7. But why is not this qualification spoken out with the tongue? Sometimes it safely may be, and then it should be so added. But, as the addition is unusual, our taking the trouble to express it would often certify to the inquirer that his suspicions were correct, though we ought not to tell him so. Our aim then must be to give such an oral answer as we should return, were the suspicion quite unfounded. Our questioner, if he is a prudent man, will piece out our phrase with the addition, secrets apart; and he will understand that he can get nothing out of us either way, which is exactly what we wish him to understand. His unauthorized interrogatory has been met by speech that amounts to silence, arguing indeed our prudence, but leaving him as wise as before on the forbidden topic. If he is a thoughtless man, he is deceived, not by any intention or election of ours, but indirectly so far as we are concerned, an incidental deception which he has brought on himself.
8. This then is a convention that obtains, not of positive institution, but dictated by nature herself, that on a matter which admits of being secret, any answer elicited under stress of necessity must be so construed, as that any grave secret that may be touched, not being morally in the power of the respondent to reveal, shall be taken to remain reserved.
9. We may therefore sometimes avoid seeming to know what we know, or to be what we are. But we may never of our own proper motion step forward and court observation as being what we are not, or knowing what is against or beyond our knowledge. We may dissemble occasionally, but not simulate. The dissembler of a secret wishes for obscurity and silence: he wants to have the eyes of men turned away from him and their curiosity unroused. Whatever he says or does is to divest the idea of there being anything particularly interesting about him. But he who simulates—call him pretender, impostor, or quack—is nothing, if not taken notice of. The public gaze is his sunshine: obscurity gives him a deadly chill. His ambition is to appear out of the ordinary, being really quite within common lines: the dissembler is in some respect beyond the ordinary, but wishes not to show himself otherwise than as an ordinary mortal with ordinary knowledge. The pretender is on the offensive, challenging attention: the dissembler is on his defence against notice. "Simulation," says Bolingbroke, "is a stiletto, not only an offensive but an unlawful weapon, and the use of it may be rarely, very rarely, excused, but never justified. Dissimulation is a shield, as secrecy is armour: and it is no more possible to preserve secrecy in the administration of public affairs without dissimulation than it is to succeed in it without secrecy." (Idea of a Patriot King.)
Readings.—De Lugo, De Just. et Jure, 14, nn. 135, 141, 142; The Month for March, 1883; Lockhart's Life of Scott, v., 26.
CHAPTER IV.
OF CHARITY.
1. It is the difference between sensible apprehension and intellectual knowledge, that the former seizes upon a particular object and it only, as this sweet: the latter takes its object as the type of a class of similars, this and the like of this, this sweet as one of the class of sweet things. In like manner the love of passion, which is the love of sense, regards one sole object. Titius is in love with Bertha alone, not with woman in general. But an intellectual love is the love of a type of beauty or goodness, of this object and of others as they approach in likeness to it. Whoever loves William from an intellectual appreciation of his patriotism, in loving him loves all patriots. Every animal loves itself with a brute, sensible love, not a love to find fault with, nor yet a noble and exalted sentiment—a love purely self-regarding, quite apart from the good that is in self, but embracing self simply as self, and self alone. This is the first love of self even in man. But over and above this animal and sensible love, which no man lacks, there is in all men worthy of the name a second self-regarding affection of an intellectual cast, whereby a man loves himself as discerning with the eye of his soul the excellence of his own nature—"how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals." Intellectual self-complacence overflows from self to similars. It is not self-love, it is love of the race, "the milk of human kindness," philanthropy.
2. But man is a disappointing creature, after all a mere "quintessence of dust," unless he can rise above himself by relation with some superhuman being, and make his final fortune in some better region than this world. Reason requires that we love ourselves, and love our fellow-men, for and in order to the development of the highest gifts and capacities that are in us. These are gifts and capacities divine, preparing us to find our everlasting happiness in God. (Ethics, c. ii., s. iv., n. 2, p. 22.) The love that we bear to ourselves and our neighbour, in view of our coming from God and going to God, is called the love of charity. Charity differs from philanthropy in looking beyond the present life, and above creatures. A materialist and atheist may possess philanthropy, but not charity.
3. Beside the twofold love, animal and intellectual, which we bear ourselves, we may also and should love ourselves with the love of charity, seeing God's gifts in us, and desiring the perfection of those gifts in a happy eternity occupied with God. The charity which we should thus bear to ourselves is the model of that which we owe to our neighbour, whom we are to love as ourselves, not with the same intensity, but with the same quality of love, wishing him the good, human and divine, temporal and eternal, which we wish for ourselves, though not so earnestly as we wish it for ourselves. Our love for ourselves is stronger than for our neighbour: for, if love comes of likeness, much more does it come of identity. But by reason of the vast preponderance of the good that is rational and eternal over that which is material and temporal; and also by reason of the principle laid down by St. Thomas, that "as to the sharing together of (eternal) happiness, greater is the union of our neighbour's soul with our soul than even of our own body with our soul" (2a 2æ, q. 26, art. 5, ad 2),—we are bound to love our neighbour's eternal good better than our own temporal good, and in certain special conjunctures to sacrifice the latter to the former. We have no duty and obligation of loving his temporal good above our own temporal good. But it is often matter of commendation and counsel to sacrifice our temporal interest to our neighbour's. This sacrifice is no breach of the order of charity, beginning at home: since what is resigned of material and perishable profit is gained in moral perfection. Especially commendable is the surrender of private good for the good of the community. Charity, or philanthropy, taking this form, bears the name of patriotism and public spirit.
4. Charity, like material forces, acts in a certain inverse ratio to the distance of the object. Other considerations being equal, the nearer, the dearer. Nay, nearness and likeness to ourselves goes further than goodness in winning our love. This is natural, and charity presupposes nature, and follows its order. As we have more charity for ourselves than for others whom we acknowledge to be better men, so likewise for our kinsmen and intimate friends. We may put the matter thus. Charity consists in wishing and seeking to procure for a person the good that leads to God. One element is the intensity and eagerness of this wish and search; another is the greatness of the good wished. Now we wish those who are better than ourselves to be rewarded according to their deserts with a greater good than ourselves: but this wish is but lukewarm compared to the intensity of our desire that we and our friends with us may attain to all the good that we are capable of.