We are now come to the crux of this Inquiry.
To every philosophical thinker who takes the trouble to ponder the matter
it must be evident that the ethical principles enunciated in the first
part of the Declaration, given _in extenso_ in the preceding chapter, are
intellectually irrefutable and morally irreproachable; although their
obviousness, certainly, will not be palpable to “the man in the street.”
The answer of this clear-sighted, strong-headed Yorkshireman, is indeed
the answer that is the resultant of exact ethical knowledge, that is, of
moral science. _For what is science, either in the realms of the
intellectual, the moral, the political, or the physical, but “exact
knowledge.”_
Moreover, these principles are the resultant of abstract moral science, or
exact ethical knowledge pure and simple.
Now, “Morality is the science of duty.”[161] But, just as it is most
mischievous _indiscriminately_ to apply abstract principles of morality,
however faultless in themselves, to the complex affairs of individuals and
of States, so is it most dangerous to strew broadcast statements of the
abstract principles of ethics for the untutored mind of the _merely_
practical man——first of all, to misunderstand; and, secondly, to wrest to
his own undoing and that of his equally unfortunate fellow-men.
This is certainly so in the present stage of the world’s imperfect
education. Though one lives in the hope that sooner or later that “ampler
day” may dawn, when, from the least unto the greatest, men shall come to
have a happy conscious realization of the truth of the poet’s dictum:
“_Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas_;”[162] “Happy is he who hath
been able to learn the causes of things.”
Still, _truth——that which is——is truth_.
_And partial truth is not less true, according to its measure and in its
degree, than the full orb of truth._[A]
[Footnote A: Strategy in war has for its intellectual and moral
justification the fact that partial truth is not less true, in its measure
and in its degree, than the full orb of truth.]
Furthermore, “Wisdom is justified by all her children;” even although some
of those children are tardy in realizing and in expressing their sense of
such justification.
Now, although all this stands to reason——nay, because it is true, is even
the perfection of reason——it was an enunciation of principles by Father
Oldcorne, which it was more than probable would be misinterpreted by two
sets of people, the intellectually stupid and the morally malicious.
Nay, it may be allowed that even persons of the highest intelligence and
of the utmost good faith——such as, in the last century, the late David
Jardine[163]——might easily enough think that Edward Oldcorne deserved
condemnation and chiding for thus apparently showing such a marked
disposition to look at this grave matter, the moral rightness or wrongness
of the Gunpowder Plot, as though it were as purely abstract and
scholastic a question as that famous moot of the middle ages: “How many
angels can dance on the point of a needle?”[A]
[Footnote A: Oldcorne had special private knowledge that the Plot would
never be a Plot _executed_, because (1) he knew Christopher Wright had
resolved to reveal it; because (2) he knew that his own personal act had
ended the Plot by his penning the Letter.]