Second Part: On Human Acts According to Moral Being

113. The being of a human act is twofold: physical being and moral being; physical being or the being of nature, which is called material, namely, the very physical entity and natural tendency toward the object; and moral being or the being of conduct, which is called formal, because it belongs to the act precisely insofar as it is human and free.

Moral is said from conduct; but conduct is distinguished in two ways: conduct improperly so called, which is a mere custom or usual mode of acting and is found even in brute animals; and conduct properly so called, of which we are speaking here, which is the mode by which a free being is accustomed to act, or even acts, in order to some end according to some norm, and consequently well or badly, and in a mode worthy either of praise and reward or of blame and punishment. Therefore a human act is called moral insofar as it depends upon a deliberate will with subjection of the act to rules; and moral being is the tendency of the act to the object as subject to the rules of conduct.

That which is called moral first of a free act consequently also indicates whatever is founded in free activity, such as moral beings which are fashioned or produced by a deliberate will: moral persons, moral effects, moral faculties; or whatever pertains to that activity, such as a moral cause, impotence, certitude, virtue, law, order, science, etc.

1. Cf. Bouquillon, Theologia Moralis Fundamentalis, n. 341. Billuart notes: "The will is denominated moral because it produces the moral act; law, because it directs it; object, because it terminates it; end, because it moves toward it; circumstances, because they affect it. Therefore nothing is called moral except by order to the moral act; therefore in it alone is morality principally and formally. This last consequence is clear, because analogates of attribution are said by order to that in which the denominating form is principally and formally," diss. 4, a. 1.

We shall speak of the essence and species of morality, of its foundations, of its principles, and of specific distinction. And of these in acts in general and in particular.