[21] _Science de la Morale_, vol. I, p. 332.
[22] Renouvier sums up its spirit in the words: “_Crois ce que je crois moi, où je te tue_” (_La Nouvelle Monadologie_).
The principle of justice confers upon the person a certain “right of defence” in the midst of all this existing varied warfare of mankind. It involves, according to Renouvier, resistance. The just man cannot stand by and see the unjust man oppress his fellow so that the victim is “obliged to give up his waistcoat after having had his coat torn from him.” Otherwise we must confuse the _just_ with the _saintly_ man who only admits one law—namely, that of sacrifice. But Renouvier will have us be clear as to the price involved in all this violent resistance. It means calling up powers of evil, emissaries of injustice. He does not found his “right of defence” on rational right; it is to misconceive it so to found it. We must recognise the use of violence and force, even in self-defence, as in itself evil, an evil necessitated by facts which do not conform to the rules of peace and justice themselves. It is to a large degree necessary, unfortunately, but is none the less evil and to be frankly regarded as evil, and likely to multiply evil in the world, owing to the tremendous solidarity of wickedness of which Renouvier has already spoken in history. It is the absence of the reign of justice which necessitates these conflicts, and we have to content ourselves with a conception of actual “right,” a conception already based on war, not with one of “rational right” or justice.
Right in the true sense, Renouvier insists, belongs to a state of peace; in a state of war, such as our civilisation is perpetually in, it cannot be realised. The objection may be made that Renouvier is then justifying the means by the end. He emphatically denies this. By no means is this the case, for “the evil,” he remarks, “which corrects another evil does not therefore become good; it may be useful, but it is none the less evil, immoral, or unjust, and what is not just is not justifiable. Wars, rebellions, revolutions may lessen certain evils, but they do not thereby cease to be any the less evils themselves. Morally we are obliged to avoid all violence; a revolution is only justified if its success gives an indication of its absolute necessity. We must lament, from the standpoint of ethics or justice, the evil state of affairs which gives rise to it.[23]