and effects involving my welfare, perhaps completely and inextricably. Often a word unspoken is a sword sheathed at my belt; spoken, it is a drawn sword in the hand of my enemy.1 Experience in such matter brings reflection, and with it the wider observation and induction that conformity of volition to moral law is wholesome, non-conformity perilous, perhaps fatal. These good and evil effects constitute in general the sanctions of the moral law, they conserve its sanctity, ratifying and vindicating its authority, inducing obedience, that it may be unbroken, whole, holy, sacred in the eyes of its subjects.2 1 "Be the stern and sad truth spoken, that the breach which guilt has once made into the human soul, is never, in this mortal state, repaired.”. HAWTHORNE, Scarlet Letter, ch. 18. "Every word and act is a portion of the living, breathing past, that having once been is immortal in its every part and moment, incarnating as it does the very spirit of immortality, an utter incapacity to change. As the act was, as the word hath been spoken, so shall act and word be forever and forever."- HAGGARD, Jess, ch. 30. Cf. James, 3: 5-12; and Proverbs, 25: 11; also Homer, Iliad, bk. ii, 455, and bk. xi, 155. 2 "A sanction, in the proper sense of the term, means nothing more nor less than a penalty incurred by a violation of a law. If a man systematically takes every pleasure as it flies,' he becomes liable to a physical sanction, or, in other words, pain, disease, death. If he transgresses the known law of the land, he comes under the political sanctions of legal punishment. If he defies the ordinances of society, he pays the penalty for his eccentricity in the social sanction of ostracism. But are any of these moral sanctions, moral penalties incurred by an immoral agent? Perhaps it will be enough to accept on this point the answer of Mill: The ultimate sanction of all morality is a subjective feeling in our minds.'". - Edinburgh Review for April, 1883, p. 236. See Mill, Utilitarianism, pp. 41, 42. It is not infrequently "The difference between sanction and obligation is simply this: Sanction is evil incurred, or to be incurred, by disobedience to command. Obligation is liability to that evil in event of disobedience. said that sanctions operate on the will. . . . It were more correct to say that sanctions operate on the desires. . . The party obliged is averse from the conditional evil, . . . he wishes or desires to avoid it, in order to this, he must fulfil the obligation, We are told by Hobbes, in his Essay ... . § 50. Mandatory law has necessarily penalty affixed. Indeed the notion of the one seems to imply the other as of its essence; for the voice of command without power enforcing it would be mere brutum fulmen, vox et præterea nihil. Accordingly, in considering the moral order of the world, the order that ought to be, we find that any deviation carries with it penalty, or rather penalties, as its natural and necessary consequence. Let us now examine first those that are wholly subjective. Subordinate to reverence for the law revealed by conscience is the sentiment of approbation or of disapprobation, correlative to the moral judgment approving or disapproving. These innate sentiments bear powerfully upon conduct, and thus constitute sanctions. Indeed they are the original, constitutional, and primary sanctions of the law. In the pleasure or pain, by which they are strongly marked, we discover native, subjective reward and punishment.1 The moral sentiments are so highly influential that their function is often exaggerated, and they are supposed to be sanctions in the sense of being a sure index and an authoritative exponent of the true moral character of an act or of general conduct. Many a man of high culture will assert his rectitude in a certain case because he experiences the pleasing on Liberty and Necessity, that 'the habitual fear of punishment maketh men just, it frames and moulds their wills to justice.' The plain and simple truth is this; that it tends to quench wishes which urge to breach of duty, or are adverse to that which is jussum or ordained." -AUSTIN, Jurisprudence, §§ 650, 655. 1 See supra, § 4. "The intensity and ardor of these sentiments in the healthy mind, the singular delicacy, variety, and complexity of which they are susceptible, their long continuance and power to color and temper our whole experience, the way in which they break out from unsuspected depths, and in their painful forms of remorse or indignation will sometimes by a sudden upheaval rend the entire fabric of a man's previous life, or change the current of a nation's history-this incomparable vividness and electric force of the moral feelings proves that the conscience, whose servants sentiment of self-approbation, saying: My conscience sanctions my course. It is therefore important to remark that one's feelings in view of his actions do not, even in the most remote way, furnish any proof of their true moral character. This would invert the psychological order that posits moral sentiment as dependent on moral judgment. In reality the feeling of approbation or disapprobation attends a false moral judgment as readily and fully as it does a true one, having no power to discern the difference. Hence these sentiments do not at all confirm the judgment; but, on the contrary, their own justification is wholly dependent on the validity of the antecedent judgment; and this depends ultimately on a clear discernment of the moral law by conscience. Accordingly we observe that even these sanctions, though original and innate, are liable, as are all other human sanctions, to distribute reward and punishment unduly, both in kind and degree. In the class of subjective sanctions must be included the silent approval or censure of one's fellows. We are largely dependent for our free welfare on even the private opinions of each other. No man can reasonably be indifferent to the judgment that others form of his conduct, and to the moral sentiments with which it inspires them. Every right-minded they are, is the sovereign factor of personality. These thunders and light nings of the soul are wielded by that power which sits on the throne of our being."― PROF. FINDLAY, Headingly College, Leeds. "He, that has light within his own clear breast, Comus, 1. 381 sq. Cf. Milton's Prose Works, i, 217. Also Proverbs, 4: 18, 19: "The path of the righteous is as the light of dawn, That shineth more and more unto the perfect day; man feels this keenly, whether the judgment be just or unjust. He is elated and encouraged by silent commendation ; he is depressed and discouraged by condemnation. These also are potent sanctions ratifying the moral law, and upholding its authority. § 51. From the foregoing considerations it appears that the notion of violable law carries with it the notions of a gain of worth or dignity in its observance, and of a loss of worth or dignity in its violation; also that the one implies the notion of merit or desert, of reward due, the other of demerit, of penalty due. Furthermore, an observation of meritorious conduct, especially if despite adverse temptation, excites an impulse to bestow reward; of culpable conduct, a disposition to inflict punishment. These natural impulses have, no doubt, an instinctive origin and play, and so far are constitutional; but they have also a distinctively rational exercise, and so far are susceptible of justification. In view of one's own conduct, an approving judgment of merit excites the instinctive impulse to reward welldoing, realized perhaps in some special self-indulgence; whereas a judgment of demerit incites an instinctive anticipation of punishment, which sometimes is self-inflicted. Criminals not infrequently surrender themselves voluntarily to public justice, that they themselves may have the satisfaction of penance for their misdeeds.1 Suicide following remorse has perhaps often the character of self-inflicted punishment. Recompense and retribution are reasonable. It is patent to common sense that the welfare of a community as a whole, and of its several members, is favored by the steady observ 1 "I am sorry that such sorrow I procure; Measure for Measure, Act v, sc. 1, 1. 479 sq. ance of the law which requires each to respect the rights of all others; and more especially is it evident that a wrong done, a trespass committed, is a breach of order affecting unfavorably, not merely the immediate sufferer, but mediately the welfare of all, even of those whose relation to him is remote. Therefore, when a breach is threatened, all agree that preventive restraints should be imposed; and when a breach is actually made, that the offender should be punished in such manner and measure as will deter him from repeating the offense, and deter all observers from like misdeed. If the community be one of which I am a member, I am disposed and indeed bound to take part directly or indirectly in inflicting the deterrent penalty. On the other hand, if some one, who, from moral weakness or from lack of moral culture, is specially liable to temptation, conform manfully in a certain action or in general conduct to the social order that ought to be, then there is a common judgment that he should be rewarded, and a prompting to bestow reward in such manner and measure as shall strengthen his good will, and induce observers in his class to practice like conduct. This seems to be a reasonable account and justification of the common disposition of men in their treatment of orderly and disorderly persons. § 52. The subjective sanctions in the minds of observers tend to become also objective in public opinion. The judg ment and sentiment usually find expression in outspoken words of praise or blame, often in modes more forcible, as popular honors, or social ostracism. Reprobation of a wrongdoer is, in general, directly proportioned to his intelligence and culture. For it is evident, from the admitted supremacy of the moral law, that a knowledge of one's obligations, implying the possibility of fulfilling them, diminishes in so far the ground of apologetic defense. |