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Society And its Purpose

Book 4 - Psychological Laws and the End of Civil Societies

CHAPTER 6

The objects which, because of their nature as real good,
can contribute to the production of human contentment

545. The first real good is existence. Those without it cannot desire it, but those who have it can desire its preservation. Desire for existence seems to be the greatest of all desires, because nothing is so much abhorred by a being as its own annihilation. However, it would be an error to deduce from this that pure, simple existence is the greatest human good. A human being who moves towards the state closest to non-existence is approaching the greatest of subjective evils. This fact does not prove that pure existence is the greatest good; on the contrary, it merely shows that existence is the least, most elementary and last remaining good. A beggar, for example, who has been refused alms is reduced to the greatest degree of poverty. Nevertheless the alms is on the one hand far from being the greatest wealth; on the other it is the smallest amount of money needed to keep the beggar one degree from extreme poverty.

546. What is the value of pure existence? Normally we say there is an infinite distance between being and non-being. But this is an error. Precisely because nothingness is nothing, human beings are unable to conceive it; they think of it as something infinitely small, and of existence as a finite quantity. Mathematicians normally posit an infinite distance between a finite quantity and the infinitely small, but this practice, carefully considered, means that in a finite quantity we can conceive an indefinite number of smaller quantities without the sum of these indefinitely multiplied quantities ever being equal to the given finite quantity within which they are conceived to exist.

To say that an indefinitely large number of small quantities can be assigned between a finite quantity and an infinitesimal amount differs greatly from saying that the difference between these two quantities is infinite. Granted that the difference contains even an infinite number of parts, these infinite parts will never amount to an infinite quantity, precisely because they are considered infinitesimally small. Hence, if we measure the difference between any two finite quantities, the unit of measure determines the difference expressed as a greater or smaller number of units. If the unit is very small, the difference gives us as high a number of units as we wish.

We see therefore that a difference in discrete quantity is not the same as one in continuous quantity. In the case of discrete quantity, the finite difference, no matter how small, can be divided into as many parts as we like, but the resulting indefinitely large number of parts never means that the difference is infinite. In the case of continuous quantity, the difference is not divided into parts: if the difference is finite, it is finite; if infinite, infinite. Hence, we must not say that the difference between something and nothing is infinite; we must say it is something. The good of this existence, therefore, is not infinite, but as limited as the existence itself.

547. Consequently, if we want to indicate correctly how good existence is for the being possessing it (for a non-existent being, existence is neither good nor evil) we must not consider pure, simple existence but existence together with all its acts. Properly speaking, `existence' indicates a mental abstraction and therefore nothing real. It is common to all beings without being any one of them; what is common cannot constitute a proper, particular being. If we seek the value of real entities, we must not consider abstract, common existence, but weigh the beings themselves, as it were, according to the different degrees of entity they have. As I have shown elsewhere, good is simply being:(255) to know the amount of good in a being, we must know how much being it has. Existence is common to all but the quantity of being varies in each. Thus the value of any particular being is as great as its degree of being.

548. We should not be surprised if there are certain kinds of beings which enjoy an infinitely greater, more noble degree of being and, therefore, in comparison with other kinds manifest a relatively infinite value. It would be a slur on human nature to claim that the difference in value between a human being and a beast is only a finite quantity, no matter how great the quantity. No quantity of horses or mules, however large, can equal the value of a single human being. The nobility and excellence of the human being excludes as unworthy all comparison with irrational natures. The difference is one of kind and constitutes a truly infinite distance between human beings and animals.

549. My present intention however is not to indicate the degree of good that different beings possess considered in themselves, but the good they have relative to their contentment, which applies only to rational beings. We must reconsider the good that human beings can possess and see how much this good contributes by its nature to their contentment.

The human being, even in a state of zero development, as in the first moments of his existence, is constituted by a naturally pleasant substantial feeling. Although the feeling of existence is naturally pleasant, it is not matter of contentment. This occurs only after the development of the intellective faculties of the will and of desires. I must therefore say something about the principal levels of development and show that as our faculties gradually develop, different appetitive objects appear in us. These are enfolded within the sphere of our desire (which grows continually and embraces what surrounds it), and finally, like ingredients, become mixed and fused in human contentment.

550. The stages of development of the human faculties are ascertained by observation of their successive acts. The principal diversity presented by these acts allows us to classify them into two great categories, namely, acts pertaining to a subjective way of acting, and acts pertaining to an objective way. This great diversity leads us to simplify the classification of human activities by reducing them all to two most general active principles, that of subjective and that of objective action.(256) We have to accept that the feeling of these two activities is included in the primitive feeling. Because the primitive feeling certainly has as its term the mode of our existence, it is the feeling of all we can possibly do and the first principle of our activity (although awareness of all this is absent from the feeling). Because the whole human being is feeling, his development is the development of a feeling, or at least, a development perpetually accompanied by a feeling.

551. What moves the feeling is desire and instinct, so that every human being develops through desires and instincts. Desire and instinct have good as their term. Hence, just as the active principles proper to human nature are two, so there must be two classes of good to which these principles tend. They can be called subjective and objective good.

Subjective good is that which enters the human subject as his very own, as an element or appurtenance of his nature. Objective good, on the other hand, is that which does not enter and become part of the subject; it is presented to and judged by the subject's understanding for what it is in itself, according to the degree of being it has.

Subjective good constitutes the order of eudaimonological good; objective good constitutes the two orders of intellectual and moral good.(257) Moral good has an intimate relationship with eudaimonological good, and leaves eudaimonological consequences, that is, produces subjective good in us, which is never complete without moral good.(258)

552. Subjective good can be classified as follows:

1. The two innate active principles are the initial subjective good. As long as they remain undeveloped in the first feeling without being moved, they constitute the least, most elementary human good, pure human existence. But natural, appropriate activity of the subject subsequently increases this subjective good. We can say therefore that `the amount of subjective good is the same as the subject's natural, appropriate activity', and that the greatest quantity of subjective good is to be found in the human being when, all things being equal, his natural, appropriate activity is greatest.

If we wish to discover the various kinds of subjective good which become present in the human being and to know their degree, we need only follow the development of the two principles we have mentioned; all the good of the human subject is contained in them as in a seed.

553. 2. As soon as the two principles become active through natural, appropriate activity, human beings have a pleasant feeling of their own activity. This lively pleasure, which strongly attracts their attention, lasts only a short time because the activity itself is short-lived. This is explained by the human limitation we have already mentioned: no human second act can be continuous in our present state. In the present life we are a power that attains its full activity by an almost unnatural effort only to return immediately to our first state of potency.

554. These momentary enjoyments experienced with transient acts must be considered a second type of subjective good, divisible into three kinds:

1. Pleasant animal sensations.

2. Pleasing intellectual feelings, that is, the pleasure experienced in the actual conception and contemplation of things and in the effects derived from this.

3. Moral feelings, which draw their immense attraction from the practice of virtue.

The first kind contains subjective good with a subjective origin; the second and third, subjective good with an objective origin, that is, the effect in the subject is produced by the possession of objective good.

555. 3. Although the act that explains human potential activity is transient, it leaves some traces and some good or bad stable effects. After every act therefore we are different from what we were previously; we are in a better or worse state.

556. A careful investigation of all the effects left in us by the different acts we perform would call for a profound work of most delicate philosophy; the thinker's mind would be swamped by the most demanding investigations. These effects and modifications touch particularly upon eudaimonological and moral teaching and especially on all that concerns our final destiny, the Creator's great designs for us and the vast corpus of ontology. However, the immediate subject of this book does not permit such extensive investigations, which pertain to a knowledge still hidden from the world. We will limit ourselves to a classification of the permanent effects left in us by our acts. The only method suitable for our present purpose is to consider them as classes of subjective good, as follows:

557. a) The first effects produced in the state of the subject by his own initial acts are the powers he manifests. Previously, these powers had lain indistinct and quiescent in the depth of the two original principles of action which can never be confused and unified; afterwards, the powers become distinct.(259)

558. b) The powers are exercised according to a certain fixed order explained by their own nature, by the nature of the beings outside of and related to them, and by accidental circumstances.

The products and effects of this exercise of our human powers are, in addition to the momentary feelings we have discussed:

1. habitual feelings,

2. cognitions preserved in the treasury of the memory.

3. persuasions and opinions.(260) Habitual feelings, permanent cognitions, and opinions and persuasions greatly modify our spirit for good or evil. The actual result depends upon the pleasantness or unpleasantness of our feelings, the truth or falsity of our cognitions, and the virtues or malice of our persuasions.

559. c) But the series of effects does not finish here. Nothing is static in the human being; everything evolves. Every effect produces other effects.

Every feeling produces a corresponding instinct; in other words, every passivity gives rise to an activity. Thus, for every new feeling we have, a new instinct manifests itself in us. Similarly, every cognition can generate an affection, and the different groups of cognitions we form, especially those associated with feelings, produce a huge variety of affections. The same can be said about opinions and persuasions, which are more effective in producing human affections than individual, bare cognitions.(261)

Affections, which can be considered as feelings, also generate corresponding instincts, that is, they give leverage to the spontaneity of the will. This power of the will called spontaneity increases in energy and undergoes, as it were, new developments according to the variety of the affections generated in us.(262)

Cognitions, besides being the cause of new affections associated with opinions and feelings, produce and leave in the human spirit a noble effect; they add to the will a freedom of action as extensive as the sphere of the cognitions themselves.(263)

None of these effects, whether direct or indirect, lacks its own feeling which greatly enlarges or restricts, that is, modifies in various ways the state of the human spirit.

560. d) In the developments I have indicated we see an increase in the amount of human activity. But we must bear in mind what I said earlier, namely, that in the first moments of human existence everything is in potency, nothing in action. The human being would remain for ever inactive, resting peacefully in existence, like a baby in its mother's womb, unless external causes provoked its universal potentiality to particular acts. By means of particular acts, our potentiality rises as it were from a deep abyss into which it falls back when the acts cease, but not as deeply as before.

When provoked to action a second time, it does not have to come from such a depth; it is nearer to and more alert as for action. Finally it rises and remains ready to respond without delay or effort to the least invitation, which it even seems to anticipate. When human activity has become as agile and alert as this relative to a vast number of important actions, human strength is immensely amplified. We and our powers remain the same, but an incalculable difference exists between our unmoved powers and those in vibrant movement directed to great activity. Our human strength must no longer be measured by our powers but by the amount of activity they have acquired for our use, just as a State's wealth must be measured not by treasure hidden underground but by capital in circulation. We have to distinguish potential actuation from mere potency. An individual's and a society's total activity are proportionate to the former, not the latter.

561. e) The activity we are discussing, which we feel and greatly enjoy, must also be distinguished from habits of action, another effect remaining in us after our transient actions.

It is true that `habit' is given different meanings, including that of inclination or tendency to act; we say, for example, that anyone in the habit of doing something has difficulty not doing it. In this sense, habit is simply a species of the activity we have just mentioned, distinguished by restlessness and impatience to act, so that finally it must come to action. But this readiness for action is an effect that often follows habit; it is not habit itself. In my opinion, habit consists in a `proximate power to act'; its two characteristics are the knowledge or ability, and the facility to act. A person could have the facility without having the will to act. For example, an artist does not always feel inclined to paint. He has the habit of painting but lacks the activity we are discussing. Habits, therefore, as I define them, are different from activity, which is alert and tending always to act.

562. Undoubtedly this activity and a habit normally arise together as consequences and effects of repeated acts. This explains why they are confused. Repeated acts generate in us the habit to act, that is, the knowledge and facility for action. At the same time they leave in us the inclination to act. Then, confusing them, we make the two into one and call it `habit'. Nevertheless clarity of ideas requires that the two be distinguished.

563. Activity is not exclusively restricted to a particular class of acts; it simply gives the measure of the quantity of action present in an individual or society. Habit, on the other hand, is always restricted to a class or group of particular acts which excludes other acts. It indicates the quality not the quantity of action, the mode not the amount of action of an individual or society. Properly speaking, every habit can be described as an art of performing particular actions. Antiquity fittingly defined `arts' `as habits of action drawn from experience'.(264) All human powers, by means of their controlled exercise, clothe themselves as it were in their own habits which modify the state of the human spirit where they are retained as different arts.

564. If we prefer to reduce human powers to the three classes of animal, intellectual and moral powers, we can classify all arts into three categories: 1. mechanical, 2. intellectual (such as logic, etc.), and 3. moral.

Fine arts are mixed, that is, intellectual-mechanical.

Moral arts are good or bad habits called virtues or vices.

No one should be surprised when I say that vices themselves are arts because arts of doing evil can and certainly do exist. Human malice does not reveal itself solely in individual acts; it abuses intelligence and cunningly reduces itself to knowledge and art, a truly devilish work.

Moral habits of virtues differ from mechanical and intellectual habits. In particular moral habits differ by necessarily including a certain degree of the activity which I have previously distinguished from habits, and which really remains completely separate in the other kinds of habits (mechanical, intellectual and mixed). Virtue would not be virtue if it were not active, and human beings would not be virtuous if they did not do what they have to do.

565. There is another notable difference between moral habits and all other habits, when the former are connected with merit.(265) Moral habits become meritorious acts by a free decree of the human being. All other habits can become act only when moved by the spontaneity of the will;(266) true, absolute freedom does not appear in human beings except contemporaneously with moral merit. Properly speaking, we can say that we pass from the sphere of spontaneous to free action only when we are free from the restrictions of what is subjective and reach a point where we must choose between subjective and objective good.

566. 4. The entire development described in nos. 1, 2 and 3 can be considered the work of the instincts and of the spontaneity of the will up to the last stage where the human being enters the moral sphere, and his action becomes fully free. From what has been said we see that the developments of human potentiality, considered solely within the sphere of spontaneity, are vast. They all leave their firm, quasi-indelible imprint in the human being, together with a particular feeling which modifies and disposes the human spirit in various ways, and all sow the seed of increased human power and nature. All effects cause other effects, which become more intricate, act on each other and indefinitely reproduce themselves.

567. Nevertheless, the most sublime and extensive action of all, the action pertaining to the human person, is that which comes from human freedom and is essentially moral. I have shown that in every free human act there is a quantity of action greater than in all possible spontaneous acts.(267) The free act takes the human being outside his own circle as subject, making him arbiter between all that is subjective and the rest of being in all its extension; in other words, he becomes arbiter between the finite and the infinite, between himself and God. We should not be surprised therefore that this sublime, most powerful principle of action, called freedom, is physically master and ruler of all other human spontaneous principles of action.(268) Indeed, we can say that this one principle of action, freedom, informs all human power and activity, because in it alone is the true activity of person.(269)

568. This truth provides the very important consequence that the greatest subjective good or, more accurately, the only subjective good of the human person, lies in the use of human freedom, that is, in the domain of morality. We have in fact said that `the quantity of subjective good is always that of the natural, appropriate activity of the subject; consequently the greatest natural, appropriate activity in the subject is the subject's greatest good.'(270) But the greatest activity of nature, and the sole activity of person, consists in the use of freedom. The natural, appropriate use of freedom is, therefore, the greatest subjective human good and the sole good of the human person. But moral virtue consists in the natural, appropriate use of freedom. Therefore the maximum good of human nature, and of the human person, is moral virtue.

569. If we understand this, we should not be surprised that virtue fills the human spirit with the sweetest habitual feelings, with heavenly joy and with new, intimate and mysterious pleasure. Although the effects and modifications imparted to our spirit by constant virtue may be hidden and deep, they are sufficiently evident to assure us that we possess internally something more noble and excellent than the material universe, something more precious than limited things, more permanent than what is transient, and more powerful than anything that is not God himself. A fine intellect wrote very truly that `uprightness of heart and habitual purity of intention have influence and results that extend much further than we commonly think.' Having arrived at this sublime good of the subject, we are at the point where subjective and objective good touch and unite without ever becoming confused.

570. Generally speaking, objective good is every being conceived by our understanding in so far as the being is. The sublime objective good we are discussing, which unites with the greatest subjective good, is being in the fullest and proper sense of the word. Being, as light to the mind, is truth; as willed without limit or arbitrary exclusions, it is the object of virtue. Finally, in so far as being communicates itself fully to humans, it becomes the form of their beatitude.

571. The understanding attains truth and participates in light in varying degrees. Similarly the will adheres to unlimited being and acquires merit and virtue in varying degrees. In spite of these limitations and provided the intellect is not adverse to truth in any way, nor the will adverse to entity, the human being is upright in mind and heart, possesses truth and good, and enjoys the naturally eternal, immutable happiness, matchless in value, which truth and good ineffably impart to the human spirit.

572. It is certain, therefore, that in human nature there exists a natural, intimate will whose object, or at least whose purpose, is this absolute good. Free will can oppose but not destroy this will of human nature. The will is a power tending to good, and every objective and subjective good is ultimately absorbed in absolute good.

573. Kant based morality on the natural will for absolute good. By giving legislative authority to this human will, which receives but does not make law,(271) he abused a great truth. Plato, who had seen and stated the truth, risked falling into a serious error caused by his difficulty in explaining how human beings, whose nature wills moral good, could then will to choose evil.(272) No philosophical school understood better than the Stoics this natural will that human beings have for virtue; no school spoke so nobly of it. We can say that in antiquity only the Stoics saw that virtue consisted `in making the will of the human person fully agree with the will of human nature,' although they did not arrive at making this philosophical formula their moral teaching. A passage from Arrian's critique of Epictetus' teaching is sufficient proof of what I am saying. Arrian shows that only virtuous human beings can be called free because only they, like freemen, do what they want, granted that the natural human will wants virtue not vice:

This excellent argument is based entirely on the principle that human beings have a natural will directing them to be virtuous, although passions may indeed pervert them, prevent them from satisfying their superior will, and almost force them to do what they do not want.

Notes

(255) Cf. PE, 21-42.

(256) Cf. AMS, 839-846.

(257) Cf. PE, 69-113.

(258) Cf. 179-203 of this work.

(259) In my opinion, only the two principles of action I have discussed are innate. In AMS, I showed how the principles of action differ from the powers, and that the latter are not innate but arise from the depth of the developing human soul. Cf. 839-846.

(260) It is most important to distinguish simple cognition from persuasion, and the faculty of knowledge from the faculty of persuasion and opinion. I discussed these necessary distinctions in OT, 402-405 and CE, 1044-1047, 1335-1362, to which I refer the reader.

(261) Cf. AMS, 630-635.

(262) My teaching about the spontaneity of the will is found in AMS, 419-425, 612-635.

(263) AMS, 546-548.

(264) The only difference I can see between habit and art is that art presupposes that the person exercising it possesses reason; habit can also be proper to animals. A canary that has been taught music can sing, by instinctive habit, what a human beings sings by both instinctive and reasoning habit. The action performed by the canary also comes from reason - not the bird's but the creator's.

(265) I have already shown that moral good can exist without actual merit. All moral good is present in heaven, but those in heaven do not merit because they lack the freedom of indifference (cf. AMS, 865-889.

(266) Cf. AMS, 560-566.

(267) Cf. AMS, ibid.

(268) Cf. AMS, 644-649.

(269) Cf. AMS, 854-864.

(270) Cf. chap. 4.

(271) Cf. the examination of Kant's system in Storia comparativa de' sistemi morali, c. 5, art. 11-12.

(272) Aristotle in fact attributes to Plato the error `of denying that human beings can willingly be evil.' Here, as in many other places, Aristotle, I think, unjustly censors his master. When Plato says human beings cannot willingly be bad, he is only affirming what the Stoics held, that is, human beings, in acting badly, act against the natural will and therefore act like slaves. - However, this does not mean that human beings are unable to make themselves slaves or free people, to obey or disobey their natural will. Such a teaching by no means destroys free will; on the contrary, it helped the Stoics to exaggerate its power. Finally I must note that the natural will to which Plato and the Stoics refer is a virtual rather than an habitual or actual will, just as the idea of virtue is virtually included in the idea of good.

(273) Epicteti Dissertationum ab Arriano digestarum, bk. 4.

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