Part 3 — CHAPTER VIII. (continued 2)

3. From this view it appears that the end for which the State exists is indeed an important and necessary good, but it is not all in all to man, not his perfect and final happiness. To guide man to that is the office of the Christian Church in the present order of Providence. Cook and statesman must so go about the proper ends of their several offices, as not to stand in the way of the Church, compassing as she does that supreme end to which all other ends are subordinate. This limitation they are bound to observe, not as cook and statesman, but as men and Christians. A perfectly Christian State, as Christian, has a twofold duty. First, it has a positive duty, at the request of the Church, to follow up ecclesiastical laws with corresponding civil enactments, e.g., laws against criminous clerks and excommunicates. On this spiritual ground, being beyond its jurisdiction, the State must be careful not to forestall but to second the precept of spiritual authority. It is no business of the State, as such, to punish a purely religious offence. The second duty of a Christian State, and a more urgent duty even than the former, is the negative one of making no civil enactment to the prejudice of the Church: e.g., not to subject clerics to the law of conscription. Useful as their arms might be for the defence of the country, the State must forego that utility for the sake of a higher end.

4. In the order of pure nature, which is the order of philosophy, there is of course no Church. Still there would be, as we have seen (c. i., s. i., n. 8, p. 197), erected on the same lines as the civil power, and working side by side with it, a religious power competent to prescribe and conduct divine worship. This power the State would be bound to abet and support, both positively and negatively; something in the same manner, but not to the same degree, as the Christian State is bound to abet the Church. The supreme direction of the natural religious power would conveniently be vested in the person of the Civil Ruler. Thus the Roman Emperor was also Chief Pontiff.

5. How in the mere natural, as distinguished from the Christian order, the provinces of marriage and education should be divided between the civil and the religious power, is perhaps not a very profitable enquiry. The only use of it is a polemic use in arguing with men of no Christianity. Among all men of any religion, marriage has ever been regarded as one of those occasions of life that bring man into special relation with God, and therefore into some dependence on God's ministers. Education, again, has a religious element, to be superintended by the religious power. Education has a secular element also, the general superintendence of which cannot be denied to the State. Though children are facts of the domestic order, and the care and formation of them belongs primarily to their parents, yet if the parents neglect their charge, the State can claim the right of intervention ab abusu. It certainly is within the province of the State to prevent any parent from launching upon the world a brood of young barbarians, ready to disturb the peace of civil society. The practical issue is, who are barbarians and what is understood by peace. The Emperor Decius probably considered every Christian child an enemy of the Pax Romana. But the misapplication of a maxim does not derogate from its truth. It also belongs to the State to see that no parent behaves like a Cyclops ([Greek: kyklopikos], Ar., Eth., X., ix., 13) in his family, ordering his children, not to their good, as a father is bound to do, but to his own tyrannical caprice. For instruction, as distinguished from education, it is the parent's duty to provide his child with so much of it as is necessary, in the state of society wherein his lot is cast, to enable the child to make his way in the world according to the condition of his father. In many walks of life one might as well be short of a finger as not know how to read and write. Where ignorance is such a disadvantage, the parent is not allowed to let his child grow up ignorant. There, if he neglects to have him taught, the State may step in with compulsory schooling. Compulsory schooling for all indiscriminately, and that up to a high standard, is quite another matter.

Readings.—Suarez, De Legibus, III., xi.; ib., IV., ii., nn. 3, 4: St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 93, art. 3, ad 3; ib., q. 96, art. 2; ib., q. 98, art. 1, in corp.;ib., q. 99, art. 3, in corp.; ib., q. 100, art. 2, in corp.

SECTION XI.—Of Law and Liberty.

1. The student of Natural Law does not share the vulgar prejudice against civil law and lawyers. He knows it for a precept of the Natural Law, that there should be a State set up, and that this State should proceed to positive legislation. This legislation partly coincides with Natural Law in urging the practice of that limited measure of morality, which is necessary for the State to do its office and to be at all. (s. x., n. 2, p. 355.) This partial enforcement of the Law of Nature is the main work of the criminal law of the State. But State legislation goes beyond the Natural Law, and in the nature of things must go beyond it. Natural Law leaves a thousand conflicting rights undetermined, which in the interest of society, to save quarrels, must be determined one way or another.

2. An illustration. It is an axiom of Natural Law, that res perit domino; that is, the owner bears the loss. If an article under sale perishes before delivery, the loss falls, apart from contracts to the contrary, upon whichever of the two parties is the owner at the time. So far nature rules. But who is the owner at any given time, and at what stage of the transaction does the dominion pass? That can only be settled by custom and the law of the land. "If I order a pipe of port from a wine-merchant abroad; at what period the property passes from the merchant to me; whether upon delivery of the wine at the merchant's warehouse; upon its being put on shipboard at Oporto; upon the arrival of the ship in England at its destined port; or not till the wine be committed to my servants, or deposited in my cellar; all are questions which admit of no decision but what custom points out." (Paley, Mor. Phil., bk. iii., p. i, c. vii.)

This leads us to remark upon the much admired sentence of Tacitus, in corruptissima republica plurimae leges, that not merely the multitude of transgressions, but the very complexity of a highly developed civilization, requires to be kept in order by a vast body of positive law.

3. Incidentally we may also remark, that the law of the State does not create the right of property; otherwise, abolishing its own creation, the State could bring in Communism, (c. vii., s. i., p. 278). But finding this right of property unprotected and undetermined, the State by its criminal law protects property against robbers, and by its civil as distinguished from criminal law, it defines numerous open questions between possessors as to manner of acquirement and conditions of tenure.

4. All civil laws bind the conscience: some by way of a categorical imperative, Do this: others by way of a disjunctive, Do this, or being caught acting otherwise, submit to the penalty. The latter are called purely penal laws, an expression, by the way, which has no reference to the days of religious persecution. Civil law binds the conscience categorically whenever the civil ruler so intends. In the absence of express declaration, it must be presumed that he so intends whenever his law is an enforcement of the Natural Law, or a determination of the same; as when the observance is necessary to the preservation of the State, or when the ruler determines what lapse of time shall be necessary for the acquisition of property by prescription. Very frequently, the parties to a contract tacitly accept the dispositions of the civil law as forming part of their agreement; and in this indirect fashion the civil law becomes binding on the conscience. In this way an Englishman who accepts a bill of exchange tacitly binds himself to pay interest at five per cent., if the bill is not met at maturity, for such is the disposition of the English Law. It may be further observed that no prudent legislator would attach a severe penalty to what was not already wrong.

5. In Roman times it was part of the flattery of the imperial jurists to their master, to tell him that he was above the laws, legibus solutus. In the trial of Louis XVI., the Sovereign People, or they who called themselves such, dispensed with certain legal formalities on that same plea. Against the law at Athens, the generals who had fought at Arginusae were condemned by one collective sentence, the anger of the Sovereign People being too impatient to vote on them separately, as the law required. Hereupon we must observe in the first place, that the Supreme Ruler, whether one man or a multitude, can never be brought to trial in his own court for any legal offence. As all justice requires two terms: no power can do justice on itself. (Ethics, c. v., s. ix., n. 1, p. 102.) This truth is embodied in the English maxim, that the king can do no wrong. Again, the Sovereign is either expressly or virtually exempted from the compass of many laws, e.g. those which concern the flying of certain flags or ensigns, and other petty matters. Thirdly, we have the principle, that no being can give a law to himself. (Ethics, c. vi. s. ii., n. 3, p. 117.) Lastly, we must observe that there is no law so fundamental but what the Supreme Power, taken in its entirety, can alter it, and by consequence dispense from it. From these considerations it follows that the Sovereign—the complete and absolute Sovereign, be he one man or many—lies under no legal obligation to obey any law of his own making as such. It does not follow that he is perfectly free to ignore the laws. He is bound in conscience and before God to make his government effectual; and effectual it cannot be, if the laws are despised; and despised they will be, if the Sovereign gives scandal by ignoring them in his own practice. Therefore the Sovereign, be he King, Council, or Assembly, is bound in conscience and before God, though not legally of his own jurisdiction, so far himself to stand to the observance of the law as not to render it nugatory in the eyes and practice of others.

6. Law and liberty are like the strings and meshes of a net. In the one limit of minimum of mesh, the net passes into sack-cloth, where nothing could get through. In the other limit of maximum of mesh, the net vanishes, and everything would get through. We cannot praise in the abstract either a large mesh or a small one: the right size is according to the purpose for which the net is to be used in each particular case. So neither can law nor liberty be praised, as Burke says, "on a simple view of the subject, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction." We can only praise either as it is "clothed in circumstances." Commonly we are led to praise the one by getting too much of the other. Confounded in a tangle of fussy, vexatious, perhaps malicious restrictions, men cry loudly for liberty. When people all about us are doing things by their own sweet will, we are converted to praise of regulation and discipline and the wholesome restraint of law.

Readings.—St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 96, art. 5, ad 3; Suarez, De Legibus, III., xxxv.; ib., V., iv.; Ruskin, Seven Lamps of Architecture, c. vii., §§ I, 2.

SECTION XII.—Of Liberty of Opinion.

1. We are here dealing with liberty only so far as it means exemption from State control. So far as the State is concerned, a man has the fullest liberty to hold in his heart the most seditious opinions, and to think the foulest thoughts, so long as they do not appear in his public language and conduct. The heart is free from all mere human law, resting in subjection to His law alone, and in responsibility to His judgment, who is the Searcher of Hearts.

2. We are dealing then not properly with opinion, but with the public expression of opinion. We are dealing with that expression as controllable by the State, not acting in deference to the invitation of any religious power, but of its own initiative and proper authority, in view of its own end, scope and aim, which is social order and public prosperity for this life. (s. x., nn. 2, 3, p. 355.)

3. That there are doctrines dangerous to social order, cannot be denied, unless we are to cease to believe in any influence of thought upon conduct. It is important to the State, that men should have the greatest possible horror of crime. (s. viii., nn. 3, 6, pp. 345, 348.) This horror is notably impaired when all idea of sin is taken away. Now the idea of sin vanishes with that of God. (Ethics, c, vi., s. ii., nn. 6, 7, 13, pp. 119, 123.) Therefore to pull down the idea of God among a nation of theists, whether by the wiles of a courtly Professor at a University, or by the tub-thumping blasphemy of an itinerant lecturer, is to injure the State. The tub-thumper however is the more easily reached by the civil authority, especially when his discourses raise a tumult among the people. But where attacks upon theism have become common, and unbelief is already rampant among the masses, for the State to interfere with either "leader of thought," high or low, would be a shutting of the stable-door after the steed was stolen. Similarly we should speak of those who subvert the received notions touching the sanctity of the marriage-tie and the law of external purity generally, the obligation of civil allegiance, the rights of property and of life.

4. It will be objected: "The doctrines that you wish to express as inimical to the peace of the commonwealth, possibly may be true. Did not the first heralds of Christianity trouble the peace of the Roman world?" We reply: Let the new teachers come to us as those apostolic men came, "in weakness and in fear and in much trembling," and yet withal "in the showing of the spirit and power," with an "exhortation not of uncleanness," nor upon "an occasion of covetousness," "holily and justly and without blame" (1 Cor. ii. 3, 4; 1 Thess. ii. 3, 5, 10); and we will receive them as angels of God, even to the plucking out of our own eyes, if need be, and giving to them. (Gal. iv. 15.) Any hostile reception that they may meet with at first from a misapplication of our principle, will soon be made up for by welcome and veneration. There is no principle that may not be momentarily misapplied in all good faith. But the mistake in this case will readily be rectified.

5. But, writes J. S. Mill, On Liberty, "we can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion." If we cannot, then is there no such thing as certainty upon any point of morals, politics, or religion. Assassination of tyrants, whether in public or private life, may be wickedness, or it may be a laudable outburst of public spirit, who knows? Which of us is sure that all property is not theft? Plato's views on marriage and infanticide may be correct: the Nihilist may be your true politician; and all our religious knowledge dwindles down to the confession of Protagoras: "Concerning Gods, I find no clear evidence whether they are or are not, or what manner of beings they are." These are the sceptical tremors which this denial induces. But even scepticism has its proof, which Mill furnishes as follows: "All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility." The very name infallibility has an effect upon the modern Englishman like that of Popery upon his forefathers. It shakes his nerves, obscures his judgment, and scares his seated reason to leap up from her throne. But after we have recovered from our fright, we recollect that, whereas infallibility is an all-round attribute, compassing an entire subject, certainty goes out to one particular point on the circumference; we may then be certain without being infallible. Extremely fallible as I am in geography, I am nevertheless certain that Tunis is in Africa. Silencing discussion is an assumption, not of infallibility, but of certainty. The man who never dares assume that he is certain of anything, so certain as to close his ears to all further discussion, comes nothing short of a universal sceptic.

6. We are told, free discussion promotes discovery. Yes, free discussion in philosophical circles, free discussion among competent persons. But free discussion of a subject among the incompetent and the incapable, and the passionate and the prejudiced, is not good for the cause of truth; and if the subject be practical and momentous, it is not good for the disputants either, nor for the community. If we allow that the science and practice of morality is not advanced by free debate of ethical questions in nurseries and boarding-schools, we must also bear in mind that a vast proportion of the human family remain all their lives long, for the purpose of such discussions, as incompetent as children. The multitude cannot be philosophers. They have neither time, nor intelligence, nor love of hard thinking sufficient to arrive at the final and adequate why and wherefore of their every duty. Though capable of doing right, they are quite incapable of doing so philosophically. They do it according as they are led by custom and authority. Their inheritance is the traditionary wisdom of mankind, which they live upon as an infant on his estate, not understanding whence their support comes. It is dangerous to batter them with objections against the received moral law. You will overthrow them, not confirm them by the result of your reasonings: you will perplex their intellect, you will confound their good purpose, you will awaken their evil passions. Surely it is a more necessary point to secure that right be done somehow, than that it be philosophically done. The one is difficult enough, the other quite impossible for the mass of mankind. Therefore, adapting to our purpose the old Greek oracle: "let us not disturb the foundations of popular morality: they are better undisturbed"—

[Greek: Mae kinei Kamarinan akinaetos gar ameinoon]

7. But is it not immoral to interfere with conscience, and to attempt to stifle sincere convictions? The State, we repeat, has nothing to do with conscience as such, nor with the inward convictions of any man. But if the State is sincerely convinced, that the convictions openly professed and propagated by some of its subjects are subversive of social order and public morality, whose sincere conviction is it that must carry the day in practice? It is of the essence of government that the convictions, sincere or otherwise, of the governed shall on certain practical issues be waived in the external observance in favour of the convictions of the ruling power. After all, this talk of conscience and sincere convictions is but the canting phrase of the day, according to which conscience means mere wild humour and headstrong self-will. Such teachings as those which we would have the State to suppress, e.g.: An oath is a folly: There is no law of purity: There is no harm in doing anything that does not annoy your neighbour: are not the teachings of men sincerely convinced: they deserve no respect, consideration, or tenderness on that score. We do not say, that the teachers of these monstrosities are not convinced, but that they are not honestly and conscientiously convinced: they have blinded themselves, and become the guilty authors of their own delusion. Not all strong convictions are honestly come by or virtuously entertained.

8. Arraigned for their utterances, men protest their sincerity, as parties indicted for murder do their innocence. We can set but small store by such protestations. It is a question of evidence to come from other sources than from the accused person's own mouth. A man indeed must be held to be sincere until he is proved to be the contrary. That is the general rule. But there are what Roman lawyers call præsumptiones juris; circumstances which, if proved, will induce the court to take a certain view of a case, and give judgment accordingly, unless by further evidence that view is proved to be a false one. Now when a man proclaims some blatant and atrocious error in a matter bearing directly upon public morals—and it is for the restraint of these errors alone that we are arguing—there is a decided præsumptio juris, that the error in him, however doggedly he maintains it, is not a sincere, candid, and innocently formed conviction. The light of nature is not so feeble as that, among civilized men. Let the offender be admonished and given time to think: but if, for all warning to the contrary, the wilful man will have his way, and still propagate his error to the confusion of society, he must be treated like any other virtuous and well-meaning criminal: he must be restrained and coerced to the extent that the interests of society require.

9. At the same time it must be confessed that when an error, however flagrant and pestilential, has ceased to shock and scandalize the general body of the commonwealth; when the people listen to the doctrine without indignation, and their worst sentence upon it pronounces it merely "queer," there is little hope of legal restraints there enduring long or effecting much. Penalties for the expression of opinion are available only so far as they tally with the common feeling of the country. When public opinion ceases to bear them out, it is better not to enforce them: for that were but to provoke resentment and make martyrs. No regulations can be maintained except in a congenial atmosphere. Allowance too must be made for the danger of driving the evil to burrow underground.

10. The censorship of opinions even in a model State would vary in method according to men and times. The censorship of the Press in particular might be either by Imprimatur required before printing, or by liability to prosecution after. The Imprimatur might be either for all books, or only for a certain class. It might be either obligatory, or merely matter of counsel, to obtain it. We are not to adopt promiscuously all the praiseworthy institutions of our forefathers.

Readings.—Cardinal Newman, Letter to Duke of Norfolk, § 5; The Month for June, 1883, pp. 200, seqq.

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APPENDIX

Of the precepts of Natural Law, some are more simple and of wider extension; others are derivative, complex, and extend to fewer cases. It is a question of more and less, and no hard and fast line of demarcation can be drawn between them. The former however are called primary, the latter secondary precepts. Again, the nature of man is the same in all men and at all periods of history for its essential elements, but admits of wide, accidental variation and declension for the worse. Thirdly, it is clear that Natural Law is a law good and suitable for human nature to observe. Starting from these three axioms, we apply the reasoning of St. Thomas, 1a 2æ, q. 96, art. 2, not to human law alone, of which he is speaking, but to sundry secondary precepts of Natural Law. These are his words:

"A law is laid down as a rule or measure of human acts. Now a measure ought to be homogeneous with the thing measured. Hence laws also must be imposed upon men according to their condition. As Isidore says: 'A law ought to be possible both according to nature and according to the custom of the country.' Now the power or faculty of action proceeds from interior habit or disposition. The same thing is not possible to him who has no habit of virtue, that is possible to a virtuous man; as the same thing is not possible to a boy and to a grown man, and therefore the same rule is not laid down for children as for adults. Many things are allowed to children, that in adults are visited with legal punishment or with blame, and in like manner many things must be allowed to men not perfect in virtue, which would be intolerable in virtuous men."

This reasoning leads us up to a conclusion, which St. Thomas states thus (la 2æ, q. 94. art. 5):

"A conceivable way in which the Natural Law might be changed is the way of subtraction, that something should cease to be of the Natural Law that was of it before. Understanding change in this sense, the Natural Law is absolutely immutable in its first principles; but as to secondary precepts, which are certain detailed conclusions closely related to the first principles, the Natural Law is not so changed as that its dictate is not right in most cases steadily to abide by; it may however be changed in some particular case, and in rare instances, through some special causes impeding the observance of these secondary precepts."

The reason for this conclusion, more pregnant, it may be, than St. Thomas himself discerned, is given briefly as follows (2a 2æ, q. 57, art. 2, ad 1):

"Human nature is changeable; and therefore what is natural to man may sometimes fail to hold good."

The precepts of Natural Law that fail to be applicable when human nature sinks below par, are only secondary precepts, and few even of them. Christianity brings human nature up to par, and fulfils the Natural Law (St. Matt. v. 17), enjoining the observance of it in its integrity. This is the meaning of St. John Chrysostom's saying: "Of old not such an ample measure of virtue was proposed to us; … but since the coming of Christ the way has been made much narrower." (De Virginitate, c. 44: cf. his 17th Homily on St. Matt. v. 37; indeed the doctrine is familiar in his pages.) Thus the prohibition of polygamy, being a secondary precept of the natural law, failed in its application in that age of lapsed humanity, when a woman was better one of many wives, protected by one husband, than exposed to promiscuous violence and lust. (Isaias iv. i.)

NOTE ON ROUSSEAU.

The ruler is the servant of the good of the people, not of the will of the people, except inasmuch as—

a. the will of the people is an indication of their good, of which they are probable judges;

b. it is usually impossible to do good to the people against their steady will.

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INDEX

Aggregation theory of civil power,

Altruism,

Altum dominium,

Anger, differs from hatred,

Appetite in the modern sense, in the scholastic sense, appetite and desire,

Archetype Ideas,

Aristotle, imperfect as a moral philosopher, on happiness, on the passions, on the mean of virtue, on death, his Magnanimous Man, distinguishes chastisement from vengeance, virtue from art, on property, defines a State, a citizen, a polity, on the State's need to punish,

Atheism, effects of social and political,

Autocentric and heterocentric,

Bain, Alexander, on content, on punishability,

Beatific vision,

Capital Punishment, not inconsistent with God's dominion over life, nor with the personality (autocentric) of man, power of (right of the sword), the distinguishing mark of sovereignty, sole instance of rightful direct killing,

Charity, to enemies, obligation of, how differing from justice,

Church and State, elementary philosophy of,

Circumstances of act, distinguished from means,

Civil authority, of God, binds the conscience, latent or free, various distributions of, not tied to any one polity, when rightfully resisted,

Comfort, no specific against crime,

Communism,

Conscience, natural law of, defined, erroneous conscience, requires educating, Conscience and the State,

Contemplation, essence of happiness,

Contracts,

Delight, or pleasure, quality of, said to perfect activity, not happiness,

Democracy, may be tyrannical, not the sole valid polity, sheer democracy difficult to work, original and special sanctity attaching to democracy,

Deontology,

Desire, physical and psychical,

Direct and indirect (or incidental) defined,

Divorce,

Duelling, essential wrong of,

Dumb animals, our relations with,

Duty, matter not of mere goodness, but of law; duties of justice, correlative of a right; duties negative and positive,

Education, the State's part in,

End in view; end does not justify means; itself limitless, sets a limit to the means,

English monarchy,

Ethics, strict view of,

Evil, none essential and positive in human nature,

Fear, as an excuse,

Food and fiddling, when better than philosophy,

Fortitude,

Francis of Assisi, St.,

General Consequences, principle of,

God, transcends created being, object of human happiness, God and possibilities, cannot but enforce morality, how entering into Moral Philosophy, does not dispense from the natural law, punishes sin, twofold worship of, God beyond the sphere of utilities, duty of knowing Him, why He cannot lie, no God, no sin,

Greek taste,

Grotius and Milton, on lying,

Habit, defined, acquired by acts, a living thing, needs exercise, habit and custom, man a creature of habits, habits remain in the departed soul,

Happiness, defined, open to man, final in contemplation of God, other than contentment, desired without limit, not pleasure,

Hatred and anger,

Hedonism,

Hobbes, his Leviathan,

Honour and reputation,

Horace, his phrase, aurea mediocritas,

Human act, outward and inward, one,

Humility,

Hypnotism,

Ignorance, as an excuse,

Integrity, state of,

Intellectual error, sometimes voluntary, in that case not mere intellectual error,

Jurisdiction, differs from dominion,

Justice, always relative to another, legal (or general),distributive, commutative (corrective), justice and charity differ,

Kant, his Categorical Imperative,

Killing, direct and indirect, indirect in self-defence, and in war, direct only in capital punishment,

Knowledge of God, obligatory,

Labour, qualitative as well as quantitative, capital not simply an embodiment of labour,

Land, a raw material, nationalisation of,

Law, defined, the Eternal Law, irresistible and yet resisted, extends to all agents, rational and irrational, co-eternal with, yet not necessary as God, laws of physical nature, law of conscience, fundamental laws of a state, civil law, necessary complement of natural law, civil law, how binding in conscience, the King, legibus solutus, how far, law and liberty,

Lay mind,

Liberty, the meshes of the net of law, liberty of opinion and the press,

Locke, on the state of nature,

Lying, definition of, intention to deceive, no part of the definition, intrinsically and always wrong, why God cannot lie, not against commutative justice, mental reservation not in every case a lie,

Magnanimous man,

Magnificence,

Marriage, duty of the race, not of the individual, two goods of marriage, unity, indissolubility,

Material and formal,

Marx, Karl,

Means to end, truly willed, four sorts of, how far and how not sanctified by the end, distinguished from circumstances, limited by the end,

Meekness and clemency,

Mental reservation, not in every case a lie,

Mill, John, confounds self-defence with vengeance, his Utilitarianism, on Liberty,

Modesty,

Morality, meaning of, determinants of,

Moral Philosophy, definition and division, a progressive science, subtlety of,

Moral Sense, no peculiar faculty distinct from Intellect,

Money, ancient and modern use of,

Nature, does nothing in vain, living according to nature, laws of nature, inviolable as tendencies, state of nature,

Natural, in contrast with supernatural, natural and physical confounded by ancients, does not mean "coming natural",

Natural law of conscience, mutable subjectively, immutable, situation remaining unchanged, primary and secondary precepts, some of the latter fail to hold even objectively, where human nature has sunk below par, (notwithstanding), not open to dispensation,

Nominalism, subversion of philosophy,

Obedience, not wholly of the nature of a contract,

Ought, or Obligation, analysis of the idea,

Passion, as an excuse, definition of, species of, not to be extirpated, never morally evil by itself, passion and principle, two different sources of sin,

People, the, all government for, sovereignty of, not philosophers,

Person, autocentric, as distinguished from a thing (hetero-centric), to have a right, you must be a person,

Plato, on desires, on the mean of virtue, his similitude of the charioteer, his phrase, "set up on holy pedestal", fails to discover justice in his Republic, his ignoring of spiritual sins, ignores retributive punishment, object of his Republic,

Pleasure, or delight, quality of, perfects activity, how far wrong to act or live for pleasure, not happiness,

Polity, defined, variety of polities, no one polity best, universal and exclusive, elementary and original polity, the polity the standard of the politically allowable,

Polygamy; patriarchal practice,

Powers that be, ordained of God,

Private war, right renounced by civilised man,

Probable opinion, what, how a lawful ground of action,

Property, res familiaris,

Prudence,

Punishment, naturally consequent upon sin, also a divine infliction, final, eternal, medicinal, deterrent, retributive, human punishment perhaps never purely retributive, capital punishment, punishment a stimulus to conscience, war not punishment,

Pyramid of capacities,

Reiffenstuel, on duelling,

Religion, how connected with morality, duties of religion, natural religious power, the State and religion,

Restitution, when due, not retribution,

Resurrection,

Revolution, is it ever right?

Right, a, defined, connatural, acquired, alienable, inalienable, one man's right imports another man's duty, but not conversely, not all rights consequences of duties, not wholly the creation of the State,

Ritual, needs regulation,

Rousseau, his Social Contract, his inalienable sovereignty of the people,

Secrets,

Self-defence, differs from punishment and from vengeance, a wrong maxim of the jurists, duelling not self-defence,

Simulation and dissimulation,

Sin, material and formal, differs from vice, some by mere passion, other on principle, spiritual sins, philosophical sin, sin alone properly unnatural, entails punishment, grave and light, forgiveness of, an uncertainty in philosophy, sin against God, crime against the State, atheism the abolition of sin,

Socialism, Collectivism and Syndicalism, an endeavour to supersede private virtue,

Soldier's death,

Spiritualism,

State, individual not all blended in, definition of, a natural requisite, more than a necessity of nature, involves authority, to be obeyed, a perfect community, commanded and commissioned by God, a secular concern with a secular end, the State and virtue, State and Church, State and education, doctrines dangerous to the State, State and Conscience, remotely a judge of sin, but does not punish it as such,

Stoics, would extirpate passion, their naturae convenienter vivere, a paradox of theirs,

Suarez, explains the natural rise of civil authority, neglects the historical,

Suicide,

Supernatural,

Superstitious practices,

Synderesis,

Temperance,

Testamentary right,

Usury, defined, principle upon which it is wrong, commercial loans not usurious, gradual opening for such,

Utilitarianism, an ill-concerted blend of Hedonism and Altruism,

Value, use value, market value,

Vice and Virtue, habits, not acts, not in children, vice not sin,

Virtue, a habit, not reducible to knowledge, intellectual and moral, how moral and intellectual virtues differ, need of moral virtue, moral virtue (not theological) observes the mean, cardinal virtues, are the virtues separable?, potential parts of a virtue, sense of virtue necessary to national greatness, virtue not "another man's good,", how differing from art, how far the care of the State,

Virtuous man, acts on motives of virtue,

War, the self-defence of nations, not a punitive operation, direct and proper object, not to kill but to put out of action,

Wild boy of Hanover,

Worship, interior and exterior, reasons for the latter, not as useful to God, but because He is worthy of it,