Walter Farrell, O.P., A Companion to the Summa, Volume II

CHAPTER IV -- HAPPINESS AND MORALITY
(Q. 18-21)

1. Comparison of physical and moral goodness and evil:    (a) Roots of morality.    (b) A definition of morality.    (c) Rules of morality:     (1) Proximate rule -- reason.     (2) Ultimate rule -- the eternal law.2. Sources of modern attack on morality:    (a) The identification of the real and the tangible.    (b) Rejection of a personal end of man.    (c) Attack on authority -- graduated according to authority attacked:     (1) Divine authority.     (2) Ecclesiastical authority.     (3) Civil authority.     (4) Paternal or domestic authority.    (d) Conclusion to a morality that is irrational or more logically though more rarely, toamorality.3. Morality of human action in general:    (a) Sources of morality:     (1) Object of action.     (2) End of action.     (3) Circumstances of action.    (b) Acts good, evil or indifferent in themselves.4. Morality of human actions in particular:    (a) Intrinsic acts -- meaning of "good will":     (1) Dependence of this goodness:         a. On the object; part played by intention.         b. On the rules of morality.     (2) Sole norm of bad will.     (3) Conformity with the will of God.    (b) Extrinsic or commanded acts:      (1) A double standard of morality.      (2) Interraction of these standards.      (3) Moral significance:         a. Of external acts.         b. Of the result of an action.5. Consequences of goodness and evil in human activity:    (a) Sin and virtue.     (b) Praise and blame.     (c) Merit and demerit. Conclusion:1. Place of morality:    (a) In the order of nature.     (b) In the nature of man.     (c) With reference to religion.2. Impossibility of escape from morality.3. Morality and the pursuit of happiness.

CHAPTER IV
HAPPINESS AND MORALITY
(Q. 18-21)

It is always disconcerting for human nature to discover reality where only the stuff of dreams wasexpected. A man who was dreaming that he was present at the Deluge, and wakes up expecting tostretch luxuriously in the enjoyment of a warm, comfortable bed, only to discover that the roof isleaking and he is being thoroughly drenched, is disconcerted. So is the man who dreamed aboutburglars, only to awake to a ransacked house. When we have nicely classified something amongthe intangible and unimportant material of dreams we like to have it stay that way. A littleidiosyncrasy of ours, perhaps, but one that will make the subject-matter of this chapter decidedlydisconcerting.

Comparison of physical and moral goodness and evil

It has been quite a fashion these last years to contrast the physical and moral much as we wouldthe real and the unreal: the physical is the strong, undeniable, dependable order of the natural;while the moral is in the class of the fluttering subjective or the intangible supernatural.

Let us look honestly at the two. Physical goodness is not hard to understand A blind cat has notas much physical goodness as a cat with two good eyes, because it lacks something that a catshould have, that we can reasonably demand of a cat. So, in a very tense moment of a cat show,the decision of the judges must hinge on which of the contestants has all that a cat should have.The absence of wings will not affect that decision a bit; a cat just does not have wings, and thelack of them is no reflection on the cat. Our norm of physical goodness, then, is correspondenceto the demands of a particular nature.

We can put this more profoundly by looking at what gives a cat, or anything else, what it shouldhave, considering its nature. Hit fatally by an automobile, the cat in question ceases to have anyof the perfections of a cat. So with a man, death robs him of the perfections due to human nature. He may make a wonderful corpse, astoundingly natural in appearance, but in appearanceonly. His soul, the principle bringing him his specific perfections, is gone. So the form or soul of acat is the source of the physical goodness of the cat. When the cat has all the perfections itsform can give, it is a perfect cat; it lacks goodness, or suffers evil, in so far as it lacks any ofthose perfections due to the form proper to cats. All this holds true of everything in the order ofnature, indeed, in the order of reality. It is our knowledge of these natural forms, or essences, that enables us to judge between the physical good and evil.

If we apply all this to actions, we shall find an exact parallel. A horse's act of eating is good in sofar as it has all we can expect of such an act, in so far as it measures up to that principle whichgives it its perfection and makes it stand out as different from all other actions. Concretely, in sofar as it does what eating is supposed to do, that is, nourish the animal, the act is good. The formof an act, the perfecting principle, which marks it as different from all others, is the object of thatact; just as a motion is marked out as different from all other motions, by the goal or object ofthat motion. The goodness of an act, then, is judged in relation to its form. We are still in the physical, undeniably natural order; and, as is evident, the same principles that determine thephysical goodness or evil of a thing as tangible as a cat or a mountain, determine the physicalgoodness or evil of an action in that same physical order.

Roots of morality

To step into the moral order means no more than to step into the order of human actions. Thequery concerning their moral goodness or evil is no more than a query as to the goodness or evilprecisely as human. Just as all other actions are judged good or bad in the light of their form,specifying principle or object, so also human actions are similarly judged in the light of their form,or object. The difference lies in this: the human action, precisely as human, is a controlled action,an action that is aimed, an action put forth under the guiding hand of reason. So the object ofhuman action is an object responding to that principle of reasonable control.

In other words, a human actions like all other actions, indeed like all other things, is good or badaccording as it has all it should have, or lacks something that belongs to it. To say that itsgoodness is moral is merely to insist that its goodness is human. To speak of human action, freeaction, or moral action, is to speak of exactly the same thing. Whenever a man places anunreasonable action, he places an immoral action. Driving along a mountain road and deliberatelyturning off over a precipice instead of following the road, a man has placed a morally evil action,because that action did not measure up to the object of human action, the object understood andaimed at by reason, even though the quick turn off may have been a clever bit of manipulation ofan automobile.

There is no distinction between the real and the moral order; things moral are just as real asthings physical, in fact more so. Their roots are buried in the same metaphysical beginnings ofthought and being which make the truth and goodness of each a matter of exact proportion totheir existence or being. Morality is not the ghostly door through which the sleepwalker passesunhindered, but the solid barrier that will wake him up with a crash if he bumps into it.

A definition of morality

Morality, quite simply, is nothing more than the relation of a human action to its proper object, toits object as a human or moral object. One goat may butt into another, looking very much like onefootball player butting into another; but the acts are quite different, for one is human, the other isthe act of a goat. One was placed in view of the end; the other was not. One has a moral object,the other has not.

Rules of morality: Proximate rule -- reason

The determination of the rule of morality is then ridiculously easy. The rule of goodness for a cat,a mountain, or a horse's dinner was the form of each of those things; the exemplar, the perfectingprinciple, which made them stand out from all others and to which they measured up. The same istrue of the rule of human or moral actions: it will be their form, that which makes them stand outfrom all others as different. We have already seen that actions are human in so far as they arecontrolled; it is this which makes the difference between a man's hat being blown off and beingthrown away at a football game. It is reason which aims human actions, which makes themhuman. The determining principle of goodness or evil then involves the principle of control; it isthe end known and aimed at by reason. Reason is the immediate rule of morality.

Ultimate rule -- the eternal law

The human reason is not a magician at the wave of whose magic wand morality comes intoexistence. It is a decidedly workman-like faculty whose job is to know and command. To cast it inthe role of creator, as principle author of morality, is a silly contradiction of facts. Rather, therealization of just what reason is and does, indicates immediately that behind it is the first cause ofmorality, as behind the howl of the tornado is the first cause of all physical things. Behind humanreason stands divine reason. To measure up to the rule of morality which is human reason, meansto measure up to that supreme rule of morality -- divine reason -- which is mirrored in our owncreated reason.

Going back to that poor cat before it was hit by an automobile, no one of us makes the mistake ofthinking the form, the soul, of that cat created the cat, even though here and now it was themeasuring rod of the cat's physical goodness. Behind it was the eternally enduring essence or formexisting in the mind of the creator, the eternally true exemplar by imitation of which the createdform or essence was set up as the norm of feline perfection. So behind every created thing is thedivine architect's model of that thing, the ultimate criterion of its truth, its goodness, itsperfection. Behind every action, behind every human action; is that same array of plans in themind of the divine architect; for action, and human action, belong in the real order and demand thesame explanation as everything else in that real order.

Morality, then, is not something of caprice, not even of divine caprice; but part of the essentialtruth of things. It is just as impossible for anyone to make an essentially bad action good as it is tomake the essence of a cat the essence of a donkey. Morality has the same solid roots, the sameinviolable nature as the earth on which we walk.

All this is disconcerting, for it puts our modern world in the position of the little boy stoutlydenying he ate the jam in spite of the generous layer of jam on his face. Our modern attack onmorality is an attack on fundamental facts that simply will not be denied; and it is only by theexercise of mental gymnastics worthy of a madhouse that we can even imagine we are denyingthose facts.

Sources of modern attack on morality: The identification of the real and the tangible

Because the attack is against fundamentals, the root of our modern scoffing at morality go back tofundamentals. One of the earliest roots, and one which is rapidly dying today through the advanceof scientific discovery and consequently of scientific humility, was the identification of the real andthe tangible or sensible. If the only real things were those which could be weighed, measured, cutup, used as subjects in a laboratory, then of course morality did not belong to the real order. Forno one has as yet stumbled over morality in the dark or preserved it in alcohol. Unfortunately thisalso included loyalty, friendship, love, beauty, wetness and a host of other things that the worldhas always insisted were realities of no mean proportions.

Rejection of a personal end of man

Much more to the fore today is the rejection of a personal end of man. This rejection has takenvarious forms, subjecting the human individual variously to a mechanical, biological, orsociological process in which he is merely filling a gap. Whatever its form, it immediately doesaway with the necessity of morality by doing away with humanity. The precise mark of humanaction is control, the aiming of action; where there is nothing to aim at, it is silly to spend timecorrecting the sights of a rifle. Since human action and moral action are the same thing, theremoval of humanity from an action is an effective squelching of morality in that action.

Attack on authority: Divine authority, ecclesiastical authority, civil authority, paternal ordomestic authority.

An older, but still strongly enduring source of this modern attack on morality is the attack onauthority. It really should not be an attack on morality at all; in fact it can be such only bymisunderstanding what and where morality is. From what we have seen, the essential moralitydoes not depend on authority, even on the authority of God; but on the same foundations fromwhich the physical order has its stability. But the notion somehow got around that human beingswere moral because they were told to be so, because they were little children ordered about by asomewhat tyrannical parent; a lessening of the authority of that parent, then, was understood as aloosening of the reins of morality. So step by step we staggered down the ladder of authority.First, divine authority and that of the Church which claimed divine authority was rejected; thenthe authority of churches which admitted they had no divine authority. The next reigning authoritywas that of the State; from there only two more steps were possible -- to the paternal or groupauthority of the family and to the completely subjectivistic authority of the individual himself. Atevery one of these steps some men and women have stopped. You will find those who trace theirmorality to themselves, to social approval or tradition, to civil law, to dictates of ecclesiasticalauthority; and you will find others who have rejected all of these one by one until their theoreticalmorals consist in the arduous task of pleating themselves.

Conclusion to a morality that is irrational or more logically though more rarely, toamorality*pThis does not mean that the modern world has gone immoral. Not at all. Very often theproponents of these particular varieties of morality are themselves living up to a very high moralstandard. What it does mean is that the modern world should have gone immoral. Topropose a moral theory side by side with the contention that morality is not real, that man has noindividual purpose or goal to his life, or that morality is mercy somebody else's dictum, is absurd.It is unreasonable; it will not stand any searching criticism; it simply does not measure up to thefacts. Building on such fundamentals, or lack of fundamentals, the really reasonable thing, thereally rational conclusion, would be amorality -- denial of morality. Or, briefly; we arc in theposition of the boy with jam on his face; we are caught with morality in our very make-up nomatter how loudly we may deny it. Our attack has been against a straw man; if we bend overclosely enough to make sure the enemy is dead enough to justify a shout of victory, we cannot butdiscover he was stuffed with straw.

Morality of human action in general: Sources of morality, object of action.

To discover the immediate sources of morality it is necessary merely to look closely at any humanaction. Take such a very ordinary thing as eating a meal. If we analyse that action, we obtain anaccurate idea of what contributes to the human or moral goodness of dining. We will find that thisaction, and every human action, has three parts and from each part some morality can flow. Nomatter who eats the dinner, what the diners capacity, or who pays the bill, the natural object of adinner is to repair the tissue burnt up by the expenditure of energy during the day. That is whatdinners are for, that is the reasonable object, the end known and aimed at by reason. It issomething quite independent of the individual diner; something universally true of all dinners thatjustly claim the name.

End of action

The second part of the human action lies in the purpose or intention of the agent. Perhaps a man isdining merely for sociability's sake -- "he isn't a bit hungry"; perhaps because he wants just onemore dinner before going to the electric chair so that the pangs of indigestion will mane himforget everything else; perhaps he is so stuffed with food that one more bite will fill him and hehas chosen this novel form of suicide. Whatever his purpose, it can go beyond that which naturallyand essentially belongs to the dinner as such.

Circumstances of action

The third part of the human action is made up of the circumstances -- the neighbourhood of ahuman act which must be letdown for the complex story of human goodness or evil. For instance,a man might carry his lunch to the opera and eat it between the acts; he might go at his dinner alittle too ardently; he might eat it at midnight knowing it is going to keep him awake all night; andso on.

Acts good, evil or indifferent in themselves

At any rate, considering these three elements of a human action, we have considered allpossibilities; there is nothing else that enters into a human action. What morality, what humangoodness or evil there is in an act, must come from these three sources. The first of these, thereasonable object of the act itself, gives the essential, necessary goodness or evil which willalways and under all circumstance cling to the act. So theft's object is to take unjustly whatbelongs to another; that distinguishes it from all other human actions, good or bad, makes itessentially in all times and under all circumstances an act which is essentially bad, or bad in itself.The object is an intrinsic form giving the act its moral nature; to compare this form, giving theaction moral life, to reason, giving the action humanity, is like comparing the form constituting ahouse distinct from all others, to the architect's conception according to which the house is built.As these objects, these internal forms constituting the moral essence of human actions, are good,bad or indifferent so also are the acts. In more concrete terms, according as the objects of theseacts lead to the end or goal set by reason, they are good; as they lead away from or impede theattaining of that goal, they are bad; if they contribute nothing one way or another in themselves,they are indifferent. A kind act is always good in itself; an unjust act is always bad in itself; takinga walk is in itself indifferent.

Over and above this essential goodness or evil of the human action in itself, there is the moralityadded by the end or intention of the one acting. I can give a poor man five dollars in order toenlist him in the ranks of crime; I can murder a dictator in vindication of my democratic principleor I can take a walk in order to induce a heart attack. And in all these cases some added moralityhas come through my immediate purpose, regardless of the natural end of the individual acts inthemselves.

Something like the effect a neighbourhood has on the desirability of a home, of the effect clotheshave on the appearance of a man, is the effect of circumstances on the morality of an act. They areaccidents, adornments or disfigurements; they may play as vastly different roles as a drop ofperfume or a misstep plays in the magnificent entrance of a society leader. They may make an actbetter or worse, more serious or less so; but they leave the act essentially intact. When they donot, when they actually change the moral species of an act, they have given up the secondary roleof circumstance and stepped into the stellar role of object. The fact that the man who receives ablow is a bishop may be only an added circumstance in one sense, making only an accidentaldifference; but over and above the essentially unjust nature of this act, is the added affront toreligious reverence that gives the act an entirely new nature.

Morality of human actions in particular

All this is very much like scattering the insides of an automobile over the floor of a garage andsaying proudly to the owner: "Well that's what takes" you from New York to Los Angeles." Theowner might reasonably reply: "Yes, and that's what's going to take you from automobilerepairing to piano tuning if you don't get it together again." We have taken the human action apartto examine its goodness and evil. But we must now put it together again to see how it drivestoward good or wanders off after evil.

In the process of reassembling the inner parts of the human action we come upon friends from aformer chapter. Among others there are those acts of the will which precede actual externalaction, that enter intimately into the making up of our minds and always precede the execution ofour purposes -- intention, consent, election or choice.

Intrinsic acts -- meaning of "good will"

All of these flow immediately from the will and are produced without the help of clever fingers orstumbling feet. They are elicited by the will in contrast to the outside acts that are executed underthe force of command coming radically from the will. Where do they fit in the scheme of morality?

They should play a very important part. After all, good and evil are the direct business of the will.It is the job of the feet to walk, of the ears to hear, of the intellect to understand; but it is the will'sexclusive task to be engaged with good and evil. This division of good and evil is the properdivision of the actions of the will. Put in another way, the end or goal of activity is the properobject of the will; and a thing is good or bad precisely because of its relation to that goal or end ofactivity.

Dependence of this goodness: On the object; part played by intention

One phrase of that last sentence is particularly important: the proper object of the will is the endor goal of activity. It is important because it greatly simplifies the question of the morality of theseintrinsic or elicited acts of our rational appetite. To determine whether my almsgiving was goodor bad, it was necessary to consider not only the natural purpose of almsgiving but also myintention in giving the alms. But in determining the essential value of these intrinsic acts of the willthat is not necessary. In these intrinsic acts, the purpose of the one acting and the purpose of theact itself always coincide -- the proper object of the will is precisely the end or goal intended. Wegive a person credit for his good intentions, and rightly so; not in the sense that such an intentionjustifies everything a man does, but it does at least justify the intention. The inner form, thespecifying principle, that which marks this act of the will off from all others, is at the same timethe object of this inner act and the end of the agent -- they are one and the same thing.

On the rules of morality

This does not mean that we are setting up the will as a swashbuckling king who can do no wrong.It can do wrong; in fact it is the fountain source of evil as well as good. It is not an independentcreator of morality, making good whatever attracts it, as Midas made whatever he touched intogold. Its goodness or evil is to be judged by the same rules that determine the morality of everyother human action, i.e., first and immediately by the rule of reason.

The inner form which gives the intrinsic acts of the will their morality must be set alongside theouter form, the exemplar, to see how it measures up. That outer form, that architect's conception,is reason's knowledge and judgment of the human object of this or any other act. I intend to helpmy neighbour and that intention is morally specified by its object or end; but that end is goodbecause it measures up to the rule of reason declaring that such an object leads a man to the goalof human life. On the contrary I intend to injure my neighbour; again the morality is determined bythe inner form and it is bad because it does not measure up to the rule of reason, because reasondeclares such an act leads a man away from the goal of human life.

Sole norm of bad will

The sole standard by which men of good will can be distinguished from men of bad will is the ruleof morality, which is reason. Reason proposing a good end to the will does not make that willgood or bad; but the will is good if its acts are in agreement with that reason, they are bad in sofar as they violate that rule. It is in acting against an end proposed by reason as good, or intendingan end proposed by reason as evil, that the will is bad.

Conformity with the will of God

A good grasp of this notion takes all the trickery out of the difficult task of conforming our will tothe will of God. A special revelation of God's intentions is not necessary; it is not necessary thatwe have a blueprint of all the detailed devices of divine Providence; we do not have to spendagonizing hours on our knees trying to discover if this is or is not the will of God. We have onlyto follow our reason. The human reason does not make up the moral values. The unchangeablemoral essences are not the product of human but of divine understanding, they are naturallyknown, accurate mirrorings of the divine plans ready to hand for every man and woman withoutthe laborious pacing of the corridors of eternity. In this or that particular thing God and ourselvesmay be at odds without our realizing it -- we pray very earnestly, for example, for someone'shealth when as a matter of fact renewed health would be the means by which he would make afailure of the life he is now prepared to end so successfully. The difference, the disagreement withthe will of God is merely material; formally, our ends are God's ends if our ends are the ends ofreason.

All this will perhaps become more clear when we look at the acts intrinsic to and commanded bythe will, walking down the highways of life arm in arm. Of course they always do take their strollsin just that fashion when the commanded act appears at all. And with astounding results. Formerfriends may snub the commanded act unmercifully when they see his companion; or on anotherday, the commanded act may receive salutations from the influential who would not notice himalone, or would pay him only the almost unconscious tributes given to creatures on a lowerstratum.

Extrinsic or commanded acts: A double standard of morality.

The commanded act, by reason of its own proper object and so of its own moral essence, is goodor bad in itself. No matter what the intention with which it promenades, this goodness or badnessremains intact. If the commanded act is itself indifferent, it will be good or bad according to theintention, the end aimed at.

Recently, walking up Lexington Avenue, I came to Fifty-Ninth Street and, inevitably, met the"sandwich men" stooping under their enthusiastic placards. Usually these people are quiteindifferent to the world surging past them: eyes blank, or vague with dreaming of a hot cup ofcoffee, hopeful with the approach of the end of their long vigil. But this particular night one stoodout, a young Italian girl, perhaps eighteen years old with that madonna-like beauty that is almostan Italian heritage. She stood absolutely motionless, facing downtown, her eyes tightly closed andwith an agony of unutterable shame stamped on her face. Realizing that her tightly locked eyealone prevented a flood of scalding tears, one could appreciate the sublime courage and desperatenecessity that drove her through the long hours of her shame. And it was not hard to form an ideaof how the virgin martyrs of early Christendom or the modern martyrs among the nuns of Spainmust have looked enduring theirs martyrdom.

Interraction of these standards

The object and moral essence of almsgiving is good. The act is good in itself. But if from a strainof sadistic crudity a man approached that girl and offered her a coin, the almsgiving would havebeen horribly bad. Theft is bad; if, seeing this girl, a man thought how nicely she could use athousand dollars and so went into the department store on the corner and somehow stole athousand dollars with the best of intentions, the act would still be bad. Looking or not looking ata human being is a morally indifferent act; but to stop and stare at this girl to enjoy her miserywould be bad; to tear one's eyes away in a rush of pity would be good.

Moral significance: Of external acts

As a matter of fact, all this can be morally complete without anything being done for the world tosee. My intention to torment the girl, followed by my decision to give her a coin might stop rightthere; and morally the case is complete as I have just outlined it. Does the actual giving of thealms add anything to the sin already committed? Over and above the damage such external actionmight do (as in the case of theft) each external sin at least adds a note of intensity, fixing the willin its determination to go through with the act; the very doing of the act extends the wholeactivity of the will over a longer period; and sometimes it actually increases the number of theseacts of the will. A timid burglar intends to humiliate his competitors by a huge theft and decideson a particular victim. Later he weakens and gives up the idea; but the next night his couragecomes back and he enjoys a very successful evening. He has committed two sins of burglary,though getting only one bit of loot.

Of the result of an action

Looking back for a moment, we see the sources of morality as the object of the human act, theend of the man acting, the circumstances under which the act is placed and the external executionof the act; all play their part, and their success or failure is judged by the strict critic reason. Butthat is not quite the last act; we cannot ring down the curtain until the consequences of thatexternal act have made their bow.

An aviator soaring over New York suddenly become bored with just riding around and decides toend the ride right there. If he jumps out depending on his parachute to land him safely, he has noright to indignation when a policeman arrests him for the murder of the people his crashing planehas killed. On the other hand, a joke told at a banquet with such success that a listener swallowshis false teeth and dies does not mean that the wit has committed murder. Effects that naturally,necessarily or even usually follow from an action are intimately connected with it and cannot bedisowned as so many illegitimate children. But effects that happen once in a lifetime, or that noone could foresee, have no claim on the heritage of good or evil left by the act itself.

Consequences of goodness and evil in human activity: Sin and virtue, Praise and blame, Meritand demeritPOur modern repugnance to the word "sin" is nothing short of absurd when taken in connectionwith our modern insistence on right and wrong, our judicial paraphernalia, our uplift societies andofficial reformers. A human act is humanly wrong when it is unreasonable, when it does notconform to the rule of reason; it is right when it does. Ant that is exactly what is meant by sin andacts of virtue. This or that is a sin precisely because it conflicts with reason; it is good andvirtuous because it conforms to the rule of reason. To demand the substance and scruple at thename is just a little childish.

Of course we are blamed for sin and praised for virtue; just as we are blamed for wrong andpraised for right. These acts, because they are human, have proceeded under our full control; theyare wrong because we steered them deliberately in that direction, right became we chose to act inthat fashion. There is room for remorse and satisfaction because human nature is in control of itsactivity. There is room for merit and demerit because there is room for success and failure,because there is room for justice to ourselves, to the world, to the divine architect whose plans weare working out.

Conclusion: Place of morality in the order of nature.

Perhaps one conclusion apparent by this time is that the question of morality is certainly acomplex question. Of course it is; for human activity is a decidedly complex activity. But there area few very simple, very fundamental conclusions which are evident from even this cursory glanceat morality.

It should be clear first of all that morality is an integral part of the natural order. It is notsomething extrinsic, foreign, merely authoritative; but something that flows immediately andnecessarily from the working out of natural laws. Like everything else in nature, man is governedby natural laws; and, like their operation in every other nature, those natural laws in man do notviolate man's nature. Just as the fulfilment of those natural laws is different in a chemical and in achimpanzee, so is it different in man, following the difference of his nature. With everything else,natural law uses the whip of physical necessity, driving to its ends without the possibility ofmistake; but human activity cannot be subjected to physical necessity and remain human, for itcannot be necessarily produced and at the same time be under our control. The necessity inducedby natural law in human activity is a moral necessity, one admitting of choice, of mistake andsuccess, because man's nature is a moral nature enjoying the ability to choose in paths to the goalof nature.

In the nature of man

Our human nature not only submits to morality, it cries out for it, it cannot exist without it. Inevery smallest human act, in exact proportion to its humanity, there is morality; for morality isnothing more than the fulfilling or violation of the law that governs human nature. According as aman's acts are directed to his goal, they are good; and so far as they turn away from that goal,they are bad. And every human action, as human, must be either for or against that goal; it isunder control, going somewhere, either to the right place or to the wrong place. If we discover aman whose actions have no morality, either good or bad, we promptly lock him up; for by thesame token his actions have no humanity, he is insane; they have no liberty and he is notresponsible for what he does. Human, free, moral action are one and the same thing.

With reference to religion

Evidently morality is not a mere adjunct of religion. It is not something reserved to pious people,to believers in religion, and forbidden to all others; rather it is something exclusively demanded ofpossessors of humanity. It is not religion which produces morality but rather morality that of itselfwill produce religion; for religion is but one of the commands of the natural law which governsman's actions -- it is not the root or source of that law.

Impossibility of escape from morality.

To escape from morality means to escape from humanity. The attempt to overthrow the moralorder is an attempt to deny the authenticity of human nature, to fly from the order of liberty. Likea child in a Halloween game, it puts a false face on human nature and expects the world to hefrightened. The world is not frightened, it is amused; and if only the inanimate and brute creationwere capable of amusement and laughter, the roar of amusement at the antics of these solemnlylearned opponents of morality would fill all the vast spaces of the universe. It is impossible to runaway from morality because it is impossible to run away from nature, because it is impossible torun away from humanity. In a word, there is no escape from the truth of things as they are.

Morality and the pursuit of happiness.

Everything we have said in this chapter has an immediate bearing on happiness. Let us recall thatwe placed the essence of happiness in the possession of the goal of life; we said that what sharewe can have of happiness in this life comes in exact proportion to our approach to that goal oflife; all our human activity is but the means to that goal, so many tools by which we carve outhappiness. And morality? Morality is the exact measure of man's success in living. Man is happy inproportion as he approaches his end; man is morally good as he aims his acts at that end, morallybad as he aims his acts away from that end. Our morality here and now is a statement of ouraccount in the bank of happiness. Virtue is its own reward in this sense; that every virtuous act isa definite step towards final happiness, every virtuous act is a pocketing of a share in thathappiness towards which we are striding. We cannot speak of morality without holding forth onhappiness.

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