ion into a stone or
a chunk of putty.

That is good which is desirable, or which is the source of what is
desirable. God alone is absolutely good, that is to say, good in
Himself and the cause of all good. Created things are good in the
proportion of their furnishing us with things desirable, and are for
that reason called relatively good. They confer benefits on one and not
perhaps on another. When I say: this or that is good, I mean that it is
useful to me, and is productive of comfort, happiness and other
desirable things. Because we are naturally selfish, our appreciation of
what is good depends on what we get out of it.

Therefore, it is that a child's first, best and strongest love should
be for its parents, for the greatest good it enjoys, the thing of all
others to be desired, the essential condition of all else, namely its
existence, it owes to its parents. Life is the boon we receive from
them; not only the giving, but the saving in more than one instance,
the fostering and preserving and sustaining during long years of
helplessness, and the adorning of it with all the advantages we
possess. Nor does this take into account the intimate cost, the
sufferings and labors, the cares and anxieties, the trouble and
worriment that are the lot of devoted parenthood. It is life spent and
given for life. Flesh and blood, substance, health and comfort,
strength of body and peace of soul, lavished with unstinted generosity
out of the fulness of parental affection--these are things that can
never be repaid in kind, they are repaid with the coin of filial piety
and love, or they remain dead debts.

Failure to meet these obligations brands one a reprobate. There is not,
in all creation, bird or beast, but feels and shows instinctive
affection towards those to whom it owes its being. He, therefore, who
closes his heart to the promptings of filial love, has the consolation
of knowing that, not only he does not belong to the order of human
beings, but he places himself outside the pale of animal nature itself,
and exists in a world of his own creation, which no human language is
able to properly qualify.

The love we owe to our parents is next in quality to that which we owe
to God and to ourselves. Love has a way of identifying its object and
its subject; the lover and the beloved become one, their interests are
common, their purpose alike. The dutiful child, therefore, looks upon
its parent as another self, and remains in