If ontological goodness is really identical with actual being, if being is good in so far as it is actual, then it would appear that ontological evil must be identical with non-being, nothingness. And so it is, in the sense that no evil is a positive, actual reality, that all evil is an absence of reality. But just as the good, though really identical with the actual, is nevertheless logically distinct from the latter, so is evil logically distinct from nothingness, or the absence of reality. As we have seen, the good is that which perfects a nature, that which is due to a nature as the realization of the end of the latter. So, too, is evil the _privation_ of any perfection due to a nature, the absence of something positive and something which ought to be present. Evil, therefore, is not a mere negation or absence of being; it is the absence of a good, or in other words the absence of a reality that should be present. All privation is negation, but not _vice versa_; for privation is the negation of something _due_: the absence of virtue is a mere negation in an animal, in man it is a privation. Hence the commonly accepted definition of evil: _Malum est privatio boni debiti_: _Evil is the privation of the goodness due to a thing_.(187) Evil is always, therefore, a defect, a deficiency. The notion of evil is a relative, not an absolute notion. As goodness is the right relation of a nature to its proper end, so is evil a failure, a defect in this relation: _Malum est privatio ordinis ad finem debitum_.(188) The very finiteness of a finite being is the absence of further reality in this being; but as this further reality is not due to such a being, its absence, which has sometimes been improperly described as “metaphysical evil,” is not rightly regarded as evil at all: except, indeed, we were to conceive it as happening to the Infinite Being Himself, which would be a contradiction in thought.