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Yet again, reconsidering the whole problem, I am not sure that the whole suggestion, taken as advice, is not at fault. I think it is making a melancholy, casuistical, ethical business out of what ought to be a natural process. I think it is vitiated by a principle which vitiates so much of the advice of moralists, the principle that one ought to aim at completeness and perfection.
What priest or Levite, with proper religious instincts, could possibly hesitate? Was the Miriam who chafed at her disappointment, and invented casuistical arguments to excuse herself, the same Miriam who walked over to see Mortimer, Wake, and Collins on behalf of Mr. Cutts? Precisely the same. The doctor kept his engagement, and in an hour returned with a nurse.
Abbott may accept my congratulations upon having achieved the most ingenious and masterful exhibition of casuistical legerdemain that it has ever been my fortune to encounter in my readings in the literatures of some thirty centuries and seven different languages. And I will also add that I respectfully challenge Dr. Abbott to publish this letter.
Helena, eagerly cited by Lanfrey, seems to show that some of the worst cases in the Jaffa hospitals were got rid of by opium; but the admission by Napoleon that the administering of opium was justifiable occurred in one of those casuistical discussions which turn, not on facts, but on motives.
The shadow of expiation, remorse, punishment, retribution is ever present, like a death's-head at a feast. The day of reckoning comes, and bitterly do the culprits realize that the tortuous game of vice is not worth the candle. Casuistical theologians may attempt to explain away the notions of punishment in the life to come, of retribution beyond the grave.
It may be objected that a study of the former without a study of the latter is futile and useless; that the economic teaching of a period can only be satisfactorily learnt from a study of its actual economic institutions and customs; and that the scholastic teaching was nothing but a casuistical attempt to reconcile the early Christian dogmas with the ever-widening exigencies of real life.
Upon this subject, the good man went through such a variety of nice and casuistical problems, supposed so many extreme cases, made the distinctions so critical and nice betwixt the right hand and the left hand betwixt compliance and defection holding back and stepping aside slipping and stumbling snares and errors that at length, after having limited the path of truth to a mathematical line, he was brought to the broad admission, that each man's conscience, after he had gained a certain view of the difficult navigation which he was to encounter, would be the best guide for his pilotage.
His present most pressing business was to resist the encroachments of the sacerdotal power and to defend the magistracy. The casuistical questions which were fast maddening the public mind seemed of importance to him only as enclosing within them a more vital and practical question of civil government. But the anger of his opponents, secret and open, was rapidly increasing.
His quotations may be sometimes taken at random, and may set forth, without any of the alleviating shades surrounding them in their proper context, special points as parts of a general sequence of thought. They were, no doubt, often furnished to him by Nicole or Arnauld, who hunted them through the immense volumes of casuistical divinity in which they were contained.
'We are the men who know all about Moses and the traditions of the elders; we judge this new phenomenon not by the question, How does it come to our consciences, and how does it appeal to our hearts? but we judge it by the question, How does it fit our Rabbinical learning and subtle casuistical laws?
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