3. The end also determines the morality of an action. Since the end is the first thing in the intention of the agent, he passes from the object wished for in the end to choosing the means for obtaining it. Without the end the means cannot exist as such. There are occasions when an end is only a circumstance: for example, if it is a concomitant or extrinsic end. When this extrinsic end is in keeping with right reason or when it is discordant thereto, it may become a determinant of morality. In every voluntary, or human, act there is an interior and exterior act of the will, and each of these acts has its own object. The end is the proper object of the interior act of the will; the exterior object acted upon is the object of the exterior act of the will; both specify the morality, but the interior object or end specifies more importantly, as a rule, than the exterior object does. The will uses the body as an instrument on the external object, and the action of the body is connected with morality only through the will. We judge the morality of a blow not by the physical stroke, but from the intention of the striker. The exterior object of the will is, in a way, the matter of the morality, and the interior object of the will, or the end, is the form. Aristotle said: "He that steals to be able to commit adultery is more of an adulterer than a thief."[1] The thievery is a means to the principal end, and this principal end chiefly specifies or informs the action. [1] _Ethics_, v, c. 2. The means used to obtain an end are very important in a consideration of the morality of an act. There are four classes of means--the good, bad, indifferent, and excusable. Good means may be absolutely good, but commonly they are liable to become vitiated by circumstances,--almsgiving is an example. Some means are bad always and inexcusable--lying, for instance. The excusable means are those which are bad, but justifiable through circumstances. To save a man's life by cutting off his leg is an excusable means. The end sometimes may vitiate or hallow indifferent means, but it does not in itself justify all means. Means, like other circumstances, are accidents of an action, but they are in the action just as much as color is in a man. Color is not of a man's essence, but we cannot have a man without color. The effect of an action, the result or product of an effective cause or agency, may in itself be an end or an object or a circumstance, and it has influence in the determination of morality. Sometimes an act has two immediate effects, one good and the other bad. For example, ligating the blood-vessels going to the uterus to stop a hemorrhage and so save a woman's life, a good effect, has also in ectopic gestation while the fetus is living another immediate effect, namely, to shut off the blood supply from the fetus and so kill it, a bad effect. To make such a double-effect action licit there are four conditions which are explained in the chapter on Mutilation.