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Object: - defined | - examined | - commented upon |
Circumstances: - defined | - examined | - commented upon |
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THE subject matter of moral theology is human
behaviour from the moral point of view:
that is to say, the goodness and badness,
the rightness and wrongness of human actions.
It is, therefore, a fundamental question to ask
by what standard are these actions judged,
what is the criterion of judgment,
the norm to which they are referred.
In other words,
what is it that makes an action right or wrong?
The ultimate standard of morality is the will of God.
That is right which conforms to and promotes the will and purpose of God in creation.
So far as men are concerned, the will and purpose of God is the manifestation of His own glory.
That glory is manifested in the creation and perfect development of free rational human beings.
That development is attained by the whole-hearted obedience of men to the will of God.
So, then, rightness of conduct consists in obedience to the law of God, or subjection to His will and purpose. What this will is,
is revealed to the reason, so that reason provides the immediate objective standard of morality. For reason, whether by intuition,
discursive argument or revelation, perceives what is and what is not consonant with God's will.
The human reason, arguing correctly and perceiving truly, grasps the divine will, and the conclusions thus arrived at are the
immediate objective standard of morality.
Thus morality may be defined as human behaviour considered from the point of view
of its agreement or disagreement with the findings of reason,
or, which comes to the same thing,
its service of, or rebellion from, man's true final end.
Human actions relate to society, to the
individual and to God.
Man is created to live in society, and cannot support life or reach full development of his powers in isolation. All, therefore,
which tends to promote and conserve society is reasonable, or right, or consonant with man's end; all which tends to destroy
society is wrong. Thus justice is a part of the law of nature, and perceived by reason to be a moral obligation on all men. A man
is composed of body and mind, a complex of powers and passions. His perfection consists in the proper harmony and interrelation of
his parts, with reason in supreme authority. All that preserves and promotes this harmony is right, all that destroys it is wrong.
Thus temperance and industry are perceived by reason to be a part of the law of nature. Man's end is God; the power of God
creates and sustains him, the wisdom of God enlightens and instructs him, the love of God draws and attracts him to Himself and
the perfect society of Heaven. All, therefore, which develops and fosters in man the love of God is right, all which turns away
from God is wrong. Thus prayer and worship are a duty, blasphemy and indifference are wrong.
There is, then, an objective standard of morality. It is right reason
that perceives what promotes and what impedes the attainment of man's final end: the judgments of the reason in this respect are
statements of the content of the natural law. It is of course obvious that the reason sometimes errs in some of these statements.
Sections of the human race, or even the human race as a whole, have from time to time held that to be part of the natural law
which is now judged not to be so; but these errors are in details, not in principles. For example, in many places polygamy is
thought to be permissible, in others to be forbidden by the natural law. This is an error about the way of achieving the ends of
marriage, not about those ends themselves, for all are agreed that marriage exists for the procreation, protection and education
of children. But in any case the objective standard of morality is right reason, that is to say, reason in so far as it
grasps the truth and reflects the eternal law or will of God. To all but thorough-going sceptics it is clear that in morals, as in
every other branch of knowledge, reason can and does perceive objective truth. The fact of error does not warrant relativism or
the denial that there is objective truth.
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In each individual the reason, which thus forms
a moral judgment, is called CONSCIENCE.
Conscience, therefore, is the immediate subjective rule or norm of morality.
There is no other means of arriving at truth but by the use of reason; that is, no other way of determining what is right, here
and now, but by the exercise of conscience. The pronouncement of conscience is final; its command is to be obeyed. For it is
always a man's duty to obey the will of God, and it is his conscience which tells him, here and now, what the will of God is. Yet
it often happens that conscience is wrong. That is, that the ruling given by conscience differs from the objective standard of
right reason. Thus in judging of the morality of actions two different criteria seem to apply. On the one hand, it is possible to
ask the question "Was that the right thing for me to do?" in the sense "Was that, in the circumstances and all
things considered, what God wanted, was it consonant with morality and my true end?" On the other hand, it is possible to ask
the question in the sense of "Did I show myself a man of good-will in thus acting? Was I obeying my conscience, and seeking
to do God's will?" A good deal of confusion arises from the fact that human actions are considered from both these angles,
from that of objective morality, what is really right, and from the subjective angle, the morality of the agent; and the same
words are often used in answering both questions. Thus in saying that an action is right, we may mean what is actually the right
thing to do, or we may mean what this man should be and think in so acting. Thus for a millionaire to build a hospital is a right
action in the sense that the building of hospitals and alleviation of pain is a good thing, what God wills, right: it is also a
right action if the millionaire does it because his conscience tells him to, and he desires to alleviate pain. On the other hand,
if the millionaire does it to further his social progress or to spite his relatives, the action is right in one sense and wrong in
the other. It is the same with the words good and bad, which are also applied indifferently to the morality of actions and agents.
The distinction between material and formal sin is an effort to avoid this confusion. An action dictated by conscience, but in fact wrong, i.e. contrary to right reason, is said to have the matter of a sin but not the form. It has the matter, because it is in fact wrong: it has not the form, because the form of sin is wilful, deliberate disobedience to God, or refusal to do what is right. In the case of an action dictated by conscience, i.e. held to be right, there is clearly not the formal element of sin. It is, therefore, a material sin only. Thus the judge who conscientiously holds it his duty to send a prisoner to the rack is guilty of the material sin of cruelty, but not the formal sin.
The objective standard of morality, then,
is right reason.
The subjective standard is conscience.
We have now to consider what gives to particular actions their moral quality, i.e. makes them good, bad or indifferent: Or, to put
the matter in another way, what are the relevant and decisive considerations in forming a judgment that this or that action is
right or wrong?
From the time of St. Thomas Aquinas onwards it has been held that there are three
main grounds or sources of the morality of actions - the OBJECT, the CIRCUMSTANCES and the INTENTION.
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The OBJECT is that at which the action
aims, and in which it naturally results, and with the attainment of which it is completed.
It is the essential characteristic or characteristics of an action which make it this type of action and not another.
When it is said that it is the object that gives to an action its specific morality (i.e. makes it good or bad), this must be
true. For the object is, by definition, that which gives to the action its form or special character. But it is not an action
considered as a bare piece of physical energizing that is here under view. Actions, in that sense, have no moral quality. For
example, the physical activity of taking a 3^5 note has no moral significance in itself; the action of which we are here speaking
as having an object is an action considered from the moral point of view, i.e. as agreeing or disagreeing with the standard of
morality. So that it is clear that in considering the object of an action we are considering those essential elements or
circumstances of the action which make it what it is, and differentiate it from something else. For example, St. Thomas (S.T. I,
11, quaest. xviii, art. 2), when speaking of the morality of actions being determined by their objects, gives as an illustration
"the root evil in moral actions is that which is derived from the object, such as to take what is not one's own" (accipere
aliena). That is to say, the object of an act of theft is not the thing taken, considered barely in itself, but the thing
taken in a particular circumstance, or as possessing a particular quality - namely, that of not being one's own. The object of
theft, then, is taking something not one's own. This is the essential characteristic of the action, and explains it. Without this
characteristic there is either no action or a different action.
The earliest attempts to define the objects of different types of action were soon found to be clumsy and inadequate. If the definition is clumsy and inexact, the same object will be found to be in use as a description of actions that are different from each other. For example, the prohibition in the Decalogue, "Thou shalt not kill", prohibits an action whose object is the destruction of human life. But this is the object of several different kinds of action, and the prohibition is by no means appropriate to them all. The action of the soldier or the executioner also has as its object the destruction of human life. The object of the action forbidden by the Decalogue therefore needs further defining. It has received it in the form "destruction of innocent human life". There is now taken up into the object of the action a certain quality or circumstance of the person killed - that he does not deserve to be killed, or has not forfeited his right to live. But the object as thus stated is, even now, in one respect too widely denned. It might mean that where a man is no longer innocent, it is lawful for anyone to kill him. But there is a difference between a killing by a soldier or an executioner and a killing by a private citizen. Into the object, therefore, must be inserted a quality or circumstance of the agent - that he is authorised to kill. So that the definition or object of "murder" now runs, "the unauthorised killing of an innocent person".
It is well known that the definition of murder also includes "with malice prepense". This might suggest that the object of an action may to some extent be determined by the intention of the agent. But this is illusory. Malice prepense and intention are not the same thing. Intention may look far beyond the action itself. Malice prepense looks no further than the fully conscious performance of the act. It means no more than the requirement that we have already noted - that for an action to be imputable, the agent must be aware, or not culpably unaware, of what he is doing. If a man performs an action deliberately of which the natural result and tendency is killing, he kills with malice prepense, no matter what his intention may have been. For his action has but one natural explanation and meaning - to kill. And in consenting to perform that action, he has malice prepense. For example, if a man pulls a scarf tight round a girl's neck, the natural tendency or result of the action, its object, is strangulation. If a man does it deliberately, he does it with malice prepense, whether he actually intends to kill or not.
The object, then, of an action is those essential circumstances or
elements that together make the action what it is, and differentiate it from other kinds of actions. Chief among these is the
natural tendency or result of the action, but also among them must be included certain other circumstances necessary for the more
exact definition of that result. To take another example, from theft. "To take what is not one's own" is the heart of
the object, but by itself it is an inadequate definition. I might be taking it on the orders of the owner, having been sent by him
to fetch it. It is necessary to add the further qualification, "against the owner's will" or "without his
consent". But even this is not sufficient. Occasions often arise when, in the absence of the owner, it is necessary to take
his property "without his consent," e.g. to remove it from a burning house. "Against his will" is a better
qualification than "without his consent". But then again, he may refuse through misapprehension of the position, or
from obstinacy, or unjustly. For example, he may refuse a starving man bread: this is unjust. It is therefore necessary to qualify
further and say "against the owner's will, where that is reasonable". So then the object of theft is "taking
something not one's own, against the owner's will, whose consent cannot reasonably be presumed, or is unreasonably
withheld".
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The object stands in contrast to the CIRCUMSTANCES .
The object is those circumstances that together make the action what it is.
All other circumstances qualify the action one way or another, but still leave it essentially the same class of action.
Thus to take someone else's £5 note without his consent is theft: it is still theft if it is a £100 note, only a greater theft.
The value of the note is a circumstance. Whether a poor man commits the theft or a rich man is another circumstance, which does
not affect the essential nature of the act as a theft. Circumstances of this nature arise from the side of the agent, the act, the
means, the place, the motive, the manner and the occasion. Thus in an act of theft, beside the object, there may be these special
circumstances, - the agent was in a position of trust: the theft was large: it was accompanied by violence, on a lonely heath,
with the intention, or motive, of getting money for a licentious life, in cold blood, on the way back from church. The
circumstances are only relevant in so far as they affect the morality of the action, so that in our example the lonely heath is
probably irrelevant and so is the occasion, on the way back from church.
The circumstance of motive or intention, clearly of very great
importance, is always treated separately.
It is of the greatest importance to distinguish clearly between the motive or intention and the object.
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Intention
The intention is that which the agent actually has
in mind when he performs the action.
We generally call it the purpose.
The object is that purpose or intention which is inherent in the action and characterizes it, whether the agent intends it or no,
i.e. is conscious and attentive to it or no. Thus when a man tightens a scarf round a girl's neck, the object or inherent purpose
is killing, as we have seen; the intention or purpose of the agent may be different, e.g. rape. Again, a doctor who performs an
operation, performs an action whose object is the curing of disease or saving of life; his intention may be that, or it may be to
prevent the discontinuance of an annuity on the patient's life. Again, a millionaire's intention in building a hospital may be
the same as the object - the relief of suffering - or it may be the acquisition of a knighthood.
The morality of an action, then, is
traditionally judged by paying attention to the object, the circumstances and the intention.
The object is that natural tendency or result which, when adequately qualified or defined, specifies the action as being one of a
particular class. The circumstances are any other conditions which are seen to be relevant, as modifying our judgment, yet not
altering the essential elements of the action. The intention is the purpose in the mind of the agent, his conscious reason for
acting. The rules for determining the morality of actions are traditionally given as follows.
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I. The first and chief determinant is THE OBJECT ITSELF.
It is in accordance with its object, in the first place, that an action is adjudged good, bad or indifferent. From the object is
derived what may be called its objective morality, for the object is but the action considered in those essentials which
constitute it this or that kind of action. If the object is bad, i.e. contrary to right reason, no other circumstances can make it
good. Thus a theft is always a theft: the circumstance that the victim is a rich man, or the agent a very poor one, or that the
thief only stole in order to give to a deserving cause, does not alter the essential moral quality of the act; it is a theft. In
other words, no circumstance can make a wrong action right.
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II. CIRCUMSTANCES -
Just as the value of a horse depends not only on its essential nature or form - that it is a horse - but also on certain
"accidental" qualities, such as strength, age, etc., so the morality of an action depends not only on its object, but
also on its circumstances. But the circumstances modify, they do not make the morality, just as the size of the horse modifies but
does not make its value; - it would have no value - as a horse - if it had not to start with the nature of a horse.
Circumstances, however, sometimes change the species of morality, not in the sense of making a wrong action right, but in the
sense of making it wrong in a different or additional way. For example, theft is an offence against justice: the circumstance that
the thing stolen is consecrated, constitutes the act a sacrilege as well as a theft. Sexual intercourse between two unmarried
people is fornication: the circumstance that one of them is married adds to the offence against chastity, an offence against
justice. The act becomes adultery. This is not perhaps a very good example, because it is a case where the circumstance is
commonly regarded as part of the object, constituting the act a special kind of act, i.e. adultery. Sometimes circumstances
increase or diminish the rightness or wrongness of an action. For example, to steal £100 is worse than to steal £5. Where the
action is indifferent in its object, e.g. walking, circumstances may make it good or bad. For example, good, if it is giving
pleasure to one's companion; bad, if it happens to be over forbidden ground. Circumstances may also make an action, good in its
object, to be bad. For example, to punish one's child for wrongdoing is a good action. To punish the child excessively, or a
fortiori cruelly, is bad. To sum up, circumstances may alter or add to the species of morality, may increase or diminish the
goodness or badness of an action, may make an action in itself (i.e. object) indifferent, to be good or bad, or may make a good
action bad. They cannot make a bad action good.
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III. INTENTION -
The intention of the agent may make
(a) an action which is indifferent, good or bad,
(b) an action which is good, more or less good, or even bad, and
(c) an action which is bad, more or less bad, but never good.
(a) To take a
walk is in itself neither good nor bad. If I go for the walk in obedience to my doctor's orders, that purpose passes into the
action itself, and gives to the action its own moral quality. What has happened is that I have with my will chosen or consented
to a particular end, and the consequent action, in itself indifferent, is the expression or carrying out of that end. If the end
is a good end, the action which implements it is good; if it is bad, the action is bad.
(b) A good action done for a good reason thereby acquires an additional goodness; that
is, if the good reason is something other than the object of the action itself. For example, to give alms with the intention of
relieving need has only its own goodness, an act of charity: to give alms with the intention of practising self-denial, as ordered
in the Gospel, has the additional goodness of an act of piety or of temperance. A good action done with a bad intention becomes
bad if the intention was the sole cause of the action. If, for example, I give alms simply to gain notoriety, or to be able to
influence the recipient, the action is bad. The reason for this is, that my will has not at all chosen almsgiving in itself as a
good thing, but has chosen, simply, the bad thing to the attainment of which almsgiving is used as a convenient means. When the
bad intention is not the sole cause of action, but only a contributory cause, the action does not become wholly bad, but is at one
and the same time both bad and good. This is the common case of mixed motives, which are present in nearly every action: to hold
that every good action is vitiated if its motive is not absolutely pure, would be to condemn almost all our actions. The act
remains good in so far as it was chosen for its own sake: an element of badness, great or small, is added to it in so far as the
will consented to, and chose, the bad end as well. Thus to go to church partly in order to show off one's new clothes, is good in
so far as one goes to church for the right reason, bad in so far as vanity was also part of our conscious intention,
(c) A bad action done with a bad intention acquires the badness of both, i.e. of the
action itself, and of the thing willed in the intention. For instance, to get drunk in order to commit fornication is an offence
at once against temperance and chastity. A bad action done with a good intention remains bad, though less bad than it would be
without the good intention. The reason for its being less bad is that there is less direct affection for what is wrong, that is,
the will has not chosen the bad action for its own sake, because of its badness. And the better the intention, the more it
diminishes the badness of the action. Yet it never wholly destroys it; the act remains bad. This is because, whatever the
intention, however high or noble, the will has in fact consented to, and chosen, what is bad. It is to do evil, and that
deliberately, that good may come.
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This, then, is the traditional system for
determining the morality of actions.
It is necessary to make some comments on it.
First, with regard to the influence of the intention on the
morality of an action.
It seems clear that if we consider an action objectively and externally as the effecting of a particular change in the situation,
the intention in the mind of the agent can make no difference to its rightness or wrongness. If the change is a good change, if it
produces a new situation which is the kind of situation which right reason approves, then the agent's desires, hopes or intentions
in bringing about that change are quite irrelevant. If it is right that hospitals should be built, then the act of the millionaire
in building this hospital is right, no matter what his intention may have been. Consequently, while we agree that a good intention
will not make a bad action to be right, we must also deny that a bad intention will make a good action to be wrong. It has no
effect on it whatsoever, so far as the action is viewed externally, as a change in the situation. Neither will the intention
give a specific morality to an indifferent action. Viewed objectively, an indifferent action remains indifferent; the change
that it produces in the situation cannot be pronounced either good or bad, right or wrong. No doubt every such action is in fact
good or bad in so far as its results effect a good or bad change, but the change is so small, or the results so remote, that we
are unable to arrive at a judgment until we are in possession of more data. My putting on a dark suit instead of a light one
certainly brings about a new situation, and it may even be a disastrous one if I happen to meet someone whose nerves are on edge
at the sight of so many dark suits and to whom mine is the last straw. But until we are aware of this disastrous result we are
unable to judge of the rightness or wrongness of my action. That in putting on the dark suit I intended to gratify my vanity has
no relevance.
Yet such a view, that the intention makes no difference to the morality of an action, seems very strange in the light of the universal tendency to praise or blame actions precisely because of the intention with which they are performed. We do not approve of the building of hospitals with a view to notoriety, or of going to church in order to display our new clothes. The explanation of this strangeness is that such judgments are not in fact passed on the actions themselves, but on the internal act of will from which the actions result. In this second example, it is the showing-off of new clothes that I have willed, and the going to church is only a means of implementing my choice. The act of will is simply a choice to indulge my vanity, and such a choice we condemn as bad. If we are careful to distinguish between the external action and the internal act of will, we shall find that most of the traditional doctrine of the influence of intention on the morality of actions is true. Thus, that the intention makes an indifferent action to be good or bad. Certainly it does, for it is not the indifferent action, but the intention of which the action is the first result, which is judged. I walk down the road. If my intention is to murder my aunt, the condemnation is of the act of will that consents to the idea of murder and of the action of walking as the first stage in carrying out that purpose. We therefore say, inaccurately, he was wrong to walk down the road, when what we mean is, he was wrong to set about murdering his aunt. Second, that a bad intention makes a good act bad. If the bad intention was the sole cause of action, it is the bad intention we are judging, not the action. The action in itself remains good, but we are saying nothing about that. We are condemning only the act of will that consented to something bad, and set about procuring it by means of this action. If the action was a good action it was right that it should be done: what was wrong was the choice of a particular end to be achieved by means of it. If the bad intention was only a partial cause of the action, it is not true that the action itself is both bad and good. The action remains good, but there are two (or more) acts of will, and it is of them that we say that one is good and the other bad. In so far as I chose the act for its own sake, or for some other good intention, I chose what is good: in so far as I chose the act also for some bad intention, I chose what is bad. Suppose that I pay a particular bill with great promptness. I do it, first, because I think I ought to, i.e. because prompt payment is right. I consent to the act itself for its own sake as a right act. Second, I do it because I know this tradesman to be in difficulties, and that payment will greatly help him. I consent to the suggestion "help a man in need". Again, I have made a good act of will. Third, I do it because it will enable me to say that I have no more money in the bank and therefore cannot buy my wife a new hat. This will annoy her. I want to annoy her, i.e. I consent to the suggestion "cause pain". It is clearly absurd to say that the payment of my debt was wrong because I did it to annoy my wife; and whether I did it solely or partly to annoy my wife is as clearly irrelevant. But it is very pertinent to say that, in performing this right action, I also made a bad act of will. Since moral theology is very interested in the morality of agents, and has to guide people not only with regard to their external actions but also to their internal acts of consent, it is very proper that intentions should receive due consideration. But it is of the utmost importance that those whose duty it is to give advice should clearly distinguish between the two. They should never dissuade from the performance of an action right in itself, because of an evil intention, but dissuade only from consent to, and embracing of, the intention.
It is worthwhile noting here that the word "intention" is
sometimes wrongly used to describe a desire or temptation of which the agent is conscious, but to which he refuses consent. For
example, a millionaire who builds a hospital may know that he is likely to be rewarded with a knighthood, and may ardently desire
a knighthood, and may consider such a desire unworthy. As a conscientious man he might refuse to build the hospital because he was
aware of the presence of this unworthy desire impelling him to the action. Such a decision would be clearly wrong, as we have
seen. He should be advised to build the hospital, and in order to avoid any possibility of consenting with his will to the
unworthy desire and using the act of building as a means towards its satisfaction, he should be told to build it anonymously. But,
and this is our immediate point, so long as he recognizes the desire for a knighthood to be unworthy, and does not consent to it
but tries to overcome it, the presence of this desire is beyond his control, and not only does not affect the rightness of the
action of building the hospital, but also does not involve him in a bad act of will. There is nothing of which he need repent, and
nothing which he can do except be on his guard against selfish ambition, and will such actions as are likely to induce in him a
condition of disinterestedness.
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Second, with regard to
circumstances, there is little that needs to be said. It is abundantly clear that circumstances alter
cases, and that they largely determine the morality of actions. It is perhaps unfortunate that the occasions when circumstances
are said to change the species of morality should be treated under the heading of circumstances at all. For in those cases the
circumstances actually make the action the kind of action it is, and so are more fittingly regarded as part of the object. For
example, to walk across a field is an indifferent act: to walk across a field where trespassers are forbidden is a wrong act. The
"circumstance" which makes it wrong is the essential description of the action that differentiates it from other kinds
of walking. It is, in fact, its object, just as the circumstance that this £5 note is not mine, and its owner does not consent to
my having it, is the object of the act of taking it, and constitutes the act a theft. Similarly the "circumstance" that
I am giving alms with someone else's money is the very essential circumstance that constitutes the act embezzlement, or
misappropriation, or whatever we like to call the act whose object is using other people's property as though it were our own.
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And this brings us, third, to the traditional treatment of the object. The object, as we have seen, is essentially that to which the action naturally tends, its intrinsic end or inherent purpose. Thus the object of sticking a knife into a man's heart is the man's death: the object of sexual intercourse is the procreation of children. But it is immediately clear that this does not give a sufficient description of the action to enable a moral judgment to be made. Killing a man is wrong - but not always: procreation of children is right - but not always. It is necessary to qualify the end of the action with a statement of the circumstances in which that end is right or wrong. Thus killing a man is wrong, if he is innocent, and if the killer has no authority. The word we use to denote the presence of these circumstances is murder. Murder, then, has for its object the unauthorised killing of an innocent person. Procreation of children is right when the children are born in conditions that make their nurture and parental oversight possible, wrong where those conditions are absent. The presence of these conditions is conveniently described by the word marriage. Their absence, either by "fornication", where neither the man nor woman have any marital obligations or duties to anyone else, or "adultery", where one or both have such duties. Adultery and fornication, then, are actions that have as their object the procreation of children in circumstances in which procreation is wrong.
Now it is possible to enumerate with some
precision the circumstances in which certain actions are wrong, and to give a name to the presence of these circumstances.
We have mentioned some already - murder, fornication, adultery, and theft.
These are what the moral theologian means when he speaks of an action whose object is bad, or which is intrinsically or inherently
evil.
Here you have actions which, in themselves, given these circumstances, tend to produce an evil result.
But it must be remembered that what we have done is only to state the circumstances in which the result is evil.
To conclude from this that the action is wrong whenever these circumstances are present is fallacious. For it may well happen that
the addition of other circumstances makes the natural result good and not evil, or evil instead of good, and in that case the
object of the action is changed. For example, "marriage" denotes the sexual act, having a good object. But the
circumstance that one of the partners suffers from a grave hereditable disease might well be held to make sexual intercourse, even
in marriage, to be wrong. Or again, the object of theft is to take what is not one's own, the owner being unwilling. This, as we
have seen, had to be modified to "the owner being reasonably unwilling". But unreasonably unwilling only means
"that unwillingness which destroys the character of theft in the action, or makes the action right". In other words,
circumstances may and often do arise in which the absence of the owner's consent does not constitute a theft, and each such
circumstance must be judged on its own merits. One underlying reason for regarding theft as wrong is that it is an offence against
justice and disruptive of society. Its object - taking what is not one's own without the owner's consent - has that natural
result. But when the circumstances are such that the effect would not be disruptive of society, then you have an action that,
however similar in appearance and in its constituent parts to theft, is yet not theft. In a time of emergency in the interests
of the public good, a military commander may find it necessary to commandeer the property of a civilian; the civilian may resent
it deeply, and perhaps even reasonably, for no compensation may be offered, or inadequate compensation: or the civilian may think,
and rightly, that another piece of property would do just as well, but there is no time to delay over bargaining. This is not
theft, although it has all the conditions of theft, because of the additional circumstance of emergency and public good. Or again,
to retain possession, against the depositor's will, of something which he has entrusted to our keeping, is a form of theft; yet
the additional circumstance that the owner will certainly use it to harm someone else, justifies the action of refusing to
restore it. And the owner's demand to have it back is not unreasonable, except in the sense that it will result in damage to
society, or, in other words, result in wrong.
The fact, therefore, that many actions can be so described in regard
to their objects as to enable us to judge easily and quickly that they are right or wrong, must not be allowed to lead us on to
the conclusion that they are so accurately described that we can say that they are always right or wrong. With many of them it is
certainly not easy to imagine the additional circumstances that would change their morality from good to bad or bad to good. But
it may happen. Thus we must disagree with the traditional doctrine that nothing can ever make an action bad in its object to be
good, if by object is meant the necessarily somewhat arbitrary selection of circumstances that constitutes what we normally call
that particular type of action. Of course if object means the special set of circumstances that surround the action here and now,
we must agree; for that is only to say "this action is wrong, and therefore is not right". We shall further agree that
the intention does not make an action "bad in its object" to be good. But we shall maintain that its consequences may
do. This is especially important in the matter of the "law of double effect". As we have seen, the traditional doctrine
has an easy solution of such problems. The action is one that has the characteristics or circumstances that normally constitute
an action bad. Then it is bad, no matter what other circumstances are present. To kill a baby in the womb to save the mother's
life, for example, involves immediately the act of killing an innocent person. But that precisely describes murder. Then it is
murder, i.e. wrong. To this we must reply
(1) that the circumstance that the baby is still in the womb, and has not yet a separate physical existence, differentiates the
action from the actions called murder; and
(2) that the tendency of the action, its probable or even certain consequence, is the saving of the mother's life. The object,
therefore, is not simple destruction, but destruction together with preservation. This is no doubt a very difficult case: both
additional circumstances are necessary in order to distinguish the act from "murder". Without the second, it is
abortion pure and simple. Without the first, it would be hard to avoid the impression that a human being was being used as a means
and not an end, i.e. that there was a violation of justice, such as is involved in the statement "it is expedient that one
man (innocent) should die for the people". And in general, in cases of this kind, as we have seen, much depends on how
certain the good result is to supervene on the bad one; for a possible and accidental result cannot be regarded as part of the
object, and we are in full agreement that it is the object when properly dinned, which constitutes the morality of actions. It
must not for one moment be supposed that anything which has been here said is intended to justify the maxim "do evil that
good may come". If the object is in truth bad, then the action is wrong. All that is here contended is that the object is
itself qualified by the certain or probable results of the action.
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