“When the end is lawful the means are also lawful”

“When the end is lawful the means are also lawful” is identified by Dalby as a Jesuit motto and repeated by the narrator during a conversation about an exceptional case. Its immediate force lies in the exchange: the maxim gives a polished moral formula to the questionable means Dalby is preparing to demand, while Dalby’s pleasure in hearing it exposes the performance behind his appeal to principle.

The Motto in Conversation

Dalby prompts the narrator to recall the Jesuit motto after the narrator senses that he is about to make a special plea. The narrator supplies the maxim, and Dalby beams, pinching the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. His delight makes the line feel like an expected cue in a private ritual of argument, not a detached statement of theology.

A Moral Formula for the Commission

The exchange leads directly into Dalby’s order that the narrator go and buy Raven. In that context, the maxim anticipates a justification in which the legitimacy of the end is made to license the means. The passage does not establish the narrator’s sincere commitment to that principle; it shows him reciting it at Dalby’s prompting, while Dalby relishes the role of the villain and the scholarly flourish of the allusion.

Dramatic Function

The motto compresses the scene’s tension between respectable moral language and covert action. Dalby’s pleasure at the recitation makes the formula part of his self-dramatization, while its position immediately before the order to obtain Raven gives it practical weight: the words furnish a rationale for the task about to be imposed. The maxim’s significance here comes from that contrast between its authoritative sound and the compromised operation it precedes.