Chapter IV

CONFUSION BETWEEN LAWS AND PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES. CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL LEGALISM AND OF JESUITIC MORALITY

[Sidenote: _Transformation of principles into practical laws: legalism._]

Nothing perhaps better makes clear the true nature of laws than the examination of the very grave errors introduced by their means into the Philosophy of the practical: for, owing to the failure to perceive the character of mere _aid_ proper to their function, laws have been confused with practical principles, these being looked upon as laws and those as principles.

[Sidenote: _Genesis of the concept of the practically licit and indifferent._]

We always live surrounded by innumerable laws, although these are always finite in number. The Decalogue also admonishes: "Take not the name of God in vain"; "Honour thy father and thy, mother"; "Thou shalt not steal"; "Thou shalt commit no murder"; "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, nor his wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his"; etc. The decalogue or hectalogue of prudence admonishes us: "Raise not up against thee too many enemies "; "Mind your own business"; "Conciliate him who is more powerful than thou"; "Hurt him who hurts thee"; etc. Those laws that are so many and so minute easily lead to the false belief that they suffice together to regulate our economic action and our moral life, and that practical principles can be substituted for and be fully represented by a Decalogue or code, which should be the true and proper regulator of human life.

But the Decalogue, the code, the _Corpus juris,_ ample and minute though they be, are not, as we know, capable of exhausting the infinity of actions conditioned by the infinite variety of facts. Every law brings with it, as its necessary correlative, as the shadow of its light, actions that are indifferent and indifferentiable, the legally indifferent, the licit, the permissible, the right, the faculty of doing or of not doing. As an inevitable consequence of this, practical principles having been conceived as a series or complex of laws, the concept of the _practically indifferent_ must also be posited and the _licit_ changed from _legal_ to _practical._

[Sidenote: _Consequence of this: the arbitrary._]

And this is what happens. At every moment of life we find ourselves face to face with actual situations, to which the laws that we possess either do not apply at all, or apply only in the approximative way that we have seen; at every moment of life, we find ourselves without the guidance of the law, face to face with the indifferent and the indifferentiated. The practical man knows well that the laws were a mere help, merely a preparatory stage to action, and that he must in each case face the actual situation as it arises, intuite and perceive it in its originality, and perform his own action with originality. But he who has accepted the _legalitarian_ conception of the practical activity and has abandoned practical principles as useless or looked upon them as non-existent, now that he finds himself abandoned also by the laws, in which he had put too much trust, has no other guide on which to fall back save his own _will._

And will is not a guide but _the lack of a guide_; it is not action but inaction, that is to say, contradictory action; not activity, but passivity, not prudence and good, but imprudence and evil.

Thus the legalitarian conception of practical principles produces neither more nor less than the death of the practical, installing passivity in the place of activity, evil in the place of good.

The legalitarian theory, which proposes to fix and to determine with precision the true concept of freedom, arrives at just the opposite result: the will.

[Sidenote: _Ethical legalism as simply a particular case of practical legalism._]

It is opportune to remark here that moral legalism, which has hitherto alone occupied the attention of critics, is nothing but a particular case of general practical legalism, and if the particular and not the general case has been observed, this has depended upon the failure to recognize the economic form in its autonomy, so common with philosophers. But from the examples that we have given, it has clearly resulted that legalism is an error which embraces alike Economy and Ethic, introducing into both the philosophic absurdity of the _practically indifferent._ Even a man without moral conscience, or one deprived of it for a moment, if he conceive the guidance of his utilitarian action in the form of laws, loses the compass of his utilitarianism and falls into the arbitrary, which is the ruin of his own individuality. If (to resume the usual example) I impose upon myself the not drinking of wine as a hygienic law, and it happen to me to find myself at a certain moment in such physiological conditions that a glass of wine can accelerate the beating of the heart and restore to me the strength of which I am in need; and if, through faith in the established law, I forget that the law is conditional and not absolute and that the only absolute law is to do at a given moment what is useful at that moment; it is evident that by so reasoning and acting, I am substituting superstition and therefore the arbitrary for prudence and that I am causing injury to myself.

[Sidenote: _Critique of the practically indifferent._]

It is necessary to maintain against the morally and practically indifferent, that it is a concept altogether external to Ethic and Economic and devastates it terribly whenever it penetrates into it, or (what is worse) subtly corrupts it. In Economic as in Ethic, in the true and proper practical field, there is no _faculty_ that is not also _obligation_; there is no _right_ that is not at the same time a _duty;_ there is nothing _licit_ that is not _forbidden;_ nor _permitted_ that is not turned into a _command._ πάντα ἔξεστιν, ἀλλ' οὐ πάντα συμφέρει, said St. Paul,[1] in obscure but suggestive language that has been much discussed--all is allowed to us but we do not allow anything--we should say in explanation; everything can and should be spiritually elaborated by the will and receive the form of freedom. But in order to destroy that paradoxical concept at the roots, it is necessary to reach the point underground where the concept of _practical legalism_ is to be found, and to show, as we have done, its origin, in the confusion between _principles and laws._

[Sidenote: _Contests between rigorists and latitudinarians and their common error._]

In vain have the _rigorists,_ becoming aware of the ruin that menaced the theory of Ethic, struggled against the theoreticians of the morally indifferent, or _latitudinarians._ So long as neither party left the legalitarian field, one side was right against the other and both were equally wrong, Pharisees and Sadducees, Jansenists and Molinists. The rigorists clung desperately to the law, refusing to admit that it could be _doubtful_ and give rise to the morally indifferent; the law was _certain._ But the law is never really either doubtful or certain: revolving upon empirical concepts, it never limits anything with precision and therefore is not certain; having for its object, not concrete action, but only preparation for it, does not propose to limit the illimitable and so is neither uncertain nor doubtful: it stands on this side or the other of such categories. Thus the rigorists also found themselves face to face with the morally indifferent, and had no way of vanquishing it. They could advise the choice of the most painful and repugnant action, self-denial, self-tormenting; but this too was a kind of wilfulness and evil. The latitudinarians, on the other hand, could enlarge the field of the morally indifferent at their pleasure, placing in evidence the dubiety of law and its consequent impotence as a practical principle; but since they did not recognize any practical principle outside the form of law, they were finally obliged to have recourse to it, that they might have some point of orientation in the guidance of their lives. And since they could not find it in the law itself, recognized as doubtful, they were obliged to place it in the authority of its interpreters; and when these authorities were at variance, in the adding up of authorities (just as is done for the Roman jurists in the law of citation made by Theodosius II.); and since, finally, two or three or four or a hundred authorities, when they are uncertain, are not of greater value than one who is equally uncertain, any sort of authority finally had to suffice them as justification for an action. _Probabilitism,_ far from being merely an illegitimate degeneration of legalism, is its logical consequence. Reduced as they were to authority, why should one be of more account than another, when all are estimable people worthy of credence? Why should the precedence be given to Papinian over Paul or over Ulpian? If Villalobos be of opinion that a priest who has committed a moral sin cannot say mass the same day, Sanchez, on the other hand, Jopines that he can: why, then, should a priest who finds himself in that case follow Villalobos rather than Sanchez? It is true that if he make a blind choice between Villalobos and Sanchez, he becomes the prey of self-will; but self-will and legalism are indissoluble, and the more carefully he tries to free himself from the bond, the more tightly it winds itself around him.

[Sidenote: _Jesuitic morality as doctrine of fraud against the moral law._]

Practical legalism can also give rise to a monstrously absurd theory, which we shall call _Jesuitic morality,_ not because it is peculiar to the Jesuits or to Catholicism, but as dutiful homage to the most conspicuous and likewise the most celebrated in literature of its historical incarnations. The theory of Jesuitic morality admits that we can rationally _defraud_ ethical law.

[Sidenote: _Concept of legal fraud._]

That the law is _defrauded or eluded_ every day, taken in itself, is neither moral nor immoral, since it is an expedient of social strife like another, and in certain cases may be a legitimate act of war and a fraud only in name. A law held to be iniquitous should be combated openly; but if the imposer of the iniquitous law, or he who wishes to profit by it, have committed a mistake in drafting it, so that it can be interpreted in such a way as to become good, or at least better, it is very natural that the adversary should profit by the mistake, if for no other reason than that he may discredit the law as equivocal and lacking in precision and compel society to discuss it again. Who does not applaud the fraud of Portia, when it is a question of saving the life of the noble Antonio from a Shylock? And if even the _ferox animus_ of Shylock has found defenders, as symbol of the tenacity with which we must make our own rights respected, yet Portia also will always find her supporters, as symbol of ingenious rebellion against an unjust law.

[Sidenote: _Absurdity of the fraud against ones self and against the moral law._]

But what is altogether irrational and yet seems to be admitted by Jesuitic morality, is _the fraud against oneself,_ and so against one's own moral conscience. To defraud one's own conscience, to rebel against it with violence or with artifice, is contradiction, wilfulness, evil. It sometimes happens that we exert ourselves to still what is called the internal voice of admonition, the Socratic demon, or the guardian angel. This happens in the utilitarian, not less than in the moral field; when, for instance, we yield to a pleasure which we know to be harmful and had intended to avoid for that reason, and when by dint of subtleties we try to persuade ourselves that it differs from that which we had recognized as harmful. We attempt, but we never really succeed; we may be able to obscure our conscience for an instant, but we can never permanently and altogether darken it; the effort itself calls for the light that we would avoid.

[Sidenote: _Jesuitic morality not explainable as mere legalism._]

But that pretension of Jesuitic morality cannot on the other hand derive from mere ethical legalism, because legalism produces the contradictions that we have already placed in relief; it generates the morally indifferent and at the same time suppresses it; and when it has suppressed again generates, in order again to suppress it; and so on to infinity, an anxious and sterile doing and undoing. But it never authorizes fraud. Simple legalism will never justify our pretending to ourselves when a definite action is willed or when we have a definite intention, that we will another action and have a different intention; or, as they say, _direction of the intention_: the intention is that which it is and it does not allow itself to be directed at will. To obey the letter of the law with the clear intention of breaking it in spirit will never be justified.

[Sidenote: _Jesuitic morality as alliance between legalism and theological utilitarianism._]

The pretension of Jesuitic morality becomes illuminated and transparent to the intellect, only when we make the hypothesis of an alliance between _practical legalism and theological utilitarianism_; that is to say, when not only do we conceive morality as a series or complex of legislative decisions, but when we likewise consider these to be nothing less than the product of the will of God. They are not in themselves moral as such, and to observe them does not arise of intrinsic necessity; but they are obeyed as the lesser evil, through fear of worse or in hope of future advantage. In this case there is a silent struggle between God the legislator and man, a struggle between the weak and the overbearing, in which the strength of the weak lies in ingenuity, their tactic in fraud. Hence the dominant concept of Jesuit morality: to get the better of the divine laws as far as possible, to do the least possible of what they command; and when called upon to give an account of one's own actions before the tribunal of confession, or before the universal judgment, so to subtilize upon the law, that from the interpretation thus put upon it, what has been done seems to belong to the licit and permissive. God forbids man to kill man; but does he intend to forbid this, when the motive for this killing is the glory of God himself? When the slayer acts as though he were the hand of God himself and is all one with him? Without doubt, no: so that it will be lawful for the Jesuit to kill or cause to be killed his Jansenist adversary, who injures divine interests by disclosing the defects of the holy Company, which is the image of God upon earth: that killing, then, is not only lawful, but ordained. But if he want to kill his adversary, not through zeal for the divine glory, but because of the injury that he causes to the personal and immoral interests of the Jesuit? This too is permitted, provided that when killing him, though animated with personal hate, he withdraw his regard from the real motive, and _directing_ his intention to the divine glory, thus justify the _means_ by the _end._

[Sidenote: _Distinction between the doctrine and the practice of the Jesuits._]

Such is the monstrous logical product, born of the union between _legalism_ and the theory of _theological utilitarianism_; such is the essence of Jesuitic morality, which has justly aroused horror and disgust. And we call it _logical_ (or illogical) product, because we wish to make it clear that here as elsewhere we are occupied with theories only and are criticizing them alone. In practical action Jesuitic morality was often better than the theory would imply; even the Padre Caramuel, who put the question as to the right possessed by the Jesuits of slaying the Jansenists, must have been at bottom a good man; because, having almost arrived at an affirmative conclusion to his inquiry by dint of perverting the moral law, he was seized by pity and defrauded his own fraud, concluding negatively that the Jansenists _occidi non possunt quia nocere non potuerunt,_ because (said he) they are poor devils, unable to obscure the glorious brilliance of the Company, as the owl does not conceal the light of the sun.[2] And Saint Alphonso dei Liguori, who is usually looked upon as an example of that lurid morality in our day, when he set to work to stir up afresh the ugliness of casuistic in connection with the sixth and ninth commandments, experienced all the repugnance of the gallant gentleman that he was, at such a task, imposed upon him by the traditional mode of treating Ethic, as is to be seen by his declarations, exclamations, and exhortations: _Nunc aegre materiam illam tractandam aggredimur, cujus vel solum nomen hominum mentes infidi. Det mihi veniam, quaeso, castus lector!... Ora studiosos ... ut ... eo tempore saepius mentem ad Deum elevent et Virgini immaculatae se commendent, ne dum aliorum animos Deo student acquirere, ipsi suarum detrimentum patiantur._[3] If Jesuitism were also moral corruption, this was not due to its abstract theories, but to the education that it practised, which was depressing, servile, and directed to mortify the strength of the will and of the intelligence, to reduce a man to be like _senis baculus,_ a docile and passive instrument in the hands of others; and to the confusion in consciences as to the real motives of actions, which it not only preserved but increased, lulling souls to sleep with sophisms and allurements of devotion _aisées à pratiquer,_ by means of which the gates of Paradise could be unlocked, and with _chemins de velours_ on which one could mount to the sky with every indulgence. The rigorists and latitudinarians are philosophically equivalent; but it is a fact that in practice the rigorists were generally energetic and austere souls; which should not cause us to forget that the latitudinarians also, amid their distorted theories, sometimes had a lucid vision of the _complications_ of reality and felt the necessity of a morality less abstract and less disharmonic in relation to life, however incorrectly they may nevertheless have developed its theory.

[1] 1 Cor. x. 23.

[2] Pascal, _Prov._ 1. 7.

[3] _Theol. moralis_ 7, Bassano, 1773, i. 168.