Morning journal and courier., 1880-08-27
Showing up the Psychologists.
Victorien sardou's Address at the DIstri-
 button of the Rewards for Virtue.

N-AO
 button of the Kew ards for Virtue.
 A Paris dispatch to the London Times of
 Aug 6 says s'The Academy distributed to-
 day it's annual rewards for virtue, and the re-
 port thereon having been intrusted to M.
 Sardou, there was the same curiosity as there was two years ago when M. Alexandre Dumas
 was about to show how dramatlst would
 treat such a-theme. M Dumas was thought,
 considering his antecedents, to be rather common place and dull, for he indulged in no paradoxes but M. Sardou, who has never glorifed vice on the stage, produced no such disappointment, for his address contained trenchant attack on modern psychology. He began by defending what some consider the anachronism of crowning the virtuous. He said: Virtue is no longer in fashion as it was in 17S2, when Monthyon founded these priZ- es. Virtue! The nineteenth century scarce ly practices it, and does not extol it at all. It's philanthropy takes different pass. It is no longer the virtuous who interest us but the criminal. A new philosophy, claiming to be based on science. sees ln man nothing but a combination of matter, and declares that his morality depends only the perfect equilibrium of his organs; and this doctrine having many partisans among medical men, 1t is not sur prising if it sees in humanity only patients. The theory is very precise Every malefactor is an Unbalanced being; his bad instincts are the effects of a morbid and often hereditary state, which circumstan- ces aggravated and for which he is scarcely responsible Theneeforth he deserves not so much anger as pity. He must be pitied, if possible cured, above all placed in an inabii- ty of doing i'll but it is not allowable to hate him. and it will soon be forbidden even to chastise him. An invalid is not punished. It might be all very well if these dangerous theories only led to misplaced pity, but they have graver consequences. From indulgence for crime they make us slide into ingratitude for virtue. The habit of contemplating the most detestable actions without horror leads us to witness the most generous ones without enthusiasm. The philosophy I speak of conducts us logically thither If the criminal is not very blamable for yielding to his instinctive leaning to evil, the benefcent man has no great merit Tn fol- lowing his natural enthusiasm for good; and if he has no great merit, no great gratitude is owed him. Let us go further; let us press to it's extreme this medical philosophy, which shrinks from no conclusion of it's strange principles It will give you to understand that in these admirable devotions, these sub | lime sacrifices, which you are about to crown, there is little fanaticism. For, after all, 1t | tells you it is not quite rational to sacrifice | for your neighbor the most precious things | you have-fortune, health, and life. Is there | not ill this something extremely abnormal in short, mania, the mania of self-sacrlice, | the mania of giving up everything, just as | others have that of taking everything? Why | reward these people? It is their happiness; they are quite enough rewarded, and we need