By DONALD DeMARCO
Have you heard about the love story between Big Ben and the Leaning Tower of Pisa? He had the time and she had the inclination. The joke rests, so to speak, on the double meaning of the word inclination. The superficial meaning of the word is geometric. The Tower, as a matter of fact, leans southward at 3.99 degrees. This meaning is placed over the romantic meaning which connotes love. This deeper meaning was an important word (inclinatio) in the vocabulary of St. Thomas Aquinas which serves as the basis of his teaching on the natural law.
But what does inclination in this second sense have to do with love? An explanation is surely in order. When we observe animal and vegetable life, we find that all animals and plants seem to know how to do what they need to do in order to preserve themselves in existence and to reproduce.
Flowers grow and bloom and scatter their fragrance. The spider weaves webs, the beaver builds dams, and the ant operates efficiently within his complex colony. We say that all this takes place because of instinct (which “nature has taught to all animals,” in the words of Aquinas).
When we observe the life of human beings we do not notice the consistency of action that we find in biological life. Man possesses reason and, therefore, he does not act unthinkingly from instinct. His actions are not only inconsistent, but often contrary to the needs of his nature. Is man, therefore, an irrational being, one for whom there is no right or wrong? Is man, as some existentialists contend, so free that he is even free from any determinate nature?
God creates out of His generosity. He is not a self-contained being as in the Aristotelian sense of one who is exclusively preoccupied with one’s self. Because we human beings are made in His image, the inclination or potential for generosity is built into our being. In the deepest precincts of our soul there abides an inclination to love, to care, to know, and to work for the common good. However, we often live at the surface of our being while our inclination to love remains hidden and unexercised.
What we should be doing in order to be congruent with the depth of our nature can be ignored so that we can function as if this primordial inclination did not reside within us. Thus, we can go about our business unaware that a vital knowledge of who we are does exists. We can neglect who we truly are and allow ourselves to be motivated by any of the seven deadly sins, not the least of which is pride.
Jacques Maritain has expressed the problem in a single sentence that is both philosophical and poetic when he characterized the elusive subtlety of this knowledge: “[It] is obscure, unsystematic, vital knowledge by connaturality or congeniality, in which the intellect, in order to bear judgment, consults and listens to the inner melody that the vibrating strings of abiding tendencies make present in the subject.”
There is music in our soul, so to speak, and there are moments when we hear the melody that is the sound of our deepest inclinations — our inclinations to do good (as well as to avoid evil).
We become aware of these inclinations when we discover our love for another, when we find that a friend is in danger, when we are confronted with people who are starving, when a catastrophe strikes, or when we are at the bedside of one who is dying, and so on. In these moments we sense that we are more human than we are when acting out of self-interest. At such times, we are in touch with those vital inclinations that are at the depth of our being.
Duty, in its most profound sense is the decision, freely chosen, to act in harmony with our primordial inclinations. There is a great deal of talk about rights in our day and comparatively little about duty. Yet duty is far more profound and far more characteristic of our humanity than rights, important as rights are. If everyone acted in accordance with his duty, there would be no need of talk about rights. Duty springs from the depth of our being and cannot be scripted. Rights can be clarified and codified and made part of law. But rights alone fail to answer the most fundamental needs of the human person.
The Good Samaritan offers an excellent example of the man who acts from a duty to another in need that follows his basic inclination to do good. He is not at all concerned about his “right” to continue on his journey uninterrupted, or his “right” to a carefree life. He acts in a way that is eminently human.
The Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore grasped the nature of this deeper sense of duty when he penned the following lines: “I slept and dreamed that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” We must waken to our inner inclinations to perform good deeds. In so acting, we discover, perhaps to our surprise, that duty rewards us with the experience of joy.
The Law of Nature is a phrase that applies to biological life that, out of necessity or instinct, plants and animals act as they do. The Natural Law applies exclusively to human beings who are endowed with freedom. It pertains to human actions that are in accordance with our most fundamental natural inclinations to do good and do avoid evil.
“Wherefore,” as Aquinas states, “according to the order of natural inclinations is the order of precepts of the natural law” (Summa Theologiae I-II, Q. 94, a. 2).
(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College and Seminary. He is a regular columnist for the St. Austin Review. His latest books, How to Navigate Through Life and Apostles of the Culture of Life, are posted on amazon.com.)
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