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247 u d e f i n i t i o n x v i i i u The quantity of moral actions is the estimative measure by which they are said to be of a certain degree. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. What is the nature of an absolute estimate of moral actions? Determination of the moral sphere. Defect of actions as regards their execution. The divisible or indivisible objects of actions. Defect of actions as regards their intention. The grade of intention. Just what is a perfectly good action? Just what is the greatest sin? Sins of lower degree. A computation of the quantity of sin. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. What the nature is of men’s knowledge regarding the quantity of sins. The relative estimate of actions drawn from their object. From the status of the agents. From the condition of the action. From the effect and the circumstances. Whether repetition intensifies an action. Just what duties yield to a second duty, when both cannot be performed at the same time? 1. Moral actions are estimated either absolutely and in themselves, or relatively and in comparison with one another. In an absolute estimate of a moral action, and especially of a good one, speaking precisely and quasigeometrically , there is no degree; but goodness itself consists, as it were, in a point and is a kind of coincidence, as it were, and congruence with the law, and as such has no measure. And so, also, considered formally and precisely, one good action is not better than another, since, forsooth, nothing can be more right than the right, although, considered materially and on the score of its object, one action is superior to and nobler than another. But, since an evil action declines from the law, it assuredly is at a certain 248 book i, definition xviii distance from the law, greater or less, from which a sin obtains thecharacter of greater or less degree, as one deviation from a straight line is greater than a second. Now this divergence from the law is like neither length, breadth, nor depth, which can be measured by a straight line; but it resembles a rectilinear angle, whose magnitude is measured by the arc of a circle described from the point of intersection of the two sides as a centre, and intercepted by the aforesaid sides. For, as a rule of law, which, like a straight line, marks out by its course precisely what is to be done, has the character of the first side; so the determination of our will, which is always joined by our conscience to the rule of the law in what resembles the point of an angle, is the other side, which, if the action swerve aside from the law, has a certain angular distance, as it were, from the first side, and by this the degree of bad actions is estimated. But, as around any point in space in which two or more lines unite, when treated as the centre of a sphere, an infinite number of tracts are conceived to be gathered, to which straight lines canrun, divergingindifferentmodesfromoneanother;sothenumber of ways is infinite by which bad actions will be able to take their course, in diverging from a rule of the law. And sowe shallnotincongruouslypicture to ourselves the field of moral actions in the shape of a sphere, in whose centre gather the sides of the moral angle, like the radii of a circle; but on whose surface there are marked the points of the tracts to which the radii tend. Now as a sphere is marked by three cardinal circles, as they might be called, whose common circumferences, planes, and diameters strike each other at right angles, such as are the horizon, the meridian, and the prime vertical, in the mundane sphere, the first of whichembraces the sphere’s tract of latitude and longitude, and the second its thickness, while the last divides the first two into two parts, and the whole sphere into a polar and an antipolar hemisphere; so, likewise, in themoralsphere, there are marked three cardinal circles, as they may be called, the first of which, like the horizon, represents the limits and object with which the moral action has to do, and represents the exercise itself; the second, like the meridian, suggests the elevation, as it were, and the intention of the mind of the agent; the third, like...

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