigour and severity of law. But in fact the law concerns itself only with the maxims of conduct, and ordains man to seek the ground of his practical maxims in the law itself, not in any sensitive instinct or by-views and ends of prejudice and advantage. No individual act, then, is specially ordained. Besides, it is impossible for any one so to behold or fathom the abysses of his heart as to become fully convinced of the purity of his moral intentions, and of his sincerity, even in one single act, however clear he may be as to its legality. Imbecility, oftener than any other cause, deters a man from the hardihood of crime, and so passes with him for virtue, which, however, implies a certain grade of strength. And how many may there be who have long lived lives blameless and unrebukable, who are, after all, only lucky in having escaped temptation? How much ethical content may belong to any action, cannot be explored even by themselves.
We infer, then, that the duty of estimating the worth of one’s actions, not legally simply, but likewise according to their morality, is one of indeterminate obligation; that, in other words, the law does not ordain any such inward mental act, but merely that it ought to be our maxim to endeavour, by unremitted assiduity, to make the consciousness of duty sufficient by itself to stir the will to action.
A. Physical wellbeing. General benevolence may be unlimited, for in all this nothing need be done; but the case is different when we come to beneficence, more especially when actions have to be performed, not out of love to others, but out of duty, with the mortification and sacrifice of our own ends. That this beneficence is duty, results from this, 1 st, That because our self-love goes inseparably linked hand in hand with the appetite to be loved by others, and, in case of need, to be assisted by them,—a state of things in which we make ourselves the end of others; and, 2 nd, That since a maxim of this kind can only have ethical virtue to oblige the will of others, when it is potentially fitted for law universal: it follows that we must state others as the ends of our will, in adopting our maxims of practical conduct; i.e., the happiness of others is an end incumbent on us as a duty.
It is my duty, then, to yield a part of my wellbeing in sacrifice for others, without hoping any indemnity, because it is my duty; and it is impossible to assign indefinite boundaries, whither and how far this duty shall extend. Its extent will always rest on the peculiar wants of each, and these wants and needs each particular must determine for himself. Nor can it, in any event, be expected that I should abandon my own real happiness and proper needs, in order to study that of another; for a maxim containing such a rule would be found repugnant to itself, if elevated to the rank of law universal. This duty, then, is indeterminate only, and there is a latitude of doing more or less towards discharging it. The law embraces the maxim only,—it cannot be extended to special actions.
B. The moral welfare of our neighbour is no doubt an integral part of his general felicity (prosperity), and it is incumbent on us to promote it; but this obligation begets a negative duty only. The compunction a man feels from the stings of conscience is, although of ethical origin, yet physical in its results, just like grief, fear, and every other sickly habitude of mind. To take heed, that no one fall under his own contempt, cannot indeed be my duty, for that exclusively in his concern. However, I ought to do nothing which I know may, from the constitution of our nature, become a temptation, seducing others to deeds which conscience may afterwards condemn them for. There are, however, no limits assignable, within which our care of the moral tranquillity of our neighbour is to range; the obligation consequently is indeterminate.
Virtue is the strength of the human will in the execution of duty. All strength is ascertained singly by the obstacles it is able to overcome. Virtue has to combat against the physical instincts of our system, when these thwart and collide with man’s ethical resolves. And because it is the person himself who lays these impediments in the way of his own maxims, virtue is not only a self co-action (for then one physical instinct might wage war upon another), but a command conducted upon a principle of inward freedom; that is, a self co-action, by force of the naked idea Duty, and the law.
Every duty, of whatever kind, involves the notion of necessitation by law; and the moral, that necessitation which an inward legislation can alone effect; but the juridical, one possible also by an external and foreign legislation. Either kind imports the notion of a co-active power, and this co-action may be proper or foreign. The ethical force of the former is virtue; and the action rising upon such a sentiment (reverence for law) may be fitly termed an act of virtue, even although the law should announce a juridical duty only; for morals alone teach to keep inviolate the rights of mankind.
But that, the practice whereof is virtue, is not upon that account one of the offices of virtue—in the proper sense of the words—the first referring to the formal of the maxims, the second to their matter, that is, to an end which is cogitated as duty. But because the ethical obligement to ends, whereof there may be several, is indefinite, —the law ordaining a rule of deportment only,—it results that there may be (differing with the nature of the legitimate ends they tend to) several different duties, which may all be called duties in morality, or offices of virtue, because they are subjected to voluntary self-co-action only, are unsusceptible of coercive measures from without, and spring from ends which are in themselves duties.
Virtue, considered as the will’s unshaken constancy in adhering to the decrees of duty, can, like every formal, be only one, identic, and always the same with itself; but in respect of the incumbent ends of action, i.e., the materials man has to work upon, there may be several virtues; and since the obligement to adopt maxims or rules of life, resting on such materials, was called a moral duty or virtuous office, it follows that the offices of virtue may be several and distinct.
The supreme principle of this division of Ethics therefore is, “Adopt such ends in thy maxims as may be made imperative on all mankind to design.” By force of this principle, each man is stated as his own and every other’s end; and it is now not enough to abstain from employing them or himself as means to his own end,—a case which would leave him quite indifferent to his fellows,—but he is beholden to make all mankind his end.
This position in morals admits, being a categorical imperative, of no proof; but some account may be given of it, i.e., a deduction from the nature of pure practical reason itself. What thing soever stands so related to humanity, one’s self or others, as possibly to be an end, must be declared an end, reason being judge, for practical reason is the power of designing ends; and to assert that reason were indifferent in regard of any such, i.e., to maintain that reason took no interest in them, is an absurdity; for then reason would miss of her function in determining the maxims and rules of life, which maxims rest always on an end; that is, in other words, would be no practical reason at all. But when pure reason announces any end à priori, it announces at the same time that end as a duty incumbent on all mankind; and this is the kind of duty termed a virtuous office or moral duty.
It was evinced in Law that the outward co-active power, so far forth as it withstands whatever would let and hinder the mutual freedom of the subject, could be made consistent with ends in general; and that this position holds good, results from the principle of contradiction. I need not quit the idea of Freedom, but need only to evolve the principle analytically out of it, while the end each person may propose to himself may be what it will: so then the supreme principle of law was analytical.
On the contrary, the principle of Morals goes out of and beyond the notion of external freedom, and conjoins with it, conformably to law universal, an end which it constitutes a duty; and this principle is synthetic: the possibility of the synthesis of the notions contained in it is explored in the deduction at the close of No. IX.
This extension of the notion Duty beyond that of outward liberty, and the limiting of this last to the bare formal condition of constantly harmonizing with every other person’s freedom, depends upon the fact that here ends are drawn into consideration from which Law altogether abstracts, and inward freedom put in room of outward co-action; and the power of self-command not by force of other instincts, but by force of pure practical reason, which disdains all such intermediaries.
To constitute the juridical imperative, the law, the power to execute it, and the will regulating the maxims, were the elements required. But whoso prescribes to himself a moral duty, has, over and above the notion of his self-co-action, the further notion of an end, not which he already has, but which he ought to have; which end, therefore, goes hand in hand with practical reason, whose last, chief, and unconditioned end (which, however, never ceases to be duty) consists in this, that virtue is its own end, and is, by its own good desert, its own reward. By all which, virtue so shines, that it seems even to eclipse the lustre of holiness itself, which cannot so much as be solicited to swerve from the law. This, however, is a deception, and arises in this manner, that, owing to our having no standard whereby to measure the grades of a strength except the magnitude of the obstacles (in us the appetites and instincts of the sensory) it has been able to subdue and overcome, we are led into the mistake of holding the subjective conditions, whereby we estimate a force, tantamount to the objective grounds of the force itself. But when virtue is compared with other human ends, each of which may have its own several obstacles to overcome, it is quite true that the inward worth of virtue as its own end far outweighs the value of all utilitarian and experimental ends, which last may notwithstanding go hand in hand with it.
It is quite a correct expression to say that man is under an obligement to virtue, as ethic strength; for although the power of mastering every opposing excitement of the sensory may, and indeed must, be absolutely postulated—the will’s causality being free—nevertheless this power is in its strength (robur) a matter of acquisition, viz., where the force of the ethical spring has been advanced by the contemplation of the dignity of our pure rational law, and at the same time by unremittingly carrying its decrees into execution.
A table of all moral duties may, agreeably to what has been just advanced, be drawn out in the following manner:—
| Internal moral duty. | The matter of moral duty. | External moral duty. | |
| I. | II. | ||
| My own end, which is likewise my duty. | Other’s ends, to advance which is my duty. | ||
| (The perfecting of my nature.) | (My neighbour’s happiness.) | ||
| III. | IV. | ||
| The law, which is likewise the mobile of action. | The end, which is the determinator of the will to act. | ||
| Whereon depends all the morality | Whereon depends all the legality | ||
| Of all free determination of will. | |||
| The formal of duty. | |||
There are such ethical predispositions, that where a man has them not, neither can he be obliged to acquire them. These are—(1) the moral sense; (2) conscience; (3) love of our neighbour; and (4) reverence for one’s self. There can exist no obligation to endeavour to acquire these, because they are subjective conditions of man’s susceptibility for ethical conceptions, not objective grounds of morality. They are every one of them æsthetical, and given antecedently in the mind, as natural predispositions, fitting man for becoming a partaker of ethic notions,—predispositions given and subsisting in the substratum of his person, which therefore cannot be said to be any one’s duty to acquire; for it is first of all by these that he is rendered the subject of ethical obligement. Man’s consciousness of them is not originated by experience and observation, but they must be deemed the effects of the moral law itself upon the mind.
A. The moral sense. This feeling is the susceptibility for pleasure or displacency, upon the bare consciousness of the harmony or of the discrepancy of our actions with the law. All determination of choice whatsoever begins with the representation of the intended act, and passes through the feeling of pleasure or pain, by taking an interest in the act, or its ulterior end, and so becomes event; and this internal determination of the sensory (liking or disliking) is either a pathognomic or an ethical emotion: the former is that sensation of pleasure which may exist antecedently to the representation of the law; the latter is that complacency brought forth by its representation, and which can only follow after it.
Now there can be no duty either to have or to acquire any such feeling; for all consciousness of obligation presupposes it, and, apart from it, no man could feel the necessitation accompanying the idea Duty; and every one must, as a moral being, have such originarily within him: an obligement in regard to it can only ordain that this sensible effect of the law be cultivated and invigorated by the admiration of its unknown and inscrutable original, which can be effected by showing that this emotion, when separated from all admixture of pathognomic attractions, is then most enlivened by the naked energies of reason.
No man is destitute of this feeling; and were he deprived of all capacity for being thus affected, he would be ethically dead; and when, to speak in medical language, his moral vitality could no longer stimulate this feeling, then would his humanity be decomposed, and resolved into his animality, and he could not be distinguished from the common herd of brute natures. We have no specific and individual sense of moral good and evil, any more than we have a sense of truth, although such expressions are not unfrequently employed; but we have an original susceptibility for having our free choice impelled by pure practical reason and her law; and this it is which is termed the moral feeling.
B. Of conscience. Conscience is original, and no additamentum to our person; and there can be no duty to procure one; but every man has, as a moral being, a conscience. To be obliged to have a conscience, would be tantamount to saying, man stands under the obligation of acknowledging that he is obliged. Conscience is man’s practical reason, which does, in all circumstances, hold before him his law of duty, in order to absolve or to condemn him. It has accordingly no objective import; and refers only to the subject, affecting his moral sense by its own intrinsic action. The phenomenon of conscience is accordingly an inevitable event, and no obligement or duty; and when it is said in common parlance, that such a one has no conscience, that means merely that he disregards its dictates; for had he none in real fact, then he could impute to himself no action, as either conformable or repugnant to the law, and so would be unable to cogitate to himself the duty of having conscience.
Omitting all the various divisions of conscience, I remark merely that an erring conscience is a chimera; for although, in the objective judgment, whether or not anything be a duty, mankind may very easily go wrong,—yet, subjectively, whether I have compared an action with my practical (here judiciary) reason, for the behoof of such objective judgment, does not admit of any mistake; and if there were any, then would no practical judgment have been pronounced,—a case excluding alike the possibility of error or of truth. He who knows within himself that he has conducted himself agreeably to his conscience, has done all that can be demanded of him, relatively to guilt or innocence. His obligement can extend only to the illuminating his understanding as to what things are duty, what not. But when it comes to the act, or when a man has acted, conscience speaks inevitably. We cannot, for these reasons, say that man ought to obey his conscience; a case where he would require a supplemental conscience to control, and take cognisance of the acts of the first.
The only duty there is here room for, is to cultivate one’s conscience, and to quicken the attention due to the voice of a man’s inward monitor, and to strain every exertion ( i.e., indirectly a duty) to procure obedience to what he says.
C. Love of our neighbour. Love is an affair of sentiment, not of will; and I cannot love when I will, and still less when I ought. A duty to love is therefore chimerical. Benevolence, however, considered as practical, may very well stand under a law of duty. Sometimes disinterested wishes for the good of our neighbour is called love; but this is improper. Sometimes even when the welfare of the other person is not concerned, but when we devotedly surrender all our ends to the ends of another (superhuman even), love is talked of, and said to be our duty; but all duty is necessitation, i.e., co-action, even where it is self-co-action, conformably to a law; but whatsoever is done by constraint and co-action, that is not performed out of love.
Acting beneficently to our fellows, according to our ability, is our duty, and that, too, whether we love them or not; and this duty loses nothing of its importance, even although we are forced to make the sad remark that our species is but little amiable when we come to know them better. Misanthropy is, however, at all times hateful, even when, shunning hostile actions, it merely induces the man-hater to isolate and separate himself from commerce with his kind. Beneficence is at all times incumbent upon us as a duty even toward a misanthrope, whom we cannot assuredly love, but towards whom we can deal kindly.
To hate the vices of other people is neither our duty nor the reverse, but simply the feeling of detestation for them; a sentiment unrelated, and standing in no connection to the will, and vice versa. Beneficence is a duty: he who is often engaged in the discharge of this duty, and beholds the success of his beneficent designs, comes in the end to love him whom he has benefited. When, therefore, it is said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, that is not to be understood, thou shalt first love thy neighbour, and then, by means of this love, act kindly towards him; but, contrariwise, do good to thy fellow-men, and this beneficence will work in thee philanthropy, i.e., a habitude or inclination to be beneficent.
Benevolent love is upon these accounts only indirectly a duty; but the love of complacency would be immediate and direct. To be constrained by duty to this is, however, a contradiction; for the pleasure of complacency is immediately attached to the perception of the existence of the beloved object; and to be obliged to be necessitated to this is absurd.
D. Of reverence. In like manner, reverence is somewhat altogether subjective, an emotion of its own kind,—no judgment referring to any object which might make it incumbent on us to produce and establish this emotion; for were this the case, such a duty could be represented only by the reverence felt towards it; and to say that it is our duty to have this reverence, would be tantamount to saying, we were obliged to an obligation. So that when it is said man ought to reverence himself, that is improperly said, and it should rather be thus couched, The law within him inevitably extorts reverence from him for his own being, and this peculiar and unique emotion, which is of its own kind, is the ground of certain duties, i.e., certain actions comporting with the duty owed by man to himself. But it is ill expressed to say, we have a duty of reverencing ourselves; for mankind must first of all revere the law, before he can so much as cogitate anything as his duty.
I. First: A single duty can rise upon only one ground of obligation; and when two or several arguments are adduced to support it, that indicates for certain, either that as yet no valid reason has been assigned, or else that they are several and distinct duties, which, by mistake, have come to be regarded as one.
For since every ethic argumentation is philosophical, it is a rational knowledge arising out of notions, and not as the mathematics are, raised upon the construction of notions. These last admit of several different demonstrations, because, in an à priori intuition, there may be given several determinations of the nature of an object, the whole of which carry the cogitation backwards to one and the same common ground. Put the case, that we wish to prove that veracity is a duty, and argue first from the detriment inflicted on others by the lie, and then support this argument by urging the internal vileness of the liar, and the violation of his own self-reverence,—and it is observable, that the first argument proves a duty of benevolence, not one of veracity, i.e., is no proof at all of the virtue desiderated. To flatter one’s self, that by adducing several bad arguments in support of one position, their number may make up what is wanting in their cogency, is a most unphilosophic stratagem, and betrays at once guile and dishonesty,—because a series of insufficient reasons, aggregated together, cannot eke out the certainty which each wants; nay, they do not even beget a probability amongst them,—and yet this is the common artifice of the rhetorician.
II. Secondly: The difference obtaining betwixt virtue and vice cannot be stated to consist in the grade of adhering to given maxims and rules of life; but must be sought for in their specific qualities, i.e., in their relation to the law: that is, in other words, the lauded principle of Aristotle is false: “Virtue is the mean betwixt extremes.” For instance, let frugality be taken as a mean betwixt the two vices, prodigality and avarice, and it is clear that its origin as a virtue cannot be explained by gradually decreasing and abating the first of these vices; neither can it by gradually enlarging the expenses of the miser,—these vices being incapable of being so taken, as if they came from diametrically opposite directions, and met in the point of frugality; but each vice has its own proper maxim, and these have qualities making them inconsistent with one another. Upon the same account, no vice can, generally speaking, be explained by saying that it is a practice carried to excess; as when it is said, Prodigality is excess in the consumption of wealth: nor yet, that it is a defect, or falling short in practice, Avarice is the failing to expend one’s wealth. For since the grade is here left undetermined, and yet everything is made to depend on this degree, whether conduct fall in with duty or otherwise, it is plain that such explanations can serve no purpose.
III. Thirdly: Duties are to be judged of, not by the power man attributes to himself of being able to fulfil them; but, contrariwise, his power is to be concluded upon from the law, which commands categorically; that is, we go, not by the experimental acquaintance taught us of mankind by observation, but by the intellectual apprehension we have of what we ought to be, as conformed to the idea of humanity. These three positions towards a scientific treatise on morals are pointed against these old apophthegms.
I. There is one only virtue, and one only vice.
II. Virtue is the keeping of the due mean betwixt extremes.
III. Virtue must, like prudence, be taught us by experience and observation.
Virtue signifies ethic strength of will; but this does not exhaust the whole notion of it: for a like strength may belong to a holy (superhuman) being, in whom no instinct reacts against the law, and who, therefore, executes the whole law willingly. Virtue is therefore the ethic strength of man in the fulfilment of his duty, a strength which is an ethical co-action, by force of one’s own legislative reason, so far forth as this last constitutes itself also at the same time the executive of the law. This ethico-active reason is not itself a duty, nor is it incumbent on us to procure it; but it announces its behest, and makes this commandment go hand in hand with an ethical co-action, possible according to laws of inward freedom; but because this co-action has to be irresistible, strength is indispensable, and the grade of this force can only be estimated by the magnitude of the obstacles springing from the person’s own appetites and instincts, and to which reason has to rise superior. Vice, the offspring of illicit passion, is the Hydra which man has to encounter and to overcome; upon which account this ethic strength, as valour ( fortitudo moralis ), constitutes the highest, and indeed the only martial glory of the brave; and this it is which has been rightly styled wisdom, because this wisdom makes her own the ends of man’s existence here below, and by possessing this alone, is any one rendered
Liber, pulcher, honoratus, Rex denique Regum,
and enabled to stand invincible against all assaults of chance or fate; because man cannot be shaken from his own self-possession, nor can the virtuous be stormed out of the inexpugnable fortress of his own virtue.
The encomiums passed upon the Ideal of Humanity in his ethical perfection are not in anywise invalidated by showing how contrary mankind are, have been, and very likely will be; nor can anthropology, which gives but a tentative and experimental knowledge of man, at all affect or impair that anthroponomy which is reared upon our unconditionately legislative reason; and although virtue may from time to time be well-deserving of our fellow-men ( never in respect of the law ), and may merit a reward, yet it ought to be considered, as it is, its own end, so also to be in itself its own reward.
Virtue represented in its entire perfection, is to be regarded as if it held possession of man, and not as if he had appropriated or were the proprietor of it; in which last case, it would seem as if man had the option to accept or to decline her, and so would need an interior virtue to induce him to make his election of the latter. To acknowledge several virtues, as we inevitably must, is merely to cogitate different moral objects, towards which the will is guided and led by the one and single principle of virtue; and the same remark holds of the contrary vices. Expressions which impersonate the one or other of them are æsthetic engines, which typify a moral import. An æsthetic of ethics is, by consequence, no part, but it is a subjective exposition, of the metaphysic of ethics; and such a Critique of moral taste would make sensible in outward delineation those emotions effected by the co-active force of the law upon the sensory. Horror, disgust, etc. etc., depict in lively and vivid colours the ethical antagonism of the will, and would aid in counteracting the false allurements of sensitive excitement.
This separation, obtaining betwixt the two main branches of Ethics, is grounded on this, that the idea Freedom, common to both these, renders necessary a distinction of duties into the offices of outward and those of inward liberty, whereof the latter alone are moral. Whence it results that we must now state some preparatory remarks on inward freedom as the condition precedent of all moral duty, exactly as we previously, in No. XII., held a preliminary discourse on conscience as the condition precedent of all obligement whatsoever.
Readiness or aptitude is a facility in acting in a particular way, and is a subjective perfection of choice; but every readiness of this sort is not necessarily a free or liberal facility; for when it degenerates into habit, i.e., when the uniformity of custom slides into mechanical necessity, by the too frequent iteration of an act, such inveterate aptitude is no product of freedom, and is by consequence no ethical facility; and this is the reason why virtue, as we have said, cannot be defined to be a readiness or facility in acting conformably to the law; although it might be so defined, were we to add that it was an aptitude of determining one’s self so to act by the representation of the law, for then the habitude would cease to be a quality of choice, and would become one of will, which is a function of desire, announcing law universal, by the maxims of conduct it adopts; and such a readiness alone can be deemed and taken for a part of a virtue.
This inward freedom demands two things: the first, that mankind, in any unforeseen emergency, remain master of himself; and, second, that he suffer not the empire of his own reason to be usurped by his appetites and passions. The state and tone of soul is, by such inward freedom, noble and erect; by the contrary, abject, servile.
Emotions and passions differ essentially: the former are seated in the sensory; and as these feelings are astir in the mind, prior to all thought and reflection, they hinder and obstruct the exercise of reason, or even render it for the time impossible. The emotions are often called transports or tempests of soul; and reason promulgates to us, by the idea Virtue, the law of self-command. However, imbecility in the exercise of reflection, coupled with the headlong impetuosity of emotion, is merely non-virtue. It is silly and childish, and is not inconsistent with a good will, and has this advantage peculiar to such a frame of mind, that the storm soon blows over: a propensity to an emotion, e.g., to wrath, is therefore not merely so much allied to vice as a passion and affection is. These last denote permanent states of desire; e.g., hatred, revenge, as contradistinguished from anger and wrath. The calm and composure wherewith mankind incline to those admit of reflection, forethought, and predetermination, and allow the mind to adopt maxims of conduct tending to the gratification of those affections; and so, by brooding over them, allow the hate to strike deep root; by all which, evil is deliberately determined on, which, as aggravated wickedness, is a true crime.
It results, therefore, that virtue, in so far as it depends upon man’s inward freedom, addresses to mankind an affirmative commandment, ordaining him to bring all his feelings and passions under the dominion and government of his reason— i.e., ordains self-command; and this it superadds to the prohibitive commandment the duty of apathy, whereby it ordains ( negatively ) man not to allow himself to have it lorded over him either by his appetites or instincts; for when reason does not take into her own hands the administration of self-government, those revolting, subject her to their thraldom.
The term apathy, as if it meant bluntness or want of feeling, i.e., listlessness or indifference in regard of the objects of choice, has fallen into bad repute. People have mistaken it for a weakness; a misunderstanding which may be obviated by denominating this dispassionateness, which has no common part with indifference, the ethic apathy, a freedom from passion, which takes place then only when the increasing reverence for the Law has so awed and ballasted the mind, that it ceases to tumble to and fro, and to be agitated by the storms and hurricane emotions which threaten to shipwreck its morality. It is but the seeming strength of one distempered, to allow one’s interest, even in what is good, to degenerate into passion. An affection of this kind is called enthusiasm, and so gives occasion for that just medium which is recommended even in the practice of virtue.
For it were ridiculous to fancy that any one could be too wise or too virtuous. An emotion is always of the sensory, by what object soever it may be excited. The true strength of virtue is the mind at tranquillity, established upon a well-pondered and steadfast determination to put the law into execution. This is the “ health ” of the ethic life. While, on the contrary, enthusiastic feelings, even when engendered by the representation of good, sparkle but with momentary lustre, and leave the mind chill and exhausted. He, again, might be called chimerically virtuous, who admits, in his system of morality, of no indifferent things, and who is beset at every step with duties strewed along his path, like spring-guns; and deems it of moment whether he dine on fish or fowl, whether he drink beer or wine, although they all agree alike well with his constitution. But if the doctrine of virtue were to deal with such infinitesimal duties, her empire would be transmuted to a tyranny.
Virtue is constantly progressive, and yet it has always to begin again, of new, from the beginning. The first part of this position results from this, that morality, considered objectively, is an ideal, and unattainable, although it is our incumbent duty to press with advancing footstep unremittingly toward it: the second, that virtue has always to start afresh, arises subjectively from its relation to the nature of man,—a nature ever lying so open to the perturbations of appetite and instinct, that virtue can, in its combat with them, never find a truce, but must infallibly, if she keep not herself in the van, and on the advance, be driven to the rear, and forced to retrograde: ethical maxims not being, like the technical, based on habit (which last refers to the physical part of voluntary determination)—so much so indeed, that were the exercise of virtue to become habit, the agent would thereby undergo the loss of freedom; which, however, is of the very essence of all actions performed out of duty.
The principle of subdividing ought to comprehend—
First, As to the formal of duty, all conditions serving to distinguish this part of general ethics from the science of law, a desideratum attained by the following: (1) That no moral duty admits of any outward legislation; (2) That while all duty, of whatever kind, must rest upon the law, yet, in morals, the commandment of duty ordains no given action, but only maxims and rules of life tending to given ends; (3) which follows from the second, That moral duty is of indeterminate, and never of strict obligation.
Second, As to its matter, Ethic has to be represented, not as a system of duties merely, but likewise as the system of the ends and scope of practical reason,—where man is shown as obliged to cogitate himself and all his fellow-men as his ends, which some moralists have talked of as duties of self-love, and of the love of our neighbour; but such expression is inaccurate, there being no direct obligation to “ love ” of any sort, although there are to such actions as state one’s self and others as their ends.
Thirdly, As for the distinction betwixt the form and the matter of morals ( i.e., betwixt an action’s conformity to law and its conformity to its end), we have to remind the reader that not every ethical obligation is a moral duty; in other words, that reverence for law begets of itself no end which can be represented as a duty, this last alone being a moral duty. There is the one only ethical obligement, but several moral duties, there being many objects which for us are ends that we are obliged to propose to ourselves. There can, however, be but one ethical intent, as the inward ground of a man’s determination to fulfil his duty; an intention extending even to his juridical duties, though these last must not on this account be held or reputed moral duties. Every subdivision of morals will therefore have respect only to moral duties. The knowledge of the ground whereon the law has its ethical virtue to oblige the will, is the science of ethics itself, formally considered.
Remark.—But why, it will be asked, have I divided morals into an elementary and a methodic part, seeing this mode of division has been dispensed with in law? The reason is, because the former treats of duties of indeterminate obligation, the latter of those of strict; whence it happens, that the latter is in its nature rigid and precise, and requires, no more than the mathematics, general directions (a method) for judging, but shows its method to be true, by real fact and event. Moral Philosophy, on the contrary, on account of the latitude admissible in its duties of indeterminate obligation, conducts inevitably to questions, calling upon the judgment to determine what maxim ought to be applied in any given case; and this maxim may come attended by its secondary or subordinate maxim, of which last we equally demand a principle for applying it to different occurring cases. Thus morals fall into a sort of casuistry which law is quite ignorant of.
Casuistry is, then, neither a science nor a part of any science; for, were it scientific, it would be dogmatic: and it is not so much a method for finding truth, as a mere exercise of judgment in searching for it. Cases of casuistry are therefore interwoven, not systematically, but fragmentarily, into morals, and come in, under the form of scholia, as addenda to the system. But when it is no exercise of the judgment that engages us, but the exercise of reason itself, and that both in the theory and in the practice of her duty, then does this last belong appropriately to ethics, being the methodology of pure practical reason. Its methodic, in the first sort of exercise, viz., in the theory of its duty, is called didactics; and this last is either akroamatic or erotematic. The erotetic method is the art of interrogating out of the pupil the notions of duty he already is possessed of; and these his notions may be extracted by the question, either out of his memory or out of his reason: from his memory, when he has been previously taught how to answer, where the method is catechetic: from his reason, when it is fancied that what is asked him, lies, although latent, in his mind, and needs only to be developed; and this is the dialogic or socratic method.
To the didactics, as the method of theoretic exercise, corresponds, as antipart, the ascetic exercise, which is that part of the methodology, where it is taught not only how the notion Virtue, but likewise how man’s active and moral powers, his will, may be gymnasticized by the ascetic exercise, and cultivated.
Agreeably to these principles, we shall divide the whole system into two parts,—the Elementology and the Methodology of Ethics. Each part will have its chapters and divisions. In the former part, the order of the chapters will be regulated upon the diversity of the persons toward whom obligations may be constituted; in the second, upon the different ends reason ordains man to have, and according to his capacity for these ends.
XIX. The division established by practical reason toward an architectonic of the system of her ethical conceptions, may be regulated upon a twofold principle, either conjoined or separate: the one represents, materially, the subjective relation obtaining betwixt the obliged and the obligors; the other, formally, the objective relation obtaining betwixt ethic laws and the offices they enjoin. The first division proceeds upon that of the different living beings in relation to whom ethical obligement may be thought as subsisting; but the last would be the order of the conceptions of pure ethico-active reason, which conceptions correspond to each duty made imperative by reason, and belong to Ethics regarded barely as a science, and are therefore indispensable for the methodical contexture and arrangement of those propositions which the former division may throw into our hands.
| Duties | |||
| Of man to mankind. | Of man towards beings of another kind. | ||
| To himself. | To others. | Towards beings inferior to man. | Towards superhuman beings. |
| Ethical. | |||
| Elementology. | Methodology. | ||
| Dogmatics. | Casuistics. | Didactics. | Ascetics. |
Which second division exhibits the form of the science, and must, as its ground-plan, go before the other.
WHEN the obligating “ I ” is taken in exactly the same sense with the “ I ” obliged, then undoubtedly duty owed to myself imports an absurdity: for the idea Duty brings along with it the notion of passive necessitation (I am obliged or beholden); whereas in a matter of debt owed to myself, I figure myself to be the obliger, that is, in a state of active necessitation (I, the very same person with the former, am the Obligor). And a position announcing a duty owed by mankind to himself (I ought to oblige myself), would state an obligement to become obliged, i.e., a passive obligation, which were, notwithstanding, at the same time and in the same terms, an active one; a statement repugnant to itself, and contradictory. The contradiction contained in such a proposition may be set under a yet clearer light, by showing that the author of the obligation could always grant a dispensation to the obliged from the obligement; that is, by consequence, when the Author and the Subject of the obligation are the same, then, in such case, the obliger would not be at all beholden to any duty imposed by him upon himself; and this, again, is just the contradiction above insisted on.
For, put the case, that there were in effect no such self-incumbent duties, then would all other duties, even the outward ones, be abolished; for I only acknowledge myself beholden and obliged to others, so far forth as I at the same time, along with the other, put that obligation upon myself; the law, by dint whereof alone I can recognise myself to be obliged, emanating in every instance from my own practical reason. By this reason I am necessitated, and so am at the same time my own necessitator. *
Man regards himself, when conscious of a duty to himself, in a twofold capacity: first, as a sensible being, i.e., as a man, where he ranks only as one among other sorts of animals; but, second, he regards himself not only as an intelligent being, but as a very reason (for the theoretic function of reason may perhaps be a property of animated matter), resident in a region inscrutable to sense, and manifesting itself only in morally practical relations, where that amazing quality of man’s nature— freedom —is revealed by the influence reason exerts upon the determination of the will. †
Mankind, then, as an intelligent physical being (homo phenomenon), is susceptible of voluntary determination to active conduct by the suggestions of his reason; but in all this the idea of obligation does not enter. The very same being, however, considered in respect of his personality (homo noumenon), i.e., cogitated as one invested with inward freedom, is a being capable of having obligation imposed upon him, and, in particular, of becoming obligated and beholden to himself, i.e., to the humanity subsisting in his person; and, so considered in this twofold character, mankind can acknowledge the obligations he stands under to himself, without incurring any contradiction, the notion man being now understood to be taken in a twofold sense.
This division can take place only according to the different objects incumbent on him, for there can be no room for it in respect of the self-obliging subject. The obliger and the obligated is always just one and the same person; and although we may theoretically distinguish betwixt man’s soul and his body, as distinct qualities of his system and known nature, yet it is quite disallowed to regard them as different substances, founding distinct obligations in respect of them, and so we cannot be entitled to divide our duties into those owed to the body, and those due to the soul. Neither experience nor the deductions of reason afford us any ground to hold that man has a soul (meaning by soul a spiritual substance dwelling in his material framework, distinct from the last, and independent of it); and we do not know whether life may or may not be a property of matter. However, even on the hypothesis that man had a soul, still a duty owed by man to his body (as the subject obliging) would be quite incogitable.
First. There can obtain, therefore, only one objective division, extending at once to the form and to the matter of the duties owed by man to himself,—the first whereof, the formal duties, are limitary or negative duties; the second, the material, are extensive and positive duties owed by man to himself. The former forbid mankind to act contrary to the ends and purposes of his being, and so concerns simply his ethical self-preservation; the latter ordain him to make a given object of choice his end, and command the perfecting of his own nature. Both these, as moral duties, are elements of virtue; the one as duties of omission ( sustine et abstine ), the other as duties of commission ( viribus concessis utere ). The first go to constitute man’s ethic health ( ad esse ), and to the preservation of the entireness of his system, both as objected to his exterior and to his interior senses ( i.e., support his receptivity); the second constitute his ethic opulence ( ad melius esse )—a wealth consisting in the possession of functions adapted for the realization of all ends, in so far as these powers and functions are matters of acquisition, and belong to self-culture as an active and attained perfection. The first principle of duty is couched in the adage, “ Naturæ convenienter vive, ” i.e., “ Maintain thyself in the original perfection of thy nature; ” the second, in the position, “ Perfice te ut finem, perfice te ut medium ”— Study to perfect and advance thy being.
But second. There is, however, a subjective division of the duties owed by man to himself; that is, such a one, where mankind, the subject of the obligement, regards himself as an animal, though also at the same time moral being, or as a moral being singly.
Now, the instincts of man’s animal nature are threefold, viz. (1) the instinctive love of life, whereby nature preserves the individual; (2) that instinct whereby nature aims at the preservation of the kind; and (3), and lastly, those appetites of hunger and thirst which are intended for enlivening the frame,—keeping it fitted for its ends,—and at the same time for securing an agreeable, though only animal enjoyment of existence. The vices which are here subversive of the duty owed by man to himself, are (1) self-murder; (2) the unnatural use of the appetite for sex; (3) that excess in meat or drink which checks and lames the functions of the soul. As for the duty owed by man to himself as a moral being singly, it is formal, and consists in the coincidence of the maxims of his will with the dignity of the humanity subsisting in his person; by consequence, in the prohibition not to renounce the pre-eminence of his rank, which consists in his power of acting upon systematic principles and rules of life; that is, in the injunction not to despoil himself of his inward freedom,—that he become not thereby the toy and football of his own appetites and instincts, and so a mere thing. The vices subversive of this duty are lying, avarice, and spurious humility. These vices rest on maxims diametrically opposed, even already by their form, to the characters of mankind as a moral being; that is, they are formally repugnant to and subversive of the inborn dignity of man’s nature, his inward freedom, and make it, as it were, a man’s maxim to have none, and so no character; that is, to slattern himself down to zero, and so to sink beneath contempt. The virtue opposed to all these vices is self-reverence, and might be called the love of one’s own inward honour; a cast of thought having no common part with pride, which last is a love and ambition of outward honours, and may be, as it often is, abject and vile. This pride ( superbia ) is particularly treated of in the sequel, under this title, as a vice.
The first if not chiefest duty incumbent upon mankind, in respect of his brute nature, is his self-conservation in his animal estate. The antipart of this obligation is the deliberate and forethought destruction of his animality; and this may be considered as either total or partial. The total we call self-murder; the partial, again, is either material or formal, —material, when a man bereaves himself of any integrant part or organ of his body, by demembration or mutilation; formal, when by excess man suffers himself to be bereft, for a while or for ever, of the use of the physical functions of his system, and so likewise indirectly of his ethic rationality, self-obstupefaction.
The voluntary divestiture of man’s animal part can be called self-murder, only then when it is shown that such an act is criminal. A crime which may be perpetrated, either simply on our own person, or also at the same time and by consequence upon the person of another, e.g., as when one in pregnancy kills herself.
Self-destruction is a crime— murder. Suicide may no doubt be considered as the transgression of the duty owed by any one to his fellow-men; as a violation of the conjugal obligations incumbent upon spouses; as a disregard of the duty owed by a subject to his government (the state); or, lastly, as a dereliction of one’s duty to God, the person quitting, without His permission, the post intrusted to him by God in the world. But none of these amount to the crime of murder; and the question at present to be considered is, whether or not deliberate self-destruction is a violation of man’s duty toward himself, even when abstraction is made from all those other considerations; that is, whether man ought to acknowledge himself beholden to the self-conservation of his animal part (nay, most strictly and exactly beholden so to act, and that too by force singly of his personality). That a man can injure himself, appears absurd (volenti non fit injuria); and this was the reason why the Stoics considered it to be a prerogative of the sage to walk with undisturbed soul out of life as out of a smoky room, not urged by any present or apprehended evils, but simply because he could no longer sustain with effect his part in life; and yet this very courage, this strength of soul to advance undauntedly to death, arguing his recognition of somewhat prized by him far higher than life, ought to have taught him not to despoil a being of existence possessing so mighty a mastery and control over the strongest forces in his physic system.
Mankind, so long as duty is at stake, cannot renounce his personality; that is, by consequence, never, —duty being always his incumbent debt; and it is a contradiction to hold that any one were entitled to withdraw himself from his obligations, and to act free, in such sense as to need no ground of warrant for his conduct. To abolish, then, in his own person the subject of morality, is tantamount to expunging with all his might the very being of morality from the world, which morality is, however, an end in itself. Whence we conclude, that to dispose of one’s life for some fancied end, is to degrade the humanity subsisting in his person (homo noumenon), and intrusted to him (homo phenomenon) to the end that he might uphold and preserve it.
For any one to deprive himself of an integral part of his frame, to dismember or mutilate his organs,—as when, for instance, any one sells or gifts a tooth to be transplanted into the jaw of another, or to submit to emasculation to gain an easier livelihood as a singer, and so on,—are acts of partial self-murder. The like observation, however, does not hold of the amputation of a decayed or mortified member, which it might be even dangerous to keep. Neither can we say that it is a violation of one’s person to remove what is a part and pertinent, but still no organ of the body, e.g., to cut one’s hair; but were this done with a view to making gain by the sale of one’s tresses, such an act could not be regarded as altogether devoid of blame.
Casuistics. —Is it self-murder to devote one’s self, like Curtius, to certain death for the liberation of his country? Is martyrdom—the deliberate offering of one’s self up for the benefit of mankind at large—capable of being regarded like the former, as a trait of a heroic character?
Is it allowed to anticipate an unjust sentence of death by suicide? Even were the sovereign to grant this permission, as Nero to Seneca?
Can we regard it as a crime, on the part of our late great monarch, * that he always bore about with him a poison, probably in order that if he should be taken in war, which he always carried on in person, he might not be compelled to accept conditions of ransom too burdensome to his country? A motive we are entitled to ascribe to him, as it is not likely he was impelled to it by mere arrogancy.
A patient, feeling decided symptoms of hydrophobia, after the bite of a mad dog, declared that as this complaint was incurable, he would destroy himself, lest, as he stated in his testament, he should, in a paroxysm of the disease, occasion some disaster to his fellow-men. It is demanded if he did wrong?
He who inoculates himself for smallpox, hazards his life on an uncertainty, even although he does so with a view to its more effectual preservation, and places himself in a much more ambiguous relation to the law, than the mariner, who does not excite the storm which he encounters, whereas this other is himself the cause of his running the risk of death. Is such inoculation lawful?
As the love of life is bestowed upon us for the preservation of our person, so the love of sex for the continuance of our kind. Either appetite is a last end purposed by nature; by end is to be understood that connection obtaining betwixt a cause and its effect, where the cause, although unintelligent, is nevertheless cogitated according to the analogy it bears to an understanding, that is, is spoken of and taken as if it intentionally and of design tended to the education of its own effect. In this way a question arises, if the power of propagating one’s species stands under a restrictive law; or if a person who exercises such a faculty may, without subverting any duty by doing so, overlook that end of nature, and employ his intersexual organs as the mere engine of brute pleasure.
In the elementary principles of law, we took occasion to show that mankind could not serve himself of the person of another, in order to this enjoyment, except subject to the limitary conditions of a particular legal contract (marriage), in which event two persons become mutually obliged to one another. But the question ethics undertakes is this, Whether there be or not a duty owed by man to himself, in respect of this appetite, the violation whereof attains (not merely degrades), the humanity inhabiting his person. The appetite itself is called lust, and the vice it gives birth to is called impurity. The virtue, again, raised upon this instinct of the sensory is termed chastity; and this chastity is now to be represented as a duty owed by man to himself. A lust is said to be unnatural, when a man is impelled to it, not by a real given matter objected to his sensory, but by the productive power of his imagination, depicting to him in fancy the object, contrary to the end aimed at by nature; for the power of appetition is then put into operation in such a manner as to evade or subvert the ends of nature; and, in truth, an end yet more important than the end proposed by nature in the instinctive love of life,— this tending only to the conservation of the individual, that to the upholding uninterrupted the succession of the species.
That this unnatural use (and so abuse) of one’s sexual organs is a violation, in the highest degree, of the duty owed by any to himself, is manifest to everybody; and is a thought so revolting, that even the naming this vice by its own name is regarded as a kind of immorality, which is not the case, however, with self-murder, which no one hesitates to detail in all its horrors, and publish to the world in specie facti; just as if mankind at large felt ashamed at knowing himself capable of an act sinking him so far beneath the brutes.
And yet, to prove upon grounds of reason the inadmissibility of that unnatural excess, and even the disallowedness of a mere irregular use of one’s sexual part, so far forth as they are violations (and in regard of the former, even in the highest possible degree) of the duty owed by man to himself, is a task of no slight or common difficulty. The ground of proving is to be sought, no doubt, in this, that man meanly abdicates his personality, when he attempts to employ himself as a bare means to satisfy a brutal lust. At the same time, the high and prodigious enormity of the violation perpetrated by man against the humanity subsisting in his person, by so unnatural and portentous a lust, which seems, as we have said, formally to transcend in magnitude the guilt of self-murder, remains unexplained upon this argument; unless, perhaps, it might be urged that the headlong obstinacy of the suicide, who casts away life as a burden, is no effeminate surrender to sensitive excitement, but shows valour, and so leaves ground for reverencing the humanity he represents; while this other resigns himself an abandoned outcast to brutality, enjoying his own self-abuse—that is, he makes himself an object of abomination, and stands bereft of all reverence of any kind.
The vice existing in this species of intemperance is not estimated by the prejudice or bodily pains mankind may entail upon himself as the sequents of his excess; for then we should regulate our judgment upon a principle of conveniency ( i.e., on a system of eudaimonism), which, however, affords no ground of duty, but only of a dictate of expediency; at least such principle gives birth to no direct obligations.
The inordinate gratification of our bodily wants is that abuse of aliments which blunts the operations of the intellect: drunkenness and gluttony are the two vices falling under this head. The drunkard renounces, for the seductive goblet, that rationality which alone proclaims the superiority of his rank; and is, while in his state of intoxication, to be dealt with as a brute only, not as a person. The glutton, gorged with viands, blunts his powers for a while, and is incapacitated for such exercises as demand suppleness of body, or the reflections of the understanding. That the putting one’s self into such a situation is a grave violation of what a man owes to himself, is self-evident. The former state of degradation, abject even beneath the beasts, is commonly brought about by the excessive use of fermented liquors, or of stupefying drugs, such as opium, and other products of the vegetable kingdom; the betraying power whereof lies in this, that for a while a dreamy happiness, and freedom from solicitude, or perhaps a fancied fortitude, is begotten, which, after all, concludes in despondency and sadness, and so unawares, and by insensible and unsuspected steps, introduces the need and want to repeat and to augment the stupefying dose. Gluttony must be reputed still lower in the scale of animal enjoyment; for it is purely passive, and does not waken to life the energies of fancy, —a faculty susceptible for a long time of an active play of its perceptions during the obstupefaction of the former, upon which account gluttony is the more beastly vice.
Casuistics. —Can we, if not as the panegyrists, yet as the apologists of wine, accord to it a use bordering on intoxication, so far forth as it animates conversation, and combines the society by the frankness it produces? Can we, in any event, say of wine what Seneca has said when talking of Cato: Virtus ejus incaluit mero? But who is he who will assign a measure to one who stands on the brink of passing into a state, where all eyesight fails him to measure anything, nay, whose disposition is in full march to go beyond it? To employ opium or ardent spirits as instruments of one’s animal gratification, is very much akin to meanness; because these, by their soporific welfare, render the individual mute, reserved, and unsocial; upon which accounts it is that these are allowed only in medicine. Mahometanism has made but an injudicious selection, when it forbids wine, and allows the use of opium in its stead.
A banquet (Lord Mayor’s feast) is a formal invitation to a double intemperance in both kinds, although it has, over and above the stimulating of one’s physical existence, a reference to a moral end, viz., the advancing of man’s social intercourse with his species. Yet because, whenever the number of the guests exceeds, as Chesterfield says, the number of the muses, the very multitude obstructs the social exchange, and admits only the talking to one’s immediate neighbours,— i.e., since a feast is an institution subverting its own end,—it remains to be regarded only as a seduction to excess, i.e., to immorality, and to a violation of the duty owed by man to himself. To what extent is mankind ethically entitled to give ear to such invitations?
THIS duty is opposed to the vices of lying, avarice, and false humility.
The highest violation of the duty owed by man to himself, considered as a moral being singly (owed to the humanity subsisting in his person), is a departure from truth, or lying. That every deliberate untruth in uttering one’s thoughts must bear this name in ethics, is of itself evident, although in law it was only styled fraud or falsehood when it violated the rights of others—ethics giving no title to vice on account of its harmlessness; for the dishonour ( i.e., to be an object of ethical disdain) it entails, accompanies the liar like his shadow. A lie may be either external or internal: by means of the former he falls under the contempt of others; but by means of the latter, falls, which is much worse, under his own, and violates the dignity of humanity in his own person. We say nothing here of the damage he may occasion to other people, the damage being no characteristic of the vice; for it would then be turned into a violation of the duty owed to others: nor yet of the damage done by the liar to himself; for then the lie, as a mere error in prudence, would contradict only the hypothetical, not the categorical imperative, and could not be held as violating duty at all. A lie is the abandonment, and, as it were, the annihilation, of the dignity of a man. He who does not himself believe what he states to another person (were it but an ideal person), has a still less value than if he were a mere thing; for of the qualities of this last some use may be made, these being determinate and given; but for any one to communicate thoughts to another by words intended to convey the contrary of what the speaker really thinks, is an end subversive of the purpose and design for which nature endowed us with a faculty of interchanging thought, and is upon these accounts a renunciation of one’s personality, after which the liar goes about, not as truly a man, but as the deceptive appearance of one only. Veracity in one’s statements is called candour; if such statements contain promises, fidelity: both together make up what is called sincerity.
A lie, in the ethical signification of the word, considered as intentional falsehood, need not be prejudicial to others in order to be reprobated, for then it would be a violation of the rights of others. Levity, nay, even good-nature, may be its cause, or some good end may be aimed at by it. However, the giving way to such a thing is by its bare form a crime perpetrated by man against his own person, and a meanness, making a man contemptible in his own eyes.
The reality of many an inward lie, the guilt whereof man entails upon himself, is easily set forth; but to explain the possibility of such a thing is not so easy; and it looks like as if a second person were required, whom we intended to deceive, since deliberately to deceive one’s self sounds like a contradiction.
Man as a moral being (homo noumenon) cannot use himself as a physical being (homo phenomenon), as a mere instrument of speech, nowise connected with the internal end of communicating his thoughts; but he is bound to the condition, under his second point of view, of making his declaration harmonize with his inward man, and so is obliged to veracity towards himself. Mankind thus perverts himself, when he bubbles himself into the belief in a future judge, although he find none such within himself, in the persuasion that it can do no harm, but may, on the contrary, be of service, inwardly to confess such faith before the Searcher of his Heart, in order, in any event, to insinuate himself into His favour. Or otherwise, supposing him to entertain no doubts on this point, still he may flatter himself that he is an inward reverer of His law, although he knows no other incentive than the fear of hell.
Insincerity is just want of conscientiousness, i.e., of sincerity in a man’s avowals to his inward judge, cogitated as a person different from himself. To take this matter quite rigidly, this would be insincerity, to hold a wish framed by self-love for the deed, because the end aimed at by it is good; and the inward lie told by a man to himself, although a violation of his duty towards himself, commonly goes under the name of, and is taken for, a weakness, pretty much in the same way as the wish of a lover to find only good qualities in his adored, seals his eyes to her most glaring defects. However, this insincerity in the statements declared by man to himself, deserves the most serious reprehension; for, from this rotten spot (which seems to taint the vitals of humanity), the evil of insincerity spreads into one’s intercourse with one’s fellow-men, the maxim of truth being once broken up.
Remark. —It is exceedingly remarkable that holy writ dates the original of evil, not from the fratricide of Cain (against which nature revolts), but from the first lie; and states the author of all evil under the denomination of the Liar from the beginning, and the Father of lies; although reason can give no account of this proneness of mankind to hypocrisy; which deflective tendency must, however, have preceded man’s actual lapse, an act of freedom not admitting, as physical effects do, a deduction and explanation from the law of cause and effect, this last law referring singly to phenomena.
Casuistical Questions. —Are falsehoods out of pure politeness (the most obedient servant at the end of a letter), lying? No one is deceived by them. An author asks, “How do you like my new work?” Now the answer might be given illusorily, by jesting upon the captiousness of such a question; but who has wit enough always ready? The smallest tarrying in replying must of itself mortify the author. Is it, then, allowed to pay him compliments?
If I lie, in matters of importance, in the actual business of life, must I bear all the consequences resulting from my falsehood? One gives orders to his servant, if any call for him, to say he is not at home: the domestic does so, and becomes in this way the cause of his master’s finding opportunity to commit a crime, which would otherwise have been prevented by the messenger-at-arms, who came to execute his warrant. On whom, according to ethic principles, does the blame fall? Unquestionably, in part upon the servant, who violated by his lie a duty owed by him to himself, the consequences of which, also, will he imputed to him by his own conscience.
I understand in this chapter not rapacious avarice, the propensity to extend one’s gains beyond one’s needs, in order to sumptuous fare; but the avarice of hoarding, which, when sordid, makes a man a miser, not so much because it disregards the obligations of charity, as because it narrows and contracts the proper enjoyment of the goods of life within the measure of one’s real wants, and so is repugnant to the duty owed by man to himself.
It is in the exposition of this vice that we can best display the inaccuracy of all those accounts of virtue and vice which make them differ in “ degree, ” and show clearly at the same time the applicability of Aristotle’s famous principle, that virtue is the mean betwixt two extremes of vice.
Thus, when for instance I regard frugality as the mean betwixt prodigality and avarice, and state this medium as one of degree, then the one vice could not pass into its opposite and contrary (which, however, is not unfrequent), except by passing through the intermediate virtue, and in this way virtue would come to be a diminishing vice, i.e., a vice at its vanishing quantity; and the true inference from this would be, in the present instance, that the perfect point of moral duty would consist in making no use at all of the bounties of fortune.
Neither the measure nor the quantum of acting upon a maxim, but that maxim’s objective principle, is what constitutes the act a vice or a virtue. The maxim of the avaricious and rapacious prodigal is to accumulate wealth, in order that he may enjoy it; that of the sordidly avaricious, or miser, is, on the contrary, to acquire and to keep accumulated his wealth, where he makes the bare possession of it his end, and dispense with the enjoyment.
The peculiar characteristic of the miser is this, that he adopts the principle of hoarding up the means conducive to many ends, with the inward reservation, never to apply such means to their destined uses, and so to bereave himself of all the amenities and sweets of life; a maxim utterly subversive of the duty a man owes to himself. Profusion and hoarding, then, differ not in degree, but they are specifically distinct in respect of their contrary and inconsistent maxims. 1
Casuistical Question. —Since we treat here only of duties owed to one’s self, and rapacious avarice (insatiable cupidity of wealth), and the avarice of hoarding, rest on the common ground of self-love, and seem both objectionable, merely because they conclude in poverty, in the case of the former, issuing in unexpected, in that of the latter, in a voluntary indigence (by force of the determination to live in poverty)—since, I say, all this is the case, the question might be raised, if they are either of them at all vices, and not rather mere imprudences, and so not falling within the sphere of the duties owed by man to himself; but the sordid avarice is not a mere misunderstood economy,—it is an abject and servile enthralling of a man’s self to the dominion of money, and is a submitting to cease to be its master, which is a violation of the duty owed by man to himself: it is the opposite of that generous liberality of sentiment (not of munificent liberality, which is no more than a particular case of the former) which determines to shake itself free from every consideration whatever, the law alone excepted, and is a defraudation committed by man against himself. And yet, what kind of law is that, whereof the very inward legislator knows not the application? Ought I to retrench the outlays of my table, or the expenses of my dress? Should I in youth, or in my old age? Or is there, generally speaking, any such virtue as that of thrift?
Man, as a part of the physical system (homo phenomenon, animal rationale), is an animal of very little moment, and has but a common value with beasts, and the other products of the soil. Even that he is superior to those by force of his understanding, gives him only a higher external value in exchange, when brought to the market along with other cattle, and sold as wares.
But man considered as a person, i.e., as the subject of ethico-active reason, is exalted beyond all price; for as such (homo noumenon), he cannot be taken for a bare means, conducive either to his own or to other persons’ ends, but must be esteemed an end in himself; that is to say, he is invested with an internal dignity (an absolute worth), in name of which he extorts reverence for his person from every other finite Intelligent throughout the universe, and is entitled to compare himself with all such, and to deem himself their equal.
The humanity of our common nature is the object of that reverence exigible by each man from his fellow, which reverence, however, he must study not to forfeit. He may, and indeed he ought, to estimate himself by a measure at once great and small, according as he contemplates his physical existence as an animal, or his cogitable being, according to the ethical substratum of his nature. Again, since he has to consider himself not merely as a person, but also as a man, that is, as such a person as has imposed upon him duties put upon him by his own reason, his insignificance as an animal ought neither to impair nor affect his consciousness of his dignity as a rational, and he ought not to forget his ethical self-reverence springing from his latter nature; that is to say, he ought not to pursue those ends which are his duties servilely, or as if he sought for the favour of any other person: he ought not to renounce his dignity, but always to uphold, in its integrity, his consciousness of the loftiness of the ethical substratum of his nature; and this self-reverence is a duty owed by man to himself.
The consciousness and feeling of one’s little worth, when compared with the law, is ethical humility: the over-persuasion that a man has a great deal of moral worth, owing only to his neglecting to quadrate himself with the law, is ethical arrogancy, and might be called self-righteousness. But to renounce all claim to any moral worth, in the hope of thereby acquiring a borrowed and another, is false ethical humility, and may be called spiritual hypocrisy.
Humility, understood as a low opinion of one’s self, when compared with other persons, is no duty (nor, generally speaking, in comparison with any finite being, although a seraph ): the active endeavour, in such comparison, to find one’s self equal or superior to others, in the imagination of thereby augmenting his inward worth, is ambition, —a vice diametrically opposed to the duty we owe to others; but the studied declinature of all one’s proper ethic worth, considered as a mean for ingratiating one’s self into the favour of another (be that other who he may), is false and counterfeit humility—( hypocrisy, flattery )—and a degradation of one’s personality, subverting the duty he owes to himself.
Upon an exact and sincere comparison of a man’s self with the moral law (its holiness and rigour), true humility must infallibly result; but from the very circumstance that we can know ourselves capable of such an inward legislation, and that the physical man finds himself compelled to stand in awe of the ethical man in his own person, there results also at the same time a feeling of exaltation, and the highest possible self-estimation, as the consciousness of one’s inward worth, by force of which he is raised far beyond all price, and sees himself invested with an inalienable dignity, inspiring him with reverence for himself.
This duty, in respect of the dignity of our humanity, can be rendered more sensible by such precepts as the following.
Become not the slaves of other men. Suffer not thy rights to be trampled under foot by others with impunity. Make no debts thou mayest be unable to discharge. Receive no favours thou canst dispense with, and be neither parasites nor flatterers nor—for they differ but in degree—beggars. Live, then, frugally, lest one day thou come to beggary. Howling and groaning, nay, a mere scream at a bodily pain, is beneath thy dignity as a man, more especially when conscious that thou hast thyself merited it. Hence the ennoblement of (averting of ignominy from) the death of a malefactor, by the constancy with which he meets his fate. To kneel or prostrate thyself upon the earth, in order to depicture in a more lively image to thy fancy thy adoration of celestial objects, derogates from thy dignity as a man; as does also the worshipping of them by images: for then thou humblest thyself, not before an ideal, the handiwork of thy reason, but beneath an idol, the workmanship of thy hands.
Casuistics. —Is not the elation of mind in self-reverence, considered as a consciousness of the lofty destiny of man, too much akin to arrogance, i.e., to self-conceit, to make it advisable to summon up to it, not only in respect of the moral law, but even in respect of other men? or would not self-denial in this particular invite others to despise our person, and so be a violation of what is due by man to himself? Fawning and scraping to another is in any event unworthy of a man.
Are not the different styles of address, and the especial marks of respect, denoting, with such painful anxiety, difference of rank in society,—all which differs widely from politeness, a thing indispensable for mutually reverencing one another,—the thou, he, they, your high wisdom, your reverence, etc. etc., in which pedantry the Germans go beyond all nations on the earth, the Indian castes alone excepted,—are not, I say, these proofs of a widely-spread tendency among mankind to false and spurious humility? (hæ nugæ in seria ducunt.)—However, he who first makes himself a worm, does not complain when he is trampled under foot.
The idea Duty always involves and presents to the mind that of necessitation by law (law being an ethical imperative limiting our freedom), and belongs to our moral understanding which prescribes the rule. The inward imputation of an act, however, as of an event falling under the law, belongs to the judgment, which being the subjective principle of the imputation of an act, utters its verdict whether or not any given deed ( i.e., act subsumible under law) has been done or not, after which reason pronounces sentence, i.e., connects the act with its legal consequences, and so absolves or condemns; all which is carried on before a court of justice, as if in the presence of an ethical person sitting to give effect to the law. The consciousness of an internal tribunal in man, before which his thoughts accuse or excuse him, is what is called Conscience.
Every man has Conscience, and finds himself inspected by an inward censor, by whom he is threatened and kept in awe (reverence mingled with dread); and this power watching over the law, is nothing arbitrarily (optionally) adopted by himself, but is interwoven with his substance. It follows him like his shadow, however he may try to flee from it. He may indeed deafen himself by pleasure or by business, or he may lull himself into a lethargy; but this is only for a while, and he must inevitably come now and then to himself: nor can he hinder himself from ever and anon awakening, whereupon he hears his dreadful and appalling voice. In the last stage of reprobation man may indeed have ceased to heed him, but not to hear him, is impossible.
This originary intellectual and ethical (for it refers to duty) disposition of our nature, called conscience, has this peculiarity, that although this whole matter is an affair of man with himself, he notwithstanding finds his reason constrained to carry on the suit, as if it were at the instigation of another person; for the procedure is the conduct of a cause before a court. Now, that he who is the accused by his conscience should be figured to be just the same person as his judge, is an absurd representation of a tribunal; since in such event the accuser would always lose his suit. Conscience must therefore represent to itself always some one other than itself as judge, unless it is to arrive at a contradiction with itself. This other may be either a real —or an ideal person the product of reason. *
Such an ideal person, authorized to sit as judge in the court of conscience, must be a searcher of the heart, for the tribunal is erected in the interior of man. Further, he must hold all-obligatory power, i.e., be such a person, or at least be figured as if he were a person, in respect of whom all duty may be represented as his commandments, because conscience is judge over all free actions. Lastly, he must have all power (in heaven and in earth) to absolve and to condemn, these properties being of the very essence of the functions of a judge: apart from his being endowed wherewith, he could give no effect to the law. But since he who searches the heart, and, having all-obligatory power, is able to absolve and condemn, is called God, it follows that conscience must be regarded as a subjective principle implanted in the reason of man, calling for an account of every action before God. Nay, this notion of responsibility is at all times involved, however darkly, in every act of moral self-consciousness.
This is not by any means to say that man is entitled, and still less that he is bound, to believe in, as real, any such Supreme Being, answering to the idea, to which conscience inevitably points; for the idea is given him not objectively by speculative reason, but subjectively only, by practical reason obliging itself to act conformably to this representation. And mankind is, by means of this idea, but merely from its analogy to that of a sovereign lawgiver of the universe, led to figure to himself conscientiousness (in the old language of the empire, religio ), as a responsibility owed to a most holy being, different from ourselves, and yet most intimately present to our substance (moral legislative reason), and to submit ourselves to His will as if it were a law of righteousness. The notion of religion in genere is therefore just this, that it is a principle of esteeming of all our duties as if they were divine commandments.
1. In an affair of conscience, man figures to himself a preadmonitory or warning conscience before he decides on acting; and here the minutest scruple, when it refers to an idea of duty (somewhat in itself moral), and over which conscience is the alone judge, is of weight, nor is it ever regarded as a trifle; nor can what would be a real transgression be declared, according to the saying of minima non curat prætor, a bagatelle or peccadillo, and so left for an arbitrary and random determination. Hence, having a large conscience is the same with having none.
2. As soon as an act is determined on and completed, the accuser immediately presents himself in the court of conscience, and along with him there appears a defender, and the suit is never decided amicably, but according to the rigour of the law. After which follows—
3. The sentence of conscience upon the man, either absolving or condemning, which concludes the cause. As to which final judgment, we remark that the former sentence never decrees a reward as the gaining of something which was not there before, but leaves room only for satisfaction at escaping condemnation. The bliss, therefore, announced by the consoling voice of conscience is not positive (as joy), but only negative (tranquillization after previous apprehension); a blessedness capable of being ascribed to virtue only, as a warfare with the influences of the evil principle in man.
This is, know thyself, not after thy physical perfection, but after thy ethical, in reference to thy duty. Search, try thy heart, whether it be good or evil, whether the springs of thy conduct be pure or impure; and how much, either as originally belonging to thy substance or as acquired by thee, may be imputable to thy account, and may go to make up thy moral state.
This self-examination, which seeks to fathom the scarcely penetrable abysses of the human heart, and the self-knowledge springing from it, is the beginning of all human wisdom. For this wisdom, which consists in the accordance of the will of an Intelligent with the last end of his existence, requires in man, first, that he disembarrass himself of an inward impediment (an evil will, nestled in his person); and second, the unremitted effort to develop his originary inamissible substratum for a good one. Only the Avernan descent of self-knowledge paves a way to self-apotheosis.
This ethical self-knowledge guards, first, against the fanatical detestation of one’s self as a man, and against a disdain of the whole human race in general. It is only by force of the glorious substratum for morality within us—which substratum it is that renders man venerable—that we are enabled to find any man despicable, or to hand ourselves over to our own contempt, when seen to fall short of this august standard; an ethical disregard attaching to this or that man singly, never to humanity in general. And then it guards, secondly, against the fond and fatal self-delusion of taking a bare wish, however ardent, for any index of a good heart; and obviates irregular self-estimation. Even prayer is no more than a wish, inwardly uttered in the presence of a Searcher of the Heart. Impartiality, in judging of ourselves, when compared with the law, and sincerity in a man’s own self-confession of his own inward ethical worth or unworth, are the duties owed by man to himself, immediately founded on this first commandment of self-knowledge.
To judge on grounds of naked reason, man has no duties imposed upon him, except those owed by him to humanity in general (himself or others); for his obligement towards any person imports ethical necessitation by that person’s will. The necessitating (obliging) subject must then, in every instance, be, first, a person; and must, second, be a person presented to our knowledge in experience and observation; for, since man has to work towards the end of that person’s will, this is a relation possible only betwixt two given existing beings, no imaginary or barely cogitable persons becoming the final cause and scope of any one’s actions. But experience and observation teach a knowledge of no other being, except our fellow-men, capable of obligation, whether active or passive. Mankind can, therefore, have no duty toward any being other than his fellow-men, and when he figures to himself that there are such, this arises singly from an amphiboly of his reflex moral notions; and this fancied duty owed by him to others is no more than a duty to himself, he being misled to this misunderstanding by confounding what is duty to himself in regard of other beings, with a duty toward those others.
This fancied duty may extend, either to impersonals, or if to personal, yet to invisible beings, not presented to our sensory. The former will be either the physical matter of the universe, or else its organized but impercipient products; or, lastly, that part of nature which we see endowed with choice, motion, and perception (1. minerals, 2. plants, 3. animals). The latter will have a reference to superhuman beings, cogitated as spiritual substances (God, angels). And we now ask, does there obtain, betwixt these different kinds of beings and man, any relation of duty? and if so, what is the nature and extent of this obligation?
In regard of the beautiful but lifeless objects in nature, to indulge a propensity to destroy them, is subversive of the duty owed by man to himself. For this spirit of destruction lays waste that feeling in man, which, though not itself ethical, is yet akin to it, and aids and supports, or even prepares a way for a determination of the sensory, not unfavourable to morality, viz., the emotion of disinterested complacency in somewhat quite apart from any view of its utility, e.g., as when we find delight in contemplating a fine crystallization, or the unutterable beauties of the vegetable kingdom.
In regard of the animated but irrational part of the creation, it is undoubted that a savage and cruel treatment of them is yet more inly repugnant to what man owes to himself; for it blunts and obtunds our natural sympathy with their pangs, and so lays waste, gradually, the physical principle which is of service to morality, and assists greatly the discharge of our duty towards other men. But to kill them or to set them on work not beyond their strength (which labour man himself must undertake), is in nowise disallowed; although to torture them, with a view to recondite experiments subserving a mere speculation, which could be dispensed with, is detestable. Nay, gratitude for the services of an old horse or house-dog is indirectly, a duty, namely, an indirect duty in regard of these animals; for, directly, it is no more than what a man owes to himself.
In regard of a Being transcending all bounds of knowledge, but whose existence is notwithstanding given to us in idea, viz., the Godhead, we have in like manner a duty called religion, which is the duty of recognising all our duties as if they were divine commandments. But this is not the consciousness of a duty toward God. For since this idea rises singly upon our own reason, and is made by ourselves for the behoof of explaining theoretically the symmetry and fitness of means to ends observed in the fabric of the universe, or practically to give added force to the mainspring of action, it is manifest that we have nowhat given, toward whom an obligation could be constituted; and his reality would first need to be established by experience (or revealed). And the duty we have here is to apply this indispensable idea of reason to the moral law within us, where it proves of the greatest ethical fertility. In this practical sense it may be asserted, that to have religion is a duty owed by man to himself.
The culture of all the different resources of mind, soul, and body, as means conducive to many ends, is a duty owed by man to himself. Man owes it to himself as a reasonable being, not to allow to go to rust and lie dormant the latent energies and native elements of his system, whereof his reason might one day make use. And even were he to rest contented with the measure of talent nature had endowed him with as his birthright, still it ought to be upon grounds of reason, that he should instruct such a remaining satisfied without so moderate a share of capacity; for, being a person capable of designing ends, or of proposing himself to others as an end, he ought to stand indebted for the development and amelioration of his powers, not to any physical instinct of his system, but to his own liberty, whereby he freely decides how far he will carry them. This duty, then, is altogether independent on any advantages the culture of his faculties as means to ends may procure to him,—for perhaps the advantage, according to Rousseau’s views, might lie in the uncultivated roughness of a savage life,—but is founded on a commandment of ethico-active reason, and a duty imposed on man by himself to advance and ameliorate the condition of his humanity, according to the diversity of the ends assigned him, and to make himself, in a practical point of view, adapted to the final destinies of his being.
Powers of mind we call those faculties whose exercise is possible by force of reason singly. They are creative, so far forth as their use is independent on experience and observation, and rests on principles à priori. Some of their products are, the mathematics, logic, and metaphysic of ethics, which two last fall under the head of philosophy, viz., the speculative philosophy, where this word is taken, not to signify wisdom, as it ought to do, but only science; which last, however, may be subservient to advancing the ends of practical wisdom.
Powers of soul, again, are those which stand at the command of the understanding, and of the rule this last prescribes in order to attain the end it designs, and so depend to a certain extent on observation and experience. Instances of such powers are, memory, imagination, and the like, from which learning, taste, the graces of outward and inward accomplishments take their rise, and which can be employed as instrumental to a vast variety of ends.
Lastly, the culture of our bodily powers ( gymnastic properly so called) is the caring for the stuff and materials of the man, apart from which instrument and engine his ends could not be exerted into acts; consequently, the intentional and regular revivifying of man’s animal part is a duty owed by mankind to himself.
Which of these natural perfections may be the more eligible, and in what proportion, when compared with the remainder, it may be his duty to design them as his ends, must be left to the private reflection of each individual, who will decide according to his taste for this or that kind of life, and according to the estimate he may make of his ability, whether he should follow some handicraft, or a mercantile employment, or become a member of a learned profession. Because, over and above the necessity man stands in of providing for his livelihood, a necessity which never can of itself beget any obligation, it is a duty owed by man to himself to make himself of use to the world; this belonging to the worth of the humanity he represents, and which, therefore, he ought not to degrade.
But this duty owed by man to himself in regard of his physical perfection, is only of indeterminate obligation. Because the law ordains only the maxims of the action, not the act itself; and, in regard of this last, determines neither its kind nor its degree, but leaves a vast latitude for man’s free choice to roam or settle in.
This consists, first of all, subjectively, in the purity of his moral sentiments, where, freed from all admixture of sensitive excitement, the law is itself alone the spring of conduct; and actions are not only conformable to what is duty, but are performed because it is so, — Be ye holy is here the commandment; and, second, objectively, consists in attaining his whole and entire moral end, i.e., the execution of his whole duty, and the final reaching of the goal placed before him as his mark,—the commandment here is Be ye perfect. The endeavour after this end is, in the case of mankind, never more than an advancement from one grade of ethical perfection to another. If there be any virtue, if there be any praise, that study and pursue.
The duty towards one’s self is, in its quality, determinate and strict; but in degree it is of indeterminate obligation, and that on account of the frailty of human nature; for that perfection which it is our constant and incumbent duty to pursue, but never (at least in this life) to attain, and the obeying which can by consequence consist only in urging after it with an unfaltering and progressive step, is no doubt, in regard of the object (the idea to realize which is end), determinate, strict, and given; but in regard of the subject, is but a duty of indeterminate obligation owed by mankind to himself.
The depths of the human heart are inscrutable. Who has such an exact of self-knowledge as to be able to say, when he feels the impelling force of duty, that the mobile of his will is swayed singly by the naked idea of the law, and to declare that other sensitive excitements may not work alongside of it and pollute it,—such as by-views of advantage, or of avoiding harm?—considerations which on occasion might serve the turn of vice. Again, as for that perfection which concerns the accomplishment of one’s end, there can, it is true, be only one virtue objectively in idea,—the ethical strength of one’s practical principles; but subjectively, in point of real fact and event, a vast number of virtues, of the most heterogeneous nature, amongst which it is not impossible some vice may lurk, although it escapes observation, and is not so called, on account of the virtues in whose company it appears. But a sum of virtues, the completeness or defects of which no self-knowledge can accurately detect, can beget only an indeterminate obligation to perfect our moral nature.
Whence we conclude, that all the moral duties, in respect of the ends of the humanity subsisting in our person, are duties of indeterminate obligation only.
THE principal division of these obligations may be made into such duties as oblige our fellow-men, when we discharge them; and second, into those which, when observed, entail upon the other no obligation of any sort. To fulfil the former is, in respect of others, meritorious; to fulfil the latter, of debt only. Love and reverence are the emotions which go hand in hand with our discharge of these two kinds of offices. These emotions may be considered separately, and in practice they may subsist, each for itself and apart from the other. Love of our neighbour may take place even while he deserves but little reverence; as, on the contrary, reverence is due to every man, although deemed hardly worth our love. But, properly speaking, they are at bottom inseparably united by the law, in every duty owed by us, to our neighbour; but this in such a manner, that sometimes the one emotion is the leading principle of the duty of the person, along with which the other follows as its accessory. Thus we regard ourselves obliged to benefit the poor; but because this favour would imply his dependence for his welfare on my generosity, a case which would be humiliating for the other, it becomes my further duty so to behave to him who accepts my gift, as to represent this benefit either as a bare incumbent duty upon my part, or as a trifling mark of friendship, and to spare the other such humiliation, and to uphold his self-reverence in its integrity.
When we speak, not of laws of nature, but of laws of duty as regulating the external relation of man to man, we then regard ourselves in a cogitable ethic world, where, by analogy to the physical system, the combination of Intelligents is figured to be effected by the joint action and reaction of attractive and repellant forces. By the principle of mutual love, they are destined for ever to approach, and by that of reverence, to preserve their due elongation from one another; and were either of these mighty moral principles to be suspended, the moral system could not be upheld, and, unable to sustain itself against its own fury, would retrovert to chaos.
But love must not be here understood to mean an emotion of complacency in the perfection of other people, there being no obligation to entertain feelings; but this love must be understood as the practical maxim of goodwill issuing in beneficence as its result.
The same remark holds of the reverence to be demonstrated towards others, which cannot be understood simply to mean a feeling emerging from contrasting our own worth with that of another,—such as a child may feel for its parents, a pupil for his ward, or an inferior for his superior in rank,—but must be taken to mean the practical maxim of circumscribing our own self-esteem, by the representation of the dignity of the humanity resident in the person of another —that is, a practical reverence.
This duty of the free reverence owed to other men is properly negative only, viz., not to exalt ourselves above others. It is in this way analogous to the juridical duty “ to do no wrong, ” and so might be taken for a strict and determinate obligation; but, regarded as a moral duty, and a branch of the offices of charity, it is a duty of indeterminate obligation.
The duty of loving my neighbour may be thus expressed,—that it is the duty of making my own the ends and interests of others, in so far as these ends are not immoral. The duty of reverencing my neighbour is expressed in the formula, to lower no man to be a bare means instrumental towards the attaining my own ends, i.e., not to expect from any man that he should abase himself to be the footstool of my views.
By discharging the former duty, I at the same time oblige the other; I make myself well-deserving of him. But by the observance of the latter, I oblige only myself, and keep myself within my own bounds, so as not to withdraw from the other any of that worth he is entitled as a man to put upon himself.
The love of our fellow-men must, because we understand by it practical benevolence, be understood, not as a love of complacency in our species, but as a maxim actively to befriend them. He who takes delight in the welfare of his fellows, considered merely as belonging to his own species, is a philanthropist, —a Friend of Mankind in general. He who alone finds delight in the misery and woes of his neighbour, is a misanthrope. An egotist is he who beholds with indifference the good or the bad fortunes of his neighbour. While that person who shuns society because he is unable to regard his fellows with complacency, although he wishes them all well, would be an æsthetic misanthrope; and his aversion from his kind might be called anthropophoby.
Whether mankind be found worthy of love or not, a practical principle of goodwill (active philanthropy) is a duty mutually owed by all men to one another, according to the ethical precept of perfection, Love thy neighbour as thyself; for every ethical relation obtaining between man and man is a relation subsisting in the representation of pure reason, i.e., is a relation of mankind’s free actions, according to maxims potentially fit for law universal, which maxims can therefore, in no event, be founded on an emotion of selfishness. The constitution of my nature forces me to desire and will every other person’s benevolence; wherefore, conversely, I am beholden to entertain goodwill towards others; but, again, because all others, except myself, are not all mankind, a maxim expressing my active goodwill towards all others would want the absolute universality whereby alone the law has ethical virtue to oblige; consequently the ethical law of benevolence must include my own person likewise with others, as the object of the commandment announced by practical reason;—which is not to say, that I thereby become obliged to love myself, such self-love obtaining of its own accord, and inevitably, but states, that legislative reason, which embraces in its idea of humanity the whole race ( i.e., me likewise), includes in its universal legislation myself likewise, under the duty of reciprocal benevolence; and so renders it allowed for me to wish well to myself, under the condition that I cherish goodwill towards every other person; my maxim being thus alone fitted for law universal, whereon is based every law of duty whatsoever.
The goodwill expressed in universal philanthropy is extensively the greatest possible, but intensively (in degree) the most contracted; and to say of any one that he is interested in the welfare of his neighbour, as a general philanthropist is to say that the interest he takes in him is just the smallest possible,—he is merely not indifferent.
But of my fellows, one stands nearer to me than another; and, so far as goodwill is concerned, I am nearest to myself: how does this harmonize with the formula, “ Love thy neighbour as thyself ” ? If one is more my neighbour (nearer to me in the obligation of benevolence) than another, and I thus am bound to more benevolence toward one person than toward another, and am, moreover, nearer to myself than to any other person; then it would appear that it cannot without contradiction be asserted that I ought to love all others as myself,—this measure, self-love, admitting no difference of degree. The smallest reflection, however, shows that the benevolence here intended is not a bare wish, which last is properly an acquiescence in the happiness of my neighbour, while I myself contribute nothing towards it, according to the adage, “ Every one for himself, God for us all; ” but that we have to understand an active practical beneficence, which makes the welfare of others its end: and so in wishes I may have an equal kind intent to all, while actively the degree may be carried to any extent or measure, according to the difference of the beloved persons, some of whom may stand nearer to me than others, and all this without violating the absolute universality of the maxim.
To enjoy the bounties of fortune, so far as may be needful to find life agreeable, and to take care of one’s animal part, but short of effeminacy and luxury, is a duty incumbent on us to ourselves; the contrary of which would be, sottishly to deprive one’s self of the bounties of fortune,—either out of avarice, servilely, or out of an outrageous discipline of one’s natural appetities, fanatically, —things both of which are repugnant to the duty owed by mankind to himself.
But how comes it that, over and above the benevolent wish, which costs me nothing, my fellows are entitled to expect that this wish should become practical, and be exerted into action,—that is, how can we evince that beneficence is due to the necessitous, from him who is possessed of means empowering him to become kind? Benevolence or goodwill is the pleasure we take in the prosperity and happiness of our neighbour: beneficence, again, would be the maxim to make that happiness our end; and the duty to do so is necessitation by the subject’s own reason, to adopt this maxim as his universal law.
It is by no means evident that any such law is originated by reason; on the contrary, it would seem that the maxim, “ Every one for himself, God for us all, ” were far more natural.
To deal kindly toward our brethren of mankind who are in distress, without hoping for anything in return, and to aid them in extricating themselves out of it, is a mutual duty incumbent on us all.
For every one who himself is in difficulties, desires to be aided by other men; but if, on the contrary, he were to make the rule general, not to succour others when distressed, then would every one refuse, or at least be entitled, when such a law were announced as of catholic extent, to refuse to him all assistance; that is, a selfish principle of this kind would, when elevated to the rank of law universal, be self-contradictory and self-destructive, that is, would be contrary to duty; whence, conversely, we hold the social principle of mutual and joint assistance to one another in case of need a universal duty owed by man to man; for, as fellow-beings, i.e., necessitous (by the finite constitution of their natures), they ought to consider themselves as stationed in this one dwelling to be fellow-workers to one another.
Beneficence, where a man is rich, i.e., enjoys the means of happiness to superfluity and beyond his own wants, is to be looked upon by the benefactor, not even as a meritorious duty, although his neighbour be obliged by it. The pleasure which he procures to himself, and which, after all, costs him no sacrifice, is a kind of moral luxury. He must, likewise, studiously avoid all appearance of intending to oblige the other by this means, because, otherwise, it would not be truly a benefit done to, but an obligation thrust upon his neighbour, to come under which must needs make the latter stand a grade lower in his own eyes. He ought rather so to carry himself, as if he were the obliged and honoured by his neighbour’s acceptance of his kindness; that is, he ought so to figure to himself, and so to represent the favour, as if it were of mere debt, and rather, when possible, exercise his good deeds quite in private. This virtue might deserve a yet greater name, when the ability to give benefits is curtailed, and the soul of the benefactor is so strong as to take upon himself, in silence, the evils which he spares the other from undergoing; a case where he must be deemed ethically wealthy.
Casuistics. —How far ought the outlay expended by any one in deeds of charity to be carried? Surely not till we ourselves came to stand in need of our friends’ generosity? What may a benefit be worth, offered to us by a dead hand in his testament? Does he who uses the right conferred upon him by the law of the land, of robbing some one of his freedom, and then making the other happy, according to his own notions of enjoyment,—can, I say, such a man be regarded as a benefactor, in consequence of the parental care he may take of his slave’s welfare? or is not the unrighteousness of bereaving any one of his freedom so grave a violation of the rights of man, that all the advantages his master could bestow would cease to deserve the name of kindness? or can he become so well-deserving of his slave by kindness, as to counteract and redeem the violation committed by him against his slave’s person? It is impossible that I can act kindly toward any other (infants and madmen excepted) by force of my idea of his happiness, but only by studying his ideas of welfare, to whom I wish to exhibit my affection, no kindness being truly shown when I thrust upon him a present without his will.
Gratitude is the venerating of another on account of a benefit we have received from him: the sentiment or emotion which goes hand in hand with such a judgment is that of reverence toward the benefactor we are beholden to; whereas this other stands toward the receiver in the relationship of love. A mere heartfelt, generous goodwill toward another, for a kindness shown us, even apart from any demonstrated regard, deserves the name of a moral duty; and this would indicate a distinction betwixt an affectionate gratitude and an active thankfulness for a favour.
Gratitude is a duty, i.e., not a mere maxim of prudence, to engage my benefactor to yet greater degrees of kindness, by professing my obligation for what he has already done; for that would be to use him as a means toward my by-ends; but gratitude is immediately made necessary by the moral law, i.e., it is a duty.
But gratitude must be regarded still further as a sacred duty, i.e., as such a duty, which to violate, would be to extinguish the moral principles of benevolence, even in their source; for that ethical object is sacred and holy, in regard of whom the obligation can never be adequately acquitted and discharged (that is, where the person who is indebted must always stand under the obligation). All other is only ordinary and vulgar duty. But there is no retribution which can acquit a person of a conferred benefit, the benefactor having always the good desert of being first in the benevolence, an advantage which the receiver cannot take away However, even without any active returns, a bare cordial goodwill toward the benefactor is of itself a kind of gratitude; in this state of mind, we say that a person is grateful.
As for the extent of gratitude, it is not by any means confined to contemporaries, but goes back to our ancestors, even to those whom we cannot certainly name. And this is the reason why it is considered indecorous not to defend the ancients as much as possible against all attacks, invective, and slights—the ancients being here considered as our teachers; although it were a ridiculous opinion to grant to them any superiority over the moderns, merely on account of their antiquity, either in their talents or in their kind intentions toward humanity, and to disregard what is new, in comparison of what is old, as if the world were continually declining from its primitive perfection.
But as to the intensity of this duty, i.e., the degree in which we may be obliged to this virtue, that is to be estimated by the advantage we have derived from the benefit, and the disinterestedness which prompted the benefactor to bestow it on us, the least degree of gratitude would be, when our benefactor is alive, to repay to him the identic service performed for us, or, when he is no more, to show like services to others. In all which, we must take good heed not to regard the benefit as a burden we would willingly be rid of and discharge, but rather to hold and to accept of the occasion as an ethical advantage, i.e., as an opportunity afforded us to exercise and practise this virtue of gratitude, which does, by combining the ardour of benevolence with its tenderness (perpetual unremitted attention to the minutest shades of this duty), invigorate the growth of philanthropy.
To have a fellow-feeling with the joys and sorrows of our friends, is no doubt a physical emotion only; and is an æsthetic susceptibility of pleasure or pain, on perceiving these states obtain in another. There arises, however, from this disposition of our nature, a particular, but only conditionate duty, called humanity, to cultivate and employ these physical springs as means of advancing an effective and rational benevolence. The duty is called humanity, man being now regarded, not as a reasonable being, but as an animal endowed with reason. This sympathy may be regarded either as seated in the will and the ability to communicate to one another what we feel, or as seated in that physical susceptibility, which nature has implanted in us, for feeling in common the delights or misery of our neighbour. The former is free or liberal, and depends on practical reason; the second is unfree and illiberal, as in pity, and may be called contagious, —like a susceptibility for heat or for distempers. The obligation extends to the former only.
It was a lofty cogitation of the Stoic sages when they said, I would wish I had a friend, not to assist me in poverty, sickness, captivity, and so on, but whom I might be able to assist and rescue; and yet this very Sage again thus speaks, when the case of his friend is gone past remedy—What concern is it of mine? i.e., he rejected pity.
And, in truth, when another suffers, and I allow myself to be infected by his sorrow, which, however, I cannot mitigate nor avert, then two persons suffer, although naturally the evil affects one singly; and it is quite inconceivable that it can be any one’s duty to augment the physical evils in the world; and consequently there can be no obligation to act kindly out of pity. There is likewise an offensive variety of this pity called mercy, by which is meant that kind of benevolence shown to the unworthy; but such an expression of benevolence ought never to take place betwixt man and man, no one being entitled to boast of his worthiness to be happy.
But although it is no direct duty to take a part in the joy or grief of others, yet to take an active part in their lot is; and so by consequence an indirect duty, to cultivate the sympathetic affections, and to make them serve as instruments enabling us to discharge the offices of a humane mind, upon ethical principles. Thus it is a duty not to avoid the receptacles of the poor, in order to save ourselves an unpleasant feeling, but rather to seek them out. Neither ought we to desert the chambers of the sick nor the cells of the debtor, in order to escape the painful sympathy we might be unable to repress, this emotion being a spring implanted in us by nature, prompting to the discharge of duties, which the naked representations of reason might be unable to accomplish.
Casuistical Question. —Would it not be better for the world if all morality and obligation were restricted to the forensic duties, and charity left among the adiaphora ? It is not easy to foresee what effect such a rule might have on human happiness. But, in this event, the world would want its highest ethical decoration— charity —which does by itself alone, even abstractedly from all its advantages, represent the world as one fair moral whole.
These vices form the detestable family of envy, ingratitude, and malice; but the hate is in these vices not open and violent, but veiled and secret; and so, to the forgetfulness of one’s duty toward one’s neighbour, superadds meanness, that is, a violation of what a man owes to himself.
A. Envy is the propensity to perceive the welfare of our neighbour with a grudge, even though our own happiness does not suffer by it; and, when it rises to the extreme of tempting any one actively to diminish his neighbour’s happiness, is the highest and most aggravated kind of envy, although otherwise it is most commonly no more than jealousy, and is only indirectly a wicked sentiment, viz., an ill-will at finding our own happiness cast into the shade by the surpassing prosperity of our neighbour; and is a displeasure arising from not knowing how to estimate our own advantages by their own intrinsic worth, but singly by comparing them with those enjoyed by others: from hence come the expressions, the enviable concord and happiness of a married pair, or of a family, just as if these were cases where it were quite allowed to envy. The movements of envy are implanted in the human heart, and it is only their utterance which can raise it to the shocking and disgraceful spectacle of a peevish, self-tormenting passion, which aims, in its inward wish, at the destruction and ruin of the good fortune of another,—a vice alike contrary to what is due from us to our neighbour and to ourselves.
B. Ingratitude towards one’s benefactor is, according to the common judgment of mankind, one of the most odious and hateful vices; and yet our species is so notorious for it, that every one holds it for likely that he may create himself enemies by his benefits. The ground of the possibility of such a vice lies in the misunderstood duty owed to one’s self, not to come to need, or to summon up, others to assist us, which lays us under obligation to them; but rather to support alone the calamities of life, than to pester our friends with them, and so to stand in their debt, which places us to others in the relation of clients to a patron, a state subversive of a man’s proper self-estimation. And this is the reason why gratitude to those who have been by necessity before us and our antecessors, is always generously expressed,—but scantily to our contemporaries; or why even sometimes we invert the latter relation, and show the contrary of gratitude, to make insensible the unequal obligation. However, this is a vice at which humanity always revolts, not only on account of the prejudice which such an example must entail, by deterring mankind from benevolence (for this benevolence would, when the ethic sentiment is pure, be only so much the more worth, when disdaining even this hope of recompense), but because the duties of philanthropy are inverted, and the want of love is transmuted to a title to hate those by whom we have been first beloved.
C. Malice is the exact counterpart of sympathy, and denotes joy at the sorrow of another; nor is it any stranger to our frame; but it is only when it goes so far as to do ill, or to assist the miscreant in executing his nefarious designs, that it appears in all its horrors, and presents the finished form of misanthropy, or the hatred of our species. It is quite inevitable, by the laws of imagination, not to feel more vividly our own welfare or good deportment, when the miseries or the scandalous behaviour of others serve as a foil to set off the brighter hues of our own state; but to find immediate joy in the existence of such portentous disasters as subvert the general welfare of our kind, or to wish that such enormities should happen, is an inward hate of mankind, and the veriest antipart of the offices of charity which are incumbent on us. The insolence of some upon uninterrupted prosperity, and their arrogancy upon their good deportment (properly upon their good fortune to have escaped seduction to any public vice), both which advantages the selfish imputes to himself as his deserts, are the causes productive of this miserable joy on their reverse of fortune,—a joy quite opposed to the sympathetic maxim of honest Chremes: “ I am a man, and I take an interest in all that relates to mankind. ”
Of this joy in the misery of another, there is a sort which is at once the sweetest, and which seems even to rest on some title of justice, nay, where it would appear that we stood under an obligation to pursue the misery of another as our end, abstracting from all views of our own advantage; and that is the case of the desire for vengeance.
Every act violating the rights of man deserves punishment, by which the sufferer is not only indemnified, but where the crime itself is avenged upon the transgressor. Punishment, however, is no act emanating from the private authority of the injured, but from that of a tribunal different from himself, which gives effect to the Laws of a Sovereign to whom all are subject; so that when we consider mankind as in a society (as Ethic demands of us) combined, not by civil laws, but by laws of reason singly, it remains that no one can be entitled to discern a punishment, and to avenge the insults received from mankind, except He who is the Supreme moral Lawgiver; and He alone, i.e., God, can say, “ Vengeance is mine; I will repay. ” Upon this account it is a moral duty, not only not to pursue with avenging hatred the aggressions of another, but even not to summon up the Judge of the World to Vengeance,— partly because man has himself so much guilt as to stand too much in need of pardon, and also partly and principally because no vengeance or punishment ought to be inflicted out of hatred. Placability is therefore a duty owed by man to man, which, however, is not to be confounded with a soft tolerance of injuries. This last consists in abstaining from employing rigorous means to obviate the continued provocations offered us by others; and would be an abandonment of one’s rights, and a violation of the duty owed by man to himself.
Remark. —All those vices which make human nature hateful when they are practised upon system, are objectively inhuman; but, subjectively, experience teaches us that they belong to our species. So that though some people may, from their extreme horror of them, have called such vices devilish, and the opposite virtues angelic, yet such notions express only a maximum, used as a standard in order to compare the particular grade of morality an action has, by assigning to man his place in heaven or in hell, without allowing a middle station betwixt either for him to occupy. Whether Haller has hit it better, when he speaks of man being an ambiguous mongrel betwixt angel and brute, I shall here leave undecided; but to halve or strike averages when comparing heterogeneous things, gives birth to no definite conception; and nothing can assist us in classifying beings according to the unknown differences of their ranks. The first division into angelic virtues and devilish vices is exaggerated,—the second is objectionable; for though mankind do, alas! sometimes fall into brutal vices, yet that is no ground for assigning to their vices a root peculiar to our species, as little as the stunting of some trees in the forest justifies us in taking them for a particular kind of shrub.
Moderation in one’s pretensions, i.e., the voluntary circumscription of a man’s own self-love by the self-love of others is modesty or discreetness. The want of this moderation in regard of the demands we make to be loved by others, is self-love; but this indiscreetness in pretending to the consideration of others, is self-conceit. The reverence I entertain toward any one, or that observance which another may demand from me, is the recognition and acknowledgment of a dignity in the person of another; i.e., of a worth exalted beyond all price, and admitting no equivalent, in exchange for which the object of my estimation could be bartered. The judgment that somewhat is possessed of no worth at all, is contempt.
Every man may justly pretend to be reverenced by his fellows, and he ought in turn to accord to them his. Humanity is itself a Dignity; for no man can be employed, neither by others nor by himself, as a mere instrument, but is always to be regarded as an end; in which point, in fact, his Dignity, i.e., his Personality, consists, and where he stands pre-eminent over all other creatures in the world,—not of his kind, and which yet may be used, and stand at his command. And as he cannot dispose of himself for any price (which would be subversive of his own self-reverence), neither is he at liberty to derogate from the equally necessary self-reverence of others as men, i.e., he is obliged practically to recognise the dignity of every other man’s Humanity, and so stands under a duty based on that reverential observance, which is necessarily to be demonstrated towards every other person.
To despise others, i.e., to refuse them that reverence we owe to mankind at large, is, in any event, contrary to duty: to think but little of them, when compared with others, is sometimes inevitable; but externally to demonstrate such disregard, is at all times offensive. What thing soever is dangerous is no object of disregard, and consequently the vicious is not so; and if my superiority to his attacks should authorize me to say I despise him, the only meaning such words can have is, that there is no danger to be apprehended from him, even though I take no precautions, because he shows himself in his full deformity. Nevertheless, I am not entitled to refuse, even to the vicious, all consideration in his capacity as a man, this last being inalienable, although the other make himself unworthy of it. Hence it comes that some punishments are to be reprobated, as dishonouring Humanity (such are drawing and quartering, to be devoured by wild beasts, demembration of the eyes and ears), which are often more grievous to the unhappy sufferer than the loss of goods and life, on account of the afflicting degradation they import (and impending his pretending to the reverence of others, which indeed every man must do); and they also make the spectator blush, to know that he belongs to a race which some dare to treat in such a manner.
Note. —Upon this is founded a duty of reverence for man, even in the logical use of reason; viz., not to reprehend his blunders under the name of absurdities, not to say that they are inept, but rather to suppose that there must be something true at bottom in them, and to endeavour to find out what this is; to which would be attached the still further duty of exerting ourselves to discover the false appearance by which the other was misled ( i.e., the subjective of the judgment, which by mistake was taken for objective), and thus, by explaining to him the ground of his error, to uphold for him his reverence for his own understanding. And truly, when we deny all sense to an adversary, how can we expect to convince him that he is in the wrong? The same remark holds of the reproach of vice, which ought never to be allowed to rise to a complete contempt of the vicious, so as to refuse him all moral worth; this being a hypothesis according to which he never could redintegrate his moral character,—a statement repugnant to the very idea of a man, who being, as such, a moral being, can never lose the ordinary substratum for a good will.
Reverence for law, which subjectively was styled the moral sense, is identic with what is called the sense of duty; and this is the reason why the demonstration of reverence toward mankind as a moral agent (highly venerating the Law) is a duty owed by others towards him, and, in his case, a right which he cannot abdicate. The standing upon this right is called the love of honour, and the expression of it, in one’s external conduct, is decorum, —the infraction whereof is what is called “ scandal, ” and is a disregard of this right, which may be followed as an example by others, whence it is highly reprehensible to give any such; although, to take such scandal at what is merely paradoxical and a mere deviation from the common fashion, is a mere fantastic whim mistaking the uncommon for the disallowed, and an error highly prejudicial and perilous to virtue. For the reverence due to others, who display by their conduct an example, ought never to degenerate into a mere servile copying of their manners (which would be to raise a custom into the authority of a law), a tyranny of the popular use and wont, altogether subversive of the duty owed by man to himself.
To omit the offices of charity is merely non-virtue (a fault); but to neglect the duties founded on the incumbent reverence due to every man whatsoever, is a vice. When the first are disregarded, no one is offended; but by the breach of the latter, the just rights of mankind are affected: the one is merely negative of virtue; but that which not only is no moral acquisition, but which abolishes that worth which ought otherwise to belong to the subject, is vice. Upon this account, the duties owed toward one’s neighbour in respect of the reverence he is entitled to challenge, admit of a negative enunciation only; i.e., this moral duty is expressed indirectly, by forbidding its opposite.
These Vices are: A. Pride; B. Backbiting; C. Sneering.
Pride ( superbia ), i.e., the thirst to be always uppermost, is a kind of ambition, where we impute to others that they will think meanly of themselves when contrasted with us, and is a vice subverting that reverence for which every man has a legal claim.
Pride differs entirely from “ fierté, ” considered as a love of honour, i.e., care to abate nothing of one’s dignity as a man when compared with others; and which fierté is on that account often spoken of as noble, for the proud demands from others a reverence which he refuses to return them. But this fierté becomes faulty, and even insulting, when it presumes that others will occupy themselves with its importance.
That pride is unjust is manifest of itself; for it is a courting of followers by the ambitious, whom he deems himself entitled to handle contemptuously, and so is repugnant to the reverence due to humanity in general. It is also folly, since it uses means to attain somewhat as an end, which is nowise worth being followed as such. Nay, it is even stupidity, i.e., an insult upon common sense, to use such means as must produce directly the contrary effect; since every man refuses his reverence to the proud, the more the haughty endeavours after it. But it is perhaps not quite so obvious that the proud is always, at the bottom of his soul, mean and abject; for he never could impute to others that they would think lightly of themselves in comparison with him, were he not inwardly conscious that, on a reverse of fortune, he would have no difficulty to sneak in his turn, and to renounce every pretension to be reverenced by others.
To speak evil of one’s neighbour, or backbiting, —by which I do not mean calumny, a verbal injury which might be prosecuted before a court of justice, but by which I understand the appetite (apart from any particular purpose) to spread about reports to the disparagement of the reverence due to others,—is contrary to the reverence owed to mankind in general; because every scandal we give weakens this reverence, on which emotion, however, depends the spring toward the moral good, and in fact tends to make people disbelieve in its existence.
The studied and wilful propagation of anywhat impeaching the honour of another (not made judicially before a court), even allowing it were quite true, diminishes the reverence due to mankind at large, and goes to throw upon our species a shadow of worthlessness, and tends finally to make misanthropy or contempt the ruling cast of thinking, which mankind entertain for one another, and blunts away the moral sense, by habituating the person to the contemplation of scenes and anecdotes of his neighbour’s vileness. It is, therefore, a duty, instead of a malignant joy, in exposing the faults of others, so as thereby to establish one’s self in the opinion of being as good, at least not worse than others, to cast, on the contrary, a veil of charity over the faults of others, not merely by softening our judgments, but by altogether suppressing them; because examples of reverence bestowed on others may excite the endeavour to deserve it. Upon this selfsame account, the spying and prying into the customs and manners of others is an insulting pretext to a knowledge of the world and of mankind, against which every man may justly set himself, as violating the reverence due him.
The propensity to exhibit others as objects of ridicule, sneering ( persiflage ), i.e., the making the faults of others the immediate object of one’s amusement, is wickedness, and quite different from jesting, where, amid familiar friends, certain peculiarities of one of their number are laughed at, but not to scorn; but to exhibit, as the object of ridicule, one’s real faults, or, still more, alleged faults, as were they real, with the intent of depriving any one of the reverence due to his person, and the propensity to do so by biting sarcasm, is a sort of diabolic pleasure, and is so much the graver violation of the duty of reverence owed toward other people.
Contradistinguished from this, is the jocose retortion, nay, even the sarcastic retortion, of the insolent attacks of an adversary, where the sneerer (or generally a malicious but impotent antagonist) is sneered down in return, and is a just defence of that reverence we are entitled to exact from the other. But when the topic is no object of wit, and one in which reason takes an ethical interest, then it is better, no matter how much soever the adversary may have sneered, and so have exposed many points for ridicule and sarcasm, and is also more conformable to the dignity of the matter, and to the reverence due toward humanity, either to make no defence at all against the attack, or otherwise to conduct it with dignity and seriousness.
Note. —It will be observed that in the foregoing chapter it is not virtues that are insisted on, but rather the contrary vices which have been represented; and this arises from the very notion of reverence, which, as we are bound to demonstrate it towards others, is but a negative duty singly: I am not obliged to revere others (regarded simply as men), i.e., to pay them positive veneration. The whole reverence to which I am naturally beholden is toward the law; to observe which law and its reverence, in my intercourse with my fellow-men, is a universal and unconditionate duty, although it is not to entertain positive reverence toward other men in general, nor to bestow upon them any such; whereas the other, viz., the negative, is the originary reverence owed to and challengeable from whomsoever. The reverence to be demonstrated to others according to their different qualities and various accidental relations, such as age, sex, descent, strength, or fragility, and those things which mainly rest on arbitrary institutions, cannot be expounded at length, nor classed in the metaphysic principles of ethics, since here we study singly the pure principles of reason.
This chapter, consisting of a single paragraph, is omitted as immaterial.
Friendship, regarded in its perfection, is the union of two persons by mutual equal love and reverence. It is then an ideal of sympathy and of fellow-feeling, in weal or woe, betwixt the reciprocally united by their ethical goodwill; and if it do not effectuate the whole happiness of life, still the adopting such a double of goodwill into both their sentiments comprehends in it a worthiness to become so; whence it results, that to seek friendship is a duty.
But although friendship, as a maximum of reciprocal kind intent, is no vulgar and common, but an honourable duty, proposed to us by reason, still it is easy to see that an entire friendship is a naked although a practically necessary idea, and unattainable in any given circumstances. For how can any man exactly measure and adjust the due proportion obtaining between the duty of Reverence and that of Love toward his friend? For, should the one party become more fervent in love, then he must dread lest he sink upon that very account in the reverence of the other. How can it, then, be reasonably expected that both the friends should bring into a due equipoise that love and esteem which are required to constitute this virtue? The one principle is attractive, the other repellent; so that the former ordains approximation, while the latter demands that a decorous distance be maintained, a limitation of intimacy expressed in the well-known rule, “that even the very best friends must not make themselves too familiar;” and which conveys a maxim, valid not only for the superior towards the inferior, but also vice versa; for the superior finds his dignity encroached on unadvisedly, and might perhaps willingly wish the reverence of his inferior suspended for the instant, but never abrogated, which, if once injured, is irrecoverably gone for ever, even though the old ceremonial be re-established on the former footing.
Friendship, therefore, in its purity and entirety, figured to be attainable, as between Orestes and Pylades, Theseus and Pirithous, is the hobby of novel-writers; whereas Aristotle has said, “Alas! my friends, there is no friendship.” The following remarks may serve to point out the difficulties encumbering it.
Viewed ethically, it is doubtless a duty that one friend make the other aware of his faults, for that is for his good, and so is one of the offices of charity; but his other half discovers in this a want of reverence, and fears that he has already sunk in this esteem, or at least is apprehensive, since he is scrutinized and censured, that this danger is close at hand; nay, that he is watched and observed by his friend, appears to him already akin to insult.
A friend in need, how desirable is he not? that is, when he is an active friend, ready to help out of his own resources and exertion. It is, however, a grievous burden to be chained to the destiny of another, and to go laden with a foreign sorrow. Upon this account, friendship is not a union intended for mutual and reciprocal advantage; but this union must be purely moral; and the assistance either may count upon from the other in case of need, cannot be held the end and motive towards it, for then the one party would forfeit the reverence of the other: this help can only be understood to signify and denote the outward mark of their inward hearty goodwill, without ever suffering it to be put to trial, which is dangerous, — each friend magnanimously endeavouring to spare his counterpart any burden, and not only to support it all alone himself, but, further, altogether to hide and conceal it from his view, while he at the same time can always flatter himself that in an exigency he could confidently call for aid on the other. But when the one accepts a benefit from the other, then he may count on an equality in their love, but not in their reverence; for he plainly stands one grade lower, being indebted and unable to oblige in return.
Friendship is, on account of the sweetness of the sensation arising from the mutual possession of one another, approaching indeed almost to a melting together, somewhat so exceedingly tender, that when it is hung upon feelings, it is not secure a single instant from interruption, but demands for its guard that the mutual surrender and confidence be conducted upon principles or firm rules, circumscribing love by demands of reverence. Such interruptions are frequent among the uneducated, which yet do not produce any rupture (for biting and scratching is common folks’ wooing); they cannot let each other alone, and yet cannot bring themselves into harmony, the very rupture being wanted to sustain the intimacy, and give a relish to the sweetness of reconciliation. At all events, the love of friendship cannot be impassioned; for this is blind, and in the sequel evaporates.