by Paul Hazard
1705. Thomasius, Fundamenta juris naturae et gentium ex sensu communi deducta.
1708. Gravina, Origines juris civilis, quibus ortus et progressus juris civilis, jus naturale gentium et XII Tabulae explicantur.
It was Gian Vincenzo Gravina who introduced the concept of natural law into history. He also endeavoured to explain a contradiction which this elusive idea of Nature inevitably brings out. Natural law is reason, and reason demands virtue; virtue excludes vice; and yet we see that vice, too, is in Nature. To that objection, here is the answer: “Over and above the general law wherein the soul and the body, so long as they remain united, participate, man has a law which is proper to himself and which is often opposed to the other. The first I call the common law; the second, the law of the soul only. The common law covers all living beings, consequently man himself. But the law of the soul, the law of reason, which consists in thinking, is proper to man alone. By the operation of this latter, man is subjected to his own reason, and, therefore, to the virtues, as though to magistrates created by reason to judge our actions and to keep watch and ward upon our senses. . . .”
Thinkers continued to work on these ideas, and their diffusion was destined to persist right down to our own day. But the end of the XVIIth century marks a decisive stage in the process, because it was then that the theory of Natural Law, the theory of the Law of Nations, and the facts were brought into juxtaposition. Incomparably less vigorous, less profound than either Grotius or Pufendorf, and often illogical, Locke, nevertheless, succeeded in bringing about the popularization of this law. Liberty, Equality! He might well have taken those words for his motto. “The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.”[6]
[1]Politique tirée des propres paroles de l’Ecriture Sainte, 1709.
[2]Télémaque, XIIIe.
[3]Pierre Le Pesant de Boisguilbert, Le détail de la France, 1695.
[4]Projet d’une dîme royale . . . , 1707.
[5]Dialogues des Morts, Socrate et Alcibiade (1718).
[6]Locke, On Civil Government, Bk. II, Chap. II.
IV
SOCIAL MORALITY
IF there was one man who, more clearly and more cogently than any of his predecessors, insisted that there was no necessary connection between morals and religion, that man was Pierre Bayle. Time after time, in his Dictionnaire, in his Réponses aux Questions d’un provincial, he returned to the charge. But it was in his Pensées sur la Comète that, taking his time, bringing all his powers into play, with great heat, yet with great lucidity, he drew up the Magna Charta of the Separation.
He began on a soft note. Atheists are no worse than idolaters, whether in heart or mind. Then, following up the train of thought thus suggested, he went on to insinuate that Atheists were no worse than Christians. Ah! if one were to say to a man from some other planet that there were people on earth endowed with reason and sound sense, God-fearing people, believing that Heaven would reward their merits and Hell their vices, the man from another world would expect to see them performing works of mercy, showing kindness to their neighbours, forgiving trespasses, and, in a word, striving to attain to an eternity of happiness. Alas! it is not thus that things happen in reality. We must needs see to believe what the spectacle of human life brings out into startling relief, namely, that between what people believe and what they do, the gulf is wide. Principles have no effect on our behaviour. Pious words are followed up by wicked deeds. We pretend to worship God, but we think only of ourselves, and of gratifying our own passions.
I know and praise what’s good, but still
Whate’er I do, ’tis always ill.
There’s nothing new about such an avowal as that. Take the Christians, look at their lives. They read devotional books, and forget them as soon as read. The soldiers of the most Christian armies are rakes and robbers. They sack and pillage the land of friend and foe alike. They don’t stand on ceremony, and, if it suits their purpose, they give churches, and chapels, and monasteries indiscriminately to the flames. The Crusades; what a splendid enterprise! In theory, yes. But what a host of frauds, treacheries, betrayals and crimes accompanied and followed them! Women are particularly devout, but how many of them slip away to meet their lovers as soon as they are out of the confessional. There are courtezans, robbers, assassins who profess a special devotion to the Madonna, and many are the stories, professedly pious, that represent the Blessed Virgin as extending her protection to wantons and malefactors, provided they burn a taper and bend the knee before her statue. The Jansenists discourage frequent communion because they are well aware that a man may approach the Holy Table every day and still remain a criminal. In short, whatever faith a man professes, it does not affect his morals or his conduct. Nay, there are some passions to which devotion is a positive stimulus. For example, we show anger to persons who do not think as we do; a great outward show of piety may be but the mask of hypocrisy.
Bayle then invites the reader to look at the matter from the opposite standpoint. If we frequently see orthodox Christians living unedifying lives, we see, no less frequently, freethinkers whose lives are exemplary. We will not now dwell on the instances furnished by men of ancient times, on men like Diagoras, Theodorus, Nicanor, Euhemerus, Hippo; on Pliny, who never belied his reputation as an illustrious son of Rome; on Epicurus, whose life was stainless; we will turn rather to the Moderns: The Chancellor de l’Hôpital was believed to have no religion at all, yet nothing could have surpassed the noble austerity of his life. Everyone who had to do with Spinoza praised his affability, his integrity, his obliging nature, and his lofty moral character. Yet Spinoza was an Atheist.
An atheistic republic; why should there not be such a thing? A society without any religion at all would be like a pagan society; and Christians, so far as their practical, everyday lives are concerned, are no different from pagans. Atheists would be just as sensitive as Christians to praise or blame, to reward or punishment. To deny that the soul is immortal does not preclude the ambition to immortalize one’s name. Finally, if a school of thought must have its martyrs in order to command respect, unbelief can boast of many; Vanini, for example, who did not shrink from dying for his atheism; and, more recently, a certain Mahomet Effendi, who was put to death at Constantinople for publicly denying the existence of God. He could have saved his life if only he had acknowledged his error and promised not to repeat it; but he preferred to persist in his impiety, declaring that, although he had no reward to look for, his love of truth compelled him to lay down his life for its sake.
The evidence being thus complete, Bayle now comes to his summing-up. “Morals and religion, far from being inseparable, are completely independent of each other. A man can be moral without being religious. An atheist who lives a virtuous life is not a creature of wonder, something outside the natural order, a freak. There is nothing more extraordinary about an atheist living a virtuous life than there is about a Christian leading a wicked one.” There are atheists in Turkey and in China who live purer lives than some Christians in Paris or Rome.
May it not be contended, indeed, that a non-religious morality is loftier than a religious morality, seeing that the former expects neither punishment nor reward, whereas the latter, with its fear of Hell and its hopes of Heaven, has always a selfish motive? Toland, as usual, goes one better: Atheism at its worst is less noxious to the State and to human society than the savage and barbarous superstition which rends asunder the most flourishing countries with division and sedition, which not only works havoc in the greatest of them, but often brings them to their ruin; which wrests children from their fathers, friends from friends, and sunders things which should be joined together by the most inviolable ties.[1]
But having destroyed morality on the divine plane, how were they going to rebuild it on the human? That was an
awkward problem.
Would they have to retrace their steps? Would they have to turn back to antiquity, and take the pagans for their guides? And if so, which of the pagans? Epicurus? Epictetus? They were mutually contradictory. Or would they have recourse to a philosopher who, though not setting forth any new or original doctrine, endeavoured to show the world what was best in ancient morality? Would they, in short, have to betake themselves to that orator of old Rome, to the author of the de Officiis, to Cicero, and demand of him the rule that should govern a purely secular existence? Long ago, Erasmus had admired his noble life, his saintly character; and it is true that “the pagan world never left us anything which unfolds in such perfection and urges upon us with such force, those generous principles from which human nature derives its crowning glory, the love of virtue, of freedom, of country and of all the human race.”[2]
But the Christian moralists were not lacking in replies to arguments like this. Those doctrines, which it was now proposed to revive, Christianity had disposed of seventeen hundred years ago. Sorry models to imitate were Brutus, Cato and the like. They were too fond of fine words, imposing gestures, and theatrical posturing. Their lives ended in bankruptcy. From that bankruptcy Christianity had redeemed the human race.
Then a wholly new brand, a wholly new pattern of morality came upon the scene; the code of self-respect; a psychological morality. It was not averse from drawing on the ancient world, which, in truth, it vastly preferred to Christianity. Nevertheless, its main appeal was to Reason. However, it was a polite, a civilized reason, not the old austere, uncultured brand; it was a reason that betrayed little or nothing of its erstwhile rigidity. “Let us forget all about those days when to be harsh meant to be virtuous. Polished manners, gallantry, the art of pleasing are now all held in esteem. As for hatred of evil, that should last as long as the world, but let us congratulate ourselves that people now call pleasure what rude and untutored folk of old called vice. Do not compose your stock of virtues from old notions which uncouth and savage nature implanted in primeval man.”[3] This new morality did not exclude the pleasures of the senses, nor did it banish the passions, provided they were regulated and kept within bounds. . . . Of course! However, this new code could not claim to have a binding, still less a universal, mandate. Duly to understand and practise it, one must be a Saint-Évremond, or a Sir William Temple, or a Lord Halifax. It was the code of the aristocrat, the exquisite, the disillusioned; its structure was frail; it meant making the best of both worlds; adaptation rather than domination was its note.
To adopt the lofty and austere metaphysical moral code propounded by Spinoza was, as we have seen, within the capacity only of the very few. How bewildering it was to contemplate the immense variety, the constant contradictions presented by the moral systems of mankind. How difficult to discover a common norm, a universal rule applicable to all men, in every time and in every place. Here, it is the custom to expose infants to be devoured by wild beasts, or to let them die of hunger. What boots it after that to prate about the universality of family ties? Here, by way of contrast, the children do not hesitate to kill off their parents in their old age. “In a part of Asia, the sick, when their case comes to be thought desperate, are carried out and laid on the earth before they are dead; and left there, exposed to wind and weather, to perish without assistance or pity. It is familiar among the Mingrelians, a people professing Christianity, to bury their children alive without scruple. There are places where they eat their own children. The Caribbees were wont to geld their children, on purpose to fat and eat them. And Garcilaso de la Vega tells us of a people in Peru which were wont to fat and eat the children they got on their female captives, whom they kept as concubines for that purpose, and when they were past breeding, the mothers themselves were killed too and eaten.” We have but to look at the world to see that morals are essentially variable. “He that will carefully peruse the history of mankind, and look abroad into the several tribes of men, and with indifferency survey their actions, will be able to satisfy himself that there is scarce that principle of morality to be named, or rule of virtue to be thought on (those only excepted that are absolutely necessary to hold society together, which commonly too are neglected betwixt distinct societies), which is not, somewhere or other, slighted and condemned by the general fashion of whole societies of men, governed by practical opinions and rules of living quite opposite to others.”[4]
Except only those that are absolutely necessary to hold society together. . . . Here there appears the possibility of a new morality; a morality with nothing innate in it, not even the idea of good and evil, but which was legitimate and necessary as carrying with it the duty of maintaining our collective existence. We are made to live in societies and we have a very proper fear of anarchy, which would bring about the destruction of our species; therefore we take the measures that are necessary to save us from mortal disorder; we embody in a system the counsels we derive from our instinct of self-preservation. For there is a lawful amour-propre, an amour-propre which maintains the life of the group. Consideration of self only becomes a vice when it threatens the group, and, with it, the individual himself, as being an entity inseparable from the whole. Moral good is not a matter of opinion like reputation, wealth, pleasures, but a vital necessity; on it depends the continued existence of the human race.
An admirable and unprecedented advantage of this system, say its partisans, is that it permits of demonstration. It is based, not on any a priori postulate, but on realities perfectly susceptible of analysis. Let us look within ourselves: whatever has an aptness to produce, to increase and to maintain our sensations of pleasure, we call good; on the other hand, whatever tends to produce, to increase and to prolong our sensations of pain, we call evil. Hence our own interest, of course, or it were better to say our very being, leads us to obey the civil laws, seeing that by observing them, we shall safeguard our property, our freedom, and, so doing, we shall be labouring for the continuity and the security of our own pleasure. If, on the other hand, we do not keep them, we incur the risk of punishment, and thence of the disorder and anarchy in which it is impossible to live without pain, or even to live at all. Similar considerations hold good in the matter of the laws governing opinion and reputation: virtue brings with it the esteem and love of those among whom we live and, therefore, increases our pleasure; vice brings with it blame, criticism, hostility, and therefore pain.[5]
But can it be said that social well-being is a matter of pure virtue? Is a community that fulfils its duty to the letter likely to prosper, or even to survive? About that, Locke had no doubts whatever. Yet it was the very thing that was called in question by an ignoble individual, a freethinker, a man who had been exasperated beyond endurance by those moralists who would insist on it that the heart of man was compounded of generosity, kindliness, and solicitude for others. The person in question was a Dutchman by birth who had settled in England, and who called himself Bernard de Mandeville. He belonged to the new school of philosophy, in that he spoke his mind freely, recking nothing of the authorities, of custom, or of any other object of respect. Daring, coarse, he specialized in the sort of startling paradox that attracts popular attention and makes a noise in the world. And a noise he did make when he began to narrate that fable of his. He had already tried his hand at imitating Aesop and La Fontaine; but this latest effort was no food for babes and sucklings.
On the 2nd April, 1705, there appeared a pamphlet of some twenty-six pages; author’s name not stated. It was called The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves Turn’d Honest. Once upon a time there was a hive which bore a close resemblance to a well-ordered human society. It lacked neither knaves nor swindlers. It had plenty of bad doctors, bad priests, bad soldiers, bad ministers; it also had a bad Queen. Every day, frauds were committed in this hive; and justice, called upon to put down corruption, was itself corruptible. In a word, every profession, every class was full of vices; but the nation was none the less prosperous, none the less strong on that accou
nt. In fact the vices of its individual members contributed to the felicity of the state as a whole and, vice versa, the felicity of the whole made for the well-being of the individuals composing it. And having absorbed this fact, the most rascally members of the tribe strove stout-heartedly for the promotion of the common weal.
But now behold a change came over the mind of the bees. They actually conceived the egregious notion of concentrating henceforth on honesty and virtue. They clamoured for radical reform, and it was the most slothful and the most knavish who were the loudest in their vociferations. Jupiter swore that this noisy multitude should be freed from the vices it complained about. He gave the word, and forthwith all were seized with a single-hearted longing for goodness; whence, in no long time, followed the utter ruin of the whole hive. No more excesses meant no more ailments; no more ailments, no more doctors. No more quarrels meant no more lawsuits, so no more need for lawyers and judges. The bees, now thrifty and sober, gave up squandering their money, and so, no more luxuries, no art, no more trade. The desolation was complete. Neighbouring bees now thought the time had come to attack. The hive defended itself and routed the invaders; but it paid dearly for its triumph. Thousands upon thousands of the bravest bees perished in the conflict. The survivors, to avoid relapsing into vice, flew away decorously to a hollow tree. There, all that the bees had left to them was their virtue, and their sorry plight:
