Right Actions and Rewardable Actions.
The preceding furnishes the ground for the distinctions [pg 134] always recognized between voluntary action which is right as best for all concerned, and those actions which are deemed praiseworthy, rewardable, and meritorious.
Whenever the dictates of reason and our strongest desire are coincident, so that choosing what is right and best involves no struggle; then the ideas of merit and of desert of reward, praise, and commendation are wanting. We say such acts are right, but there is no merit in them, and no proper ground for adding any other reward than that which naturally results from choosing what we desire most, and which is best for us and for all concerned.
On the contrary, when there is a struggle between a sense of what is right and best, and the strongest desire, and a choice is made which involves self-denial and self-sacrifice, we feel that the act is one which is meritorious, and deserving of reward and praise.
Any voluntary action, then, is right which is conformed to those rules of rectitude which tend to secure the most happiness for all, even when there is no temptation to another course. But an action is meritorious and rewardable only when there is a reference to the rules of rectitude in the mind of the actor and some degree of self-denial. To choose what we desire most, without any regard to what is right or wrong, even when it chances that our choice is that which is best, and thus right, does not meet our idea of a meritorious and praiseworthy act.
The greater portion of our choices are of those things which are good in all relations, as best for self and best for all concerned. Thus when we desire to eat, to drink, to breathe the pure air, to admire the [pg 135] beauties of nature, to enjoy the society of friends,—to choose these and a thousand other daily blessings, promotes our own best good and the best good of all concerned. In all such cases choosing what we desire most is morally right in all relations. But no acts of choice are meritorious, except as they involve a regard to law in the mind of the actor, and some degree of self-denial in conforming to rule.
The only cases where moral evil (or wrong choices) can exist, are where desires are excited for some good, either for ourselves or for others, which is not best for all concerned. In all such cases there is a “bias,” “tendency,” and “propensity” to choose good of some sort, but it is not the best good, and therefore to choose it would be morally wrong. Thus there is a bias or propensity to what is good in one relation, but evil in another; good as tending to give enjoyment, but evil as contrary to a law which enjoins that the best good should always be preferred.
In such cases the desires for a good which is not for the best are not morally wrong, for they arise involuntarily from those susceptibilities implanted by God, which are not to be exterminated, but only regulated by law. The moral evil consists not in the existence of such desires, but in choosing to gratify them at the sacrifice of the best good of self or of others.
It has been shown that one result of the wrong action of mind is such a change in its constitutional nature, that there will be a desire to inflict evil on others as a malignant pleasure to the guilty mind. In these cases such desires may properly be called morally wrong because they are the result of the voluntary action of the sinful mind, and not of the natural susceptibilities [pg 136] implanted by the Creator. As they result wholly from wrong previous choices, the guilty mind itself is the author of them and not the Creator of mind.
Here it is important to discriminate in regard to that natural impulse in all minds which is excited by the infliction of pain on self or on others. It is this natural impulse to inflict evil on the author of evil which is the foundation of justice in the family and in the civil state. Its design is for the best good of all concerned, and it becomes evil only by excess and misuse. So long as it is controlled by reason and conscience it is good and only good.