THE OLD MORALITY.*

MR. HOWLEY undertakes, as he tells us in the preface to this little work, to show that the moral law known to pagan philosophers and Christian theologians has not lost its oldest

meaning, and is not less applicable to active life now than in the days of Aristotle and St. Augustine. With this end in view, he examines the relation between morality and the mental and bodily organisation of man, as well as between the moral law and State-enforced or municipal law,—the ought-to-be and the must-be, as he aptly terms them, of human conduct. Ranging over

so wide a field, and not wholly denying himself the privilege of digression, it is, of course, impossible that in a volume of 240 pages he should fully reason out his conclusions. He frequently

contents himself with glancing, in language somewhat Carlylesque, at the arguments on which he relies. But, if often brief in argument, he is liberal in illustration.

Almost all his propositions are supported by references to writers, ancient or modern, of high authority, or by examples drawn from history. His illustrations are, we think, generally well chosen and telling. They certainly indicate a wide acquaintance with both pagan and Christian writers on ethics. It strikes U3 that the broad distinction between the morality known to Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero, and the morality taught

by Christ, though fully recognised by Mr. Howley in one or two passages, is scarcely sufficiently borne in mind throughout the body of the work.

A writer ou morals is drawn almost of necessity into some of the stock controversies which have puzzled philosophers from the earliest times. Mr. Howley does not shrink from them.

Referring to the difference in opinion between Cicero and St. Augustine upon the question whether Gore foreknowledge of

events is compatible with free-will in man, he contends that St. Augustine's view of the question cannot be assailed without denying two perfections of the Deity,—" namely, that he exists outside time, and that he views as immutably present what man regards as past, present, and future." We submit that in discussing a question so completely beyond us as the nature of Omniscience, we are not entitled to ignore a fact so completely within our reach as the consciousness of free-will.

Upon the question whether any circumstance can justify untruth, Mr. Howley quotes the following weighty, but some- times conflicting, authorities :-

" St. Augustine knew of no circumstance that would justify untruth. Thomas Aquinas acutely shut out every attempt to make exceptions

to troth, by saying A lie is a sin, not merely for the damage done thereby to a neighbour, but for its own inordinateness ;' and, 'It is not lawful to use any unlawful inordinateness to hinder the harm and prejudice of othere.' The Epicurean school, using exclusively the moral criterion of the general good or evil done to society, is free to maintain that in some cases we may tell a lie to hinder harm and prejudice to our neighbours. Therefore, Paley, as a follower of this school, held there are falsehoods which are not criminal Suarez, the Spanish Jesuit, follows the teaching of Aquinas, and remarks that even a Papal dispensation cannot strip falsehood of its deformity ; and that the error of a casuist, who argued that a man does not tell a lie if he does so to save the life of another, has been condemned. Cardinal Newman reminds the readers of his Apologia that almost all authors, Catholic and Protestant, admit that when a just cause is present there is some kind or other of verbal misleading which is no sin.' Jeremy Taylor would let us tell a lie for charity, or to save a man's life. Milton would let us deceive boys, the sick, enemies, and men in error ; Dr. Johnson would permit exceptions to truth, if, for instance, a murderer should ask you which way a man is gone."

Unfortunately, this question of truthfulness is no mere school- man's question. As often as a man promises to do any act inconsistent with morality, the problem presents itself whether it is more immoral to keep the promise or to break it. By com- mon consent, a promise to commit any punishable crime—say to assist in a theft or fraud—ought not to be performed. But where the promised departure from moral law is less glaring, opinion is less decided. A North of England clergyman raised this question, and offered a somewhat rash solution of it, in reference to the late elections. A voter, undoubtedly, is morally bound to vote according to his conscience. Whatever policy he believes, according to the lights that are in him, to be most for the public good, that policy it is his plain duty to support by his vote. If people who have the power to injure him, be they

• The Old Morality, Traced Historically and Applied Practically. By Edward Howley. London : Longman.

employers, or customers, or landlords, extort a promise from him to vote against his conscience, he has to choose between two deplorable alternatives. We will not undertake to say which of the two is least immoral. Of the morality of those who, whatever be their politics, extort such promises from dependent men, it seems difficult to form too low an estimate.

The Emperor Charles V., as we learn from Mr. Howley, had an effectual practical method of setting himself free from promises wrongfully extorted,—a method, however, available only to the great men of the earth :-

" Von Landerberg, commander of German mercenaries under the Emperor, takes from the English half wages, paid in advance, then asks better conditions, or be will carry his men into France. The

English complain to Charles V.'s chancellor, who replies Promise what the fellow asks, and at the end of the campaign he might be hung; for this is the Emperor's method of dealing with such men. Ho had tried it repeatedly, with excellent success.'"

State-made or municipal law has for its legitimate object, to compel the observance by each individual citizen (in matters sufficiently definite and tangible for hu man law to take cognisance of) of so much of the general moral law as involves obligations towards other men and towards the State. The Jews and the Puritans, indeed, as Mr. Howley points out, endeavoured to enforce morality by law even in matters not involving obliga- tions towards others ; though, as far as can be ascertained, with indifferent success. But at the present day a man may be through life one of the vilest of the human race without ever exposing himself to any legal proceeding, civil or criminal.

Some exceptions, indeed, to the rule confining the operation of law to the enforcement of obligations towards others exist in

our own country ; but they are more nominal than real. Self- murder, for instance, is by English law regarded as a crime of

the same degree as the murder of other men. But while deliberate attempts to murder other men are punished by long terms of penal servitude, attempts at suicide, however deliberate, practically go unpunished.

The right of resisting unjust laws is more broadly stated by

the writers quoted by Mr. Howley than we should have expected :- " The mind of man, says Aquinas, being unable to reason perfectly from the law of nature, human laws are necessarily subject to error; but if they be unjust, they cannot have their obligation by virtue of the eternal law, and do not bind the conscience, unless to avoid scandal and disturbance ; while if they are contrary to divine good,' we mast by no means obey them. When laying down that unjust laws are no laws, he relies on the authority of St. Augustine, who had only followed Plato and Cicero. The nullity of unjust laws, and the right of resisting them, has only a latent explosive force. The Jesuit, Suarez, who argued strenuously in favour of the Pope's supremacy in matters of faith and morale, admits that a canon law enacted by the Pope to regulate external ecclesiastical discipline is of no validity if it does not possess the great attribute of justice."

Certainly the most heroic chapters in the history of most countries are those which relate the acts of men who have forcibly resisted laws or rulers unjustly established. If such men had not lived, oppression, ignorance, and misery would be far more widely spread throughout the world than they are now. It is obvious, however, that from an ethical point of view resistance to established law can only be defended where the injustice is at once beyond all doubt and of the first magnitude, and where its removal by other than forcible means is hopeless. The exercise of the right of private judgment upon these points is manifestly full of danger. It is one of the unfortunate results, too, of unjust laws that the sense of wrong, and the habits of resistance they engender, are not always put an end to by the removal of the injustice. Where so much has been gained by resistance to the law, the belief naturally springs up that still more can be gained by still further resistance. As we under- stand Mr. Howley to suggest, the resistance by Irish tenants to unjust rents and a grinding system of land tenure, is'now followed by resistance manifestly aiming at the confiscation of the landowners' property for the benefit of the persons who happen to occupy it as tenants.