Moral Philosophy: Ethics, Deontology and Natural Law

by Joseph Rickaby

8. Here we must pause and meditate a parable.—There was a certain monastery where the monks lived in continual violation of monastic observance. Their Abbot was a holy man, a model of what a monk ought to be. But though perfectly cognisant of the delinquencies of his community, he was content to display to his subjects the edifying example of his own life, and to let it appear that he was aware of their doings and pained at them. He would croon softly as he went about the house old Hell's words: "Not so, my sons, not so: why do ye these kind of things, very wicked things?" But the monks took no notice of him. It happened in course of time that the Abbot went away for about ten days. What he did in that time, never transpired: though there was some whisper of certain "spiritual exercises," which he was said to have been engaged in. Certain it is, that he returned to his monastery, as he left it, a monk devout and regular: the monk was the same, but the Abbot was mightily altered. The morning after his arrival, a Chapter was held; the Abbot had the Rule read from cover to cover, and announced his intention of enforcing the same. And he was as good as his word. Transgressions of course abounded: but the monks discovered that to transgress was quite a different thing now from what it had been. Seeing the law proclaimed, and the Abbot in earnest to enforce it, they too reformed themselves: the few who would not reform had to leave. The subsequent holy lives of those monks do not enter into this history.

9. Now, we might fancy God our Lord like the Abbot of that monastery in the early years of his rule. We might fancy the Supreme Reason, displeased indeed, as Reason must be, at the excesses and follies of mankind, but not otherwise commanding men to avoid those evil courses. Were God to be thus quiescent, what we have called (n. 6) philosophical sin, would indeed carry this additional malice, beyond what was there set down, of being an offence against God, but it would not be a grievous offence: for it would not be a sin in the proper sense of the term, not being a transgression of the law of God, inasmuch as God, by the supposition, would have given no law. But the supposition itself is absurd. God could not so withhold His command. He is free indeed not to command, but that only by not creating. If He wills to have creatures, He must likewise will to bind them to certain lines of action: which will to bind in God is a law to the creature.

10. This assertion, that God cannot but will to bind His creatures to certain lines of action, must be proved, though in the ascent we have to mount to high regions, and breathe those subtle airs that are wafted round the throne of the Eternal. As God is the one source of all reality and of all power, not only can there be no being which He has not created and does not still preserve, but no action either can take place without His concurrence. God must go with His every creature in its every act: otherwise, on the creature's part, nothing could be done. Now, God cannot be indifferent what manner of act He shall concur unto. A servant or a subject may be indifferent what command he receives: he may will simply to obey,—to go here or there, as he is bid, or to be left without orders where he is. That is because he leaves the entire direction and management of the household to his master. But for God to be thus indifferent what action He should lend His concurrence to, would be to forego all design and purpose of His own as to the use and destiny of the creatures which He has made and continually preserves. This God cannot do, for He cannot act aimlessly. It would be renouncing the direction of His own work, and making the creature His superior. God is incapable of such renunciation and subservience. He must, then, will the cooperation which He lends, and the concurrent action of the creature, to take a certain course, regulated and prescribed by Himself: which is our proposition, that God cannot but will to bind His creatures to certain lines of action. If His free creatures choose to stray from these lines, God indeed still cooperates, and to His cooperation is to be ascribed the physical goodness of the action, not its moral inordinateness and inopportuneness. Still, as the action is morally inordinate, God may be said to cooperate, in a manner, where He would not: whence we gather some conception of the enormity of sin. (See c. vii., nn. 5, 6, pp. 130, 131.)

11. The lines of action laid down and prescribed by God are not arbitrary and irrespective of the subject of the command. They are determined in each case by the nature of the subject. The Author of Nature is not apt to subvert that order which proceeds from Himself. He bids every creature act up to that nature wherein He has created it. His commands follow the line of natural exigency. What this natural exigency amounts to in man in regard to his human acts, we have already seen, (c. vi., s. i., p. 109.)

12. The difference between a necessary and a free agent is, that the former is determined by its nature to act in a certain way, and cannot act otherwise: the latter may act in more ways than one. Still, as we have seen, the nature even of a free agent is not indifferent to all manner of action. It requires, though it does not constrain, the agent to act in certain definite ways, the ways of moral goodness. Acting otherwise, as he may do, the free agent gainsays his own nature, taken as a whole, a thing that a necessary agent can nowise do. God therefore who, as we have shown, wills and commands all creatures whatsoever to act on the lines of their nature, has especial reason to give this command to His rational creatures, with whom alone rests the momentous freedom to disobey.

13. We are now abreast of the question, of such burning interest in these days, as to the connection of Ethics with Theology, or of Morality with Religion. I will not enquire whether the dogmatic atheist is logically consistent in maintaining any distinction between right and wrong: happily, dogmatic atheists do not abound. But there are many who hold that, whether there be a God or no, the fact ought not to be imported into Moral Science: that a Professor of Ethics, as such, has no business with the name of the Almighty on his lips, any more than a lecturer on Chemistry or Fortification. This statement must be at once qualified by an important proviso. If we have any duties of worship and praise towards our Maker: if there is such a virtue as religion, and such a sin as blasphemy: surely a Professor of Morals must point that out. He cannot in that case suppress all reference to God, for the same reason that he cannot help going into the duties of a man to his wife, or of an individual to the State, if marriage and civil government are natural institutions. If there is a God to be worshipped, any book on Moral Science is incomplete without a chapter on Religion. But the question remains, whether the name of God should enter into the other chapters, and His being and authority into the very foundations of the science. I do not mean the metaphysical foundations; for Metaphysics are like a two-edged sword, that cleaves down to the very marrow of things, and must therefore reveal and discover God. But Morality, like Mathematics, takes certain metaphysical foundations for granted, without enquiring into them. On these foundations we rear the walls, so to speak, of the science of Ethics without reference to God, but we cannot put the roof and crown upon the erection, unless we speak of Him and of His law. Moral distinctions, as we saw (c. vi., s. i. n. 7, p. 113), are antecedent to the Divine command to observe them: and though they rest ultimately on the Divine nature, that ultimate ground belongs to Metaphysics, not to Ethics. Ethics begins with human nature, pointing out that there are certain human acts that do become a man, and others that do not. (c. vi., s. i., p. 109.) To see this, it is not necessary to look up above man. Thus we shall prove lying, suicide, and murder to be wrong, and good fellowship a duty, without needing to mention the Divine Being, though by considering Him the proof gains in cogency. Or rather, apart from God we shall prove certain acts wrong, and other acts obligatory as duties, philosophically speaking, with an initial and fundamental wrongness and obligation. In the present section we have proved once for all, that what is wrong philosophically, or is philosophically a duty, is the same also theologically. Thus the initial and fundamental obligation is transformed into an obligation formal and complete. Therefore, hereafter we shall be content to have established the philosophical obligation, knowing that the theological side is invariably conjoined therewith. As St. Thomas says (1a 2æ, q. 71, art. 6, ad 5): "By theologians sin is considered principally as it is an offence against God: but by the moral philosopher, inasmuch as it is contrary to reason." But what is contrary to reason offends God, and is forbidden by Divine law, and thus becomes a sin. No God, no sin. Away from God, there is indecency and impropriety, unreasonableness, abomination, and brutality, all this in view of outraged humanity: there is likewise crime against the State: but the formal element of sin is wanting. With sin, of course, disappears also the punishment of sin as such. Thus to leave God wholly out of Ethics and Natural Law, is to rob moral evil of half its terrors, and of that very half which is more easily "understanded of the people." A consideration for school-managers.

Readings.—St. Thos., 1a, q. 22, art. 2, in corp. (against Lucretius, ii. 646-651); Suarez, De Legibus, II., vi., nn. 3, 5-9, 13, 14, 17, 20-24.

CHAPTER VII.

OF THE ETERNAL LAW.

1. A law is defined to be: A precept just and abiding, given for promulgation to a perfect community. A law is primarily a rule of action. The first attribute of a law is that it be just: just to the subject on whom it is imposed, as being no harmful abridgment of his rights: just also to other men, as not moving him to injustice against them. An unjust law is no law at all, for it is not a rule of action. Still, we may sometimes be bound, when only our own rights are infringed, to submit to such an imposition, not as a law, for it is none, but on the score of prudence, to escape direr evils. A law is no fleeting, occasional rule of conduct, suited to meet some passing emergency or superficial disturbance. The reason of a law lies deep down, lasting and widespread in the nature of the governed. A law, then, has these two further attributes of permanence in duration and amplitude in area. Every law is made for all time, and lives on with the life of the community for whom it is enacted, for ever, unless it be either expressly or implicitly repealed. A law in a community is like a habit in an individual, an accretion to nature, which abides as part of the natural being, and guides henceforth the course of natural action. This analogy holds especially of those laws, which are not enacted all of a sudden—and such are rarely the best laws—but grow upon the people with gradual growth unmarked, like a habit by the repetition of acts, in the way of immemorial custom. I have said that a law is for a community, that it requires amplitude and large area. A law is not laid down for an individual, except so far as his action is of importance to the community. The private concerns of one man do not afford scope and room enough for a law. Neither do the domestic affairs of one family. A father is not a legislator. A law aims at a deep, far-reaching, primary good. But the private good of an individual, and the domestic good of a family, are not primary goods, inasmuch as the individual and the family are not primary but subordinate beings: not complete and independent, but dependent and partial; not wholes but parts. The individual is part of the family, and the family is part of a higher community. It is only when we are come to some community which is not part of any higher, that we have found the being, the good of which is primary good, the aim of law. Such a community, not being part of any higher community in the same order, is in its own order a perfect community. Thus, in the temporal order, the individual is part of the State. The State is a perfect community; and the good of the State is of more consequence than the temporal well-being of any individual citizen. The temporal good of the individual, then, is matter of law, in so far as it is subservient to the good of the State. We have, then, to hold that a law is given to the members of a perfect community for the good of the whole. Not every precept, therefore, is a law: nor every superior a lawgiver: for it is not every superior that has charge of the good of a perfect community. Many a precept is given to an individual, either for his private good, as when a father commands his child, or for the private good of him that issues the precept, as when a master commands a servant. But every law is a precept: for a law is an imperative rule of action, in view of a good that is necessary, at least with the necessity of convenience. To every law there are counsels attached. A law may be said to be a nucleus of precept, having an envelope of counsel. Every law has also a pendent called punishment for those who break it: this is called the sanction of the law. A law is also for promulgation, as a birch rod for application. The promulgation, or application, brings the law home to the subject, but is not part of the law itself. So much for the definition of Law.