Moral Philosophy: Ethics, Deontology and Natural Law Part 15

(a) is of no use except to be used up, spent, consumed:

(b) is not wanted for the lender's own consumption within the period of the loan:

(c) is lent upon security that obviates risk:

(d) is so lent that the lender foregoes no occasion of lawful gain by lending it.

8. When all these four conditions are fulfilled, and yet interest is exacted upon a loan, such interest is usurious and unjust. And why?

Simply by reason of the principle that we laid down before, speaking of private exchange (n. 3), a principle that is thus stated by St.

Thomas:

"If one party is much benefited by the commodity which he receives of the other, while the other, the seller, is not a loser by going without the article, no extra price must be put on. The reason is, because the benefit that accrues to one party is not from the seller, but from the condition of the buyer. Now no one ought to sell to another that which is not his, though he may sell the loss that he suffers. He, however, who is much benefited by the commodity he receives of another, may spontaneously bestow some extra recompense on the seller: that is the part of one who has the feelings of a gentleman." (2a. 2ae, q. 77, art. 1, in corp.)

9. St. Thomas speaks of sales, but the principle applies equally to loans. It is upon loans of money that interest is commonly taken, and of money-loans we speak. Clearly, according to the doctrine stated, the lender can claim the compensation of interest, if he has to pinch himself in order to lend, or lends at a notable risk. He is selling his own loss,--or risk, which is loss once removed. But supposing he has other monies in hand, and the security is good, and he has enough still left for all domestic needs, and for all luxuries that he cares to indulge in,--moreover he has nothing absolutely to do with his money, in the event of his not lending it, but to h.o.a.rd it up in his strong box, and wait long months till he has occasion to use it: in that case, if he lends it he will be no worse off on the day that he gets it back, no worse off in the time while it is away, than if it had never left his coffers. Such is the contract of _mutuum_, shorn of all accidental attendant circ.u.mstances, a contract, which "of its own nature," as Benedict XIV. says, that is, apart from circ.u.mstances, "requires the amount returned exactly to balance the amount received."

Not though the borrower has profited of the loan to gain kingdoms, is any further return in strict justice to be exacted of him on that precise account.

10. But now an altered case. Suppose land is purchaseable, and it is proposed to stock a farm with cattle, and rear them, and convey them to a large town where there is a brisk demand for meat--the supposition is not always verified, nor any supposition like it, but suppose it verified in some one case--then, though the lender has other monies in hand for the needs of his household, and the security is good, yet the money is not so lent as that he foregoes no occasion of lawful gain by lending it. He foregoes the purchase of land and farm stock, or at least delays it, and delay is loss where profit is perennial. On that score of gain forfeited he may exact interest on the money that he lends, which interest will be no usury. The t.i.tle of interest here given is recognized by divines as _lucrum cessans_, "interruption of profit." The interest is taken, so far as it goes upon a lawful t.i.tle, not upon the fact of the borrower's profit--that is irrelevant--but upon the profit that the lender might have made, had he kept the money in hand.

11. This latter case (n. 10) represents that putting of money out to interest, which is an essential feature of modern commerce. The former case (n. 9) is the aspect that money-lending commonly bore in the Middle Ages. In those days land was hard to buy, agriculture backward, roads bad, seas unnavigable, carrying-trade precarious, messages slow, raids and marauders frequent, population spa.r.s.e, commerce confined to a few centres, mines unworked, manufactures mostly domestic, capital yet unformed. Men kept their money in their cellars, or deposited it for safety in religious houses: whence the stories of treasure-trove belonging to those days. They took out the coin as they wanted it to spend on housekeeping, or on war, or feasting. It was very hard, next to impossible, to lay out money so as to make more money by it. Money was in those days really barren--a resource for housekeeping, not for trade--a medium of private, not of commercial exchange--a representative of use value, not of market value. Apart from risk of non-repayment, to take interest for money that you had no use for but to h.o.a.rd, was getting "a breed of barren metal:" it was taking up what you laid not down: it was making profit out of your neighbour's need, or your neighbour's gain, where there was no corresponding need unsatisfied, or gain forfeited, on your part: it was that "attempt to draw profit and increment, without labour, without cost, and without risk, out of the use of a thing that does not fructify," which the Fifth Lateran Council defines to be usury.

12. In our time, thanks to steam and electricity, the increase of population, and continued peace, the whole world has become one trading community, representing now more, now less abundant opportunities for the investment of money, and the conversion of it into other lucrative commodities. Money consequently with us is not a mere medium of private exchange for the purposes of housekeeping: it is a medium of commercial exchange. It represents, not use value, but market value. To be a thousand pounds out of pocket for a year means an opportunity of gain irretrievably lost, gain that could have been made otherwise than by money-lending. Where this is so, and so far as it is so, the lender may without violation of justice point to _lucrum cessans_, gain lost, and arrange beforehand with the borrower for being reimbursed with interest.

13. The transition from mediaeval housekeeping, with its use values and private exchange, to the mercantile society of modern times, was not made in a day, nor went on everywhere at the same rate. It was a growth of ages. In great cities commerce rapidly ripened, and was well on towards maturity five centuries ago. Then the conditions that render interest lawful, and mark it off from usury, readily came to obtain. But those centres were isolated. Like the centres of ossification, which appear here and there in cartilage when it is being converted into bone, they were separated one from another by large tracts remaining in the primitive condition. Here you might have a great city, Hamburg or Genoa, an early type of commercial enterprise, and, fifty miles inland, society was in its infancy, and the great city was as part of another world. Hence the same transaction, as described by the letter of the law, might mean lawful interest in the city, and usury out in the country--the two were so disconnected. In such a situation the legislator has to choose between forbidding interest here and allowing usury there; between restraining speculation and licensing oppression. The mediaeval legislator chose the former alternative. Church and State together enacted a number of laws to restrain the taking of interest, laws that, like the clothes of infancy, are not to be scorned as absurd restrictions, merely because they are inapplicable now, and would not fit the modern growth of nations. At this day the State has repealed those laws, and the Church has officially signified that she no longer insists on them.

Still she maintains dogmatically that there is such a sin as usury, and what it is, as defined in the Fifth Council of Lateran.

_Readings_.--St. Thos., 2a 2ae, q. 77, art. 1; Ar., _Pol_., I., ix.; St. Thos., 2a 2ae, q. 77, art. 4; _The Month_ for September, 1886; _The Nineteenth Century _for September, 1877, pp. 181, seq.

CHAPTER VI.

OF MARRIAGE.

SECTION I.--_Of the Inst.i.tution of Marriage_.

1. Marriage is defined by the Canonists: _the union of male and female, involving their living together in undivided intercourse_. In the present order of Providence, the marriage contract between baptized persons is a sacrament, under the superintendence of the Church, the fertile theme of canonists and theologians. As philosophers, we deal with marriage as it would be, were there no sacraments, no Church, and no Incarnation, present or to come. This is marriage in the order of pure nature.

2. It is natural to all animals to propagate their kind, natural therefore also to man; and being natural, it is so far forth also a good thing, unless we are to say with the Manicheans, that the whole of corporeal nature is an evil creation. Nay, so urgent is the natural appet.i.te here, that we must argue the existence, not of a mere permission, but of an exigency of nature, and consequent command of G.o.d (_Ethics_, c. vi., s. ii., nn. 11, 12, p. 122), for the propagation of the human species. Besides, there is in the individual the duty of self-preservation, therefore likewise in the race. Again, the old cannot subsist at all without the support of the young, nor lead a cheerful existence without their company. Imagine a world with no youth in it, a winter without a spring!

3. There is this difference between self-preservation and the preservation of the race, that if a man will not eat, none can eat for him; but if one man omit the propagation of his kind, another can take it up. There are many things necessary for the good of mankind, which are not to be done by every individual. Not all are to be soldiers, nor all builders, though houses are needful, and sometimes war. Nor is it desirable that the human race should be multiplied to its utmost capacity. It is enough here to mention without discussing the teaching of Malthus, how population presses on the means of subsistence, the latter increasing in an arithmetical, the former in a geometrical ratio. Without going the whole way with Malthus, modern economical writers are commonly a little Malthusian, and shrink from giving to all and each of their species the word to "increase and multiply."

4. But, it will be said, sickly and consumptive subjects, and still more those who have any tendency to madness, may well be excused from having children; so too may they be excused whose poverty cannot keep a family; excused too is the inveterate drunkard, and all habitual criminals, by the principle of heredity, lest they transmit to posterity an evil bodily predisposition; but the healthy and the virtuous, men sound of mind and limb, of life unspotted, and in circ.u.mstances easy, the flower of the race,--none of these surely should omit to raise up others to wear his lineaments: we want such men multiplied. I answer, on natural grounds alone: You may counsel, but you cannot compel, either by positive law or ethical precept, any man or woman to seek to have children. You surely will not breed men by selection, like cattle, as Plato proposed. The union of the s.e.xes, especially the married union, is an act to be of all others the most entirely free, spontaneous, uncommanded, and unconstrained. It should be a union of intense mutual love. But a man may not meet with any woman that he can love with pa.s.sion; or, meeting such, he may not be able to win her. Nor, considering the indeterminateness of points of health, capacity, and character, could any certain list be drawn up of persons bound to have issue. Thus the utmost that can be argued is a counsel in this direction, a counsel that mankind ordinarily are ready enough to comply with. But if any one of seeming apt.i.tude excuses himself on the score of finding no partner to his liking, or of a desire to travel, or of study, or still more, of devotion--and why should not a man, ever of natural piety, go out into solitude, like St. Antony, to hold communion with his Maker?--all these excuses must be taken. It is lawful then in the state of mere nature, upon any one of many sufficient grounds, to stand aside and relinquish to your neighbour the privilege and responsibility of giving increase to the human family.

5. But if it is no one individual's duty to propagate his kind, how is it that we have laid down that there is such a duty? For the duty is inc.u.mbent upon them that alone can do it, and it can only be done by individuals. The answer rests on a distinction between _proximate_ and _remote_ duty. The propagation of the race is the remote duty of every individual, but at present the proximate, duty of none. A _remote_ duty is a duty not now pressing but which would have to be performed in a certain contingency, which contingency happening, the duty becomes _proximate_. If there appeared a danger of our race dying out, the survivors would be beholden, especially those in power, to take steps for its continuance. Rewards might then be held out, like the _jus trium liberorum_ inst.i.tuted at Rome by Augustus; and if necessary, penalties inflicted on celibacy. In this one extreme case the matrimonial union might be made matter of legal constraint. But when will such constraint become necessary?

6. The continuance of the human race must be wrought out by man and woman standing in that abiding and exclusive relation to one another, which const.i.tutes the state of marriage. Nature abhors promiscuity, or free love. It is the delight of writers who use, perhaps abuse, Darwin's name, to picture primitive mankind as all living in this infrab.e.s.t.i.a.l state. But "the state supposed is suicidal, and instead of allowing the expansion of the human race, would have produced infertility, and probably disease, and at best only allowed the existing numbers to maintain, under the most favourable circ.u.mstances, a precarious existence. To suppose, therefore, that the whole human race for any considerable time were without regular marriage, is physiologically impossible. They could never have survived it."

(Devas, _Studies of Family Life_, -- 101.)

7. Even if the alleged promiscuity ever did prevail--and it may have obtained to some extent in certain degraded portions of humanity--its prevalence was not its justification. The practice cannot have been befitting in any stage of the evolution of human society. As in all things we suppose our readers to have understanding, we leave it to them to think out this matter for themselves. Suffice it here to put forward two grand advantages gained and ends achieved, which are called by theologians "the goods of marriage."

8. The first good of marriage is the _offspring_ that is born of it.

Nature wills, not only the being, but the well-being of this offspring, and that both in the physical and in the moral order. Very important for the physical health of the child it is, that it be born of parents whose animal propensities are under some restraint; such restraint the bond of marriage implies. Then, in the moral order, the child requires to be educated with love, a love that shall be guided by wisdom, and supported by firmness. Love, wisdom, and firmness, they are the attributes of both parents; but love is especially looked for from the mother, wisdom and firmness from the father. And, what is important, both have an _interest_ in the child such as no other human being can take. We are speaking of the normal father or mother, not of many worthless parents that actually are; for, as Aristotle often lays it down, we must not judge of a thing from its bad specimens. No doubt, the State could establish public nurseries and infant schools, and provide a staff of nurses and governesses, more scientific educators than even the normal parent; but who, that has not been most unhappy in his origin, would wish his own infancy to have been reared in such a place? What certificated stranger can supply for a mother's love?

9. The second good of marriage is the _mutual faith_ of the partners.

Plato never made a greater mistake than when he wrote that "the female s.e.x differs from the male in mankind only in this, that the one bears children, while the other begets them;" and consequently that "no occupation of social life belongs to a woman because she is a woman, or to a man because he is a man, but capacities are equally distributed in both s.e.xes, and woman naturally bears her share in all occupations, and man his share, only that in all woman is weaker than man." (_Republic_, 454 D; 455 D.) Over against this we must set Aristotle's correction: "Cohabitation among human kind is not for the mere raising of children, but also for the purposes of a partners.h.i.+p in life: for from the first the offices of man and woman are distinct and different: thus they mutually supply for one another, putting their several advantages into the common stock." (Ar., _Eth_., VIII., xii. 7.) Elsewhere he sets forth these several offices in detail: "The nature of both partners, man and woman, has been prearranged by a divine dispensation in view of their partners.h.i.+p: for they differ by not having their faculties available all to the same effect, but some even to opposite effects, though combining to a common end: for G.o.d made the one s.e.x stronger and the other weaker, that the one for fear may be the more careful, and the other for courage the more capable of self-defence; and that the one may forage abroad, while the other keeps house: and for work the one is made competent for sedentary employments, but too delicate for an out-door life, while the other makes a poor figure at keeping still, but is vigorous and robust in movement; and touching children, the generation is special, but the improvement of the children is the joint labour of both parents, for it belongs to the one to nurture, to the other to chastise." (Ar., _Econ_., i. 3.)

These pa.s.sages are enough to suggest more than they actually contain, of two orders of qualities arranged ant.i.thetically one over against another in man and woman, so that the one existence becomes complementary to the other, and the two conjoined form one perfect human life. This life-communion, called by divines _fides_, or mutual faith, is then the second good fruit of marriage. Indeed it is the more characteristically human good, _offspring_ being rather related to the animal side of our nature. But as animal and rational elements make one human being, so do _offspring_ and _mutual faith_ const.i.tute the adequate good of that human union of the s.e.xes, which we call marriage.

10. Whatever good there is in marriage, connections formed by either party beyond the marriage-bed, are agents of confusion to the undoing of all that good and the practical dissolution of the marriage.

_Readings_.--_Contra Gentes_, iii., 122; _ib_., iii., 126; _ib_., iii., 136; Devas, _Studies of Family Life_, ---- 90-101, where he disposes of the proof of primitive promiscuity, drawn from the fact that in early societies kins.h.i.+p is traced and property claimed only through the mother.

SECTION II.--_Of the Unity of Marriage_.

1. _Both man and woman are by nature incapable of a second marriage, while their former marriage endures_. No woman can have two husbands at the same time, which is _polyandry_; and no man can have two wives at the same time, which is _polygamy_. The second marriage attempted is not only _illicit_, but _invalid_: it is no contract, no marriage at all, and all cohabitation with the second partner is sheer adultery. This is a great deal more than saying that polyandry and polygamy are unlawful.

2. That is by nature no marriage, which is inconsistent with the natural ends of marriage, _offspring_ and _mutual faith_. But polyandry is thus inconsistent with the good of offspring, and polygamy with mutual faith. It is not meant that polyandry makes the birth of children impossible. But nature is solicitous, not for the mere birth, but for the rearing and good estate of the child born. Now a child born fatherless is in an ill plight for its future education.

Posthumous children in lawful wedlock are born fatherless: that is a calamity: but what shall we think of an inst.i.tution which makes that calamity to the child sure always to occur? Such an inst.i.tution is polyandry. For in it no man can ever know his own child, except by likeness, and likeness in a baby face is largely as you choose to fancy it. Again, is the polyandrous wife to be, or not to be, the head of the family? If not, the family--for it ought to be one family, where there is one mother--will have as many heads as she has husbands, a pretty specimen of a house divided against itself. If she is to be the head, that is a perversion of the natural order of predominance between the s.e.xes. In any case, polyandry is little better than promiscuity: it is fatal to the family and, fatal to the race; and children born of it are born out of marriage.

3. Against polygamy the case in natural law is not quite so strong as against polyandry. Still it is a strong case enough in the interest of the wife. The words spoken by the bride to the bridegroom in the marriage rite of ancient Rome, _Ubi tu Caius, ego Caia_, "Where you are master, I am mistress," declare the relation of _mutual faith_ as it should be, namely, a relation of equality, with some advantage, preference, and pre-eminence allowed to the husband, yet not so great advantage as to leave _him_ free where _she_ is straitly bound, and reduce her to the servile level of one in a row of minions to his pa.s.sion and sharers of his divided affections. Polygamy in all ages has meant the lowering of womankind:

He will hold thee-- Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse

At its strongest, the love of man for woman, where polygamy obtains, is a flame of pa.s.sion, that quickly spends itself on one object, and then pa.s.ses to another; not a rational, enduring, human affection. It is also a fact, that the increase of the race is not greater in polygamy than in monogamy. Thus, as a practice that runs strongly counter to one of the great purposes of marriage, and is, to say the least, no help to the other, and carries with it the humiliation of the female s.e.x, polygamy is justly argued to be abhorrent to nature.

4. It is beside the purpose of this work to enter into the questions of morality that arise out of Holy Scripture, considered as an inspired record of the actions of the Saints. But the polygamy of the patriarchs of old so readily occurs to mind, that it is worth while to mention four conceivable explanations, if only to indicate which is and which is not reconcilable with our philosophy. The first explanation would be, that polygamy is not against the natural law, but only against the positive divine law, which was derogated from in this instance. We have made it out to be against the natural law. The second explanation would be that G.o.d gave the patriarchs a dispensation, strictly so called, from this point of the natural law.

We have maintained that G.o.d cannot, strictly speaking, dispense from one jot or t.i.ttle of natural law. (_Ethics_, c. viii., s. iii., nn.

1-3, p. 147.) [Footnote 19] A third explanation would be founded on the words of St. Paul to the Athenians (Acts xvii. 30), about "G.o.d overlooking the times of this ignorance." This would suppose that mankind, beginning in monogamy, from pa.s.sion and ignorance lapsed quickly into polygamy: that the patriarchs in good faith conformed to the practice of their time; and that G.o.d, in their case as with the rest of mankind, awaited His own destined hour for the light of better knowledge to break upon the earth. A fourth explanation would be this.

G.o.d by His supreme dominion can dissolve any marriage. By the same dominative power He can infringe and partially make void any marriage contract without entirely undoing it. The marriage contract, existing in its fulness and integrity, is a bar to any second similar contract, as we have proved. But what, on this theory, the Lord G.o.d did with the marriages of the patriarchs was this: He partially unravelled and undid the contract, so as to leave room for a second contract, and a third, each having the bare essentials of a marriage, but none of them the full integrity.

[Footnote 19: _Dispensatio_ is the Latin for [Greek: oikonomia], and in this case means an "economy" of law, in the sense that G.o.d did not press the marriage law beyond the capacity of the subject (Matt. xix.

7,8). See my Newman Index, s.v. _Economy_. The schoolmen missed this meaning, and took _dispensatio_ in the canonical sense.]

But, for the author's final view, see Appendix.

_Readings_.--_Contra Gent_., iii., 124; Suarez, _De Legibus_, II., xv., 28.

SECTION III.--_Of the Indissolubility of Marriage_.

1. This section is pointed not so much against a _separation_--which may take place by mutual consent, or without that, by grievous infidelity or cruelty of one party--as against a divorce _a vinculo_, which is a dissolution of a marriage in the lifetime of the parties, enabling each of them validly and lawfully to contract with some other. The unity of marriage is more essential than its indissolubility. Nature is more against polygamy than against divorce.

Even Henry VIII. stuck at polygamy. In the present arrangement, a divorce _a vinculo_ is obtainable in three cases. First, when of two unbaptized persons, man and wife, the one is converted, and the unconverted party refuses to live peaceably in wedlock, the convert may marry again, and thereupon also the other party. So the Church understands St. Paul, I Cor. vii. 13, 15. Again, the Pope can grant a divorce _a vinculo_ in the marriage of baptized persons before cohabitation. Such a marriage in that stage is also dissolved by the profession of one of the parties in a religious order. Beyond these three cases, the Catholic Church allows neither the lawfulness nor the validity of any divorce _a vinculo_ by whomsoever given to whatsoever parties.

2. It is ours to investigate the lie of the law of nature, having due regard to the points marked, antecedently to our search, by the definition of infallible authority. Nothing can be done in the Church against the law of nature: since therefore divorce _a vinculo_ is sometimes recognized in the Church, it may be contended that marriage is not by nature absolutely indissoluble. On the other hand, it is a proposition censured by Pius IX. in the Syllabus, n. 67: "By the law of nature the bond of marriage is not indissoluble." Thus it appears we must teach that marriage is naturally indissoluble, still not absolutely so, just as a safe is justly advertised as fire-proof, when it will resist any conflagration that is likely to occur, though it would be consumed in a blast-furnace or in a volcano. So marriage is indissoluble, if it holds good for all ordinary contingencies, for all difficulties that may be fairly reckoned with and regarded as not quite improbable, for every posture of affairs that the contracting parties before their union need at all consider. Or, if the three cases of divorce actually allowed are to be traced to the dominative power of G.o.d (_Ethics_, c. vii., n. 2, p. 129), we may teach that marriage is by nature absolutely indissoluble, and that divorce is as much against the law of nature as the killing of an innocent man, excepting in the case of G.o.d's dominion being employed to quash the contract or the right to life. But against this latter view is to be set the consideration, that G.o.d is manifestly averse to using His dominative power to overturn natural ordinances. He does not hand the innocent over to death except in the due course of physical nature: why then should He ever put forth His power against the marriage-tie, unless it be that nature herself in certain cases postulates its severance? But if such is ever nature's pet.i.tion, the universal and unconditional permanence of the marriage-tie cannot be a requisition of nature, nor is divorce absolutely excluded by natural law.