Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/616

Rh 594 ETHICS Thomas The moral philosophy of Thomas Aquinas is Aristo- Aquinas. telianism with a Neo-Platonic tinge, interpreted and supple mented by Christian dogma. All action or movement of all things irrational as well as rational is directed towards some end or good, that is, really and ultimately towards God Himself, the ground and first cause of all being, and unmoved principle of all movement. This universal striv- in after God, since He is essentially intelligible, exhibits itself in its highest form in rational beings as a desire for knowledge of Him ; such knowledge, however, is beyond all ordinary exercise of reason, and may only be partially revealed to man here below. Thus the summum bonum for man is objectively God, subjectively the happiness to be derive! from loving vision of His perfections; although there is a lower kind of happiness to be realized here below in a normal human existence of virtue and friendship, with mind and body sound and whole and properly trained for the needs of life. The higher happiness is given to man by free grace of God ; but it is only given to those whose heart is right, and as a reward of virtuous actions. Passing to consider what actions are virtuous, we first observe generally that the morality of an act is in part, but only in part, determined by its particular motive ; it partly depends on its external object and circumstances, which render it either objectively in harmony with the &quot; order of reason&quot; or the reverse. In the classification of particular virtues and vices, we can distinguish very clearly the elements sup plied by the different teachings which Thomas has imbibed. In dividing the &quot; natural &quot; virtues into intellectual and moral, giving his preference to the former class, and distin guishing in it the &quot; intellect &quot; that is conversant with prin ciples, the &quot; science &quot; which deduces conclusions, and the &quot; wisdom&quot; to which belongs the whole process of knowing the sublimest objects of knowledge, Thomas follows Aristotle closely ; his distinction among moral virtues of the justice that renders others their due from the virtues that control the appetites and passions of the agent himself, re presents his interpretation of the Nicomachean ethics ; while his account of these latter virtues is a simple transcript of Aristotle s, just as his division of the non-rational element of the soul into &quot; concupiscible &quot; and &quot; irascible&quot; is the old Platonic one. In arranging his list, however, he defers to the established doctrine of the four cardinal virtues ; accordingly, the Aristotelian ten have to stand under the higher genera of (I) the prudence which gives reasoned rules of conduct, (2) the temperance which restrains the passions, and (3) the fortitude that strengthens the soul against them. But before these virtues, which belong to the nature of man as a rational creature, and can be ac quired, though not perfectly, as a mere natural result of training and practice, are ranked the three &quot; theologic &quot; virtues, faith, love, and hope, supernaturally &quot; instilled &quot; by God, and directly relating to Him as their object. By faith we obtain that part of our knowledge of God which is beyond the range of mere natural wisdom or philosophy ; naturally (e.g.}, we can know God s existence, but not His trinity in unity, though philosophy is useful to defend this and other revealed verities. Faith is the substantial basis of all Christian morality, but without love the essential form of all the Christian virtues it is &quot; formless &quot; (infor- mis). Christian love is conceived (after Augustine) as primarily love to God (beyond the natural yearning of the creature after its ultimate good), which expands into love towards all God s creatures as created by Him, and so ulti mately includes even self-love. But creatures are only to be loved in their purity as created by God ; all that is bad in them must be an object of hatred till it is destroyed. In the classification of sins the Christian element pre dominates ; still we find the Aristotelian vices of excess aud defect, along with the modern divisions into &quot;sins against God, neighbour, and self,&quot; &quot; mortal and venial sins,&quot; &c. When from the essentially jural notion of sin we pass to the discussion of law, we observe an other element in Thomas s doctrine, drawn from a different part of the renascent intel lectual activity of Europe, from the study, namely, of Roman jurisprudence, which attained in the 12th century so rapid and brilliant a revival in Italy. This side of Thomas s system is specially important to notice, since it is just this blending of theological conceptions with the abstract theory of the later Pioman law that gave the start ing-point for independent ethical thought in the modern world. Under the general idea of law, defined as an &quot; ordinance of reason for the common good,&quot; promulgated by him who has charge of the community, Thomas distin guishes (1) the eternal law or regulative reason of God which embraces all His creatures, rational and irrational ; (2) &quot; natural law,&quot; being that part of the eternal law that relates to rational creatures as such ; (3) human law, which properly consists of more particular deductions from natural law adapted to the circumstances of particular societies ; (4) divine law specially revealed to man. As regards natural law, he teaches that God has firmly implanted in the human mind a knowledge of its immutable general prin ciples, although the applications of them may sometimes be obscured and perverted by bad education and custom. Human law is required, not merely to determine the details for which natural law gives no clear guidance, but also to supply the force necessary for practically securing, among imperfect men, the observance of the most necessary rules of mutual behaviour. A further force is supplied by the revealed code of the decalogue and the gospel combined, which again goes beyond natural law in directing the way to eternal life. We have, however, to distinguish in the case of the gospel between (1) absolute commands and (2) &quot; counsels, &quot; which latter recommend, without posi tively ordering, the monastic life of poverty, celibacy, and obedience, as the best method of effectively turning the will from earthly to heavenly things. Finally, to express the manner in which the moral law operates in the mind, Thomas uses and defines the specially Christian notion of conscience, distingiiishing the &quot; synderesis &quot; l (CTVTTT^O-IS) by which moral principles are permanently retained from the &quot; conscientia &quot; by which they are applied to particular cases. But how far is man able to attain either natural or Christian perfection ? This is the part of Thomas s system in which the cohesion of the different elements composing it seems weakest. He is scarcely aware that his Aristo- telianized Christianity inevitably combines two different difficulties in dealing with this question : first, the old pagan difficulty of reconciling the position that w.ll is a rational desire always directed towards apparent good with the freedom of choice between good and evil that the jural view of morality seems to require ; and, secondly, the Christian difficulty of harmonizing this latter notion with the absolute dependence on divine grace which the religious consciousness affirms. The latter difficulty Thomas, like many of his predecessors, avoids by supposing a &quot; co-opera tion&quot; of free-will and grace, but the former he does not fully meet. It is against this part of his doctrines that the most important criticism, in ethics, of his rival Duns Scotus (1266-1308) was directed. He urged that will could not be really free if it were bound to reason, as Thomas (after Aristotle) conceives it ; a really free choice must be perfectly indeterminate between reason and unreason. Scotus consistently maintained that the divine 1 The &quot; synderesis &quot; of the Catholic mystics is a different notion ; it is the &quot;apex mentis,&quot; the highest faculty of the mind, by which the most perfect communion with the Divine nature is realized.