to veracity, by saying
something that is not strictly true, as well as by evading (and that is
often done) all answer to inquiries which you are unable to meet
satisfactorily--a violation of your conscience to this extent, and in
this way; or, on the other hand, a still more painful violation of your
conscience in consigning deliberately some young woman--faulty, no
doubt, and erring, but yet likely to derive a lesson from her own
errors, and the risk to which they have exposed her--consigning her, I
say, to ruin, by refusing her a character, and thus shutting the door
upon all the paths by which she might retrace her steps. This I state as
one amongst the many cases of conscience daily occurring in the common
business of the world. It would surprise any reader to find how many
they are; in fact, a very large volume might be easily collected of such
cases as are of ordinary occurrence. _Casuistry_, the very word
_casuistry_ expresses the science which deals with such _cases_: for as
a case, in the declension of a noun, means a falling away, or a
deflection from the upright nominative (_rectus_), so a case in ethics
implies some falling off, or deflection from the high road of catholic
morality. Now, of all such cases, one, perhaps the most difficult to
manage, the most intractable, whether for consistency of thinking as to
the theory of morals, or for consistency of action as to the practice of
morals, is the case of DUELLING.

[14] No terms of art are used so arbitrarily, and with such perfect
levity, as the terms _hypothesis_, _theory_, _system_. Most writers use
one or other with the same indifference that they use in constructing
the title of a novel, or, suppose, of a pamphlet, where the phrase
_thoughts_, or _strictures_, or _considerations_, upon so and so, are
used _ad libitum_. Meantime, the distinctions are essential. That is
properly an _hypothesis_ where the question is about a cause: certain
phenomena are known and given: the object is to place below these
phenomena a basis [[Greek: a hypothosis]] capable of supporting them,
and accounting for them. Thus, if you were to assign a cause sufficient
to account for the _aurora borealis_, that would be an hypothesis. But a
theory, on the other hand, takes a multitude of facts all disjointed,
or, at most, suspected, of some inter-dependency: these it takes and
places under strict laws of relation to each other. But here there is no
question of a cause. Finally, a