Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/260

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DUVERGIER


218


DtrVERGIER


duties are comprehended under the general term rehs;- ion. .Since He is Truth itself, we owe it to Him To believe whatever He has revealed to us in a super- natural manner; to worship Him in the way which, in revelation, He has taught us is most pleasing to Him ; and to obey the authority which He has constituted (see Church). Reverence due to Him forbids all pro- fanity and blasphemy of Him or whatever is sacred to Him. Lying is an offence against His Divine nature, which is Truth itself. These generic duties cover all the specific duties that we owe to God, and embrace, besides, those duties which devolve upon us as mem- bers of the Catholic Church. — (2) Our duties towards ourselves may all be included under one principle: life, the goods of person, mental and physical, have been given to us in trust, with the obligation of using them to obtain our supreme good and end. Hence we may not destroy them, or abuse them as if we were inde- pendent master of them. Therefore suicide, abuse of our faculties, mental or physical, exposing our life or health to danger without a reasonable motive, are prohibited; as also are all actions incompatible with the reverence that we owe to our moral nature. We are bound to strive for the development of our intel- lect and for temporal goods as far as these are neces- sary to the fulfilment of the moral law. As duty is a debt to some one other than ourselves, we cannot, strictly speaking, use the term duties to ourselves. They are due to God ; they regard oiu-selves. — (3) All our duties towards others are implicitly contained in the Christian precept: " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself ". God wills the welfare of all men; hence the obligation of making His will the rule of mine binds me to will their welfare, and to order my conduct towards them with a due respect to the rational nature which they possess, and to the obligations which that nature imposes on them. The application of this prin- ciple gives birth to duties towards the minds and wills of others (prohibition of scandal and lying); to the lives of others (prohibition of murder, etc.); to their good reputation (prohibition of insult, detraction, or defamation of character).

As material goods are necessary to us in order to live according to the rational law, evidently God in imposing moral obligation wills also that we have at our disposal the means necessary to fulfil our duty. Hence arises that moral control over things which "is called a right. The neeiis of a moral life require that some things should be permanently under om- con- trol; hence the rights of ownership. Xow a right in one person is nugatory unless others are botmd to respect it. So to every right there is a corresponding duty.

Thus far we have sketched the line of duty incimi- bent on each one towards others as individuals. Be- sides these there are .social duties. The primary so- ciety, the family, which is the unit of civil society, has its foundation in our natm-e; and the relations which constitute it give rise to two groups of rights and cor- relative duties — conjugal and parental. Besides the family, a wider, broader, association of man with his fellows is needed, generally speaking, in order that he may develop liis life with all its needs and potencies, in accordance with the dictates of reason. God has in- tended man to live in civil society, and man becomes the subject of duties and rights with regard to the society of which he is a member. The society, too, acquires a moral unitv or personality which is also the subject of rights and duties. This system of social rights and duties has for its pivot the "right possessed by the society to impose law-s which constitute a bind- ing obligation. This right, called authority, is derived from the natural law, ultimately from God. For, since He wills civil .society as a means for the due de- velopment of liuman nature. He wills that authority without which it cannot exist. As the lower animals cannot l)e the subject of rights we do not owe them


any duties; but we owe duties to God in their regard (see Ethics; L.\w: Oblig.\tion).

St. Thom.\s, I, Q. .vdi, a. 2, Q. bra.x, a. 2; II-II, Q. xviii, a. 5. y. Ixxi, a. 2; Sc.vrez, De legibus, II; De uUimo fine, Tr. i. ch. iii; d'Hclst, Conferences de Solre-Dame (1891), s. v. Les Fondemenis de la Morale; Farges, La Liberie el Le Devoir (Paris, 1902); Leckt, History of European Morals, i; Joseph I!iCK.vBY,.-l<;m>wis Ethicus, QQ. .xciii, xciv; Idem, Moral Philos- ophy, I, vi; DE Bates, Les Bases de la Morale (Ghent, 1892); Ladd, Philosophy of Conduct (New York, 1902), xv; Newman, A Grammar of Assent, v; Martineau, A Study of Religion (New \ork, 1888), Introduction; Fox, Religion and Morality (New York, 1899).

J.^IIES J. Fox.

Duvergier de Hauranne (or Du Verger), Je.vn (also called Sai.vt-Cyr.\.v from an abbey he held in commendam), one of the authors of Jansenism, b. at Bayonne, France, loSl; d. in Paris, 1643. After studying the humanities in his native place, and philosophy at the Sorbonne, he went to Lou vain, not to the university but to the Jesuit college, where he graduated, 1604, with a brilliant thesis admired by Justus Lipsius. His acquaintance with the future theologian of the Jansenist sect, Cornelius Jansen (Jansenius), a young disciple of the Baianist Jacques Janson, probably began at Louvain. In 1605 the two were in Paris, attending together the lessons of the GalUcan. Edmond Richer, and studying Christian antiquity with a view to restoring it to its place of honour, usurped, as they claimed, by Scholasticism. These studies of patristic and especially Augustinian literature were pursued with incredible energj' for wellnigh twelve years, at Paris, till 1611, and then at Campiprat (Cantipre), the home of Hauranne, tmder the protection of Bertrand d'Eschaux, Bishop of Bayonne, who made Duvergier canon of his ca- thedral, and Jansen principal of a newly-founded college. Owing, no doubt, to the translation of d'Es- chaux from Bayonne to Tours, the two friends left Bayonne in 1617, Jansen returning to Louvain and Duvergier going to Poitiers where Bishop de la Roche- posay, a disciple of Scaliger and an enthusiastic humanist, received him as a fri,.>nd, appointed him to a canonry and the priorj' of Bonneville, and laier, 1620, resigned in his behalf the Abbey of Saint-C^'ran- en-Brenne. The new commendatorj' prelate resided httle in his abbey. In 1622 he returned definitively to Paris, the metropolis affording him better oppor- tunities to further his plans. During the years 1617- 1635 an assiduous correspondence was kept up be- tween Duvergier and Jansen, of which there remain only "Lettres de Jansenius a Duverger de Hauranne", seized at the time of Saint-Cj'ran's incarceration. These letters, wherein conventional ciphers are fre- quently used, constantly mention the affaire princi- pale, projct, cabale, that is, first and foremost, the composition of the "Augustinus" by Jansen, Saint- Cyran employing himself to enlist patrons for the so-called Augustinian system (see J.^^xsexism).

For greater security the two innovators occasion- ally met to discuss the progress of their joint work. One of these meetings probablj' gave rise to the much- debated Projet de Bourg-Fontaine. In his "Relation juridique de ce qui s'est pass6 i Poitiers touchant la nouvelle doctrine des Jans^nistes" (Poitiers, 1G54), Filleau stated on the authority of one of the conspira- tors then repentant, that si.x persons had secretly met in 1621 at the chartreuse of Bourg-Fontaine, near Paris, for the purpose of overthrowing Christianity and establishing deism in its stead. The names of the conspirators, only initialled by Filleau, were given in full by Bayle (Diet., s. v. ".Ajnauld"); that of Saint-Cyran heads the list. The Jansenists always protested against this story. Arnauld called it a "diabolical invention", and Pascal ridiculed it in his "Seizieme Icttre ;\ un provincial". The Jesuit Father Sauv.age's argument in his "R^alit6 du projet de Bourg-Fontaine d^montr(5e par ['execution"