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Objection 1: It would seem that certain blessings are not necessary
in order to excuse marriage. For just as the preservation of the
individual which is effected by the nutritive power is intended by
nature, so too is the preservation of the species which is effected by
marriage; and indeed so much the more as the good of the species is
better and more exalted than the good of the individual. But no goods
are necessary to excuse the act of the nutritive power. Neither
therefore are they necessary to excuse marriage.
Objection 2: Further, according to the Philosopher (Ethic.
viii, 12) the friendship between husband and wife is natural, and
includes the virtuous, the useful, and the pleasant. But that which
is virtuous in itself needs no excuse. Therefore neither should any
goods be assigned for the excuse of matrimony.
Objection 3: Further, matrimony was instituted as a remedy and as
an office, as stated above (Question 42, Article 2). Now it
needs no excuse in so far as it is instituted as an office, since then
it would also have needed an excuse in paradise, which is false, for
there, as Augustine says, "marriage would have been without reproach
and the marriage-bed without stain" (Gen. ad lit. ix). In like
manner neither does it need an excuse in so far as it is intended as a
remedy, any more than the other sacraments which were instituted as
remedies for sin. Therefore matrimony does not need these excuses.
Objection 4: Further, the virtues are directed to whatever can be
done aright. If then marriage can be righted by certain goods, it
needs nothing else to right it besides the virtues of the soul; and
consequently there is no need to assign to matrimony any goods whereby
it is righted, any more than to other things in which the virtues
direct us.
On the contrary, Wherever there is indulgence, there must needs be
some reason for excuse. Now marriage is allowed in the state of
infirmity "by indulgence" (1 Cor. 7:6). Therefore it needs
to be excused by certain goods.
Further, the intercourse of fornication and that of marriage are of
the same species as regards the species of nature. But the intercourse
of fornication is wrong in itself. Therefore, in order that the
marriage intercourse be not wrong, something must be added to it to
make it right, and draw it to another moral species.
I answer that, No wise man should allow himself to lose a thing
except for some compensation in the shape of an equal or better good.
Wherefore for a thing that has a loss attached to it to be eligible,
it needs to have some good connected with it, which by compensating for
that loss makes that thing ordinate and right. Now there is a loss of
reason incidental to the union of man and woman, both because the
reason is carried away entirely on account of the vehemence of the
pleasure, so that it is unable to understand anything at the same
time, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. vii, 11); and again
because of the tribulation of the flesh which such persons have to
suffer from solicitude for temporal things (1 Cor. 7:28).
Consequently the choice of this union cannot be made ordinate except by
certain compensations whereby that same union is righted. and these are
the goods which excuse marriage and make it right.
Reply to Objection 1: In the act of eating there is not such an
intense pleasure overpowering the reason as in the aforesaid action,
both because the generative power, whereby original sin is
transmitted, is infected and corrupt, whereas the nutritive power, by
which original sin is not transmitted, is neither corrupt nor
infected; and again because each one feels in himself a defect of the
individual more than a defect of the species. Hence, in order to
entice a man to take food which supplies a defect of the individual, it
is enough that he feel this defect; but in order to entice him to the
act whereby a defect of the species is remedied, Divine providence
attached pleasure to that act, which moves even irrational animals in
which there is not the stain of original sin. Hence the comparison
fails.
Reply to Objection 2: These goods which justify marriage belong to
the nature of marriage, which consequently needs them, not as
extrinsic causes of its rectitude, but as causing in it that rectitude
which belongs to it by nature.
Reply to Objection 3: From the very fact that marriage is intended
as an office or as a remedy it has the aspect of something useful and
right; nevertheless both aspects belong to it from the fact that it has
these goods by which it fulfills the office and affords a remedy to
concupiscence.
Reply to Objection 4: An act of virtue may derive its rectitude
both from the virtue as its elicitive principle, and from its
circumstances as its formal principles; and the goods of marriage are
related to marriage as circumstances to an act of virtue which owes it
to those circumstances that it can be an act of virtue.
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