rer, or a matter too trivial to provoke question, as
in dealing with children or madmen, there seem to be four courses:

1. _To say the thing that is not_. Here I draw the reader's attention
to the words _material_ and _formal_. "Thou shalt not kill;" _murder_
is the _formal_ transgression of this commandment, but _accidental
homicide_ is the _material_ transgression. The _matter_ of the act is
the same in both cases; but in the _homicide_, there is nothing more
than the act, whereas in _murder_ there must be the intention, etc.
which constitutes the formal sin. So, again, an executioner commits
the material act, but not that formal killing which is a breach of
the commandment. So a man, who, simply to save himself from starving,
takes a loaf which is not his own, commits only the material, not the
formal act of stealing, that is, he does not commit a sin. And so a
baptised Christian, external to the Church, who is in invincible
ignorance, is a material heretic, and not a formal. And in like
manner, if to say the thing which is not be in special cases lawful,
it may be called a _material lie_.

The first mode then which has been suggested of meeting those special
cases, in which to mislead by words has a sufficient object, or has a
_just cause_, is by a material lie.

The second mode is by an _aequivocatio_, which is not equivalent to
the English word "equivocation," but means sometimes a _play upon
words_, sometimes an _evasion_.

2. _A play upon words_. St. Alfonso certainly says that a play upon
words is allowable; and, speaking under correction, I should say that
he does so on the ground that lying is _not_ a sin against justice,
that is, against our neighbour, but a sin against God; because words
are the signs of ideas, and therefore if a word denotes two ideas, we
are at liberty to use it in either of its senses: but I think I must
be incorrect here in some respect, because the Catechism of the
Council, as I have quoted it at p. 248, says, "Vanitate et mendacio
fides ac veritas tolluntur, arctissima vincula _societatis humanae_;
quibus sublatis, sequitur summa vitae _confusio_, ut _homines nihil a
daemonibus differre videantur_."

3. _Evasion_;--when, for instance, the speaker diverts the attention
of the hearer to another subject; suggests an irrelevant fact or
makes a remark, which confuses him and gives him something to think
about; throws dust into his eyes; states some truth, from which he is
quite sure