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 OCCLEVE

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OCCULT

is the perverse human will and is intrinsic to the hu- man composite. The occasion is something extrinsic and, given the freedom of the will, cannot, properly speaking, stand in causal relation to the act or vicious habit which we call sin. There can be no doubt that in general the same obligation which binds us to re- frain from sin requires us to shun its occasion. Qui tenetur ad finem, tenetur ad media (he who is bound to reach a certain end is bound to employ the means to attain it). Theologians distinguish between the proximate and the remote occasion. They are not altogether at one as to the precise value to be attrib- uted to the terms. De Lugo defines proximate occa- sion (DepoEnit.,disp. 14, n. 149) as one in which men of like calibre for the most part, fall into mortal sin, or one in which experience points to the same result from the special weakness of a particular person. The remote occasion lacks these elements. All theologians are agreed that there is no obligation to avoid the remote occasions of sin both because this would, practically speaking, be impossible and because they do not in- volve serious danger of sin. As to the proximate oc- casion, it may be of the sort that is described as necessary, that is, such as a person cannot abandon or get rid of. Whether this impossibility be physical or moral does not matter for the determination of the principles hereinafter to be laid down. Or it may be voluntary, that is within the competency of one to remove. Moralists distinguish between a prox- imate occasion which is continuous and one which, whilst it is unquestionably proximate, yet confronts a person only at intervals. It is certain that one who is in the presence of a proximate occasion at once vol- untary and continuous is bound to remove it. A re- fusal on the part of a penitent to do so would make it imperative for the confessor to deny absolution. It is not always necessary for the confessor to await the actual performance of this duty before giving absolu- tion; he may be content with a sincere promise, which is the minimum to be required. Theologians agree that one is not obliged to shun the proximate but necessary occasions. Nemo tenelur ad impossibile (no one is bound to do what is impossible). There is no question here of freely casting oneself into the danger of sin. The assumption is that stress of unavoidable circumstances has imposed this unhappy situation. All that can then be required is the employment of such means as will make the peril of sin remote. The difficulty is to determine when a proximate occasion is to be regarded as not physically (that is plain enough) but morally necessary. Much has been written by theologians in the attempt to find a rule for the measurement of this moral necessity and a formula for its expression, but not successfully. It seems to be quite clear that a proximate occasion may be deemed necessary when it cannot be given up without grave scandal or loss of good name or with- out notable temporal or spiritual damage.

Slater. Moral Theology (New York, 1908) : Ballerini, Opus Theologicum Morale (Prato, 1900); G^NICOT, TheologitE Moralis Insliluliones (Louvain, 1898).

Joseph F. Delant.

Occleve (or Hoccleve), Thomas; little is known of his life beyond what is mentioned in his poems. He was b. about 1368; d. in 1450. The place of his birth and education is unknown. When about nine- teen he became a clerk in the Privy-Seal Office, a posi- tion which he held for at least twenty-four years. It is recorded in the Patent Rolls (1399) that he received a pension of £10 a year. In his poem "La Male R^gle", written in 1406, he confesses to having lived a life of pleasure and even of dissipation, but his mar- riage in 1411 seems to have caused a change in his career, and his poem "De Regimine Principum", written soon afterwards, bears witness to his reform. In 1424 he was granted a pension of £20 a year for life. His name and reputation have come down to us

linked with those of Lydgate; the two poets were fol- lowers and enthusiastic admirers of Chaucer. It is most probable that Occleve knew Chaucer personally, as he has left three pa.ssages of verse about him, and, in the MS. of the " De Regimine", a portrait of Chaucer (the only one we possess), which he says he had painted " to put other men in remembrance of his per- son". He was a true Chaucerian as far as love and admiration could make him, but he was unable to im- itate worthily his master's skill in poetry. Occleve has left us a body of verse which has its own interest, but none of which, as poetry, can be placed much above mediocrity. Nevertheless, there are many things which give pleasure. There is his devoted love to Our Lady, which causes some of the poems he wrote in her honour (especially " The Moder of God") tobe among his best efforts. There is his admiration of Chaucer, already spoken of, and there is also sound morality, and a good deal of "the social sense" in the matter of his poems. Though he had no humour, he could tell a story well, and in several poems he enlists our sympathy by the frank recognition of his weak- ness both as man and poet.

His work consists of: a long poem, "De Regimine Principum" (the Government of Princes), addressed to Prince Henry, afterwards Henry V; it is written in the seven-line stanza and contains much varied matter, religious, moral, social, and political; two verse stories from the "Gesta Romanorum"; three other poems of some length, largely autobiographical, "La Male Regie", "A Complaint", and "A Dia- logue"; "Ars sciendi mori" (the Art of learning to die) a specimen of his work at its best, most of it in the seven-line stanza, but with an ending in prose; many other poems, chiefly Ballades, and mostly short, with the exception of "Cupid's Letter" and the interesting expostulation with Sir John Oldcastle concerning his heresy, "O Oldcastle, alas what ailed thee To slip into the snare of heresie?". All the above poems are contained in the Early English Text Society's edition of Occleve's works (London, 1892-7).

FuRNiVALL in Diet. Nat. Biog., IX (reissued, London, 1908); Idem in Prefaee to E. Bng. Text Socy. Edition of Works (Lond., 1892-7); Saintsbury in Camb. Hist. ofEng. Literature, II (Cana- bridge, 190S).

K. M. Warren.

Occult Art, Occultista. — Under this general term are included various practices to which special articles of the Encyclopedia are devoted: Animism; Astrol- ogy; Divin.\tion; Fetishism. The present article deals with the form of Occultism known as " Magic". The English word magic is derived through the Latin, Greek, Persian, Ass5'rian from the Sumerian or Tu- ranian word imga or emga ("deep", "profound"), a designation for the Pro to-Chaldean priests or wizards. Magi became a standard term for the later Zoroas- trian, or Persian, priesthood through whom Eastern oc- cult arts were made known to the Greeks; hence fidyot (as also the kindred words iiayiKis, fiayela), a magi- cian or a person endowed with secret knowledge and power like a Persian magus. In a restricted sense magic is understood to be an interference with the usual course of physical nature by apparently inade- quate means (recitation of formularies, gestures, mix- ing of incongruous elements, and other mysterious ac- tions), the knowledge of which is obtained through secret communication with the force underlying the universe (God, the Devil, the soul of the world, etc.); it is the attempt to work miracles not by the power of God, gratuitously communicated to man, but by the use of hidden forces beyond man's control. Its ad- vocates, despairing to move the Deity by supplication, seek the desired result b^' evoking powers ordinarily reserved to the Deity. It is a corruption of religion, not a preliminary stage of it as Rationalists main- tain, and it appears as an accompaniment of decadent rather than of rising civilization. There is nothing