Treatise III: On Laws

Intention of the introduction. It is not now proposed to us that we should here attempt to treat at length and polemically, with diverse opinions recited and rejected according to their merit, the questions concerning divine law and human obligation which are examined and disputed ex professo in moral philosophy. With God's favor, we should wish only, by the distinct presentation and exposition of certain notions, to prepare the way for obtaining for ourselves a scientific knowledge of laws and sins.

The divinely constituted order. Non-rational beings are led to their end by provident God through a physical necessity of acting, or determination; but man partly through moral necessity, or obligation, partly by morally free option by which, subordinately, that is, with the divinely constituted order intact, he himself predefines an order either for those subject to him or for himself. For just as he has received being, so from God, the universal provider, he finds an order constituted toward the common good of the whole human race, indeed of the whole created world. That order is pre-established from eternity by the purest and immutable divine act which is the very essence of God; but in the mode in which, because of our weakness, we are compelled to explain the divine act and make it as it were "human," the same order results from the eternal divine ordination, and consequently formally from the eternal command by which the divine intellect, under the motion of the divine will loving His infinite goodness to be imitated in the created world, efficaciously decrees creation itself. For insofar as order affects the essences of things, by one and the same intellection and will the world is created and ordered, or God is creator and orderer.

Besides, we are taught by faith that, by a positive will of God beneficent beyond measure, rational creatures have been called to a supernatural, that is, divine, end, and therefore a more sublime ordination of the world has succeeded in place of the merely natural one.

Finally, by the eternal divine foresight, provision has been made for the fall, or the culpable degradation of man, through the better order of the repaired world, to which Christ is assigned as head and end.

Proceed then: the human intellect perceives the essential, or natural and necessary, order of things; and thus human reason is said to participate in the eternal divine reason by its very cognition. At the same time it perceives the necessity of conforming itself to this order; this necessity it expresses by that mysterious word: I ought, and indeed absolutely, independently of every condition or supposition.

Formal and express subjection. Besides, he who formally acknowledges in that order the divine ordination immediately, by the spontaneous conclusion of the intellect, renders by the same word I ought the necessity of formal subjection under the commanding will of God.

Moreover that subjection extends itself to the order itself constituted by the positive will of God: for the necessity of obeying God elevating and repairing man is demonstrated as contained in the natural law itself.

Furthermore, the pre-established order appears to be completed and perfected, with respect had both to human society, or the common life of men, and to the singular life of each one. Thus, moreover, human reason, by the active faculty of providing for order, participates in the active excellence of the divine reason ordering.

Yet this active ordination must be composed, as we just warned, with the necessary observation of the order already constituted by God, either necessarily or freely, so that it is not a subversion of that order, but on the contrary its completion or perfection.

The present question concerning obligation. If man contemplated the universal order in God Himself, he would certainly acknowledge and adore Him formally as the author of order, and would conceive the necessity of obeying formally as theological, or as existing toward God.

But now he reads the order in created things themselves and in his own nature. Hence without the express and formal acknowledgment of God that mysterious I ought is pronounced and conceived. Hence a question, neither recent nor light, has arisen: what does psychologically the "I ought" contain, and by what cause is it generated in us; or what is its ontological or objective explanation?

This question differs formally from this other: whenever a man acts in a different way from that in which, according to the dictate of conscience, he ought to act, does he sin theologically or not? The former question pertains here; the latter is conveniently deferred to the treatise on sins. Yet we do not deny that it depends virtually on the former. For this reason we have affirmed a merely formal distinction between the two questions.

The description of obligation, or its nominal definition, agrees sufficiently among doctors. It means an objective absolute necessity imposed on the will. Objective necessity is opposed to subjective coercion or determination to one thing, and is a necessity which is perceived by the intellect as if an object and exhibited to the will. It is absolute insofar as, just like material or physical necessity, it excludes every exception. It is imposed on the will insofar as the will at the same time experiences itself as psychologically free and yet bound.

With this description there agrees also the psychological analysis of the more accepted philosophers. Thus Rauh ¹, in the sense of moral obligation, found these things: the spontaneous (not free) idea of a thing as to be done; the consciousness of that idea as of a thing free and yet, by a spontaneous act of reason, as if extorted; various effects of sadness, peace, as signs of these actions.

That spontaneous dictate, according to many, coheres with a certain innate and invincible appetite, invincible at least for this reason, that it remains in the very act by which it is contradicted, so that one acting otherwise is in a certain way absurd, while his practical-practical conclusion (or conclusion concerning action as here and now to be done) contradicts the necessary more general, or speculative-practical, judgment by which he judges: good is to be done, evil is to be avoided.

But is that appetite formally the appetite of my happiness, so that our spontaneous intuition - good is to be done, evil is to be avoided - is a certain conclusion of a reasoning of this sort: I wish to be happy; I cannot be happy unless I do good and avoid evil; therefore good is to be done and evil is to be avoided?

This explanation is shown false by the intimate sense itself. He who says that he is obligated often abstracts from his own happiness. Indeed he does not judge himself freed from obligation because he erroneously thinks the action to be done is opposed to his own happiness. Suppose some materialist who judges that the present life, that life namely besides which he holds there is none, must be sacrificed for his country.

Does the same dictate of obligation rather cohere with another profound will or innate inclination, that is, with an inclination toward that order which reason detects, and which therefore is also called rational? This inclination toward the honest good is in our very nature, which, as it imitates divine being, so also imitates divine holiness ¹. On account of divine holiness God absolutely wills the order of reason; on account of the participated holiness of God, our will has a necessary propensity to doing the good simply such and to avoiding contrary evil.

But shall we find in a certain innate propensity, or necessary subjective will, an adequate explanation of subjective obligation? If we observe ourselves psychologically, that dictate, I ought, expresses more than a certain innate propensity or inclination, for instance toward the honest good, which remains even when by my particular choice I contradict it. For conscience testifies to us more than this: "I act against my inclination," which it reports to me whenever I abdicate or neglect some appetite. Consciousness of inclination would lead me only to the conditioned dictate: "if you wish to obey your inclination, you must act thus." But the word I ought is much more absolute; it is released even from every inclination: whether I have this or not, nevertheless I ought.

If matters stand thus, nothing remains except this: the word I ought expresses the necessity, confusedly apprehended, of subjection to that order toward which I have an inclination; this subjection is immediately perceived in my created, or dependent, nature. Therefore it renders the consciousness of a certain Superior who must be obeyed. To use other words: I ought, that word, does not signify: by physical necessity I will; or by physical necessity I incline; but: by moral necessity I am compelled - moral, I say, because in my perceived necessary subjection the same thing is perceived: otherwise, I act badly; and I can indeed act badly physically, but I cannot by another reason, which I call moral and which is imposed on me.

And so the necessity of the divine will is explained by the infinite holiness of God; the moral necessity of our will is explained by our participated holiness and by our perceived subjection. Not our holiness alone, but this holiness completed by the intuition of our subjection, morally binds our will.

¹ Revue de Metaphysique et de morale, 1902, pp. 653-660, Le sentiment d'obligation morale.

¹ Cf. St. Thomas, 1, 2, q. 91, art. 2, c.

By the same intellection and will by which He created the world, God ordered it, morally binding the free human will both to the essential order and to the order superadded by His positive and munificent will. But the concept of moral obligation, which is expressed by the words, "I ought absolutely," does not seem able to be explained by a certain profound and physically necessary will of appetition, whether of one's own happiness or of the honest good; but it expresses the necessity of subjection to the order of reason, or at least a confused consciousness of a Superior who must be obeyed.