The Goodness of Being

Article 3. The Goodness of Being

c) Evil

a) Meaning of Goodness

Transcendental goodness which, as we shall see, is but a phase of being itself and is in reality identified with being, consists in the fact that being in general, and any being in particular, can answer a tendency, a natural desire or appetite. This is a loose-sounding description, and we must make it definitely intelligible by approaching the question of goodness in a somewhat circuitous manner.

When is a thing called good ? First, when it pleases, when it is enjoyable, when it affords satisfaction. Thus we speak of a good dinner, a good vacation, a good time; thus a child calls candy good, and children of a larger growth speak of a good discussion, a good sermon, a good view, a good play; and the Victorian lady used often to admit the satisfying experience of “a good cry.” In the second place, a thing is called good when it is useful, and when it has all the qualities that fit it for its proper use. Thus we speak of a good broom, a good house, a good car, a “good fit,” a good rain. And inasmuch as a thing is not wholly fitted for its proper use it is lacking in goodness, and we say that it is “no good.” Further, we call a thing good when it serves a good purpose. Thus a certain food, although unpalatable, may promote health-giving or health-preserving activities in the body, and we say that it is good food, in spite of the fact that it does not please our palate. Again, a thing is good when it meets the requirements of the moral law. Thus we speak of a good life, a good thought, a good action. We may sum up all these aspects of good in a practical, if not exhaustive, way, by saying that a thing is good (a) when it gives pleasure or satisfaction; (b) when it has all requisites for its proper use; (c) when it actually serves a good end or purpose; (d) when it squares with the rational requirements for proper human (i. e., moral) conduct.

Now, in all the phases or types of goodness here considered there is a common point, a common character. It is this: a good thing answers a natural appetite, tendency, or desire. For it answers an appetite or tendency for satisfaction, for fit and useful things, for a suitable end or goal, for suitable human conduct. The note of satisfaction, of filling out a need, of answering a requirement, of meeting a tendency, is in all the phases and all the types and examples of good we have considered and in all we could consider. Good answers tendency or appetite. In this fact we discern its fundamental nature. Upon this fact we frame its essential definition. Aristotle was right when he said, “Good is what everything tends to or desires.”

Regarded in this fundamental way, good is manifestly a synonym for being. For every being (inasmuch as it is actual) is capable of answering a tendency, desire, or appetite. And even as potential (i. e., as possible) a being bears a relationship to actuality and to the capability of answering a tendency which comes with actuality. Actual being is there; and what is there can be aimed at, can be the goal of tendency or appetite. Hence actual being, in so far as it is being at all, is desirable or good. And potential being is, in the exact measure of its potentiality, also good or desirable; it is potential good. Hence it is just to say that being and goodness, or, more exactly, being and the good are interchangeable terms. The old Latin formula is, omne ens est bonum; ens et bonum convertuntur, that is, “Every being is good; the good and being are synonymous.”

Take another view of this same truth: We discern purpose in things; we see about us an ordered universe; things tend to their ends, their goals, and all, literally, “work together unto good.” Therefore there is in things a tendency or inclination or appetite by which they seek their ends, and the ends are therefore good. And the beings which seek their ends are themselves elements or units in an ordered and complex universe, and each of them serves in its own way the needs of other things, and is, in so far, an end, a desirable thing, a good. Anything that exists or can exist can be the object of a tendency or appetite; and only in the measure in which a being exists or can exist can it be such an object. But anything that exists or can exist is being. Therefore being and the good are synonymous terms. This is not goodness (or the good) of a certain type, but goodness in its root-meaning; goodness that transcends the boundaries of type and class; goodness that is transcendental. And it is of this transcendental goodness that we speak when we say that goodness and being are not really but only logically distinct. Omne ens est bonum; ens et bonum convertuntur.

b) Classification of Goodness

Goodness is classified as metaphysical, physical, and moral.

1. Metaphysical goodness (ontological goodness; transcendental goodness) is that goodness which we have seen to be synonymous with being. Metaphysical goodness is, first and foremost, synonymous with actual being. It extends, however, to potential being inasmuch as this being involves a direction and order towards actual existence. Thus metaphysical or transcendental goodness is a complete synonym for actual being; in only a secondary way does it extend to potential being, for potential being, lacking actuality, lacks perfection which is the measure of actual goodness.

2. Physical goodness is the perfection of a being which has all the rounded completeness which its nature requires. Any lack of a natural requirement is a lack of goodness, and such lack or absence of being (i. e., perfection) is not good but evil. Thus we say that bread is good bread when it has all the qualities and perfections that its nature as bread requires. If something is lacking in its “rounded perfection” we say that, in so far, the bread is not good. Indeed, we sweepingly declare, “This bread is no good.” And here we discern the meaning of an ancient axiom, Bonum ex integra causa; malum ex quocumque defectu, that is, “A thing, to be good, must be wholly and completely good; it is spoiled (made bad) by any defect.” We shall see the justice of this axiom again, when we speak of the opposite of goodness, that is, of evil. We speak of physical goodness when we say that our health is good, or that our motor car is a good one, or that the carpenter has done a good job. When all the parts, elements, qualities, that should be present to a thing are actually there, then the thing has physical goodness. When a thing has all that it needs to fulfill its use or its purpose, it has physical goodness. Thus we see that there can be such a thing as good food; we also see that there can be such a thing as good poison.

5. Moral goodness is the perfection which accrues to free human activity from the fact that such activity squares with the requirements of the moral law. Free human activity means all deliberate human thoughts, desires, words, deeds, omissions. And the requirements of the moral law (which is fundamentally God Himself, viewed as Divine Reason and Will, that is, as the Eternal Law) are manifested proximately to man by conscience, that is, by human reason pronouncing upon the lawfulness or unlawfulness of a situation here and now to be decided. Thus moral goodness is the goodness of human conduct which is in line with conscience. The absence or lack of moral goodness is moral evil or sin.

In addition to the classification of goodness just given there are certain other classes (sub-classes, contained under the headings of physical or moral goodness) which we must notice here:

(a) A thing chosen as a suitable means to an end has the goodness of utility. It is called a bonum utile or “a useful good.” Thus a good broom not only illustrates physical goodness, but useful goodneZS. Thus, again, a painful and dangerous operation is, however undesirable in itself, a useful good; it is good as a means to the recovery of normal functions.

(b) A thing chosen for its own sake (and not as a means to something else) is a proper good. It is called a bonum honestum or “a seemly and fitting good.” Thus life and health are proper goods.

(c) A thing chosen for itself affords satisfaction when achieved, and, under this aspect as satisfying, it is called a bonum delectabile or “a pleasurable good.” Thus the enjoyment of health, or the pleasure one takes in a good dinner, indicates that health and pleasing food are pleasurable goods.

(J) A thing which truly answers an unspoiled natural tendency, or also a thing which answers a supernatural (i. e., grace-derived) tendency, is a real good. Thus, health, virtue, suitable work, are real goods. Contrasted with real good is apparent good, that is, a thing which has the outer seeming and the appeal of a real good, but which brings no lasting satisfaction, mius indolence and sinful indulgence are not real, but apparent goods. It is a truth established in philosophical psychology that man cannot deliberately choose evil for its own sake or under the true aspect of evil; man can only choose evil when he views it as a good. Nor is this sad choice a mere mistake; in responsible persons acting deliberately, it is always a uperverse and blameworthy choice. Man, in every human action,—that is, in every deliberate thought, word, deed,—acts for good, real or apparent.

(e) A good which belongs to the order of man’s outer, bodily life, is a material good. Such goods are man’s health, his property, his standing in the community, his good name. A good which perfects man’s mind, is an intellectual good; such goods are, for example, knowledge, studiousness, tact or prudence. A good which perfects man’s will, is a moral good; such, for instance, are justice, fortitude, purity.

(f) A good achievable by natural powers is a natural good; such a good is, for instance, acquired knowledge. A good achievable only by the aid of revelation or grace, is a supernatural good; such are the certitude of divine faith, confidence in God’s providence, the divine virtues (faith, hope, charity). Further, a good achievable by a creature is a finite good. God alone is infinite Good.

c) Evil

Evil is the absence of good, the lack of perfection, the privation of what ought to be present. Evil is accurately and simply defined as the privation of good.

We have distinguished goodness as metaphysical, physical, and moral. Academically, we may make a like classification of evil, the opposite of goodness. But, as we have seen, being and goodness are metaphysically identified, and so it appears that there is no such thing as metaphysical evil. Every being is good.

Now, on first sight it appears not only unlikely but downright untrue to say that every being is good. Is a wound or sore good ? Is sickness good ? Is sin good ? The answer is that a wound or a sore or a sickness is physically bad, and that sin is morally bad. But we have no metaphysical badness or evil here. After all, a wound or a sore or a sickness is not so much something positive as something negative; not so much the presence of something as the absence of something. Thus sickness is the absence of health; a wound or sore is the absence of physical soundness. These are not $o much things as the absence of things. And so also with sin; it is the lack of conformity between man’s conduct and the moral law; it is a failure, a falling away, a lack, an absence. These things which are physically or morally bad have no positive proper entity of their own which could be called evil; if they had, there could be metaphysical evil. But, as we see, they have not, for their essence lies in a lack and an absence, and not in the entitative presence of anything; they are rather to be called non-being than being, and hence their badness or evil is not to be ascribed to being, which is ever good.

Now, sickness and pain may appear very positive actualities to a man who must bear them, especially if they are due to physical causes that have positive, and even visible, presence, such as tumors or cancerous growths. It sounds a bit mad, at first hearing, to be told that a large and luxuriant collection of boils is rather the absence than the presence of something. Nor is it complete sense. The boils are indeed positive entities, but the damage that they do and the pain that they inflict is an interruption of normal function, an absence of healthy activities in the body. And only in so far are they evil. In themselves they may be very good boils, and may delight the scientific soul of the surgeon who finds them perfect specimens of a certain type of infection; but whether they are good in this sense or not, they are good in so far as they have actual being. But how can they be good in the root-sense of desirable? They are not only desirable but desired; not, indeed, by the patient who feels them as pain and suffering, but by the body cells which helped to produce them in an effort to overcome what was interfering with normal processes. The germs which caused the first infection are in themselves good. In so far as they cause a disturbance, a lack of proper function, in the human body, they constitute a physical evil for that body, but, while they are bad for the body, they are not bad for themselves or in themselves. Being as such is good; any positive entity or being as such is good; and this is metaphysical goodness. Even the movement of the murderer’s arm in striking down his victim is good; the same movement might readily be conceived as striking off the shackles of a slave, or as driving away a wild beast from innocent and helpless prey. The action is even physically good. But it is morally evil. And its evil consists in the fact that what is itself good is misdirected, misapplied, used in a manner out of line with (hence lacking conformity with) the law which should govern human conduct.

Metaphysical evil, then, is utterly impossible. But physical and moral evil are not only possible, but manifest facts. Physical evil is any lack of elements, parts, functions, services, ends, purposes, that should be present in a natural agent, that is, in any duly constituted actual nature. All the perfections demanded by a rounded and complete nature must be present to render it worthy of the simple description physically good. Of course, a complex nature may have good features, and these may be considered as distinct natures in themselves, and so be discerned as good, whereas other features are not good, Thus a blind man may be in good health; all organs of his body may be functioning perfectly with the single exception of his eyes. But the point we make is that his nature as a whole is, by reason of his blindness, not perfect; it has a lack; it is in so far not good, but physically bad. Again we say, Bonum ex integra causa; malum ex quocumque defectu, that is, “A thing to be good must be wholly and completely good; it is rendered bad by (and to the extent of) any defect.” Thus when we say that an ill-fitting coat is “no good,” we do not say that the cloth is not of a pleasing weave, that it is not of suitable color, that it is not of fine workmanship; we mean merely that it does not fit. Thus a man may complain of bad health, and say, “I’m not well; my health is not good,” even when only one organ (such as liver or stomach) is deranged. Qf course, in an organism there is an interplay and sympathy of function which makes the man with a bad stomach or liver deficient in many other functions; but the point we make is that the man’s health is not good because all organs are not functioning properly and harmoniously. Again, a watch is “no good” if the mainspring be brpken; all other parts are perfect, only one has broken down; yet the watch is thereby rendered a bad watch, a watch that is “no good.” Bonum ex Integra causa: a thing to be good must be entirely good.

Moral evil is sin. It is the lack of agreement between human activity and the norm or measure of what such activity ought to be. This norm is, as we have seen, fundamentally the Eternal Law (God, as Divine Reason and Will), and proximately human conscience, that is, human reason judging the present situation as in order or out of order, as lawful or unlawful. The Eternal Law is God’s plan and programme for the proper conduct of human life as a purposive thing, a thing directed to a great End. Reason is man’s mind inasmuch as it comes to grips with reality and studies it out; and one of the first signs that a man has reached the full use of his nature as man (a rational animal) is that he studies out and recognizes an order in things that he is required to observe and not to upset; in a measure, he recognizes the Divine plan, the Eternal Law. Man early becomes responsible; he “comes to the use of reason”; and, while he may disobey and disregard the obligations which reason makes manifest to him, he cannot deny the existence of such obligations. He cannot deny conscience. Thus we see that conscience is not some mysterious inner urge, not “some still small voice,” not “a little spark of celestial fire,” but plain human reason, the same reason with which we work out a problem in mathematics, or with which we plan the family budget, or with which we scheme for a better job; only, to be called conscience, reason must deal with issues of right and wrong, lawful and unlawful, good and bad. Now, moral evil is a lack of conformity between human conduct or activity on the one hand and conscience on the other. Like all evil, it is the absence or lack of something, not the entitative presence of something. In the face of moral, as of physical, evil, we can and must still declare that being as such is ever good; for moral evil, like physical evil, is, in its essence, non-being rather than being.

What, now, is the cause of evil? Well, since evil is essentially a deficiency, a lack, an absence, a non-being in itself, it requires not a cause which produces it, but a cause which fails to supply the deficiency. It requires not so much an efficient (i. e., producing) cause as a deficient cause. Btit, in so far as positive reality is the cause of evil (by reason of its lack of power, or by reason of its moral perversity) we must assert that the cause of evil is good in itself. An engraver may have poor tools, or his skill may be defective, or he may be careless and hurried in his work, and for any or all of these reasons his work is not good; it is bad, no good, evil. Now, the engraver himself, his ability, his instruments, and his activity, are, as existing realities, actually good. That is, these things have being, and hence have metaphysical goodness. But physically these things present aspects of deficiency, and their product is therefore marked by deficiency of what it ought to be; it falls short, it is imperfect; it is, in so far, evil or “no good.” The actual causes as realities have metaphysical or transcendental goodness; the actual product has actual metaphysical goodness. But the causes, and the product, are physically only “good as far as they go,” and they do not go the whole distance; they fail; they are lacking. Hence there is absent from the product the rounded perfection that should be there, and this absence or lack is what we call physical evil or badness. We see that the true cause of this evil is the lack, the failure, the deficiency of what is, in itself, good. Thus understood, the statement is true that the cause of evil is good.

As to evil in the world about us, we find, as we have explained, both the physical and the moral type. Of physical evil, God is the accidental cause, not the per se or direct cause. The most manifest of physical evils are sickness, death, plagues, bad climate, waste lands, noxious plants, dangerous animals, natural forces in destructive play. Yet these things are not evil in themselves, nor are they evil for man; man grows to full stature only under pressure and hardship; he is all the better for the whips and scorns of time; he would inevitably fail of attaining his great End if the earth were still a paradise. As bitter medicine and painful operations are sometimes required to restore health and soundness, so the so-called physical evils of existence are required by fallen man; rightly received, they drive out the deadly sickness of pride, they make man look to God, they help him achieve the purpose of his creation. Man, by the original sin, put “the times out of joint”; he upset the order of the world; he cannot, then, blame the consequent hardships upon God; and yet God allows the hardships to happen, and mercifully turns them to man’s account, to his lasting good. In this (accidental) sense, God is the cause of physical evil in the world.

Of moral evil, God is in no sense the cause. Having made man free, he does not destroy the gift of freedom, even when it is abused. And sin or moral evil is always the abuse of freedom, of free-will. Yet even out of sin, of which man is the author and not God in any sense, the merciful Creator and Provider draws good. For out of the sin of persecutors came the glorious constancy of the martyrs. Out of the ills of civic or industrial oppression arises the opportunity for the exercise of the social virtues, the works of mercy.

Summary of the Article

This Article has shown us the meaning of goodness and the good. We have seen herein how being and the good are really identified, and that they are distinguished only by a rational or logical distinction. We have classified the good as metaphysical or ontological, physical, and moral. We have discussed the negative nature of evil, the opposite and the privation of good. We have seen that metaphysical evil is utterly impossible. We have discussed physical and moral evil. We have indicated the cause of evil.