Flying Solo and the Natural Law: The Common Good as Part of the Moral Order

AN OVEREMPHASIS ON INDIVIDUALISM will usually land one outside the philosophy of natural law and even outside human law properly so called. That is one reason why the natural law philosophy is largely out of favor. Individualism may be defined in a variety of ways, but ultimately, individualism looks at the common good as something merely utilitarian or useful. That is, the common good, is "a mere means to the good of individuals," and outside of this has no independent justification. Simon, 97. The common good does lead to the private good of men, but it is a misinterpretation of its importance to view it as a means, and not an end in itself. By subordinating the common good to the individual good, that is by making it the desire of private good and private action, one misinterprets it, and in fact destroys the notion altogether. There must be a common desire and a common action behind a good, and not a multiple of private desires and common actions, if a good it to be called authentically common. Adam Smith's "invisible hand" which supposedly guides individual choice and individual demand and individual supply and leads to the common good is farcical of the common good. By definition, selfishness, even if it may accidentally or even frequently also benefit the commonwealth, is not conducive to common good, at least one strictly so called.

But more is required that mere common desire and common action for there to be a common good. In addition to common desire and common action, this good, to be common, also requires a distribution to individuals; the common good must not be kept apart from or segregated from the individuals that make up the community. So Simon concludes:

A thing which has the appearance of a common good, inasmuch as it cannot be realized without common desire and common action, is not a common good and may amount to sheer destruction if it is kept apart from the persons who make up the community. . . . The accomplishments of common desire and effort if left undistributed are actually kept out of society and denied the character of common good.

Simon, 98. Three things, then, in Simon's view must exist for a common good to be a common good in theory and fact: (i) a common desire, (ii) a common action, and (iii) a distribution, in some fashion, among the individuals who make up the commonality.

Simon draws from a stray comment of the Communist Manifesto to make a point (though not by any means advocating any of its principles!). "The bourgeoisie," Marx and Engles state, "has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals." Both the Roman aqueducts and the Gothic cathedrals can be considered common goods, so long as they are not withdrawn from access by the public. All men may drink the water the aqueduct guides into the city, just like all men can drink the living waters by attending the cathedral. The pyramids, on the other hand, are not common goods. There was no equivalent distribution among the people of the sizable human labor that was expended on these monuments for the glory of the Pharaoh. "The Pyramids of Egypt are a rather clear example of an undistributed and undistributable common achievement." Such things still occur, they are often the result of "pork barrel" spending, as when "a road is built, at great public expense, for the service of a very few people." Simon, 99. This reminds one of the famous "Bridge to Nowhere," a 365 million project to link the town of Ketchikan (population 8,900) and the island of Gravina (population 50) in Alaska.

Given that there has to be some appropriate distribution of a common good among the population to retain its characteristic of a common good, Simon asks whether the common good becomes utilitarian relative to the good of the individual that participates in it. In other words, does it become a mere means? No, says Simon:

[T]he law of distribution which is that of the common good in no way prevents the common good from enjoying the character of an end, and of an end higher than the private good, and of the final end if the community under consideration has the character of a complete community.

Simon, 100-01. (That's why Aristotle referred to the common good (which he calls the "good of the polis") as "greater and more divine," κάλλιον δὲ καὶ θειότερον, than securing private good. Arist., Nic. Eth., 1094b8. This preeminence of the common good is derived from its "completeness" and "duration," qualities that we discussed in our previous blog posting.

Not only does the common good take precedence over the private good because of its relative duration and completeness, there is also a sense of hierarchy or ordering in the types of goods (and evils). Drawing upon the thought of Pascal in his Pensées, [frag. 792], Simon makes this point. In this fragment, Pascal expresses an important truth. While within certain orders goods may be incommensurable, across certain orders they may not. Some goods are of more fundamental value the others. There is a difference of kind between some goods and others, or some evils and others. Not all matters are differences in degree.

Pascal expresses, with his unique power of words, the great metaphysical and ethical truth that all good of a lower order falls sort of any good of a higher order.

Simon, 102.


This is a truth utterly forgotten by moderns, who are loathe to make judgment calls, as if all value is a matter of taste. For modern ears, the sentiments of St. Thomas or of Cardinal Newman are incomprehensible

The good of grace in a single soul is greater than the good of nature in the whole universe.

The Church . . . holds that it were better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one willful untruth, though it harmed no one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse . . . she considers the action of this world and the action of the soul simply incommensurate, viewed in their respective spheres; she would rather save the soul of one single wild bandit of Calabria, or whining beggar of Palermo, than draw a hundred lines of railroad through the length of Italy, or carry out a sanitary reform in its fullest details in every city of Sicily, except so far as these great national works tended to some spiritual good beyond them.

S. T. Ia-IIae, q. 113, 9 ad 2; John Henry Cardinal Newman, Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching (London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1891), Vol. I, 240.

Here is a traditional truth entirely lost, one shared by St. Thomas, Cardinal Newman, Pascal, and anyone that gives a moment thought to eternal verities: "[A]ny good of the higher order is greater than the totality of the good that the lower order admits of." Simon, 102. (It should be noted that this notion is entirely lost by the advocates of the "New Natural Law Theory such as Finnis, Grisez, and George, who hold all human goods to incommensurable and do not admit of this sort of hierarchy of goods.) The physical order is subordinate to the rational order, and the rational order is subordinate to the natural moral order, and the natural moral order is subordinate (though never contradictory) to the order of grace. So, for example, one should never intentionally kill an innocent human being even to save one's physical life, or to gain riches, or to acquire knowledge, because this would be to commit a moral evil to so as to gain advantage in the physical or rational orders, violating this hierarchy that prevents such confusing of orders.

Simon then asks the question of what order--physical or moral--the common good may be placed. When one hears the Ciceronian saying: salus populi suprema lex esto, the health of the people is the supreme law, which is nothing other than the principle that the common good of a people is the centerpiece of law, is this suprema lex a law of the physical or moral order? It is, Simon insists, a principle of moral order, and so supreme, but not absolutely. That the common good should be at the center of law, should be its end, is a supreme principle:

Supreme, indeed, not absolutely speaking for the order of charity [which I've characterized as the order of Grace, L.C.], in the words of Pascal, is above all the perfections of nature; but supreme in an order that it would be most inappropriate to designate as physical, material, or external. The common good of the civil society . . . [is in the] order of moral perfection, which remains essentially naturally and never should be confused with the order of charity (in the strictly theological sense which is that of Pascal) . . . . Of this common good it should not be said that it is the ultimate end absolutely speaking, for it is an ultimate within an order which is not itself ultimate.

Simon, 105. Simon then concludes:

[T]he common good indeed enjoys primacy over the private good of the individual, when both are of the same order, but that at the same time the common good is internal to man and by its very nature requires continuous distribution among the members of society. As such it is the end of the laws of the state. . . . If the purse of law is common, the cause also must be common. Thus the law is a rule of reason, relative to the common good which, on account of its relation to the common good, proceeds from the community. . . . [t]he making of law belongs either to the community as a whole or to someone who is in charge of the community. . . . [and] has to be promulgated, it has to be conveyed to the knowledge of those who are subject to the law.

Simon, 107-08, 109.

When one gathers together all the thoughts of Simon on human law, the analogate of law with which we are most familiar, he proposes, in fact, the definition of law of St. Thomas Aquinas:

Law is an ordinance of reason for the common good, promulgated by him who has the care of the community.

[Lex] est aliud quam quaedam rationis ordinatio ad bonum commune, ab eo qui curam communitatis habet, promulgata.

Simon, 109; Ia-IIae q. 90 a. 4 co.

Using his understanding of human law as the analogate, Simon now turns to what it may tell us of the natural law, the natural moral law.

The Disfigured Face: Thomistic Ontology: Existence Distinct from Essence

METAPHYSICS AFFECTS ETHICS perhaps is the conclusion of Professor Cortest's first chapter in his The Disfigured Face: Traditional Natural Law and Its Encounter with Modernity. The science of being affects the science of doing. Who we think we are, and what we think of reality, affects how we act. Modern man does not know how to act, largely because he does not know who he is or even what is (that, or he thinks he can make himself whatever he wants to be and has not stable, informing nature that ought to guide him). St. Thomas Aquinas did not suffer from the modern malaise which has deracinated or uprooted man.

At the heart of the natural law theory of St. Thomas Aquinas is his ontology. Ontology, a word which comes from Greek ontos (ὄντος = of being) and logia (λογία = study, science, theory), is the science of being. Since at least the time of Christian Wolff (1679-1754), "ontology" has been distinguished from "metaphysics" generally, and now is regarded as part of "metaphysics," along with its other components "psychology" and "cosmology." At the center of St. Thomas's ontology was the proposition that essence is really distinct from existence, that existence was the preeminent ground for the discovery of truth, and that existence was for every thing other than God, whose essence is existence, a sharing in existence as a gift of God. God it is "who properly causes existence in creatures, just as it is fire itself that sets other things on fire. And God is causing this effect in things not just when they begin to exist, but all the time they are maintained in existence, just as the sun is lighting up the atmosphere all the time the atmosphere remains lit." (Cortest, 12, quoting S.T. Ia, q. 8, art. 1)

"Thomas considered 'being' the first and most fundamental object known by reason." Cortest, 1. Being is, in fact, at the heart of the thought of St. Thomas and the one he referred to as "the Philosopher," Aristotle. "There is," Aristotle says in his book Metaphysics, "a science which investigates being as being and the attributes which belong to this in virtue of its own nature," ἔστιν ἐπιστήμη τις ἣ θεωρεῖ τὸ ὂν ᾗ ὂν καὶ τὰ τούτῳ ὑπάρχοντα καθ᾽ αὑτό. Arist., Met., 1003. To on hē on. Being as being.

Certainly since the Enlightenment, and even spottily before in the Renaissance, the underlying philosophical views of both Aristotle and St. Thomas, who relied on Aristotle, have been increasingly rejected. The French positivist Auguste Comte saw metaphysics as a passing stage, sort of as like an intellectual teenager (theology being the infant), in the development of human intellectual knowledge. In his lectures on metaphysics, Theodor Adorno, who was no fan of metaphysics (or ontology), noted, probably accurately enough, that "metaphysics is used in almost the entire non-German-speaking world as a term of abuse, a synonym for idle speculation, mere nonsense and heaven knows what other intellectual vices." Theodor W. Adorno, Metaphysics: Concept and Problems (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 1. Before Adorno, Nietzsche called those who dabbled in metaphysics "Hinterweltler," "backworldsmen," perhaps an allusionary word play, in that Nietzsche's term sounds strangely like "Hinterwäldler," or "backwoodsmen." (Ontology or metaphysics is not the only area that has suffered abuse by moderns. The notion of natural law has been equally the subject of deprecation. One need only think of the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, who called natural law "nonsense on stilts," or Associate Supreme Court Justice Holmes, who all his life "sneered at the natural rights of man." )

The rejection of the Thomistic ontology is unfortunate because it rejects the particular contribution of St. Thomas to metaphysics, specifically, his emphasis on existence (esse, "to be," that a thing is) as really (and not only mentally) distinct from essence (essentia--the "what" of a thing; its quiddity) in his metaphysics of being. For St. Thomas, both "essence" and "existence" were important concepts to distinguish in thinking about reality because, other than God in which they were identical, in created things they were really distinct things. Further, St. Thomas taught that truth is more principally grounded in the existence (esse) of a thing, rather than in its essence, veritas fundatur in esse rei magis quam in ipsa quidditate. St. Thomas, I Sent., d. 19, q. 5, a. 1. Unfortunately, at least initially, St. Thomas's views on ontology faced stiff competition from the nominalism that had infected the brains of scholars. More popular in the 13th [correction, 14th century] century seemingly was the thought of Ockham, and Ockham rejected the extra-mental distinction between essence and existence as meaningless, in fact non-existent, therefore equating both of these concepts. Cortest, 5. Ockham could not put it any plainer:

We have to say, therefore, that essence (entitas) and existence (existentia) are not two things. On the contrary, the words "thing" (res) and "to be" (esse) signify one and the same thing.

Ideo dicendum est, quod entitas et existentia non sunt duae res. Sed ista duo vocabula 'res' et 'esse' idem et eadem significant.

Ockham, Summa Totius Logicae, 3, 2, 27. Ockham also emphasized the particular, and did not believe in abstract essences as having any sort of reality; in short, he was a nominalist. (Though unrelated to the issue of ontology, Ockham also was a voluntarist in morality, believing the will to be preeminent over reason in law.)

As Cortest notes, if "essence" is studied without regard to "existence," then one loses contact with reality and ventures into a world of mere abstraction, of concepts, of the mere possible or potential. On the other hand, if "being" is considered a sophomoric abstraction, a verbal flatus, and all thought is focused on the particular existence, then we are unable to grasp universal realities or the concept of "nature." St. Thomas, like a clever helmsman, steers us between the Charybdis of a Kantian or Hegelian idealism, and a Scylla of a Humean or Lockean empirical superficialism.

Francisco Vitoria

For a time, Ockham and his followers carried the day, perhaps finding ultimate expression in the Lutheran boil that burst open spewing forth all its puss when the recalcitrant, troubled, disobedient Augustinian friar nailed 95 theses on the Cathedral doors in Wittenberg, shattering Christian unity. But slowly, surely, largely as a result of the work of Cardinal Cajetan (Tomasso de Vio) (1468-1534) and Francisco de Vitoria (ca. 1492-1546), the Thomistic spirit was revitalized. Cajetan, the diminutive Dominican with a prodigious mind, is probably the most celebrated of all the Thomistic commentators. Francisco de Vitoria, commonly regarded as the father of Spanish Thomism, completely reformed the curriculum at the University of Salamanca, replacing the Sentences of Peter Lombard with the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas as the principal text for the study of theology.

Nobody could have foreseen the harvest that Vitoria's decision to sow Thomist seeds instead of Lombardian seeds into the furrows of the minds of his students. The names of those who came from, or have ties to, that school are profuse, and they ripened largely in Dominican and Jesuit habit, and fed the disciplines of moral theology, political philosophy, economics, and international law: Domingo de Soto (1495-1560), Martín de Azpilcueta (1491-1586), Domingo Bañez (1528-1604), Diego de Covarrubias y Leya (1512-1577), Tomás de Mercado (1525-1575), Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566), Luis de Molina (1535-1600), Juan de Mariana (ca. 1535-1624), Melchior Cano (1509-1560), and Francisco Suárez (1548-1617). From Spain, the Thomistic revival rooted itself into all Europe, affecting all manner of men and all manner of sciences.

Francisco Suárez

Cortest acknowledges that the last mentioned of the Salamancan greats: Francisco Suárez, the Doctor eximius, the exceptional Doctor, is "perhaps the greatest philosopher in the Thomistic tradition," and yet, "he differed profoundly from the Angelic Doctor [Thomas Aquinas] in his metaphysics." Cortest, 9. There is, in short, a school, distinct from Thomism, called Suarism. For Cortest, one of the fundamental distinctions between Aquinas and Suárez was precisely in the Thomistic distinction between essence and existence:

The primacy of existence, so fundamental for Aquinas, is lost with Suárez, for whom essence and existence can both be either potential or actual. . . . For Suárez, all being is reduced to essential being; existence is always subordinate to essence."

Cortest, 9. From the Thomist teaching that gave preeminence of existence over essence, Suárez went rogue. Suárez understood being primarily as essence, and this tended to deprecate the true character of being, of existing. "Therefore," Suárez concluded in his Disputationes Metaphysicae, XXXI, s. vi, 23, "it must be said that essence and existence are the same thing but that it is conceived of under the aspect of essence." Dicendum ergo est eamdem rem essse essentiam et existentiam, concipi autem sub ratione essentiam. Suárez had, in a way, come back full circle to Ockham.

From the point of view of the Thomist, this is a massive mistake. The mistake arises from seeing being as a noun rather than a participle. Cortest, 9. (One may recall that Ockham saw existence or being (esse) as a form of a verb, not a noun.) The mistake arises out of Suárez's taking for granted that his verbum mentis, the word in his mind, "corresponds exactly to what it represents, even when he uses it to conceptualize the principles of being itself." Cortest, 10 (quoting David M. Knight, SJ, "Suarez's Approach to Substantial Form," The Modern Schoolman 40 (1962): 238)

Is being, existence, esse, "to be," a verbal, nounal, or participial concept?

What difference, if any, does it make?

Taken as a participle, being signifies "the act of existing as exercised and is the same as the actual existent." Looked as a noun, it means "the essence of a thing which has or can have existence (esse) and it can be said to signify existence itself not as exercised in act but in potency or aptitude." Thus, taken as a noun, the objective concept of being is that which is or can be, that which has a real essence prescinding from actual existence without excluding or denying it.

Cortest, 9-10 (quoting John P. Doyle, "Suarez On the Reality of the Possible," The Modern Schoolman 45 (1967): 36-37) To view existence as a noun, rather than a participle, is to sort of fold the concept of existence into essence. And thus existence becomes, not an independent, extra-mental reality, but becomes the difference between essence potential and essence actual. According to Cortest, the result is to fragment being and take us somewhat out of reality. Metaphysics is the "science of possible being," and no longer the science of "actual or real being." We sort of walk out of the boundaries of authentic Thomistic ontology and its moderate realism. It sort of shatters the chain of being, in fact being itself, into virtually infinite shards.

It also affects Suárez's view of individuation (i.e., what makes individuals individuals?). Traditionally, the individual expression of an essence (say, "Socrates," as an individuation of "man.") was the result of matter or particular existence of an essence. But for Suárez, "neither matter nor existence constitute the principle of the individual." Cortest, 11. For Suárez, "accidents contain within themselves their own principle of individuation," and this "leads logically to the conclusion that a being contains within itself a multiplicity of individuating principles." Cortest, 11. By looking at accidents and substance thus separately, Suárez "destroys the very unity that most characterizes the Aristotelian-Thomistic conception of substance." Cortest, 11. Man was hacked up into many parts, and was no longer whole.

Why is this subtlety important? Is this just subtlecraft? Cortest answers:

On this foundation [of existence being really distinct from essence, and being the preeminent metaphysical principle for understanding reality], an epistemology and an ethics are developed. In fact, the Thomistic system [of knowledge and of morality] can be understood as a series of logical extensions from this premise.

Cortest, 11. The eventual effect was to divide the world of thought into two: either those who relied only on existence, focusing only in individual existent things, neglecting essence, or those who relied only on essence, neglecting existence. The former are the empiricists. The latter are the idealists. Both views have significant effect on ethics, that is, affect one's view of the natural law.

The Disfigured Face of Natural Law: Introduction

WE SHALL FOCUS THE NEXT SIX OR SO POSTINGS on a book by Professor Luis Cortest entitled The Disfigured Face: Traditional Natural Law and its Encounter with Modernity (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008). Professor Cortest is an Associate Professor of Spanish and Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Oklahoma University. It is apparent that his interests in the Spanish writers of the 16th century, the so-called Siglo de Oro, or the "Golden Age," of Spanish literature introduced him to the principles of the natural law which were so prevalent in that age. In earlier postings, we reviewed at some depth the auto sacramental authored by the great 17th century Spanish playwright, Pedro Calderón de la Barca entitled A Dios por razón de estado, To God by Reason of the State. For the Spanish of the Siglo de Oro, the doctrine of natural law was as prevalent and as alive in the minds and hearts of thinkers and artists as feelings of democracy, human rights, and relativism are today. Central to the thesis of Professor's Cortest book is that the great synthesis of the natural law found in St. Thomas Aquinas is based upon a certain ontology or philosophy of being, and a certain teleological or purposeful view of nature (nature has an end, a purpose, a telos, which is Greek for "end," "goal," or "purpose."). The underlying Aristotelian/Thomist ontological and teleological assumptions, central to an authentic Thomist natural law theory, have been progressively dismantled by the philosophical and scientific presuppositions stemming from the Enlightenment and Modernism. By and large, Enlightenment and Modern thought have rejected the Aristotelian/Thomist ontology and teleological view of nature. This is true--alas--of even advocates of the so-called "modern" natural law theories of Finnis, Grisez, O'Boyle, and George (what is sometimes referred to as the "Integration" natural law theories, see our previous posting By Nature Equal: Human Equality and the Natural Law, Last Possible Ally Fails where this theory is briefly discussed.) The necessity of a certain view of being (ontology) and nature (teleology) as part of a classical treatment of natural law has been also the topic of a posting on the Jesuit thinker, John Courtney Murray. See The Four Requirements of a Classical Natural Law Theory.


Professor Cortest's book has four chapters: Thomistic Ontology, Ontological Morality and Human Rights, The War of the Philosophers, The Modern Way, Pope Leo XIII and His Legacy, and The Survival of Tradition. We intend to devote one posting for each chapter.

Pope Benedict XVI on the Natural Moral Law

THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXCERPT FROM POPE BENEDICT XVI'S speech at a general audience held on June 17, 2010. The entire talk pertains to St. Thomas Aquinas, and I have culled out that portion of the Pope's speech pertaining to the importance of th natural law and St. Thomas Aquinas's teaching in regard to it. The full text in English of the audience may be seen at here:

. . An important application of this relation between nature and grace is recognized in the moral theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, which is very timely. At the center of his teaching in this field, he puts the new law, which is the law of the Holy Spirit. With a profoundly evangelical focus, he insists on the fact that this law is the grace of the Holy Spirit given to all those who believe in Christ. To such grace is joined the written and oral teaching of the doctrinal and moral truths, transmitted by the Church. Stressing the fundamental role in moral life of the Holy Spirit's action, of grace, from which the theological and moral virtues flow, St. Thomas makes one understand that every Christian can attain the lofty prospects of the "Sermon on the Mount" if he lives an authentic relationship of faith in Christ, if he opens himself to the action of his Holy Spirit. However -- Aquinas adds -- "even if grace is more effective than nature, still nature is more essential for man" (Summa Theologiae, Ia, q, 29, a. 3), due to which, in the Christian moral perspective, there is a place for reason, which is capable of discerning the natural moral law. Reason can recognize [this law] considering what is good to do and what is good to avoid to obtain that happiness which is in each one's heart, and which also imposes a responsibility toward others and, hence, the search for the common good. In other words, the virtues of man, theological and moral, are rooted in human nature. Divine grace supports, sustains and drives the ethical commitment but, on their own, according to St. Thomas, all men, believers and non-believers, are called to recognize the exigencies of human nature expressed in natural law and to be inspired in it in the formulation of positive laws, that is, those issuing from the civil and political authorities to regulate human coexistence.

St. Thomas Aquinas Before a Crucifix

When the natural law and the responsibility it implies are denied, the way is opened dramatically to ethical relativism on the individual plane and to the totalitarianism of the state on the political plane. The defense of man's universal rights and the affirmation of the absolute value of the dignity of the person postulate a foundation. Is not the natural law precisely this foundation, with the non-negotiable values that it indicates? The Venerable John Paul II wrote in his encyclical "Evangelium Vitae" words that remain very timely: "It is therefore urgently necessary, for the future of society and the development of a sound democracy, to rediscover those essential and innate human and moral values which flow from the very truth of the human being and express and safeguard the dignity of the person: values which no individual, no majority and no State can ever create, modify or destroy, but must only acknowledge, respect and promote" (No. 71).

Pope Benedict XVI

In conclusion, Thomas proposes to us a broad and trustworthy concept of human reason: broad because it is not limited to the spaces of the so-called empirical-scientific reason, but open to the whole being and hence also to the fundamental and inalienable questions of human living; and trustworthy because human reason, above all if it accepts the inspirations of the Christian faith, is a promoter of a civilization that recognizes the dignity of the person, the intangibility of his rights and the strength of his duties. It is not surprising that the doctrine about the dignity of the person, fundamental for the recognition of the inviolability of man's rights, matured in realms of thought that took up the legacy of St. Thomas Aquinas, who had a very lofty concept of the human creature. He defined it, with his rigorously philosophical language, as "that which is most perfect found in the whole of nature, that is a subsistent subject in a rational nature" (Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 29, a. 3).

The profundity of St. Thomas Aquinas' thought stems -- let us never forget it -- from his lively faith and his fervent piety, which he expressed in inspired prayers, such as this one in which he asks God: "Grant me, I pray, a will that seeks you, a wisdom that finds you, a life that pleases you, a perseverance that waits for you with trust and a trust that in the end succeeds in possessing you."