Chapter VI. Reality And The Good.
44. The Good as “Desirable” and as “Suitable”.—The notion of the good (L. bonum; Gr. ἀγαθόν) is one of the most familiar of all notions. But like all other transcendental or widely generic concepts, the analysis of it opens up some fundamental questions. The princes of ancient Greek philosophy, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, gave much anxious thought to its elucidation. The tentative gropings of Socrates involved an ambiguity which issued in the conflicting philosophies of Stoicism and Epicureanism. Nor did Plato succeed in bringing down from the clouds the “Idea of the Good” which he so devotedly worshipped as the Sun of the Intellectual World. It needed the more sober and searching analysis of the Stagyrite to bring to light the formula so universally accepted in after ages: The Good of beings is that which all desire: Bonum est quod omnia appetunt.[173] Let us try to reach the fundamental idea underlying the terms “good,” “goodness,” by some simple examples.
The child, deriving sensible pleasure from a sweetmeat, cries out: That is good! Whatever gratifies its senses, gives it sensible delight, it likes or loves. Such things it desires, seeks, yearns for, in their absence; and in their presence enjoys. At this stage the good means simply the pleasure-giving. But as reason develops the human being apprehends and describes as good not merely what is pleasure-giving, but whatever satisfies any natural need or craving, whether purely organic, or purely intellectual, or more widely human: food is good because it satisfies a physical, organic craving; knowledge is good because it satisfies a natural intellectual thirst; friendship is good because it satisfies a wider need of the heart. Here we notice a transition from “agreeable” in the sense of “pleasure-giving” to “agreeable” in the more proper sense of “suitable” or useful. The good is now conceived not in the narrow sense of what yields [pg 168] sensible pleasure but in the wider sense of that which is useful or suitable for the satisfaction of a natural tendency or need, that which is the object of a natural tendency.
Next, let us reflect, with Aristotle, that each of the individual persons and things that make up the world of our direct experience has an end towards which it naturally tends. There is a purpose in the existence of each. Each has a nature, i.e. an essence which is for it a principle of development, a source of all the functions and activities whereby it continually adapts itself to its environment and thereby continually fulfils the aim of its existence. By its very nature it tends towards its end along the proper line of its development.[174] In the world of conscious beings this natural tendency is properly called appetite: sense appetite of what is apprehended as good by sense cognition, and rational appetite or will in regard to what is apprehended as good by intellect or reason. In the world of unconscious things this natural tendency is a real tendency and is analogous to conscious appetite. Hence it is that Aristotle, taking in all grades of real being, describes the good as that which is the object of any natural tendency or “appetite” whatsoever: the good is the “appetibile” or “desirable,” that which all things seek: bonum est quod omnia appetunt.
45. The Good as an “End,” “Perfecting” the “Nature”.—So far, we have analysed the notion of what is “good” for some being; and we have gathered that it implies what suits this being, what contributes to the latter's realization of its end. But we apply the term “good” to objects, and speak of their goodness, apart from their direct and immediate relation of helpfulness or suitability for us. When, for instance, we say of a watch that it is a good one, or of a soldier that he is a good soldier, what precisely do we mean by such attribution of goodness to things or persons? A little reflection will show that it is intelligible only in reference to an end or purpose. And we mean by it that the being we describe as good has the powers, qualities, equipments, which fit it for its end or purpose. A being is good whose nature is equipped and adapted for the realization of its natural end or purpose.
Thus we see that the notion of goodness is correlative with the notion of an end, towards which, or for which, a being has a natural tendency or desire. Without the concept of a nature as [pg 169] tending to realize an end or purpose, the notion of “the good” would be inexplicable.[175] And the two formulæ, “The good is that which beings desire, or towards which they naturally tend,” and “The good is that which is adapted to the ends which beings have in their existence,” really come to the same thing; the former statement resolving itself into the latter as the more fundamental. For the reason why anything is desirable, why it is the object of a natural tendency, is because it is good, and not vice versa. The description of the good as that which is desirable, “Bonum est id quod est appetibile,” is an a posteriori description, a description of cause by reference to effect.[176] A thing is desirable because it is good. Why then is it good, and therefore desirable? Because it suits the natural needs, and is adapted to the nature, of the being that desires it or tends towards it; because it helps this being, agrees with it, by contributing towards the realization of its end: Bonum est id quod convenit naturæ appetentis: The good is that which suits the nature of the being that desires it. The greatest good for a being is the realization of its end; and the means towards this are also good because they contribute to this realization.
No doubt, in beings endowed with consciousness the gradual realization of this natural tendency, by the normal functioning and development of their activities, is accompanied by pleasurable feeling. The latter is, in fact, not an end of action itself, but rather the natural concomitant, the effect and index, of the healthy and normal activity of the conscious being: delectatio sequitur operationem debitam. It is the pleasure felt in tending towards the good that reveals the good to the conscious agent: that is, taking pleasure in its wide sense as the feeling of well-being, of satisfaction with one's whole condition, activities and environment. Hence it is the anticipated pleasure, connected by past association with a certain line of action, that stimulates the conscious being to act in that way again. It is in the first instance because a certain operation or tendency is felt to be [pg 170] pleasing that it is desired, and apprehended as desirable. Nor does the brute beast recognize or respond to any stimulus of action other than pleasure. But man—endowed with reason, and reflecting on the relation between his own nature and the activities whereby he duly orients his life in his environment—must see that what is pleasure-giving or “agreeable” in the ordinary sense of this term is generally so because it is “agreeable” in the deeper sense of being “suitable to his nature,” “adapted to his end,” and therefore “good”.
The good, then, is whatever suits the nature of a being tending towards its end: bonum est conveniens naturæ appetentis. In what precisely does this suitability consist? What suits any nature perfects that nature, and suits it precisely in so far as it perfects it. But whatever perfects a nature does so only because and in so far as it is a realization of the end towards which this nature tends. Here we reach a new notion, that of “perfecting” or “perfection,” and one which is as essentially connected with the notion of “end” or “purpose,” as the concept of the “good” itself is. Let us compare these notions of “goodness,” “end,” and “perfection”. We have said that a watch or a soldier are good when they are adapted to their respective ends. But they are so only because the end itself is already good. And we may ask why any such end is itself good and therefore desirable. For example, why is the accurate indication of time good, or the defence of one's country? And obviously in such a series of questions we must come to something which is good and desirable in and for itself, for its own sake and not as leading and helping towards some remoter good. And this something which is good in and for itself is a last or ultimate end—an absolute, not a relative, good. There must be such an absolute good, such an ultimate end, if goodness in things is to be made intelligible at all. And it is only in so far as things tend towards this absolute good, and are adapted to it, that they can be termed good. The realization of this tendency of things towards the absolute good, or ultimate end, is what constitutes the goodness of those things, and it does so because it perfects their natures.
The end towards which any nature tends is the cause of this tendency, its final cause; and the influence of a final cause consists precisely in its goodness, i.e. in its power of actualizing and perfecting a nature. This influence of the good is sometimes described as the “diffusive” character of goodness: Bonum est diffusivum sui: Goodness tends to diffuse or communicate [pg 171] itself, to multiply or reproduce itself. This character, which we may recognize in the goodness of finite, created things, is explained in the philosophy of theism as being derived, with this goodness itself, from the uncreated goodness of God who is the Ultimate End and Supreme Good of all reality. Every creature has its own proper ultimate end and highest perfection in its being a manifestation, an expression, a shewing forth, of the Divine Goodness. It has its own actuality and goodness, distinct from, but dependent on, the Divine Goodness; but inasmuch as its goodness is an expression or imitation of the Divine Goodness, we may, by an extrinsic denomination, say that the creature is good by the Divine Goodness. In a similar way, and without any suspicion of pantheism, we may speak of the goodness of creatures as being a participation of the Divine Goodness ([5]).
46. The Perfect. Analysis of the Notion of Perfection.—It is the realization of the end or object or purpose of a nature that perfects the latter, and so far formally constitutes the goodness of this nature. Now the notion of perfection is not exactly the same as the notion of goodness: although what is perfect is always good, what is good is not always perfect. The term “perfect” comes from the Latin perficere, perfectum, meaning fully made, thoroughly achieved, completed, finished. Strictly speaking, it is only finite being, potential being, capable of completion, that can be spoken of as perfectible, or, when fully actualized, perfect. But by universal usage the term has been extended to the reality of the Infinite Being: we speak of the latter as the Infinitely Perfect Being, not meaning that this Being has been “perfected,” but that He is the purely Actual and Infinite Reality. Applied to any finite being, the term “perfect” means that this being has attained to the full actuality which we regard as its end, as the ideal of its natural capacity and tendency. The finite being is subject to change; it is not actualized all at once, but gradually; by the play of those active and passive powers which are rooted in its nature it is gradually actualized, and thus perfected, gaining more and more reality or being by the process. But what directs this process and determines the line of its tendency? The good which is the end of the being, the good towards which the being by its nature tends. This good, which is the term of the being's natural tendency—which is, in other words, its end—is the fundamental principle[177] which perfects the nature of the being, is the source and explanation of the process whereby [pg 172] this nature is perfected: bonum est perfectivum: the good is the perfecting principle of reality. The end itself is “the good which perfects,” bonum quod; the “perfecting” itself is the formal cause of the goodness of the being that is perfected, bonum quo; the being itself which is perfected, and therefore ameliorated or increased in goodness, is the bonum cui. In proportion, therefore, to the degree in which a being actually possesses the perfection due to its nature it is “good”; in so far as it lacks this perfection, it is wanting in goodness, or is, as we shall see, ontologically “bad” or “evil”.