A Higgs boson particle walks into a Catholic church.  Surprised, the priest asks, “what are you doing here?”  The particle replies, “You can’t have mass without me!”

I am always surprised by the resistance which the classical definition of man as a rational animal stirs.

Rationality has two aspects, one concerning how I decide what to do, the other concerning how I recognize the way things are.

As to the first aspect:  Humans do not always act for good reasons, but we always act for reasons.  The other animals do not have reasons; they only have motives.  To put it another way, they are incapable of reflection on their motives; for them, the impulse to do something is simply a given.  Even when they are torn by conflicting impulses, they don’t ask themselves questions about them; they go the way the stronger one directs.  Not even the most confused animal asks “what does all this mean?”

As to the second aspect:  Humans may not know much, but knowledge is always an issue for us; for animals, it never is.  However superior their sight or sense of smell may be to ours, they take in only facts, not truths.  Incapable of reflection on the correspondence between thought and reality, they cannot grasp what truth is.  They form habits, but not generalizations; they try to find things out (like where the mouse is), but not even the most curious cat longs to grasp the meaning of the whole.  A creature could even be more clever than we are, in a certain sense smarter than we are, and yet not be rational.

The Psalmist bids the birds, the skies, and even the reptiles to praise God, and they do so, just by being what He has made.  Yet we alone are capable of reflecting on that soaring hymn.  The skies are not aware that they declare His glory; the bird does not know that it exults.   Among all the animals, we are His only images, because we are the only mirrors.

People often speak as though acting naturally were the opposite of acting rationally.  For the other animals, it is.  For humans, it isn’t.  Because we have a rational nature, all of our natural inclinations must pertain to reason in some way, or they would not be natural to us.

But there are a few twists.  Here is the first twist:  We are not pure intelligences; for example, we also share in the nature common to all animals.  Here is the second one:  In us, the inclinations we share with other animals are taken up into reason and transformed by it.  Thus, we experience them differently than other animals do.  Both humans and other animals have an inclination to procreate, but the others just mate.  Unlike them, we marry; we participate in a practice imbued with the rational meaning of a procreative partnership.

So, although all of our natural inclinations pertain to reason, they don’t all pertain to reason in the same way.  Some are, so to speak, native-born citizens of reason, for example the inclination to know the truth, especially the truth about God.  Others are, so to speak, naturalized citizens of reason, for example the inclination to a procreative partnership.  The former are reasonable per se, whereas the latter are reasonable “by participation.”

Thanksgiving Day

Consider the good and beauty of mortal friendship.  We enjoy it, yes.  But we also appreciate it, and this fact itself is a good; it reflects and thereby doubles the original enjoyment.  Did I say doubles?  Say rather tri­ples, quadruples, quintuples, as the enjoyment of friendship reverberates in the strings of memory, gratitude, and delight.  If we never remember our friends, have no gratitude for them, and are never moved to joy just because they are, we can scarcely be said to have experienced friendship at all.  We are diminished, impoverished, mutilated; something is wrong with us.

But if all that is true even in the case of goods like mortal friend­ship, then isn’t it still more true in the case of friendship with God?  If we cannot take joy in remembering Him, being grateful to Him, and delight­ing in the thought of Him, aren’t we missing the very note on which the chord of good is built?

We are, and this fact alters and deepens the motive for obeying the natural law.  True, the natural law directs us to nothing but our good.  The Objector responds, “Then we should have done it anyway, even apart from God’s command.” But is it possible that part of what makes it good for us lies in doing it just because He commands it?

What lover has not known the delight of doing something, just because the beloved asked?  What child has not begged Daddy to give him a job to do, just so he could do it for Daddy?  What trusted vassal did not plead of a truly noble lord, “Command me!” just in order to prove himself in loyal valor?  If in such ways, even the commands of mere men can be gifts and boons, then why not still more the commands of God?

Natural law thinkers view the happiness of the community as the complete set of conditions, physical and social, that need to be satisfied in order for individuals to be able to pursue happiness effectively, both through their own actions and through the actions of smaller communities such as families, churches, and neighborhoods.

But wait:  If the common good really is the "universal happiness," then why not think of it in a different way?  Why not think of it the way utilitarians and cost-benefit analysts think of it, as an arithmetic sum of my happiness, your happiness, and everyone else's happiness?  Isn't that what "universal happiness" would mean?

No, because society is not a mega-person.  It is an association of persons, each of them distinct and irreducible.  To the utilitarian and the cost-benefit analyst, persons seem to run together, like oil cans being emptied into a drum, gingerbread men placed too close on the cookie sheet, or lead soldiers melting down in the furnace.  But this is absurd.  To say "Your happiness is -3, mine is -3, and that other fellow's is +5, so the happiness of the aggregate is -1," makes about as much sense as saying "Iowa's temperature is 75°, Wisconsin's is 70°, and Minnesota's is 68°, so the temperature of the tri-state area is 213°."