"It was a proud day for the Carthaginian general [Footnote 12] when he stood as master on the ground of Himera; enabled to fulfil the duty, and satisfy the exigencies, of revenge for his slain grandfather. Tragical indeed was the consummation of this long-cherished purpose…. All the male captives, 3,000 in number, were conveyed to the precise spot where Hamilkar had been slain, and there put to death with indignity, as an expiatory satisfaction to his lost honour. No man can read the account of this wholesale massacre without horror and repugnance. Yet we cannot doubt, that among all the acts of Hannibal's life, this was the one in which he most gloried; that it realized in the most complete and emphatic manner, his concurrent aspirations of filial sentiment, religious obligation, and honour as a patriot; [Footnote 13] that to show mercy would have been regarded as a mean dereliction of these esteemed impulses…. Doubtless, the feelings of Hannibal were cordially shared, and the plenitude of his revenge envied, by the army around him. So different, sometimes so totally contrary, is the tone and direction of the moral sentiments, among different ages and nations."
[Footnote 12: Hannibal, B.C. 409, therefore not the victor of Cannae.]
[Footnote 13: Italics mine.]
We may supplement this story by another from Herodotus (iii., 38):
"Darius, after he had got the kingdom, called into his presence certain Greeks who were at hand, and asked, 'What he should pay them to eat the bodies of their fathers when they died.' To which they answered, that there was no sum that would tempt them to do such a thing. He then sent for certain Indians, of the race called Callatians, men who eat their fathers, and asked them, while the Greeks were standing by, and knew by the aid of an interpreter all that was said—'What he should give them to burn the bodies of their fathers, at their decease?' The Indians exclaimed aloud, and bade him forbear such language. Such is the way of men; and Pindar was right in my judgment, when he said, 'Convention is king over all.'"
2. If any one held that the natural law of conscience was natural in the same way as the sense of temperature: if one held to the existence of a Moral Sense in all men, settling questions of right and wrong, as surely as all men know sweet things from bitter by tasting them: these stories, and they could be multiplied by hundreds, abundantly suffice to confute the error. There is no authentic copy of the moral law, printed, framed, and hung up by the hand of Nature, in the inner sanctuary of every human heart. Man has to learn his duties as he learns the principles of health, the laws of mechanics, the construction and navigation of vessels, the theorems of geometry, or any other art or science. And he is just as likely to go wrong, and has gone wrong as grievously, in his judgments on moral matters as on any other subject of human knowledge. The knowledge of duties is natural (as explained in the previous section, n. 2), not because it comes spontaneously, but because it is necessary to our nature for the development and perfection of the same. Thus a man ought, so far as he can, to learn his duties: but we cannot say of a man, as such, that he ought to learn geometry or navigation. If a man does not know his duties, he is excused by ignorance, according to the rules under which ignorance excuses (c. iii., s. i., nn. 3-5, p. 27). If a man does not know navigation, there is no question of excuse for what he was not bound to learn, but he may suffer loss by his want of knowledge.
3. It was furthermore observed above (l.c.), that the natural law was so called as being found expressed more or less perfectly in the minds of all men, and therefore being a proper element of human nature. It remains to see how much this universal natural expression amounts to. That is at once apparent from our previous explanation of synderesis. (s. i., nn. 5, seq., p. 139.) Not a complete and accurate knowledge of the natural law is found in all minds, far from it; but synderesis is found in all. This is apparent from Mr. Grote's own phrases, "aspirations of filial sentiment," "religious obligation," "honour as a patriot," Parents are to be honoured, we must do our duty to God and to our country: there Hannibal was at one with the most approved teachers of morality. Callatian and Greek agreed in the recognition of the commandment, Honour thy father and thy mother. That was the major premiss of them both, in the moral syllogism (s. i., n. 3, p. 135), which ruled their respective consciences. Their difference was upon the applying minor, as it is called; the Greek regarding the dissolution of the body into its elements by fire, and so saving it from corruption, as the best means of honouring the dead: the Callatians preferring to raise their parents as it were to life again, by making them the food of their living children. Hannibal, again, had before his mind the grand principle of retribution, that wrongdoing must be expiated by suffering. But he had not heard the words "Vengeance is Mine;" and mistakenly supposed it to rest with himself to appoint and carry out his own measure of revenge. Whether he was quite so invincibly ignorant on this point, as Grote represents, is open to doubt. At any rate he was correct in the primary moral judgment on which he proceeded.
Reading.—St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 94, art. 6.
SECTION III.—Of the immutability of the Natural Law.
1. Besides printing, many methods are now in vogue for multiplying copies of a document. Commonly the document is written out with special ink on special paper: the copy thus used is called a stencil; and from it other copies are struck off. We will suppose the stencil to be that page of the Eternal Law written in the Mind of God, which regulates human acts, technically so called. The copies struck off from that stencil will be the Natural Law in the mind of this man and of that. Now, as all who are familiar with copying processes know too well, it happens at times that a copy comes out very faint, and in parts not at all. These faint and partial copies represent the Natural Law as it is imperfectly developed in the minds of many men. In this sense, and as we may say subjectively, the Natural Law is mutable, very mutable indeed. Still, as no one would say that the document had been altered, because some copies of it were bad, so it is not strictly correct to say that the Natural Law varies with these subjective varieties. Appeal would be made to a full and perfectly printed impression of the document, one that rendered the stencil exactly. The Natural Law must be viewed in like manner, as it would exist in a mind perfectly enlightened concerning the whole duty of man, and exactly reproducing in itself that portion of the Eternal Law which ordains such duty. Were such a mind to discern a natural obligation to lie differently at two different times, all the relevant circumstances being alike in both cases, and the moral solution different, then only could the Natural Law be held to have changed.
2. But this is clearly impossible. The conclusion of a geometrical theorem is a truth for all time. There is no difference here between a complicated theorem, having many conditions, and a simpler theorem with fewer. It is indeed easier for a few than for many conditions to be all present together: but the enunciation of the conclusion supposes all the conditions, whatever their number. The same in a practical manner, as in the stability of a bridge. The bridge that would stand in England, would stand in Ceylon. If it would not, there must have occurred some change in the conditions, as the heat of the tropical sun upon the girders. A point of casuistry also, however knotty, once determined, is determined for ever and aye, for the circumstances under which it was determined. The Natural Law in this sense is absolutely immutable, no less in each particular application than in the most general principles. We must uniformly pass the same judgment on the same case. What is once right and reasonable, is always right and reasonable, in the same matter. Where to-day there is only one right course, there cannot to-morrow be two, unless circumstances have altered. The Natural Law is thus far immutable, every jot and tittle.