The Ruins by C. F. Volney - HTML preview

Part II, Chapter 3

PRINCIPLES OF THE LAW OF NATURE RELATING TO MAN

 

Q. Explain the principles of the law of nature with relation to man.

 

A. They are simple; all of them are comprised in one fundamental and single precept.

 

Q. What is that precept?

 

A. It is self-preservation.

 

Q. Is not happiness also a precept of the law of nature?

A. Yes: but as happiness is an accidental state, resulting only from the development of man's faculties and his social system, it is not the immediate and direct object of nature; it is in some measure, a superfluity annexed to the necessary and fundamental object of preservation.

Q. How does nature order man to preserve himself?

A. By two powerful and involuntary sensations, which it has attached, as two guides, two guardian Geniuses to all his actions: the one a sensation of pain, by which it admonishes him of, and deters him from, everything that tends to destroy him; the other, a sensation of pleasure, by which it attracts and carries him towards everything that tends to his preservation and the development of his existence.

Q. Pleasure, then, is not an evil, a sin, as casuists pretend?

 

A. No, only inasmuch as it tends to destroy life and health which, by the avowal of those same casuists, we derive from God himself.

 

Q. Is pleasure the principal object of our existence, as some philosophers have asserted?

 

A. No; not more than pain; pleasure is an incitement to live as pain is a repulsion from death.

 

Q. How do you prove this assertion?

A. By two palpable facts: One, that pleasure, when taken immoderately, leads to destruction; for instance, a man who abuses the pleasure of eating or drinking, attacks his health, and injures his life. The other, that pain sometimes leads to self- preservation; for instance, a man who permits a mortified member to be cut off, suffers pain in order not to perish totally.
Q. But does not even this prove that our sensations can deceive us respecting the end of our preservation?

A. Yes; they can momentarily.

 

Q. How do our sensations deceive us?

 

A. In two ways: by ignorance, and by passion.

 

Q. When do they deceive us by ignorance?

A. When we act without knowing the action and effect of objects on our senses: for example, when a man touches nettles without knowing their stinging quality, or when he swallows opium without knowing its soporiferous effects.

Q. When do they deceive us by passion?

A. When, conscious of the pernicious action of objects, we abandon ourselves, nevertheless, to the impetuosity of our desires and appetites: for example, when a man who knows that wine intoxicates, does nevertheless drink it to excess.

Q. What is the result?

A. That the ignorance in which we are born, and the unbridled appetites to which we abandon ourselves, are contrary to our preservation; that, therefore, the instruction of our minds and the moderation of our passions are two obligations, two laws, which spring directly from the first law of preservation.

Q. But being born ignorant, is not ignorance a law of nature?

 

A. No more than to remain in the naked and feeble state of infancy. Far from being a law of nature, ignorance is an obstacle to the practice of all its laws. It is the real original sin.

 

Q. Why, then, have there been moralists who have looked upon it as a virtue and perfection?

A. Because, from a strange or perverted disposition, they confounded the abuse of knowledge with knowledge itself; as if, because men abuse the power of speech, their tongues should be cut out; as if perfection and virtue consisted in the nullity, and not in the proper development of our faculties.

Q. Instruction, then, is indispensable to man's existence?

A. Yes, so indispensable, that without it he is every instant assailed and wounded by all that surrounds him; for if he does not know the effects of fire, he burns himself; those of water he drowns himself; those of opium, he poisons himself; if, in the savage state, he does not know the wiles of animals, and the art of seizing game, he perishes through hunger; if in the social state, he does not know the course of the seasons, he can neither cultivate the ground, nor procure nourishment; and so on, of all his actions, respecting all his wants.

Q. But can man individually acquire this knowledge necessary to his existence, and to the development of his faculties?

 

A. No; not without the assistance of his fellow men, and by living in society.

 

Q. But is not society to man a state against nature?

A. No: it is on the contrary a necessity, a law that nature imposed on him by the very act of his organization; for, first, nature has so constituted man, that he cannot see his species of another sex without feeling emotions and an attraction which induce him to live in a family, which is already a state of society; secondly, by endowing him with sensibility, she organized him so that the sensations of others reflect within him, and excite reciprocal sentiments of pleasure and of grief, which are attractions, and indissoluble ties of society; thirdly, and finally, the state of society, founded on the wants of man, is only a further means of fulfilling the law of preservation: and to pretend that this state is out of nature, because it is more perfect, is the same as to say, that a bitter and wild fruit of the forest, is no longer the production of nature, when rendered sweet and delicious by cultivation in our gardens.

Q. Why, then, have philosophers called the savage state the state of perfection?

A. Because, as I have told you, the vulgar have often given the name of philosophers to whimsical geniuses, who, from moroseness, from wounded vanity, or from a disgust to the vices of society, have conceived chimerical ideas of the savage state, in contradiction with their own system of a perfect man.

Q. What is the true meaning of the word philosopher?

A. The word philosopher signifies a lover of wisdom; and as wisdom consists in the practice of the laws of nature, the true philosopher is he who knows those laws, and conforms the whole tenor of his conduct to them.

Q. What is man in the savage state?

 

A. A brutal, ignorant animal, a wicked and ferocious beast.

 

Q. Is he happy in that state?

A. No; for he only feels momentary sensations, which are habitually of violent wants which he cannot satisfy, since he is ignorant by nature, and weak by being isolated from his race.
Q. Is he free?

A. No; he is the most abject slave that exists; for his life depends on everything that surrounds him: he is not free to eat when hungry, to rest when tired, to warm himself when cold; he is every instant in danger of perishing; wherefore nature offers but fortuitous examples of such beings; and we see that all the efforts of the human species, since its origin, sorely tends to emerge from that violent state by the pressing necessity of self-preservation.

Q. But does not this necessity of preservation engender in individuals egotism, that is to say self-love? and is not egotism contrary to the social state?

A. No; for if by egotism you mean a propensity to hurt our neighbor, it is no longer selflove, but the hatred of others. Self-love, taken in its true sense, not only is not contrary to society, but is its firmest support, by the necessity we lie under of not injuring others, lest in return they should injure us.

Thus mans preservation, and the unfolding of his faculties, directed towards this end, teach the true law of nature in the production of the human being; and it is from this essential principle that are derived, are referred, and in its scale are weighed, all ideas of good and evil, of vice and virtue, of just and unjust, of truth or error, of lawful or forbidden, on which is founded the morality of individual, or of social man.

Part II, Chapter 4

BASIS OF MORALITY; OF GOOD, OF EVIL, OF SIN, OF CRIME, OF VICE AND OF VIRTUE

 

Q. What is good, according to the law of nature?

 

A. It is everything that tends to preserve and perfect man.

 

Q. What is evil?

 

A. That which tends to man's destruction or deterioration.

 

Q. What is meant by physical good and evil, and by moral good and evil?

A. By the word physical is understood, whatever acts immediately on the body. Health is a physical good; and sickness a physical evil. By moral, is meant what acts by consequences more or less remote. Calumny is a moral evil; a fair reputation is a moral good, because both one and the other occasion towards us, on the part of other men, dispositions and habitudes,* which are useful or hurtful to our preservation, and which attack or favor our means of existence.

* It is from this word habitudes, (reiterated actions,) in Latin mores, that the word moral, and all its family, are derived.

 

Q. Everything that tends to preserve, or to produce is therefore a good?

 

A. Yes; and it is for that reason that certain legislators have classed among the works agreeable to the divinity, the cultivation of a field and the fecundity of a woman.

 

Q. Whatever tends to cause death is, therefore, an evil?

 

A. Yes; and it is for that reason some legislators have extended the idea of evil and of sin even to the killing of animals.

 

Q. The murdering of a man is, therefore, a crime in the law of nature?

 

A. Yes, and the greatest that can be committed; for every other evil can be repaired, but murder alone is irreparable.

 

Q. What is a sin in the law of nature?

 

A. Whatever tends to disturb the order established by nature for the preservation and perfection of man and of society.

 

Q. Can intention be a merit or a crime?

 

A. No, for it is only an idea void of reality: but it is a commencement of sin and evil, by the impulse it gives to action.

 

Q. What is virtue according to the law of nature?

 

A. It is the practice of actions useful to the individual and to society.

 

Q. What is meant by the word individual?

 

A. It means a man considered separately from every other.

 

Q. What is vice according to the law of nature?

 

A. It is the practice of actions prejudicial to the individual and to society.

 

Q. Have not virtue and vice an object purely spiritual and abstracted from the senses?

 

A. No; it is always to a physical end that they finally relate, and that end is always to destroy or preserve the body.

 

Q. Have vice and virtue degrees of strength and intensity?

A. Yes: according to the importance of the faculties, which they attack or which they favor; and according to the number of persons in whom those faculties are favored or injured.

Q. Give me some examples?

A. The action of saving a man's life is more virtuous than that of saving his property; the action of saving the lives of ten men, than that of saving only the life of one, and an action useful to the whole human race is more virtuous than an action that is only useful to one single nation.

Q. How does the law of nature prescribe the practice of good and virtue, and forbid that of evil and vice?

A. By the advantages resulting from the practice of good and virtue for the preservation of our body, and by the losses which result to our existence from the practice of evil and vice.

Q. Its precepts are then in action?

 

A. Yes: they are action itself, considered in its present effect and in its future consequences.

 

Q. How do you divide the virtues?

A. We divide them in three classes, first, individual virtues, as relative to man alone; secondly, domestic virtues, as relative to a family; thirdly, social virtues, as relative to society.

OF INDIVIDUAL VIRTUES

 

Q. Which are the individual virtues?

A. There are five principal ones, to wit: first, science, which comprises prudence and wisdom; secondly, temperance, comprising sobriety and chastity; thirdly, courage, or strength of body and mind; fourthly, activity, that is to say, love of labor and employment of time; fifthly, and finally, cleanliness, or purity of body, as well in dress as in habitation.

Q. How does the law of nature prescribe science?

A. Because the man acquainted with the causes and effects of things attends in a careful and sure manner to his preservation, and to the development of his faculties. Science is to him the eye and the light, which enable him to discern clearly and accurately all the objects with which he is conversant, and hence by an enlightened man is meant a learned and well-informed man. With science and instruction a man never wants for resources and means of subsistence; and upon this principle a philosopher, who had been shipwrecked, said to his companions, that were inconsolable for the loss of their wealth: "For my part, I carry all my wealth within me."

Q. Which is the vice contrary to science?

 

A. It is ignorance.

 

Q. How does the law of nature forbid ignorance?

A. By the grievous detriments resulting from it to our existence; for the ignorant man who knows neither causes nor effects, commits every instant errors most pernicious to himself and to others; he resembles a blind man groping his way at random, and who, at every step, jostles or is jostled by every one he meets.

Q. What difference is there between an ignorant and a silly man?

A. The same difference as between him who frankly avows his blindness and the blind man who pretends to sight; silliness is the reality of ignorance, to which is superadded the vanity of knowledge.

Q. Are ignorance and silliness common?

A. Yes, very common; they are the usual and general distempers of mankind: more than three thousand years ago the wisest of men said: "The number of fools is infinite;" and the world has not changed.
Q. What is the reason of it?

A. Because much labor and time are necessary to acquire instruction, and because men, born ignorant and indolent, find it more convenient to remain blind, and pretend to see clear.

Q. What difference is there between a learned and a wise man?

 

A. The learned knows, and the wise man practices.

 

Q. What is prudence?

A. It is the anticipated perception, the foresight of the effects and consequences of every action; by means of which foresight, man avoids the dangers which threaten him, while he seizes on and creates opportunities favorable to him: he thereby provides for his present and future safety in a certain and secure manner, whereas the imprudent man, who calculates neither his steps nor his conduct, nor efforts, nor resistance, falls every instant into difficulties and dangers, which sooner or later impair his faculties and destroy his existence.

Q. When the Gospel says, "Happy are the poor of spirit," does it mean the ignorant and imprudent?

A. No; for, at the same time that it recommends the simplicity of doves, it adds the prudent cunning of serpents. By simplicity of mind is meant uprightness, and the precept of the Gospel is that of nature.

ON TEMPERANCE

 

Q. What is temperance?

 

A. It is a regular use of our faculties, which makes us never exceed in our sensations the end of nature to preserve us; it is the moderation of the passions.

 

Q. Which is the vice contrary to temperance?

 

A. The disorder of the passions, the avidity of all kind of enjoyments, in a word, cupidity.

 

Q. Which are the principal branches of temperance?

 

A. Sobriety, and continence or chastity.

 

Q. How does the law of nature prescribe sobriety?

A. By its powerful influence over our health. The sober man digests with comfort; he is not overpowered by the weight of aliments; his ideas are clear and easy; he fulfills all his functions properly; he conducts his business with intelligence; his old age is exempt from infirmity; he does not spend his money in remedies, and he enjoys, in mirth and gladness, the wealth which chance and his own prudence have procured him. Thus, from one virtue alone, generous nature derives innumerable recompenses.

Q. How does it prohibit gluttony?

A. By the numerous evils that are attached to it. The glutton, oppressed with aliments, digests with anxiety; his head, troubled by the fumes of indigestion, is incapable of conceiving clear and distinct ideas; he abandons himself with violence to the disorderly impulse of lust and anger, which impair his health; his body becomes bloated, heavy, and unfit for labor; he endures painful and expensive distempers; he seldom lives to be old; and his age is replete with infirmities and sorrow.

Q. Should abstinence and fasting be considered as virtuous actions?

A. Yes, when one has eaten too much; for then abstinence and fasting are simple and efficacious remedies; but when the body is in want of aliment, to refuse it any, and let it suffer from hunger or thirst, is delirium and a real sin against the law of nature.

Q. How is drunkenness considered in the law of nature?

A. As a most vile and pernicious vice. The drunkard, deprived of the sense and reason given us by God, profanes the donations of the divinity: he debases himself to the condition of brutes; unable even to guide his steps, he staggers and falls as if he were epileptic; he hurts and even risks killing himself; his debility in this state exposes him to the ridicule and contempt of every person that sees him; he makes in his drunkenness, prejudicial and ruinous bargains, and injures his fortune; he makes use of opprobrious language, which creates him enemies and repentance; he fills his house with trouble and sorrow, and ends by a premature death or by a cacochymical old age.

Q. Does the law of nature interdict absolutely the use of wine?

A. No; it only forbids the abuse; but as the transition from the use to the abuse is easy and prompt among the generality of men, perhaps the legislators, who have proscribed the use of wine, have rendered a service to humanity.

Q. Does the law of nature forbid the use of certain kinds of meat, or of certain vegetables, on particular days, during certain seasons?

A. No; it absolutely forbids only whatever is injurious to health; its precepts, in this respect, vary according to persons, and even constitute a very delicate and important science for the quality, the quantity, and the combination of aliments have the greatest influence, not only over the momentary affections of the soul, but even over its habitual disposition. A man is not the same when fasting as after a meal, even if he were sober. A glass of spirituous liquor, or a dish of coffee, gives degrees of vivacity, of mobility, of disposition to anger, sadness, or gaiety; such a meat, because it lies heavy on the stomach, engenders moroseness and melancholy; such another, because it facilitates digestion, creates sprightliness, and an inclination to oblige and to love. The use of vegetables, because they have little nourishment, enfeebles the body, and gives a disposition to repose, indolence, and ease; the use of meat, because it is full of nourishment, and of spirituous liquors, because they stimulate the nerves, creates vivacity, uneasiness, and audacity. Now from those habitudes of aliment result habits of constitution and of the organs, which form afterwards different kinds of temperaments, each of which is distinguished by a peculiar characteristic. And it is for this reason that, in hot countries especially, legislators have made laws respecting regimen or food. The ancients were taught by long experience that the dietetic science constituted a considerable part of morality; among the Egyptians, the ancient Persians, and even among the Greeks, at the Areopagus, important affairs were examined fasting; and it has been remarked that, among those people, where public affairs were discussed during the heat of meals, and the fumes of digestion, deliberations were hasty and violent, and the results of them frequently unreasonable, and productive of turbulence and confusion.

ON CONTINENCE

 

Q. Does the law of nature prescribe continence?

A. Yes: because a moderate use of the most lively of pleasures is not only useful, but indispensable, to the support of strength and health: and because a simple calculation proves that, for some minutes of privation, you increase the number of your days, both in vigor of body and of mind.

Q. How does it forbid libertinism?

A. By the numerous evils which result from it to the physical and the moral existence. He who carries it to an excess enervates and pines away; he can no longer attend to study or labor; he contracts idle and expensive habits, which destroy his means of existence, his public consideration, and his credit; his intrigues occasion continual embarrassment, cares, quarrels and lawsuits, without mentioning the grievous deep-rooted distempers, and the loss of his strength by an inward and slow poison; the stupid dullness of his mind, by the exhaustion of the nervous system; and, in fine, a premature and infirm old age.

Q. Does the law of nature look on that absolute chastity so recommended in monastical institutions, as a virtue?

A. No: for that chastity is of no use either to the society that witnesses, or the individual who practises it; it is even prejudicial to both. First, it injures society by depriving it of population, which is one of its principal sources of wealth and power; and as bachelors confine all their views and affections to the term of their lives, they have in general an egotism unfavorable to the interests of society.

In the second place, it injures the individuals who practise it, because it deprives them of a number of affections and relations which are the springs of most domestic and social virtues; and besides, it often happens, from circumstances of age, regimen, or temperament, that absolute continence injures the constitution and causes severe diseases, because it is contrary to the physical laws on which nature has founded the system of the reproduction of beings; and they who recommend so strongly chastity, even supposing them to be sincere, are in contradiction with their own doctrine, which consecrates the law of nature by the well known commandment: increase and multiply.

Q. Why is chastity considered a greater virtue in women than in men?

A. Because a want of chastity in women is attended with inconveniences much more serious and dangerous for them and for society; for, without taking into account the pains and diseases they have in common with men, they are further exposed to all the disadvantages and perils that precede, attend, and follow child- birth. When pregnant contrary to law, they become an object of public scandal and contempt, and spend the remainder of their lives in bitterness and misery. Moreover, all the expense of maintaining and educating their fatherless children falls on them: which expense impoverishes them, and is every way prejudicial to their physical and moral existence. In this situation, deprived of the freshness and health that constitute their charm, carrying with them an extraneous and expensive burden, they are less prized by men, they find no solid establishment, they fall into poverty, misery, and wretchedness, and thus drag on in sorrow their unhappy existence.

Q. Does the law of nature extend so far as the scruples of desires and thoughts.

A. Yes; because, in the physical laws of the human body, thoughts and desires inflame the senses, and soon provoke to action: now, by another law of nature in the organization of our body, those actions become mechanical wants which recur at certain periods of days or of weeks, so that, at such a time, the want is renewed of such an action and such a secretion; if this action and this secretion be injurious to health, the habitude of them becomes destructive of life itself. Thus thoughts and desires have a true and natural importance.

Q. Should modesty be considered as a virtue?

A. Yes; because modesty, inasmuch as it is a shame of certain actions, maintains the soul and body in all those habits useful to good order, and to self-preservation. The modest woman is esteemed, courted, and established, with advantages of fortune which ensure her existence, and render it agreeable to her, while the immodest and prostitute are despised, repulsed, and abandoned to misery and infamy.

ON COURAGE AND ACTIVITY

 

Q. Are courage and strength of body and mind virtues in the law of nature?

A. Yes, and most important virtues; for they are the efficacious and indispensable means of attending to our preservation and welfare. The courageous and strong man repulses oppression, defends his life, his liberty, and his property; by his labor he procures himself an abundant subsistence, which he enjoys in tranquillity and peace of mind. If he falls into misfortunes, from which his prudence could not protect him, he supports them with fortitude and resignation; and it is for this reason that the ancient moralists have reckoned strength and courage among the four principal virtues.

Q. Should weakness and cowardice be considered as vices?

A. Yes, since it is certain that they produce innumerable calamities. The weak or cowardly man lives in perpetual cares and agonies; he undermines his health by the dread, oftentimes ill founded, of attacks and dangers: and this dread which is an evil, is not a remedy; it renders him, on the contrary, the slave of him who wishes to oppress him; and by the servitude and debasement of all his faculties, it degrades and diminishes his means of existence, so far as the seeing his life depend on the will and caprice of another man.

Q. But, after what you have said on the influence of aliments, are not courage and force, as well as many other virtues, in a great measure the effect of our physical constitution and temperament?

A. Yes, it is true; and so far, that those qualities are transmitted by generation and blood, with the elements on which they depend: the most reiterated and constant facts prove that in the breed of animals of every kind, we see certain physical and moral qualities, attached to the individuals of those species, increase or decay according to the combinations and mixtures they make with other breeds.

Q. But, then, as our will is not sufficient to procure us those qualities, is it a crime to be destitute of them?

A. No, it is not a crime, but a misfortune; it is what the ancients call an unlucky fatality; but even then we have it yet in our power to acquire them; for, as soon as we know on what physical elements such or such a quality is founded, we can promote its growth, and hasten its developments, by a skillful management of those elements; and in this consists the science of education, which, according as it is directed, meliorates or degrades individuals, or the whole race, to such a pitch as totally to change their nature and inclinations; for which reason it is of the greatest importance to be acquainted with the laws of nature by which those operations and changes are certainly and necessarily effected.

Q. Why do you say that activity is a virtue according to the law of nature?

A. Because the man who works and employs his time usefully, derives from it a thousand precious advantages to his existence. If he is born poor, his labor furnishes him with subsistence; and still more so, if he is sober, continent, and prudent, for he soon acquires a competency, and enjoys the sweets of life; his very labor gives him virtues; for, while he occupies his body and mind, he is not affected with unruly desires, time does not lie heavy on him, he contracts mild habits, he augments his strength and health, and attains a peaceful and happy old age.

Q. Are idleness and sloth vices in the law of nature?

A. Yes, and the most pernicio