t and end" (Aquinas 79). Now human reason is not perfect, specifically when compared to eternal or divine reason. What is good or evil about a particular choice of thought or behavior in a particular situation may not be self-evident. But general principles that tend toward order, reason, justice, and the good are self-evident.
Accordingly, and "particular determinations, devised by human reason [and] called human laws" (Aquinas 79), are created in a way that is consistent with the good and that tends toward justice and good. The point s that human thought and behavior reason themselves, as far as possible, toward a situation of good and away from one of evil. By means of the application of practical reason, human beings acquire better understanding of what conforms with the good or the eternal law in individual cases.
The notion of applied practical reason that Aquinas presents is also taken up by Locke in his Second Treatise of Government. Locke frames his discussion around a rational or moral weight given to concepts of property: "I shall endeavour to shew, how men might come to have a property in several parts of that which God gave to mankind in common, and that without any express compact of all the commoners" (Locke 139). Locke's view of human reason, sanctioned by biblical revelation from Psalms that God "has given the earth to the children of men" (138), is the basis for the impulse toward both basic survival and the acquisition of goods or benefit once survival has been accomplished. The impulse toward survival, held in common by all rational beings, implies that all such beings have a right to acquire from the common property, or as it were what lies unclaimed in or by the cosmos, that which will help them survive.
Now Aquinas distinguishes between the "eternal" case, where knowledge and reason are absolute, and the "particular" case, where human reason judges whether a course of action that is the result of applica...