Single Question. Whether Every Act gets Goodness from the End

1. Concerning the fortieth distinction I ask whether every act gets goodness from the end.a

a. a[Interpolation] Concerning this fortieth distinction, where the Master deals with the comparison of the exterior act to the end and to intention, two questions are asked: first whether every act gets goodness from the end, second whether any act can be indifferent. Argument about the first:

2. That it does:

Augustine on Psalm 31, narration 2 n.4, and in the Master’s text, “Intention makes the work good^ [faith directs intention. Do not attend much to what a man does but to what he looks to when he does it].”

3. Further, an act of understanding gets truth from the principle; but the end here is as the principle is there;     therefore etc     .

4. Again, the goodness of an act comes from some single cause; no other cause can be posited but the end;     therefore etc     .

5. On the contrary:

Augustine Against Lying 7 n.18 (and it is in the Master’s text) says that, “there are many acts that cannot be good though they are done for a good end.”

I. To the Question

6. Response. One must speak first of natural goodness and then of moral goodness.

7. About the first I say that, just as beauty in the body comes from the combination of all the things befitting the body and each other, namely quantity, color, and shape (as Augustine maintains On the Trinity 8.4, “A man’s face is good when it is similar in dimensions, happily disposed, and bright in color”), so natural goodness - not the goodness that converts with being but the goodness that has bad as opposite - is the second perfection of a thing, complete with all things befitting the thing and each other. And goodness is perfect when all these come together, according to the remark of Dionysius Divine Names ch.4, “Goodness comes from a perfect and complete cause;” but when all of them are lacking, and the nature that is naturally perfected by them remains, it is perfectly bad; when some are removed, there is badness but not perfect badness - as is the case with beauty and ugliness of body. Now a natural act is of a nature to agree with its efficient cause, its object, its end, and its form; for it is naturally then good when it has all befitting things, to the extent they are of a nature to come together for its being.

8. About the second [cf. 1 d.17 n.62] I say that the goodness of a moral act comes from the combination of all the things befitting the act (not from its nature absolutely), but the things befitting it according to right reason; so because right reason dictates that a determinate object befits the act, and a determinate mode as well as other circumstances, complete goodness does not come from the end alone.

9. But the first reason for an act’s goodness comes from the act’s fitting the efficient cause, which the act is called ‘moral’ by, because it is freely elicited; and this cause is common both to a good act and to a bad act, for the one is not laudable nor the other blamable unless it is from the will. The second condition comes from the object; and if the object is fitting, the act is good in its kind; but goodness in kind is indifferent as to the goodnesses beyond it, which are taken from the specific circumstances, just as a genus is indifferent to the many differences.

10. The first circumstance after the object is the primary end; nor is this end sufficient without the other circumstances, as the circumstance of form (namely that the act is done in due manner, which pertains to the fourth circumstance), and following it the more extrinsic circumstances, namely when and where.

11. It is plain, then, that the goodness of the end alone, even as intended according to right reason, is not sufficient for the goodness of an act, but other circumstances - in the order stated - are required for an act to be good.Aristotle Ethics 3.2.1111a3-6 has this list of circumstances: “who, what, about what or in what, sometimes also by what (as by what instrument) and for what end (as health) and how (as calmly or vehemently).” Ps.-Augustine Principles of Rhetoric ch.4 lists the circumstances as: “who, what, when, where, why, how, by what instruments.” ⁵³

II. To the Principal Arguments

12. As to Augustine [n.2] the answer is plain from his authority to the opposite [n.5], because although the end is the more principal condition belonging to the goodness of an act, it is however not sufficient; and yet speaking simply of the goodness of merit (which adds over and above moral goodness), this comes principally from the end, because, when complete moral goodness is presupposed, meritorious goodness is a further addition coming from due relation of the act to the end, and this ‘due relation’ happens to the extent the act is elicited by charity; and in reference to this can the authorities about the end be expounded, because, namely, meritorious goodness comes from the end.

13. To the second argument [n.3] I say that the efficient cause of the act of understanding - the one that is on the side of the act of understanding - acts naturally and cannot act in a way not conformed to the object, and so it always acts rightly; the will does not always in this way act in conformity with its object, because it is a free cause and not a natural one. So when there is rightness on the part of the moving principle, the whole act [sc. of the intellect] is right; not so here [sc. in an act of the will] on the part of the end.

14. To the third [n.4] I say that the single goodness integrates together in itself all the perfections befitting the act - and there is not some one single perfection, just as neither is there some one beauty in the body [n.7]..