A sketch of morality independent of obligation or sanction
 |
| A sketch of morality - Jean-Marie Guyau |
There can be little doubt that the present moment offers a fit opportunity for introducing to a large circle of English readers this book of Guyau's, which, in his own country, is rightly considered his masterpiece.
Guyau is already known in England by his remarkable and suggestive work on Education and Heredity and The Irreligion of the Future; and another work from him, on so important a subject as Morality, may furnish a much-needed source of inspiration and encouragement, at a time when moral science is evidently entering upon a period of renewed energy and wider interest.
Stimulated by the great difficulties of the ever-increasing complexity of life, under circumstances which render many of the old creeds and religions incompetent to grapple with the problems demanding solutions; distressed by mental chaos which threatens to retard all progressive efforts by fitful reactions; the lovers of freedom and social amelioration turn to Morality for the support and the strength-giving quality without which life is doomed to decay and destruction.
But, in order to make the influence of morality a living reality, instead of shadowy and conventional dogma, the study of its principles should be approached with a deep. reverence for human nature and truth, and a broad-minded sympathy, which alone can achieve success in so arduous an undertaking. In this sphere of moral science, which includes all that is of most vital importance to man, the author of Morality Independent of Sanction or Obligation is a master spirit. He merits the study of all men and women who look for the development of the highest and best from germs which lie hidden in the human breast itself.
That Guyau is one of ourselves, born in the central life of the nineteenth century, gives all the more significance and actuality to his thoughts, and fills his writings with a convincing interest that the utterances of authors belonging to earlier times cannot possess in the same degree and intensity.
For each generation, the hope and the light of the future must necessarily spring from its own present. The past may give us the eternal essence of human thought, which has a historical and unquestionable value; but the present alone can fully express its own needs, capacities, and forces.
The present must work out its own salvation. Neither Socrates nor Christ, neither Aristotle nor Buddha, neither Luther nor Kant, can give us the keys to the problems of an age which was unknown to them. Our springs of life, the energies of our new birth, take their rise in the most highly-gifted minds of our own era.
And among these finely-organized and superior natures, Guyau stands one of the foremost. Born in 1856, a typical offspring of the second part of our century, we find in him a personality specially endued with a genius for reflecting the intellectual and moral evolution of the age. These are the very doubts and negations which we experience, and it is the very hopes and ideals translator's preface. ix which shall lift us out of the depths of mechanical materialism. Exclusive attention to physical and external phenomena has occupied our minds and shut us out from the sphere of reflective and emotional activity, which is none other than the sphere of morality.
Guyau, in no way hampered by an antiquated education, found himself, from the very beginning of his intellectual life, at the point which even now a great many enlightened minds only reach after a severe struggle. He possessed the great advantage of which Emerson speaks in his essay on "Worship ": " For a great nature it is a happiness to escape a religious training — the religion of character is so apt to be invaded." We should like to add: Religion of thought — that is to say, the loyalty to the truth — is so apt to be lost. From this danger Guyau escaped, his first and only religion having been the idealism of Plato and Kant.
These were the masters from whose lofty conceptions he gradually evolved the standpoint whence the royal road to human self-direction lies open before his vision and his efforts. And his nature was such as to unite the qualities of the thinker and moralist with those of the artist and poet. While acting as the mirror of all the conflicting tendencies and characteristics of his age, it remained a witness to the higher unity which underlies all existence.