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.
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.
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.
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.
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.