Moral System
Section 3 - VII.
The moral activity of the human race is rooted in the religious principle
215. However religion does more than that. An earthly sanction, sufficient to restrain us in all possible cases from doing evil, would satisfy the law of natural justice, which commands us to order our actions so that they do not oppose the exigency of things. But what kind of stimulus would we need for good actions? What law would have sufficient authority to prescribe the mode of action and make us act?
216. It is true that nature has sympathetic affections gently inclining us to love and do good to our neighbour. Philosophers did not delay in firmly attaching their shaky morality to them, but the effort was soon seen to fail. Good sense saw that sympathetic affection and gentle inclinations did not contain the authority of law. Subject to illusions and eccentricities, and even to serious disorders, they also vary capriciously in different individuals, and sometimes lead us to offend rather than practise virtue. Affections, therefore, could not be considered the principle of the moral activity necessary for individuals, for society and for the human race. Moreover, even if we found affections on the same level and with the same nature in everyone, and free from the restrictions we have mentioned, we would still have to take account of their uncertain, tenuous power. Their weakness would be a matter for concern even if we did not abandon ourselves to their blind action, but subjected their impulses to the dictates of natural reason (which, without religion, is itself a limited, fallacious norm). Such affections could not resist our self-love for long, nor produce the great moral activity which comes from religion alone. Their sole effect would consist in some miserable, perhaps sterile, activity.
217. On the other hand, the sublime concept of God communicated to the human race by the Gospel has all the necessary characteristics to be, here on earth, the principle of an unlimited moral activity, especially when the principle is enlightened by grace. I shall make only a few observations to demonstrate this.
First of all, our moral judgment about God, granted we know him, must obviously respect him as an object of the greatest reverence and adoration. He is present to our mind as the absolute Being and therefore the source of being. The universe, which is nothing compared with him, receives its existence from him at every moment. We ourselves, tiny particles of the universe, would be doubly nothing if he did not communicate to us all that we are. Just as we receive being from him, so only from him can we expect the increase of our existence, that is, every perfection. And if he is our principle, he is also our end, the ocean and inexhaustible fount of good, of all the good that can be an object of our desire.
218. We have seen that the cause of all our movement is the desire for, and esteem of good. If our judgment about the supreme Being becomes practical, as religion requires it to be, the supreme Being must obviously become for us the end and reason of all our actions. The moral law, considered in its general concept but not yet applied to subsistent beings, does not command us to perform actions; it simply imposes the manner of their performance. But when we begin to apply the law to God, it reveals him as the source of positive obligations; it no longer commands or counsels only the manner of our actions but the actions themselves.
219. The supreme Being, therefore, both legislator and rewarder of those who do good, is the source of the most exquisite moral actions. When the law is applied to him, it almost seems to change nature, assuming a tone equally authoritative but more demanding. It does not say: `I leave you free to do, or not to do the actions; but when you do them, you must do them in conformity with the truth. It says: `Act with all your powers to attain the supreme Good.
Before we knew the supreme Good, it would have been difficult to understand how our actions could be made obligatory relative to both their manner and their being. As I have observed, there would seem to be no way of reconciling the principle of happiness with that of virtue, although we cannot renounce either one or the other. However, once the supreme Good is known, the law can command the actions themselves, not simply their manner of being, because the precept of directing our actions to the supreme Good remains perfectly in accord with our natural inclination to happiness.
220. We cannot say however that a similar precept arises from the inclination to happiness. In fact the precept arises uniquely from the force of what is true. If we note the process by which the precept reveals itself, we see how it draws all its obligating force from pure justice. As soon as we have known God directly, we must make the practical judgment that he is our supreme Good; the bare force of truth and pure justice oblige us to this judgment. Because he is our supreme Good, we must judge him to be so.
221. The discovery, in this judgment, of our supreme advantage is a consequence of the judgment, and does not constitute the explanation of or necessity for the judgment, which is right because it is true, not because it is useful. On the other hand, the infinite utility attached to the obligation simply renders its realization possible. Only religion, therefore, the holy and blessed concept of God, offered by Christianity, constitutes the sufficient principle of human moral activity.
222. For this reason the gospel formula, proclaimed as the formula which contains the first and supreme commandment, was pronounced by Christ in a positive, not a negative form. He commands actions to be done, not how they are done. Indeed he commands the greatest activity possible, drawing all human powers into movement. He says: `You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. You shall love your neighbour as yourself. (145)
It is now time to discuss the essence of right.
Notes
(145) Mt 22: [37, 39]. Here we must note that the command is to love God with all our mind, that is, with the act of willed acknowledgement of his supreme perfection and goodness. `With all our heart' expresses our spiritual affections. `With all our soul' means with our whole animal life at every moment of life. St. Mark [12: 30] and St. Matthew [St. Luke 10: 27] add `with all your strength' to recall what has been said in the preceding phrases and to indicate that every action of our life must be sacred to the supreme Being, and carried out with all the energy of our spirit. All this seems to recall the expression in Deuteronomy 4: [6: 4] `with all your might'. — Pagan philosophers, when they wanted to demonstrate the positive duty of benevolence which we have to others, had recourse to God as the common father of all (cf. Cicer. De Offic., bk. 3, c. 6).