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MORAL PHILOSOPHY:
ETHICS, DEONTOLOGY AND NATURAL LAW.
BY JOSEPH RICKABY, S.J.
Nihil Obstat: JOSEPHUS KEATING, S.J. Censor deputatus
Imprimi potest: JOANNES H. WRIGHT, S.J. Præp. Prov. Angliæ
Nihil Obstat: C. SCHUT, D.D. Censor deputatus
Imprimatur: EDM. CAN. SURMONT Vie. Gen.
PREFACE (1905).
For fifteen years this Manual has enjoyed all the popularity that its author could desire. With that popularity the author is the last person to wish to interfere. Therefore, not to throw previous copies out of use, this edition makes no alteration either in the pagination or the text already printed. At the same time the author might well be argued to have lapsed into strange supineness and indifference to moral science, if in fifteen years he had learnt nothing new, and found nothing in his work which he wished to improve. Whoever will be at the expense of purchasing my Political and Moral Essays (Benziger, 1902, 6s.) will find in the first essay on the Origin and Extent of Civil Authority an advantageous substitute for the chapter on the State in this work. The essay is a dissertation written for the degree of B. Sc. in the University of Oxford; and represents, I hope, tolerably well the best contemporary teaching on the subject.
If the present work had to be rewritten, I should make a triple division of Moral Philosophy, into Ethics, Deontology (the science of [Greek: to deon], i.e., of what ought to be done), and Natural Law. For if "the principal business of Ethics is to determine what moral obligation is" (p. 2), then the classical work on the subject, the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, is as the play of Hamlet with the character of Hamlet left out: for in that work there is no analysis of moral obligation, no attempt to "fix the comprehension of the idea I ought" (ib.). The system there exposed is a system of Eudaemonism, not of Deontology. It is not a treatise on Duty, but on Happiness: it tells us what Happiness, or rational well-being, is, and what conduct is conducive to rational well-being. It may be found convenient to follow Aristotle, and avow that the business of Ethics is not Duty, not Obligation, not Law, not Sanction, but Happiness. That fiery little word ought goes unexplained in Ethics, except in an hypothetical sense, that a man ought to do this, and avoid that, if he means to be a happy man: cf. p. 115. Any man who declares that he does not care about ethical or rational happiness, stands to Ethics as that man stands to Music who "hath no ear for concord of sweet sounds."
All that Ethics or Music can do for such a Philistine is to "send him away to another city, pouring ointment on his head, and crowning him with wool," as Plato would dismiss the tragedian (Republic III. 398). The author of the Magna Moralia well says (I. i. 13): "No science or faculty ever argues the goodness of the end which it proposes to itself: it belongs to some other faculty to consider that. Neither the physician says that health is a good thing, nor the builder that a house is a good thing: but the one announces that he produces health and how he produces it, and the builder in like manner a house." The professor of Ethics indeed, from the very nature of his subject-matter, says in pointing out happiness that it is the rational sovereign good of man: but to any one unmoved by that demonstration Ethics can have no more to say. Ethics will not threaten, nor talk of duty, law, or punishment.
Ethics, thus strictly considered on an Aristotelian basis, are antecedent to Natural Theology. They belong rather to Natural Anthropology: they are a study of human nature. But as human nature points to God, so Ethics are not wholly irrespective of God, considering Him as the object of human happiness and worship,—the Supreme Being without whom all the aspirations of humanity are at fault (pp. 13-26, 191-197). Ethics do not refer to the commandments of God, for this simple reason, that they have nothing to say to commandments, or laws, or obligation, or authority. They are simply a system of moral hygiene, which a man may adopt or not: only, like any other physician, the professor of Ethics utters a friendly warning that misery must ensue upon the neglect of what makes for health.
Deontology, not Ethics, expounds and vindicates the idea, I ought. It is the science of Duty. It carries the mild suasions of Ethics into laws, and out of moral prudence it creates conscience. And whereas Ethics do not deal with sin, except under the aspect of what is called "philosophical sin" (p. 119, § 6), Deontology defines sin in its proper theological sense, as "an offence against God, or any thought, word, or deed against the law of God." Deontology therefore presupposes and is consequent upon Natural Theology. At the same time, while Ethics indicate a valuable proof of the existence of God as the requisite Object of Happiness, Deontology affords a proof of Him as the requisite Lawgiver. Without God, man's rational desire is frustrate, and man's conscience a misrepresentation of fact. [Footnote 1]
[Footnote 1: This is Cardinal Newman's proof of the existence of God from Conscience: see pp. 124, 125, and Grammar of Assent, pp. 104-111, ed. 1895. With Newman's, "Conscience has both a critical and a judicial office," compare Plato, Politicus, 260 B, [Greek: sumpasaes taes gnostikaes to men epitaktikon meros, to de kritikon]. The "critical" office belongs to Ethics: the "judicial," or "preceptive" office [Greek: to epitaktikon] to Deontology; and this latter points to a Person who commands and judges, that is, to God.]
In this volume, pp. 1-108 make up the treatise on Ethics: pp. 109-176 that on Deontology.
Aristotle writes: "He that acts by intelligence and cultivates understanding, is likely to be best disposed and dearest to God. For if, as is thought, there is any care of human things on the part of the heavenly powers, we may reasonably expect them to delight in that which is best and most akin to themselves, that is, in intelligence, and to make a return of good to such as supremely love and honour intelligence, as cultivating the thing dearest to Heaven, and so behaving rightly and well. Such, plainly, is the behaviour of the wise. The wise man therefore is the dearest to God" (Nic. Eth. X. ix. 13). But Aristotle does not work out the connexion between God and His law on the one hand and human conscience and duty on the other. In that direction the Stoics, and after them the Roman Jurists, went further than Aristotle. By reason of this deficiency, Aristotle, peerless as he is in Ethics, remains an imperfect Moral Philosopher.
PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION (1918)
1. I have altered the opening pages in accordance with the Preface to the edition of 1905.
2. I have added a paragraph on Syndicalism (pp. 291-2).
3. Also a new Table of Addenda et Corrigenda, and a new Index.
The quotations from St. Thomas may be read in English, nearly all of them, in the Author's Aquinas Ethicus, 2 vols.; 12s. (Burns and Oates.)
CONTENTS.
PART I.—ETHICS.
CHAPTER I.—OF THE OBJECT-MATTER AND PARTITION OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
CHAPTER II.—OF HAPPINESS. Section I.—Of Ends. Section II.—Definition of Happiness. Section III.—Happiness open to Man. Section IV.—Of the Object of Perfect Happiness. Section V.—Of the use of the present life.
CHAPTER III.—OF HUMAN ACTS. Section I.—What makes a human act less voluntary. Section II.—Of the determinants of Morality in any given action.
CHAPTER IV.—OF PASSIONS. Section I.—Of Passions in general. Section II.—Of Desire. Section III.—Of Delight. Section IV.—Of Anger.
CHAPTER V.—OF HABITS AND VIRTUES. Section I.—Of Habit. Section II.—Of Virtues in general. Section III.—Of the difference between Virtues, Intellectual and Moral. Section IV.—Of the Mean in Moral Virtue. Section V.—Of Cardinal Virtues. Section VI.—Of Prudence. Section VII.—Of Temperance. Section VIII.—Of Fortitude. Section IX.—Of Justice.
PART II.—DEONTOLOGY.
CHAPTER I. (VI.)—OF THE ORIGIN OF MORAL OBLIGATION. Section I.—Of the natural difference between Good and Evil. Section II.—How Good becomes bounden Duty, and Evil is advanced to sin.
CHAPTER II. (VII.)—OF THE ETERNAL LAW.
CHAPTER III. (VIII.)—OF THE NATURAL LAW OF CONSCIENCE. Section I.—Of the Origin of Primary Moral Judgments. Section II.—Of the invariability of Primary Moral Judgments. Section III.—Of the immutability of the Natural Law. Section IV.—Of Probabilism.
CHAPTER IV. (IX.)—OF THE SANCTION OF THE NATURAL LAW. Section I.—Of a Twofold Sanction, Natural and Divine. Section II.—Of the Finality of the aforesaid Sanction. Section III.—Of Punishment, Retrospective and Retributive.
CHAPTER V. (X.)—OF UTILITARIANISM.
PART III.—NATURAL LAW.
CHAPTER I.—OF DUTIES TO GOD. Section I.—Of the Worship of God. Section II.—Of Superstitious Practices. Section III.—Of the duty of knowing God.
CHAPTER II.—OF THE DUTY OF PRESERVING LIFE. Section I.—Of Killing, Direct and Indirect. Section II.—Of Killing done Indirectly in Self-defence. Section III.—Of Suicide. Section IV.—Of Duelling.
CHAPTER III.—OF SPEAKING THE TRUTH. Section I.—Of the definition of a Lie. Section II.—Of the Evil of Lying. Section III.—Of the keeping of Secrets without Lying.
CHAPTER IV.—OF CHARITY.
CHAPTER V.—OF RIGHTS. Section I.—Of the definition and division of Rights. Section II.—Of the so-called Rights of Animals. Section III.—Of the right to Honour and Reputation. Section IV.—Of Contracts. Section V.—Of Usury.
CHAPTER VI.—OF MARRIAGE. Section I.—Of the Institution of Marriage. Section II.—Of the Unity of Marriage. Section III.—Of the Indissolubility of Marriage.
CHAPTER VII.—OF PROPERTY. Section I.—Of Private Property. Section II.—Of Private Capital. Section III.—Of Landed Property.
CHAPTER VIII.—OF THE STATE. Section I.—Of the Monstrosities called Leviathan and Social Contract. Section II.—Of the theory that Civil Power is an aggregate formed by subscription of the powers of individuals. Section III.—Of the true state of Nature, which is the state of civil society, and consequently of the Divine origin of Power. Section IV.—Of the variety of Polities. Section V.—Of the Divine Right of Kings and the Inalienable Sovereignty of the People. Section VI.—Of the Elementary and Original Polity. Section VII.—Of Resistance to Civil Power. Section VIII.—Of the Right of the Sword. Section IX.—Of War. Section X.—Of the Scope and Aim of Civil Government. Section XI.—Of Law and Liberty. Section XII.—Of Liberty of Opinion.
ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA
p. 31. Aristotle calls the end [Greek: to telos]; the means, [Greek: ta pros to telos] (St. Thomas, ea quae sunt ad finem); the circumstances, [Greek: ta ein ois hae praxis].
Observe, both end and means are willed directly, but the circumstances indirectly.
The end is intended, [Greek: boulaeton]; the means are chosen, [Greek: proaireton]; the circumstances are simply permitted, [Greek: anekton], rightly or wrongly. The intention of the end is called by English philosophers the motive; while the choice of means they call the intention, an unfortunate terminology.
p. 42, §. 3. "As the wax takes all shapes, and yet is wax still at the bottom; the [Greek: spokeimenon] still is wax; so the soul transported in so many several passions of joy, fear, hope, sorrow, anger, and the rest, has for its general groundwork of all this, Love." (Henry More, quoted in Carey's Dante, Purgatorio, c. xviii.) Hence, says Carey, Love does not figure in Collins's Ode on the Passions.
p. 43. For daring read recklessness.
p. 44. Plato is a thorough Stoic when he says (Phaedo 83) that every pleasure and pain comes with a nail to pin down the soul to the body and make it corporeal. His Stoicism appears in his denunciation of the drama (Republic, x. 604).
p. 47, §. 8. The first chapter of Mill's Autobiography, pp. 48-53, 133-149, supplies an instance.
p. 49, §. I, 1. 2, for physical read psychical.
P. 52. §. 5. This serving, in [Greek: douleuein], St. Ignatius calls "inordinate attachment," the modern form of idolatry. Cf. Romans vi. 16-22.
p. 79. For spoiled read spoilt.
p. 84, foot. For ways read way.
p. 85, 1. 6 from foot. Substitute: ([Greek: b]) to restrain the said appetite in its irascible part from shrinking from danger.
p. 94, middle. For others read other.
p. 95. For Daring read Recklessness.
p. 103, middle. Substitute, "neither evening star nor morning star is so wonderful."
p. 106, §. 6. Aristotle speaks of "corrective," not of "commutative" justice. On the Aristotelian division of justice see Political and Moral Essays (P. M. E.), pp. 285-6.
p. 111, §. 4. The static equivalent of the dynamic idea, of orderly development is that the eternal harmonies and fitnesses of things, by observance or neglect whereof a man comes to be in or out of harmony with himself, with his fellows, with God.
p. 133. To the Readings add Plato Laws, ix, 875, A, B, C, D.
p. 151. Rewrite the Note thus: The author has seen reason somewhat to modify this view, as appears by the Appendix. See P.M.E. pp. 185-9: Fowler's Progressive Morality, or Fowler and Wilson's Principles of Morals, pp. 227-248.
p. 181, 1. ii from top. Add, This is "the law of our nature, that function is primary, and pleasure only attendant" (Stewart, Notes on Nicomathean Ethics, II. 418).
p. 218, lines 13-16 from top, cancel the sentence, To this query, etc., and substitute: The reply is, that God is never willing that man should do an inordinate act; but suicide is an inordinate act, as has been shown; capital punishment is not (c. viii. s. viii. n. 7, p. 349).
p. 237. For The Month for March, 1883, read P.M.E., pp. 215-233.
p. 251. To the Reading add P.M.E., pp. 267-283.
p. 297, l.6 from foot. After simply evil add: Hobbes allows that human reason lays down certain good rules, "laws of nature" which however it cannot get kept. For Hobbes and Rousseau see further P.M.E., pp. 81-90.
p. 319, middle. Cancel the words: but the sum total of civil power is a constant quantity, the same for all States.
pp. 322-3. Cancel §. 7 for reasons alleged in P.M.E., pp. 50-72. Substitute: States are living organizations and grow, and their powers vary with the stage of their development.
p. 323, § 8. For This seems at variance with, read This brings us to consider.
p. 338. To the Readings add P.M.E., pp. 102-113.
p. 347, middle. Cancel from one of these prerogatives to the end of the sentence. Substitute: of every polity even in the most infantine condition.
* * * * *
MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
PART I. ETHICS.
CHAPTER I.
OF THE OBJECT-MATTER AND PARTITION OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
1. Moral Philosophy is the science of human acts in their bearing on human happiness and human duty.
2. Those acts alone are properly called human, which a man is master of to do or not to do. A human act, then, is an act voluntary and free. A man is what his human acts make him.
3. A voluntary act is an act that proceeds from the will with a knowledge of the end to which the act tends.
4. A free act is an act which so proceeds from the will that under the same antecedent conditions it might have not proceeded.
An act may be more or less voluntary, and more or less free.
5. Moral Philosophy is divided into Ethics, Deontology, and Natural Law. Ethics consider human acts in their bearing on human happiness; or, what is the same thing, in their agreement or disagreement with man's rational nature, and their making for or against his last end. Deontology is the study of moral obligation, or the fixing of what logicians call the comprehension of the idea I ought. Ethics deal with [Greek: to prepon], "the becoming"; Deontology with [Greek: to deon], "the obligatory". Deontology is the science of Duty, as such. Natural Law (antecedent to Positive Law, whether divine or human, civil or ecclesiastical, national or international) determines duties in detail,—the extension of the idea I ought,—and thus is the foundation of Casuistry.
6. In the order of sciences, Ethics are antecedent to Natural Theology; Deontology, consequent upon it.
Readings.—St. Thos., in Eth., I., lect. 1, init.; ib., 1a 2æ, q. 1, art. 1, in corp.; ib., q. 58, art. 1, in corp.
CHAPTER II.
OF HAPPINESS.
SECTION I.—Of Ends.
1. Every human act is done for some end or purpose. The end is always regarded by the agent in the light of something good. If evil be done, it is done as leading to good, or as bound up with good, or as itself being good for the doer under the circumstances; no man ever does evil for sheer evil's sake. Yet evil may be the object of the will, not by itself, nor primarily, but in a secondary way, as bound up with the good that is willed in the first place.
2. Many things willed are neither good nor evil in themselves. There is no motive for doing them except in so far as they lead to some good beyond themselves, or to deliverance from some evil, which deliverance counts as a good. A thing is willed, then, either as being good in itself and an end by itself, or as leading to some good end. Once a thing not good and desirable by itself has been taken up by the will as leading to good, it may be taken up again and again without reference to its tendency. But such a thing was not originally taken up except in view of good to come of it. We may will one thing as leading to another, and that to a third, and so on; thus one wills study for learning, learning for examination purposes, examination for a commission in the army, and the commission for glory. That end in which the will rests, willing it for itself without reference to anything beyond, is called the last end.
3. An end is either objective or subjective. The objective end is the thing wished for, as it exists distinct from the person who wishes it. The subjective end is the possession of the objective end. That possession is a fact of the wisher's own being. Thus money may be an objective end: the corresponding subjective end is being wealthy.
4. Is there one subjective last end to all the human acts of a given individual? Is there one supreme motive for all that this or that man deliberately does? At first sight it seems that there is not. The same individual will act now for glory, now for lucre, now for love. But all these different ends are reducible to one, that it may be well with him and his. And what is true of one man here, is true of all. All the human acts of all men are done for the one (subjective) last end just indicated. This end is called happiness.
5. Men place their happiness in most different things; some in eating and drinking, some in the heaping up of money, some in gambling, some in political power, some in the gratification of affection, some in reputation of one sort or another. But each one seeks his own speciality because he thinks that he shall be happy, that it will be well with him, when he has attained that. All men, then, do all things for happiness, though not all place their happiness in the same thing.
6. Just as when one goes on a journey, he need not think of his destination at every step of his way, and yet all his steps are directed towards his destination: so men do not think of happiness in all they do, and yet all they do is referred to happiness. Tell a traveller that this is the wrong way to his destination, he will avoid it; convince a man that this act will not be well for him, will not further his happiness, and, while he keeps that conviction principally before his eyes, he will not do the act. But as a man who began to travel on business, may come to make travelling itself a business, and travel for the sake of going about; so in all cases there is a tendency to elevate into an end that which was, to start with, only valued as a means to an end. So the means of happiness, by being habitually pursued, come to be a part of happiness. Habit is a second nature, and we indulge a habit as we gratify nature. This tendency works itself to an evil extreme in cases where men are become the slaves of habit, and do a thing because they are got into the way of doing it, though they allow that it is a sad and sorry way, and leads them wide of true happiness. These instances show perversion of the normal operation of the will.
Readings.—St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 1, art. 4, in corp.; ib., q. 1, art. 6, 7; ib., q. 5, art. 8; Ar., Eth., I., vii., 4, 5.
SECTION II.—Definition of Happiness.
1. Though all men do all things, in the last resort, that it may be well with them and theirs, that is, for happiness vaguely apprehended, yet when they come to specify what happiness is, answers so various are given and acted upon, that we might be tempted to conclude that each man is the measure of his own happiness, and that no standard of happiness for all can be defined. But it is not so. Man is not the measure of his own happiness, any more than of his own health. The diet that he takes to be healthy, may prove his poison; and where he looks for happiness, he may find the extreme of wretchedness and woe. For man must live up to his nature, to his bodily constitution, to be a healthy man; and to his whole nature, but especially to his mental and moral constitution, if he is to be a happy man. And nature, though it admits of individual peculiarities, is specifically the same for all. There will, then, be one definition of happiness for all men, specifically as such.
2. Happiness is an act, not a state. That is to say, the happiness of man does not lie in his having something done to him, nor in his being habitually able to do something, but in his actually doing something. "To be up and doing," that is happiness,—[Greek: en to zaen kai energein]. (Ar., Eth., IX., ix., 5.) This is proved from the consideration that happiness is the crown and perfection of human nature; but the perfection of a thing lies in its ultimate act, or "second act," that is, in its not merely being able to act, but acting. But action is of two sorts. One proceeds from the agent to some outward matter, as cutting and burning. This action cannot be happiness, for it does not perfect the agent, but rather the patient. There is another sort of act immanent in the agent himself, as feeling, understanding, and willing: these perfect the agent. Happiness will be found to be one of these immanent acts. Furthermore, there is action full of movement and change, and there is an act done in stillness and rest. The latter, as will presently appear, is happiness; and partly for this reason, and partly to denote the exclusion of care and trouble, happiness is often spoken of as a rest. It is also called a state, because one of the elements of happiness is permanence. How the act of happiness can be permanent, will appear hereafter.
3. Happiness is an act in discharge of the function proper to man, as man. There is a function proper to the eye, to the ear, to the various organs of the human body: there must be a function proper to man as such. That can be none of the functions of the vegetative life, nor of the mere animal life within him. Man is not happy by doing what a rose-bush can do, digest and assimilate its food: nor by doing what a horse does, having sensations pleasurable and painful, and muscular feelings. Man is happy by doing what man alone can do in this world, that is, acting by reason and understanding. Now the human will acting by reason may do three things. It may regulate the passions, notably desire and fear: the outcome will be the moral virtues of temperance and fortitude. It may direct the understanding, and ultimately the members of the body, in order to the production of some practical result in the external world, as a bridge. Lastly, it may direct the understanding to speculate and think, contemplate and consider, for mere contemplation's sake. Happiness must take one or other of these three lanes.
4. First, then, happiness is not the practice of the moral virtues of temperance and fortitude. Temperance makes a man strong against the temptations to irrationality and swinishness that come of the bodily appetites. But happiness lies, not in deliverance from what would degrade man to the level of the brutes, but in something which shall raise man to the highest level of human nature. Fortitude, again, is not exercised except in the hour of danger; but happiness lies in an environment of security, not of danger. And in general, the moral virtues can be exercised only upon occasions, as they come and go; but happiness is the light of the soul, that must burn with steady flame and uninterrupted act, and not be dependent on chance occurrences.
5. Secondly, happiness is not the use of the practical understanding with a view to production. Happiness is an end in itself, a terminus beyond which the act of the will can go no further; but this use of the understanding is in view of an ulterior end, the thing to be produced. That product is either useful or artistic; if useful, it ministers to some further end still; if artistic, it ministers to contemplation. Happiness, indeed, is no exercise of the practical understanding whatever. The noblest exercises of practical understanding are for military purposes and for statesmanship. But war surely is not an end in itself to any right-minded man. Statecraft, too, has an end before it, the happiness of the people. It is a labour in view of happiness. We must follow down the third lane, and say:
6. Happiness is the act of the speculative understanding contemplating for contemplation's sake. This act has all the marks of happiness. It is the highest act of man's highest power. It is the most capable of continuance. It is fraught with pleasure, purest and highest in quality. It is of all acts the most self-sufficient and independent of environment, provided the object be to the mind's eye visible. It is welcome for its own sake, not as leading to any further good. It is a life of ease and leisure: man is busy that he may come to ease.
7. Aristotle says of this life of continued active contemplation:
"Such a life will be too good for man; for not as he is man will he so live, but inasmuch as there is a divine element in his composition. As much as this element excels the compound into which it enters, so much does the act of the said element excel any act in any other line of virtue. If, then, the understanding is divine in comparison with man, the life of the understanding is divine in comparison with human life. We must not take the advice of those who tell us, that being man, one should cherish the thoughts of a man, or being mortal, the thoughts of a mortal, but so far as in us lies, we must play the immortal [Greek: athanatizein], and do all in our power to live by the best element in our nature: for though that element be slight in quantity, in power and in value it far outweighs all the rest of our being. A man may well be reckoned to be that which is the ruling power and the better part in him. . . . What is proper to each creature by nature, is best and sweetest for each: such, then, is for man the life of the understanding, if the understanding preeminently is man." (Ar., Eth., X., vii., 8, 9.)
8. But if happiness is an act in discharge of the function proper to man as man (n. 3), how can it be happiness to lead a life which Aristotle says is too good for man? The solution of this paradox is partly contained in the concluding words of Aristotle above quoted, and will still further appear presently (s. iv., n. I, p. 21), where we shall argue that human life is a state of transition in preparation for a higher life of the soul, to be lived, according to the natural order, when the compound of soul and body would no longer exist.
9. The act of contemplation, in which happiness consists, must rest upon a habit of contemplation, which is intellectual virtue. An act, to be perfection and happiness, must be done easily, sweetly, and constantly. But no act of the intellect can be so done, unless it rests upon a corresponding habit. If the habit has not been acquired, the act will be done fitfully, at random, and against the grain, like the music of an untrained singer, or the composition of a schoolboy. Painful study is not happiness, nor is any studied act. Happiness is the play of a mind that is, if not master of, yet at home with its subject. As the intellect is man's best and noblest power, so is intellectual virtue, absolutely speaking, the best virtue of man.
10. The use of the speculative understanding is discernible in many things to which even the common crowd turn for happiness, as news of that which is of little or no practical concern to self, sight-seeing, theatre-going, novels, poetry, art, scenery, as well as speculative science and high literature. A certain speculative interest is mixed up with all practical work: the mind lingers on the speculation apart from the end in view.
11. The act of contemplation cannot be steadily carried on, as is necessary to happiness, except in the midst of easy surroundings. Human nature is not self-sufficient for the work of contemplation. There is need of health and vigour, and the means of maintaining it, food, warmth, interesting objects around you, leisure, absence of distracting care or pain. None would call a man happy upon the rack, except by way of maintaining a thesis. The happiness of a disembodied spirit is of course independent of bodily conditions, but it would appear that there are conditions of environment requisite for even a spirit's contemplation.
12. Happiness must endure to length of days. Happiness is the perfect good of man. But no good is perfect that will not last. One swallow does not make a summer, nor does one fine day: neither is man made blessed and happy by one day, nor by a brief time. The human mind lighting upon good soon asks the question, Will this last? If the answer is negative, the good is not a complete good and there is no complete happiness coming of it. If the answer is affirmative and false, once more that is not a perfect happiness that rests on a delusion. The supreme good of a rational being is not found in a fool's paradise. We want an answer affirmative and true: This happiness shall last.
13. We now sum up and formulate the definition of happiness as follows: _Happiness is a bringing of the soul to act according to the habit of the best and most perfect virtue, that is, the virtue of the speculative intellect, borne out by easy surroundings, and enduring to length of days—[Greek: energeia psychaes kat aretaen taen aristaen kai teleiotataen en biph teleio.] (Ar., Eth., I., vii., 15, 16.)
14. Man is made for society. His happiness must be in society, a social happiness, no lonely contemplation. He must be happy in the consciousness of his own intellectual act, and happy in the discernment of the good that is in those around him, whom he loves. Friends and dear ones are no small part of those easy surroundings that are the condition of happiness.
15. Happiness—final, perfect happiness—is not in fighting and struggling, in so far as a struggle supposes evil present and imminent; nor in benevolence, so far as that is founded upon misery needing relief. We fight for the conquest and suppression of evil; we are benevolent for the healing of misery. But it will be happiness, in the limit, as mathematicians speak, to wish well to all in a society where it is well with all, and to struggle with truth for its own sake, ever grasping, never mastering, as Jacob wrestled with God.
Readings.—Ar., Eth., I., vii. viii., 5 to end; I., x., 8 to end; I., v., 6; VII., xiii., 3; IX., ix.; X., vii.; X., viii., 1-10; Ar., Pol., IV. (al. VII.), i., 3-10; IV., iii., 7, 8; St. Thos., la 2ae, q. 3, art. 2; ib., q. 3, art. 5. in corp., ad 3; ib., q. 2, art. 6.
SECTION III.—Happiness open to man.
"And now as he looked and saw the whole Hellespont covered with the vessels of his fleet, and all the shore and every plain about Abydos as full as possible of men, Xerxes congratulated himself on his good fortune; but after a little while, he wept. Then Artabanus, the King's uncle, when he heard that Xerxes was in tears, went to him, and said: 'How different, sire, is what thou art now doing from what thou didst a little while ago! Then thou didst congratulate thyself; and now, behold! thou weepest.' 'There came upon me,' replied he, 'a sudden pity, when I thought of the shortness of man's life, and considered that of all this host, so numerous as it is, not one will be alive when a hundred years are gone by.' 'And yet there are sadder things in life than that,' returned the other. 'Short as our time is, there is no man, whether it be among this multitude or elsewhere, who is so happy, as not to have felt the wish—I will not say once, but full many a time—that he were dead rather than alive. Calamities fall upon us, sicknesses vex and harass us, and make life, short though it be, to appear long. So death, through the wretchedness of our life, is a most sweet refuge to our race; and God, who gives us the tastes that we enjoy of pleasant times, is seen, in his very gift, to be envious.'" (Herodotus, vii., 45, 46.)
1. It needs no argument to show that happiness, as defined in the last section, can never be perfectly realized in this life. Aristotle took his definition to represent an ideal to be approximated to, not attained. He calls his sages "happy as men" (Eth., I., x., 16), that is, imperfectly, as all things human are imperfect. Has Aristotle, then, said the last word on happiness? Is perfect happiness out of the reach of the person whom in this mortal life we call man? However that may be, it is plain that man desires perfect happiness. Every man desires that it may be perfectly well with him and his, although many have mistaken notions of what their own well-being consists in, and few can define it philosophically. Still they all desire it. The higher a man stands in intellect, the loftier and vaster his conception of happiness, and the stronger his yearning after it. This argues that the desire of happiness is natural to man: not in the sense in which eating and drinking are natural, as being requirements of his animal nature, but in the same way that it is natural to him to think and converse, his rational nature so requiring. It is a natural desire, as springing from that which is the specific characteristic of human nature, distinguishing it from mere animal nature, namely reason. It is a natural desire in the best and highest sense of the word.
2. Contentment is not happiness. A man is content with little, but it takes an immensity of good to satisfy all his desire, and render him perfectly happy. When we say we are content, we signify that we should naturally desire more, but acquiesce in our present portion, seeing that more is not to be had. "Content," says Dr. Bain, "is not the natural frame of any mind, but is the result of compromise."
3. But is not this desire of unmixed happiness unreasonable? Are we not taught to set bounds to our desire? Is not moderation a virtue, and contentment wisdom? Yes, moderation is a virtue, but it concerns only the use of means, not the apprehension of ends. The patient, not to say the physician, desires medicines in moderation, so much as will do him good and no more; but, so far as his end is health, he desires all possible health, perfect health. The last end, then, is to be desired as a thing to possess without end or measure, fully and without defect.
4. We have then these facts to philosophise on: that all men desire perfect happiness: that this desire is natural, springing from the rational soul which sets man above the brute: that on earth man may attain to contentment, and to some happiness, but not to perfect happiness: that consequently nature has planted in man a desire for which on earth she has provided no adequate satisfaction.
5. If the course of events were fitful and wayward, so that effects started up without causes, and like causes under like conditions produced unlike effects, and anything might come of anything, there would be no such thing as that which we call nature. When we speak of nature, we imply a regular and definite flow of tendencies, this thing springing from that and leading to that other; nothing from nothing, and nothing leading nowhere; no random, aimless proceedings; but definite results led up to by a regular succession of steps, and surely ensuing unless something occurs on the way to thwart the process. How this is reconciled with Creation and Freewill, it is not our province to enquire: suffice it to say that a natural agent is opposed to a free one, and creation is the starting-point of nature. But to return. Everywhere we say, "this is for that," wherever there appears an end and consummation to which the process leads, provided it go on unimpeded. Now every event that happens is a part of some process or other. Every act is part of a tendency. There are no loose facts in nature, no things that happen, or are, otherwise than in consequence of something that has happened, or been, before, and in view of something else that is to happen, or be, hereafter. The tendencies of nature often run counter to one another, so that the result to which this or that was tending is frustrated. But a tendency is a tendency, although defeated; this was for that, although that for which it was has got perverted to something else. There is no tendency which of itself fails and comes to naught, apart from interference. Such a universal and absolute break-down is unknown to nature.
6. All this appears most clearly in organic beings, plants and animals. Organisms, except the very lowest, are compounds of a number of different parts, each fulfilling a special function for the good of the whole. There is no idle constituent in an organic body, none without its function. What are called rudimentary organs, even if they serve no purpose in the individual, have their use in the species, or in some higher genus. In the animal there is no idle natural craving, or appetite. True, in the individual, whether plant or animal, there are many potentialities frustrate and made void. That is neither here nor there in philosophy. Philosophy deals not with individuals but with species, not with Bucephalus or Alexander, but with horse, man. It is nothing to philosophy that of a thousand seeds there germinate perhaps not ten. Enough that one seed ever germinates, and that all normal specimens are apt to do the like, meeting with proper environment. That alone shows that seed is not an idle product in this or that class of living beings.
7. But, it will be said, not everything contained in an organism ministers to its good. There is refuse material, only good to get rid of: there are morbid growths; there is that tendency to decay, by which sooner or later the organism will perish. First, then, a word on diseases. Diseases are the diseases of the individual; not of the race. The race, as such, and that is what the philosopher studies, is healthy: all that can be imputed to the race is liability to disease. That liability, and the tendency to decay and die, are found in living things, because their essence is of finite perfection; there cannot be a plant or animal, that has not these drawbacks in itself, as such. They represent, not the work of nature, but the failure of nature, and the point beyond which nature can no further go.
8. On the preceding observations Aristotle formulated the great maxim—called by Dr. Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, p. i., sect. 15, "the only indisputable axiom in philosophy,"—Nature does nothing in vain. (Ar., Pol., I., viii., 12; De Anima, III., ix., 6; De part. animal., I. i., p. 641, ed. Bekker.)
9. The desire of happiness, ample and complete, beyond what this world can afford, is not planted in man by defect of his nature, but by the perfection of his nature, and in view of his further perfection. This desire has not the character of a drawback, a thing that cannot be helped, a weakness and decay of nature, and loss of power, like that which sets in with advancing years. A locomotive drawing a train warms the air about it: it is a pity that it should do so, for that radiation of heat is a loss of power: but it cannot be helped, as locomotives are and must be constructed. Not such is the desire of perfect happiness in the human breast. It is not a disease, for it is no peculiarity of individuals, but a property of the race. It is not a decay, for it grows with the growing mind, being feeblest in childhood, when desires are simplest and most easily satisfied, and strongest where mental life is the most vigorous. It is an attribute of great minds in proportion to their greatness. To be without it, would be to live a minor in point of intellect, not much removed from imbecility. It is not a waste of energy, rather it furnishes the motive-power to all human volition. It comes of the natural working of the understanding that discerns good, and other good above that, and so still higher and higher good without limit; and of the natural working of the will, following up and fastening upon what the understanding discerns as good. The desire in question, then, is by no means a necessary evil, or natural flaw, in the human constitution.
10. It follows that the desire of perfect happiness is in man by the normal growth of his nature, and for the better. But it would be a vain desire, and objectless, if it were essentially incapable of satisfaction: and man would be a made and abiding piece of imperfection, if there were no good accessible to his intellectual nature sufficient to meet its proper exigence of perfect happiness. But no such perfect happiness is attainable in this world. Therefore there must be a world to come, in which he who was man, now a disembodied spirit, but still the same person, shall under due conditions find a perfect good, the adequate object of his natural desire. Else is the deepest craving of human nature in vain, and man himself is vanity of vanities.
11. It may be objected that there is no need to go beyond this world to explain how the desire of perfect happiness is not in vain. It works like the desire of the philosopher's stone among the old alchemists. The thing they were in search of was a chimera, but in looking for it they found a real good, modern chemistry. In like manner, it is contended, though perfect happiness is not to be had anywhere, yet the desire of it keeps men from sitting down on the path of progress; and thus to that desire we owe all our modern civilization, and all our hope and prospect of higher civilization to come. Without questioning the alleged fact about the alchemists, we may reply that modern chemistry has dissipated the desire of the philosopher's stone, but modern civilization has not dissipated the desire of perfect happiness: it has deepened it, and perhaps rather obscured the prospect of its fulfilment. A desire that grows with progress certainly cannot be satisfied by progressing. But if it is never to be satisfied, what is it? A goad thrust into the side of man, that shall keep him coursing along from century to century, like Io under the gadfly, only to find himself in the last century as far from the mark as in the first. Apart from the hope of the world to come, is the Italy of to-day happier than the Italy of Antoninus Pius? Here is a modern Italian's conclusion: "I have studied man, I have examined nature, I have passed whole nights observing the starry heavens. And what is the result of these long investigations? Simply this, that the life of man is nothing; that man himself is nothing; that he will never penetrate the mystery which surrounds the universe. With this comfortless conviction I descend into the grave, and console myself with the hope of speedy annihilation. The lamp goes out; and nothing, nothing can rekindle it. So, Nature, I return to thee, to be united with thee for ever. Never wilt thou have received into thy bosom a more unhappy being." (La Nullità della Vita. By G. P., 1882.)
This is an extreme case, but much of modern progress tends this way. Civilization is not happiness, nor is the desire for happiness other than vain, if it merely leads to increased civilization.
Readings.—St. Thomas, C. G., iii., 48; Newman's Historical Sketches—Conversion of Augustine; Mill's Autobiography, pp. 133-149.
SECTION IV.—Of the Object of Perfect Happiness.
1. As happiness is an act of the speculative intellect contemplating (s. ii., n. 6, p. 9), so the thing thus contemplated is the object of happiness. As happiness is the subjective last end, so will this object, inasmuch as the contemplation of it yields perfect happiness, be the objective last end of man. (s. i., nn. 3, 4, p. 4.) As perfect happiness is possible, and intended by nature, so is this objective last end attainable, and should be attained. But attained by man? Aye, there's the rub. It cannot be attained in this life, and after death man is no more: a soul out of the body is not man. About the resurrection of the body philosophy knows nothing. Nature can make out no title to resurrection. That is a gratuitous gift of God in Christ. When it takes effect, stupebit natura. Philosophy deals only with the natural order, with man as man, leaving the supernatural order, or the privileges and status of man as a child of God, to the higher science of Scholastic Theology. Had God so willed it, there might have been no supernatural at all. Philosophy shows the world as it would have been on that hypothesis. In that case, then, man would have been, as Aristotle represents him, a being incapable of perfect happiness; but he who is man could have become perfectly happy in a state other than human, that is, as a disembodied spirit. Peter is man: the soul of Peter, after separation, is man no longer; but Peter is not one person, and Peter's soul out of the body another person; there is but one person there, with one personal history and liabilities. The soul of Peter is Peter still: therefore the person Peter, or he who is Peter, attains to happiness, but not the man Peter, as man, apart from the supernatural privilege of the resurrection. Hence Aristotle well said, though he failed to see the significance of his own saying, that man should aim at a life of happiness too good for man. (s. ii., nn. 7, 8, p. 9.)
2. The object of happiness,—the objective last end of man,—will be that which the soul contemplating in the life to come will be perfectly happy by so doing. The soul will contemplate all intellectual beauty that she finds about her, all heights of truth, all the expanse of goodness and mystery of love. She will see herself: a vast and curious sight is one pure spirit: but that will not be enough for her, her eye travels beyond. She must be in company, live with myriads of pure spirits like herself,—see them, study them, and admire them, and converse with them in closest intimacy. Together they must explore the secrets of all creation even to the most distant star: they must read the laws of the universe, which science laboriously spells out here below: they must range from science to art, and from facts to possibilities, till even their pure intellect is baffled by the vast intricacy of things that might be and are not: but yet they are not satisfied. A point of convergency is wanted for all these vistas of being, whence they may go forth, and whither they may return and meet: otherwise the soul is distracted and lost in a maze of incoherent wandering, crying out, Whence all this? and what is it for? and above all, whose is it? These are the questions that the human mind asks in her present condition: much more will she ask them then, when wonders are multiplied before her gaze: for it is the same soul there and here. Here men are tormented in mind, if they find no answer to these questions. Scientific men cannot leave theology alone. They will not be happy there without an answer. Their contemplation will still desiderate something beyond all finite being, actual or possible. Is that God? It is nothing else. But God dwells in light inaccessible, where no creature, as such, can come near Him nor see Him. The beauties of creation, as so many streams of tendency, meet at the foot of His Throne, and there are lost. Their course is towards Him, and is, so far as it goes, an indication of Him: but He is infinitely, unspeakably above them. No intelligence created, or creatable, can arrive by its own natural perception to see Him as He is: for mind can only discern what is proportionate to itself: and God is out of proportion with all the being of all possible creatures. It is only by analogy that the word being, or any other word whatever can be applied to Him. As Plato says, "the First Good is not Being, but over and beyond Being in dignity and power." (Rep. 509, B.)
3. To see God face to face, which is called the beatific vision, is not the natural destiny of man, nor of any possible creature. Such happiness is not the happiness of man, nor of angel, but of God Himself, and of any creature whom He may deign by an act of gratuitous condescension to invite to sit as guest at His own royal table. That God has so invited men and angels, revelation informs us. Scholastic theology enlarges upon that revelation, but it is beyond philosophy. Like the resurrection of the body, and much more even than that, the Beatific Vision must be relegated to the realm of the Supernatural.
4. But even in the natural order the object of perfect happiness is God. The natural and supernatural have the same object, but differ in the mode of attainment. By supernatural grace, bearing perfect fruit, man sees God with the eyes of his soul, as we see the faces of our friends on earth. In perfect happiness of the natural order, creatures alone are directly apprehended, or seen, and from the creature is gathered the excellence of the unseen God. The process is an ascent, as described by Plato, from the individual to the universal, and from bodily to moral and intellectual beauty, till we reach a Beauty eternal, immutable, absolute, substantial, and self-existent, on which all other beauties depend for their being, while it is independent of them. (Plato, Symposium, 210, 211.) Unless the ascent be prosecuted thus far, the contemplation is inadequate, the happiness incomplete. The mind needs to travel to the beginning and end of things, to the Alpha and Omega of all. The mind needs to reach some perfect good: some object, which though it is beyond the comprehension, is nevertheless understood to be the very good of goods, unalloyed with any admixture of defect or imperfection. The mind needs an infinite object to rest upon, though it cannot grasp that object positively in its infinity. If this is the case even with the human mind, still wearing "this muddy vesture of decay," how much more ardent the longing, as how much keener the gaze, of the pure spirit after Him who is the centre and rest of all intellectual nature?
5. Creatures to contemplate and see God in, are conditions and secondary objects of natural happiness. They do not afford happiness finally of themselves, but as manifesting God, even as a mirror would be of little interest except for its power of reflection.
6. In saying that God is the object of happiness, we must remember that He is no cold, impersonal Beauty, but a living and loving God, not indeed in the order of nature our Father and Friend, but still our kind Master and very good Lord, who speaks to His servants from behind the clouds that hide His face, and assures them of His abiding favour and approving love. More than that, nature cannot look for: such aspiration were unnatural, unreasonable, mere madness: it is enough for the creature, as a creature, in its highest estate to stand before God, hearing His voice, but seeing not His countenance, whom, without His free grace, none can look upon and live.
Reading.—St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 2, art. 8.
SECTION V.—Of the use of the present life.
1. Since perfect happiness is not to be had in this mortal life, and is to be had hereafter; since moreover man has free will and the control of his own acts; it is evidently most important for man in this life so to control and rule himself here as to dispose himself for happiness there. Happiness rests upon a habit of contemplation (s. ii., n. 9, p. 10), rising to God. (s. iv., n. 4, p. 24.) But a habit, as will be seen, is not formed except by frequent acts, and may be marred and broken by contrary acts. It is, then, important for man in this life so to act as to acquire a habit of lifting his mind to God. There are two things here, to lift the mind, and to lift it to God. The mind is not lifted, if the man lives not an intellectual life, but the life of a swine wallowing in sensual indulgences; or a frivolous life, taking the outside of things as they strike the senses, and flitting from image to image thoughtlessly; or a quarrelsome life, where reason is swallowed up in anger and hatred. Again, however sublime the speculation and however active the intellect, if God is not constantly referred to, the mind is lifted indeed, but not to God. It is wisdom, then, in man during this life to look to God everywhere, and ever to seek His face; to avoid idleness, anger, intemperance, and pride of intellect. For the mind will not soar to God when the heart is far from Him.
CHAPTER III.
OF HUMAN ACTS.
SECTION I.—What makes a human act less voluntary.
1. See c. i., nn. 2, 3, 4.
2. An act is more or less voluntary, as it is done with more or less knowledge, and proceeds more or less fully and purely from the will properly so called. Whatever diminishes knowledge, or partially supplants the will, takes off from the voluntariness of the act. An act is rendered less voluntary by ignorance, by passionate desire, and by fear.
3. If a man has done something in ignorance either of the law or of the facts of the case, and would be sorry for it, were he to find out what he has done, that act is involuntary, so far as it is traceable to ignorance alone. Even if he would not be sorry, still the act must be pronounced not voluntary, under the same reservation. Ignorance, sheer ignorance, takes whatever is done under it out of the region of volition. Nothing is willed but what is known. An ignorant man is as excusable as a drunken one, as such,—no more and no less. The difference is, that drunkenness generally is voluntary; ignorance often is not. But ignorance may be voluntary, quite as voluntary as drunkenness. It is a capital folly of our age to deny the possibility of voluntary intellectual error. Error is often voluntary, and (where the matter is one that the person officially or otherwise is required to know) immoral too. A strange thing it is to say that "it is as unmeaning to speak of the immorality of an intellectual mistake as it would be to talk of the colour of a sound." (Lecky, European Morals, ii., 202.)
4. There is an ignorance that is sought on purpose, called affected ignorance (in the Shakspearian sense of the word affect), as when a man will not read begging-letters, that he may not give anything away. Such ignorance does not hinder voluntariness. It indicates a strong will of doing or omitting, come what may. There is yet another ignorance called crass, which is when a man, without absolutely declining knowledge, yet takes no pains to acquire it in a matter where he is aware that truth is important to him. Whatever election is made in consequence of such ignorance, is less voluntary, indeed, than if it were made in the full light, still it is to some extent voluntary. It is voluntary in its cause, that is, in the voluntary ignorance that led to it. Suppose a man sets up as a surgeon, having made a very imperfect study of his art. He is aware, that for want of knowledge and skill, he shall endanger many lives: still he neglects opportunities of making himself competent, and goes audaciously to work. If any harm comes of his bungling, he can plead intellectual error, an error of judgment for the time being; he did his best as well as he knew it. Doubtless he did, and in that he is unlike the malicious maker of mischief: still he has chosen lightly and recklessly to hazard a great evil. To that extent his will is bound to the evil: he has chosen it, as it were, at one remove.
5. Another instance. A man is a long way on to seeing, though he does not quite see, the claims of the Church of Rome on his allegiance and submission. He suspects that a little more prayer and search, and he shall be a Roman Catholic. To escape this, he resolves to go travelling and give up prayer. This is affected ignorance. Another has no such perception of the claims of Catholicism. He has no religion that satisfies him. He is aware speculatively of the importance of the religious question; but his heart is not in religion at all. With Demas, he loves the things of this world. Very attractive and interesting does he find this life; and for the life to come he is content to chance it. This is crass ignorance of religious truth. Such a man is not a formal heretic, for he is not altogether wilful and contumacious in his error. Still neither is it wholly involuntary, nor he wholly guiltless.
6. Passionate desire is not an affection of the will, but of the sensitive appetite. The will may cooperate, but the passion is not in the will. The will may neglect to check the passion, when it might: it may abet and inflame it: in these ways an act done in passion is a voluntary act. Still it becomes voluntary only by the influx of the will, positively permitting or stimulating: it is not voluntary precisely as it proceeds from passion: for voluntary is that which is of the will. It belongs to passion to bring on a momentary darkness in the understanding: where such darkness is, there is so much the less of a human act. But passion in an adult of sane mind is hardly strong enough, of itself and wholly without the will, to execute any considerable outward action, involving the voluntary muscles. Things are often said and done, and put down to passion: but that is not the whole account of the matter. The will has been for a long time either feeding the passions, or letting them range unchecked: that is the reason of their present outburst, which is voluntary at least in its cause. Once this evil preponderance has been brought about, it is to be examined whether the will, in calm moods, is making any efforts to redress the evil. Such efforts, if made, go towards making the effects of passion, when they come, involuntary, and gradually preventing them altogether.
7. What a man does from fear, he is said to do under compulsion, especially if the fear be applied to him by some other person in order to gain a purpose. Such compulsory action is distinguished in ordinary parlance from voluntary action. And it is certainly less voluntary, inasmuch as the will is hedged in to make its choice between two evils, and chooses one or other only as being the less evil of the two, not for any liking to the thing in itself. Still, all things considered, the thing is chosen, and the action is so far voluntary. We may call it voluntary in the concrete, and involuntary in the abstract. The thing is willed as matters stand, but in itself and apart from existing need it is not liked at all. But as acts must be judged as they stand, by what the man wills now, not by what he would will, an act done under fear is on the whole voluntary. At the same time, fear sometimes excuses from the observance of a law, or of a contract, which from the way in which it was made was never meant to bind in so hard a case. Not all contracts, however, are of this accommodating nature; and still less, all laws. But even where the law binds, the penalty of the law is sometimes not incurred, when the law was broken through fear.
Readings.—Ar., Eth., III, i.; St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 6, art. 3; ib., q. 6, art. 6, 8; ib., q. 77, art. 6.
SECTION II.—Of the determinants of morality in any given action.
1. The morality of any given action is determined by three elements, the end in view, the means taken, and the circumstances that accompany the taking of the said means. Whoever knows this principle, does not thereby know the right and wrong of every action, but he knows how to go about the enquiry. It is a rule of diagnosis.
2. In order to know whether what a man does befits him as a man to do, the first thing to examine is that which he mainly desires and wills in his action. Now the end is more willed and desired than the means. He who steals to commit adultery, says Aristotle, is more of an adulterer than a thief. The end in view is what lies nearest to a man's heart as he acts. On that his mind is chiefly bent; on that his main purpose is fixed. Though the end is last in the order of execution, it is first and foremost in the order of intention. Therefore the end in view enters into morality more deeply than any other element of the action. It is not, however, the most obvious determinant, because it is the last point to be gained; and because, while the means are taken openly, the end is often a secret locked up in the heart of the doer, the same means leading to many ends, as the road to a city leads to many homes and resting-places. Conversely, one end may be prosecuted by many means, as there are many roads converging upon one goal.
3. If morality were determined by the end in view, and by that alone, the doctrine would hold that the end justifies the means. That doctrine is false, because the moral character of a human act depends on the thing willed, or object of volition, according as it is or is not a fit object. Now the object of volition is not only the end in view, but likewise the means chosen. Besides the end, the means are likewise willed. Indeed, the means are willed more immediately even than the end, as they have to be taken first.
4. A good action, like any other good thing, must possess a certain requisite fulness of being, proper to itself. As it is not enough for the physical excellence of a man to have the bare essentials, a body with a soul animating it, but there is needed a certain grace of form, colour, agility, and many accidental qualities besides; so for a good act it is not enough that proper means be taken to a proper end, but they must be taken by a proper person, at a proper place and time, in a proper manner, and with manifold other circumstances of propriety.
5. The end in view may be either single, as when you forgive an injury solely for the love of Christ: or multiple co-ordinate, as when you forgive both for the love of Christ and for the mediation of a friend, and are disposed to forgive on either ground separately; or multiple subordinate, as when you would not have forgiven on the latter ground alone, but forgive the more easily for its addition, having been ready, however, to forgive on the former alone; or cumulative, as when you forgive on a number of grounds collectively, on no one of which would you have forgiven apart from the rest.
6. Where there is no outward action, but only an internal act, and the object of that act is some good that is willed for its own sake, there can be no question of means taken, as the end in view is immediately attained.
7. The means taken and the circumstances of those means enter into the morality of the act, formally as they are seen by the intellect, materially as they are in themselves. (See what is said of ignorance, c. iii., s. i., nn. 3-5, p. 27.) This explains the difference between formal and material sin. A material sin would be formal also, did the agent know what he was doing. No sin is culpable that is not formal. But, as has been said, there may be a culpable perversion of the intellect, so that the man is the author of his own obliquity or defect of vision. When Saul persecuted the Christians, he probably sinned materially, not formally. When Caiphas spoke the truth without knowing it, he said well materially, but ill formally.
8. In looking at the means taken and the circumstances that accompany those means, it is important to have a ready rule for pronouncing what particular belongs to the means and what to the circumstances. Thus Clytemnestra deals her husband Agamemnon a deadly stroke with an axe, partly for revenge, partly that she may take to herself another consort; is the deadliness of the blow part of the means taken or only an accompanying circumstance? It is part of the means taken. The means taken include every particular that is willed and chosen as making for the end in view. The fatal character of the blow does make to that end; if Agamemnon does not die, the revenge will not be complete, and life with Aegisthus will be impossible. On the other hand, the fact that Clytemnestra is the wife of the man whom she murders, is not a point that her will rests upon as furthering her purpose at all; it is an accompanying circumstance. This method of distinguishing means from circumstance is of great value in casuistry.
9. It is clear that not every attendant circumstance affects the morality of the means taken. Thus the blow under which Agamemnon sank was neither more nor less guiltily struck because it was dealt with an axe, because it was under pretence of giving him a bath, or because his feet were entangled in a long robe. These circumstances are all irrelevant. Those only are relevant which attach some special reasonableness or unreasonableness to the thing done Thus the provocation that Clytemnestra had from her husband's introduction of Cassandra into her house made her act of vengeance less unreasonable: on the other hand it was rendered more unreasonable by the circumstance of the dear and holy tie that binds wife to husband. The provocation and the relationship were two relevant circumstances in that case.
10. But it happens sometimes that a circumstance only affects the reasonableness of an action on the supposition of some previous circumstance so affecting it. Thus to carry off a thing in large or small quantities does not affect the reasonableness of the carrying, unless there be already some other circumstance attached that renders the act good or evil; as for instance, if the goods that are being removed are stolen property. Circumstances of this sort are called aggravating—or, as the case may be, extenuating—circumstances. Circumstances that of themselves, and apart from any previous supposition, make the thing done peculiarly reasonable or unreasonable, are called specifying circumstances. They are so called, because they place the action in some species of virtue or vice; whereas aggravating or extenuating circumstances add to, or take off from, the good or evil of the action in that species of virtue or vice to which it already belongs.
11. A variety of specifying circumstances may place one and the same action in many various species of virtue or vice. Thus a religious robbing his parents would sin at once against justice, piety, and religion. A nun preferring death to dishonour practises three virtues, chastity, fortitude, and religion.
12. The means chosen may be of four several characters:—
(a) A thing evil of itself and inexcusable under all conceivable circumstances; for instance, blasphemy, idolatry, lying.
(b) Needing excuse, as the killing of a man, the looking at an indecent object. Such things are not to be done except under certain circumstances and with a grave reason. Thus indecent sights may be met in the discharge of professional duty. In that case indeed they cease to be indecent. They are then only indecent when they are viewed without cause. The absence of a good motive in a case like this commonly implies the presence of a bad one.
(c) Indifferent, as walking or sitting down.
(d) Good of itself, but liable to be vitiated by circumstances, as prayer and almsgiving; the good of such actions may be destroyed wholly or in part by their being done out of a vain motive, or unseasonably, or indiscreetly.
13. It is said, "If thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be lightsome." (St. Matt., vi., 22.) The eye is the intention contemplating the end in view. Whoever has placed a good end before him, and regards it steadily with a well-ordered love, never swerving in his affection from the way that reason would have him love, must needs take towards his end those means, and those only, which are in themselves reasonable and just: as it is written: "Thou shalt follow justly after that which is just." (Deut. xvi., 20.) Thus I am building a church to the glory of God; money runs short: I perceive that by signing a certain contract that must mean grievous oppression of the poor, I shall save considerable expense, whereas, if I refuse, the works will have to be abandoned for want of funds. If I have purely the glory of God before my eyes, I certainly shall not sign that contract: for injustice I know can bear no fruit of Divine glory. But if I am bent upon having the building up in any case, of course I shall sign: but then my love for the end in view is no longer pure and regulated by reason: it is not God but myself that I am seeking in the work. Thus an end entirely just, holy, and pure, purifies and sanctifies the means, not formally, by investing with a character of justice means in themselves unjust, for that is impossible,—the leopard cannot change his spots,—but by way of elimination, removing unjust means as ineligible to my purpose, and leaving me only those means to choose from which are in themselves just.
14. With means in themselves indifferent, the case is otherwise. A holy and pious end does formally sanctify those means, while a wicked end vitiates them. I beg the reader to observe what sort of means are here in question. There is no question of means in themselves or in their circumstances unjust, as theft, lying, murder, but of such indifferent things as reading, writing, painting, singing, travelling. Whoever travels to commit sin at the end of his journey, his very travelling, so far as it is referred to that end, is part of his sin: it is a wicked journey that he takes. And he who travels to worship at some shrine or place of pilgrimage, includes his journey in his devotion. The end in view there sanctifies means in themselves indifferent.
15. As a great part of the things that we do are indifferent as well in themselves as in the circumstances of the doing of them, the moral character of our lives depends largely on the ends that we habitually propose to ourselves. One man's great thought is how to make money; what he reads, writes, says, where he goes, where he elects to reside, his very eating, drinking and personal expenditure, all turns on what he calls making his fortune. It is all to gain money—quocunque modo rem. Another is active for bettering the condition of the labouring classes: a third for the suppression of vice. These three men go some way together in a common orbit of small actions, alike to the eye, but morally unlike, because of the various guiding purposes for which they are done. Hence, when we consider such pregnant final ends as the service of God and the glory of a world to come, it appears how vast is the alteration in the moral line and colouring of a man's life, according to his practical taking up or setting aside of these great ends.
16. We must beware however of an exaggeration here. The final end of action is often latent, not explicitly considered. A fervent worshipper of God wishes to refer his whole self with all that he does to the Divine glory and service. Yet such a one will eat, drink, and be merry with his friends, not thinking of God at the time. Still, supposing him to keep within the bounds of temperance, he is serving God and doing good actions. But what of a man who has entirely broken away from God, what of his eating, drinking, and other actions that are of their kind indifferent? We cannot call them sins: there is nothing wrong about them, neither in the thing done, nor in the circumstances of the doing, nor in the intention. Pius V. condemned the proposition: "All the works of infidels are sins." Neither must we call such actions indifferent in the individual who does them, supposing them to be true human acts, according to the definition, and not done merely mechanically. They are not indifferent, because they receive a certain measure of natural goodness from the good natural purpose which they serve, namely, the conservation and well-being of the agent. Every human act is either good or evil in him who does it. I speak of natural goodness only.
17. The effect consequent upon an action is distinguishable from the action itself, from which it is not unfrequently separated by a considerable interval of time, as the death of a man from poison administered a month before. The effect consequent enters into morality only in so far as it is either chosen as a means or intended as an end (nn. 2, 3, p. 31), or is annexed as a relevant circumstance to the means chosen (n. 9, p. 34.). Once the act is done, it matters nothing to morality whether the effect consequent actually ensues or not, provided no new act be elicited thereupon, whether of commission or of culpable omission to prevent. It matters not to morality, but it does matter to the agent's claim to reward or liability to punishment at the hands of human legislators civil and ecclesiastical.
18. As soul and body make one man, so the inward and outward act—as the will to strike and the actual blow struck—are one human act. The outward act gives a certain physical completeness to the inward. Moreover the inward act is no thorough-going thing, if it stops short of outward action where the opportunity offers. Otherwise, the inward act may be as good or as bad morally as inward and outward act together. The mere wish to kill, where the deed is impossible, may be as wicked as wish and deed conjoined. It may be, but commonly it will not, for this reason, that the outward execution of the deed reacts upon the will and calls it forth with greater intensity; the will as it were expands where it finds outward vent. There is no one who has not felt the relative mildness of inward feelings of impatience or indignation, compared with those engendered by speaking out one's mind. Often also the outward act entails a long course of preparation, all during which the inward will is sustained and frequently renewed, as in a carefully planned burglary.
Readings.—St. Thos., 1a 2ae, q. 18, art. 1; ib., q. 18, art. 2, in corp., ad 1; ib., q. 18, art. 3, in corp., ad 2; ib., q. 18, art. 4-6; ib., q. 18, art. 8, in corp., ad 2, 3; ib., q. 18, art. 9, in corp., ad 3; ib., q. 18, art. 10, 3; ib., q. 18, art. 11, in corp.; ib., q. 20, art. 4, in corp.
CHAPTER IV.
OF PASSIONS.
SECTION I.—Of Passions in General.
1. A passion is defined to be: A movement of the irrational part of the soul, attended by a notable alteration of the body, on the apprehension of good or evil. The soul is made up of intellect, will, and sensible appetite. The first two are rational, the third irrational: the third is the seat of the passions. In a disembodied spirit, or an angel, there are no senses, no sensible appetite, no passions. The angel, or the departed soul, can love and hate, fear and desire, rejoice and grieve, but these are not passions in the pure spirit, they are acts of intellect and will alone. So man also often loves and hates, and does other acts that are synonymous with corresponding passions, and yet no passion is there. The man is working with his calm reason: his irrational soul is not stirred. To an author, when he is in the humour for it, it is a delight to be writing, but not a passionate delight. The will finds satisfaction in the act: the irrational soul is not affected by it. Or a penitent is sorry for his sin: he sincerely regrets it before God: his will is heartily turned away, and wishes that that sin had never been: at the same time his eye is dry, his features unmoved, not a sigh does he utter, and yet he is truly sorry. It is important to bear these facts in mind: else we shall be continually mistaking for passions what are pure acts of will, or vice versa, misled by the identity of name.
2. The great mark of a passion is its sensible working of itself out upon the body,—what Dr. Bain calls "the diffusive wave of emotion." Without this mark there is no passion, but with it are other mental states besides passions, as we define them. All strong emotion affects the body sensibly, but not all emotions are passions. There are emotions that arise from and appertain to the rational portion of the soul. Such are Surprise, Laughter, Shame.
There is no sense of humour in any but rational beings; and though dogs look ashamed and horses betray curiosity, that is only inasmuch as in these higher animals there is something analogous to what is reason in man. Moreover passions are conversant with good and evil affecting sense, but the objects of such emotions as those just mentioned are not good and evil as such, common parlance notwithstanding, whereby we are said to laugh at a bon mot, or "a good thing."
3. Love is a generic passion, having for its species desire and delight, the contraries of which are abhorrence and pain. Desire is of absent good; abhorrence is of absent evil; delight is in present good; pain is at present evil. The good and the evil which is the object of any passion must be apprehended by sense, or by imagination in a sensible way, whether itself be a thing of sense or not.
4. Desire and abhorrence, delight and pain, are conversant with good and evil simply. But good is often attainable only by an effort, and evil avoidable by an effort. The effort that good costs to attain casts a shade of evil or undesirableness over it: we may shrink from the effort while coveting the good. Again, the fact of evil being at all avoidable is a good thing about such evil. If we call evil black, and good white, avoidable evil will be black just silvering into grey: and arduous good will be white with a cloud on it. And if the white attracts, and the black repels the appetite, it appears that arduous good is somewhat distasteful, to wit, to the faint-hearted; and avoidable, or vincible, evil has its attraction for the man of spirit. About these two objects, good hard of getting and evil hard of avoidance, arise four other passions, hope and despair about the former, fear and daring about the latter. Hope goes out towards a difficult good: despair flies from it, the difficulty here being more repellent than the good is attractive. Fear flies from a threatening evil: while daring goes up to the same, drawn by the likelihood of vanquishing it. Desire and abhorrence, delight and pain, hope and despair, fear and daring, with anger and hatred (of which presently), complete our list of passions.
5. Aristotle and his school of old, called Peripatetics, recommended the moderation of the passions, not their extirpation. The Stoics on the other hand contended that the model man, the sage, should be totally devoid of passions. This celebrated dispute turned largely on the two schools not understanding the same thing by the word passion. Yet not entirely so. There was a residue of real difference, and it came to this. If the sensitive appetite stirs at all, it must stir in one or other of nine ways corresponding to the nine passions which we have enumerated. Such an emotion as Laughter affects the imagination and the sensitive part of man, and of course the body visibly, but it does not stir the sensitive appetite, since it does not prompt to action. To say then that a man has no passions, means that the sensitive appetite never stirs within him, but is wholly dead. But this is impossible, as the Stoic philosopher was fain to confess when he got frightened in a storm at sea. Having no passions cannot in any practical sense mean having no movements of the sensitive appetite, for that will be afoot of its own proper motion independent of reason: but it may mean cherishing no passions, allowing none to arise unresisted, but suppressing their every movement to the utmost that the will can. In that sense it is a very intelligible and practical piece of advice, that the wise man should labour to have no passions. It is the advice embodied in Horace's Nil admirari, Talleyrand's "No zeal," Beaconsfield's "Beware of enthusiasm." It would have man to work like a scientific instrument, calm as a chronometer, regulated by reason alone. This was the Stoic teaching, this the perfection that they inculcated, quite a possible goal to make for, if not to attain. And it is worth a wise man's while to consider, whether he should bend his efforts in this direction or not. The determination here taken and acted upon will elaborate quite a different character of man one way or the other. The effort made as the Stoics direct, would mean no yielding to excitement, no poetry, no high-strung devotion, no rapture, no ecstasy, no ardour of love, no earnest rhetoric spoken or listened to, no mourning, no rejoicing other than the most conventional, to the persistent smothering of whatever is natural and really felt, no tear of pity freely let flow, no touch of noble anger responded to, no scudding before the breeze of indignation,—all this, that reason may keep on the even tenour of her way undisturbed.
6. The fault in this picture is that it is not the picture of a man, but of a spirit. He who being man should try to realize it in himself, would fall short of human perfection. For though the sensitive appetite is distinguished from the will, and the two may clash and come in conflict, yet they are not two wholly independent powers, but the one man is both will and sensitive appetite, and he rarely operates according to one power without the other being brought into corresponding play. There is a similar concomitance of the operations of intellect and imagination. What attracts the sensitive appetite, commonly allures also the affective will, though on advertence the elective will may reject it. On the other hand, a strong affection and election of the will cannot be without the sensitive appetite being stirred, and that so strongly that the motion is notable in the body,—in other words, is a passion. Passion is the natural and in a certain degree the inseparable adjunct of strong volition. To check one is to check the other. Not only is the passion repressed by repressing the volition, but the repression of the passion is also the repression of the volition. A man then who did his best to repress all movements of passion indiscriminately, would lay fetters on his will, lamentable and cruel and impolitic fetters, where his will was bent on any object good and honourable and well-judged.
7. Again, man's will is reached by two channels, from above downwards and from below upwards: it is reached through the reason and through the imagination and senses. By the latter channel it often receives evil impressions, undoubtedly, but not unfrequently by the former also. Reason may be inconsiderate, vain, haughty, mutinous, unduly sceptical. The abuse is no justification for closing either channel. Now the channel of the senses and of the imagination is the wider, and in many cases affords the better passage of the two. The will that is hardly reached by reason, is approached and won by a pathetic sight, a cry of enthusiasm, a threat that sends a tremor through the limbs. Rather I should say the affective will is approached in this way: for it remains with the elective will, on advertence and consultation with reason, to decide whether or not it shall be won to consent. But were it not for the channel of passion, this will could never have been approached at all even by reasons the most cogent. Rhetoric often succeeds, where mere dry logic would have been thrown away. God help vast numbers of the human race, if their wills were approachable only through their reasons! They would indeed be fixtures.
8. Another fact to notice is the liability of reason's gaze to become morbid and as it were inflamed by unremitting exercise. I do not here allude to hard study, but to overcurious scanning of the realities of this life, and the still greater realities and more momentous possibilities of the world to come. There is a sense of the surroundings being too much for us, an alarm and a giddiness, that comes of sober matter-of-fact thought over-much prolonged. Then it happens that one or more undeniable truths are laid hold of, and considered in strong relief and in isolation from the rest: the result is a distorted and partial view of truth as a whole, and therewith the mind is troubled. Here the kindlier passions, judiciously allowed to play, come in to soothe the wound and soreness of pure intellect, too keen in its workings for one who is not yet a pure spirit.
9. Moral good and evil are predicable only of human acts, in the technical sense of the term. (c. i., nn. 2—4, p. 41.) As the passions by definition (c. iv., s. i., n. 1, p. 41) are not human acts, they can never be morally evil of themselves. But they are an occasion of moral evil in this way. They often serve to wake up the slumbering Reason. To that end it is necessary that they should start up of themselves without the call of Reason. This would be no inconvenience, if the instant Reason awoke, and adverted to the tumult and stir of Passion, she could take command of it, and where she saw fit, quell it. But Reason has no such command, except in cases where she has acquired it by years of hard fighting. Passion once afoot holds on her course against the dictate of Reason. True, so long as it remains mere Passion, and Reason is not dragged away by it, no consent of the will given, no voluntary act elicited, still less carried into outward effect,—so long as things remain thus, however Passion may rage, there is no moral evil done. But there is a great temptation, and in great temptation many men fall. The evil is the act of free will, but the pressure on the will is the pressure of Passion. But Passion happily is a young colt amenable to discipline. Where the assaults of Passion are resolutely and piously withstood, and the incentives thereto avoided—unnatural and unnecessary incentives I mean—Passion itself acquires a certain habit of obedience to Reason, which habit is moral virtue. Of that presently.
10. In a man of confirmed habits of moral virtue, Passion starts up indeed independently of Reason, but then Reason ordinarily finds little difficulty in regulating the Passion so aroused. In a certain high and extraordinary condition of human nature, not only has Reason entire mastery over Passion wherever she finds it astir, but Passion cannot stir in the first instance, without Reason calling upon it to do so. In this case the torpor of the will deprecated above (n. 7) is not to be feared, because Reason is so vigorous and so masterful as to be adequate to range everywhere and meet all emergencies without the goad of Passion. This state is called by divines the state of integrity. In it Adam was before he sinned. It was lost at the Fall, and has not been restored by the Redemption. It is not a thing in any way due to human nature: nothing truly natural to man was forfeited by Adam's sin. It is no point of holiness, no guerdon of victory, this state of integrity, but rather a being borne on angel's wings above the battle. But one who has no battle in his own breast against Passion, may yet suffer and bleed and die under exterior persecution: nay, he may, if he wills, let in Passion upon himself, to fear and grieve, when he need not. So did the Second Adam in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Readings.—St. Thos., 1a, q. 81, art. 2, in corp.; id., 1a 2æ, q. 23, art. 1, in corp.; ib., q. 23, art. 2, in corp.; Cicero, Tusc. Disp., iv., cc. 17-26; St. Aug., De Civitate Dei, ix., cc. 4, 5; Ar, Eth., III., v., 3, 4; ib., I., xiii., 15-17; St. Thos., 3a, q. 15, art. 4; id., 1a 2æ, q. 59, art. 5; Plato, Timaeus, 69, B, E: 70, A.
SECTION II.—Of Desire.
1. Desires are either physical cravings, by moderns called appetites; or physical desires or tastes, called desires proper. The appetites have their beginning in bodily uneasiness. They are felt needs of something required for the animal maintenance of the individual or of the race. The objects of the several appetites are Meat and Drink, Warmth or Coolness, Exercise and Repose, Sleep, Sex. The object of mere appetite is marked by quantity only, not by quality. That is to say, the thing is sought for in the vague, in a certain amount sufficient to supply the want, but not this or that variety of the thing. The cry of a hungry man is, "Give me to eat," if very hungry, "Give me much:" but so far as he is under the mere dominion of appetite he does not crave any particular article of food, vegetable or animal: he wants quantity merely. So of thirst, so of all the appetites, where there is nothing else but appetite present.
2. But if a thirsty man cries for champagne, or a hungry man fancies a venison pasty, there is another element beyond appetite in that demand. On the matter of the physical craving there is stamped the form of a psychical desire. The psychical element prescribes a quality of the objects sought. The thirsty man thus prompted no longer wants drink but wine: the man mewed up within doors no longer calls for exercise, but for a horse or a bicycle. It is obvious that in man the appetites generally pass into the further shape of psychical desire. It is when the appetite is vehement, or the man is one who makes slight study of his animal wants, that pure appetite, sheer physical craving, is best shown. Darius flying before his conqueror is ready to drink at any source, muddy or clear, a drink is all that he wants: it is all that is wanted by St. Paul the first Hermit. But your modern lounger at the clubs, what variety of liquors are excogitated to please his palate!
3. Not all psychical desires are on the matter of appetite; they may be fixed on any good whatsoever of body or of mind. Many psychical desires are not passions at all, but reside exclusively in the superior part of the soul, in the will prompted by the understanding, and do not affect the body in any sensible way. Such for instance is the great desire of happiness. Those desires that are passions are prompted, not by the understanding, but by the imagination or fancy, imaging to itself some particular good, not good in general, for that the understanding contemplates. Fancy paints the picture; or if sense presents it, fancy appropriates and embellishes it: the sensitive appetite fastens upon the representation: the bodily organs sensibly respond; and there is the passion of psychical desire.
4. Physical cravings, or appetites, have limited objects: the objects of psychical desires may be unlimited. A thirsty man thirsts not for an ocean, but for drink quantum sufficit: give him that and the appetite is gone. But the miser covets all the money that he can get: the voluptuary ranges land and sea in search of a new pleasure: the philosopher ever longs for a higher knowledge: the saint is indefatigable in doing good. Whatever a man takes to be an end in itself, not simply a means, that he desires without end or measure. What he desires as a means, he desires under a limitation, so far forth as it makes for the end, so much and no more. As Aristotle says of the processes of art, "the end in view is the limit," [Greek: peras to telos] (cf. c. ii., s. iii., n. 3, p. 15) Whatever is desired as an end in itself, is taken to be a part of happiness, or to represent happiness. Happiness and the object that gives happiness is the one thing that man desires for itself, and desires without end or measure. Unfortunately he is often mistaken in the choice of this object. He often takes for an end what is properly only a means. They "whose god is their belly," have made this mistake in regard of the gratification of appetite. It is not appetite proper that has led to this perversion, but psychical desire, or appetite inflamed by the artificial stimulus of imagination. For one who would be temperate, it is more important to control his imagination than to trouble about his appetite. Appetite exhausts itself, sometimes within the bounds of what is good for the subject, sometimes beyond them, but still within some bounds; but there is no limit to the cravings bred of imagination.
5. By this canon a man may try himself to discover whether or not a favourite amusement is gaining too much upon him. An amusement is properly a means to the end, that a man may come away from it better fitted to do the serious work of his life. Pushed beyond a certain point, the amusement ceases to minister to this end. The wise man drops it at that point. But if one knows not where to stop: or if when stopped in spite of himself, he is restless till he begin again, and never willingly can forego any measure of the diversion that comes within his reach, the means in that case has passed into an end: he is enslaved to that amusement, inasmuch as he will do anything and everything for the sake of it. Thus some men serve pleasure, and other men money.
6. Hence is apparent the folly of supposing that crimes against property are preventible simply by placing it within the power of all members of the community easily to earn an honest livelihood, and therewith the satisfaction of all their natural needs. It is not merely to escape cold and hunger that men turn to burglary or fraudulent dealing: it is more for the gratification of a fancy, the satisfaction of an inordinate desire. Great crimes are not committed "to keep the wolf from the door," but because of the wolf in the heart, the overgrown psychical desire, which is bred in many a well-nourished, warmly clad, comfortably housed, highly educated citizen. There is a sin born of "fulness of bread."
Readings.—St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 30, art. 3, in corp.; ib., q. 30, art. 4, in corp.; Ar., Eth., III., xi., 1-4: Ar., Pol., I., ix., 13; ib., II., vii., 11-13.
N.B.—The division of desires into physical and psychical is first suggested by Plato, who (Rep. 558 D to 559 C) divides them as necessary and unnecessary. Unnecessary desires he treats as evil. What Plato calls a necessary, Aristotle calls a physical, and St. Thomas a natural desire. Unfortunately, Aristotle and St. Thomas had but one word for our English two, physical and natural. Desires that are not physical, not natural nor necessary to man in his animal capacity, may be highly natural and becoming to man as he is a reasonable being, or they may be highly unbecoming. These psychical desires, called by St. Thomas not natural, take in at once the noblest and the basest aspirations of humanity.
SECTION III.—Of Delight.
1. Delight like desire may be either physical or psychical. All that has been said above of desire under this division applies also to delight, which is the realization of desire. This division does not altogether fall in with that into sensual delights and intellectual delights. A professional wine-taster could hardly be said to find intellectual delight in a bottle of good Champagne, real Veuve-Clicquot: yet certainly his is a psychical delight, no mere unsophisticated gratification of appetite. Sensual delights then are those delights which are founded on the gratification of appetite, whether simple—in which case the delight is physical—or studied and fancy-wrought appetite, the gratification of which is psychical delight. Intellectual delights on the other hand are those that come of the exercise of intellect, not unsupported by imagination, but where appetite enters not at all, or only as a remote adjunct, albeit the delight may turn upon some sight or sound, as of music, or of a fine range of hills. Or the object may be a thing of intellect, pure and removed from sense as far as an object of human contemplation can be, for instance, the first elements of matter, freewill, the immensity of God. The study of such objects yields a purer intellectual delight than that of the preceding. But this is a high ground and a keen upper air, where few can tread and breathe.
2. A man has more complacency in himself upon attaining to some intellectual delight than upon a sensual satisfaction: he is prouder to have solved a problem than to have enjoyed his dinner. Also, he would rather forego the capacity of sensual enjoyment than that of intellectual pleasure; rather lose his sense of taste than his science or his scholarship, if he has any notable amount of either. Again, put sensual delight in one scale, and in the other the intellectual delight of honour, no worthy specimen of a man will purchase the pleasure at the price of honour. The disgrace attaching to certain modes of enjoyment is sufficient to make men shun them, very pleasant though they be to sense. Again, sensual delight is a passing thing, waxing and waning: but intellectual delight is steady, grasped and held firmly as a whole. But sensual delight comes more welcome of the two in this that it removes a pre-existing uneasiness, as hunger, weariness, nervous prostration, thus doing a medicinal office: whereas no such office attaches in the essential nature of things to intellectual delight, as that does not presuppose any uneasiness; and though it may remove uneasiness, the removal is difficult, because the uneasiness itself is an obstacle to the intellectual effort that must be made to derive any intellectual delight. Sensual enjoyment is the cheaper physician, and ailing mortals mostly resort to that door.
3. "I will omit much usual declamation on the dignity and capacity of our nature: the superiority of the soul to the body, of the rational to the animal part of our constitution; upon the worthiness, refinement, and delicacy of some satisfactions, or the meanness, grossness, and sensuality of others: because I hold that pleasures differ in nothing but in continuance and intensity." (Paley, Moral Philosophy, bk. i., c. vi.)
In opposition to the above it is here laid down that delights do not differ in continuance and intensity, that is, in quantity, alone, but likewise in quality, that is, some are nobler, better, and more becoming a man than others, and therefore preferable on other grounds than those of mere continuance and intensity. I wish to show that the more pleasant pleasure is not always the better pleasure; that even the pleasure which is more durable, and thereby more pleasant in the long run, is not the better of the two simply as carrying the greater cumulus of pleasure. If this is shown, it will follow that pleasure is not identical with good; or that pleasure is not happiness, not the last end of man.
4. Delight comes of activity, not necessarily of change, except so far as activity itself involves change, as it always does in mortal man. Delight sits upon activity, as the bloom upon youth. Bloom is the natural sign of maturity; and the delight that we come to take in doing a thing shows that we are at least beginning to do it well: our activity is approaching perfection. In this sense it is said that delight perfects activity. As the activity, so will be the delight. But the activity will be as the power of which it is an exercise. Powers like in kind will supply like activities, and these again will yield delights alike in kind. There is no difference of quality in such delights, they differ in quantity alone. Thus taste and smell are two senses: the difference between them can hardly be called one of kind: therefore the delights of smelling and of tasting fall under one category. We may exchange so much smell for an equal amount of taste: it is a mere matter of quantity. But between sight and hearing on the one hand, and taste and smell and touch on the other, there is a wider difference, due to the fact that intellect allies itself more readily to the operation of the two former senses.
5. Widest of all differences is that between sense and intellect. To explain this difference in full belongs to Psychology. Enough to say here that the object of sense is always particular, bound up in circumstances of present time and place, as this horse: while the object of intellect is universal, as horse simply. The human intellect never works without the concurrence either of sense or of imagination, which is as it were sense at second hand. As pure intellectual operation is never found in man, so neither is pure intellectual delight, like that of an angel. Still, as even in man sense and intellect are two powers differing in kind, so must their operations differ in kind, and the delights consequent upon those operations. Therefore, unless Paley would have been willing to allow that the rational and animal parts of our nature differ only as more and less—which is tantamount to avowing that man is but a magnified brute—he ought not to have penned his celebrated utterance, that pleasures differ only in continuance and intensity: he should have admitted that they differ likewise in kind; or in other words, that pleasures differ in quality as well as in quantity. The goodness of a pleasure, then, is not the mere amount of it. To repeat St. Augustine's reflection on the drunken Milanese: "It makes a difference what source a man draws his delight from." [Footnote 2] As in man reason is nobler than sense, preferable, and a better good to its possessor—for reason it is that makes him man and raises him above the brute—so the use of the reason and the delight that comes thereof is nobler, preferable, and a better good to him than the pleasure that is of the mere operation of his animal nature. A little of the nobler delight outweighs a vast volume of the baser: not that the nobler is the pleasanter, but because it is the nobler. Nor can it be pretended that the nobler prevails as being the more durable, and thereby likely to prove the pleasanter in the long run. The nobler is better at the time and in itself, because it is the more human delight and characteristic of the higher species. I have but to add that what is better in itself is not better under all circumstances. The best life of man can only be lived at intervals. The lower operations and the delights that go with them have a medicinal power to restore the vigour that has become enfeebled by a lengthened exercise of the higher faculties. At those "dead points" food and fiddling are better than philosophy.
[Footnote 2: Interest unde quis gaudeat. (S. Aug., Confess., vi., 6.)]
6. This medicinal or restorative virtue of delight is a fact to bear in mind in debating the question how far it is right to act for the pleasure that the action gives. It is certainly wrong to act for mere animal gratification. Such gratification is a stimulus to us to do that which makes for the well-being of our nature: to fling away all intention of any good other than the delight of the action, is to mistake the incentive for the end proposed. But this is a doctrine easily misunderstood. An example may save it from being construed too rigidly. Suppose a man has a vinery, and being fond of fruit he goes there occasionally, and eats, not for hunger, but as he says, because he likes grapes. He seems to act for mere pleasure: yet who shall be stern enough to condemn him, so that he exceed not in quantity? If he returns from the vinery in a more amiable and charitable mood, more satisfied with Providence, more apt to converse with men and do his work in the commonwealth, who can deny that in acting in view of these ends, at least implicitly, he has taken lawful means to a proper purpose? He has not been fed, but recreated: he has not taken nourishment, but medicine, preventive or remedial, to a mind diseased. It is no doubt a sweet and agreeable medicine: this very agreeableness makes its medical virtue. It is a sweet antidote to the bitterness of life. But though a man may live by medicine, he does not live for it. So no man by rights lives for pleasure. The pleasure that a man finds in his work encourages him to go on with it. The pleasure that a man finds by turning aside to what is not work, picks him up, rests and renovates him, that he may go forth as from a wayside inn, or diverticulum, refreshed to resume the road of labour. Hence we gather the solution of the question as to the lawfulness of acting for pleasure. If a man does a thing because it is pleasant, and takes the pleasure as an incentive to carry on his labour, or as a remedy to enable him to resume it, he acts for pleasure rightly. For this it is not necessary that he should expressly think of the pleasure as being helpful to labour: it is enough that he accepts the subordination of pleasure to work as nature has ordained it; and this ordinance he does accept, if he puts forth no positive volition the other way, whether expressly, as none but a wrong-headed theologian is likely to do, or virtually, by taking his pleasure with such greediness that the motion of his will is all spent therein as in its last end and terminus, so that the pleasure ceases to be referable to aught beyond itself, a case of much easier occurrence. Or lastly, the natural subordination of pleasure to work may be set aside, defeated, and rendered impossible by the whole tenour of an individual's life, if he be one of those giddy butterflies who flit from pleasure to pleasure and do no work at all. Till late in the morning he sleeps, then breakfasts, then he shoots, lunches, rides, bathes, dines, listens to music, smokes, and reads fiction till late at night, then sleeps again; and this, or the like of this is his day, some three hundred days at least in the year. This is not mere acting for pleasure, it is living for pleasure, or acting for pleasure so continuously as to leave no scope for any further end of life. It may be hard to indicate the precise hour in which this man's pleasure-seeking passes into sin: still this is clear, his life is not innocent. Clear him of gluttony and lust, there remains upon him the sin of sloth and of a wasted existence.
7. Even the very highest of delights, the delight of contemplation, is not the highest of goods, but a concomitant of the highest good. The highest good is the final object of the will: but the object of the will is not the will's own act: we do not will willing, as neither do we understand understanding, not at least without a reflex effort. What we will in contemplating is, not to be delighted, but to see. This is the subjective end and happiness of man, to see, to contemplate. Delight is not anything objective: neither is it the subjective last end of humanity. In no sense then is delight, or pleasure, the highest good.
Readings.—Ar., Eth., X., iv., 8; ib., X., iii., 8-13, ib., X., v., 1-5; Plato, Gorgias, pp. 494, 495; Mill, Utilitarianism, 2nd. edit., pp. 11-l6; St. Thos., la 2æ, q. 31, art. 5; id., Contra Gentiles, iii., 26, nn. 8, 10, 11, 12.
SECTION IV.—Of Anger.
1. Anger is a compound passion, made up of displeasure, desire, and hope: displeasure at a slight received, desire of revenge and satisfaction, and hope of getting the same, the getting of it being a matter of some difficulty and calling for some exertion, for we are not angry with one who lies wholly in our power, or whom we despise. Anger then is conversant at once with the good of vengeance and with the evil of a slight received: the good being somewhat difficult to compass, and the evil not altogether easy to wipe out. (Cf. s.i., n.4, p. 43.)
2. Anger is defined: A desire of open vengeance for an open slight, attended with displeasure at the same, the slight being put upon self, or upon some dear one, unbefittingly. The vengeance that the angry man craves is a vengeance that all shall see. "No, ye unnatural hags," cries Lear in his fury, "I will do such things,—what they shall be yet I know not, but they shall be the terror of the earth." When we are angry, we talk of "making an example" of the offender. The idea is that, as all the world has seen us slighted and set at naught, so all the world, witnessing the punishment of the offending party, may take to heart the lesson which we are enforcing upon him, namely, that we are men of might and importance whom none should despise. Whoever is angry, is angry at being despised, flouted to his face and set at naught, either in his own person, or in the person of one whom he venerates and loves, or in some cause that lies near to his heart. Anger is essentially a craving for vengeance on account of a wrong done. If then we have suffered, but think we deserve to suffer, we are not angry. If we have suffered wrong, but the wrong seems to have been done in ignorance, or in the heat of passion, we are not angry, or we are not so very angry. "If he had known what he was about," we say, or, "if he had been in his right mind, he could not have brought himself to treat me so." But when one has done us cool and deliberate wrong, then we are angry, because the slight is most considerable. There is an appearance of our claims to considerations having been weighed, and found wanting. We call it, "a cool piece of impertinence," "spiteful malevolence," and the like. Any other motive to which the wrong is traceable on the part of the wrong-doer, lessens our anger against him: but the motive of contempt, and that alone, if we seem to discover it in him, invariably increases it. To this all other points are reducible that move our anger, as forgetfulness, rudely delivered tidings of misfortune, a face of mirth looking on at our distress, or getting in the way and thwarting our purpose.
3. Anger differs from hatred. Hatred is a chronic affection, anger an acute one. Hatred wishes evil to a man as it is evil, anger as it is just. Anger wishes evil to fall on its object in the sight of all men, and with the full consciousness of the sufferer: hatred is satisfied with even a secret mischief, and, so that the evil be a grievous one, does not much mind whether the sufferer be conscious of it or no. Thus an angry man may wish to see him who has offended brought to public confession and shame: but a hater is well content to see his enemy spending his fortune foolishly, or dead drunk in a ditch on a lonely wayside. The man in anger feels grief and annoyance, not so the hater. At a certain point of suffering anger stops, and is appeased when full satisfaction seems to have been made: but an enemy is implacable and insatiate in his desire of your harm. St. Augustine in his Rule to his brethren says: "For quarrels, either have them not, or end them with all speed, lest anger grow to hatred, and of a mote make a beam."
4. Anger, like vengeance, is then only a safe course to enter on, when it proceeds not upon personal but upon public grounds. And even by this maxim many deceive themselves.
Readings.—Ar., Rhet., ii., 2; ib., 4, ad fin.; St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 46, art. 2, in corp.; ib., q. 46, art. 3, in corp.; ib., q. 46, art. 6; ib., q. 47, art. 2.
CHAPTER V.
OF HABITS AND VIRTUES.
SECTION I.—Of Habit.
1. A habit is a quality difficult to change, whereby an agent whose nature it was to work one way or another indeterminately, is disposed easily and readily at will to follow this or that particular line of action. Habit differs from disposition, as disposition is a quality easily changed. Thus one in a good humour is in a disposition to be kind. Habit is a part of character: disposition is a passing fit. Again, habit differs from faculty, or power: as power enables one to act; but habit, presupposing power, renders action easy and expeditious, and reliable to come at call. We have a power to move our limbs, but a habit to walk or ride or swim. Habit then is the determinant of power. One and the same power works well or ill, but not one and the same habit.
2. A power that has only one way of working, set and fixed, is not susceptible of habit. Such powers are the forces of inanimate nature, as gravitation and electricity. A thing does not gravitate better for gravitating often. The moon does not obey the earth more readily to-day than she did in the days of Ptolemy, or of the Chaldean sages. Some specious claim to habit might be set up on behalf of electricity and magnetism. A glass rod rubbed at frequent intervals for six months, is a different instrument from what it would have been, if left all that time idle in a drawer. Then there are such cases as the gradual magnetising of an iron bar. Still we cannot speak of electrical habits, or magnetic habits, not at least in things without life, because there is no will there to control the exercise of the quality. As well might we speak of a "tumbledown" habit in a row of houses, brought on by locomotives running underneath their foundations. It is but a case of an accumulation of small effects, inducing gradually a new molecular arrangement, so that the old powers act under new material conditions. But habit is a thing of life, an appurtenance of will, not of course independent of material conditions and structural alterations, in so far forth as a living and volitional is also a material agent, but essentially usable at will, and brought into play and controlled in its operation by free choice. Therefore a habit that works almost automatically has less of the character of a true habit, and passes rather out of morality into the region of physics. Again, bad habits, vices to which a man is become a slave against his better judgment, are less properly called habits than virtues are; for such evil habits do not so much attend on volition (albeit volition has created them) as drag the will in their wake. For the like reason, habit is less properly predicable of brute animals than of men: for brutes have no intelligent will to govern their habits. The highest brutes are most susceptible of habit. They are most like men in being most educable. And, of human progeny, some take up habits, in the best and completest sense of the term, more readily than others. They are better subjects for education: education being nothing else than the formation of habits.
3. Knowledge consists of intellectual habits. But the habits of most consequence to the moralist lie in the will, and in the sensitive appetite as amenable to the control of the will. In this category come the virtues, in the ordinary sense of that name, and secondarily the vices.
4. A habit is acquired by acts. Whereupon this difficulty has been started:—If the habit, say of mental application, comes from acts of study, and again the acts from the habit, how ever is the habit originally acquired? We answer that there are two ways in which one thing may come from another. It may come in point of its very existence, as child from parent; or in point of some mode of existence, as scholar from master. A habit has its very existence from acts preceding: but those acts have their existence independent of the habit. The acts which are elicited after the habit is formed, owe to the habit, not their existence, but the mode of their existence: that is to say, because of the habit the acts are now formed readily, reliably, and artistically, or virtuously. The primitive acts which gradually engendered the habit, were done with difficulty, fitfully, and with many failures,—more by good luck than good management, if it was a matter of skill, and by a special effort rather than as a thing of course, where it was question of moral well-doing. (See c.ii., s.ii., n.9, p. 10.)
5. A habit is a living thing: it grows and must be fed. It grows on acts, and acts are the food that sustain it. Unexercised, a habit pines away: corruption sets in and disintegration. A man, we will say, has a habit of thinking of God during his work. He gives over doing so. That means that he either takes to thinking of everything and nothing, or he takes up some definite line of thought to the exclusion of God. Either way there is a new formation to the gradual ruin of the old habit.
6. Habit and custom may be distinguished in philosophical language. We may say that custom makes the habit. Custom does not imply any skill or special facility. A habit is a channel whereby the energies flow, as otherwise they would not have flowed, freely and readily in some particular direction. A habit, then, is a determination of a faculty for good or for evil. It is something intrinsic in a man, a real modification of his being, abiding in him in the intervals between one occasion for its exercise and another: whereas custom is a mere denomination, expressive of frequent action and no more. Thus it would be more philosophical to speak of a custom of early rising, and of a custom of smoking, rather than of a habit of smoking, except so far as, by the use of the word habit, you may wish to point to a certain acquired skill of the respiratory and facial muscles, and a certain acquired temper of the stomach, enabling one to inhale tobacco fumes with impunity.
7. Habits are acquired, but it is obvious that the rate of acquisition varies in different persons. This comes from one person being more predisposed by nature than another to the acquiring of this or that habit. By nature, that is by the native temper and conformation of his body wherewith he was born, this child is more prone to literary learning, that to mechanics, this one to obstinacy and contentiousness, that to sensuality, and so of the rest. For though it is by the soul that a man learns, and by the act of his will and spiritual powers he becomes a glutton or a zealot, nevertheless the bodily organs concur and act jointly towards these ends. The native dispositions of the child's body for the acquisition of habits depend to an unascertained extent upon the habits of his ancestors. This is the fact of heredity.
8. Man is said to be "a creature of habits." The formation of habits in the will saves the necessity of continually making up the mind anew. A man will act as he has become habituated, except under some special motive from without, or some special effort from within. In the case of evil habits, that effort is attended with immense difficulty. The habit is indeed the man's own creation, the outcome of his free acts. But he is become the bondslave of his creature, so much so that when the occasion arrives, three-fourths of the act is already done, by the force of the habit alone, before his will is awakened, or drowsily moves in its sleep. The only way for the will to free itself here is not to wait for the occasion to come, but be astir betimes, keep the occasion at arm's length, and register many a determination and firm protest and fervent prayer against the habit. He who neglects to do this in the interval has himself to blame for being overcome every time that he falls upon the occasion which brings into play the evil habit.
Readings.—St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 49, art. 4, ad 1, 2; ib., q. 50, art. 3, in corp., ad. 1, 2; ib., q. 51, art. 1, in corp.; ib., q. 53, art. 3, in corp.; Ar., Eth., II., i.; ib., III., v., 10-14; ib., II., iv., 1, 2, 4.
SECTION II.—Of Virtues in General.
1. Virtue in its most transcendental sense means the excellence of a thing according to its kind. Thus it is the virtue of the eye to see, and of a horse to be fleet of foot. Vice is a flaw in the make of a thing, going to render it useless for the purpose to which it was ordained. From the ethical standpoint, virtue is a habit that a man has got of doing moral good, or doing that which it befits his rational nature to do: and vice is a habit of doing moral evil. (See c. i., n. 5.) It is important to observe that virtue and vice are not acts but habits. Vices do not make a man guilty, nor do virtues make him innocent. A man is guilty or innocent according to his acts, not according to his habits. A man may do a wicked thing and not be vicious, or a good action and not be virtuous. But no man is vicious who has not done one, two, aye, many wicked things: and to be virtuous, a man must have performed many acts of virtue. Children do right and wrong, but they have neither virtues nor vices except in a nascent state: there has not yet been time in them for the habits to be formed. When sin is taken away by God and pardoned, the vice, that is, the evil habit, if any such existed before, still remains, and constitutes a danger for the future. The habit can only be overcome by watchfulness and a long continuance of contrary acts. But vice is not sin, nor is sin vice, nor a good deed a virtue.
2. The name of virtue is given to certain habits residing in the intellect, as intuition or insight (into self-evident truths), wisdom (regarding conclusions of main application), science (of conclusions in special departments), and art. These are called intellectual virtues.
It was a peculiarity of Socrates' teaching, largely shared by Plato, to make all virtue intellectual, a doctrine expressed in the formula, Virtue is knowledge; which is tantamount to this other, Vice is ignorance, or an erroneous view. From whence the conclusion is inevitable: No evil deed is wilfully done; and therefore, No man is to blame for being wicked.
3. Undoubtedly there is a certain element of ignorance in all vice, and a certain absence of will about every vicious act. There is likewise an intellectual side to all virtue. These positions we willingly concede to the Socratics. Every morally evil act is borne of some voluntary inconsiderateness. The agent is looking the wrong way in the instant at which he does wrong. Either he is regarding only the solicitations of his inferior nature to the neglect of the superior, or he is considering some rational good indeed, but a rational good which, if he would look steadily upon it, he would perceive to be unbefitting for him to choose. No man can do evil in the very instant in which his understanding is considering, above all things else, that which it behoves him specially to consider in the case. Again, in every wrong act, it is not the sheer evil that is willed, but the good through or with the evil. Good, real or supposed, is sought for: evil is accepted as leading to good in the way of means, or annexed thereto as a circumstance. Moreover, no act is virtuous that is elicited quite mechanically, or at the blind instance of passion. To be virtuous, the thing must be done on principle, that is, at the dictate of reason and by the light of intellect.
4. Still, virtue is not knowledge. There are other than intellectual habits needed to complete the character of a virtuous man. "I see the better course and approve it, and follow the worse," said the Roman poet. [Footnote 3] "The evil which I will not, that I do," said the Apostle. It is not enough to have an intellectual discernment of and preference for what is right: but the will must be habituated to embrace it, and the passions too must be habituated to submit and square themselves to right being done. In other words, a virtuous man is made up by the union of enlightened intellect with the moral virtues. The addition is necessary for several reasons.
[Footnote 3: Video meliora proboque,/Deteriora sequor. (Ovid, Metamorph., vii., 21.)]
(a) Ordinarily, the intellect does not necessitate the will. The will, then, needs to be clamped and set by habit to choose the right thing as the intellect proposes it.
(b) Intellect, or Reason, is not absolute in the human constitution. As Aristotle (Pol., I., v., 6) says: "The soul rules the body with a despotic command: but reason rules appetite with a command constitutional and kingly": that is to say, as Aristotle elsewhere (Eth., I., xiii., 15, 16) explains, passion often "fights and resists reason, opposes and contradicts": it has therefore to be bound by ordinances and institutions to follow reason's lead: these institutions are good habits, moral virtues, resident there where passion itself is resident, in the inferior appetite. It is not enough that the rider is competent, but the horse too must be broken in.
(c) It is a saying, that "no mortal is always wise." There are times when reason's utterance is faint from weariness and vexation. Then, unless a man has acquired an almost mechanical habit of obeying reason in the conduct of his will and passions, he will in such a conjuncture act inconsiderately and do wrong. That habit is moral virtue. Moral virtue is as the fly-wheel of an engine, a reservoir of force to carry the machine past the "dead points" in its working. Or again, moral virtue is as discipline to troops suddenly attacked, or hard pressed in the fight.
5. Therefore, besides the habits in the intellect that bear the name of intellectual virtues, the virtuous man must possess other habits, as well in the will, that this power may readily embrace what the understanding points out to be good, as in the sensitive appetite in both its parts, concupiscible and irascible, so far forth as appetite is amenable to the control of the will, that it may be so controlled and promptly obey the better guidance. These habits in the will and in the sensitive appetite are called moral virtues, and to them the name of virtue is usually confined.
Readings.—St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 71, art. 1, in corp.; ib., q. 58, art. 2; ib., q. 58, art. 3, in corp., ad 3; ib., q. 56, art. 4, in corp., ad 1-3.
SECTION III.—Of the Difference between Virtues, Intellectual and Moral.
1. St. Thomas (1a 2æ, q. 56, art. 3, in corp.) [Footnote 4] draws this difference, that an intellectual virtue gives one a facility in doing a good act; but a moral virtue not only gives facility, but makes one put the facility in use. Thus a habit of grammar he says, enables one readily to speak correctly, but does not ensure that one always shall speak correctly, for a grammarian may make solecisms on purpose: whereas a habit of justice not only makes a man prompt and ready to do just deeds, but makes him actually do them. Not that any habit necessitates volition. Habits do not necessitate, but they facilitate the act of the will. (s. i., nn. 1, 2, 8, pp. 64, 68.)
[Footnote 4: By doing good St. Thomas means the determination of the appetite, rational or sensitive, to good. He says that intellectual virtue does not prompt this determination of the appetite. Of course it does not: it prompts only the act of the power wherein it resides: now it resides in the intellect, not in the appetite; and it prompts the act of the intellect, which however is cot always followed by an act of appetite in accordance with it.]
2. Another distinction may be gathered from St. Thomas (1a 2æ, q. 21, art. 2, ad 2), that the special intellectual habit called art disposes a man to act correctly towards some particular end, but a moral habit towards the common end, scope and purpose of all human life. Thus medical skill ministers to the particular end of healing: while the moral habit of temperance serves the general end, which is final happiness and perfection. So to give a wrong prescription through sheer antecedent ignorance, is to fail as a doctor: but to get drunk wittingly and knowingly is to fail as a man.
3. The grand distinction between intellectual and moral habits seems to be this, that moral habits reside in powers which may act against the dictate of the understanding,—the error of Socrates, noticed above (c. v., s. ii., n. 2, p. 70), lay in supposing that they could not so act: whereas the power which is the seat of the intellectual habits, the understanding, cannot possibly act against itself. Habits dispose the subject to elicit acts of the power wherein they reside. Moral habits induce acts of will and sensitive appetite: intellectual habits, acts of intellect. Will and appetite may act against what the agent knows to be best: but intellect cannot contradict intellect. It cannot judge that to be true and beautiful which it knows to be false and foul. If a musician strikes discords on purpose, or a grammarian makes solecisms wilfully, he is not therein contradicting the intellectual habit within him, for it is the office of such a habit to aid the intellect to judge correctly, and the intellect here does correctly judge the effect produced. On the other hand, if the musician or grammarian blunders, the intellect within him has not been contradicted, seeing that he knew no better: the habit of grammar or music has not been violated, but has failed to cover the case. Therefore the intellectual habit is not a safeguard to keep a man from going against his intelligent self. No such safeguard is needed: the thing is impossible, in the region of pure intellect. In a region where no temptation could enter, intellectual habits would suffice alone of themselves to make a perfectly virtuous man. To avoid evil and choose good, it would be enough to know the one and the other. But in this world seductive reasonings sway the will, and fits of passion the sensitive appetite, prompting the one and the other to rise up and break away from what the intellect knows all along to be the true good of man. Unless moral virtue be there to hold these powers to their allegiance, they will frequently disobey the understanding. Such disobedience is more irrational than any mere intellectual error. In an error purely intellectual, where the will has no part, the objective truth indeed is missed, but the intelligence that dwells within the man is not flouted and gain-sayed. It takes two to make a contradiction as to make a quarrel. But an intellectual error has only one side. The intellect utters some false pronouncement, and there is nothing within the man that says otherwise. In the moral error there is a contradiction within, an intestine quarrel. The intellect pronounces a thing not good, not to be taken, and the sensitive appetite will throw a veil over the face of intellect, and seize upon the thing. That amounts to a contradiction of a man's own intelligent self.
4. It appears that, absolutely speaking, intellectual virtue is the greater perfection of a man: indeed in the act of that virtue, as we have seen, his crowning perfection and happiness lies. But moral virtue is the greater safeguard. The breach of moral virtue is the direr evil. Sin is worse than ignorance, and more against reason, because it is against the doer's own reason. Moral virtue then is more necessary than intellectual in a world where evil is rife, as it is a more vital thing to escape grievous disease than to attain the highest development of strength and beauty. And as disease spoils strength and beauty, not indeed always taking them away, but rendering them valueless, so evil moral habits subvert intellectual virtue, and turn it aside in a wrong direction. The vicious will keeps the intellect from contemplating the objects which are the best good of man: so the contemplation is thrown away on inferior things, often on base things, and an overgrowth of folly ensues on those points whereupon it most imports a man to be wise.
To sum up all in a sentence, not exclusive but dealing with characteristics: the moral virtues are the virtues for this world, intellectual virtue is the virtue of the life to come.
Readings.—St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 58, art. 2, in corp.; Ar., Eth., I., xiii., 15-19; St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 66, art. 3.
SECTION IV.—Of the Mean in Moral Virtue.
1. Moral virtue is a habit of doing the right thing in the conduct of the will and the government of the passions. Doing right is opposed to overdoing the thing, and to underdoing it. Doing right is taking what it suits a rational nature to desire, and eschewing what is unsuitable under the circumstances. (c. i., n. 5.)
But a thing may be unsuitable in two ways, by excess, and by defect: the rational choice is in the mean between these two. The moral order here is illustrated from the physical. Too much exercise and too little alike impair the strength; so of meat and drink in regard to health; but diet and exercise in moderation, and in proportion to the subject, create, increase, and preserve both health and strength. So it is with temperance, and fortitude, and all varieties of moral virtue. He who fights shy of everything, and never stands his ground, becomes a coward; while he who never fears at all, but walks boldly up to all danger, turns out rash. The enjoyer of every pleasure, who knows not what it is to deny himself aught, is a libertine and loose liver; while to throw over all the graces and delicious things of life, not as St. Paul did, who counted all things dross, that he might gain Christ, but absolutely, as though such things were of themselves devoid of attraction, is boorishness and insensibility. Thus the virtues of temperance and fortitude perish in excess and defect, and live in the mean. It is to be noticed in this illustration that the mean of health is not necessarily the mean of virtue. What is too little food, and too much exercise, for the animal well-being of a man, may be the right amount of both for him in some higher relation, inasmuch as he is more than a mere animal; as for a soldier in a hard campaign, where a sufficiency of food and rest is incompatible with his serving his country's need.
2. The taking of means to an end implies the taking them in moderation, not in excess, or we shall overshoot the mark, nor again so feebly and inadequately as to fall short of it. No mere instrument admits of an unlimited use; but the end to be gained fixes limits to the use of the instrument, thus far, no more, and no less. Wherever then reason requires an end to be gained, it requires a use of means proportionate to the end, not coming short of it, nor going so far beyond as to defeat the purpose in view. The variety of good that is called the Useful lies within definite limits, between two wildernesses, so to speak, stretching out undefined into the distance, wilderness of Excess on the one side, and wilderness of Defect on the other.
3. A true work of art cannot be added to or taken from without spoiling it. A perfect church would be spoiled by a lengthening of the chancel or raising the tower, albeit there are buildings, secular and ecclesiastical, that might be drawn out two miles long and not look any worse. The colouring of a picture must not be too violent and positive; but artistic colouring must be chaste, and artistic utterance gentle, and artistic action calm and indicative of self-command. Not that voice and action should not be impassioned for a great emergency, but the very passion should bear the mark of control: in the great master's phrase, you must not "tear a passion to tatters." It is by moderation sitting upon power that works of art truly masculine and mighty are produced; and by this sign they are marked off from the lower host of things, gorgeous and redundant, and still more from the order of "the loose, the lawless, the exaggerated, the insolent, and the profane."
4. On these considerations Aristotle framed his celebrated definition of moral virtue: the habit of fixing the choice in the golden mean in relation to ourselves, defined by reason, as a prudent man would define it. All virtue is a habit, as we have seen—a habit of doing that which is the proper act of the power wherein the habit resides. One class of moral virtues is resident in the will, the act of which power is properly called choice. The rest of the moral virtues reside in the sensitive appetite, which also may be said to choose that object on which it fastens. Thus moral virtue is a habit of fixing the choice. The golden mean between two extremes of excess and defect respectively has been already explained, and may be further shown by a review of the virtues. Besides fortitude and temperance, already described, liberality is a mean between prodigality and stinginess; magnificence between vulgar display and pettiness: magnanimity between vainglory and pusillanimity; truthfulness between exaggeration and dissimulation; friendship between complaisance, or flattery, and frowardness,—and so of the rest. The golden mean must be taken in relation to ourselves, because in many matters of behaviour and the management of the passions the right amount for one person would be excessive for another, according to varieties of age, sex, station, and disposition. Thus anger that might become a layman might be unbefitting in a churchman; and a man might be thought loquacious if he talked as much as a discreet matron. [Footnote 5] The golden mean, then, must be defined by reason according to the particular circumstances of each case. But as Reason herself is to seek where she is not guided by Prudence, the mean of virtue must be defined, not by the reason of the buffoon Pantolabus, or of Nomentanus the spendthrift, but as a prudent man would define it, given an insight into the case.
[Footnote 5: Ar., Pol., III., iv., 17, says just the converse, which marks the altered position of woman in modern society.]
5. The "golden mean," as Horace named it (Od., ii., 10), obtains principally, if not solely, in living things, and in what appertains to living things, and in objects of art. A lake, as such, has no natural dimensions: it may be ten miles long, it may be a hundred; but an elephant or an oak-tree cannot go beyond a certain growth. There is a vast range between the temperature of a blast-furnace and the temperature of the ice-pack on the Polar Sea, but very limited is the range possible in the blood of a living man. Viewed artistically, a hill may be too low, or a lake want width, for man's eye to rest upon it with perfect satisfaction. The golden mean, then, is an artistic conception, and what I may call an anthropological conception: it suits man, and is required by man, though Nature may spurn and over-ride it. The earthquake, the hurricane, and the angry ocean are not in the golden mean, not at least from a human point of view. If man chooses to personify and body forth the powers of nature, he creates some monstrous uncouth figure, like the Assyrian and Egyptian idols; but if man makes a study of man, and brings genius and patient elaboration to bear on his work, there emerges the symmetry and perfect proportion of the Greek statue. No people ever made so much of the beauty of the human form as the ancient Greeks: they made it the object of a passion that marked their religion, their institutions, their literature, and their art. Their virtues and their vices turned upon it. Hence the golden mean is eminently a Greek conception, a leading idea of the Hellenic race. The Greek hated a thing overdone, a gaudy ornament, a proud title, a fulsome compliment, a high-flown speech, a wordy peroration. Nothing too much was the inscription over the lintel of the national sanctuary at Delphi. It is the surpassing grace of Greek art of the best period, that in it there shines out the highest power, with nothing too much of straining after effect. The study of Greek literary models operates as a corrective to redundancy, and to what ill-conditioned minds take to be fine writing. The Greek artist knew just how far to go, and when to stop. That point he called, in his own unsurpassed tongue, the [Greek: kairos]. "The right measure (kairos) is at the head of all," says Pindar. "Booby, not to have understood by how much the half is more than the whole," is the quaint cry of Hesiod. Aeschylus puts these verses in the mouth of his Furies;
The golden mean is God's delight:
Extremes are hateful in His sight.
Hold by the mean, and glorify
Nor anarchy nor slavery.
Characteristic of Socrates was his irony, or way of understating himself, in protest against the extravagant professions of the Sophists. In the reckoning of the Pythagoreans, the Infinite, the Unlimited, or Unchecked, was marked as evil, in opposition to good, which was the Limited. From thence, Plato, taking up his parable, writes: "The goddess of the Limit, my fair Philebus, seeing insolence and all manner of wickedness breaking loose from all limit in point of gratification and gluttonous greed, established a law and order of limited being; and you say this restraint was the death of pleasure; I say it was the saving of it." Going upon the tradition of his countrymen, upon their art and philosophy, their poetry, eloquence, politics, and inmost sentiment, Aristotle formulated the law of moral virtue, to hold by the golden mean, as discerned by the prudent in view of the present circumstances, between the two extremes of excess and defect.
6. There is only one object on which man may throw himself without reserve, his last end, the adequate object of his happiness, God. God is approached by faith, hope, and charity; but it belongs not to philosophy to speak of these supernatural virtues. There remains to the philosopher the natural virtue of religion, which is a part of justice. Religion has to do with the inward act of veneration and with its outward expression. To the latter the rule of the mean at once applies. Moderation in religion is necessary, so far as externals are concerned. Not that any outward assiduity, pomp, splendour, or costliness, can be too much in itself, or anything like enough, to worship God with, but it may be too much for our limited means, which in this world are drawn on by other calls. But our inward veneration for God and desire to do Him honour, can never be too intense: "Blessing the Lord, exalt Him as much as you can: for He is above all praise." (Ecclus. xliii. 33.)
7. The rule of the mean, then, is a human rule, for dealing with men, and with human goods considered as means. It is a Greek rule: for the Greeks were of all nations the fondest admirers of man and the things of man. But when we ascend to God, we are out among the immensities and eternities. The vastness of creation, the infinity of the Creator,—there is no mode or measure there. In those heights the Hebrew Psalmist loved to soar. Christianity, with its central dogma of the Incarnation, is the meeting of Hebrew and Greek. That mystery clothes the Lord God of hosts with the measured beauty, grace, and truth, that man can enter into. But enough of this. Enough to show that the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean is a highly suggestive and wide-reaching doctrine beyond the sphere of Morals. It throws out one great branch into Art, another into Theology.
8. The vicious extremes, on this side and on that of a virtue, are not always conterminous with the virtue itself, but sometimes another and more excellent virtue intervenes; as in giving we may pass from justice to liberality, and only through passing the bounds of liberality, do we arrive at the vicious extreme of prodigality. So penitential fasting intervenes between temperance in food and undue neglect of sustenance. But it is to be noted that the central virtue, so to speak, as justice, sobriety, chastity, is for all persons on all occasions: the more excellent side-virtue, as liberality, or total abstinence, is for special occasions and special classes of persons.
Readings.—Ar., Eth., II., ii., 6, 7; ib., II., cc. 6-9; Hor., Odes, II., 10; Ruskin, Modern Painters, p. 3, s. i., c. x.
SECTION V.—Of Cardinal Virtues.
1. The enumeration of cardinal virtues is a piece of Greek philosophy that has found its ways into the catechism. Prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance are mentioned by Plato as recognised heads of virtue. They are recognised, though less clearly, by Xenophon, reporting the conversations of Socrates. It does not look as though Socrates invented the division: he seems to have received it from an earlier source, possibly Pythagoras. They are mentioned in Holy Scripture (Wisdom viii., 7, which is however a Greek book), and Proverbs viii., 14. They make no figure in the philosophies of India and China.
2. The cardinal virtues are thus made out.—Virtue is a habit that gives a man readiness in behaving according to the reason that is in him. Such a habit may be fourfold. (a) It may reside in the reason, or intellect itself, enabling it readily to discern the reasonable thing to do, according to particular circumstances as they occur. That habit is the virtue of prudence. (b) It may reside in the rational appetite, otherwise called the will, disposing a man to act fairly and reasonably in his dealings with other men. That is justice. (c) It may reside in the irrational, or sensitive, appetite, and that to a twofold purpose; (a) to restrain the said appetite in its concupiscible part from a wanton and immoderate eagerness after pleasure; that is temperance: (b) to incite the said appetite in its irascible part not to shrink from danger, where there is reason for going on in spite of danger; that is fortitude.
3. Plato compares the rational soul in man to a charioteer, driving two horses: one horse representing the concupiscible, the other the irascible part of the sensitive appetite. He draws a vivid picture of the resistance of the concupiscible part against reason, how madly it rushes after lawless pleasure, and how it is only kept in restraint by main force again and again applied, till gradually it grows submissive. This submissiveness, gradually acquired, is the virtue of temperance. Clearly the habit dwells in the appetite, not in reason: in the horse, not in the charioteer. It is that habitual state, which in a horse we call being broken in.
The concupiscible appetite is broken in to reason by temperance residing within it. Plato lavishes all evil names on the steed that represents the concupiscible part. But the irascible part, the other steed, has its own fault, and that fault twofold, sometimes of over-venturesomeness, sometimes of shying and turning tail. The habit engendered, in the irascible part, of being neither over-venturesome nor over-timorous, but going by reason, is termed fortitude. [Footnote 6]
[Footnote 6: It will help an Englishman to understand Plato's comparison, if instead of concupiscible part and irascible part, we call the one steed Passion and the other Pluck. Pluck fails, and Passion runs to excess, till Pluck is formed to fortitude, and Passion to temperance.]
4. As the will is the rational appetite, the proper object of which is rational good, it does not need to be prompted by any habit to embrace rational good in what concerns only the inward administration of the agent's own self. There is no difficulty in that department, provided the sensitive appetite be kept in hand by fortitude and temperance. But where there is question of external relations with other men, it is not enough that the sensitive appetite be regulated, but a third virtue is necessary, the habit of justice, to be planted in the will, which would otherwise be too weak to attend steadily to points, not of the agent's own good merely, but of the good of other men.
5. Thus we have the four cardinal virtues: prudence, a habit of the intellect; temperance, a habit of the concupiscible appetite; fortitude, a habit of the irascible appetite; and justice, a habit of the will. Temperance and Fortitude in the Home Department; Justice for Foreign Affairs; with Prudence for Premier. Or, to use another comparison, borrowed from Plato, prudence is the health of the soul, temperance its beauty, fortitude its strength, and justice its wealth.
Readings.—St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 61, art. 2, in corp.; ib., q. 56, art. 4, in corp., ad 1-3; ib., q. 56, art. 6, in corp., ad 1, 3; ib., q. 59, art. 4, in corp., ad 2; Plato, Laws, 631 B, C.
SECTION VI.—Of Prudence.
1. Prudence is right reason applied to practice, or more fully it may be defined, the habit of intellectual discernment that enables one to hit upon the golden mean of moral virtue and the way to secure that mean. Thus prudence tells one what amount of punishment is proper for a particular delinquent, and how to secure his getting it. It is to be observed that prudence does not will the golden mean in question, but simply indicates it. To will and desire the mean is the work of the moral virtue concerned therewith: as in the case given it is the work of vindictive justice.
2. From the definition of moral virtue above given (c. v., s. iv., n. 4, p. 79), it is clear that no moral virtue can come into act without prudence: for it is the judgment of the prudent man that must define in each case the golden mean in relation to ourselves, which every moral virtue aims at. Thus, without prudence, fortitude passes into rashness, vindictive justice into harshness, clemency into weakness, religion into superstition.
3. But may not one with no prudence to guide him hit upon the golden mean by some happy impulse, and thus do an act of virtue? We answer, he may do a good act, and if you will, a virtuous act, but not an act of virtue, not an act proceeding from a pre-existent habit in the doer. The act is like a good stroke made by chance, not by skill; and like such a stroke, it cannot be readily repeated at the agent's pleasure. (See c. v., s. i., n. 4, p. 66; and Ar., Eth., II., iv., 2.)
4. Prudence in its essence is an intellectual virtue, being a habit resident in the understanding: but it deals with the subject-matter of the moral virtues, pointing out the measure of temperance, the bounds of fortitude, or the path of justice. It is the habit of intellectual discernment that must enlighten every moral virtue in its action. There is no virtue that goes blundering and stumbling in the dark.
5. He is a prudent man, that can give counsel to others and to himself in order to the attainment of ends that are worthy of human endeavour. If unworthy ends are intended, however sagaciously they are pursued, that is not prudence. We may call it sagacity, or shrewdness, being a habit of ready discernment and application of means to ends. Napoleon I. was conspicuous for this sagacity. It is the key to success in this world. But prudence discovers worthy ends only, and to them only does it provide means. The intellect is often blinded by passion, by desire and by fear, so as not to discern the proper end and term to make for in a particular instance and a practical case. The general rules of conduct remain in the mind, as that, "In anger be mindful of mercy:" but the propriety of mercy under the present provocation drops out of sight. The intellect does not discern the golden mean of justice and mercy in relation to the circumstances in which the agent now finds himself. In other words, the habit of prudence has failed; and it has failed because of the excess of passion. Thus prudence is dependent on the presence of the virtues that restrain passion, namely, fortitude and temperance. A like argument would hold for the virtue of justice, that rectifies inordinate action in dealing with another. The conclusion is, that as the moral virtues cannot exist without prudence, so neither can prudence exist without them: for vice corrupts the judgment of prudence.
6. Hence we arrive at a settlement of the question, whether the virtues can be separated, or whether to possess one is to possess all. We must distinguish between the rudimentary forms of virtue and the perfect habit. The rudimentary forms certainly can exist separate: they are a matter of temperament and inherited constitution: and the man whom nature has kindly predisposed to benevolence, she has perhaps very imperfectly prepared for prudence, fortitude, or sobriety. But one perfect habit of any one of the four cardinal virtues, acquired by repeated acts, and available at the call of reason, involves the presence, in a matured state, of the other three habits also. A man who acts irrationally upon one ground, will behave irrationally on other grounds also: or if his conduct be rational there, it will not be from regard for reason, but from impulse, temperament, or from some other motive than the proper motive of the virtue which he seems to be exercising.
Readings.—St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 54, art. 4; ib., q. 58, art. 5, in corp.; ib., 2a 2æ, q. 47, art. 7, 12, 13; Ar., Eth., VI., v.; ib., VI., xii., 9, 10; ib., VI., xiii., 6; St. Francis of Sales, Of the Love of God, bk. xi., c. vii.
SECTION VII.—Of Temperance.
1. Temperance is a virtue which regulates by the judgment of reason those desires and delights which attend upon the operations whereby human nature is preserved in the individual and propagated in the species. Temperance is the virtue contrary to the two deadly sins of Gluttony and Lust. As against the former, it represents Abstinence, or moderation in solid food, and Sobriety, which is moderation in drink. As against the latter, it is the great virtue of Chastity. The student must bear in mind that, to a philosopher, Temperance does not mean Total Abstinence, and Abstinence is quite independent of Fridays and flesh-meat. Temperance then is made up of Abstinence, Sobriety, and Chastity.
Aristotle writes: "Cases of falling short in the taking of pleasure, and of people enjoying themselves less than they ought, are not apt to occur: for such insensibility is not human: but if there be any one to whom nothing is pleasant, and all comes alike in the matter of taste, he must be far from the state and condition of humanity: such a being has no name, because he is nowhere met with." This is true, because where there is question of a virtue, such as Temperance, resident in the concupiscible appetite, we are not concerned with any sullenness or moroseness of will, nor with any scrupulosity or imbecility of judgment, refusing to gratify the reasonable cravings of appetite, but with the habitual leaning and lie of the appetite itself. Now the concupiscible appetite in every man, of its own nature, leans to its proper object of delectable good. No virtue is requisite to secure it from too little inclination that way: but to restrain the appetite from going out excessively to delight is the function, and the sole function, of Temperance. The measure of restraint is relative, as the golden mean is relative, and varies with different persons and in view of different ends. The training of the athlete is not the training of the saint.
3. Besides the primary virtue of Temperance, and its subordinate species (enumerated above, n. 1), certain other virtues are brought under Temperance in a secondary sense, as observing in easier matters that moderation and self-restraint which the primary virtue keeps in the matter that is most difficult of all. St. Thomas calls these potential parts of Temperance. There is question here of what is most difficult to man as an animal, not of what is most difficult to him as a rational being. To rational man, as such, ambition is harder to restrain than sensuality: which is proved by the fact that fewer men, who have any ambition in them, do restrain that passion than those who restrain the animal propensities that are common to all. But to man as an animal (and vast numbers of the human race rise little above the animal state), it is hardest of all things to restrain those appetites that go with the maintenance and propagation of flesh and blood. These then are the proper matter of Temperance: other virtues, potential parts of Temperance, restrain other cravings which are less animal. Of these virtues the most noticeable are humility, meekness, and modesty. [Footnote 7]
[Footnote 7: This is St. Thomas's arrangement, placing Humility under Temperance. The connection of Humility with Magnanimity, and thereby with Fortitude, is indicated pp. 100, 101.]
4. There is a thirst after honour and preeminence, arising from self-esteem, and prevalent especially where there is little thought of God, and scant reverence for the present majesty of heaven. A man who thinks little of his Maker is great in his own eyes, as our green English hills are mountains to one who has not seen the Alpine heights and snows. Apart from the consideration of God there is no humility; and this is why Aristotle, who treats of virtues as they minister to the dealings of man with man, makes no mention of this virtue. There are certain outward manifestations in words, acts, and gestures, the demeanour of a humble man, which is largely identified with modesty and with submission to others as representing God.
5. Modesty is that outward comportment, style of dress, conversation, and carriage, which indicates the presence of Temperance, "set up on holy pedestal" (Plato, Phaedr., 254 B) in the heart within.
6. Meekness is moderation in anger, and is or should be the virtue of all men. Clemency is moderation in punishment, and is the virtue of men in office, who bear the sword or the rod.
7. As regards the vices opposite to Temperance, an important distinction is to be drawn between him who sins by outburst of passion and him whose very principles are corrupt. [Footnote 8] The former in doing evil acknowledges it to be evil, and is prone to repent of it afterwards: the latter has lost his belief in virtue, and his admiration for it: he drinks in iniquity like water, with no after-qualms; he glories in his shame. The former is reclaimable, the latter is reprobate: his intellect as well as his heart is vitiated and gone bad. If there were no miracles, he would be a lost man: but God can work miracles in the moral as in the physical order: in that there is hope for him.
[Footnote 8: See the note in Aquinas Ethicus, Vol. I., pp. 170, 171.]
8. A nation need not be virtuous in the great bulk of her citizens, to be great in war and in dominion, in laws, in arts, and in literature: but the bulk of the people must possess at least the sense and appreciation of virtue in order to such national greatness. When that sense is lost, the nation is undone and become impotent, for art no less than for empire. Thus the Greece of Pericles and of Phidias fell, to be "living Greece no more."
9. As in other moral matters, no hard and fast line of division exists between sinning from passion and sinning on principle, but cases of the one shade into cases of the others, and by frequent indulgence of passion principle is brought gradually to decay.
Readings.—Ar., Eth., III., x.; St. Thos., 2a 2æ, q. 141, art. 2; ib., q. 141, art. 3, in corp.; ib., q. 142, art. 1; ib., q. 143, art. 1, in corp., ad 2, 3; ib., q. 161, art. 1, ad 5; ib., q. 161, art. 2, in corp.; ib., q. 161, art. 6, in corp., ad 1; ib., q. 157, art. 1, in corp., ad 3; ib, q. 156, art. 3; Ar., Eth., VII., viii.
SECTION VIII.—Of Fortitude.
1. As Temperance is a curb, restraining animal nature in the pursuit of the good to which it goes out most eagerly, namely, life and the means of its continuance, so Fortitude also is a curb, withholding that nature from irrational flight from the evil which it most dreads. Aristotle tells us what that evil is: "Most dreadful of all things is death, for it is the limit, and for the dead man there appears to be no further good nor evil left." (Eth., III, vi., b.) Death is truly the limit to human existence: for, though the soul be immortal, the being of flesh and blood, that we call man, is dissolved in death, and, apart from supernatural hope of the resurrection, extinct for ever. Death therefore is the direst of all evils in the animal economy; and as such, is supremely abhorred by the sensitive appetite, which is the animal part of man. Fortitude moderates this abhorrence and fear by the dictate of reason. Reason shows that there are better things than life, and things worse than death, for man in his spiritual capacity as an intellectual and immortal being.
2. Fortitude is a mean between Cowardice and Rashness, to which opposite extremes we are carried by the contrary passions of Fear and Daring respectively. Fortitude thus is a two-sided virtue, moderating two opposite tendencies: while Temperance is one-sided, moderating Desire alone. Life, rationally considered, bears undoubtedly a high value, and is not to be lightly thrown away, or risked upon trivial or ignoble objects. The brave man is circumspect in his ventures, and moderate in his fears, which implies that he does fear somewhat. He will fear superhuman visitations, as the judgments of God. He will dread disgrace, and still more, sin. He will fear death in an unworthy cause. And even in a good cause, it has well been said: "The truly brave man is not he who fears no danger, but the man whose mind subdues the fear, and braves the danger that nature shrinks from." The Duke of Marlborough is said to have quaked in the saddle as he rode into action, saying: "This poor body trembles at what the mind within is about to do." Fortitude then is the virtue that restrains fear and regulates venturesomeness by the judgment of reason, in danger especially of a grand and glorious death.
3. To the ancients, there was no grander object of devotion than the State, their native city: no direr misfortune than its dissolution, or the loss of its self-government: no nobler death than to die in arms in its defence. As old Tyrtæus sang:
A noble thing it is to lie dead, fallen in the front ranks,
A brave man in battle for his country. [Footnote 9]
[Footnote 9:
[Greek: tethnamenai gar kalon, eni promachoisi pesonta,
andr' agathon peri hae patridi marnamenon.]
([Greek: Tyrtaeus apud Lycurg])]
Such a death was taken to be the seal and stamp of the highest fortitude. Nor has Christianity dimmed the glory that invests a soldier's death. Only it points to a brighter glory, and a death in a still nobler cause, the death of the martyr who dies for the faith, and becomes valiant in battle for what is more to him than any earthly city, the Church, the City of God. Nor must the martyr of charity, who dies in succouring his neighbour, go without the praise of fortitude: nor, in short, any one who braves death, or other heavy affliction, in the discharge of duty, or when forwarding a good cause.