CASUISTRY.
Casuistry is the application of the general principles of morality to
individual _cases_ in which there is room for question as to duty. The
question may be as to the obligation or the rightfulness of a particular
act, as to the choice between two alternative courses, as to the measure
or limit of a recognized duty, or as to the grounds of preference when
there seems to be a conflict of duties. A large proportion of these cases
disappear under any just view of moral obligation. Most questions of
conscience have their origin in deficient conscientiousness. He who is
determined to do the right, the whole right, and nothing but the right, is
seldom at a loss to know what he ought to do. But when the aim is to evade
all difficult duties which can be omitted without shame or the clear
consciousness of wrong, and to go as close as possible to the boundary
line between good and evil without crossing it, the questions that arise
are often perplexing and complicated, and they are such as, in the
interest of virtue, may fittingly remain unanswered. There are always
those whose aim is, not to attain any definite, still less any
indefinitely high, standard of goodness, but to be saved from the penal
consequences of wrong-doing; and there are even (so-called) religious
persons, and teachers too, with whom this negative indemnity from
punishment fills out the whole meaning of the sacred and significant term
_salvation_. It must be confessed that questions which could emanate only
from such minds, furnish a very large part of the often voluminous and
unwieldy treatises on casuistry that have come down to us from earlier
times, especially of those of the Jesuit moralists, whose chief endeavor
is to lay out a border-path just outside the confines of acknowledged
wrong and evil.
Yet there are *cases in which the most conscientious persons may be in
doubt as to the right*. We can here indicate only the general principles
on which such cases are to be decided, with a very few specific
illustrations.
*The question of duty is often a question*, not of principle, but *of
fact*. It is the _case_, the position and relations of the persons or
objects concerned, that we do not fully understand. For instance, when a
new appeal is made for our charitable aid, in labor or money, the question
is not whether it is our duty to assist in a work of real beneficence, but
whether for the proposed object, and under the direction of those who make
the appeal, our labor or money will be lucratively invested in the service
of humanity. There are, certainly, benevolent associations and enterprises
for the very noblest ends, whose actual utility is open to the gravest
doubt. It is sometimes difficult even to determine a question of justice
or equity, simply because the circumstances of the case, so far as we can
understand them, do not define the right. Instances of this class might be
multiplied; but they are all instances in which there is no obscurity as
to our obligation or duty, and therefore no question for moral casuistry.
We are, however, obviously bound, by considerations of fitness, to seek
the fullest information within our power in every case in which we are
compelled to act, or see fit to act; nor can we regard action without
knowledge, even though the motive be virtuous, as either safe or
blameless.
*The measure or limit of duty* is with many conscientious persons a
serious question. Here an exact definition is hardly possible, and a
generous liberty may be given to individual taste or judgment; yet
considerations of fitness set bounds to that liberty. Thus direct and
express self-culture is a duty incumbent on all, yet in which diversity of
inclination may render very different degrees of diligence equally fitting
and right; but all self-centred industry is fittingly limited by domestic,
social, and civic obligations. Thus, also, direct acts of beneficence are
obviously incumbent on all; but the degree of self-sacrifice for
beneficent ends need not, nay, ought not to be the same for every one; and
while we hold in the highest admiration those who make the entire
surrender of all that they have and are to the service of mankind, we have
no reason to scant our esteem for those who are simply kind and generous,
while they at the same time labor, spend, or save for their own benefit.
Indeed, the world has fully as much need of the latter as of the former.
Were the number of self-devoting philanthropists over-large, a great deal
of the necessary business and work of life would be left undone; and did
self-denying givers constitute a very numerous body, the dependent and
mendicant classes would be much more numerous than they are; while the
withdrawal of expenditure for personal objects would paralyze industrial
enterprise, and arrest the creation of that general wealth which
contributes to the general comfort and happiness, and the accumulation of
those large fortunes which are invaluable as safety-funds and
movement-funds for the whole community.
There are cases in which there is manifestly a *conflict of duties*. This
most frequently occurs between prudence and beneficence. Up to a certain
point they coincide. No prudent man will suffer himself to contract
unsocial, or selfish, or miserly habits, or to neglect the ordinary good
offices and common charities of life. But is one bound to transcend the
limits of prudence, and, without any specific grounds of personal
obligation, to incur loss, hardship, or peril, in behalf of another
person? One is no doubt bound to do all that he could reasonably expect
from another, were their positions reversed; but is it his duty to do more
than this? In answer, it must be admitted that he who in such a case
suffers prudence to limit his beneficence has done all that duty
absolutely requires; but, in proportion to the warmth of his benevolence
and the loftiness of his spirit and character, he will find himself
constrained to transcend this limit, and to sacrifice prudence to
beneficence. Thus—to take an instance from a class of events by no means
infrequent—if I see a man in danger of drowning, it is obviously my duty
to do all that I can do for his rescue without putting my own life in
jeopardy. But I owe him no more than this. My own life is precious to me
and to my family, and I have a right so to regard it. I shall not deserve
censure or self-reproach, if I decline exposing myself to imminent peril.
Yet if I have the generosity and the courage which belong to a truly noble
nature, I shall not content myself with doing no more than this,—I shall
hazard my own safety if there is reason to hope that my efforts may have a
successful issue; and in so doing I shall perform an act of heroic virtue.
The same principle will apply to exposure, danger, and sacrifice of every
kind, incurred for the safety, relief, or benefit of others. We transgress
no positive law of right, when we omit doing for others more than we could
rightfully expect were we in their place. Prudence in such a case is our
right. But it is a right which it is more noble to surrender than to
retain; and the readiness with which and the degree in which we are
willing to surrender it, may be taken as a fair criterion of our moral
growth and strength.
Under the title of *Justice*, with the broad scope which we have given to
it, there may be an apparent conflict of duties, and there are certain
obvious laws of precedence which may cover all such cases. We should first
say that our obligations to the Supreme Being have a paramount claim above
all duties to inferior beings, had we not reason to believe that God is in
no way so truly worshipped and served as by acts of justice and mercy to
his children. The Divine Teacher has given us to understand, not that
there is no time or place too sacred for charity, but that holy times and
places have their highest consecration in the love to man which love to
God inspires.
Toward men, it hardly needs to be said that justice (in the limited and
ordinary acceptation of the word) *has the precedence of charity*. Indeed,
were it not for the prevalence of injustice—individual, social, and
civic—there would hardly be any scope for the active exercise of charity.
Want comes almost wholly from wrong. Were justice universal, that is, were
the rights and privileges which fitly belong to men as men, extended to
and made available by all classes and conditions of men, there would still
be great inequalities of wealth and of social condition; but abject and
squalid poverty could hardly exist. In almost every individual instance,
the withholding or delay of justice tends more or less directly toward the
creation of the very evils which charity relieves. No amount of
generosity, then, can palliate injustice, or stand as a substitute for
justice.
As regards the persons to whom we owe offices of kindness or charity, it
is obvious that *those related to us by consanguinity or affinity have the
first ** claim*. These relations have all the elements of a natural
alliance for mutual defence and help; and it is impossible that their
essential duties should be faithfully discharged and their fitnesses duly
observed, without creating sympathies that in stress of need will find
expression in active charity. In the next rank we may fittingly place our
benefactors, if their condition be such as to demand a return for their
kind offices in our behalf. Nearness in place may be next considered; for
the very fact that the needs of our neighbors are or may be within our
cognizance, commends them especially to our charity, and enables us to be
the more judicious and effective in their relief. Indeed, in smaller
communities, where the dwellings of the rich and of the poor are
interspersed, a general recognition of the claims of neighborhood on
charity would cover the field of active beneficence with an efficiency
attainable in no other way, and at a greatly diminished cost of time and
substance. There is yet another type of neighborhood, consecrated to our
reverent observance by the parable of the Good Samaritan. There are from
time to time cases of want and suffering brought, without our seeking,
under our immediate regard,—cast, as it were, directly upon our kind
offices. The person thus commended to us is, for the time, our nearest
neighbor, nay, our nearest kinsman, and the very circumstances which have
placed him in this relation to us, make him fittingly the foremost object
of our charity.
The question sometimes presents itself *whether ** we shall bestow an
immediate, yet transient benefit, or a more remote, but permanent good*.
If the two are incompatible, and the former is not a matter of absolute
necessity, the latter is to be preferred. Thus remunerative employment is
much more beneficial than alms to an able-bodied man, and it is better
that he suffer some degree of straitness till he can earn a more
comfortable condition, than that he be first made to feel the dependence
of pauperism. Yet if his want be entire and urgent, the delay of immediate
relief is the part of cruelty. On similar grounds, beneficence which
embraces a class of cases or persons is to be preferred to particular acts
of kindness to individuals. Thus it seems harsh to refuse alms to an
unknown street beggar; but as such relief gives shelter to a vast amount
of fraud, idleness, and vice, it is much better that we should sustain, by
contributions proportioned to our ability, some system by which cases of
actual need, and such only, can be promptly and adequately cared for, and
that we then—however reluctantly—refuse our alms to applicants of doubtful
merit.