8. Still less are moral distinctions between good and evil to be set down to the law of the State, or the fashion of society. Human convention can no more constitute moral good than it can physical good, or mathematical or logical truth. It is only in cases where two or more courses are tolerable, and one of them needs to be chosen and adhered to for the sake of social order, that human authority steps in to elect and prescribe one of those ways of action, and brand the others as illegitimate, which would otherwise be lawful. This is called the making of a positive law.
Readings.—St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 18, art. 5, in corp.; 1a 2æ, q. 71, art. 2; Plato, Rep., 588 B to end of bk. ix.; Ar., Eth., IX., iv., nn. 4-10; Suarez, De Legibus, II., vi., nn. 4, 11; Cicero, De Legibus, i., cc. 15-17.
SECTION II.—How Good becomes bounden Duty, and Evil is advanced to Sin.
1. The great problem of Moral Philosophy is the explanation of the idea, I ought, (c. i., n. 6). We are now come close up to the solution of that problem. The word ought denotes the necessary bearing of means upon end. To every ought there is a pendent if. The means ought to be taken, if the end is to be secured. Thus we say: "You ought to start betimes, if you are to catch your train." "You ought to study harder, if you are to pass your examination." The person spoken to might reply: "But what if I do miss my train, and fail in my examination?" He might be met with another ought: "You ought not to miss the one, if you are to keep your appointment: or to fail in the other, if you are to get into a profession." Thus the train of oughts and ifs extends, until we come finally to a concatenation like the following: "You ought not to break your word, or to give needless pain to your parents, if you don't want to do violence to that nature which is yours as a reasonable being," or "to thwart your own moral development,"—and so on in a variety of phrases descriptive of the argument of the last section. Here it seems the chain is made fast to a staple in the wall. If a person goes on to ask, "Well, what if I do contradict my rational self?" we can only tell him that he is a fool for his question. The oughts, such as those wherewith our illustration commenced, Kant calls the hypothetical imperative, the form being, "You must, unless:" but the ought wherein it terminated, he calls the categorical imperative, the alternative being such as no rational man can accept, and therefore no alternative at all.
2. This doctrine of the Categorical Imperative is correct and valuable so far as it goes. But then it does not go far enough. The full notion of what a man ought, is what he must do under pain of sin. Sin is more than folly, more than a breach of reason. It is mild reproach to a great criminal to tell him that he is a very foolish person, a walking unreasonableness. If he chooses to contradict his rational self, is not that his own affair? Is he not his own master, and may he not play the fool if he likes? The answer is, "No, he is not his own master; he is under law, and his folly and self-abuse becomes criminal and sinful, by being in contravention of the law that forbids him to throw himself away thus wantonly."
3. Kant readily takes up this idea, shaping it after his own fashion. He contends,—and herein his doctrine is not merely deficient, but positively in error,—that the Categorical Imperative, uttered by a man's own reason, has the force of a law, made by that same reason; so that the legislative authority is within the breast of the doer, who owes it obedience. This he calls the autonomy of reason. It is also called Independent Morality, inasmuch as it establishes right and wrong without regard to external authority, or to the consequences of actions, or to rewards and punishments. The doctrine is erroneous, inasmuch as it undertakes to settle the matter of right and wrong without reference to external authority; and inasmuch as it makes the reason within a man, not the promulgator of the law to him, but his own legislator. For a law is a precept, a command: now no one issues precepts, or gives commands, to himself. To command is an act of jurisdiction; and jurisdiction, like justice (see c. v., s. ix., n. 1, p. 102) requires a distinction of persons, one ruler, and another subject. But the reason in a man is not a distinct subject from the will, appetites, or other faculties within him, to which reason dictates: they are all one nature, one person, one man; consequently, no one of them can strictly be said to command the rest; and the dictate of reason, as emanating from within oneself, is not a law. But without a law, there is no strict obligation. Therefore the whole theory of obligation is not locked up in the Categorical Imperative, as Kant formulated it.
4. The above argumentation evinces that God is not under any law; for there is no other God above Him to command Him. As for the ideas of what is meet and just in the Divine intelligence, though the Divine will, being a perfect will, is not liable to act against them, yet are those ideas improperly called a law to the Divine will, because intellect and will are identified in one God. Kant's doctrine makes us all gods. It is a deification of the human intellect, and identification of that intellect with the supreme and universal Reason; and at the same time a release of the human will from all authority extraneous to the individual. This amounts to a putting off of all authority properly so called, and makes each man as sovereign and unaccountable as his Maker. "Thy heart is lifted up, and thou hast said: I am God, and sit in the chair of God: and hast set thy heart as if it were the heart of God: whereas thou art a man and not God." (Ezech. xxviii. 2.) Kant is thus the father of the pantheistic school of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.
5. But it has been contended that this phrase about a man who does wrong breaking a law, is only a metaphor and figure of speech, unless it be used with reference to the enactment of some civil community. Thus John Austin says that a natural law is a law which is not, but which he who uses the expression thinks ought to be made. At this rate sin is not a transgression of any law, except so far as it happens to be, in the lawyer's sense of the word, a crime, or something punishable in a human court of justice. There will then be no law but man's law. How then am I obliged to obey man's law? Dr. Bain answers: "Because, if you disobey, you will be punished." But that punishment will be either just or unjust: if unjust, it originates no obligation: if just, it presupposes an obligation, as it presupposes a crime and sin, that is, an obligation violated. There seems to be nothing left for John Austin but to fall back upon Kant and his Categorical Imperative, and say that whoever rebels against the duly constituted authority of the State in which he lives, is a rebel against the reason that dwells within his own breast, and which requires him to behave like a citizen. So that ultimately it is not the State, but his own reason that he has offended; and the State has no authority over him except what his own reason gives.
6. If this were true, there would be no sin anywhere except what is called philosophical sin, that is, a breach of the dignity of man's rational nature; and the hardest thing that could be said in reprobation of a wrongdoer, would be that he had gone against himself, and against his fellow-men, by outraging reason, the common attribute of the race.
7. Far worse than that has the sinner done. He has offended against his own reason, and thereby against a higher Reason, substantially distinct from his, standing to it in the relation of Archetype to type, a Living Reason, [Greek: hepsychos logos] (cf. Ar., Eth., V., iv., 7), purely and supremely rational. The Archetype is outraged by the violation of the type. Moreover, as the two are substantially distinct, the one being God, the other a faculty of man, there is room for a command, for law. A man may transgress and sin, in more than the philosophical sense of the word: he may be properly a law-breaker, by offending against this supreme Reason, higher and other than his own.