Book I, Chapter 26

CHAP. XXVI. That the whole universe of things is good, and that no thing is evil per se.

Here, in the middle of our course, we must show, for the sake of what precedes and what follows, that the whole universe of all things is good, and that there is nothing in it that is evil. For the heretics Empedocles, Pythagoras, Mani and the Manichaeans seemed to say the opposite, as the eighteenth part of the first Corollary teaches. Indeed, whatever is per se capable of being willed 1 and loved by one who is good and wise is in some way good, as Philosophers and Theologians alike bear witness. Every part of the world is per se willable and loveable by God, just as it is per se creatable by him and conservable by him, as can be seen from chapters 2, 3, 6, 8 and 9.

Again, all truth is good, because it is right, just and holy. Every essence is truth, or has truth, since being and the true are convertible, as appears from the premises 2 and 11 of this book. Hence Aristotle too says, Metaph. 2, 4: 251B·1 "As each thing stands with respect to being, so it stands with respect to truth." And in Metaph. 5, where being is distinguished: "To be signifies that it is true; not to be, that it is not true but false." He recounts the same in 6, 4, and in the same 5th, where the false is distinguished and it is said that the false is said of what is not; so also what is, is called true.2 And Avicenna, Metaph. 8, 6: "The Necessary is truth,3 251B·2 and the truth of any thing is the property of its being, which is established for it." Anselm too, in his little book On Truth, proves that every essence and every action is truth, justice and rectitude, 251B·3 as is clear from chapters 6, 7 and 8 and almost throughout the whole book. And Augustine, 83 Questions 1: 251C·1 "Every soul is a soul by that by which it is a true soul; every soul therefore has from truth that it be at all." Why then not so of any other thing whatever? So also in Confessions 7, 15 he says: "All things are true insofar as they are, and nothing is falsehood, except when something is thought to be which is not."

Again, since God is supremely being, he is supremely good and perfect. For Philosophers and Theologians alike, in proving that God exists, prove one first being, and from this they show that it is maximally being, most perfect and best. So also all other beings, to the extent that they participate in his being, are good by nature and perfect in proportion. 251C·2 Aristotle hints at this obscurely in On the Heavens 1, 100, when he says: "The end of the whole Heaven, and all time containing infinity, and perfection, is eternal, taking from 'always being' the name 'immortal and divine'; whence it has been communicated to others, to some more clearly, to others more obscurely, to be and to live."4 C3 Augustine too, On Christian Doctrine 1, next to last, says the same quite clearly: "Because God is good, we are; and insofar as we are good we are, and insofar as we are evil, to that extent we are less. He supremely and primarily is who is wholly unchangeable, and who most fully could say, 'I am who am.' Other things cannot be, except from him; and they are good to the extent that they have received that they might be."

Again, if anything were evil per se, it would be contrary per se to the good. That thing, therefore, or at least the first in the genus of evils, would be equal to the first in the genus of goods, since contraries, as is established, are placed under the same genus and are maximally distant. And so Aristotle says in On the Heavens 1, 44: "If one of two contraries is determinate, D1 the other too will be determinate." Averroes in the Commentary proves this, saying: "This is manifest from the description of contraries, which are at the end of remotion; and since each of them is maximally distant, they must be equal in contrariety, namely so that neither is stronger than the other. But if we suppose one of them finite and the other infinite, then they will not be contrary to each other equally, since the form of contrariety that is in one of them will not be equal to the form of contrariety of the other." And he adds: "And it is manifest per se that they are in the same degree of contrariety; and if not, they will not be at the end of distance. For it would be possible to add something above the lesser, so that it would be more contrary." He proves this false in three ways. First, because then the same thing would have several contraries, namely supreme ones. Second, because then that which was posited at the maximum distance would not be so, which is the contrary of the position. Third, because then there would not be the same proportion of one of the contraries to the other, and conversely; and he asserts that the opposite of this is known. If these things are so, then, evil is infinite, and equally strong with God omnipotent, with whom every word will not be impossible. It could therefore hinder and frustrate the good God from every good work of his, and thus he would not be omnipotent, along with other infinite absurdities.

Augustine, 83 Questions 6, proves the same in this way: "Everything that is, is either corporeal or incorporeal; the corporeal is contained by a sensible form, the incorporeal by an intelligible form. Everything, therefore, that is, is not without some form; and where there is some form, there is necessarily some mode; and a mode is something of good; the highest evil, therefore, has no mode, for it lacks all good. It is not, therefore, because it is contained by no form; and this whole name of evil has been devised from the privation of form."

Again, if something were evil per se, it would be contrary to the highest good, the good Lord God. A1 This is against Aristotle, who writes thus in Metaphysics 12, last chapter: "Nothing is contrary to the first." And Augustine says in City of God 12, 2: "To that nature which supremely is, nothing is contrary, except what is not. For to that which is, there is nothing contrary; and therefore to God and the supernal essence, and to the Author of all essences of whatever kind, no essence is contrary."

Further, whatever naturally seeks and loves the good is in some way good. For if it were per se and perfectly evil, it would be per se and perfectly contrary to the good. But no such contrary naturally seeks and loves the other; rather it hates and flees it; A2 yet everything naturally seeks the good. For Ethics 1, 1 says that they "rightly declared the good to be that which all things seek." And On the Soul 2, 34: "All things seek the divine and immortal." Reason also makes this manifest. For everything that has a natural end naturally seeks it; but God is the ultimate end of all beings, as could be shown from the second Supposition, and is expressly proved in Metaph. 12 and in many other places in Aristotle's philosophy, and likewise in Avicenna. Hence also Prov. 16: "The Lord has made all things for himself"; 252B·1 and Apoc. 1: "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end." Avicenna testifies clearly to all this concerning the common appetite for the good, Metaph. 8, 6, saying: "The Necessary Being per se is pure goodness, and whatever is at all desires goodness. But that which every thing desires is being, and ‖252B·2 what is perfect in being insofar as it is being; and being is pure goodness and pure perfection; and goodness is altogether that which every thing desires according to its measure, since by it its being is perfected."

Again, anything either is an operation or has in some way some natural operation; but every operation, and so too the operating cause, 252B·3 seeks in some way the good. For according to Aristotle, Ethics 1, 1: "Every art and every doctrine, and likewise every act and choice, seems to seek some good"; hence they rightly declared the good to be what all things seek. And Politics 1, 1: "All men do all things for the sake of what seems good." 252C·1 And Augustine, on that verse of Psalm 32 [33], "Blessed the nation whose God is the Lord," concludes after a long course: "It is for the sake of driving off misery and of acquiring blessedness that all men do whatever they do, whether good or evil." Boethius also says, Consolation of Philosophy 3, prose 2: "All the care of mortals, which the labor of so many pursuits exercises, proceeds indeed by diverse paths, but strives nonetheless to arrive at one end of blessedness." 252C·2 And On the Heavens 2, 34: "Nature always does what is best among contingent things"; and On Generation 2, next to last: "In all things, we say, nature always desires what is better."

The same can be shown otherwise, thus. Every agent seeks some proper end, as is clear in Physics 2 at length, and in Ethics 1, 1 and Metaph. 9, 16, and in many other places. But an end always has the character of good, as is clear in Physics 2, 23, where it is said that the last is not wholly the end, but the best; and something similar is found below, in the same 31.

It is said that the end is the most powerful cause, and always is, or seems, good; and Metaph. 2, 8: "Those who remove the end remove the nature of the good"; and in Metaph. 3, 3 and Physics 2, 74, and in many other places, the same opinion is found very often. Again, to the same effect: every agent naturally desires the ultimate end common to any action, which is without doubt supremely good, and on this account is the end of any entity and any making. D1 For the Philosopher says in Metaph. 3, 3: "What is good according to itself and on account of its nature is an end, so that for its sake the rest both come to be and are." Again, as the second Supposition requires, and as is shown in Philosophy in many places, there is no infinite regress among ends. There must therefore be one end that is first and last, common to the whole genus of ends, and the final cause of all other ends, as it is in any other genus, as is demonstrated in Metaph. 2 and 10 of Aristotle. But no such end can be assigned short of God. And this is what the Philosopher attests by many authorities. For he says in Metaph. 12, 37: "That which is 'that for the sake of which,' that is, the final cause, the definition shows in unmoved things": that is, the definition of the final cause, which he immediately adds, saying: "For there is for something a 'that for the sake of which,' of which this one is and that one is not; and it moves as beloved; and the moved, namely the first thing moved by it, moves other things."

Averroes, explaining the definition of ends, says thus: "Of the perfections for the sake of which the perfectible thing is moved, some are qualities, such as health; some are substances extrinsic to the thing that is moved toward them in order to be assimilated to them, as are found all the actions of servants, since they are directed toward the intention of their Lord, and so are said to be for the sake of the Lord; and likewise beings with this first principle. But this first mover moves the first moved, as the first lover the first beloved.5 For the first heaven is moved by this mover according to desire, to be assimilated to it as far as it can, as a lover is moved to be assimilated to his beloved; but the other celestial bodies are moved according to desire toward the motion of the first body, and therefore they have a fully double motion; and the things that are beneath them are moved by means of these motions. Generation and corruption are made by the double, opposed motions; continuation by the one eternal motion."

And above, in the same section of the text: "What is good, and choiceworthy for its own sake in the same column,6 is always best, and what is first is approvable," as the text says which the Commentator expounds; "but the other thing, which is chosen for its own sake in the whole of things chosen, is very noble when it is first acquired." Where Averroes says: "That which is loved and desired for its own sake among these abstract principles is that which is at the end of nobility, simplicity and unity; and toward it everything is moved with a motion swifter and greater than the motions proper to each of them. For it is the chosen per se, and the beloved of all; and such is the perfect at the end, and that is acquired per se, and all things that are acquired are acquired A1 for its sake."

Hence the Philosopher, On the Heavens and the World 2, 63: "What is in the best condition has no need of action; for it is itself that for whose sake, namely the end. But action is always in two things, when both that for whose sake it is done and that which is for the sake of it [are present]: in other animals fewer, in plants some few and perhaps one. For either there is some one thing by which it would be associated, just as it also has, or there are many; but all things are preliminary to the best." So the text which the Commentator expounds: "The actions of man [are] manifold,[variant] and are not for their own sake but for the sake of another, since he is not of perfect nobility. But a thing of perfect nobility does not need an operation by which it might be made noble: for it is that for the sake of which the operation is done. And every action, and perfection of operation, will be through that which performs the operation for the sake of something, and for the sake of that for the sake of which the doer's operation is, namely for the sake of that noble and perfect end." And On the Soul 2, 34: "An animal makes an animal, and a plant a plant, insofar as they may share in the ever-divine and immortal according to what they can; for all things seek that, B2 and for its sake all things do whatever they do according to nature."

Boethius, Consolation 3, prose 11, shows at length that every being seeks the end and good both proper and common; not the common for the sake of the proper, but the reverse. He says therefore that that toward which all things hasten is the highest of all goods, and that that is the end of all things which is desired by all; and since we have gathered that it is good, we must confess that the end of all things is good. And below, prose 12: "Since God is rightly believed to govern all things with the rudder of goodness, and since all these things, as I have taught, hasten toward the good by natural intention, it cannot be doubted that they are ruled willingly, and turn of their own accord to the nod of the one who disposes them, as befitting and tempered to their ruler. Thus, I say, it must be. There is therefore nothing that, ‖C1 preserving its nature, would try to oppose God, nothing, I say; nor is there anything that could or would resist this highest good." He also says in On the Hebdomads: "The common opinion of the learned holds that everything that is tends toward the good; but everything tends toward its like; those things, therefore, that tend toward goods are themselves good."

Again, it could be confirmed through Augustine, C2 who holds in many places that all human beings necessarily will blessedness, and for its sake universally will and do whatever they will or do, as was alleged above. Therefore it cannot be said that all these sayings of the Authors are understood of natural, non-voluntary actions. For some authorities speak expressly of Angels and men, and the same reason holds on both sides. Moreover, otherwise the nobler beings, namely the voluntary ones, and the nobler actions, of nobler power, that is, the voluntary ones, would be disposed more negligently and worse; although according to the Philosopher, D1 On the Heavens and the World 2, 50: "Nature does not care for the vile, disregarding the precious." Whence something marvelous seems to follow, namely that every action of any creature is to enjoy or to use, and none is to abuse.7 But this does not follow according to the mind of the Saints. For although every action of a creature is in some way referred to God, it is not so precisely with the due circumstances, as it ought to be.

Again, peace is so great a good that no one doubts that it is good, nor deliberates about it; but all seek it for its own sake, as an end. Hence the Philosopher, Ethics 3, 8:8 "We deliberate not about ends,

but about what leads to ends. For the statesman does not deliberate whether he should make peace, E1 nor does any of the rest deliberate about the end; rather, positing some end, they consider how and by what means it will be." Again, all beings naturally seek a certain peace, namely natural concord and due harmony, both intrinsically and extrinsically all around, as is clear in simples and in mixtures, in all things alike and contrary, but in human beings most of all. For the peaceable want peace, and likewise the warlike. For as the Philosopher says, Ethics 10, 11: "We make war in order to bring about peace; for no one chooses to make war for the sake of making war, nor to prepare for war; E2 for anyone would seem altogether a murderer, if he made his friends attackers so that battles and killings might occur." Hence also, on the testimony of the great king Artaxerxes: "Peace is desired by all mortals." E3 So also Augustine, City of God 15, 11:9 "Peace is so great a good that nothing is wont to be heard more gratefully, nothing desired more desirably, nothing found better; and peace all things, good and bad, in every operation, good and bad, desire and love, nor can they in any way not love peace." A1 Augustine says and proves all of this plainly in City of God 19, 12 and 13.

Further, natural order is a good, and all things have natural order, hence all things also have good. This argument is almost wholly clear in Metaph. 13, 2, where Aristotle, distinguishing about the good, and refuting Aristippus and the other such Sophists who posit that there is no good in mathematics, as is recounted in Metaph. 3, 3, shows that there is good in mathematics, saying thus: "Since the good and the best, the one is always in operation; but the good is also in ‖A2 movable things,10 those who say that the mathematical sciences say nothing of the good or the best, lie. For they say, and demonstrate most of all: the greatest forms of the good are order, commensuration, and the determinate, which the mathematical sciences show most of all. And since these seem to be the cause of many things, I mean, for example, order and the determinate." The same is clear in On the Heavens and the World 3, 24, where it is said: "Disorder is nothing other than what is beside nature; for order is the proper nature of sensible things."

Again, that is good which assigns to each what is its own; but order does this. For Augustine, City of God 19, 13, thus defines order: "Order is the arrangement of equal and unequal things assigning to each its place"; which agrees well enough with the preceding saying of Aristotle. Hence also in City of God 15, 22, he defines virtue briefly thus: that it is the order of love. Again, were order not a great good, it would not be noted so carefully in Sacred Scripture. In the Rationale of Judgment11 four rows of stones had to be set, and the names of the sons of Israel placed according to the order of their birth, and the lamps arranged in order. The Queen of Sheba too, seeing the order of Solomon's attendants, said: "Blessed are your servants." Likewise the order of Melchizedek is commended not least; and nearly the whole law and prophecy is sprinkled with such passages in various places. B1 The Apostle too admonishes the Corinthians that all things be done among them according to order and decently, and writing to the Colossians the Apostle says that he rejoices to see their order. That all things have some natural order is shown by this: that

all things have one natural end, as was just now shown; and that all things are essentially and naturally ordered to one another by being equally more or less.12 Aristotle too, Metaph. 12, last chapter, inquires in what the natural good and best of the universe consists, namely whether in some separate good or in order. And in answering he shows that it consists in both, as the good of an army consists in order and in the leader. He posits there a double natural order of all beings, namely to one another and to the first; and Averroes, comment 52, shows this beautifully there. C1 And in Metaph. 1, chapter 9, Aristotle recounts the reason of the Ancients, who were compelled by this truth, as he says, to posit, though not distinctly enough, one final cause common to all beings. For they saw that for all beings there is on [being],13 and well, in the natural order; and that this could not come from any element, nor from chance or fortune; hence they concluded that there is one general principle of the goodness of the whole. And so Anaxagoras said that there is a certain intellect in Animals, and in nature the cause of the earth and the world, and of the whole order; and he took the cause of saying so from Hermitimus Dacomenius,14 as is recounted immediately afterward in chapter ten; and the Philosopher approves this opinion. Hence it seems that this is the general opinion of the Philosophers.

D1 Boethius also says, Consolation 4, prose 6: "Order embraces all things, so that nothing in the kingdom of providence be allowed to rashness." D2 Moreover, Aristotle in the Secret of Secrets, 1, part 23,15 says that the Creator disposed all things by his wisdom in equal weight, and fixed number, and order. With which the Wise Man agrees, Wisdom 11: D3 "You have disposed all things in measure, and number, and weight," hence also in natural order. These three also import a great good, as is clear from Augustine, 4 On Genesis 4, and below, 2 On Free Choice 19, and the last, 5 City of God 11,16 D4 On the Predestination of the Saints 4, and in many other places. He also says in City of God 11, 15: "There is," he says, "no nature that he did not constitute, from whom is every measure, every form, every order, without which nothing of things can be found or thought, and each of these three is good. Any existing thing therefore has some good, and is likewise itself good."

Further, every truly existing thing is truly knowable positively, E1 because according to the Philosopher, Metaph. 2, 4, as each thing stands with respect to being, so it stands with respect to truth, and hence with respect to knowledge. But evil is not knowable positively and per se, but privatively and by comparison to the good, as privation is by its habit. E2 For the Philosopher says, On the Soul 3, 25, that privation, evil and black are in some way shown and known by their contrary. Where Averroes says that universally all privations are not known except by their contraries, namely through knowledge of the habit and through knowledge of the lack of the habit; and this he meant by blackness, the privation of whiteness. And in Metaph. 12, 37 the Philosopher hints at the same thing: "Intelligible,"

he says, "the other column, and the first substance of it." Hence it is clear that he is speaking of the column of the good when he says that it is intelligible per se, hinting that the contrary column, namely that of evil, is not intelligible per se but per accidens. Averroes, expounding this, A1 alleges from Alexander that those things that are understood per se belong to the Allastochia of the good,17 but those of evil are understood per accidens, namely through the privation of the good; and of all contrary principles of any transmutation, one is as it were form and the other as it were privation. The Allastochia that is as it were form is understood per se; but the one that is as it were privation is understood, though not per se. For privation is not understood except in ‖A2 respect of the habit, which is the form. With these Augustine agrees, City of God 12, 7, saying that to wish to find the causes of the sin of an evil will, and of such defections, is as if one wished to see darkness or hear silence; both of which, however, are known to us through eyes and through ears, not in form but in the privation of form. "Let no one therefore seek to know from me what I know I do not know, unless perhaps in order to learn not to know what must be known as unable to be known."

Further, if anything were per se evil, this would most appear in the morally evil act; but any such act is some motion, and therefore also an act and perfection of the movable or moved thing, insofar as it is of this, as is clear in Physics 3 of Aristotle, at some length. Again, to the same effect: every act is the end, completion and natural perfection of the power whose act it is. For Aristotle says in Metaph. 9, 15: "The end is the act, and for the sake of this the power is taken. For animals do not see in order to have sight, but have sight in order to see"; and he shows this there by a long course. Hence also every act is some natural good; B1 and this is the reasoning of Avicenna, Metaph. 9, 8, who says: "Nothing is found in actions to be called evil that is not the perfection of the agent cause; and perhaps it is evil only with respect to the patient, who feels sadness through that action; or with respect to a higher cause, which ought to prohibit. So the injury inflicted by the irascible power is the proper perfection of that power, and as far as that power goes such an action is good; but it is an evil of the one injured, or of the rational soul, which ought to shun this power." He shows the same through another quite suitable example, that of burning done by fire, which is the proper perfection of the form of fire, and consequently its good, but is perhaps an evil of the thing burned, or of the one who kindles the fire.

Again, homicide and adultery are not evil per se, nor are any exterior acts, since they are not evil in children, fools, sleepers, or even the insane, since these lack free choice of a causal will. This is clear from the second of the premises of this book. To the same effect: if homicide were evil per se, then homicide insofar as it is homicide would be evil, since "insofar as" follows from "per se" or "according to itself," as is clear in Metaph. 5, 23, where those are defined; C1 and if homicide insofar as it is homicide is evil, every homicide is evil, as is clear in Prior Analytics 1, the chapter on reduplicatives; and Averroes on Metaph. 5, comment 3: C2 "Man insofar as he is man is not a maker of idols, since then every man would be a maker of idols." Again, whatever is in something per se is in it essentially, as is clear in Posterior Analytics 1 and Metaph. 5, where earlier;18 and whatever is in something essentially is in all its supposits necessarily, D1 as is clear in On the Heavens 2, 59, where it is argued that if one star is of spherical shape, so is every star. Where Averroes says: "It is necessary that what exists in any one of the individuals of a species, from among essential things, exist in all the individuals of that species; and shape is from among essential things."

The venerable Anselm of Canterbury too, On the Fall of the Devil 19, shows that every will, D2 that is, every act of will, insofar as it is, is good, and no thing is evil. He proves it thus: the will of the first Angel, by which he willed to be like God, was not evil, namely essentially and per se, for then the Son of God would not will to be like the Father. And he adds: "Or if to will any lowest pleasures were evil, ‖D3 the will of brutes would be called evil." Again, if homicide is evil per se and not per accidens, then, since homicide is always and everywhere itself and has itself whole, it is always and everywhere evil. For if now or here it is not evil, and then or there it is evil, this is because of something that befalls it now and here, by reason of which now and here it is evil;19

and when this [accident] has been separated from it elsewhere and at another time, then and there it will not be evil. It is not therefore evil solely through itself, nor through something essential to it, as soul or risibility is to man; for such things cannot be separated. It is therefore evil only per accidens, because through something such that it can be present to it and absent from it without the corruption of the subject. The venerable Anselm of Canterbury too, in On the Virginal Conception 4, argues in this way: "If the concupiscible appetites were unjust per se, whenever they consented to them they would do what is unjust; but when brute animals consent to them, they are not called unjust." Again, if acts of adultery and homicide are evil per se, then, since the act according to its essence is alike in the married and the unmarried, in the innocent and those guilty of death, there will be sin in these also. To the same effect, let it be supposed that, because of excessive similarity, or another cause, from blameless ignorance a man has carnal knowledge of another's wife, believing her to be his own, and likewise kills an innocent man placed in prison in the place of a guilty man, justly condemned and duly guarded,20

…neither sins; rather he earns merit in that case. Therefore such acts, per se and according to their substance, are not evil but are sometimes good, just as carnal acts with one's own wife, while she is believed to be another's, A1 are a mortal sin 21, as is the killing of a guilty man believed innocent. This appears in Genesis 29 about Rachel and Leah, and quite plainly on similar matters in the Canon, 29, Question 1, and in the Sentences of Peter, book 4, distinction 30. 22

Further, to the same point: justice and injustice are privatively opposed, and so are naturally apt to arise about the same thing, as is clear in the Categories and in Aristotle, Metaphysics 5. But justice is found only in a rational creature; therefore injustice too, and not in such exterior acts. Indeed, sin does not seem to be more per se in such acts than in similar acts of beasts. This is nearly the whole argument of Anselm's On the Virginal Conception, where he likewise shows that original sin, by the fact that it is injustice, is not in the seed or the body but only in the rational soul.

Further, it seems that no interior act is evil per se, since neither blasphemy nor hatred of God is. This can be shown just as it was shown of exterior acts in fools and even in madmen, and because any such act is a certain natural perfection of such a natural power.

Moreover, to understand and to will are different operations. Suppose, then, that God creates some nature that can freely will and refuse, and perform the other works of the will, but cannot judge intellectually or rationally and merely apprehends as brutes do. Then such a nature, by blaspheming or hating God, would not sin, because it would not act against the judgment or rule of reason. Such acts, therefore, are not evil per se, as appears from what has been shown above.

Further, a man can be deceived in many ways, without any preceding fault of his own, by very many appearances and sophistical arguments. Suppose, then, that Behemoth 23, the most cunning of Sophists, whose subtleties are tangled, entangles some simple man, without any prior fault of his own, and ensnares him so intricately that it seems to him altogether that unless he blasphemes or hates God he will necessarily sin more. Then, according to the judgment of most right reason, he is bound to blaspheme or hate God, lest he otherwise fall into a greater sin, since according to the common conception of the mind, of two evils the lesser is to be chosen. The reason for this is that among goods the contrary holds, namely that the greater is more to be chosen. Hence Ethics 5, 5: "In the notion of the good, the lesser evil comes to be [so] as against the greater evil; the lesser is more eligible than the greater; but the eligible is a good, and the greater good more so." 24

C1 The same is clear from blessed Gregory, Moralia 32, 17, on that text of Job 40, "The sinews of his testicles are entangled." He says: "The sinews of these testicles are entangled, because the arguments of his suggestions are bound with intertwined knots, so that he makes very many sin in such a way that, if perhaps they seek to flee a sin, they cannot escape it without another snare of sin, or they commit a fault in the very avoiding, and cannot free themselves from the one unless they consent to be bound in another." And he shows this by many examples, of which the first is this: if someone has sworn to keep secret the secrets of another, and that man reveals to him after the oath that he intends to commit a secret homicide, which the one who swore can prevent only by betraying this secret intention, then he is bound in the snares of so great a perplexity. For if he betrays the secret he seems to himself guilty of perjury; if he does not betray it, guilty of homicide.

He gives another example, of a certain simple man who promises complete obedience to a prelate, who ‖D1 first commands him to do what is unbecoming. Then such a man is perplexed: if he obeys, he commits a sin and sins; if he does not obey, he incurs disobedience, as he believes. Against all such perplexities he supplies a general remedy, namely that the perplexed man always choose the lesser evil. *D2 For he says thus: "There is, however, something it is useful to do to destroy his wiles: when the mind is constrained between lesser and greatest sins, if absolutely no way of escape without sin lies open, let the lesser always be chosen. For he too who is shut in on every side by a circuit of walls lest he flee throws himself into flight where the wall is found lower." All this is cited in the Canon, distinction 13, Nervi, and something similar is written in 22, Question 4, Non solum, and many similar things in many chapters before and after. 25

Again, to the same point there is that chapter above, in the same distinction, Duo mala, which is taken from the Eighth Council of Toledo. "Two evils," it says, "although they must be guarded against with the utmost care, nevertheless if the necessity of danger has compelled us to commit one of them, we ought to resolve on that which is known to be bound by the lesser tie. But which of these is lighter and which graver, let us investigate by the keenness of pure reason." And to this point bears what is put at the head of that distinction, namely that against natural law no dispensation is admitted, unless perhaps two evils press so hard that one of them must be chosen. Isidore, On the Highest Good 3, 5, teaches the same most plainly.

Suppose, then, that to some simple man who has willed and sworn to some prelate complete obedience in all things, E1 it is commanded by that prelate, or by the devil who transfigures himself into that prelate, that he hate God and blaspheme. And suppose he judges that such an act against God is the lesser evil, because there is only one sin there, against God alone, and one much excused by the prelate's command. And suppose he believes that not to obey in this case is the greater sin, because it is against his prelate and against God, whose place the prelate holds, and because it would be to violate an oath and to apostatize from a vow.

Or suppose that the Devil, who transfigures himself into an angel of light, transfigures himself into the Angel of great counsel, the Lord Jesus Christ 26, and commands some simple believer, who believes he is Christ, to blaspheme and hate God for a moment. If he does not, he will blaspheme God and hate him forever, being damned. The man believes it the lesser evil to blaspheme or hate God in this case than not to obey the one commanding, and let this happen without any preceding fault on his part. For we see that many Saints are frequently deceived by sophistical arguments, and at least this is possible by God's absolute power.

And if it is said that this happens at the least on account of a preceding original sin, let the original sin be removed by baptism, and let such a man be in charity. Then never in punishment of original sin will he fall into an ignorance that leads him necessarily into mortal sin.

Likewise, such credulity is one ‖A1 act possible to occur, as is clear from the counsel 27 and from the text of Job. That text cannot be understood as the letter at first sounds, because Behemoth does not have such members, and this is clear through Gregory and likewise through Gratian where before, and reason teaches the same. For one can believe what is more manifestly false and less plausible, such as the opposite of the first principle, or that all things are moved or are at rest, and the like, as is recounted in Metaphysics 4 and elsewhere. But such an act of perplexed credulity depends, neither in coming to be nor in being, on a prior fault as on some cause of it, as will become clear by induction. It is therefore absolutely possible for credulity of this kind to come about and to remain without prior fault.

Likewise suppose that God were to create a man without original sin or any other, in grace, of such condition as we are. Of him, thus deceived, the same argument is made as before. And to stop all evasions, suppose that such a man is perplexed, and believes that if he waits, deliberates, takes counsel, or prays to God, he will sin more gravely by that very fact (for let this credulity be part of that perplexity). Suppose also that he is commanded to do this or that at once, and believes himself obligated to do it at once, without any waiting or the like; or suppose him put in prison, where he cannot get counsel. And moreover, even if he prays to God, since God is not bound, nor compelled by prayers, to act, but whatever he does outwardly he always does freely, suppose by his absolute power that he does not hear the one praying.

Such a man, then, so perplexed, if he chooses and does what he believes to be the lesser evil, does not sin; therefore no such act is per se a sin. But someone perhaps will say that if he so chooses, in this case, he nonetheless sins, because he himself chooses and does the lesser sin, according to the authorities cited above, and so he sins in some way. This does not seem so. For no one sins by doing what he ought, and such a man does what he ought. Nor does anyone sin by acting according to the most right judgment of reason, of the Saints, of the Canon, and of a general Council, and this man so acts.

Again, if such a man sins (that is, mortally, in many cases, as it seems), and if he does not choose thus he also sins mortally, then such a man, in charity, in justice and in rectitude of will, an heir of the heavenly kingdom, would lose all these of necessity and against his will. This is rejected by many testimonies of the Saints and Doctors. And it seems expressly against blessed Gregory where before, and it is cited in the Canon where before. For he says: "When we are constrained among doubts, it is useful that we submit in the smallest matters, lest we sin without pardon in great ones."

D1 Augustine too, in On Lying 13, holds the same, where after the long discussion preceding he concludes thus: "So it must be concluded in this way. Other people's sins of whatever kind, except those which make unclean the one against whom they are committed, no one should avoid by sins of his own, neither for himself nor for anyone else, but should rather bear them and endure them bravely. But those which are so committed against a man as to make him unclean, we must avoid even by our own sins; and therefore those things too are not to be called sins which are done in order that that uncleanness be avoided. For whatever is done in such a way that, were it not done, one would justly be blamed, is not a sin, and whatever was done to avoid such things would be no sin. Therefore whoever has lied to avoid these things does not sin."

And below, the same, 26: "This whole discussion, however much it alternates ‖D2 between affirmation and negation on whether one must lie, no one can say that he finds in any example or word of Scripture that any lie is to be loved or not hated. What he finds is that sometimes, by lying, one must do what you hate, so that what is more to be detested may be avoided. But in this men err, that they subordinate precious things to cheaper ones. For when you have conceded that some evil must be admitted so that another, graver, is not admitted, each person measures the evil not by the rule of truth but by his own desire and habit, and thinks that graver which he himself dreads more, not what is more truly to be fled."

And he adds, 27, in sequence: "Things which are preserved for the sake of holiness and religion, when wrongdoers have wished to violate them, are to be redeemed even by lesser sins, not merely by the wrongs of others 28, if the condition is proposed and the means is given; and then those things cease to be sins which are undertaken to avoid graver ones."

"For just as in useful things, such as money or some other advantage, what is lost for the sake of a greater gain is not called a loss, so too in holy things what is admitted so that a graver thing not be admitted is not called a sin. Or if that too is called a loss which someone gives up so as not to lose more, let this also be called a sin, provided only that no one doubts that it is to be undertaken so that more may be avoided, just as no one doubts that, to avoid a greater loss, what is less must be endured."

Likewise 22, Question 4, Si aliquid; it is cited from the venerable Bede, in homily A1 44, in this manner: "If it has happened that we have sworn something rather incautiously, which if kept would turn to a worse outcome, we should know that it is to be freely changed by salutary counsel, and that, as pressing necessity requires, we must rather commit perjury than, to avoid perjury, turn aside into another, graver, crime." Finally David swore by God to kill Nabal, but at Abigail's intercession soon let it go, nor did he grieve that he had incurred any guilt for such a perjury. And reason shows the same. For whoever chooses the lesser evil in order thus to flee a greater evil is not deemed to choose the lesser evil but to flee the greater evil; therefore he incurs no sin.

A2 For the Philosopher says, Ethics 9, 1: "When friendship exists on account of pleasure and utility, it is dissolved when those things cease to occur for whose sake they loved; for they did not love the persons themselves, A3 but the things that existed." 29 In agreement with this is Anselm, On the Fall of the Devil 13: "He who wills something for the sake of happiness wills nothing other than happiness." And On Concord 8: "He who keeps rectitude of will only for the sake of something else does not love it, but loves that for the sake of which he keeps it, B1 and therefore is not to be called just, nor is such rectitude to be named justice."

And Augustine says, On the Trinity 11, 6: "But if someone refers the will of seeing to something else, he wills something else, and it will no longer be the will of seeing; or if it is of seeing, it is not of seeing this: as if one should wish to see a scar in order to show from it that there was a wound, or should wish to see a window in order to see through the window those passing by." And below, in the same: "All wills are rightly bound to one another if that to which all are referred is good; but if it is bad, all are bad." And Eighty-Three Questions 36: "If you wish to please men so as to benefit them toward the love of God, it is no longer this but something else that you desire." And the authorities on lying already set out seem to say the same.

B2 This too seems to be had from canonical Scripture. For Isaiah says, in the person of God, "Holocausts of rams," etc., "I did not want such things." And it is certain that he did in some way want them, because he commanded them in the Law, but he did not want those things for their own sake, only for another end, which he expresses well enough below, in the same place, when he says: "Wash yourselves, be clean," etc., "seek judgment, and relieve the oppressed," etc.

And this is what Micah shows more clearly: C1 "What," he says, "worthy shall I offer to the Lord? Shall I offer him holocausts and yearling calves? Can God be appeased with thousands of rams, or with many thousands of fat he-goats? I will show you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: to do judgment, and to love mercy, C2 and to walk attentively with your God." And Psalm 50 [51]: "If you had wanted sacrifice, I would have given it; you will not be pleased with holocausts. A sacrifice to God is a crushed spirit." C3 And Mark 9: "Whoever receives one of such children in my name receives me; and whoever receives me does not receive me but him who sent me."

And so the Apostle speaks, 1 Corinthians, saying thus, C4 "If I do this willingly" (that is, if I preach the Gospel), "I have a reward; but if unwillingly, a stewardship has been entrusted to me." He implies that if he preaches the Gospel for temporal gain, he preaches it unwillingly, that is, not wanting the Gospel but the gain. This is clear there more expressly through Augustine in the gloss, saying: "If, compelled by lack of those things which are necessary to temporal life, I preach the Gospel, others will have a reward through me, but I will not, because I do not love the Gospel itself, but its price, set in those temporal things."

So it seems that the perplexed man who by his own judgment chooses the lesser evil in order to flee the greater evil, according to the mind of these Authors, does not choose any evil but, as far as in him lies, rather flees every evil; wherefore he does not seem to sin. But the authorities that say such a man must choose the lesser sin mean that he must choose that which seems to him the lesser sin, and which in every other case would be a sin. For only in this case is it permitted to a man to choose and do what he believes to be a sin; and since it is natural law that every man flee, and not choose, evil for himself, a dispensation against that natural law is admitted only in this case, as is recounted above.

Moreover, very many Philosophical and Theological authorities also hint at and confirm this opinion. E1 Aristotle, indeed, Ethics 1, 6, says that good is said equally with being, and he shows this by induction through all the categories. On this Averroes says: E2 "Since the name of good is said synonymously with the name of being, it will be said ambiguously of the ten categories, that is, not according to one intention." 30

Likewise Ethics 4, 12: "Evil destroys itself, and if it were complete, it would become unbearable." On this Averroes: "Evil is the corruption of itself, when all its parts have been gathered together, since this is not tolerable."

Likewise Avicenna, Metaphysics 8, 6: "The necessary being per se is pure goodness, and whatever exists altogether desires goodness. But that which every thing desires is being, and perfection in being, insofar as it is being. Privation, however, insofar as it is privation, is not desired, except insofar as being and perfection follow upon it."

Therefore that which is truly desired is being. Being is pure goodness and pure perfection; and goodness is altogether that which every thing desires according to its own measure, since by it its being is perfected. Evil, however, has no essence, but is a privation of substance and of the usefulness of its disposition. 31 The same, 9, 7 and 8, distinguishes concerning evil and says that it is said in four ways: an abhorrent deed; its principle, namely character; sadness and pain; and the defect of a thing from its perfection. And below, chapter 8, he proves that no action is per se evil, because every action is a perfection of the agent, as was cited above. And below, in the same place, having made a definition of being by good and evil, he adds that that which is wholly evil, or in which evil prevails, or which is equal evil to good, has not yet been found.

A1 Avicenna and Algazel, Metaphysics 5, last, profess this opinion too. Boethius also, Consolation of Philosophy 3, last prose, proves it thus: Almighty God can do everything, and he cannot do evil; therefore evil is nothing. The same, below, in the fourth book of the same work, prose 6, says thus: "God, the maker of all natures, disposes all things, directing them to the good, and while he hastens to hold fast those things which he has brought forth in his own likeness, he eliminates all evil from the bounds of his commonwealth B1 through the sequence of fated necessity."

The venerable Anselm of Canterbury also, in On the Virginal Conception, proves the same at length, as was touched on above. Whence in chapter 4 he says: "For nothing, whether substance or action or anything else, considered per se, is just except justice; or unjust, or a sin, except injustice." And in chapter 5: "From these things, then, it is easily recognized that injustice has no essence, although usage calls injustice the affection and acts of an unjust will, which considered per se are something. By this very reasoning we understand evil to be nothing. For as injustice is nothing other than the absence of due justice, so evil is nothing other than the absence of due good." And in On the Fall of the Devil 8, he demonstrates the same on purpose, and at the end of the chapter concludes thus: "Neither, then, the bad will, nor the bad turning of the will, is itself the evil by which an angel or a man becomes evil, which we say is nothing."

And in 9 he says that that evil is injustice, which is the privation of justice, and that evil is nothing other than the privation of good. And in 16: "I find nothing else at all to blame in the will of the evil angel than the absence of justice, or not having justice." And in 19 he shows the same by the two reasons recited above, and in concluding says: "Whence it follows that no will is evil, but is good insofar as it is, because it is the work of God." And in 20 he sets out a distinction concerning evil: "For there is a simple evil, which is nothing other than evil, which is nothing, namely injustice itself; and another evil, namely a nature, in which there is injustice, since it is something and other than injustice, which is evil and nothing." And in 26, again distinguishing concerning evil, he says that evil is twofold, namely the evil of injustice, which is always nothing, and the evil of harm, which he also subdivides: for one such evil is nothing, as blindness, but another is something, as sadness and pain.

The same, On Concord 6: "The good which is justice is truly something; but evil, which is injustice, lacks all existence. This I have shown most plainly in the treatise On the Fall of the Devil, and in the little book which I entitled On the Virginal Conception and Original Sin: injustice is not a quality or an action or any essence, but only the absence of due justice." 32

Hugh teaches the same in On the Sacraments 1, part 5, 26. Again, if evil were something, this would seem most of all true of the evil will; and since that will is not eternal, it would have an efficient cause, D1 which Augustine denies in City of God 12, 9. There he shows that God was the efficient cause of the good will in the angels now blessed, that the evil will in the reprobate angels had no efficient cause but a deficient one, and that nothing makes such a will except the defection by which God is forsaken, the cause of which defection is itself deficient. Above, in 8, after a long course of reasoning, he concludes: "Let no one, then, seek the efficient cause of the evil will. For it is not efficient but deficient, because that will is not an affection but a defection." D2 The same author shows the same conclusion almost throughout the whole book On the Nature of the Good: that evil is nothing, and that all things, insofar as they are, are good and are from God. Hence in chapter 1 he says: "All goods, whether great or small, through whatever degrees of things, cannot be except from God. Every nature, insofar as it is nature, is good; therefore no nature can be except from God." And below, in 3 and 13, he says that every measure, whether great or small, is from God, and so too of form and order.33 And in 4: "Evil is nothing other than the corruption of measure, form, or natural order; therefore a nature is called evil that has been corrupted." And in 5: "But if corruption were to take away all measure, form, and order in bodily things, no ‖E1 nature would remain." The same author in Confessions 7, almost throughout and not in a brief disputation, shows that evil is not something, and in chapter 12 he concludes thus: "Therefore, if corruptible things are deprived of all good, they will not be at all; therefore as long as they are, they are good; therefore whatever things are, are good, since each is good, and all together very good." And in chapter 13 he adds: "For you there is no evil, nor for your whole creation, because outside there is nothing that might corrupt and break in upon the order you have imposed on it." Again, On Genesis according to the Letter 4, 14: "If God could not make good things, ‖E2 there would be no power; but if he could and did not, there would be great envy; since therefore he is omnipotent and good, he made all things very good." The same is plain from the Enchiridion 6 and 7, from On Free Choice 3, 19, from City of God 12, 6, and in other places

many. Hence also Ecclesiasticus 39: "All the works of the Lord are very good"; and below in the same place: "One must not say, 'This is worse than that,' for all things will be approved in their own time." Likewise Ambrose, in the book he composed on Isaac and the Soul, says: "What then is evil but the lack of good?" And again: "Therefore evils have arisen out of goods. For they are evils only because they are deprived of goods." Likewise Lombard favors this view, Sentences 2, Dist. 25, saying: "But some, attending carefully to the words of Augustine, and not unlearnedly, hold that an evil will and evil acts, insofar as they are, or insofar as they are acts, are good; and they say that every will and act is a good nature of God."34 He seems to think something similar below in the same book, Dist. 36, and likewise in Dist. 45 of the first. Blessed Dionysius too teaches this view plainly in On the Divine Names, in many places, by means of some of the reasons set out above, and especially in chapter 4. And now, to bring the treatise on evil, which is ambiguous to some, to a certain conclusion, here is a very brief and most certain argument: that must be held for certain to be Catholic whose opposite is held for certain to be heretical. B1 Such is the principal conclusion of the present chapter. For Jerome says in book 12 On Isaiah, expounding Isaiah 45 [:7], "I am the Lord, forming light and creating darkness, making peace and creating evil": "Let the heresy be confounded that supposes God the maker of evils, since here evil is put not as the contrary of good but for affliction and war, according to what is written in the Gospel: 'Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.'35 Let Marcion be confounded, who understands two Gods, one good and just, the other evil and unjust, one the maker of invisible things and the other of visible, by whom the first would make light and the second darkness, the former peace and the latter evil, although one and the same God has created both, according to the diversity of merits." B2 And here Jerome takes "evil" not for a man or angel called evil denominatively, and in a certain way the subject of malice, but for the per se evil, that is, for malice itself, per se and pure, in line with what he says and defines elsewhere. For above in the same work, book 1, on that text of Isaiah 2 [:22], "Cease from the man whose spirit is in his nostrils, because he himself is reputed lofty," he speaks thus in that place: "Bama among the Hebrews is called not 'a lofty one' but 'the loftiness,' that is, altitude and sublimity itself, as if one were to say: not 'divine' but 'divination,' not 'a stream' but 'a spring,' not 'man' but 'humanity.'"36 It is therefore heretical to suppose that God is the maker of evils of guilt, as the Prophet and Jerome speak here; for according to the third chapter, and according to them, he is the maker of all things, even of the evils of affliction and of wars. Therefore it is also heretical to suppose that the evil of guilt is any thing at all. C1 Isidore also, in Etymologies 8, 5 or 12,37 reciting various heresies of various heretics, says: "The Colitani or Colicitani say that God does not make evils, against what is written, 'I the Lord, creating evils'"; and he immediately adds: "The Floriani say the contrary, that God created evils, against what is written, 'God made all things good.'" This is recited in the Canon, 24, last question, Quidam autem,38 where heretics are numbered with their heresies. That God is the Creator and maker of all things the passages already alleged prove, and no Catholic is ignorant of it; for the Nicene Creed professes this generally in the name of the whole Church: "I believe," it says, in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible, as the third chapter also showed.

Corollary

And let it have a Corollary: that good and per se evil, or goodness and pure malice, are not proper contraries but privative opposites.

Hence it is manifest that good and per se evil, or goodness and pure malice, are not contraries in the proper sense but privative opposites. For if they were contraries in the proper sense, they would be placed under the same genus, and constituted by contrary positive differences standing at the greatest distance; whereas per se evil, or pure malice, posits nothing. Since therefore they are opposites, and only one of them is positive, it is clear that they are privative opposites. Nor ought it to move anyone that the Philosopher frequently posits good and evil as if they were contraries, for he does this in giving an example; and as for the examples he gives, he does not always suppose that it is so, but gives them so that the learner may grasp the point, as is plain from the same author, Prior Analytics 1. Or it may be said otherwise: that when authors sometimes affirm good and evil to be contraries, they mean by "contraries" opposites; or they mean by "evil" the evil of affliction and of sensible pain, according to the distinction of Avicenna and Anselm recited above. But someone will perhaps object against what has been said the saying of the Philosopher, Ethics 2, 7,39 in these words: "Not every action admits a mean, nor every passion; for some have been named straightway as bound up with malice, for instance rejoicing at evil, shamelessness, envy, and among actions adultery, theft, homicide; for all these and such like are said

in themselves to be evil, not their excesses nor their deficiencies. Therefore it is never possible to go right regarding them, but always to sin; nor is it a matter of doing well or not well regarding such things, in respect of doing it as one ought, and when, and how, for example committing adultery; but simply to do any of these is to sin." Catholic Doctors also state a similar view in many places, and Lombard, Sentences 2, dist. 40, cites Augustine for this view. To these objections it must be said, A1 as Anselm intimates in On the Virginal Conception 4, that names can be imposed on these evil acts in two ways: either so that they signify absolutely the substance of such an act, or so that along with the act they co-signify some accompanying evil circumstance. Hence Anselm says there: "To certain actions are given names by which it is signified that they are done unjustly, such as fornication and lying; but one thing is understood when the action or utterance itself is considered, another when it is considered whether justly or unjustly." Finally, every essence is from God, and nothing from him is unjust; and so the objections are resolved. For Augustine and the Philosopher take those names stated above in the second way, not the first; therefore they do not run counter to what was shown earlier. That Augustine speaks in this way A2 appears from what he says: "Things that are agreed to be sins are not to be done under any pretext of a good cause, for any seeming good end, with any supposedly good intention." And that the Philosopher speaks so is evident. For he does not say that some such act is in reality evil per se, but that some things have been named straightway as bound up with malice. He is intimating that some names signify evil acts, not absolutely according to the essence of the acts, but co-signify and bind up malice together with them. This is clear enough from the fact that he named homicide among them, which is not evil per se, as is plain from the same author himself, Ethics 10, 14,40 where he cites the lawgivers: that one must urge those who obey to virtue for the sake of the good, but the disobedient and the more degenerate by penalties and punishments, and the incurable are to be exterminated, which has also been enacted by the laws of all nations.