This is morality. From the beginning men have held that certain acts are wrong and to be avoided, and that others are to be done. What is wrong, moreover, is such of its own nature, not from our will: we deem the fulfillment of duty, obedience to law, the first, highest, and last necessity of life. If we deny this truth we let in chaos. What is right or wrong is one or the other on its own merits, prescinding from its pleasurableness or pain.
We must seek good whether we will or not. Good is the sole object upon which the will operates, it is the raw material of the will's business. The ultimate standard of this good is God himself as its exemplary cause, but proximately the standard of moral good is our rational nature. Through our reason we judge whether a thing is good or bad; that is, whether it perfects or injures us; and as it is good or bad for us our will's tendency toward it is good or bad. Many acts are indifferent in themselves, but take on a good or bad quality from our intention; others are good or bad in themselves apart from our volition: charity is good, lying is bad, whether they are willed by us or not.
The morality of any action is determined (1) by the object of the action; (2) by the circumstances that accompany the action; (3) by the end the agent had in view.
1. The term object has various meanings, but here it means the deed performed in the action, the thing which the will chooses. That deed by its very nature may be good, or it may be bad, or it may be indifferent morally. To help the afflicted is in itself a good action, to blaspheme is a bad action, to walk is an indifferent action. Some bad actions are absolutely bad; they never can become good or indifferent—blasphemy or adultery, for example; others, as stealing, are evil because of a lack of right in the agent: these may become indifferent or good by acquiring the missing right. Others are evil because of the danger necessarily connected with their performance,—the danger of sin connected with them, or the unnecessary peril to life. An action, to have a moral quality, must be voluntary, deliberate; and mere repugnance in doing an act does not in itself make the act involuntary.
2. Circumstances sometimes, though not always, may add a new element of good or evil to an action. The circumstances of an action are the Agent, the Object, the Place in which the action is done, the Means used, the End in view, the Method observed in using the means, and the Time in which the deed is done. If a judge in his official capacity tells a sheriff to hang a criminal, and a private citizen gives the same command, the actions are very different morally because of the circumstance of the agent giving the command. The object—it changes the morality of the deed whether one steals a cent or a thousand dollars. The place—what might be an offensive action in a residence might be a sacrilege in a church. The means—to support a family by labor or thievery. The end in view—to give alms in obedience to divine command or to give them to buy votes. The method used in employing the means—kindly, say, or cruelly. The time—to do manual labor on Sunday or on Monday. Some circumstances aggravate the evil in a deed, others excuse or attenuate it. Others may so color the deed that they specify it, make it some special virtue or vice. The circumstance that a murderer is the son of the man he kills specifies the deed as parricide.
3. The end also determines the morality of an action. Since the end is the first thing in the intention of the agent, he passes from the object wished for in the end to choosing the means for obtaining it. Without the end the means cannot exist as such. There are occasions when an end is only a circumstance: for example, if it is a concomitant or extrinsic end. When this extrinsic end is in keeping with right reason or when it is discordant thereto, it may become a determinant of morality. In every voluntary, or human, act there is an interior and exterior act of the will, and each of these acts has its own object. The end is the proper object of the interior act of the will; the exterior object acted upon is the object of the exterior act of the will; both specify the morality, but the interior object or end specifies more importantly, as a rule, than the exterior object does. The will uses the body as an instrument on the external object, and the action of the body is connected with morality only through the will. We judge the morality of a blow not by the physical stroke, but from the intention of the striker. The exterior object of the will is, in a way, the matter of the morality, and the interior object of the will, or the end, is the form. Aristotle said: "He that steals to be able to commit adultery is more of an adulterer than a thief."[1] The thievery is a means to the principal end, and this principal end chiefly specifies or informs the action.
The means used to obtain an end are very important in a consideration of the morality of an act. There are four classes of means—the good, bad, indifferent, and excusable. Good means may be absolutely good, but commonly they are liable to become vitiated by circumstances,—almsgiving is an example. Some means are bad always and inexcusable—lying, for instance. The excusable means are those which are bad, but justifiable through circumstances. To save a man's life by cutting off his leg is an excusable means. The end sometimes may vitiate or hallow indifferent means, but it does not in itself justify all means. Means, like other circumstances, are accidents of an action, but they are in the action just as much as color is in a man. Color is not of a man's essence, but we cannot have a man without color.
The effect of an action, the result or product of an effective cause or agency, may in itself be an end or an object or a circumstance, and it has influence in the determination of morality. Sometimes an act has two immediate effects, one good and the other bad. For example, ligating the blood-vessels going to the uterus to stop a hemorrhage and so save a woman's life, a good effect, has also in ectopic gestation while the fetus is living another immediate effect, namely, to shut off the blood supply from the fetus and so kill it, a bad effect. To make such a double-effect action licit there are four conditions which are explained in the chapter on Mutilation.
The doctrine of Probabilism is very important in morality. Any law must be promulgated before it really becomes a law, and promulgation in a rational conscience is sufficient. Sometimes there is rational doubt of the existence, the interpretation, or the application of a law in a given case. Here probability is the only rule we can follow. A law which is doubtful after honest and capable investigation has not been sufficiently promulgated, and therefore it cannot impose a certain obligation because it lacks an essential element of a law. When we have used such moral diligence as the gravity of the matter calls for, but still the applicability of the law is doubtful in the action in view, the law does not bind; and what a law does not forbid it leaves open. Probabilism is not permissible where there is question of the worth of an action as compared with another, or of issues like the physical consequences of an act. If a physician knows a remedy for a disease that is certainly efficacious and another that is doubtfully efficacious, he may not choose this probable cure. Probabilism has to do only with the existence, interpretation, or applicability of a law, not with the differentiation of actions. The term probable means provable, not guessed at, not jumped at without reason. The doubt must be positive, founded on reason, not a matter of mere ignorance, suspicion, emotional bias. The opinion against a law to permit probabilism must be solid. It must rest upon an intrinsic reason from the nature of the case, or an extrinsic reason from authority, always supposing the authority is really an authority. The probability is to be comparative also. What seems to be a very good reason when standing alone may be weak when compared with reasons on the other side. When we have weighed the arguments on both sides, and we still have a good reason for holding our opinion in a doubtful case, our opinion is probable. The probability is, moreover, to be practical. It must have considered all the circumstances of the case.
There is, then, a Supreme Being whom we must obey, who created and owns human life primarily; there is also a moral law. On these facts rests the argument relating to the destruction of human life. How far, then, has a human being dominion over his own life, and, secondly, over the life of any one else?
St. Thomas,[2] Lessius,[3] and others offer as one argument to prove suicide is not licit, that it is an injury to society or the state of which the suicide is part, and to which the use and profit of his service rightly belong. Lessius, while developing this proof,