by reason; and what is evil for one may very well be good for another. And therefore evil, inasmuch as it is a specific differentia in the genus of moral matters, does not involve anything that is essentially evil, but something that is in itself good, but evil to man inasmuch as it sets aside the order of reason, which is man's good.
Arg. 4. All that a<5ts is something. But evil afts inasmuch as it is evil: for it understands good and spoils it. Evil therefore, inasmuch as it is evil, is some thing.
# When a thing is in potentiality to some further t The great contradictor of this fundamental doc- perfection, it is only by accident that it does not trine, — not to mention Schopenhauer, — is Buddha attain it. If it were incapacitated for that perfection and Buddhism, which makes all conscious thought, essentially, it would not be in potentiality at all. An as such, an evil, and the grand aim of life to be rid undergraduate, radically and essentially debarred from of it. Manicheism and Platonism complete the circle, taking his degree, would not be an undergraduate, by making matter evil. Between evil mind and evil If he is too stupid to take it, that is an accident, matter, we may close our philosophy books. Stupidity is not of the essence of his condition.
Reply. A privation, as such, is no principle of aftion. Hence it is well said that evil does not fight against good except in the power of good: but in itself it is impotent and weak and originative of no action. Evil is said however to spoil good also formally in itself, as blindness is said to spoil sight, or whiteness to colour a wall.
Arg. 5. Where there is found more and less, there must be an order of things, for negations and privations are not susceptible of more and less. But we find among evils one worse than another. Therefore evil must be some thing.
Reply. Conditions that imply privation are intensified or relaxed as are inequality and unlikeness: for a thing is more unequal according as it is further removed from inequality, and more unlike according as it is more removed from likeness: hence a thing is more evil according as it is a greater privation of good, or at a greater distance from good.* Arg. 6. Thing and being are convertible terms. But evil is in the world. Therefore it is some thing and nature.
Reply. Evil is said * to be ' in the world, not as having any essence, or existing as a thing, but in the way in which a thing 4 is ' evil precisely by evil, as blindness, and in the way in which any privation is said 4 to be,' in- asmuch as an animal * is ' blind by blindness. For there are two senses of 4 being': in one sense it means the essence of a thing, and is divided into the ten predicaments"}"; and in this sense no privation can be called a being: in another sense, it signifies the truth of an affirmative proposition (yeritatem compositionis); and thus evil and privation is said to be a being, inasmuch as a thing is said to 4 be ' thereby under a privation.
CHAPTER X-That the Cause of Evil is good WHAT is not, is cause of nothing: every cause must be some being. But evil is not any being (Chapp. VII, IX): therefore evil cannot be the cause of anything. If then evil is caused by anything, what causes it must be good.
4. Every cause is either material, formal, efficient, or final. But evil can be neither matter nor form: for it has been shown (Chapp. VII, IX) that both a&ual being and potential being is good. In like manner evil cannot be an efficient cause, since everything adts according as it is actually and has a form. Nor can it be a final cause, since it is beside the intention (Chap. IV). Evil therefore cannot be the cause of anything; and therefore, if there be any cause of evil, it must be caused by good.
But since good and evil are opposites, and one opposite cannot be cause of another except accidentally, it follows that good cannot be the adtive cause of evil except accidentally. In physics, this accident may happen either on the part of the agent or on the part of the effe<5t. On the part of the agent, when the agent suffers from a lack of power, whence it follows that the aftion is defective and the efFeft deficient. But to an agent, as such, it is quite an accident to suffer from a lack of power: for an agent does not aft inasmuch as power is lacking to him, but according as he has anything of power. Thus then evil is caused accidentally on the part of the agent, inas- much as the agent runs short of power: therefore it is said that evil has not • Mathematical formulae, expressive of absurd and "privations and negations are not susceptible of more impossible cases, express also grades and modes of and less."
absurdity, one case being more absurd than another, t The categories of Aristotle, substance, quality, or absurd not for the same reason as another. It is quantity, relation, and the rest, not simply true, what the objection lays down, that got an efficient cause, but a deficient cause, because evil does not follow from an efficient cause except in so far as it is deficient in power, and in this respe<5t it is not efficient. It comes to the same thing if the defedt of the a<5tion and effe<5t arises from some defe<5t of the instrument, or of any other thing requisite for the agent's attion, as when motive power produces halting through crookedness of the shin-bone: for the agent a<5ts by both the power and the instrument. On the part of the efFeft evil is caused accidentally as well in respe<5t of the matter of the effe<5t as also in respe<5t of its form. For if the matter is indisposed to receive the impression of the agent, some defeat must follow in the effe6t. Nor is it imputable to any defeat of the agent, that it does not transmute an indisposed matter to a perfect a<5t: for the power of every natural agent is determined according to the limit of its nature; and its failure to transcend that cannot be brought in against it as a defeat in power: such defedt can then only be argued when it falls short of the measure of power due to it by nature. On the part of the form of the effeft evil is accidentally incident, inasmuch as one form necessarily involves the privation of another form, and with the production of one thing there ' must needs ensue the destruction of another. But this evil does not belong to the efFeft intended by the agent, but attaches to something else. In the processes of nature therefore evil is caused by good only accidentally. The same is the case also in the processes of art: for art in its operation imitates nature, and is at fault in the same way as nature.
But in moral matters the case seems to be different. For a flaw in morals does not follow from any lack of power, seeing that weakness either entirely removes, or at least diminishes, moral reprehensibleness: for weakness does not deserve the punishment which is due to fault, but rather compassion and indulgence: to be blameworthy, a point of condu<5t must be a voluntary a<5l, not an inevitable necessity. On careful consideration we find that the case of morals is in some respedts like, in some respetts unlike the case of physics. The unlikeness consists in this, that a moral fault is viewed as consisting in the aftion alone, not in any efFe<5t produced: for moral virtues are not efFeftive, but aftive, while arts are efFe<5tive; and therefore it has been said that art is at fault in the same way as nature. Moral evil therefore is not estimated ac- cording to the matter and form of the efFeft, but follows simply from the agent. Now in moral attions there are found in orderly enumeration four a6tive principles. One principle is the executive power, namely, the motor power which moves the limbs to execute the command of the will. This power is moved by the will, and so the will is another principle. The will is moved by the judgement of the apprehensive faculty, which judges the particular thing proposed to be good or bad. — -good and bad being the (formal) objefts of the will, the one objedt of seeking, the other of avoidance. Lastly, the apprehensive faculty is moved by the thing apprehended. The first a<5live principle then in moral adtions is the thing apprehended; the second is the apprehensive faculty; the third is the will; the fourth is motor power which executes the command of reason. But the a6t of the executive power already presupposes moral good or evil: * for these exterior adtts bear a moral character only in so far as they are voluntary. Hence if the a<5t of the will is good, the exterior a<5t will also be called good; and evil, if the volition is evil. It would be no point of moral badness for the exterior a6t to fail by some defedt un- * The hand can do neither good nor evil morally,except as the minister of a will already made up to either one or the other. 4 connected with the will: thus lameness is not a moral but a natural blemish. Such a lack of executive power diminishes, if it does not totally excuse from, moral blemish. Again, the aft whereby the objeft moves the apprehensive faculty is exempt from moral blemish: for it is according to the order of nature that what is visible affefts the sight, and every objeft affects the cor- responding passive potentiality. Even the aft of the apprehensive faculty, considered in itself, is nowise morally blameworthy, as we see that any defeft in it excuses from or diminishes moral blame, like the lack of executive power: for infirmity and ignorance alike excuse from sin, or diminish it. It remains then that moral blameworthiness is found first and foremost in the aft of the will alone; and reasonably so, since an aft is called * moral' from being voluntary. In the aft of the will then is to be sought the root and origin of what in the moral order is sin.
But this investigation leads us into an apparent difficulty. On the under- standing that defeft in an aft arises from some defeft in the principle of aftion, some defeft in the will must be presupposed before there can be any moral fault. If this defeft is natural, it is ever inherent in the will; and the consequence is that the will must always do wrong in action, a consequence proved false by the faft of there being such things as acts of virtue. On the other hand, if the defeft is voluntary, that is already a moral fault, the cause of which must stand over for further enquiry; and so we shall have a running account to infinity. We must therefore say that the defeft pre-existing in the will is no natural necessity, otherwise it would follow that the will sinned in every aft: nor again is a thing of chance and ill luck, for at that rate there could be in us no moral fault, since events of chance are unpremeditated and beyond the control of reason. The defeft therefore is voluntary, but not a moral fault: so we must suppose to save the account running to infinity.
Now we must consider how that can be. In every aftive principle the perfeftion of its power depends on some superior aftive principle: for secondary agent afts by virtue of the power of the prime agent.* So long then as the secondary agent remains under the power of the prime agent, it will aft unfailingly: but it will fail in its aftion whenever it happens to swerve from the order of the prime agent, as appears in an instrument when it ceases to respond to the movement of the agent who uses it. Now it has been said above that in the order of moral aftions two principles go before volition, the apprehensive faculty and the objeft apprehended, which is the end in view. But since to everything movable there corresponds a proper motive power, not any and every apprehensive faculty is the due motive power of any and every appetite,f but one apprehension is the proper motive of one appetite, another of another. As then the sensible apprehensive faculty is the proper motive power of the sensible appetite, so the proper motive power of the will is reason itself. Further, as reason can apprehend many sorts of good things and many ends of aftion; as moreover every power has its own proper end; the will also must have some objeft and end of aftion and prime motive, and that must be not any and every sort of good, but some definite good. When- ever then the will tends to aft under the motive of an apprehension of reason * This axiom is redolent of the primum mobile, tion,— of a polity, but not of a monarchy among Taking a more modern view of the physical order, material forces.
we may say that no agent adts to any orderly purpose t The word appetitus in scholastic terminology except in concert with other agents, with which it is includes the will; and 'apprehensive faculty' belongs bound up in the unity of one system. Modern science to intellect and also to sense, tells not so much of subordination as of co-ordinarepresenting to it its own proper good, a due aftion ensues. But when the will bursts out into aftion upon the apprehension of the sensible apprehensive faculty, or even upon the apprehension of reason itself, representing some other good than the proper good of the will, there ensues in the attion of the will a moral fault.* Therefore any faulty a<5tion in the will is preceded by a lack of due regard to reason and to the proper end of willing. I say 4 a lack of due regard to reason,' in such cases as when, upon some sudden ap- prehension of sense, the will tends to some good that is pleasant according to sense. I say 6 a lack of due regard to the proper end of willing,' in cases when the reason arrives by reasoning at some good, which is not either now or in this Vpay good, and still the will tends to it as though it were its proper good. Now this lack of due regard is voluntary: for it is in the power of the will to will and not to will: it is likewise in its power to dire<5t reason adtually to consider or to cease from considering, or to consider this or that.f Still this failure of due consideration is not a moral evil: for, consideration or no con- sideration, or whatever the consideration be on reason's part, there is no sin until the will comes to tend to some undue end, which then is an a<5t of will. — Thus it remains true that in moral as well as in physical aftions, evil is not caused by good except accidentally.
CHAPTER XI— That Evil is founded in some Good EVIL cannot exist by itself, having no essence (Chap. VII): it must therefore be in some subjeft: but every subjedt, being a substance, is some good.
3. A thing is called evil because it does harm: that can only be because it does harm to good: for to do harm to evil is a good thing, since the un- doing of evil is good. But it would not do harm to good, formally speaking, unless it were in good: J thus blindness does harm to a man inasmuch as it is within him.
But since good and evil are opposites, and one opposite cannot be the subjeft of another, but expels it, it seems at first sight strange if good is said to be the subjeft of evil. But if the truth is sought out, we shall find nothing strange or awkward in this conclusion. Good is commonly predicated as being is predicated, since every being, as such, is good. It is not strange that not- being should be in being as its subjedt: for every privation is some not-being, and still its subje<5t is a substance, which is a being. Still not-being has not for its subject the being that is its opposite: thus sight is not the subject in which blindness is, but the animal. So the subje<5t in which evil is, is not the good opposed to it, for that is taken away by the evil, but some other good. Thus the subjeft of moral evil is natural good: while natural evil, which is a privation of form, is in matter, and matter is good, as also is potential being.
* A man acts upon sensible apprehension to the thing more than an application of the power 'actually neglect of rational, when he suffers himself to be to consider or to cease from considering '? I merely overcome by wine and women. A man acts under move the question, which is one of some subtlety. — the prompting of reason, suggesting a rational good The latter half of this chapter contains the one other than the proper object of his will, when he thorough-going refutation, perhaps, ever given of asserts his independence against lawful authority, the determinism of Socrates and Plato, who reduced Independence is a rational good in itself, but this moral to intellectual error, and put it beyond the independence is not the proper good of this man. control of the will.
Pride was not made fir man (Ecclus. x, 18), any more t ' Formally speaking,' i.e., as a constituent elethan excess in drinking. See Ethics and Natural Law, ment within, as distinguished from an efficient cause t Is the power ' to consider this or that 9 any- GOD THE END OF CREATURES CHAPTER XII- That Evil does not entirely swallow up Good THE subje6t of evil must always remain, if evil is to remain. But the subje6t of evil is good: therefore good always remains. But on the contingency of evil being infinitely intensified, and good being continually diminished by that intensification of evil, it appears that good may be diminished by evil even to infinity. And the good so diminished must be finite, for infinite good is not capable of evil. It seems then that in time good may be entirely taken away by evil.
This then is the reply. Evil, as we have seen, entirely takes away the good to which it is opposed, as blindness takes away sight: but there must remain that good which is the subjeft of evil, which subjeft, as such, bears a character of goodness, inasmuch as it is in potentiality to the aftuality of good, whereof it is deprived by evil.* The less then it is in potentiality to that good, the less good it will be. But a subject comes to be less in potentiality, or open- ness to a form, not only by the subtraction of some part of its potentiality, which is tantamount to subtraction of part of the subject itself, but also by the said potentiality being impeded by some contrary act from issuing in the actuality of the form.f Good therefore is diminished by evil rather by the planting of evil, its contrary, than by the taking off of any portion of good. And this agrees with what has been already said about evil: for we said that evil happens beside the intention of the doer, who always intends some good, and upon the good intended there follows the exclusion of some other good opposite to that good. The greater then the multiplication of that good, upon which, contrary to the intention of the agent, evil follows, the greater the diminution of potentiality in respeft of the opposite good; and so all the more may good be said to be diminished by evil. This diminution however of good by evil in the physical world cannot go on indefinitely: for all the physical forms and powers are limited, and come to some term beyond which they cannot go. J But in moral matters this diminution of good by evil may pro- ceed to infinity: for the understanding and the will have no limits to their a6ts: thus he who wills to commit a theft may will it again and commit an- other, and so to infinity. The further then the will tends towards undue ends, the more difficult it becomes for it to return to its proper and due end, as may be seen in persons in whom the habit of vice has been induced by a custom of sinning. Thus then by moral evil the good of natural aptitude may be diminished without limit: yet it can never be totally taken away, but always waits on nature while that remains.
• A potentiality often remote and vain, as the him,— or anyhow after him, when the microbes have potentiality of sight when the eye is gouged out, or devoured the whole man and then one another. But, the potentiality of truth and justice in the devil. St Thomas adds, there is no limit to the possible But the fad remains that all positive physical being, wickedness of a man, — a question which may be as such, is of itself good; and however it be beset debated. The reader may remember Sir James Macwith evil, that circumstance is strictly accidental. Cf. kintosh's celebrated epigram on Henry VIII: "He Heb. xii, I, besetting sin. Sin besets, but never quite approached as near to the ideal standard of perfect absorbs, the work of God. — Besides, the philosopher wickedness as the finitudes of human nature will considers the universal, the species, the normal thing, allow." St Thomas, always Aristotelian, seems to have rather than the individual and accidental: and the had here in view Aristotle's saying in the Politics, II, normal state of things is good, not evil. vii: "The wickedness of mankind is insatiable: people t Thus friendship may be diminished not only will bargain for a certain allowance, but no sooner by cessation of intercourse, but by downright quarrels. is this accorded than they ask for more, and so ad X Thus the virulence of a fever is limited by the infinitum." Or was he haply thinking of the will set strength of the patient, a limited quantity: when in evil, which is characteristic of the lost soul for all that is exhausted, the patient dies, and the fever with eternity (B. IV, Chap. XCIII)?
GOD <£?* HIS CREATURES BOOK III CHAPTER XlV-That Evil is an Accidental Cause RUNNING through all the species of causes, we find that evil is a cause accidentally. In the species of efficient cause, since through the defi- ciency of power in the a6tive cause there follows defe6t in the effe6t and aftion. In the species of material cause, since through the indisposition of the matter there follows a defeft in the produ6t. In the species of formal cause, since to one form there is always annexed the privation of another form. In the species of final cause, since the evil annexed to an undue end means the hindering of the end that is due.* CHAPTER XV-That there is not any Sovereign Evi/> a&ing as the Principle of all Evils A SOVEREIGN evil should be without participation in any good, as that is the sovereign good which is wholly removed from evil. But there cannot be any evil wholly removed from good, since evil is founded on good (Chap. XI).
2. If anything is sovereignly evil, it must be evil by its very essence, as that is sovereignly good which is good by its essence. But evil has no essence (Chap. VII).
3. That which is a first principle is not caused by anything. But all evil is caused by good (Chap. X). There is therefore no evil first principle.
5. The incidental must be posterior to the ordinary. But evil happens only incidentally and beside the intention (Chap. IV). Therefore it is impossible for evil to be a first principle.
Hereby is excluded the error of the Manicheans.
CHAPTER XVI- That the End in View of everything is some Qood THAT to which a thing tends when in absence from it, and in which it rests when in possession of it, is the scope and aim and end in view. But everything, so long as it lacks the perfection proper to it, moves towards gaining that perfection, so far as it depends upon itself so to do; and when it has gained that perfedtion, therein it rests, f The end then of every- thing is its perfection. \ But the perfection of everything is its own good. Everything therefore is ordained to good as to its end.
4. Things that are aware of an end and things that are unaware of an end are alike ordained to an end, with this difference, that things that are aware of an end tend to an end of themselves, while things that are unaware of an end tend to an end under the direction of another, as appears in the case of archer and arrow. But things that are aware of an end are always ordained to good for their end: for the will, which is the appetite of a fore-known end, never tends to anything except under the aspeCt of good, which is its objedt.
* This reasoning evinces, not only that evil is an rest: it moves just as rapidly out of its perfection as accidental cause, but also that it is caused accidentally, it moved into it. Not quite so: there is what is called which is the argument of Chap. XIII. We have an fjkuda xaflcaTuW, ' settled age,' like settled summer illustration of this in ordinary language, where 'acci- weather; and the more perfect the animal, the longer dent,' ' mischance,' * misfortune,' ' mistake,' ' mis- this settled age endures.
carriage,' etc., all stand for things evil. I One Greek word rikoQ means both ' end ' and t It will be said, — An animal moves towards 'perfection.' maturity and full strength: but therein it does not GOD THE END OF CREATURES Therefore things also which are unaware of an end are ordained to good for their end; and so good is the end of all things.* CHAPTER XVII-That all Things are ordained to one End, which is God THE sovereign good, which is God, is the cause of goodness in all good things. He is therefore also the cause of every end being an end, since whatever is an end is such inasmuch as it is good. But that whereby another thing has an attribute, has more of that attribute itself.t Therefore God above all things is the end of all.
4. In every series of ends the last end must be the end of all the ends pre- ceding. But we find all things arranged in various grades of goodness under one sovereign good, which is the cause of all goodness; and thereby, since good bears the character of an end, all things are ordered under God as ends preceding under their last end.
5. Private good is subordinated to the end of the common good: for the being of a part is for the sake of the being of the whole: hence the good of the race is more godlike than the good of the individual man. But the sove- reign good, which is God, is the common good, since the good of the whole community depends on Him: while the goodness which marks any given thing is its own private good, and also the good of other things which depend upon it. All things therefore are subordinate to the end of one good, which is God.
7. The last end of every producer, in so far as he is a producer, is him- self: for the things produced by us we use for ourselves; and if ever a man makes anything for another man, that is referred to his own good, — his uti- lity, his pleasure, or his honour. But God is the produdtive cause of all things, either immediately or mediately. And therefore He is the end of all.
Hence it is said: God hath wrought all things for himself (Prov. xvi, 4): and, I am alpha and omega, the first and the last (Apoc. xxii, 13).
CHAPTER XVIII-#*w Qod is the End of all Things GOD is at once the last end of all things, and is nevertheless before all things in being. There is an end which, while holding the first place in causation according as it is in intention, is nevertheless posterior in being; and this is the case with every end that an agent establishes by his aftion, as the physician establishes health by his altion in the sick man, which health nevertheless is his end. There is again an end which is prior in cau- sation, and also is prior in being: such an end one aims at winning by one's aftion or movement, as a king hopes to win a city by fighting. God then is the end of things, as being something which everything has to gain in its own way.
* Recent speculations on the 'subconscious' have 'prime mover9 means at once 'prime executor 9 and shown that conscious and unconscious adtion do not ' prime contriver.9