Article I. On the Object of Law

88. • The object of law generally is whatever law can command or prohibit.

Principles. - I. The object of law is all and only those acts whose placing or omission can confer toward the common good. From what has been said it follows:

II. All indifferent acts taken distributively can be the object of law; for since acts of this kind can confer toward the common good, by that very fact they can be commanded or forbidden ¹.

¹ Very well known is the distinction between those things which are prohibited because they are evil, and those things which are evil because they are prohibited. Moreover these latter are contained within the ambit of acts indifferent per se.

89. Questions. - QUESTION 1. Whether heroic acts fall under law?

I answer. Generally they do not seem to fall under law ², because they are considered morally to exceed human strength, and therefore a law of this kind would lack that quality by which it could be called possible. Nevertheless sometimes, when the common good requires it, they can be commanded. Thus guards who are soldiers cannot desert their station, even when danger of life is imminent, if the Republic would suffer detriment from it.

² This question, as is clear, is made concerning human laws. For divine law, both natural and positive, can oblige even with danger of life. Thus the holy Martyrs underwent death, and a most bitter one, not from a certain supererogation, but from obligation.

QUESTION 2. Whether human law can command merely internal acts?

I answer 1. Civil law certainly cannot, because without these acts the legislator obtains his end. - Besides, he cannot judge concerning internal acts.

2. Nor, according to many, can ecclesiastical law do this; because, they say, the legislative power of the Church pertains only to the external governance of the faithful. - St. Lig., book 1, no. 100; St. Thomas, Suarez, Benedict XIV, etc., against others who also probably affirm, because the Church received unlimited power from Christ ³.

³ The prior opinion, which denies to the Church the power of commanding merely internal acts, seems to rest more on a certain appearance of extrinsic authority than on reason. For the stronger reason which is brought forward, that the power of the Church looks to mere external governance, seems scarcely, or not even scarcely, tolerable; for does it pertain to mere external governance that she directly command attention in praying, or that she prescribe for Regulars a certain time for holy meditations?

What they add, that the Church has never commanded acts of this kind, and that this is false can be shown by not a few examples brought forward, and would conclude nothing per se; for wrongly from the negation of act is an argument made to the negation of power.

Finally they add that the Church cannot judge concerning these acts. But 1. the inference can be denied: for can she judge more concerning the interior exercise of meditation, which nevertheless she commands to Regulars? 2. But the antecedent too can be denied. For although this is true of judgment which is pronounced by man through sentence, yet it is false of judgment which, as Suarez says (On Laws, book 4, ch. 12, no. 4), is made by a legislator through law, when namely the law punishes a delict through itself, for example through a censure to be incurred by the fact itself.

**VV. (page 909) object 1. that the reasons brought here prove nothing against the sentence of the holy Doctor, who called the denying opinion more probable. I answer. They prove that which had to be proved, namely that the reasons which are customarily brought forward for the denying opinion are not suitable.

They object 2. from St. Alphonsus that the Church can indirectly command attention in praying, and meditation for Regulars. I answer 1. Those two examples are brought forward here merely to show the weakness of the reason which is customarily brought forward as principal against it, not however as examples of a merely internal act. 2. St. Alphonsus discusses the power of commanding indirectly; but in this note it had been written DIRECTLY. 3. Besides, the observation of VV. could have had force as to the first example, but by no means as to the other.

90. • QUESTION 3. Whether human law can command mixed acts, or acts partly internal and partly external?

I answer affirmatively. The reason is that mixed acts constitute at the same time one moral indivisible. Thus the Church commands devout attention in the celebration of Mass. - Thus all.

QUESTION 4. Whether human law can command external occult acts?

I answer affirmatively. Because it has the power of directing whatever is external. For occult acts by their nature do not differ from others; but that they cannot be punished happens per accidens. - St. Lig. ibid.

QUESTION 5. Whether a Confessor can enjoin merely internal acts?

I answer affirmatively. Because the office of directing penitents in the way of salvation requires this faculty. Hence he can enjoin pious meditations on penitents. - Voit, no. 163.