With his customary lucidity, Pieper shows how all reality is positioned between the mind of God and the mind of man and is the basis for both man's unquenchable yearning and the measure of all man's knowledge. He then develops the Thomistic position that reality is also the basis for the good and therefore the norm of conscience and ethical action. As Pieper himself expresses in part of the thesis of the second treatise, "An insight into the nature of the good as rooted in objective being, of itself compels us to carry it out in a definite human attitude, and it makes certain attitudes impossible."