“Rare? Why, I’m not so sure. But as for the injustice, you’re quite right,” he replied. “What she has to put up with is dreadfully unjust—but only from her point of view. From mine, I assure you, nothing could be more just, the proof thereof is that nothing so delights me as what I wreak upon her. There are two sides to every passion, Juliette: seen from the side of the victim upon whom pressure is brought to bear, the passion appears unjust; whereas, do you know, to him who applies the pressure, his passion is the justest thing imaginable. When the passions speak, unjust as it may sound to him who is going to have to suffer, their voice is nonetheless that of Nature; from no one, from nowhere but Nature have we received these passions; nothing but Nature’s energy inspires them in us; and yet, they make us commit injustices, but these injustices are in Nature necessary; and Nature’s laws, whose motivations may escape us but whose mechanical workings are plainly accessible to the alerted understanding, betray a vicious content which is at least the equal of their virtuous content. He amongst us who has no innate propensity for virtue, what else is he to do but blindly submit to the hand of a tyrant, knowing full well that this hand is Nature’s and that he is the being she has delegated to do ill in order that the harmonious scheme be preserved.”
“But,” I inquired of the black-hearted libertine, “when the delirium in you has abated, do you not sense some subtle, some obscure virtuous impulses—which, were you to obey them, would without fail incline you in the direction of good?”
“Yes,” Noirceuil admitted, “I do occasionally sense impulses of that sort. The storm of passion rages, then subsides, and in the ensuing calm they are sometimes engendered, and ’tis a strange thing. However, I think I can account for it in this way.
“I pause, I reflect. Is it really virtue that has just clashed with the vice in me? and, supposing it is virtue, ought I to yield and do its bidding? To resolve the question, and to resolve it impartially, I undertake to put my mind in a state of completest possible calm so as to prevent myself from favoring either of the contending parties, and then I ask myself: what is virtue? If I find that it has some real existence, I will go on to analyze that existence; and if it seems to me preferable to vicious existence, there’s a bare chance I’ll adopt it for myself. Meditating, I thus observe that by the title of virtue one honors all the various manners or modes of being by means of which a given creature, setting his own pleasures and interests aside, dedicates himself primarily to furthering the happiness of society: whence it results that, to be virtuous, I must renounce everything pertaining to my own self and welfare so as from there on to be concerned exclusively with the welfare of others; and this I must do in behalf of people who most certainly would never do the same for me; but even were they to, would that suffice as a reason why I should necessarily have to act like them if at the same time I discovered that every disposition in my being urged me against assuming such a manner or mode of existing? If, for that matter, if you call virtue that which is helpful to society, by narrowing the definition one must give the same name to that which serves one’s own interests, whence it will come out that individual virtue is often the very opposite of social virtue, for the individual’s interests are nearly always opposed to society’s; thus, negatives enshroud the discussion, and virtue, purely arbitrary, ceases to have any positive aspect. Returning to the cause of the conflict I sense when I lean toward vice, once well convinced that virtue lacks any real existence, I’ll easily discover that it is not virtue which is struggling to make itself heard in me, but that this faint voice which now and then pipes up for a brief interval is no other than that of education and prejudice. This much established, I proceed to compare the pleasures vice and virtue procure; I start with virtue, I sample it, savor it thoughtfully, thoroughly, critically. How dull, how vapid! how tasteless, how bland! it leaves me cold, nothing moves me in this, nothing stirs me, virtue makes me listless, it bores me; looking more closely at the matter, I perceive that all the pleasure has gone to him I have served and, in return, for reward, I have nothing but his distant and aloof gratitude. Now, I wonder: is this pleasure? And what a difference between this virtuous exercise and the next one of vice! How my senses, my nerves are brought alive, how my organs bestir themselves! I have just to caress the mere thought of the misdemeanor I am plotting and lo! the divine sap starts up and rushes through my veins, I am all afire, fever assails me; the thought hurls me into ecstasy, a delicious illusion spreads aureate across the whole landscape of this world I am about to conquer through a crime; in its premeditation I voluptuate, it transports me; all its ramifications come one by one under my avid scrutiny, I wax drunk upon the spectacle; ’tis a new life surging in me, a new soul animates me; my mind is blended in pleasure, identifies with it, and if now there is yet breath in me, ’tis for none but the sake of sweet lust I live.”
“Monsieur,” I said to this libertine whose discourse, I admit, inflamed me extraordinarily and with whom I was moved to quarrel only insofar as, by seeming unconvinced, I might spur him to say on, “ah, Monsieur, to refuse an existence to virtue is, so it seems to me, to hasten with undue dispatch toward the objective and perhaps to incur the danger of going astray by paying too scant attention to principles, those guideposts which are there to lead us regularly along toward a consequential irregularity.”
“Why,” replied Noirceuil, “as you like. We’ll reason more methodically then: your remarks announce that you are framed in a way to understand; I much delight in conversations with interlocutors of your stripe.
“In all of life’s events,” he went on, “at least, in all those wherein we have freedom to exercise choice, we experience two impressions or, if you prefer, two inspirations: one invites us to do what men call good—and to be virtuous—the other to elect what they call evil—or vice. What we must examine is this conflict; we must find out why we are of two minds and hesitate. There would be no hesitation, the law-abiding citizen assures us, were it not for our passions; they hold in check those impulsions to virtue which, he reckons, Nature ingrained in our souls: master your passions and you’ll hesitate no more. But how has he come to suppose, this righteous man who addresses me, that the passions are the effects only of these latter wicked inspirations, and that virtues are always the effects of the former? what incontrovertible evidence has he to prove his hypothesis? To discover the truth, to determine to which of these two warring sentiments there does indeed belong the priority which is to decide the character of my behavior (for one may be sure that of the two voices, the one which speaks first to me is that which will speak loudest and which I must heed, considering it an authentic because immediate, spontaneous inspiration of Nature, whereas the other voice only corrupts and distorts Nature’s message to me); to recognize this primacy, I say, I examine not separate peoples, for national customs have denatured their virtues, but I observe the entire mass of mankind. I study the hearts of men, of savages first, then of civilized beings: where better than in this book shall I learn whether ’tis to vice or virtue I ought to give my preference, and which of these two inspirations can rightly claim ascendancy over the other. Now, opening my investigation, I first encounter the patent opposition between self-interest and general; I see that if a man prefers, to his own, the general well-being and if, consequently, he is virtuous, he is bound to be very unhappy his whole life long; and that if, on the other hand, he allows his personal interest a greater importance than the Commonweal, he is perfectly happy, provided the laws of society leave him in peace. But the laws of society have nothing to do with Nature, are very foreign to her; hence, they should be accorded no weight or place at all in our investigation; which investigation, the laws having been eliminated from the picture, ought then infallibly to demonstrate man happier in vice than in virtue, whence I shall conclude that, pre-eminence belonging to the stronger impulse, to, that is to say, the impulse leading to happiness, this impulse must incontrovertibly be natural and the contrary impulse, leading to misery, must with equal cert
ainty be unnatural; it is thus demonstrated that, as a human sentiment, virtue is not by any means spontaneous or naturally sanctioned; it is rather nothing but the sacrifice the obligation to live in society squeezes out of a man, an infernal enforced sacrifice he makes to considerations the observation whereof will bring him, in return, a certain minimal pittance of happiness, this in some sort to offset his privations. And so, it is for each man to choose: either the vicious inspiration which, most clearly and most decidedly, is that which comes from Nature but which, in the light of human legislation, may perhaps not procure him an unmitigated happiness, may perhaps bring him somewhat less than he may properly expect; or the factitious way of virtue that is in no wise natural but which, constraining him to forego certain things, by means of others will perhaps recompense him to some extent for the cruelty he must inflict upon himself when in his own heart he murders the first inspiration. And in my view the value of the virtuous sentiment further deteriorates when I remember not only that it is not a primary natural impulse, but that, by definition, it is a low, base impulse, that it stinks of commerce: I give unto you in order that I may obtain from you in exchange; whence you do plainly see that vice is eminently inherent in us and it is so invariably Nature’s most fundamental commandment, the key to her operation in us, that the noblest of all virtues when subjected to analysis reveals itself but consummate selfishness and thus a vice. And so I say unto you that all is vice in man; vice alone is therefore the essence of his nature and of his constitution. Vicious is he when above the interest of others he sets his own; and vicious still and yet as much when he lies in the very bosom of virtue, since this virtue, this sacrifice of his passions, is in him nothing else than indulgence of his pride, either that or the desire to purchase for himself a draught of happiness more mildly brewed than the potent happiness he drinks while on the road to crime. But willy-nilly and by whatever shifts, ’tis forever his happiness he seeks, never is he concerned for anything else; absurd it is to propose that there be any such thing as disinterested virtue whose object would be to do good without a motive: this virtue is illusory. You may rest assured that man does not practice virtue save for a purpose, and that is the advantage he hopes to reap therefrom, or the gratitude that puts others in his debt. I’ll not listen to that prattle about virtues ingrained in temperament, as elements of character; these are as self-seeking as the others bred of calculation, since he in whom they find expression has no merit beyond giving his heart over to the sentiment that cheers him most. Analyze whatever splendid deed you wish and see if you do not always recognize some motive of self-interest there. The vicious individual labors toward the same end, but less deceitfully, and unashamedly, and is more to be esteemed, surely, for this forthrightness of his; he’d attain that end, otherwise and far more surely than his underhanded adversary, were it not for the law; but these laws are odious since, eternally encroaching upon the territories of possible individual happiness in the name of safeguarding the general happiness, they take away infinitely more than they confer. From this definition you may now induce, as consequence, that since virtue in man is only the second and subsidiary impulse existing in him, apart from and above all others is the will to achieve his happiness at the expense of whomsoever it may be; that since the impulse which clashes with, or counteracts, or thwarts, or diverts the passions is no better than a pusillanimous wish to buy the same happiness at a cheaper price, that is, at a minimum of sacrifice and without risking the rope; that since virtue, when rightly apprehended, shows itself to be no more than meek slavish conformance to the laws which, varying from one climate to the next, effectively deny any consistent and objective existence to this virtue, one cannot have anything but the completest scorn and the most thoroughgoing hatred for this virtue; and the best one can do nowadays is to resolve under no circumstances to adopt this much inflated and highly recommended scheme of being and conduct fabricated by local ordinances, superstitious and sickly temperaments, the vile, mean, shrewd way of the wretched, which, if we elect it, must surely make us all the more unhappy in as much as it is impossible, once a man has engaged himself in this low and shameful traffic, to extricate himself therefrom: live virtuously? do so if you are ill or a fool, ’tis the fool’s solution and the grave of the debilitated.
“I know the arguments sometimes advanced in favor of virtue: ’tis of such beauty that even the wicked are all confounded at the sight, and its radiance makes them respect it. Do not, Juliette, be the dupe of this sophistry. If the wicked respect virtue, ’tis because virtue serves them, because they avail themselves usefully of it; only the laws’ authority disturbs the excellent relations between wickedness and goodness, for virtue never resorts to physical violence. ’Tis never the virtuous man who resists the criminal man’s passions; ’tis a very vicious man who contrives to thwart them because, both having the same interests, the two men are in competition and must obligatorily clash and hurt each other in the course of their operations; whilst, in his dealings with the virtuous man, the criminal never has such controversies. Altogether possible that they do not agree over principles; but their discord is pacific, in their actions they are able to avoid giving each other hurt; the wicked one’s passions, on the contrary, requiring nothing but imperious domination, content with nothing less, everywhere and continually run headlong into those of his counterpart, and there must be perpetual strife between them. The homage the villain renders to virtue is token, once again, of sheer selfishness: ’tis not an idol he bows worshipfully down before; no, virtue offers him the opportunity to enjoy himself in peace, and this the libertine prizes. But, they will sometimes tell you, he who adores virtue takes wonderful pleasure therein; doubtless; any kind of madness can afford a little; it’s not the pleasure-taking I deny, I simply maintain that so long as virtue procures pleasure, not only is it vicious, as I have shown, but it is weak, and when I have a choice between two vicious pleasure-takings, do you suppose I’ll select the less intense?
“The degree of violence to which one is moved alone characterizes the essence of pleasure. He who is only to a mediocre extent agitated by a passion can never be as happy as he who is rent by a grandiose passion; and consider how vast it is, the emotional difference between pleasures afforded by virtue and by vice! He who declares how very happy he was to deliver over to an heir, let us say, the million which was privily put into his trusteeship, can this personage conceivably claim that the amount of happiness he has experienced is anything like as great as the joy that would be known to another who devoured that million after having discreetly liquidated the beneficiary? Regardless of how dominant the position of the idea of happiness in our way of thinking, it is however only through realities that it inflames our imagination, and however much his good deed may flatter your honest man’s imagination, his ideal happiness has most assuredly not afforded his real self as many piquant sensations as he could have experienced from the reiterated and manifold delights a victim’s million would physically have procured him. But the robbery—but the murder of the heir, do you say, will spoil his happiness? Not at all; granted a lucid mind and a firm doctrine, robberies and murders can impair happiness only in as much as they excite remorse; but the man who has ripened his philosophy, who is strong in his principles, he who has entirely vanquished the vexing and baneful leftovers of the past, impeded by nothing, he will relish an unalloyed pleasure; and the difference between our two individuals consists in this: that over and over again in the course of his whole life the first will be unable to prevent himself from wondering, deeply distressed: Ah! that million, would it not have given me much pleasure? whilst the other, tranquil, will never once pause to ask: Indeed, why ever did I take it? The virtuous act could thus give rise to regrets, whereas the wicked, being what it is, must necessarily preclude them. To be brief, the only happiness virtue procures is fancied and fantastical; there is no veritable felicity other than personal, and virtue flatters not one of the senses. Is it by any means, I ask you, to virtue that we
attach position, fame, honors, wealth? do we not every day behold the wicked prosper exceedingly, and the good languish in chains? To expect to see virtue rewarded in another world, this folly is no longer pardonable. To what end then, this worship of a false—of a tyrannical—of an almost egoistical, an always vicious divinity (vicious, I repeat, and I have proven why) who has nothing to spare now for those who serve him and who but promises impossible or fictitious payments deferred to the future? Need I mention, moreover, the danger in wishing to be virtuous in a very corrupt age? Thus to isolate oneself from others is to withhold from them the happiness they await from virtue, and, quite absolutely, better to be vicious along with everyone else than to be a good man alone. ‘So great is the discrepancy between the manner in which we do live and the other in which we ought, that he who spurns what is done and would have nought but what should be done,’ says Machiavelli, ‘seeks rather his undoing than his salvation, and hence it is that a man who professes to be entirely good in the midst of such a host of others who are not, must shortly perish.’ If there be virtuous wretches, have a care lest, mistakenly surprised to find this trait in them, we be deceived by it: fearfully reduced, they may be allowed to take what pride they can in the pathetic enjoyment of virtue, it perhaps consoles them, there you have their secret.”
During this learned dissertation, Madame de Noirceuil and the two Ganymedes had fallen asleep.
Noirceuil glanced their way. “Feeble-minded creatures,” he murmured; “pleasure-machines, sufficient to our purposes, but, truly, their appalling insensibility depresses me.” His eyes now rested meditatively upon me. “You, Juliette, your subtler mind conceives me, understands me, yes, anticipates me, I relish your company. And,” he added, further narrowing his eyes, “you cannot hide it: you are in love with evil.”
Juliette Page 18
