Mental Reservation.
This class includes also all cases of mental reservation. It should be said in justice to the teachers of Moral Theology in the Romish Church, that, although the Jesuits made themselves so obnoxious by asserting the propriety of mental reservation, they at least in general terms condemn it. " Restrictio mentalis," says Gury, " est actus mentis verba alicujus proposition's ad alium sensum quam naturalem et obvium detorquentis vel restringentis." This he says is unlawful, because it is " simpliciter mendacium." It is true these theologians make serious modifications of this rule. It is only of reservation " proprie mentalis," that is, when the true meaning of the speaker cannot be detected, that this condem- nation is pronounced. If it be possible, from the circumstances or the mode of expression, to know what he means, the rule does not always apply. There are cases in which it is allowable to permit a man to deceive himself. Under this head is brought in the case above referred to. It is said that a confessor may properly say that he does not know a thing, when he means that he does not know it as a man. or with a knowledge that is communicable. So it is said that if a man be asked by one who has no right to inter- rogate him, whether he has committed a crime, he may say, No : meaning none that he was bound to confess. So also it is taught that public persons, ambassadors, magistrates, advocates, etc., may use mental reservation in its wider sense. In like manner a servant may say his master is not at home, whom he knows to be in the house, because such denial so often means that the person inquired for does not wish to be seen.1 This opens a very wide door of which- not only Jesuits, but men professing to be Protes- tants and Christians freely avail themselves. To an unsophis- tical mind all the instances above specified are cases of unmiti- gated falsehood.
The extent to which the Jesuits carried the principle of mental reservation is a matter of notoriety. The three rules by which they perverted the whole system of morals, and which threatened to overturn the very foundations of society, and which led at one time to the suppression of the order, were, —
1. The doctrine that the character of an act depended solely on the intention. If the intention be good, the act is good ; whether it be falsehood, perjury, murder, or any other conceivable crime. Pascal quotes the Jesuit moralist Escobar as laying down the gen-
1 Gury, ut supra, vol. i. pp. 200, 201.
446 PART m. Ch. XIX. — THE LAW.
eral principle, " that promises are not binding unless there was an intention of keeping them, at the time they were made." 1 On the same principle, that the intention determines the character of the act, the murder of Henry III. in 1589; of the Prince of Orange in 1584 ; of Henry IV. of France in 1610 ; and especially the massacres on the feast of St. Bartholomew, were all justified. This principle is not confined to the Jesuits. When in 1819 young Sand murdered Kotzebue, the poet, from political motives, he not only justified the act to the last, but perhaps the general senti- ment among his younger countrymen was that of approbation. Even De Wette, the distinguished theologian and commentator, in a letter of consolation to the mother of Sand, spoke of the as- sassination as H a favourable sign of the times." 2 It was regarded very much as the killing of Marat by Charlotte Corday is re- garded by the public to this day. When the doctrine comes to be formalized as a moral principle that the intention determines the character of the act, so that murder committed for the good of the Church or the State is commendable, then the law of God is set at nought and the bonds of society are unloosed.
2. The doctrine of probability. If it was probable that an act was right there was no sin in committing it, although in the con- viction of the agent the act was wrong ; and an act was probably right, if among the moralists there was a difference of opinion on the subject.
3. The above-mentioned doctrine of mental reservation. It was taught that a man might innocently swear he did not do a certain thing, provided he said to himself, not audibly to others, "I mean I did not do it ten years ago." All these different kinds of lying, though referred to different heads by the Jesuit teachers, belong properly to the class of pernicious falsehoods, such as the law of God utterly condemns.
The second class, called "mendacia officiosa," includes all falsehoods uttered for a good object. Such as those told the sick by their attendants, to comfort or encourage them ; those told by
1 Blaise Pascal, Lettres e'crites a un Provincial, edit. Paris, 1829, p. 180; Escobar, in. ex. iii. n. 48.
2 De Wette did not approve of the assassination of Kotzebue in a moral point of view. His language was: " So wie die That geschehen ist, mit diesem Glauben, mit dieser Zuver- sicht, ist sie ein schones Zeichen_der Zeit. — Die That ist — allgemein betrachtet — unsitt- lich und der sittlichen Gesetzgebung zuwiderlaufend. Das Bose soil nicht durch das Bose iiberwunden werden, sondern allein durch das Gute. Dureh Unrecht, List und Gewalt kann kein Recht gestif tet werden, und der gute Zweck heiligt nicht das ungerechte Mittel." Quoted in the Conversations-Lexicon, 7th edit. Leipzig, 1827, art. Wette (de). The let- ter, although thus guarded, led to the loss of his professorship in Berlin and his virtual ban- ishment from the city.