154. In nothing does Hobbes deserve | natural to presume that Hobbes, who is more credit than in having set an exam- said to have been employed by Bacon in ple of close observation in the philosophy translating some of his works into Latin, of the human mind. If he errs, he errs had at least been led by him to the induclike a man who goes a little out of the tive process he has more than any other right track, not like one who has set out employed. But he has seldom mentioned in a wrong one. The eulogy of Stewart his predecessor's name; and, indeed, his on Descartes, that he was the father of mind was of a different stamp ; less exthis experimental psychology, cannot be cursive, less quick in discovering analostrictly wrested from him by Hobbes, in- gies, and less fond of reasoning from them, asmuch as the publications of the former but more close, perhaps more patient, and are of an earlier date; but we may fairly more apt to follow up a predominant idea, say that the latter began as soon, and which sometimes become one of the prosecuted his inquiries farther. It seems "idola specûs" that deceive him.

CHAPTER IV.

HISTORY OF MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, AND OF JURISPRUDENCE, FROM 1600 TO 1650. SECT. I. ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.

Casuists of the Roman Church-Suarez on Moral
Law-Selden.-Charron.-La Mothe le Vayer.
-Bacon's Essays.--Feltham.-Browne's Religio
Medici.-Other Writers.

1. IN traversing so wide a field as moral and political philosophy, we must still endeavour to distribute the subject according to some order of subdivision, so far, at least, as the contents of the books themselves which come before us will permit. And we give the first place to those which, relating to the moral law both of nature and revelation, connect the proper subject of the present chapter with that of the second and third.

writers.

2. We meet here a concourse of volCasuistical umes, occupying no small space in old libraries, the writings of the casuists, chiefly within the Romish Church. None, perhaps, in the whole compass of literature are more neglected by those who do not read with what we may call a professional view; but to the ecclesiastics of that communion they have still a certain value, though far less than when they were first written. The most vital discipline of that church, the secret of the power of its priesthood, the source Importance of most of the good and evil it of confession. can work, is found in the confessional. It is there that the keys are kept; it is there that the lamp burns, whose rays diverge to every portion of human life. No church that has relinquished this prerogative can ever establish a permanent dominion over mankind; none that retains it in effective use can lose the hope or the prospect of being their ruler. 3. It is manifest that in the common

course of this rite, no particular Necessity of difficulty will arise, nor is the rules for the confessor likely to weigh in confessor. golden scales the scruples or excuses of ordinary penitents. But peculiar circumstances might be brought before him, wherein there would be a necessity for possessing some rule, lest, by sanctioning the guilt of the party before him, he should incur as much of his own. Treatises, therefore, of casuistry were written as guides to the confessor, and became the textbooks in every course of ecclesiastical education. These were commonly digested in a systematic order, and, what is the unfailing consequence of system, or, rather, almost part of its definition, spread into minute ramifications, and aimed at comprehending every possible emergency. Casuistry is itself allied to jurisprudence, especially to that of the canon law; and it was natural to transfer the subtlety of distinction and copiousness of partition usual with the jurists, to a science which its professors were apt to treat upon very similar principles.

literature.

4. The older theologians seem, like the Greek and Roman moralists, Increase of when writing systematically, to casuistical have made general morality their subject, and casuistry but their illustration. Among the monuments of their ethical philosophy, the Secunda Secundæ of Aquinas is the most celebrated. Treatises of casuistry, which is the expansion and application of ethics, may be found both before and during the sixteenth century; and while the confessional was actively converted to so powerful an engine, they could not conveniently be wanting. Casuistry, indeed, is not much required by

tive and ob

66

the moral position of the penitent to the judgment of the confessor by any process of language so insuperable, that the most

6. But, though past actions are the primary subject of auricular con- Directory fession, it was a necessary con- office of the sequence that the priest would confessor. be frequently called upon to advise as to the future, to bind or loose the will in incomplete or meditated lines of conduct. And as all, without exception, must come before his tribunal, the rich, the noble, the counsellors of princes, and princes themselves, were to reveal their designs, to expound their uncertainties, to call, in effect, for his sanction in all they might have to do, to secure themselves against transgression by shifting the responsibility on his head, That this tremendous authority of direction, distinct from the rite of penance, though immediately springing from it, should have produced a no more overwhelming influence of the priesthood than it has actually done, great as that has been, can only be ascribed to the reaction of human inclinations, which will not be controlled, and of human reason, which exerts a silent force against the au

the Church in an ignorant age; but the sixteenth century was not an age of ignorance. Yet it is not till about the end of that period that we find casuistical lit-acute understanding might be foiled in the erature burst out, so to speak, with a task of bringing home a conviction of profusion of fruit. Uninterruptedly af- guilt to the self-deceiving sinner. Again, terward," says Eichhorn," through the he might aggravate needless scruples, or whole seventeenth century, the moral disturb the tranquil repose of innocence. and casuistical literature of the Church of Rome was immensely rich; and it caused a lively and extensive movement in a province which had long been at peace. The first impulse came from the Jesuits, to whom the Jansenists opposed themselves. We must distinguish from both the theological moralists, who remained faithful to their ancient teaching."* 5. We may be blamed, perhaps, for obDistraction truding a pedantic terminology, of subjec- if we make the most essential jective mo- distinction in morality, and one rality. for want of which, more than any other, its debatable controversies have arisen, that between the subjective and objective rectitude of actions; in clearer language, between the provinces of conscience and of reason; between what is well meant and what is well done. The chief business of the priest is naturally with the former. The walls of the confessional are privy to the whispers of self-accusing guilt. No doubt can ever arise as to the subjective character of actions which the conscience has condemn-thority it acknowledges. ed, and for which the penitent seeks absolution. Were they even objectively lawful, they are sins in him, according to the unanimous determination of casuists. But, though what the conscience reclaims against is necessarily wrong, relatively to the agent, it does not follow that what it may fail to disapprove is innocent. Choose whatever theory we may please as to the moral standard of actions, they must have an objective rectitude of their own, independently of their agent, without which there could be no distinction of right and wrong, or any scope for the dictates of conscience. The science of ethics, as a science, can only be conversant with objective morality. Casuistry is the instrument of applying this science, which, like every other, is built on reasoning, to the moral nature and volition of man. It rests for its validity on the great principle that it is our duty to know, as far as lies in us, what is right, as well as to do what we know to be such. But its application was beset with obstacles; the extenuations of ignorance and error were so various, the difficulty of representing

* Geschichte der Cultur, vol. vi., part i., p. 390.

7. In the directory business of the confessional, far more than in the Difficulties penitential, the priest must strive of casuistry. to bring about that union between subjective and objective rectitude in which the perfection of a moral act consists, without which in every instance, according to their tenets, some degree of sinfulness, some liability to punishment remains, and which must at least be demanded from those who have been made acquainted with their duty. But when he came from the broad lines of the moral law, from the decalogue and the Gospel, or even from the ethical systems of theology, to the indescribable variety of circumstance which his penitents had to recount, there arose a multitude of problems, and such as, perhaps, would most command his attention, when they involved the practice of the great, to which he might hesitate to apply an unbending rule. The questions of casuistry, like those of jurisprudence, were often found to turn on the great and ancient doubt of both sciences, whether we should abide by the letter or a general law, or let in an equitable interpretation of its spirit. The consulting party would be apt to plead for the one,

the guide of conscience would most se-ingly numerous; some of them belong to curely adhere to the other. But he might the last twenty years of the sixteenth, but also perceive the severity of those rules a far greater part to the following century. of obligation which conduce, in the particular instance, to no apparent end, or even defeat their own principle. Hence there arose two schools of casuistry, first in the practice of confession, and afterward in the books intended to assist it; one strict and uncomplying, the other more indulgent and flexible to circumstances.

10. The Jesuits were prone, for several reasons, to embrace the laxer Favoured by theories of obligation. They the Jesuits, were less tainted than the old monastic orders with that superstition which had flowed into the Church from the East, the meritoriousness of self-inflicted suffering for its own sake. They embraced a life of toil and danger, but not of habitual privation and pain. Dauntless in death and torture, they shunned the mechanical asceticism of the convent. And, secondly, their eyes were bent on a great end, the good of the Catholic Church, which they identified with that of their own order. It almost invariably happens, that men who have the good of mankind at heart, and actively prosecute it, become embarrassed, at some time or other, by the conflict of particular duties with the best method of pro

8. The characteristics of these systems Strict and were displayed in almost the lax schemes whole range of morals. They of it. were, however, chiefly seen in the rules of veracity, and especially in promissory obligations. According to the fathers of the Church, and to the rigid casuists in general, a lie was never to be uttered, a promise was never to be broken. The precepts especially of revelation, notwithstanding their brevity and figurativeness, were held complete and literal. Hence, promises obtained by mis-moting their object. An unaccommodatake, fraud, or force, and, above all, gratuitous vows, where God was considered as the promisee, however lightly made, or become intolerably onerous by supervenient circumstances, were strictly to be fulfilled, unless the dispensing power of the Church might sometimes be sufficient to release them. Besides the respect due to moral rules, and especially those of Scripture, there had been, from early times, in the Christian Church, a strong disposition to the ascetic scheme of religious morality; a prevalent notion of the intrinsic meritoriousness of voluntary selfdenial, which discountenanced all regard in man to his own happiness, at least in this life, as a sort of flinching from the discipline of suffering. And this had, doubtless, its influence upon the severe casuists.

9. But there had not been wanting those Convenience who, whatever course they might of the latter. pursue in the confessional, found the convenience of an accommodating morality in the secular affairs of the Church. Oaths were broken, engagements entered into without faith, for the ends of the clergy, or of those whom they favoured in the struggles of the world. And some of the ingenious sophistry, by which these breaches of plain rules are usually defended, was not unknown before the Reformation. But casuistical writings at that time were comparatively few. The Jesuits have the credit of first rendering public a scheme of false morals, which has been denominated from them, and enhanced the obloquy that overwhelmed their order. Their volumes of casuistry were exceedVOL. II.-Q

ting veracity, an unswerving good faith, will often appear to stand, or stand really, in the way of their ends; and hence the little confidence we repose in enthusiasts, even when, in a popular mode of speaking, they are most sincere, that is, most convinced of the rectitude of their aim.

11. The course prescribed by Loyola led his disciples, not to solitude, but The causes to the world. They became the of this. associates and counsellors, as well as the confessors of the great. They had to wield the powers of the earth for the service of Heaven. Hence, in confession itself, they were often tempted to look beyond the penitent, and to guide his conscience rather with a view to his usefulness than his integrity. In questions of morality, to abstain from action is generally the means of innocence, but to act is indispensable for positive good. Thus their casuistry had a natural tendency to become more objective, and to entangle the responsibility of personal conscience in an inextricable maze of reasoning. They had also to retain their influence over men not wholly submissive to religious control, nor ready to abjure the pleasant paths in which they trod; men of the court and the city, who might serve the Church though they did not adorn it, and for whom it was necessary to make some compromise in furtherance of the main design.

12. It must also be fairly admitted that the rigid casuists went to ex- Extravagance travagant lengths. Their de- of the strict cisions were often not only harsh, but unsatisfactory; the reason de

casuists.

manded in vain a principle of their iron law; and the common sense of mankind imposed the limitations, which they were incapable of excluding by anything better than a dogmatic assertion. Thus, in the cases of promissory obligation, they were compelled to make some exceptions, and these left it open to rational inquiry whether more might not be found. They diverged unnecessarily, as many thought, from the principles of jurisprudence; for the jurists built their determinations, or professed to do so, on what was just and equitable among men; and though a distinction, frequently very right, was taken between the forum exterius and interius, the provinces of jurisprudence and casuistry, yet the latter could not, in these questions of mutual obligation, rest upon wholly different ground from the former.

13. The Jesuits, however, fell rapidly Opposite into the opposite extreme. Their faults of subtlety in logic, and great ingenuJesuits. ity in devising arguments, were employed in sophisms that undermined the foundations of moral integrity in the heart. They warred with these arms against the conscience which they were bound to protect. The offences of their casuistry, as charged by their adversaries, are very multifarious. One of the most celebrated is the doctrine of equivocation; the innocence of saying that which is true in the sense meant by the speaker, though he is aware that it will be otherwise understood. Another is that of what was called probability; according to which it is lawful, in doubtful problems of morality, to take the course which appears to ourselves least likely to be right, provided any one casuistical writer of good repute has approved it. The multiplicity of books, and want of uniformity in their decisions, made this a broad path for the conscience. In the latter instance, as in many others, the subjective nature of moral obligation was lost sight of; and to this the scientific treatment of casuistry inevitably contributed.

of these, it must be owned, belong to the rite of auricular confession itself, as managed in the Church of Rome, though they give scandal by their publication and apparent excess beyond the necessity of the case. The Summa Casuum Conscientiæ of Toletus, a Spanish Jesuit and cardinal, which, though published in 1602, belongs to the sixteenth century, and the casuistical writings of Less, Busenbaum, and Escobar, may just be here mentioned. The Medulla Casuum Conscientiæ of the second (Munster, 1645) went through fiftytwo editions, the Theologia Moralis of the last (Lyon, 1646) through forty. Of the opposition excited by_the_laxity in moral rules ascribed to the Jesuits, though it began in some manner during this period, we shall have more to say in the next.

15. Suarez of Granada, by far the greatest man in the department of Suarez, moral philosophy whom the or- De Legibus. der of Loyola produced in this age, or perhaps in any other, may not improbably have treated of casuistry in some part of his numerous volumes. We shall, however, gladly leave this subject to bring before the reader a large treatise of Suarez, on the principles of natural law, as well as of all positive jurisprudence. This is entitled, Tractatus de legibus ac Deo legislatore in decem libros distributus, utriusque fori hominibus non minus utilis, quam necessarius. It might, with no great impropriety perhaps, be placed in any of the three sections of this chapter, relating not only to moral philosophy, but to politics in some degree, and to jurisprudence.

16. Suarez begins by laying down the position that all legislative, as Titles of his well as all paternal, power is de- ten books. rived from God, and that the authority of every law resolves itself into his. For either the law proceeds immediately from God, or, if it be human, it proceeds from man as his vicar and minister. The titles of the ten books of this large treatise are as follows: 1. On the nature of law in 14. Productions so little regarded as general, and on its causes and consequenthose of the Jesuitical casuists cannot ces: 2. On eternal natural law, and that be dwelt upon. Thomas Sanchez, of Cor- of nations: 3. On positive human law dova, is author of a large treatise on mat- in itself, considered relatively to human rimony, published in 1592; the best, as nature, which is also called civil law: 4. far as the canon law is concerned, which On positive ecclesiastical law: 5. On the has yet been published. But in the casuis- differences of human laws, and especially tical portion of this work the most extra- of those that are penal, or in the nature ordinary indecencies occur, such as have of penal: 6. On the interpretation, the alconsigned it to general censure.* Some teration, and the abolition of human laws : Bayle, art, Sanchez, expatiates on this, and 7. On unwritten law, which is called cuscondemns the Jesuit; Catilina Cethegum. The tom; 8. On those human laws which are later editions of Sanchez De Matrimonio are castigate.

* Ranke, die Päpste, vol. iii.