Moral Science; a Compendium of Ethics

by Alexander Bain

In the (unfinished) Summa Theologiae, the Ethical views and cognate questions occupy the two sections of the second part—the so-called prima and secunda secundae. He begins, in the Aristotelian fashion, by seeking an ultimate end of human action, and finds it in the attainment of the highest good or happiness. But as no created thing can answer to the idea of the highest good, it must be placed in God. God, however, as the highest good, can only be the object, in the search after human happiness, for happiness in itself is a state of the mind or act of the soul. The question then arises, "what sort of act?" Does it fall under the Will or under the Intelligence? The answer is, Not under the will, because happiness is neither desire nor pleasure, but consecutio, that is, a possessing. Desire precedes consecutio, and pleasure follows upon it; but the act of getting possession, in which lies happiness, is distinct from both. This is illustrated by the case of the miser having his happiness in the mere possession of money; and the position is essentially the same as Butler's, in regard to our appetites and desires, that they blindly seek their objects with no regard to pleasure. Thomas concludes that the consecutio, or happiness, is an act of the intelligence; what pleasure there is being a mere accidental accompaniment.

Distinguishing between two phases of the intellect—the theoretic and the practical—in the one of which it is an end to itself, but in the other subordinated to an external aim, he places true happiness in acts of the self-sufficing theoretic intelligence. In this life, however, such a constant exercise of the intellect is not possible, and accordingly what happiness there is, must be found, in great measure, in the exercise of the practical intellect, directing and governing the lower desires and passions. This twofold conception of happiness is Aristotelian, even as expressed by Thomas under the distinction of perfect and imperfect happiness; but when he goes on to associate perfect happiness with the future life only, to found an argument for a future life from the desire of a happiness more perfect than can be found here, and to make the pure contemplation, in which consists highest bliss, a vision of the divine essence face to face, a direct cognition of Deity far surpassing demonstrative knowledge or mortal faith—he is more theologian than philosopher, or if a philosopher, more Platonist than Aristotelian.

The condition of perfect happiness being a theoretic or intellectual state, the visio, and not the delectatio, is consistently given as its central fact; and when he proceeds to consider the other questions of Ethics, the same superiority is steadily ascribed to the intellectual function. It is because we know a thing to be good that we wish it, and knowing it, we cannot help wishing. Conscience, as the name implies, is allied to knowledge. Reason gives the law to will.

After a long disquisition about the passions and the whole appetitive side of human nature, over which Reason is called to rule, he is brought to the subject of virtue. He is Aristotelian enough to describe virtue as habitus—a disposition or quality (like health) whereby a subject is more or less well disposed with reference to itself or something else; and he takes account of the acquisition of good moral habits (virtutes acquisitae) by practice. But with this he couples, or tends to substitute for it, the definition of Augustin that virtue is a good quality of mind, quam Deus in nobis sine nobis operatur, as a ground for virtutes infusae, conferred as gifts upon man, or rather on certain men, by free grace from on high. He wavers greatly at this stage, and in this respect his attitude is characteristic for all the schoolmen.

So again in passing from the general question of Virtue to the virtues, he puts several of the systems under contribution, as if not prepared to leave the guidance of Aristotle, but feeling at the same time the necessity of bridging over the distance between his position and Christian requirements. Understanding Aristotle to make a co-ordinate division of virtues into Moral and Intellectual, he gives reasons for such a step. Though virtue, he says, is not so much the perfecting of the operation of our faculties, as their employment by the will for good ends, it may be used in the first sense, and thus the intellectual virtues will be the habits of intelligence that procure the truest knowledge. The well-known division of the cardinal virtues is his next theme; and it is established as complete and satisfactory by a twofold deduction. But a still higher and more congenial view is immediately afterwards adopted from Plotinus. This is the Neo-Platonic description of the four virtues as politicae, purgatoriae, and purgati animi, according to the scale of elevation reached by the soul in its efforts to mount above sense. They are called by Thomas also exemplares, when regarded at once as the essence of the Deity, and as the models of human perfections.

This mystical division, not unsupported by philosophical authority, smooths the way for his account of the highest or theological virtues. These bear upon the vision of Deity, which was recognized above as the highest good of humanity, and form an order apart. They have God for their object, are altogether inspired by God (hence called infusae), and are taught by revelation. Given in connection with the natural faculties of intellect and will, they are exhibited in the attainment of the supernatural order of things. With intellect goes Faith, as it were the intellect applied to things not intelligible; with Will go Hope and Charity or Love: Hope being the Will exercised upon things not naturally desired, and Love the union of Will with what is not naturally brought near to us.

Aquinas then passes to politics, or at least the discussion of the political ideas of law, right, &c.

Coming now to modern thinkers, we begin with

THOMAS HOBBES. [1588-1679.]

The circumstances of Hobbes's life, so powerful in determining the nature of his opinions, had an equally marked effect on the order and number of expositions that he gave to the psychological and political parts of his system. His ethical doctrines, in as far as they can be dissociated from, his politics, may be studied in no less than three distinct forms; either in the first part of the Leviathian (1651); or in the De Cive (1647), taken along-with the De Homine (1658); or in the Treatise of Human Nature (1650, but written ten years earlier), coupled with the De Corpore Politico (also 1650). But the same result, or with only unimportant variations, being obtained from all, we need not here go beyond the first-mentioned.