3. The fundamental element of a moral action is reason acting with freedom of choice, by which reason the physical motion just described is perceived as produced by a decision of the will. Now this reason, acting with freedom of choice, presupposes or includes that faculty of man in which is placed the capacity to produce or to omit those motions.
4. The formal element of a moral action consists in the imputation, or rather in the imputativity, by which the effect of a voluntary action can be imputed to the agent, whether the agent himself has produced the effect in a physical way, or has had it produced by the instrumentality of others. Now it is from the formal aspect of an action that the agent himself, indeed, shares in the designation of morality and is called the moral cause. From this it is readily understood that, speaking properly and strictly, the formal reason of the moral cause consists in the imputation, but this terminally considered, and that this formal reason is nothing else than the voluntary agent to whom the effect is, or ought to be, imputed, because either in <5> whole or in part he has produced (expressed more effectively in German by verursachet) the effect, and turned out to be its author. And, therefore, if any good comes it must be entered to his credit, if any evil, it must be charged against him; so the very agent himself is bound, as it were, to stand in the place of the effect and to answer for it.
5. As for the rest, the formal element of a human action, that is, the imputativity, has the nature of a positive form, from which, as from a root, spring those affections, properties, and consequences of which we must treat here. Hence a moral action can be called a positive entity (in the class of things moral, not of things in nature), whether the material element be a physical motion or the deprivation of such a motion. For to the essence of such positive entities in the class of things moral it is sufficient if they establish something from which true affections in the same class result, since just as there are no affections of a non-entity, so that which has definite and positive affections can by no means be called a non-entity absolutely speaking.6 What these affections are will be shown below.
6. Now moral actions are here distinguished primarily as follows: (1) By reason of the cause, into immediate actions, namely, those which some one has personally produced of himself, and mediate actions, those which he has caused to be produced by another. (2) By reason of the act itself, they are divided into pure actions and mixed actions.7 Pure actions are those which are completed by a certain movement of some force directed to an object with a definite purpose. Such are the recognition of God and worship of Him, the exhibition of honour and of veneration, reverence, affection, aversion, consolation, praise, vituperation, &c., whose effect consists in this, that the object is affected from the action in a certain fashion, or is felt to have been affected in the direction of being favourably or unfavourably disposed to one. Other actions, however, are, as it were, mixed, for they bring a certain real advantage or disadvantage to some one’s person or property. Instances of these mixed actions are a gift, a loan, a theft, murder, &c., whose effect consists primarily in a certain deed that in a real way either helps or injures another’s person or property. (3) By reason of the object, moral actions are divided variously, on which see below.
7. In contradistinction from moral actions are natural actions, or actions of any forces whatsoever, in so far as they are considered in their natural being, as movements produced by powers which are in one by nature, but without respect to the decision of the will and to imputativity, and therefore are deprived of the foundation as well as of the formal element of morality. And such are the actions not merely of the necessary powers which, granted all things requisite for action, cannot help but act, but also those of the free powers which, granted all things requisite for action, can act or not, if, indeed, they be <6> considered in the manner just mentioned. Among these, nevertheless, there is this difference, namely, that the former in themselves and directly are not capable of the foundation of morality, but the latter are.
8. Moral actions, moreover, can be considered either in genus or in species. In genus according to (1) the object, (2) the principles, (3) the affections, (4) the effects. <7>
By the object of moral actions is meant all that with which they deal.
1. The morality of the object from imposition.
2. Division of the object.
1. In the next place, this object itself partakes of the designation of morality, and, considered in this respect, is itself also called moral. Concerning this in general it must be noted that its morality depends on imposition, that is, on the decision of free agents as such, and these free agents either of their own free will, or from some congruence of the nature of a thing with imposed morality, together with a tacit or expressed mutual agreement which has been entered into, have imposed morality upon things and persons, and have determined that definite effects should follow it.1 And this is a consideration which can be applied even to the morality of the actions themselves. But there due note must be made of the fact that, when morality is said naturally to inhere in a certain action, this is not to be understood as though it meant that the morality results from the physical principles of the thing or from the very nature of the action in itself; but that it does not derive its origin from the arbitrary imposition of men, but only from the disposition of God himself, who has so formed the nature of man that particular actions of necessity are or are not congruent with this nature.2 And, of a truth, that He made man in this fashion and not in another depended entirely upon His own will. But if the morality of actions which are called naturally honourable or base were to derive their origin from the nature of these acts in themselves, and not from the will of the Creator, to which, nevertheless, the nature of the rational creature has been attuned, no reason could be given why particular acts may be moral for men, although they are not moral for brutes. So, moreover, that state of man which is called a state of nature is in fact so from imposition, yet not the arbitrary imposition of men, but that of the Creator himself, who destined men thereto at their very creation.
2. Now one object of moral actions is suppositive, the other positive, at least in a moral sense. The former is called status; the latter is divided commonly into persons and things.3 <8>