ust what St. Alfonso or Scavini is doing. You
only try your hand yourself at a treatise on the rules of morality, and
you will see how difficult the work is. What is the _definition_ of a
lie? Can you give a better than that it is a sin against justice, as
Taylor and Paley consider it? but, if so, how can it be a sin at all, if
your neighbour is not injured? If you do not like this definition, take
another; and then, by means of that, perhaps you will be defending St.
Alfonso's equivocation. However, this is what I insist upon; that St.
Alfonso, as Paley, is considering the different portions of a large
subject, and he must, on the subject of lying, give his judgment, though
on that subject it is difficult to form any judgment which is
satisfactory.

But further still: you must not suppose that a philosopher or moralist
uses in his own case the licence which his theory itself would allow
him. A man in his own person is guided by his own conscience; but in
drawing out a system of rules he is obliged to go by logic, and follow
the exact deduction of conclusion from conclusion, and must be sure that
the whole system is coherent and one. You hear of even immoral or
irreligious books being written by men of decent character; there is a
late writer who says that David Hume's sceptical works are not at all
the picture of the man. A priest might write a treatise which was really
lax on the subject of lying, which might come under the condemnation of
the Holy See, as some treatises on that score have already been
condemned, and yet in his own person be a rigorist. And, in fact, it is
notorious from St. Alfonso's Life, that he, who has the repute of being
so lax a moralist, had one of the most scrupulous and anxious of
consciences himself. Nay, further than this, he was originally in the
Law, and on one occasion he was betrayed into the commission of what
seemed like a deceit, though it was an accident; and that was the very
occasion of his leaving the profession and embracing the religious life.

The account of this remarkable occurrence is told us in his Life:--

"Notwithstanding he had carefully examined over and over the details of
the process, he was completely mistaken regarding the sense of one
document, which constituted the right of the adverse party. The advocate
of the Grand Duke perceived the mistake, but he allowed Alfonso to
continue his eloquent address to the end without interruption; as soon,
however, as he had