Moral System
Section 2 - IX.
The principles of objective order, appropriateness and beauty
164. The great scholar Gerdil, following St. Augustine, proposed the doctrine of order. But not even this doctrine can entirely satisfy us in our search for the supreme principle of natural probity.(104) Although order can help greatly in deducing duties and rights, it does not attain that ultimate point where all duties begin. The doctrine states: `In all our actions we must preserve the natural relationships of appropriateness which exist among things. We certainly cannot deny this, but such a doctrine presupposes that we know many things and see their relationships. As we have seen, however, the law of justice is simpler, and its truth shines in our mind as soon as the first object appears. And if we know many things we must preserve their relationships. But what are our duties to each individual thing, considered in itself and abstracted from all other things?
165. The first of all relationships, if we wish to keep this word `relationship, is clearly the IDENTITY OF THINGS, as we have already explained. However, each thing is truly one, and relationship can exist only between two different things. Hence, the statement that the law reveals itself to us by relationships is not very exact, although it is quite exact to say, as we have said, that the law is presented to us by the essences of things.
166. Beauty, which Plato frequently ascribes to virtue, and appropriateness between things, to which the Stoics assigned probity, do not greatly differ from the doctrine of Sigismund Gerdil.
Notes
(104) Cf. the article, Principes métaphysiques de la Morale chrétienne, and the dissertation, Sull' origine del senso morale, in the works of Cardinal Gerdil, vol. 2, Roman edition.