turn as it
comes. And this is just 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 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 may
write a treatise which would be called really lax on the subject of
lying, which might come under the condemnation of the holy see, as
some treatises on that score have 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
interrupti