its methods are too purely
technical to commend themselves to mankind at large. But common-sense
and conscience are quite as definite guides as logic or authority; and
there seems no good reason for refusing to give the name of casuistry to
their operations.

The casuistry of primitive man is uncompromisingly legal. His morality
is not yet separated from his religion; and religion for him means the
cult of some superior being--the king or priest of his tribe--whose
person is charged with a kind of sacred electricity. "His divinity is a
fire, which, under proper restraints, confers endless blessings; but if
rashly touched, or allowed to break bounds, it burns or destroys what it
touches. Hence the disastrous effects supposed to follow a breach of
taboo; the offender has thrust his hand into the divine fire, which
shrivels up and consumes him on the spot" (Frazer, _The Golden Bough_,
i. 169). Elaborate rules are accordingly drawn up to secure the maximum
of benefit, and the minimum of inconvenience, from this sacred fire; and
in the application of these rules does savage casuistry consist. At a
higher stage of civilization the god is no longer present in person but
issues to his worshippers categorical commands. These logic must seize
upon and develop as far as they will go; for the breach of some trifling
consequence of a rule might mean the loss of the deity's favour. Hence
the rise of sacred books among most Eastern peoples. On the Jewish
Decalogue, for instance, follows the law, and on the law the rabbinical
schools. Some of these will be stricter, and some laxer; but on the
whole all tend to "aggravate" the law--down to the point of forbidding
the faithful to wear a girdle, or to kill a noxious insect on the
Sabbath. Though indeed we might look nearer home than the Talmud for
similar absurdities; most Puritan communities could furnish strange
freaks of Sabbatarian casuistry. Nor have the Catholics been one whit
behind them. Their scholastic doctors gravely discuss whether--since
water is the "matter" of baptism--a soul can be made regenerate by milk,
or rose-water or wine.

At the opposite pole stood ancient Greece. Here ceremonial casuistry
found no place, because there were no sacred books. "Among the Greeks
writing never attained the consecration of religion. No system of
doctrine and observance, no manuals containing authoritative rules of
morality, were ever transmitted in documentary form. In conduct they
sh