De immutabilitate traditionis contra modernam haeresim evolutionismi

That moral dogmatism not only does not restore the collapsed building of truth by setting the will for the good as principle and foundation, but heaps ruin upon ruin, namely the ruin of the moral order upon the ruin of intellectual cognition, by making the notion of morality independent of the notion of God and of His law, and by constructing the rule of the honourable upon the immanent powers or aspirations of the soul alone.

Here, concerning morality, certain preliminary notions are altogether necessary. The notion of morality includes two concepts. It includes first the concept of goodness or malice in human acts; it includes further the concept of obligation, by which we are bound to do good and not to do evil. And it is always and necessarily founded upon the knowledge of God, both under the aspect of the ultimate end of our will, and under the aspect of the legislator commanding that order unto the end be preserved, and forbidding that it be disturbed.

Consider first morality insofar as it includes the concept of goodness or malice in human acts. This goodness, this malice, whence is it taken? Speaking generally, the goodness or defect of any operation must be taken by respect to the end that has been set before the active principle of the operation. For the operation is related as the motion of an operative power toward a term to be attained. It is therefore good if it is rightly directed into that term, and it is evil and defective if otherwise. As in the operations of nature, « when an act proceeds from a natural power according to the natural inclination toward the end, then rectitude is preserved in the act, because the mean does not depart from the extremes, namely the act from the order of the active principle to the end »¹. But when a defect of the organ or some disturbance arising from any source whatever makes the act deflect from that order, then the character of a defective and evil act comes in. The same is also the case in the operations of art, for rectitude is then preserved when the operation is contained within the line of the end that the art has set before itself to attain; the character of defect comes in when it deviates from that end, whatever that end finally be. « Since sin is by deviation from the order to the end, in the act of art it happens in two ways that there is sin. In one way, by deviation from the particular end intended by the artisan, and this sin will be proper to the art, for instance if the artisan intending to make a good work makes a bad one, or intending to make a bad one makes a good one. In another way, by deviation from the common end of human life, and in this way he is said to sin if he intends to make a bad work and makes it, whereby another is deceived. But this sin is not proper to the artisan as artisan, but as he is a man. Hence from the first sin the artisan is blamed as artisan; but from the second the man is blamed as man² ». And so, running through all the kinds of operations, goodness or defect will always be found to be traced back to the relation of the act to the end or term set before the operative power, according as the act is rightly directed into that end, or on the contrary deflects from the due order of the same end.

Now therefore it must be seen what is, in morals, the active principle of the operation, and what is the end or term set before that same principle. For from this, and from this alone, will the notion of the moral act be taken, as good or not good, right or not right. Now the principle of the moral act as such is the free will, as all will easily concede, since the genus of morals evidently begins there where the dominion of the will is first found. But it is the will to which the direction of the whole of human life manifestly belongs, because it is the will that moves all the other powers. It has therefore for its end and ultimate term the supreme end itself of human life, which is no other than God, under whose order our whole life, all of it, is constituted. Further, the will by its nature regards the highest and absolute good, and although it can by its own arbitrariness place the highest good in act in various things, for instance in pleasure, in riches, in honours, etc., yet there is one only in which the character of the highest good is truly and not merely apparently preserved; which one again is goodness itself by essence, God. The rectitude therefore and goodness of a voluntary or moral act as such will consist essentially in the order observed which terminates at the end, God; its perversity and malice, in the withdrawal and deviation from the order that is unto that same end, God; there is the norm, there the rule, there the reason according to which it is conceived what is good and what is evil in morals. For according to this it is understood, in the first place, that moral evil is whatever is committed immediately against God Himself, as is to blaspheme God, to disbelieve God, to deny worship to God, etc. According to this it is understood next that moral evil is whatever is against the ordered love of a man for himself: both because the love of the good that we have from God leads us by the hand to love more than ourselves that first and supreme cause from which we share all things, and in which our own good is more contained than in ourselves; and because, when that is corrupted which disposes beforehand, that can no longer stand for which the predisposition and the leading by the hand are necessary. On this account, therefore, that which is repugnant to the ordered love of oneself is repugnant also to subjection to God the ultimate end, and for that reason is counted among the things that are morally evil. According to this, finally, it is understood that moral evil is whatever injures or destroys the good of human fellowship or society, because again, to corrupt the compact of human society is nothing else than to remove a necessary condition, or to destroy a necessary means of tending to the ultimate end of human life, God, and to that extent it is truly said to be against the end itself, if not immediately, at least mediately, as much as lies in its nature.

Such, then, is the principle of discerning the things that are good or evil in morals, and there is or can be no other. If you remove the end, God, or merely prescind from it, nothing then of all the things to which human desire extends will be able to appear as deordinated with a moral deordination, that is, one falling upon a voluntary act precisely as it is voluntary. For with the end, God, shut out, there no longer remains any end except one that would be either in other creatures or in man himself, and neither counts for anything in the matter. Not an end that would be in other creatures: because free choice is not constituted under other creatures as such, from which it shares nothing; because free choice has no natural relation or dependence upon any creature, such that a term to be pursued should be thought to be set before it by that creature; because consequently it is impossible that an act of free choice should exist as precisely perverse and deordinated by that very fact that it goes beyond the order, the fitness, the exigency, the good, the utility of any other creature whatsoever. Nor again an end that would be in man himself, because then the human will, remaining always fixed in its own good, would always act rightly and in order, and by this means every distinction between good and evil in morals would become impossible, would no longer have any sense, and could not even come into thought.

But if you now consider morality insofar as it superadds to the notion of good and evil the notion of obligation to do good and to turn away from evil, the dependence of the idea of morality upon the presupposed knowledge of God will appear to you still more manifestly. For nothing is more evident than that an obligation binding the conscience, and binding man (whether he will or not) insuperably, imports in its concept a subjection to a rule of absolute necessity, and that imposed by some superior, really, or on the part of the thing, truly existing: since a restrictive subjection of liberty, in respect of an abstraction that would have no being outside the consideration of one's own intellect, is a chimera and a fable, is a sport of the imagination, is an empty phantom, which is blown away with the same ease with which it is constructed. And on this account I say that it is plain from the terms themselves that the rule of morality, insofar as it is apprehended as obligatory, is apprehended by that very fact as descending from the law of someone who dominates. But that this can be no other than God is made manifest by reasons plainly obvious, which have already been set out elsewhere, where the notion of sin was treated³, and which it will be helpful to recall briefly to memory here again. For first, since the rule of morals dominates man, not insofar as he is this or that man, but insofar as he is man simply, it can have been imposed by Him alone to whom man is subject according as he partakes of human nature. And this is none but God, who alone is the author and lord of human nature. Further, secondly, the rule of morality cannot descend upon defective wills, except from Him whose intention cannot altogether deviate from the end of morality, and who exists by essence absolutely impeccable, as adhering indeclinably and immovably to the supreme good which is the principle and term of the whole moral order. But again this is God alone. For, as is said in the Compendio theologiae, c. 113: « Wherever the will cannot fail of the end, it is manifest that there the defect of a voluntary action cannot be. But the will cannot fail in respect of the good which is the nature of the one willing. For any thing whatsoever appetites in its own way its own perfect being, which is the good of each thing; but in respect of an exterior good it can fail, being content with the good connatural to it. In Him, therefore, whose nature is the ultimate end, the defect of a voluntary action cannot occur; and this belongs to God alone, for His goodness, which is the ultimate end of things, is His nature. But the nature of others that will is not the ultimate end; whence in them the defect of a voluntary action can occur through this, that the will remains fixed in its own good, not tending further into the supreme good which is the ultimate end »."

Further, thirdly, moral obligation is not born to descend except from that supreme superior who is not only absolutely holy in Himself, but also necessarily wills that all other wills should be debtors of the order to be preserved. But this again and again is verified in God alone, for whom it is the same to will Himself as the ultimate end of all things and to will that the order of justice be preserved in the universe, since the order of justice and the order of the ultimate end are adequately convertible. Finally, if we wish to prescind from God, what, I ask, will remain? There will remain perhaps some aesthetic fitness, individual advantage, social utility, and whatever else of that kind. But these are far, far from an absolute obligation, which ought to be superior to the will of man, superior to any good otherwise to be obtained, superior to any pain eventually to be endured, superior to the difficulty of any effort required for the keeping of duty. But it is plainly repugnant that in man himself, considered in himself, there should be a necessity greater than man. It is repugnant that any creature should be the indefinite and insuperable reason of a rule always to be observed and never to be passed over. It is repugnant that it should be the supreme norm and the ultimate end, as it would have to be in order to impose such and so great a necessity.

Thus, then, from first to last, the notion of morality is a notion essentially founded upon the notion of God the ultimate end, to whom the rational creature is wholly subject, and from whom it has the law imposed — commanding indeed those things that lead to the end, and to that extent preserving the rectitude of order; but forbidding those things that lead away from the end, and to that extent disturbing the order. Whoever therefore loosens the notion of morality from the notion of God, whoever sets before morality another basis, another foundation, another principle, that man destroys morality as much as in him lies, and reduces it to a mere human inclination, found on the same line and at the same grade as the other inclinations, which are undoubtedly subject to free choice — so far from dictating to it a law of right action, and setting before it an irremovable norm of ordered operation.

But now moral dogmatism does not found the notion of morality upon the notion of God, creator, lord, legislator, and our ultimate end; but rather, conversely, it wills the notion of God to be the offspring and procreation of morality. Prior is the will furnished with morality; posterior is the knowledge of God, to which the mind is bent under the pressure of the heart. There remains therefore a morality independent of God as far as we are concerned, a morality emerging from the immanent powers or aspirations of the soul alone, a morality finally enclosed and circumscribed on every side by that Kantian categorical imperative, which, brought back to the scales of reason, is found to be empty, not subsisting in itself, consisting of contradictory notes, and therefore to be contemned.

You feel indeed in yourself inclinations to keep justice, temperance, chastity, but you feel also others, and wholly opposed. You feel inclinations to do good to others, to love parents, children, brothers, neighbours; but in animals too it is possible to observe similar propensions, and sometimes indeed very tender and delicate affections, as Basil relates, l. 8 Hexaem., of the storks which cherish their parents worn out with age with their feathers, refresh them with food, and support them in flight. Up to this point, therefore, there is nothing more than a certain instinct, among the many others with which our composite nature abounds. But when you seem to yourself to hear the voice of conscience which commands categorically, that you should follow these inclinations before others as obligatory rules, you are the sport of a vain sentimentality. But I say this of a vain sentimentality, as long as you maintain your immanentist man with all your might; as long as that real man whom you have driven out with a pitchfork, and who at least confusedly is conscious of himself as constituted under the law of God, you keep driving further off with the same pitchfork, and do not suffer to return. Does conscience command? But no one appears in whose name it commands or can command. Does it command categorically? But no necessity can be assigned to which that categorical injunction is proportioned. For if you bring forward the honour and dignity of one's own person, I ask of what dignity of person, of what honour you speak. Is it of the honour that you enjoy among others? But in this there can be a reason restraining the hand, or more truly, restraining an action that may come to the knowledge of other men; but as regards the forum and the dictate of conscience, nothing, and nothing further. Is it of the honour that you enjoy with yourself? But against this, first, because honour of this kind is subject to each one's own good pleasure. How then does that injunction, rising up so insolently even against the things you more ardently desire, not exceed just limits? But against this, secondly, because the estimation of honour and dignity is wont to be so broad and various among men, that concerning what your honour requires — especially in the eyes alone of your individual conscience — you may rightly and deservedly constitute yourself an independent judge and arbiter. But against this, thirdly, because, prescinding always from the higher end and from the order by which you are bound to it, you will place honour and dignity in nothing better and more rightly than in not abdicating the liberty with which nature endowed you, and made you master of your own determinations. But if anything occurs to the contrary, it will be a bugbear, it will be a prejudice, it will be a subjective impression, which cold reason, recalling it to critical examination, will pronounce vain and empty.

Thus, then, the morality to which moral dogmatism recurs is not in truth morality, but the radical negation of all morality. Nor does it matter that they perhaps intend the morality such as all men, more or less confusedly, conceive it. For this is the perpetual contradiction into which they infallibly fall, whoever they are who pervert those first notions that are laid up in our reason as an incorruptible ground. They always associate the true notion with the sophisticated notion, and clothe the sophisticated one with the attributes and properties that they find in the true. But we are now speaking of morality such as the system sets it up. A system, namely, in which man must draw all things from his own innermost ground and vital potentiality, lest an undue limit be set to his legitimate autonomy, and to his own manner of autochthonous expansion. A system setting before him a good will, for which blind instinct is the criterion of good, and an imaginary law the directing rule. A system, finally, not only dissolving the bond of morality's dependence on God, but even making the very knowledge of God and every other religious dogma spring up under the incubation of the heart, whose suggestion the intellect obeys, so that in the last analysis it is purely and simply the will in place of reason. And do you not see there the ruin of the moral order heaped upon the ruin of intellectual cognition, so that the destruction is complete? There is yet another thing by which the consummation of the destruction is shown still more evidently, of which, in the last place, something must now be said.