“I did not sufficiently explain myself, father. I should certainly have considered the thing perfectly impracticable, if I had not known, from what I have seen of your fathers, that they are capable of doing with ease what is impossible to other men. This led me to anticipate that they must have discovered some method for meeting the difficulty—a method which I admire even before knowing it, and which I pray you to explain to me.” “Since that is your view of the matter,” replied the monk, “I cannot refuse you. Know, then, that this marvellous principle is our grand method of _directing the intention_—the importance of which, in our moral system, is such, that I might almost venture to compare it with the doctrine of probability. You have had some glimpses of it in passing, from certain maxims which I mentioned to you. For example, when I was showing you how servants might execute certain troublesome jobs with a safe conscience, did you not remark that it was simply by diverting their intention from the evil to which they were accessary, to the profit which they might reap from the transaction? Now that is what we call _directing the intention_. You saw, too, that were it not for a similar divergence of the mind, those who give money for benefices might be downright simoniacs. But I will now show you this grand method in all its glory, as it applies to the subject of homicide—a crime which it justifies in a thousand instances; in order that, from this startling result, you may form an idea of all that it is calculated to effect.” “I foresee already,” said I, “that, according to this mode, everything will be permitted; it will stick at nothing.”