Point II. The End

By the end is here understood the reason or motive which induces the agent to act.

The end of all human life is called the last end; other motives for action are intermediate ends. An end is primary if it holds the first place among several, and would be sufficient by itself to induce action; otherwise it is secondary.

It is obvious that the end or motive which induces the agent to act holds a very prominent place among the sources of the morality of an action.

For it is the object to which the will tends, the prospect of gaining which moves the agent to act; but, as we saw in the last point, the motion of the will takes its moral quality from the object; a will, then, which tends to a good end will so far be good; a will which tends to a bad end will be bad. But the morality of an action resides chiefly in the will, so that a good or bad will, derived from the motive of an action, must necessarily contribute to the goodness or badness of that action. It is the end or motive which sets the will in motion and gives its own moral quality to the action which follows. One, then, who steals money in order to be able to commit adultery commits a sin against justice, induced thereto by a desire to sin against chastity, and as St Thomas, following Aristotle, says, he is more of an adulterer than a thief.¹

¹ St Thomas, 1-2, q. 18, a. 6.

The end which the agent has in view may coincide with the natural scope of the action, as when a man eats to support life. The extrinsic end is then said to correspond with the intrinsic end of the object. Or it may be different, as when a man eats merely for the sake of pleasure; and a man may be moved to action by a variety of subordinate ends, as when he eats to keep up his strength, to be able to work, to obtain the money wherewith to be able to support his family, and so fulfil his duty.

If the object of the action be good, and the extrinsic end of the agent be good also, the action will have a twofold merit. And so there is a twofold merit in giving an alms to relieve distress for the love of God. On the other hand, a grievously sinful motive corrupts and makes an otherwise good action grievously wrong. It turns the agent altogether away from God, his last end. And so it would be a mortal sin to give an alms to a poor woman in order to seduce her.

Even a venially sinful motive, if it be the whole or the primary motive for the action, corrupts the whole act and makes it venially sinful; for then a bad object is sought by good means indeed, but the means are infected with the purpose to which they are prostituted. And so one who preaches merely out of vanity commits a venial sin.

If, however, an end be only venially sinful, and be not the whole or primary motive of the agent, the resulting action will be partly good and partly evil. We suppose that the object is good, a partial motive or motives are also good; in this case a partial and secondary bad motive, which is only venially sinful, cannot corrupt the whole action. One who preaches principally out of obedience, but more willingly because his vanity is flattered, performs an action which is substantially good, but which is infected with a slight defect.

A good motive gives its own moral quality to an indifferent action and makes it good. And so I do an act of charity by depriving a man of a knife with which he was threatening to commit suicide, while the same action done with a view to making the knife my own would be theft.

There is a controversy among theologians as to whether the purpose or intention with which an action is performed can make an action unjust, which, apart from that intention, is not so.

Would a man, for example, be guilty of an act of injustice towards his enemy, and bound to make restitution to him, if he committed a crime, foreseeing and intending that it should be imputed to his enemy, who would be punished for it? Of course he is guilty of a grave sin by giving way to such an act of hatred, and if by any means he procures the false accusation of his enemy he is also guilty of injustice by causing his undeserved punishment. But supposing the false accusation, though foreseen, was in no way procured by him, but was brought about by other causes, would his intention make him guilty of injustice towards his enemy and bound to make restitution to him ? Many theologians affirm that it would,¹ but seeing that the false accusation is indeed occasioned by the crime, but not caused by it, it would seem that the bad intention of the man who committed the crime was incapable of supplying the . causal connection between the crime and the false accusation. The intention alone cannot change the nature of the external action. But if this be so, he is not the effective cause of the injury done to his enemy, and he is not bound to make restitution to him, A good intention certainly cannot make a bad action good. It is not lawful to tell a lie even to save another’s life, according to the teaching of Innocent III. Evil must not be done that good may come of it. This is the teaching of Holy Scripture and of the Catholic Church, nor have Jesuits any other doctrine different from that of the Church. Father Dasbach promised to give anyone two thousand florins who would prove in open court that the Jesuits had ever taught that the end justifies the means, Count Paul von Hoensbroech undertook to do so, but he failed in his suit when it was tried at Cologne in the spring of 1905.² Here we must touch upon a question which has raised a good deal of controversy among divines, and which still divides them. Some, following the great St Augustine, hold that it is a venial sin to eat and to perform other operations of our animal nature for the sake of the pleasure which they give us. Others, on the contrary, hold that the sensible pleasure which accompanies the satisfaction of our animal appetites is good, inasmuch as it is natural and intended by the Author of nature, and so to perform actions which are not wrong in themselves from the motive of pleasure cannot be sinful. If it were not for the sake of the pleasure afforded by eating and by other animal functions many men would abstain from them altogether through disgust. The imperious Stimulus of our fleshly appetites and their satisfaction is required for the preservation and increase of the human race. These satisfactions of our animal nature must indeed be ruled and moderated by right reason, the norm of human conduct. If they are thus moderated, they are conformable to man’s nature, they are in right order and morally good. This seems to be the teaching of St Thomas;³ it is the commoner opinion among modern theologians, nor is it involved in the condemnation of the eighth and ninth propositions condemned by Innocent XI on March 2, 1679.⁴

¹ Lugo, De Justitia, disp. 8, n. 75.

² Civilta Cattolica, Oct. 7, 1905, p. 3.

³ Cont. Gent. 3, c. 9, n. 1; Summa, 2-2, q. 141, a. I, ad I.

⁴ V. Frins, De Act. Hum. 2, n. 505.