while Fielding has embodied the popular conception of a casuist in Parson Thwackum and Philosopher Square, both of whom only take to argument when they want to reason themselves out of some obvious duty. Still more outspoken is the Savoyard vicar in the Émile (1762) of Jean Jacques Rousseau: “Whence do I get my rules of action? I find them in my heart. All I feel to be good is good; all I feel to be evil is evil. Conscience is the best of casuists; it is only when men wish to cheat it that they fly to logical quibbles.” Extravagant as this sentiment sounds, it paved the way to better things. The great object of 17th-century moralists had been to find some general principle from which the whole of ethics could be deduced; common-sense, by turning its back on abstract principles of every kind, forced the philosophers to come down to the solid earth, and start by inquiring how the world does make up its mind in fact. During the last two centuries deduction has gone steadily out, and psychology come in. Ethics have become more distinctively a science, instead of an awkward hybrid between a science and an art; their business has been to investigate what moral conduct is, not to lay down the law as to what it ought to be. Hence they deliberately refuse to engage in casuistry of the old-fashioned sort. Further, it is increasingly felt that ethical judgments do not depend on reason alone, but involve every element in our character; and that the real problem of practical morality is to establish a harmonious balance between the intelligence and the feelings—to make a man’s “I think this is right” correspond with his “I feel that it is so.” Whether systematic training can do anything to make the attainment of this balance easier is a question that has lately engaged the attention of many educational reformers; and whatever future casuistry may still have before it would seem to lie along the lines indicated by them.
There is an excellent study of the ancient casuists by M. Raymond Thamin, Un Problème moral dans l’antiquité (Paris, 1884). For the Roman Catholic casuists see Döllinger und Reusch, Moralstreitigkeiten im siebzehnten Jahrhundert (2 vols., Nördlingen, 1889), and various articles (“Casuistik,” “Ethik,” “Moralsysteme,” &c.) in Wetzer and Welte’s Kirchenlexicon (Freiburg, 1880-1896). See also the editions of Pascal’s Provincial Letters, by John de Soyres (with English notes, Cambridge, 1880), and A. Molinier (2 vols., Paris, 1891). The Anglican casuists are discussed in Whewell, Lectures on Moral Philosophy (London, 1862). For general reflections on the subject see the appendix to Jowett’s edition of the Epistle to the Romans (London, 1855). Most modern text-books on ethics devote some attention to the matter—notably F.H. Bradley in his Ethical Studies (London, 1876). See also Hastings Rashdall, Theory of Good and Evil (2 vols., Oxford, 1907).
(St. C.)
CASUS BELLI, the technical term for cases in which a state holds itself justified in making war, if a certain course to which it objects is persisted in. Interference with the full exercise of a nation’s rights or independence, an affront to its dignity, an unredressed injury, are instances of casus belli. Most of the new compulsory treaties of arbitration entered into by Great Britain and other states exclude from their application cases affecting the “vital interests” or “national honour” of the contracting states. These may therefore be considered as a sort of definition of casus belli in so far as the high contracting parties to them are concerned.