Morality and Free Thought (translated from the Revue des duex Mondes) [pp. 494-513]

504 MORALITY AND FREE THOUGHT. [July,
discussed. Whether magistrate, soldier, citizen, the honest
man can satisfy all his duties without being a hero-even a
priest can fulfill all his obligations without being a saint. No
one is obliged in conscience to be a saint; no one is obliged to
be a hero. Heroism, sanctity, are states of perfection to which
only the Jlite of the human race can aspire. We perceive,
therefore, a point where the domain of duty ceases, and the
kingdom of, so to speak, superhuman virtues begins. This is
the kingdom of liberty par excellence. The men who rise to
these heights rise freely, with a liberty complete, absolute, and
meritorious to the last degree, whilst, the idea of obligation
pervading the sphere of duty, the liberty which performs the
duty-that is to say, which satisfies an imperious obligationwould neither be a liberty absolutely free, nor the most meritorious principle of merit. It is added, that to reduce morality
to pure duty, without admitting a superior and free domain, is
to reduce morality to something official, to make man the passive executor of an order, to replace morality by legality, to
take from the free arbiter its proper inspiration, finally to apply
to the conscience a military rJgime like that which Frederick
the Great established in his States. In place of a morality in
which the germ of the individual could nobly unfold, we should
have the Prussian discipline.
These are certainly beautiful doctrines, supported by very
seductive reasons. The writer who has set them forth with
most talent, is M. Franck in his Morality for All. Now hear
M. Janet's reasoning. Nothing is more interesting than to
see the dialectician with his precision proceed to the analysis
of ideas which seem to him equivocal, dissect the elements of
them, separate the true and the false, then, having weighed
everything, naturally resolve the problem. According to M.
Janet, who on this point agrees entirely with Kant, the domain
of goodness is not more vast than that of duty; since man's
duty is to aspire in all things to the perfection of his being, no
degree of goodness is outside the sphere of duty. You say that
one is not obliged to be a hero or a saint? That is too general
and too vague an assertion; it must be examined more closely.
First, what is a hero? Has he whom opinion judges a hero
while thus distinguishing himself performed the best action?
He has don a beautiful deed; could he not do one which