Moral System
Section 1 - V.
The moral law: its objective necessity and its eternity
120. What has been said shows that the first act of justice is to judge things rightly in so far as this depends upon our will.(87) Right judgment is formed by our acknowledging things as they are in our apprehension, without any desire on our part to increase or diminish their goodness, excellence and dignity. Our faculty of judgment naturally feels itself obliged to harmonise with our faculty of apprehension because such harmony consists only in acknowledging the truth. It is manifestly contradictory and absurd to judge that something is different from what we know it to be. But in so far as this contradiction and absurdity are willed, they are moral evil itself; on the other hand, and in so far as it depends upon our will, the absence of such dissent, and the agreement between what we affirm and what we know, is moral good.
121. The absurdity of moral evil and the truth of moral good can be seen more clearly if we consider the immutability and eternity of essences, which can never be changed from what they are. Considered in relationship to the different acts of our spirit, immutability and eternity furnish us with the concept of the identity of things, the final reason for the necessity we experience in the truth of our judgment, and for the disorder that we feel present in the falsity of our judgment. It is through their identity that things are constant to themselves in their metaphysical entity, that is, are what they are.
122. However, this expression, identity of things, does not denote any peculiar quality relative to things themselves. As we said, it expresses only a relationship with our way of looking at them, that is, with the multiplicity of the acts in which we continually see them. If our faculty of knowledge and of acknowledgement always had these things present, and contemplated them with a single, uninterrupted act, we would never speak about their identity. But we do in fact look at them intellectually, turn away from them, and then turn to look at them once more. Consequently we notice the stability of some nature or entity, and we say that the thing is identical with itself. In other words, we say that something was present in our understanding in the way it is now.
123. We see of course that the reality of corporeal things is constantly changing; it varies from one moment to another. But if identity is not to be found in material things, where is it to be found? It must be found in ideas, in ideal things, and hence in the faculty of apprehension where ideas are faithfully preserved. The perpetual changes registered in real and material things mean that they simply furnish us with new images and forms of concepts. Our faculty of apprehension and mental conception re-copies(88) at every moment whatever it sees, and places it amongst all the other quasi-portraits which it preserves. The changes in material things are not therefore communicated to ideas, but increase the number of ideas, all of which remain constant in their being even when corporeal things change, pass away and cease to be.
124. Reflection, therefore, in turning back frequently to our ideas, notices their constancy and immutability, and formulates the principle of the identity of things, as it is called. This means that no essence expressed in an idea is confused with any other, and that in each instant things can have only a single form. As a result, they cannot be represented in the mind by two different types, but only by one, perfectly constant type. This leads us to affirm that things are all true through themselves. We mean that they conform to a single, ideal type, incorruptible and immutable by nature.
125. The origin of the principle of the identity of things thus explains why human beings all possess this principle; we simply cannot form any concept at variance with it. Different types or essences are so distinct from one another that it is impossible for one ever to be confused with another, or taken for another. Our faculty of judgment cannot therefore be ignorant of their distinction and separation, nor of the constancy of each in its own form. Essences, because they are simple, would be quite different if the smallest variety were present.(89)
The same necessity is not present in our judgment, however, when we wrongly affirm or deny that a thing possesses some property which, when added to or subtracted from the thing, does not destroy it. But this occurs only and whenever our judgment is concerned with real things. In this case, the judgment can be false or correct. In other words, it can attach a predicate to something which has no claim to the predicate, or remove a predicate from something to which the predicate pertains.
126. The closest union between the real, necessary order and the moral, willed order is therefore founded in the principle of identity, the point at which these two orders meet, as it were, and where one finishes and the other begins. It is so small a point that until now it has escaped the vision of many.
Notes
(87) The great commandment repeated so often in the Scriptures: JUDGE RIGHT THINGS, YOU SONS OF MEN (Ps 57: 1 [Douai]).
(88) We think it is possible to use metaphorical language after having expounded in appropriate words our thoughts on ideas. The reader already knows the value we place on such expressions.
(89) Cf. Rinnovamento della Filosofia, bk. 3, c. 39 ss.