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 OBLIGATION

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OBLIGATION

of employing the necessary means in order to attain an end which must be obtained. There is, however, a special quality in the necessity of iiiorul obligation which is peculiar to itself. We all uiiproriatc this when we say that children are "obliged " to obey their parents, that they "ought" to obey them, that it is their "duty" to do so. We do not simply mean by those assertions that obedience to parents is a neces- sary means towards their own education, and for securing the peace, harmony, and affection, which should reign in the home. We do not simply mean that the happiness of parents and children depends upon such obedience. Although society at large is much concerned that children should be trained in respect and deference towards lawful authority, yet even the demands of society do not explain what we mean when we affirm that children are obliged to obey their parents. There is a peremptoriness, a sacredness, a universality about the obligation of duty, which can only be explained by calling to mind what man is, what is his origin, and what is his destiny. Man is a creature, made by God his Creator, with Whom he is destined to live for all eternity. That is the end of man's life and of his every action, imposed on him by his Maker, who in making man ordered every fibre of his nature to the end for which he was made. That doctrine explains the peremptoriness, the sacredness, the universality of moral obligation, made known to us, as it is, by the dictates of conscience. The doc- trine has seldom been put in clearer or more beautiful language than by Cardinal Newman in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk (p. 55):—

"The Supreme Being is of a certain character, which, expressed in human language, we call ethical. He has the attributes of justice, truth, wisdom, sanc- tity, benevolence and mercy, as eternal characteris- tics in His Nature, the very Law of His being, identi- cal with Himself; and next, when He became Creator, He implanted this Law, which is Himself, in the in- telligence of all His rational creatures. The divine Law then is the rule of ethical truth, the standard of right and wrong, a sovereign, irreversible, absolute authority in the presence of men and Angels. "The eternal law,' says St. Augustine, 'is the Divine Reason or Will of God, commanding the observance, forbid- ding the disturbance, of the natural order of things.' 'The natural law,' says St. Thomas, 'is an impression of the Divine Light in us, a participation of the eternal law in the rational creature.' This law, as appre- hended in the minds of individual men, is called 'con- science' ; and though it may suffer refraction in passing into the intellectual medium of each, it is not thereby BO affected as to lose its character of being the Di- vine Law, but still has, as such, the prerogative of com- manding obedience. ' The Divine Law,' says Cardinal Goussct, 'is the supreme rule of actions; our thoughts, desires, words, acts, all that man is, is subject to the domain of the law of God; and this law is the rule of our conduct by means of our conscience. Hence it is never lawful to go against our conscience; as the Fourth Lateran Council says, ' Quidquid fit contra con- scientiam, ajdificat ad gehennam.'. . . The rule and measure of duty is not utility, nor ex^pedience, nor the happiness of the greatest number, nor State conven- ience, nor fitness, order, and the pulchrum. Con- science is not a long-sighted selfishness, nor a desire to be consistent with oneself; but it is a messenger from Him who both in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by His repre- sentatives. Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Chiist, a prophet in its informations, a monarch in its peremptoriness, a priest in its blessings and anathe- mas, and even though the eternal priesthood through- out the Church could cease to be, in it the sacerdotal principle would remain and would have a sway."

An injustice would be done to the foregoing doc- trine if it were classed with Mysticism, innate ideas,

and Intuitionism. On the contrary, it is in the strict- est sense rational. It asserts that we can know God, our Creator and Lord, that we can know ourselves and the bonds that bind us to (Jod antl to our fellow-men. We can know the actions which it is right and becom- ing that such a being as man should perform. We can and do know that God, Whom as our Creator and Lord we are bound to obey, commands us to do what is right and forbids us to do what is wrong. Tliat is the eternal law, the Divine reason, or the Divine will, which is the source of all moral obligation. Moral precepts are the commands of God, but they are also the behests of right reason, inasmuch as they are merely the rules of right conduct by which a being such as man is shoidd be guided.

An objection is sometimes urged against the method of analysing moral obligation which we have followed. It is said that moral obligation cannot be explained as a moral necessity of adopting the necessary means to the end of moral action, for it may be asked what is the moral obligation of the end itself. The Utili- tarians, for example, maintained that the end of human action should be the greatest happiness of the greatest number. But a man may well ask, why he should be bound to direct his actions towards securing the greatest happiness of the greatest num- ber. It is plain what answer should be given to such a question on the principles laid down above. God is our Creator and Lord, and as such and because He is good. He has every right to our obedience and service. We need not go beyond the preceptive will of God in our analysis; it is obligatory upon us from the very nature of God and our relation to Him. The rules of morality are then moral laws, imposing on us an obligation derived from the will of God, our Crea- tor. That obligation is the moral necessity that we are under of conforming our actions to the demands of our rational nature and to the end for which we ex- ist. If we do what is not conformable to our rational nature and to our end, we violate the moral law and do wrong. The effect on ourselves of such an action is twofold according to Catholic theology. A bad action does not merely subject us to a penalty assigned to wrongdoing, the sanction of the moral law. Be- sides this rcatus poen(e, there is also the reatus culpce in every moral transgression. The sinner has com- mitted an offence against God, something which dis- pleases Him, and which puts an end to the friendship which should exist between the Creator and creature. This state of enmity is accompanied, in the super- natural order to which we have been raised, by the privation of God's grace, and of the rights and priv- ileges annexed to it. This is by far the most impor- tant of the effects ijroduced on the soul by sin, the liability to punishment is merely a secondary conse- quence of it. This shows how far from the truth we should be if we attempted to explain moral obligations by mere liability to punishment which wrongdoing entails in this world or in the next.

The sense of moral obligation is an attribute of man's rational nature, and so we find it wherever we find man. However, in the early history of ethical speculation the notion is not prominent. Before philosophers began to inquire into the meaning and origin of moral obligation, they busied themselves about what is the good, and what the end of human activity. This was the question which occupied the philosophers of ancient Greece. What is the highest good for man? In what does man's happiness con- sist? Is it pleasure, or virtue practised for its own sake or for the gratification and self-esteem that it brings to the virtuous man? With the exception of the Stoics, the Greek philosophers did not much dis- cuss the question of duty and moral obligation. They thought that, of course, when a man knew where his highest good lay, he could not but pursue it. Vice was really ignorance, and all that was necessary to