You notice, gentlemen, that I lay great stress on, this principle that _the end can never justify the means_. It is an evident principle, which all civilized nations acknowledge. Its opposite, that the end justifies the means, is so odious that the practice of it is a black stamp of ignominy on any man or any set of men that would be guilty of it. The Catholic Church has, all through her course of existence, taught the maxim that the end cannot justify the means. She has impressed it on the laws and hearts of all Christian peoples. She inculcates it in the teachings of all her theologians and moral philosophers and in all her channels of education. And since we Jesuits are among her leading educators and writers, we have maintained that thesis in thousands of printed volumes, as firmly as I am maintaining it before you to-day. No Jesuit ever, nor any Catholic theologian or philosopher, has taught the contrary. And yet even such pretentious works as the "Encyclopædia Britannica" have carried all over the earth the slander that we teach the opposite maxim, that the end does justify the means, and the odious term _Jesuitry_ has been coined to embody that slander. Is it not strange then, very strange, that they who thus falsely accuse us are often the very men who will procure an abortion to save the mother's life, who will do wrong that good may come of it? And you find such men maintaining the lawfulness of abortion on the plea that the operation, whether licit or not, is a necessary means to obtain a good end.