[Sidenote: _Jesuitic morality as doctrine of fraud against the moral law._] Practical legalism can also give rise to a monstrously absurd theory, which we shall call _Jesuitic morality,_ not because it is peculiar to the Jesuits or to Catholicism, but as dutiful homage to the most conspicuous and likewise the most celebrated in literature of its historical incarnations. The theory of Jesuitic morality admits that we can rationally _defraud_ ethical law. [Sidenote: _Concept of legal fraud._] That the law is _defrauded or eluded_ every day, taken in itself, is neither moral nor immoral, since it is an expedient of social strife like another, and in certain cases may be a legitimate act of war and a fraud only in name. A law held to be iniquitous should be combated openly; but if the imposer of the iniquitous law, or he who wishes to profit by it, have committed a mistake in drafting it, so that it can be interpreted in such a way as to become good, or at least better, it is very natural that the adversary should profit by the mistake, if for no other reason than that he may discredit the law as equivocal and lacking in precision and compel society to discuss it again. Who does not applaud the fraud of Portia, when it is a question of saving the life of the noble Antonio from a Shylock? And if even the _ferox animus_ of Shylock has found defenders, as symbol of the tenacity with which we must make our own rights respected, yet Portia also will always find her supporters, as symbol of ingenious rebellion against an unjust law. [Sidenote: _Absurdity of the fraud against ones self and against the moral law._] But what is altogether irrational and yet seems to be admitted by Jesuitic morality, is _the fraud against oneself,_ and so against one's own moral conscience. To defraud one's own conscience, to rebel against it with violence or with artifice, is contradiction, wilfulness, evil. It sometimes happens that we exert ourselves to still what is called the internal voice of admonition, the Socratic demon, or the guardian angel. This happens in the utilitarian, not less than in the moral field; when, for instance, we yield to a pleasure which we know to be harmful and had intended to avoid for that reason, and when by dint of subtleties we try to persuade ourselves that it differs from that which we had recognized as harmful. We attempt, but we never really succeed; we may be able to obscure our conscience for an instant, but we can never permanently and altogether darken it; the effort itself calls for the light that we would avoid. [Sidenote: _Jesuitic morality not explainable as mere legalism._]