Article I: On the End of Human Law

265. Human or civil law is rightly defined as an ordination of human reason by which society or the State and its members are directed immediately to temporal perfection and happiness by him who has care of it, and mediately are aided toward the ultimate end. Therefore the immediate and proximate end of law is the common good of civil society and of its members, that is, their conservation, perfection, and temporal happiness. But these imply the practice of virtue: for happiness in this life consists formally in the exercise of virtue, and instrumentally in the abundance of goods necessary for the exercise of virtue (n. 44). But virtue is ordered to eternal beatitude. Therefore the remote and mediate end, to which the proximate end is to be subordinated, is eternal beatitude.

1. St. Thomas, on I Ethics, c. 13, lect. 19; c. 10, lect. 10 and 16.

266. It is objected: thus with Machiavelli and other politicians, public tranquility and temporal happiness are the end of political rule. But rules of honesty and precepts of religion are very much opposed to public tranquility and temporal happiness. Therefore a political prince is not bound by such rules and principles.

Reply: 1) I distinguish the major: public tranquility and temporal happiness is the proximate end of society, conceded; the ultimate end, denied. There is no regime which ought not be referred to the glory of God and eternal happiness, according to that saying of Augustine (On the City of God, V, 24): "We call those emperors happy if they command just things (that is, honorable things), if they make their power the servant of His majesty, especially for spreading the worship of God." Nor does it follow from this that political rule does not differ from the rule of the Church: for they are two republics adequately distinct by reason of the proximate and immediate end, and of the matter proper to each; but this does not prevent both from conspiring toward the same spiritual end. Therefore, although civil power, insofar as it directly commands, is restricted to its proper matter, nevertheless in its proper matter it rules subjects in order to the end of eternal salvation, as to the remote and ultimate end.

2. I deny the minor. For who, unless he be of a delirious mind, will say that the principles of religion and the rules of honesty are harmful to temporal happiness, since rather they greatly contribute to it, by directing and coercing wicked passions which overthrow common tranquility and temporal happiness? Whence Aristotle says, Politics III, c. 6: "all who have care for the good institution of a city publicly consider virtue and vice."