(d) when the object is good or indifferent, and an evil circumstance is intended, not as a circumstance, but as forming a unit with the object and as affecting the substance of the act--for example, when a person intends prayer precisely as distracted, thus converting prayer into a sin. The good object is willed in such cases, not as good, but as vitiated by an evil circumstance. 81. Although an act is totally evil when the good in it is absorbed by the evil, the presence of what is good in itself can diminish, though it cannot take away, the evil. Thus, to lie in order to help a neighbor is totally evil; yet, it is not as great an evil as to lie to hurt that neighbor. 82. Indifferent Acts.--An act is entirely indifferent if all the elements in it--its object, circumstances and purpose--are neither harmonious nor discordant with the standards of morality. Such an act would be walking home rapidly in order to eat a meal, if besides these factors, which bear no relation to good morals, there was nothing else in the act that did bear such a relation. 83. As to the actual existence of a human or voluntary act that is morally indifferent, we conclude: (a) Considered in the abstract and universally, some human acts are morally indifferent; for if acts be considered with reference to their objects alone and apart from the circumstances that accompany them, and as they are classified in the mind, it is clear that many of them have no determinate relations to moral norms--e.g., reading, writing, walking, etc. (one can read either good or bad literature); (b) considered in the concrete, and as they happen in individual cases, no human acts are morally indifferent, since the purpose of the agent is either according to right reason or against it, so that, in spite of the indifferent object, the act becomes either good or bad by reason of the presence or absence of the good purpose. 84. Considered even in the concrete and in individual cases, all acts that are not human, but indeliberate or involuntary (see 23 sqq.), are morally indifferent--or, more correctly, unmoral, as being outside the genus of moral acts on account of the absence in them of will, which is the prerequisite of morality. Thus, absent-minded acts are neither good nor bad morally. 85. As to the kind of intention required to make an indifferent act morally good, or which should be had when the act is objectively good, we conclude: (a) The good intended must not be solely a sensible good (i.e., the pleasure that the act gives), but also and chiefly a rational good (i.e., its conformity to moral standards), since man, unlike the animals, was made, not for sensible, but for rational good. Hence, to eat deliberately with no other end than that of gratifying the palate, is to eat without a moral purpose worthy of a human being, and is a bad act.