This is not hair-splitting in the opprobrious sense of that term. The bases of all sins are absolutely abstract principles, and because abstract principles can not be pinched or weighed, they have often little meaning for the opposition in an argument. There is only the width of a hair between Heaven and Hell at many places along the frontier, and there is only the difference between a direct or an indirect volition separating murder and a good deed. The best ethics frequently consists in delicate hair-splitting; and despite the protests of sentimentalists, one of the most valuable benefits of Moral Science is {26} to show us how to handle moral poisons for good purposes, as a physician uses the material poisons, opium and aconite. If the foetus in this case of rupture in ectopic gestation were a materially unjust aggressor on the mother's life, the indirect hastening of its death would be justifiable according to all moralists, and the direct hastening would be licit according to Cardinal de Lugo, who was, in the opinion of St. Alphonsus, "post D. Thomam inter alios theologos facile princeps" (_Th. Mor._, lib. 4. n. 552). Sabetti held that the foetus is a materially unjust aggressor. His reason for this opinion is that the extrauterine foetus is not in a position in which it has a right to be. If it were in the uterus, its natural position, it would have a right to its position. Ectopic gestation is a disease, not a physiological condition. Father Aertnys (_Amer. Eccl,_ Rev., July, 1893) denies that the foetus is an aggressor materially unjust. He says: "Nequaquam enim mortem intentat matri, sed actione, quam non ipse sed corpus matris producit, conatur ad lucem pervenire, et iste conatus non nisi ex naturali concursu rerum fit matri causa mortis. Infans ergo non est _aggressor_ et multo minus est _aggressor injustus_. Hinc nego paritatem cum homine mente capto, qui delirans alteri mortem intentat; hic enim agit motus a sua voluntate, licet absque culpa, et ponit actiones in se injustas, utpote ad necandum directe intentas." In the same periodical (January, 1894) while repeating this statement he says: "Sive in utero existat sive alibi reconditus sit [sc. foetus], nequaquam mortem intentat matri, siquidem non ipse actione propria conatur egredi, sed corpus matris infantem expellit et haec expulsio a matre emanans fit matri causa mortis."