Section — Marc, Institutiones Morales
§ 2. On Circumstances
- DEFINITION. Circumstance, as if standing around the act, is an accidental quality morally affecting a human act already constituted in its moral being (St. Thom., 1.2, q. 7, a. 1).
Therefore two things are required for a circumstance: 1. that it does not attribute first being to the act; 2. that it affect the act morally, that is, modify it in order to the rules of morals. For here the discourse is not concerning circumstances affecting the act only physically or juridically, for example, with which hand someone committed theft (Billuart, de act. hum. Diss. 4, a. 3, § 2).
DIVISION. Seven classes of circumstances are numbered, expressed by this little verse of Tully:
Who, what, where, by what helps, why, how, when.
For qualities affecting an act can adhere: 1. to the person of the agent, for example, whether he is a priest, religious, married; 2. to the object of the act, for example, whether the thing taken by theft is in great or small quantity, sacred or profane; whether the person struck is a cleric or layman, etc.; 3. to the place where the action is committed, whether it is public or secret, sacred or profane; 4. to the means of acting, whether they are just or unjust; 5. to the extrinsic end of the one operating, concerning which below (n. 304); 6. to the mode of acting, for example, whether the one operating acted maliciously or in good faith, intensely or remissly, from contempt or levity, from ignorance or fear, etc.; 7. to the time, for example, whether on a feast day, whether by long or brief delay.
- PRINCIPLES. I. A human act takes true morality from circumstances. This is proved from Sacred Scripture (Mark 12:43), where the woman is praised who cast only two coins into the treasury, before the Pharisees casting many. The reason is, because circumstances have a relation of agreement or disagreement with right reason: thus in sacrilegious theft the circumstance of the sacred thing violated has a peculiar disagreement with right reason, besides that which it has from the object, or from the fact that it is another's thing. Thus also, other things being equal, greater quantity of alms renders the act more praiseworthy (V, n. XXXIX).
- II. Circumstances are given which add a new morality to the act. This is clear from the fact that there are circumstances which according to themselves, separately and independently from the first morality sought from the object, import a special and distinct relation of conformity or deformity to right reason or the rule of morals, as in sacrilegious theft.
Circumstances of this kind are said to pass into the object, because with relation to the superadded species they become the object: thus in sacrilegious theft, the thing insofar as it is another's is the object of theft; insofar as sacred, it is the object of sacrilege. Those circumstances are commonly called species-changing.
- III. Circumstances are given which increase or lessen morality in the same species; wherefore they are called AGGRAVATING or lessening. For there are circumstances which do not have of themselves a distinct morality, but modify that which comes from the object; such as more and less, intense and remiss, etc. Thus the quantity of money says no morality of itself; but it says good morality if the matter concerns alms; evil, if the matter concerns theft. Whence the saying: More or less does not change the species.
But if circumstances transfer sin from venial into mortal, or vice versa, they are said to change not the objective species, which they only increase or lessen, but the theological or demeritorious species. Thus theft of one as does not differ, as to the virtue to which it is opposed, from theft of ten gold pieces; nevertheless it differs as to fault, namely theologically: for the one is a venial sin, the other a mortal sin. Whence a circumstance which makes mortal from venial is called by some increasing unto infinity, because it brings with itself privation of grace and glory (cf. n. 334 and 342, q. 2 and 3).
Note. "A lightly evil circumstance, for example, precipitation in acting, tepidity in prayers, light indignation, concomitant vainglory, etc., coming to an act, does not take away its whole goodness, nor destroy every merit" (V, n. XXXIX). Thus commonly. "If it were otherwise," says Billuart (l. c.), "scarcely any good act would be found, even in the Saints themselves, since it happens so easily that any work whatever is infected by some lightly evil circumstance."