Article II: On the Impediments of Imputability

Everything impedes the imputability of human acts which is opposed to the principles of imputability itself, that is, to the voluntary and the free. But there is no reason why we should treat separately of the impediments of THE FREE; and the reason is, because, if we except internal necessity, which is opposed only to the free, the impediments of the voluntary and of the free are altogether the same. But the treatment of internal necessity is rightly and deservedly omitted, for the reason that man as wayfarer never experiences it in his peculiar acts. Therefore the discourse will be concerning only the impediments of THE VOLUNTARY, of which four are counted, opposed to the two constitutives of the voluntary, namely: violence and fear, which are opposed to the intrinsic principle, or the will; ignorance and concupiscence, which are opposed to knowledge (cf. n. 271).

These impediments proximately influence the internal act. But there are given also others which exercise a remote influence upon liberty and are: heredity, temperament, and certain pathological states.

Yet let it be noted that these impediments, which are called remote, obtain efficacy only through the mediation of the proximate ones, as Bessmer, S.J. rightly notes (Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, 1908, II, p. 258), and therefore can, indeed ought, rightly to be reduced to the four heads noted above, already introduced by Aristotle.

I. On the impediments which proximately influence the voluntary.