of the morality of an action. For it is the object to which the will tends, the prospect of gaining which moves the agent to act; but, as we saw in the last point, the motion of the will takes its moral quality from the object; a will, then, which tends to a good end will so far be good; a will which tends to a bad end will be bad. But the morality of an action resides chiefly in the will, so that a good or bad will, derived from the motive of an action, must necessarily contribute to the goodness or badness of that action. It is the end or motive which sets the will in motion and gives its own moral quality to the action which follows. One, then, who steals money in order to be able to commit adultery commits a sin against justice, induced thereto by a desire to sin against chastity, and as St Thomas, following Aristotle, says, he is more of an adulterer than a thief. [1]
3. The end which the agent has in view may coincide with the natural scope of the action, as when a man eats to support life. The extrinsic end is then said to correspond with the intrinsic end of the object. Or it may be different, as when a man eats merely for the sake of pleasure; and a man may be moved to action by a variety of subordinate ends, as when he eats to keep up his strength, to be able to work, to obtain the money wherewith to be able to support his family, and so fulfil his duty.
4. If the object of the action be good, and the extrinsic end of the agent be good also, the action will have a twofold merit. And so there is a twofold merit in giving an alms to relieve distress for the love of God. On the other hand, a grievously sinful motive corrupts and makes an otherwise good action grievously wrong. It turns the agent altogether away from God, his last end. And so it would be a mortal sin to give an alms to a poor woman in order to seduce her.
Even a venially sinful motive, if it be the whole or the primary motive for the action, corrupts the whole act and makes it venially sinful; for then a bad object is sought by good means indeed, but the means are infected with the purpose to which they are prostituted. And so one who preaches merely out of vanity commits a venial sin.
If, however, an end be only venially sinful, and be not the whole or primary motive of the agent, the resulting action will be partly good and partly evil. We suppose that the object is good, a partial motive or motives are also good; in this case a partial and secondary bad motive, which is only
- ↑ St Thomas, 1-2, q. 18, a. 6.
