GOOD
640
GOOD
its selfhood, nor be absorbed according to the pantheis-
tic sense in tlie Divine Substance.
A word or two may be ailded upon a point which owing to the prevalence of Ivantian ideas is of actual importance. As we have seen, the moral good and the supreme good are ends in themselves; they are not means, nor are they to be pursued merely as means to pleasure or agreeable feeling. But may we make the agreeable any part of our motive? Kant answers in the negative ; for to allow this to enter into our motive is to vitiate the only moral motive, " right for right's sake ' ' by self-interest. This theory does not pay due regard to the order of things. The pleasurable feeling attendant upon action, in the order of nature, estab- lished by God, served as a motive to action, and its function is to guarantee that actions necessary to wel- fare shall not be neglected. Why, then, should it be unlawful to aim at an end which God has attached to the good? Similarly as the attainment of our su- preme good will be the cause of everlasting happiness, we may reasonably make this accompanying end the motive of our action, provided that we do not make it the sole or predominant motive.
In conclusion, we may now state in a word the cen- tral idea of our doctrine. God as Infinite Being is In- finite Good; creatures are good because they derive their measure of being from Him. This participation manifests His goodness, or glorifies God, which is the end for which He created man. The rational creature is destined to be united to God as the Supreme End and Good in a special manner. In order that he may attain to this consummation, it is necessary that in this life, by conforming his conduct to conscience, the interpreter of the moral law, he realizes in himself the righteousness which is the true perfection of his na- ture. Thus God is the Supreme Good, as principle and as end. " I am the beginning and I am the end."
St. Thomas, S. TheoL. I-I, QQ, v, vi. xliv, xlvii, Ixv; I-II, v, xviii-xx, xciv; Idem, Summa Contra Gentiles, tr. Rickaby, God and His Creatures (London, 1905), II, xxiii; III, i-xl, Ixxxi, cxvi; ■ St. Augustine, De Natura Boni: Idem, De Dnctrina Christiana; Idem, De Cioitate Dei; Plato, Republie, IV-X; Idem, Phado, 64 sqq.; Idem, Thewtetus; Aristotle, Metaphysics, I, II, IV, VI; Idem, Nicomach. Ethics, I, i-iv; IX; X; Bouquillon, Theologia Fundamentalis, lib. I; lib. Ill, tract, i; lib. IV; all textbooks of Scholastic philosophy — good is treated in ontol- ogy and in ethics; Rickaby, Moral Philosophy (London, 1901); Mivart, Ore Truth, sect, iii, iv (London, 1S89); Turner, History of Philosophy (Boston and London, 1903), passim; Janet and Seailles, History of the Problems of Philosophy, ed. Jones (London and New York, 1902), II, i, ii; Faroes, La Liberie et le Devoir, pt. II, § iii; McDonald, The Principles of Moral Science, bk. I, chs. i-vi, xl; Harper, The Metaphysic of the School (London, 1884), vol. I, bk. II, eh. iv.
James J. Fox.
Good, The Highest. — We always act with a view to some good. "The good is the object which all pursue, and for the sake of which they always act", says Plato (Republic, I, vi). His disciple Aristotle repeats the same idea in other words when he declares (Ethics, 1, 1) that the good is "that which all aim at". This definition is, as St. Thomas ob.serves, a posteriori. Yet, if appetibility does not constitute goodness, still it is our only means of identifying it; in practice, the good is the desirable. But experience soon teaches that all desires cannot be satisfied, that they are con- flicting, and that some goods must be foregone in order to secure others. Hence the necessity of weighing the relative value of goods, of classifying them, and of ascertaining which of them must be procured even at the loss of others. The result is the division of goods into two great classes, the physical and the moral, happiness and virtue. Within either class it is com- paratively easy to determine the relation of particular good things to one another, but it has proved far more difficult to fix the relative excellence of the two classes of virtue and happiness. Still the question is of supreme importance, since in it the reason and final dastiny of our life is involved. As Cicero .says (De FinibuB, v, (>), "Suininum autem bonmn si ignoratur,
vivendi rationem ignorari necesse est. " If happiness
and virtue are mutually exclusive, we have to choose
between the two, and this choice is a momentous one.
Hut their incompatibility may be only on the surface.
Indeed the hope is ever recurring that the sovereign
good includes both, and that t liere is some way of
reconciling them.
It has been the task of moralists to sift the condi- tions on which this may be done. (1) Some would reduce virtue to happiness; (2) others teach that happine.ss is to be found in virtue; (3) but, as both these solutions are ever found to be in contradiction with the facts of life, the consequent vacillations of opinion can be traced throughout the history of phil- osophy. In the main, they can be classified under three heads, according as one or the other predomi- nates, or both are made to blend : viz. : (1 ) Eudsemonism or Utilitarianism, when the highest good is identified with happiness; (2) Rational Deontologism, when the highest good is identified with virtue or duty; (.3) Rational Eudsemonism, or tempered Deontologism, when both virtue and happiness are combined in the highest good.
I. EuD^MONisM. (a) Socrates (469-399 b. c), the father of systematic Ethics, taught that happiness is the end of man; that it consists, not in external goods — signs of the uncertain favours of fortime, or of the gods (evTvxia) — but in a rational joy, which implies the renimciation of common delights {(vTpa^ia). He did not, however, carry this doctrine of moderation to the degree of asceticism, but rather insisted on the cultivation of the mind as being of greater importance. Knowledge is the only virtue, ignorance the only vice. Yet, from the Dialogues of Xenophon, it is seen that he descends to the common morality of Utilitarianism.
(b) This latter phase of Socratic teaching was adopted by Aristippus of C'yrene (435-356 B. c), who as representative of the Hedonistic School among the ancients, and holding, on the one hand, with Socrates that knowledge is virtue, and, on the other, with Pro- tagoras, that we can know only our sensations, and not that which causes them, concluded that that which produces in us the most pleasant feelings is the highest good. Culture and virtue are desirable only as a means to this end. As pleasure is conditioned by organic states, it can be produced only by motion, which, to be pleasant, must needs be gentle; hence according to the Cyrenaics, it is not the mere absence of pain, but a transient emotion which makes man happy and constitutes his highest good.
(c) Aristotle (384-322 B. c.) admits with Socrates and the ancient philosophers generally, that the highest good is to be identified with the highest happiness ; and, in determining in what this highest happiness consists, he agrees with the Cyrenaics that it is not mere pass- ing enjoyment, but action (iv t« f^v Kal lvepye7v, Kth. Nic, IX, ix, 5). Still it is not any and every kind of activity that man may find agreeable which consti- tutes this supreme happiness, but that which is proper to him (olKeTof Ipyov — oUfla dper-^, Ibid., I, vii, 15). This cannot be merely the life which he shares with the plants and animals, or the sensibility, which he enjoys in common with the brutes, but thought, which is the distinctive characteristic of man. Moreover, as it is in the sphere of activity proper to each living being that its peculiar excellence is to be sought, it follows that man's rational activity (^vxrjs Ivipyeia PLCTo. X670U, Ibid., I, vii, 15) is at the same time honour- able and virtuous (fvxrjs ivipyeia Kar aperiiv, loc. cit.). Since, however, there are several such activities, it must be the noblest and most perfect of these. This is none other than speculative thought, or that which has to do with the contemplation of "honourable and divine subjects" {koKSiv koX ffetuv. Ibid., X, vii, 10), because this belongs to the noblest faculty and tends to the noblest object; because it is the most continuous the most pleasant, the most self-sufficing (Ibid., I, x, 8).
