12. Does The End Alone Justify Actions?
I76 Moral Goodness some circumstance to which [supernatural grace or] charity does not incline one. The reason is that everyone is either in a state of grace or in a state of sin. If one is in the state of grace and performs an act that is morally good in the second way [i. e., circumstantially], then grace inclines one to do this, and thus it is meritorious. On the other hand, if the act is morally bad in the second way, it is clearly demeritorious
(for the prior badness always includes the second, but not the converse, and the second implies the third, but not vice versa). But if a bad person has an act that is bad in the second way, such a one sins by such an act. But if a bad person has an act that is good in the second way, such a one is neither good nor bad in the third way, and therefore is neutral [as to merit and demerit], but is not neutral speaking of the second type [of moral goodness].
12. DOES THE END ALONE JUSTIFY ACTIONS?
(Ordinatio II, dist. 40) As for the fortieth distinction [of Bk. II], I ask: Is every act good by reason of its end?
[Arguments Pro and Con] For the affirmative there is Augustine's citation in the text [of Peter
Lombard] that "it is the intention that makes the work good."
Furthermore, an act of understanding is true by reason of a principle; but the end here functions as a principle does there.
To the contrary, there is Augustine's statement in his work Against Lying, also cited in the text [of Peter Lombard] to the effect that there are many acts that cannot be good even though they are done for a good end.
[Body of the Question] I reply that we must first look at natural goodness and then at moral goodness.
[Natural goodness] As for the first, I say that natural goodness is like beauty of body, which results from a combination of all that is internally harmonious and is becoming to the body, such as size, color, and figure (as Augustine wants to say of a good face in Bk. VIII of The Trinity: "Good is the face of a man with regular features, a cheerful expression, and a glowing color"). And this natural goodness is not that which is coextensive with being, but that which is opposed to evil and is a second perfection of a thing, in which \\ie find united all that is becoming to it and is internally harmonious. And where all these concur there is perfect goodness according to that statement of Dio-
Does the End Alone Justify Actions?
nysius: "The good stems from a cause that is perfect and whole."
Should there be a nature in which all those things are missing which it ought to have, then it would be completely bad. If only certain things are lacking, it is bad but not completely so, like a body in which there is both beauty and ugliness. Now, an action is naturally suited to be in accord with its efficient cause, its object, its purpose, and its form. It is naturally good when it has all that becomes it insofar as these things are concerned that are suited by nature to concur in constituting it naturally.
[Moral goodness] As for the second, I say that the goodness of a moral act is a combination of all that becomes the act, not in an absolute sense, as if it were constitutive of its very nature as an act, but in the sense that according to right reason it is becoming to the act.
Now, since right reason dictates that an act agree with a certain object and do so in a specific way-and so with the other circumstancescomplete goodness is not the result of the intention alone. Now, the first reason for its goodness is its appropriateness to the agent in question, namely, because the act is free it is said to be moral. And this is something a morally good and a morally bad act have in common, for if an act is not from the will, then it is neither praiseworthy nor reprehensible.
The second condition has to do with the object. If this is something appropriate, then the act is good generically, because it is still indifferent to the further aspects of goodness that arise because of the special circumstances, just as the genus is indifferent with respect to the many differences.
After this the first circumstance is that of the end itself. But this does not suffice apart from the other circumstances, such as the circumstance of its form, for example, that it take place in a becoming fashion, a point pertaining to the fourth circumstance, after which come the more extrinsic circumstances, such as time and place and the like. It is clear, therefore, that the goodness of the purpose alone, even when intended according to right reason, does not suffice to make the act good, but the other circumstances according to the aforesaid order are required that goodness be there.
[Reply to the Initial Arguments] How the text from Augustine should be interpreted is clear from his citations for the opposite, for if the end is the main condition for goodness in the act, it is not simply sufficient in an unqualified sense.
In like fashion, speaking of the goodness of merit, which adds something to moral goodness, we can say this derives principally from the end, since what meritorious goodness adds to complete moral good-