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Natrual Law, Art 3: WHETHER ALL ACTS OF VIRTUE ARE PRESCRIBED BY THE…

- - - - Procreation
        
        preserve the species
        
        need to make a bond with opposite sex marriage (marital support)
      - Truth
        
        the acquisition of knowledge
        
        the communication of knowledge
      - Society
        
        need for community to meet our needs and to share good in friendship
      - Life
        
        security (i.e. protection against injury from natural forces, animal, other humans; it also includes physical freedom)
        
        food (appropriate nourishment, water, and air)
      - Worship God
    - - Ignorance
      - Anarchy
      - Irreligion
      - deception
      - Death of the innocent
      - injustice
      - breaking the family
- - - - All virtuous acts, considered as virtues, belong to the natural law. For the natural law belongs everything to which a man is inclined according to his nature.
        
        Each thing is inclined naturally to an operation that is suitable to it according to its form
        
        Living things to life.
        
        the rational soul is the proper form of man, there is in every man a natural inclination to act according to reason. and this is to act according to virtue.
        
        Consequently, considered thus, all acts of virtue are prescribed by the natural law: since each one’s reason naturally dictates to him to act virtuously.
        
        Animals are incline to live according to instinct
        
        birds fly
        
        spiders make webs
        
        fish swim
        
        phyiscal bodys are incline to attract each other (gravity)
        
        fire is inclined to give heat.
    - - waking up early
        
        morning run
        
        eating 5 types of fruit and veg a day
      - thus not all virtuous acts are prescribed by the natural law: for many things are done virtuously, to which nature does not incline at first; but which, through the inquiry of reason, have been found by men to be conducive to well-living.
- - - - give me my baseball bat.
        I want to teach this kid a lesson
- - - - Secondly, the term habit may be applied to that which we hold by a habit: thus faith may mean that which we hold by faith.
        And accordingly, since the precepts of the natural law are sometimes considered by reason actually, while sometimes they are in the reason only habitually, in this way the natural law may be called a habit.
      - Thus, in speculative matters, the indemonstrable principles are not the habit itself whereby we hold those principles, but are the principles the habit of which we possess.
    - - First, properly and essentially: and thus the natural law is not a habit. The natural law is something appointed by reason, just as a proposition is a work of reason.
        That which a man does is not the same as that whereby he does it: the act of speeking is not the same as the manner by which we speek. Since then a habit is that by which we act, a law cannot be a habit properly and essentially.
      - A habit is something by which we do something (the manner by which we do something)
        Natural law refer not to the manner but the action.
- - - - The secondary precepts, the natural law can be blotted out from the human heart, either by evil persuasions, or by vicious customs and corrupt habits, as among some men, theft, and even unnatural vices, as the Apostle states (Rom. 1), were not esteemed sinful.
        the cauterisation of the conscience
        
        By doing evil deeds for good intentions (immoral experimentation)
        
        By justifying deeds known to be bad
      - As the Secondary Precepts are conclusion of the Primary Precepts, even without the Primary Precepts being negated it is possible to come to erronious conclusions. Just as in speculative matters errors occur in respect of necessary conclusions.
        A mathmatical equation has only one answer (conclusion) but due to an individual's weekness of mind they may not be unable to find the answer/conclusion.
    - - But in the case of a particular action, in so far as reason is hindered from applying the general principle to a particular point of practice, on account of concupiscence or some other passion, it can be blotted out as stated above (Q. LXXVII., A. 2)
      - As to those general principles, the natural law, in the abstract, can nowise be blotted out from men’s hearts.
      - examples
        
        due to lack of awareness (sleepiness or influenced by drugs)
        
        a moment of passion (rage, greif, sorrow, desperation, lust)
- - - - In this sense nothing hinders the natural law from being changed: since many things for the benefit of human life have been added over and above the natural law, both by the Divine law and by human laws.
      - examples
        
        Procreation
        
        marriage laws (age restrictions, intermarriage restrictions)
        
        Truth
        
        schooling
        
        communication laws
        
        Society
        
        regulating commerce
        common law
        safty laws
        
        Life
        
        security - property laws
        
        Food & drink regulations
        drug regulations
        
        Worship God
        
        how to worship God
    - - In this sense, the natural law is altogether unchangeable in its first principles: but in its secondary principles, which, as we have said (A. 4), are certain detailed proximate conclusions drawn from the first principles, the natural law is not changed so that what it prescribes be not right in most cases. But it may be changed in some particular cases of rare occurrence, through some special causes hindering the observance of such precepts, as stated above (A. 4).