perfectly justified. Therefore I was justified when I combined the two. Considered from the legal point of view, such devices may be a necessary though clumsy and indirect mode of altering an antiquated law. If the prohibition of usury be superstitious, it may be well to circumvent it by such circuitous means. But when the legal method is applied to a moral law, when you at the same time affirm the moral law to be divine and immutable while you are eviscerating it of its whole substance, you are playing fast and loose with morality itself. The device in this case, which admits of innumerable applications, is what was called directing the intention. I elaborately pretend, that is, to be doing one thing when I am doing another, and succeed in getting the benefit of one wicked action by doing two actions, harmless separately and averting my mind in each case from the action which is to be its complement. So duelling is forbidden. But it is surely not forbidden to defend my life or honour. I may, again, tell a man without sin that I am going to take a walk in a field and shall probably have a sword by my side. If he goes there, too, and attacks me, I may rightly resist him, even by running him through the
