What would be the use, then, of
any such withdrawal? It would not make the evil thing good. An evil
thing it would still remain, unnatural, irrational, and as such,
displeasing to God, the Supreme Reason. The man would not be free to
do the thing, even though God did not forbid it. It appears,
therefore, that the Divine prohibition, and similarly the Divine
command, which we have proved (c. vi., s. ii., nn. 10, 11, p. 121) to
be necessarily imposed in matters of natural evil and of naturally
imperative good, is imposed as a hard and fast line, so long as the
intrinsic good or evil remains the same.
[Footnote 14: There is a theological difficulty about the polygamy of
the patriarchs, which will be touched on in _Natural Law_, c. vi., s.
ii., n. 4. p. 272.]
4. There is, therefore, no room for Evolution in Ethics and Natural
Law any more than in Geometry. One variety of geometrical
construction, or of moral action, may succeed another; but the truths
of the science, by which those varieties are judged, change not. There
is indeed this peculiarity about morality, distinguishing it from art,
that if a man errs invincibly, the evil that he takes for good is not
_formally_ evil, or evil as he wills it, and the good that he takes
for evil is _formally_ evil to him.
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