Now, wisdom (or prudence) is the cardinal virtue which presides over all the other three virtues. And wisdom (or prudence) tells us that strategy in war, that sometimes necessary evil; diplomacy betwixt the representatives of nations; and above and beyond all the imparting to the general body of the people only so much knowledge of the tendencies of current events as is for the common good, can have intellectual and moral justification on this one fundamental ethical principle only, namely, that partial truth is not less true, in its measure and in its degree, than the full orb of truth.
Again; where a sound intellectual and moral basis is not consciously held, man, by the rules that govern his rational nature, will not “walk sure-footedly.” Moreover, it is impossible for a self-respecting free people to allow that essential unity does not prevail betwixt the fundamental principles of both private action and public action. For just wars and politics are not the pawns of a game that has been devised and patented by the devil. Just wars and politics are ethics working in the living present, in the wider field of human conduct. And, properly understood, they are, after their kind, and must be, if they are lawful to rational creatures, as noble and as much under the reign, rule, and governance of the Ideal Man as are those solemn acts of life which have been (amongst other purposes) devised to remind man of the transcendental nature of his origin and destiny.
Just as on some wild, tempestuous night, the full orb of the silvery moon is obscured to the eye of the gazer by a dark, driving cloud.
Now, it has been said that, partly, because Oldcorne inferred insincerity of heart in Humphrey Littleton, and, partly, because Oldcorne inferred in his questioner pernicious purposes in propounding the question he did propound respecting the moral lawfulness, or otherwise, of the Gunpowder Plot, therefore Oldcorne gave Littleton an answer sounding in partial — that is, in this case, in abstract, in speculative — truth alone.
Oldcorne’s own expressed words are as follow: —
“In this warie sort I spake to him bycause I doubted he came to entrap me, and that he should take no advantage of my words whither he reported them to Catholics or to Protestants.”
Unquestionably, this must have been a reason — one reason, that is — for Father Oldcorne’s flanking, evasive reply, sounding in partial — that is, in this case, in abstract, in speculative — truth alone.
For otherwise a man of such approved goodness and established character would have never declared it to be a reason. The contrary supposal it is impossible to entertain.
But because Oldcorne’s declared reason was undoubtedly a reason, it does not follow — regard being had to persons, times, and circumstances — either from the demands of universal reason or moral fitness, that it was his only and sole reason, nor (still less) that it was his paramount and predominant reason for his action in question, that is, for his mode of couching the aforesaid Declaration in partial truth alone.
What leads to the conclusion with resistless force that Oldcorne’s alleged reason cannot have been his paramount, his predominant, reason is the simple, indisputable fact that such an aim so egregiously miscarried.