Cardinal Mercier and the Natural Law, Part 12: The Moral Order Needs God

THE MORAL ORDER IS CHARACTERIZED by immutability and universality. Any order that is neither immutable or universal is an order other than moral: it is man-made, conventional or positive.

In terms of immutability, the law, so long as the matter is the same, can be expected to be the same. The precepts of the moral law do not change, as they are set in the nature of things. The moral law is not like the injunctions of Allah in the Qur'an, which are subject to being abrogated by the seeming whims of divinity or the desires of his prophet. There is no notion of naskh (نسخ) or abrogation in natural law.

[T]he application of the moral law is general, independent of the circumstances of time and place, and in this sense is eternal and common to all; it binds every man in possession of his natural reason no matter what time he may live or where he may dwell.

[250(57)] Thus, Catholic, Buddhist, Muslim, Jew, Atheist . . . all are bound by the one, unchanging moral law, and all are answerable to God for its breach. The moral law is thus exceptionless, but in saying this, one must also be wary not to identify the moral law itself with human expressions of it or human formulae. Thus, weakness in our expression or our formulas may require exceptions, adaption, or modification when confronting particular cases or new situations. But this is not a change in law, but a change in our description or grasp of it.

The moral law is recognizable, knowable, universally, by all men who have come to the age of reason, that is when he "has it in his power to reflect and is capable of perceiving the subordination his actions should have in regard to their moral end, and the time at which he has become a moral agent." [250(57)] No man can be ignorant of the first principles of the moral law, or even of the immediate conclusions of those first principles, though invincible ignorance is possible for more remote conclusions. Therefore, all men know that they ought to pursue good and shun evil, and that, for example, the intentional killing of an innocent human being is intrinsically wrong. There can be no ignorance of such fundamental principle and immediate conclusion. It is possible, however, to envision situations where someone may be invincibly ignorant of more remote conclusions that require additional knowledge or which are complicated by circumstances. Thus, a person may be invincibly ignorant that the use of contraceptives that are also abortifacients are, under the natural law, morally wrong (in addition to their contraceptive nature) because they involve the intentional taking of innocent life. (See generally Dr. Bogomir M. Kuhar, Infant Homicides Through Contraceptives (Bardstown, Ky: Eternal Life 2003) (5th ed.) They may be entirely unaware of the chemical nature of the drug they are taking and the abortifacient nature of it.

Can there be a morality independent of God? Mercier rejects the notion. Too bound up with God is the moral imperative, so that it is both erroneous and impracticable to posit a morality that is independent of God. Indeed, not only is God, who is knowable by reason, both the fundament and ultimate end of the natural moral order, revelation, and the graces of the Church, are aids that, under the present condition of the human race, are necessary.

An independent morality may include deistic or rationalistic views, or, more radically, atheistic ones. The deistic and rationalistic views, while not wholly rejecting God from the scope of the moral order, seek to establish a moral theory that does not include, and is independent of, all positive (i.e., revealed) religion:

Catholic doctrine merely sums up accurately the lessons taught by experience when it proclaims the universal and constant inferiority both in knowledge and practice of the moral law among those peoples who are without the supernatural aid of revelation and grace. The doctrine of the relative necessity of Revelation--which finds its application equally in the moral as in the purely speculative order--is briefly summed up in the following extract from the [1st] Council of the Vatican: 'To this divine Revelation it is indeed to be attributed that those things which, in matters divine, are not of themselves beyond reason can be known, even if the present condition of the human race, by all men, without difficulty, with firm certainty and with no admixture of error.'

[256(66)] (See, in this regard, The Need for Revelation: "Pis-Aller" by Matthew Arnold.)

The atheist moral program is even more objectionable. It is in vain to build moral theories without God. "Unless the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it." Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum in vanum laboraverunt qui aedificant eam. (Ps. 126:1) "Now a moral system without God is as erroneous as it is impracticable." [256(66)] Mercier gives three reasons for the intrinsic failure of the atheistic moral program. First, without God there is no basis for any moral imperative. Here, the Dostoevskian wisdom within the Brothers Karamazov bears its full weight as encapsulated by the words: Если Бога нет, то всё дозволено. If God did not exist, all things would be permitted.

Take away, as the ultimate term of our volitions, an absolute, that is to say, an end which subsists of itself, and all our aspirations towards good and all our deliberate volitions cease to have any final object. We cannot conceive the absolute obligation to will what is morally good--in other words, duty--unless there be, beyond all contingent goods that I may or may not will, a good which is not contingent, which is an end in itself, namely God.

[256-57(66)] Thus atheism is as much a moral, as it is an intellectual, disease.

Moreover, natural theology shows, by reason, that an ontological order exists which demands the existence of a First Cause, of God. Moreover, the ontological order as it relates to morality, and upon which the entirety of the moral order depends, requires that there be a God who loves himself with necessary love, "so that only in view of Himself can He love those beings who are capable of sharing, though in a way far different from Himself, His infinite Perfection or His infinite Goodness." [257(66)] Without God that is love, and without God sharing that love with all men, it is impossible to envision a moral order. Put succinctly, God is both the justificatory source as well as the end (goal) of the moral order.

Finally, recourse to God is required to provide the assurance that observance of the moral law is supported by sanction. "For how is the observance of the moral law to be sufficiently guaranteed if man has no certitude that a just and powerful God will sooner or later establish an eternal harmony between virtue and happiness on the one hand, and between vice and misery on the other?" [257(66)] Without God as the great equalizer, the Eternal Judge, one despairs of the moral project, and one will lapse into morality as expediency. Invariably, morality will temporize.

Cardinal Mercier also criticizes secularist models of morality. These are identified by the suppression of God and his replacement with some other substitute or absolute. He divides those into three general groups. The first involves a sort of implied social contract, or social debt. The second posits a sociological origin of duty. The third group appears to tout progress of man's nature, self-realization or self-development. All these suffer from endemic faults and are doomed to failure. [257-58(67)]

Cardinal Mercier and the Natural Law, Part 11: Excursus on Kantian Duty

IN A PRIOR POSTING, WE OBSERVED that moral duty was universal, absolute, and necessary, and Mercier's theory of natural law abides by these. Kant accepted the challenge that moral duty had to be universal, absolute, and necessary. However, Kant did not believe that anything universal, absolute, and necessary could be derived from experience, from phenomena. In his view, moral obligation had to have its source from some principle that preceded, that did not rely upon, any contingent experience. In sum, it had to be something a priori in form. Something totally independent from our senses, from our experiences, even from our loves. It hovered about us sort of like the sun without our first seeing its light, feeling its warmth, or experiencing the orange wash of its rising halloo, the burnishing rays of its daily reign, and the roseate rays of its evening aquittance.

Brain in a Jar: Symbol of Kant's Categorical Imperative

This cool, inorganic principle of logic, better fitted for machines than for men, and so which is not to be found in flesh, but only in naked mind, a mind as it were pulled out from the skull of man in placed, like Broca's brain, in a jar of formalin at the Musée de l'Homme, is the categorical imperative:

What is this pure form which has no empirical connexions and in consequence is along [according to Kant] of being universal and necessary? It is the principle: 'Act as if the maxim from which you act were to become through your will a universal law of nature', or 'Act in accordance with a maxim which can serve as universal law'.

[247-48(55)] In Kant's moral theory, the will must not allow itself to be swayed, wooed, informed by anything other than this categorical imperative. The will must be independent of any desire, motive, but the naked categorical imperative. Only thus, shed of any desire of flesh and friendship, any matronly solicitude, any paternal love, can the will be said to be truly autonomous, self-determining, free and thereby virtuous. Sound inclinations--which play such an important role in the theories of natural law--are to be banished from Kantian ethics.

Similarly to be banished from Kantian ethics is any notion of incentive and reward, or hope of it of punishment or even fear of punishment. These extrinsic motivators sully the pure categorical imperative which alone must be our guide.

But Mercier rejects the Kantian system. "The categorical imperative," he insists, "is no moral standard by which good and evil may be distinguished, nor is it a true moral law." "Moreover," Mercier continues, "the principles on which Kant bases his argument are false." [249(56)]. Why so?

Mercier's argument against the categorical imperative is based upon the definition of "moral rule." "By its definition," Mercier begins, "a moral rule is a practical judgment, and therefore a judgment concerning the relation of an act with its end." [249(56)] The Kantian theory of a moral act, however, disposes of ends. "Consequently," the Kantian theory of morality "makes any relation of an act to an end impossible and therefore rules out any true norm of morality." We are left, hobbling, without a bourne, a crippled pilgrim, without scrip or staff, and, worse, without place of pilgrimage. So, this much vaunted Kantian autonomy is the same as assaulting a pilgrim and leaving him dazed, senseless, and lost, and then calling him free. From natural law pilgrim to Kantian beggar. That's Kantian autonomy.

It is really inconceivable that a moral law should be built upon the lack of any legitimate end, without a final cause.

Obligation which is the essential note of a law, is a certain necessity, put upon the will, of freely acting in a determined way. But it is inconceivable that the will should be drawn to act except by a final cause, that is, by the representation of a good to be willed. Hence the categorical imperative which claims to exclude all real final causes from the sphere of the moral will cannot produce any real obligation and consequently is not a law in the proper sense.

[249(56)] Mercier further rejects the notion that universality and necessity, both of which are characteristics of moral obligation, cannot be derived from experience, "when these are put to the service of the spiritual faculties of man's soul." In other words, experience alone may not be sufficient, but will and reason may be able to distill from experience such principles of universality and necessity.

Another flaw that Mercier sees in Kantian ethics is that it sees human nature to be its own end, and that therefore complete autonomy can be predicated upon such human nature. However, human nature must have an end outside of itself, namely God. And the moment that man's end is not man himself, but God, the notion of a complete autonomy of human nature collapses.

Finally, Mercier rejects the notion that reason demands that we not pay heed or even follow the "natural inclination we experience towards the enjoyment of our happiness." While true that this desire should be "rightly directed," that the inclination must be sound, for it to be "compatible with the highest standard of morality of which human nature is capable," that requirement of right direction or soundness does not allow us to reject any desire or any inclination whatsoever. In other words, the desires or inclinations, while not absolute, are subordinately good. So long as they are subordinate or ordered to our summum bonum or finis ultimus they can be secondary, but no less real, motives. "Our love," Mercier concludes, "when perfectly ordered seeks God, our objective end, primarily and above all things, and secondarily that subjective happiness which results from the possession of God." [249(56)] We will find our own good in God, our own happiness in God. It would seem philosophically unhinged, schizophrenic even, to suggest that we must reject our own happiness in pursuing God, when God is nothing but our assured happiness.

The categorical imperative is, perhaps, the last thought of a dying brain as it is placed in a jar of formalin to be gawked at by Museum guests, an opportunity purchased with the sum of some Euros. It wonders how, robbed of body and spirit and condemned to a jar of formalin, it will henceforward be good. How can it answer that question when it is not even really human? Do we really want to be taught morality from a brain in a jar which can never leave the room?


Wouldn't we rather learn it from a wizened guide, who knows the way to where we are going, even if he does have to lean on a stick? Some things, St. Augustine tells us, and I suppose Kant (who virtually never left his town of Königsberg) forgot, are learned by walking. Solvitur ambulando. We have to both walk, and know where to go. That's the real categorical imperative.

Cardinal Mercier and the Natural Law, Part 10: The Moral Virtues

FROM LAW TO VIRTUE THE ROAD IS SHORT. The two are inextricably mixed. "The habitual qualities that result from the observance of the moral law are called moral virtues." [240(46)] The law leads to virtue, and virtue to good. Simply put, a virtue is "an habitual disposition, either received from God (infused virtue) or acquired by the individual (acquired virtue), which is added to the natural powers of the rational soul and makes the normal exercise of its activity easier." [24-41(40)] Moral virtues perfect or polish the will, as distinguished from intellectual virtues, which perfect or polish the intellect. Mercier adopts the classical division of the moral virtues into four "hinges," four "fundamental or cardinal virtues." And these are prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance.

The Four Moral Virtues by Giotto (Scrovegni Chapel, Padua)
From Left to Right: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance

The practical reason is used by man to distinguish between what is morally good and what is morally evil, between the affirmative commands and the negative prohibitions of the natural law. It is through a judgment of the practical reason that an act's conformity with any determined end, including the last end, is determined. From the subjective point of view, our practical judgment is what we use to tell us the goodness or badness of moral acts. Cardinal Mercier rejects those theories of morality that would place moral decisions in some sort of irrational faculty, some sort of instinctual or affective power separate and apart from the cognitive part of man (i.e., moral sense or organic morality theories).

The practical reason has its first principle just like the speculative reason has its first principle. With respect to the speculative reason, the first principle is the principle of non-contradiction: a thing cannot both be and not be in the same way. With respect to the practical reason the first principle is that good must be done, and evil avoided. This principle is self-evident, foundational. [242-43(50)] (quoting S.T. Ia-IIae, q. 94, a. 2).

Since the moral law, the natural law, is really law, it follows that it requires a sanction. A sanction, considered objectively, is "all the rewards and punishments attached to the performance or to the violation of it [a law]." Considered formally, the sanction is "the promulgation of this system of rewards and punishments reserved for those who observe or transgress the law." [244(51)] The natural law therefore should have both punishments and rewards and these should be promulgated. Mercier considers the objective and formal need for sanction, and he suggests that the moral law has sanction. Though the sanction of the moral law is seen in this life, it is not always sufficient, and so he argues that the moral law requires some sort of eternal reward or punishment.

During the present life, there is a sanction, albeit insufficient in all respects. Mercier distinguishes four kinds of sanction that are temporal: a natural sanction, an interior sanction, a legal sanction, and a public or social sanction.

Natural Sanction	The natural consequences of our action, including health, comfort, success, etc. which generally follow the exercise of moral virtues and the weakness, disease, suffering that follow from vice.
Interior Sanction	The internal sense arising from conscience, which includes joy of being good, and the shame, guilt arising from doing wrong.
Legal Sanction	The system of rewards and penalties from human law that supplements or supports the natural law
Public or Social Sanction	The praise, esteem, discredit, glory, infamy, etc. that others attach to our external actions.

Though the natural law has sanctions attached to it in this life, Mercier acknowledges that these are insufficient for three reasons. To be sufficient, sanction would have to be universal, proportionate, and efficacious. In other words, the sanction must leave no good act or actor unrewarded and no bad act or actor unpunished (universal); it must be precisely tailored to the individual merit and demerit of the act or actor (proportionate); it must be consistently applied so as to maintain the moral order (efficacious). Manifestly, this does not occur in this life. We all know that men that have escaped punishment, and men that have obtained reward far beyond their just deserts. It is a constant plaint of the virtuous:

These things also I saw in the days of my vanity: A just man perisheth in his justice, and a wicked man liveth a long time in his wickedness.

Haec quoque vidi in diebus vanitatis meae iustus perit in iustitia sua et impius multo vivit tempore in malitia sua.

There is also another vanity, which is done upon the earth. There are just men to whom evils happen, as though they had done the works of the wicked: and there are wicked men, who are as secure, as though they had the deeds of the just: but this also I judge most vain.

Est et alia vanitas quae fit super terram sunt iusti quibus multa proveniunt quasi opera egerint impiorum et sunt impii qui ita securi sunt quasi iustorum facta habeant sed et hoc vanissimum iudico.

(Eccl. 7:16; 8:14). We may also simply peruse the Book of Job.

Job by William Blake

"A sanction, then, to be adequate, must be found elsewhere, in a future life." [245(52)] So it would seem to be required by reason alone that there must be some sort of eternal settling of accounts, though clearly reason can only speculate beyond that much:

After a time of trial, the length of which we do not know, the virtuous will be eternally rewarded in a future life, and the wicked will be deprived for ever of their happiness." . . . . With regard to [this] proposition, philosophy can establish two points: (i) the idea of eternal punishment is not contrary to reason; God can inflict on man for certain grave or mortal delinquencies a supreme eternal damnation. (ii) if we consider the exigencies of the providential order of the universe, God must give a sanction to the moral law by inflicting on the guilty a supreme eternal punishment. If, therefore, He can and must punish grave transgressions with an eternal chastisement, it is a logical conclusion that the guilty will in fact be for ever unhappy.

[245(53)] (Mercier also provides support or proof of this by arguments from reason, or at least showing that it is not contrary to reason, which will not be summarized here simply for lack of space. See [245-47(53-54)])

Cardinal Mercier and the Natural Law: Part 9, The Natural Law

"MAN IS SUBJECT TO A NATURAL LAW," Cardinal Mercier states, "that is, an inclination which habitually disposes him to know and will the end of his rational nature and what conduces to it, as well as to discern and reject what is contrary to it." [236(40)] The thesis is supported by three separate arguments. The first argument argues from analogy. The second is founded upon consciousness. The third argument is based upon Providence. We shall treat the three arguments seriatim.

The argument from analogy begins with being, a transcendental which transcends all categories, and which is predicated of all that is. "Every being in this world has within it an inclination towards some end, and its law is to tend towards it." [236(40)] This is something that we learn from observation. What being do we know that has no end, that wanders about aimlessly, arbitrarily, chaotically, without order, without any kind of inner compass? Why should man alone be an exception? There is no answer why man should be an exception. "Man is no exception; he is likewise set towards his end." [236(40)] It follows, then, that we have an inclination which influences our reason and our will, and this "influence exercised by the end upon the higher faculties of man is called the natural law." Man, like all created beings, is under law; his particular law, which governs his will and reason, is called the natural law.

The next argument is based upon consciousness. If man reflects upon himself, if he practices the Delphic suggestion to know himself, he is aware that there is some sort of higher tug, a "higher attraction," that draws him toward the good that his reason recognizes. And all men are aware (which man has not experienced?) that he has breached or yielded to evil by "overcoming [a natural] interior resistance," and, having done so, is filled with the self-reproach of shame or with feelings of guilt or compunction. How many of us have felt regret for the evil word, the hurtful act, the deceit played out on others, the failure to meet the demands of our inner voice: how many of us do not know the Aristotelian and Biblical sense of hamartia? How many of us have not, like an archer, hamartein, missed the mark? He also experiences the satisfaction that comes by its opposite, the practice of virtue. Who does not sense the joy that comes with a kind word, a mendful act, and the leading of another from ignorance to truth?

Finally, one may work downwards as it were from creation. God must have had some end in view in creating the world and its creatures. Being both infinitely wise (and incapable of being deceived as to relation between the creature and its end), infinitely holy (and incapable of choosing an end unfit for the creature), and infinitely able (and therefore able to achieve what he intended), God has given to his created beings "an impulse towards their ends, a principle which directs their activities in conformity with the eternal designs of his Providence."

[I]n a word, He must have implanted in each created agent the natural law. Now this natural law must be in harmony with the constitution of the subject under its sway. The natural law implanted in man's nature, which is rational and free, cannot be, then a fatalistic law; on the contrary, it must consist in an intellectual tendency to form some principles of reason with certainty, and in an impulse which, without forcing or necessarily determining the will, inclines it towards the real good apprehended by the intellect.

[237(40)] The natural law is thus reflected in inclinations in man which show themselves as tendencies in his reason and in impulses of his will.

The natural law is, as it were, a subset of the eternal law. "By the eternal law," Cardinal Mercier states, "is meant the destination, as conceived by Divine Wisdom, of all creatures to their respective ends, and the adaptation of their activities to them." [237(41)] He cites to St. Thomas's short and classic definition: Lex aeterna nihil aliud est quam ratio divinae sapientiae secundum quod est directiva omnium actuum et motionum. "The eternal law is nothing other than the reason of divine wisdom by which all acts and motions of all things are directed." (S.T. Ia-IIae, q. 93, a. 1) The natural law is nothing other than how this eternal law is manifested in a free and rational creature. Hoc lumen et hanc legem dedit Deus homini in creatione. God gave this light and this law to man as part of the act of his creation. There would be no natural law without man. There would be no man without natural law.

At its most basic, the natural law is exceedingly simple; indeed incontestable. He who denies this principle is not worthy of his humanity.

Regarded under its general form the natural law is summed up in this fundamental dictum: 'Bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum vitandum'. [One ought to follow and do good, and avoid evil.]

[238(41)] This is article 1, section 1 of the natural law. Everything else follows from it. "It is the function of reason to draw from this first principle both immediate and more or less remote deductions that will serve to guide the will in its conduct through life." [238(41)]

This fundamental principle of natural law--to follow and do good and to avoid evil--places man under a moral obligation, which implies a form of necessity. The necessity, however, is not physical. Rather the necessity is moral. The necessity is not theoretical, but practical. The necessity is not hypothetical, but it is absolute. [238(42)] In other words, if is not in the form of if you want to be good, then do . . . . This injunction is, plain and simple, you ought to be good; therefore you should do . . . .

How is freedom to be reconciled with this necessity? Is man robbed of freedom if he is subjected to moral, practical, and absolute necessity to do good and avoid evil?

In addressing the question of how to reconcile human freedom with the necessity of the moral law, Mercier explores the foundation of moral obligation. From whence does moral obligation proceed? Here, at least since the time of Kant, there appear to be two extreme answers Mercier explains: heteronomy (what Mercier calls "theological morality") and autonomy (what Mercier calls "independent morality" or "autonomy of reason"). In the heteronomical view, the moral law is exclusively imposed from above, as it were, from God as the supreme Legislator of the moral order. The heteronomists dispute as to whether this command is reflective of divine reason, or divine will, or both divine reason and will. Regardless of this, however, the heteronomists all believe the necessity of obeying the moral law is that it is an oracle, as it were, from the divine Legislator. It is imposed from above. This view is required, the heteronomists argue, because of the very nature of God and law. Moreover, it is the only possible way to avoid falling into the realm of "independent morality" or the "autonomy of reason," where man makes his own law.

Mercier rejects this either/or scenario. The moral duty, and the necessity to follow it, is not only a command of the sovereign God, though he does not reject God as the ultimate source of obligation. Mercier, however, rejects the notion of radical autonomy, that man has a law that is apart from God and that the duty he imposes he imposes upon himself. "[T]his necessity between choosing between the theological [heteronomous] morality . . . and autonomous morality is in no way forced upon us." [238(43)] Mercier, following "unreservedly" St. Thomas, believes that the necessity of moral duty arises from a "double foundation--immediately, upon human nature; remotely, upon the intelligence of God who rules all things by His providence." [238-39(43)]

With sure Catholic instincts, Cardinal Mercier consequently rejects false notions of autonomy without rejecting autonomy, and rejects false notions of heteronomy without rejecting heteronomy, and adopts, instead, a view that admits both man's autonomy and the law's heteronomy, in a reconciled view that John Paul II, in his encyclical Veritatis splendor called theonomy or participated theonomy. VS, No. 40-41. Thus, between the error of absolute heteronomy and the error of absolute autonomy, navigate St. Thomas, Cardinal Mercier, and John Paul II through the via media of participated theonomy.

The natural law is participated theonomy. And so Mercier is able to preserve two truths in equal measure:

We can therefore say that human nature is a law unto itself, that it bears within itself the obligation of doing good and avoiding evil, inasmuch as the soul's own tendency towards its complete good puts upon the will, enlightened by the practical judgments of the reason, the moral necessity of willing the good that is upright and, in its final analysis, the supreme good in which its completed good and perfection is realized.

[240(44)] Yet Mercier can also say, virtually in the same breath, that:

If God wills creatures to exist distinct from Himself, it is impossible that He should not perceive by His practical reason the necessary relations of subordination which must exist between these creatures and the essential goodness of the Divine Being. These relations as conceived by the Divine Mind are the 'eternal law'. Such is the ultimate foundation of the distinction between good and evil, and of the natural law and of moral obligation.

[240(45)] So the natural law is both a "law unto itself," and a law "subordinat[e]" to God who is its "ultimate foundation." The natural law is in man and from God, derived, as it were, from the eternal law of God and divinely crafted to fit the rational and free nature of the creature that God made in his image and likeness. It is in the participated theonomy that is at the heart of the natural law where man will find himself both free and good.

Cardinal Mercier and the Natural Law, Part 8

WHETHER OUR ACT IS GOOD or our act is evil depends upon one, and only thing: whether that act conforms or does not conform to our supreme end, which, by now, we know (by reason alone, bracketing revelation for the moment) is the contemplation of God. An object is good if it is the object of a morally good act. We know these truths based upon reason alone, though they are consonant and supplemented with the truths of revelation. It follows that a morally evil act is the opposite of a morally good act. It is an act that is opposed to our supreme good: "it is the act which is prejudicial to the perfecting of our rational nature, or it is the object of this act." [231(32)] There is a corollary which follows from this, and it is that every good act is, "at least implicitly or virtually, an act which contributes to the glory of God." The negative is that every morally bad act, "inasmuch as it cannot be referred to God, the last end of creation, is blameworthy in his sight." [232(33)] (citing S. T. Ia-IIae, q. 21, a. 4)

In determining whether an act is morally good or morally evil, we must look at three sources of morality: (1) the formal object of the act; (2) the circumstances surrounding the act; and (3) the end of the act. These are called the "sources of morality," or the "fonts of morality." Mercier looks at these three "sources" or "fonts" and then compares them to utilitarian, evolutionist, sociological, and pragmatist theories of morality.

The Three Sources of Morality. "The formal object is the first determinant of the goodness or badness of a human action." [232)34)] The operative term here is "form." As Mercier explains:

By formal object we mean not the reality, considered absolutely, of a thing, but the reality looked at in reference to the moral act, as bearing a relation of the conformity or want of conformity with the end of the rational nature of the agent.

[232(34)] Suppose two men, George and Bill, have $1,000. The material object is the acquisition and possession of $1,000. This is not the formal object. The first (Bill), we learn, acquired the $1,000 through theft. The other (George), we learn, acquired it as a result of a gift. Therefore, though the material act is the same (acquisition and possession of $1,000), the formal act is entirely different. The formal act is the acquisition of $1,000 through theft. The formal act in the case of George is the acquisition of $1,000 through a gift.

The second source of morality is circumstance. "The objective circumstances of time, place, and person likewise contribute their share to the character of the moral act." [232(34)] The example given by Mercier makes intuitive sense: stealing five shillings from a poor man is a greater wrong that stealing the same amount from a rich man. This is an extraneous circumstance that colors the moral act, and so must be taken into account in determining the character of the act.

The third source of morality is the end, or the extrinsic purpose of the act. "[T]he extrinsic purpose contributes to the perfection or imperfection of an act." [232(34)] This is typically regarded as the agent's motive. An act has two kinds of purposes, an intrinsic and an extrinsic purpose. Thus, in the case of someone who gives alms to the poor out of a religious motive (i.e., out of love of Christ and his suffering members), the intrinsic purpose of almsgiving is to help the needy. This is intrinsic to the act of almsgiving, and it exists regardless of the motive or extrinsic purpose of the agent in giving alms. In this case, the extrinsic purpose of the agent (giving alms for the love of Christ) is commendable. It would be otherwise if the actor were giving alms for the purpose of assuaging his vanity gaining some sort of power of those he helps. In the latter case, the extrinsic purpose (motive) would be different from the first.

All three sources must be good for a moral act to be good. "The absence of any one of these conditions is sufficient to make the act a bad one: 'Bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu'." [233(34)]

This view of the moral act is decidedly different from that entertained by Thomas Hobbes and "all the adherents of the modern positivistic school," including Émile Littré (1801-81), Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), and Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), who "consider man's well-being, that is the pleasure of the present life, to be the sole motive-force of all our actions," whether that well-being is of the community or the individual is irrelevant. Hedonism is opposed to the natural law. Morality is not determined on the basis of whether an act is pleasurable or painful; morality is determined on whether the integral moral act is consonant with the ultimate end of man, and thus a morally good act may be painful or pleasurable, depending upon the circumstances, but the pain or pleasure of the act is not what is drives the norm of right and wrong.

Cardinal Mercier raises some objections to individualistic utilitarianism. This theory relies on well-being of man as the end-all of morality, well-being defined as the maximization of pleasure in this life. First, Mercier points out that a system of individualistic utilitarianism rests on a contradiction when it maintains that pleasure is primary object of the will. Pleasure follows will; it does not precede the will. Secondly, pleasure is such a subjective principle. It is "essentially relative to the individual person and varies with the different circumstances of life." [233(36)] It follows that it is not capable of providing a rule of distinguishing "one thing or action as objectively and intrinsically right from another as objectively and intrinsically wrong." [234(36)] It thus collapses to relativism. Third, it abandons reason, and to allow pleasure to control of the human rein of morality is ultimately is fatal to human behavior.

[I]f reason is left out of account and it is indulged in recklessly and without discrimination, [it] is self-destructive, for experience teaches us that it is followed by pain or transforms itself into pain. This principle of moral hedonomism or egoism is, then, self-contradictory and leads to logical suicide.

[234(36)] To overcome the deficiency of pleasure as the foundational moral principles, some moralists substituted utility for pleasure as moral's first principle. "But the useful is not an end; it is only a means in view of an end." Something is useful with respect to a certain standard. What then is that standard? Utilitarianism is thus stillborn.

Social utilitarianism attempts to solve the inherent egoism in individual utilitarianism by transferring the moral principle to an individual to the social body, thus "man must seek the welfare of the greatest number, the amelioration of humanity." [234(37)] Social utilitarianism suffers from the same problem as individual utilitarianism: relativism. If individual utilitarianism is subjective because it relies on my pleasure or minimization of pain, how does social utilitarianism escape from relativism by relying on my neighbor's pleasure or lack of pain? Moreover, if my neighbor's happiness is to be maximized, we are brought once again to the question of what makes our neighbor happy, and so social utilitarianism merely defers but does not answer the question of what makes men happy.

There is another problem with placing the universal and basic moral principle in the "happiness for humanity." Such a criterion would make morality dependent upon society, whereas "morality is anterior to the organization of society." [234(37)] (As a thought experiment, one might place oneself on a desert island: without men around, are we free to engage in any behavior? Torture animals? Bestiality? Self-mutilation? Suicide? Blasphemy of God? Intemperance? Obviously, there are moral principles that do not rely upon the social body in which we are placed.)

Finally, social utilitarianism really collapses back into individual utilitarianism. "[F]or what indeed is social happiness but the happiness of the individuals who make up society? The distinction between good an evil for the community is accordingly subordinate to the distinction between good and evil for the individual." [235(37)] The social utilitarian has not escaped the relativism of the individual utilitarian.

Herbert Spencer (of "survival of the fittest" fame) sought to put utilitarianism on a scientific footing by tying it in with the Darwinian evolutionist theory. A one-dimensional man, Spencer places mankind in the material world only, and thus dumbs down morality into a "chapter in mechanics." [235(38)] In Herbert Spencer's mechanistic view of things:

[T]he universe is subject to two fundamental laws, the law of persistence of force and the law of evolution. The latter consists in the passing from 'the instability of the homogeneous' to 'the stability of the heterogeneous', and this stability results from the adaptation of a being to its environment. Hence, the moral end of man is nothing but the perfect adaptation of the individual to the conditions of social life.

[235(38)] Spencer's mechanistic view of the universe suffers from all such mechanistic theories. Most principally, however, "in such a system, liberty can find no place," and because of mechanistic determinism inherent in mechanistic views of the world, "the ideas of right and wrong no longer retain their proper meaning." [235(38)] Moreover, any theory of morality which relies on some supposed future state of mankind (i.e., one that relies upon progress or evolution) suffers from the problem of a moving standard. How is an individual to know what this "final state of humanity" is? How is an individual to know how to act so as to be realize this "supreme state" of mankind? Since, in the view of those who put morality on an evolutionary plane, mankind is in flux, how is it that we know to which end it is flowing? "Now what could be more complicated than this final equilibrium of all the forces of the universe which is to constitute the ultimate phase of the cosmic evolution?" [236(38)] The system reeks of impracticability, even impossibility.

The sociological systems of morality are also criticized by Cardinal Mercier. As examples of this he cites to the sociological systems of Lucien Lévy-Brühl (1857-1939) and of Émile Durkheim (1858-1917). Sociological systems of morality take the position that moral judgments are guided on nothing other than the social environment, and so are defined by society and are not antecedent to, or independent from, society. These theories are erroneous "since our fundamental moral judgments are the same always and everywhere, and are therefore not affected by the vicissitudes of social life." [236(39)]. Such statements as that of Samuel Butler from his The Note Books--"Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibal country."*--posit a facile and unthinking identity between morality and custom. If morality is nothing but custom, then there is no such thing as morality. The argument is nothing but a sophistry, a means to relieve oneself of objective moral norms by collapsing the category of morality into the category of custom. Methinks I smell the smoke of Satan in such thoughts.

Finally, Cardinal Mercier rejects the pragmatists, whose advocates include William James (1842-1910) and Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805). For pragmatists, "the moral ideal is lived in the collective consciousness by reason of the utility which it procures." However, such a system suffers from the same problem that confronts all utilitarian theories: it ultimately collapses into subjectivism, relativism. It "cannot escape the condemnation of purely capricious subjectivism."

All these alternative theories of morality--individual utilitarianism, social utilitarianism, social Darwinism, sociological schools of morality, pragmatism--ultimately collapse into relativism. Is it any wonder that, with the propagation of these theories and the rejection of natural law, the West is "moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value one's own ego and one's own desires"? (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's Pre-Conclave Sermon, before being elected Pope).

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*Samuel Butler, The Note Books (Pomona Press, 2006), 32.