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235 u d e f i n i t i o n x v i u A good action is one which agrees with law; a bad action is one which disagrees with the same. 1. 2. 3. 4. The formal basis of goodness and badness. An action is good which has all the requisites; bad, in which even one is lacking. Whether an action in an individual case may be indifferent. The cause of badness is by no means to be sought in God. 1. The formal character of goodness and badness consists in a bearing, or in other words, a determinative relation to a directive norm which we call a law (by this we always understand here a law which necessitates, not permits , and, if it be a human law, one which is not repugnant to divineright). For, in so far as an action of free choice proceeds from the prescript of the norm, and is instituted in accordance therewith, in such wise that it agrees exactly with the norm, it is called good; in so far as it is undertakencontrary to the prescript of the norm, or disagrees with the norm, it is called bad, and, in a single word, designated a misdeed. Moreover, as each and every directive norm, for example the compass, is called the cause of itinerary correctness, and of arriving at the port, not so much in that the ship cuts that course which coincides with its pointing, as that the skipper directs his course according to its prescript;1 so a law is said to be the cause of correctness in an action, not so much because an action, undertaken from any 1. Cf. Weigel, Analysis Aristotelica, sect. II, chap. XII, §24: “in the same manner as a house comes from the possessor, namely from an agent or moral cause who has legitimately ordered (i.e., caused) the house to be built, . . . arrival in port stems from the nautical compass, namely from an agent or notional cause that has directed the mind of the skipper by the objective arrangement of its parts (i.e., as by a cause).” 236 book i, definition xvi cause at all, squares with the law, but primarily because the action proceeds from the dictate of the law, and from dependence upon the law, that is, with the intention of rendering obedience to the same. And so, if a man, led by chance, or by some reason other than to show himself obedient to the law, does that which the law bids, he can be said to have done rightly indeed (in a sense rather negative than affirmative, that is, not wrongly), yet not well in a moral sense; precisely as he who has brought down a bird by the accidental discharge of an escopette cannot be said to have shot expertly and skilfully. 2. Now, since the law determines either the quality or disposition of the agent, or the object, or the end, or, finally, the definite circumstances of an action; it follows thence that a certain action is morally good or bad, either because the agent has been so disposed as the law requires, or otherwise disposed; or because the action is directed totheobjectwiththesame purpose and circumstances as those with which the object is disposed by law, and the contrary. Here, however, it is to be noted, that, in order for some action to be good it is necessary for it both to agree with the law according to all quasi-material requisites, and also, as far as its formal character is concerned, to have been performed not from ignorance or from some other cause, but in order to render an owed obedience to the law. And so an action otherwise materially, as it were, good, is charged against the agent as a bad action, because of a bad intention. Thus he who, while intending to do harm, actually does good, deserves no reward. Thus he who uses his legitimate authority with a bad purpose (for example, a judge using his authority to exact punishment from the guilty, so as to glut a private passion), does wrong. And yet an action otherwise materially, as it were, bad, does by no means become good because of the good intention of the agent. Thence it follows that no one can use his own transgressions in the way of means, as it were, to attain a good end, and things bad are not to be done so...

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