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Chapter 12

The Union Of Moral And Eudaimonological Good

890. An eternal law of justice shines before all intelligences. It decrees that a morally good will should be happy. This law, which is self-evident, is confirmed by an irresistible feeling in our consciousness.

891. But the explanation of the law, which admits of no exception, is complex, and lies hidden amongst the secrets of ontology. It springs from the depths of being, and is one of the laws constituting the intrinsic order of being, the first fact in the chain of all facts.
Here, I have no intention of entering these sublime regions, or investigating the deep roots of a law which no one denies or can deny. But I shall make a few observations which, I think, will be quite sufficient to justify the law.(412)

892. First, the person who conforms himself to the law by adherence to and just evaluation of being, acquires from being itself, to which he is joined, an extraordinary value and a wonderful, moral beauty springing from the reflection of virtue in the virtuous soul, and generating an infinite love in those who contemplate it. Plato was speaking of this spiritual beauty when he said that `if virtue were made visible to our corporeal eyes, it would excite tremendous love and desire'.

893. But sublime, rational, evaluative love, founded in the beauty of virtue and of the virtuous person, implies a desire and wish for every good for this person, and the absence of all evil. This sentiment is aroused in every rational being together with love and esteem.

A virtuous person, endowed therefore with sublime beauty, is worthy of all love, and draws love from every intelligence. Such a person is therefore worthy of all good also; every intelligence desires and wishes every good for this person, and judges it fitting for such a person to be happy. This explains both the feeling of congratulation and approval which spontaneously arises in us every time we see virtue prosper, and our sorrow and painful displeasure, sometimes close to desperation, when we see the just suffer and the wicked at their proud ease amidst great pleasures.
Moral good therefore arouses love from intelligence, and love decrees that moral good should be accompanied by eudaimonological good. These three realities are united by a very close bond, founded in the essence of things.

894. This bond can be understood more easily if we consider that all intelligent beings, that is, beings which have the nature of end (moral good orginates in and amongst such beings) are destined to be valued and loved reciprocally for what they are, and to communicate themselves mutually to each other with love and knowledge. Happiness, which consists in this intercommunication of intelligences and universal love, means simply enjoyment of the totality of being, which is rooted and consummated in the first, infinite intelligence, God himself. Being virtuous consists simply in contributing one's own part to love, that is, in loving all intelligences, all existing things, according to the intrinsic order of the things themselves. The virtuous person gives all he can of himself to the union and intimate intercommunication of beings, and to the happiness of all. It is therefore just and fitting that he himself share in the bliss and perfection of everything of which he is author, and that he be repaid by the entirety of love, communion and joy to which he adheres.

895. We should note carefully that these reasons which explain and justify the bond between moral and eudaimonological good apply not only to the moral good imputable to a will or person but to any moral good whatsoever, even if necessary and not free. The lovableness and beauty of such good together with its part in the moral happiness of all is an intrinsic, essential property independent of external considerations. It originates entirely from the will's harmony with the law, that is, from the conformity of the will and person with the eternal order of being which beautifies the soul united to it as the soul immerses itself in it.

896. If, in addition to moral good, we consider the will or person that causes it, that is, free will producing moral good, the question of merit arises.(413)
As we said, moral good is imputed to the will and person. Hence, intelligent natures, which are the aim of moral good, are not only naturally and spontaneously inclined to communicate with one another, and enjoy together intelligent being (which communicates itself to them), but to show such being true gratitude. This being is seen as freely just and good, something which values and loves them, ready to communicate itself and be united with them.

897. This kind of gratitude, or correspondence of love with love, is founded in justice. The person who loves gives of himself, since love is free and proper to the giver. It is therefore just that love be restored to the one who gives love, and good be restored to the one who desires and wishes good for others and that in this way the lover should acquire as much from others as he gives of himself.

898. When we discussed moral good without considering free will, the cause of moral good, we saw that the reward of happiness for moral good must come from the instinct, as it were, of beings, and from the constitutive law of intelligences. If we now consider the freedom that caused moral good, we find that justice itself decrees the happiness of the virtuous human being. This is the notion of merit proper to a person practising virtue.

899. Note, because esteem and love proceed directly from freedom, merit is not founded on purely external works but on esteem and love, which are entirely internal.
A virtuous human being can acquire merit from his virtue, therefore, even if it has given no external benefit to intelligent natures, because love is always present, and of itself alone requires love. All possible benefits are found in love, because to love another is to wish all possible good for the other, and to be ready to make every sacrifice for the other.

Consequently, even acts of love that terminate in God have the power to merit from him, in as much as he, beloved and best, does not withdraw but gives and communicates himself to the lover, on whom he bestows reciprocal love. To respond in this way is fully fitting and conformable to the intimate nature of that perfect Being, whose essence is being.

900. Relative to other limited natures, the virtuous person, because his virtue is to their advantage, can merit by bestowing external benefits as well as by showing internal esteem and love. This is true for intelligent natures whether considered as individuals, or united in societies and bound with mutual ties.

901. It was under this aspect that St. Thomas principally considered the notion of merit:
The words merit and demerit express the relationship between action and recompense. Recompense under the title of justice is given to the person who works for the advantage or harm of another.

We must consider that the person living in a society is somehow part and member of the society itself. To work for or against another in the society is to work for or against the whole society, just as the person who injures a hand has also injured the human being. Working for the good or evil of an individual has merit or demerit for two reasons. First, because recompense is due from the person who has been helped or offended; and second, because recompense is due from the whole group. On the other hand, a person who directs his act immediately to the group must be recompensed first by the group, and then by the individual parts.

When a person does something to his own advantage or harm, recompense is due to him because his act affects the common good (he himself is part of the group). But in so far as the act is the individual's own, recompense is not due because the individual is himself the agent, unless through some similarity we mean the opposite, as when we speak about justice to ourselves.(414)

902. Recompense is the reward or punishment received by the merit of virtue or vice.

903. Hence, eudaimonological good or evil, as a natural consequence of moral good or evil, must be distinguished from the eudaimonological good or evil required by imputable moral good and evil. Only the latter, which proceeds from free will, can, properly speaking, be called reward and punishment.

904. Every moral good and evil is linked with a eudaimonological good or evil; this is a law, we said, arising from the nature of things. But that a person freely doing good be rewarded, and punished for freely doing evil, is a law of personal justice, and has its origin in the eternal norms of what is just and upright.

905. Consequently, the very nature of things makes the virtuous person happy in the first case, because the nature of things (considered generally) is ordered intrinsically; no judgment is required to decree what recompense must be given to the virtuous or evil person.

In the second case, however, we are dealing with the application of reward and punishment according to the norms of personal justice. This always requires and presupposes the intervention of a judge, because the general norms of what is just and upright must be applied to the will and person as the free cause of the good and evil. This application must result in an acknowledgement of merit or demerit, followed by the decree of recompense and the application of reward or punishment.

Notes

(412) I dealt with the bond between moral and eudaimonological good in Storia comparative de' Sistemi morali, c. 7, art. 3, §7, to which I refer the reader.

(413) Innocent X condemned the following proposition of Jansen (n. 3): `Merit or demerit in the human being requires only freedom from force, not from necessity, in the state of fallen nature.'

(414) S.T., I-II, q. 21, art. 3, corp.