Chapter I. What is a Human Act?

THE Christian faith teaches that the end of human life is to know, love, and serve God. If a man fulfils this obligation faithfully till death, it further gives him the assured hope of eternal happiness with God in heaven. All our actions should be directed towards the end for which the whole man exists; if an action is such that it conduces to that end, it is a good, moral action; if, on the contrary, it does not conduce to that end, it is a bad, immoral action.

Not all man’s actions, however, are capable of being invested with this moral quality. There are many actions of man which have no more moral quality than the growth of a tree in the garden or the running of a dog in the street. Good or bad digestion is an operation to a great extent removed from man’s control; he is in general no more responsible for it than for the condition in which he was born. Or, if some immoral picture is suddenly thrust under his eyes, he cannot help seeing it. Such acts are neither moral nor immoral; they are neither capable of conducing to the end of moral human action, nor of diverting the agent from it: they merit neither praise nor blame.

A man is a good man morally if he performs well the good actions over which he has control; he is a bad man if he wilfully performs bad actions. So that the actions over which a man has control, the actions which he freely performs, are alone capable of making him a good or a bad man; they are the only actions of man which have a moral quality; they alone are treated of in moral theology. It is the task of moral theology to frame rules for human conduct according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, to decide what actions are good and what bad according to the principles of the Christian faith.

The actions over which a man has control are in a special sense called human if acts, because they are due to his free choice. That man has the power of free choice or free will, is clearly taught in Holy Scripture, and is a dogma of faith.¹ It is also a truth of sound philosophy,” vouched for by the consciousness of each individual and by the common sense of mankind. It does not belong to our province to prove the doctrine. We suppose that, at any rate in many of his daily actions, when all the conditions requisite for action are present, a man is free to act or not, to perform this action rather than that other. A man must indeed have a motive for action, but that motive does not constrain him to act; if he has the use and control of his reason, he may as long as he is in life perform or abstain from the action proposed to him. Man has the wonderful power, unique in all the visible creation, of directing his mental and bodily activity in this way or that according to his good pleasure; and it is this wonderful power which makes him a moral agent, and makes it worth while to discuss and formulate rules of human conduct. Man himself is the cause of his human acts; he freely directs them to the end of human existence, or to some perverse end of his own choice.

¹ Ecclus. xxxi 10; Trent, sess. 6, can. 5, 6.

This power of free choice is a property of the rational will, and is the natural complement of the deliberative reason with which man is also endowed. For among the various objects offered to the will’s acceptance, the reason can propose motives for the selection of one object rather than of another, and, at any rate in many actions, until the deliberation is finished, the will need not decide between them. If an object capable of satisfying all our desires were presented to us, there would indeed be no room for deliberation; as Dante expresses it: Such one becomes, admiring that blest Ray, That, whatsoever else allure the sight, Impossible it is to turn away; Because the one sole wished-for Good is there, A.d everything defective elsewhere found, In it is perfected beyond compare. Paradiso, xxxiii 100. Wright’s translation. In the presence of such an object, the whole man, with all the vehemence of his will made for good, would rush into the embrace of his God. For God alone is capable of wholly satisfying all man’s desires. Or again, if some object of ardent natural desire were suddenly thrust upon us, leaving no time for deliberation, overwhelming us with the idea of its power¹ to satisfy our appetite, it might be that no room was left for free choice, that we should be necessitated to action. There would be at least some indeliberate motion towards the object, a movement of the will which divines call motus primo-primus. If in such a case the power of deliberation is not altogether smothered, but is exercised, though imperfectly, the movement of the will which follows is called secundo-primus. If the power of deliberation is wholly wanting, the act which follows cannot be sinful, however wrong objectively; if the act is semi-deliberate, however grievously wrong in itself, it will be imputed to the agent only as a more or less serious venial sin.²

These principles are of great importance for forming an estimate of the moral guilt of children, of habitual drunkards, of persons long habituated to sins of the flesh, and persons with weak intellect.

It follows from what has been said that previous knowledge of, and deliberation about, the object proposed by the intellect to the will, is necessary to free and moral action, which is defined by divines to be action which proceeds from man’s deliberative will.³

¹ M. Maher, Psychology, 5th ed., p. 394.

² St Thomas, 1-2, q. 77, a. 7.

³ St Thomas, 1-2, q. I, a. 1.

Human acts are by theologians divided into various classes:

(a) Internal acts are performed by the internal powers of the soul; external, by the bodily organs.

(b) Elicited acts are such as proceed immediately from the will and are performed by it alone. They are usually said to be six in number; three having reference to the end, and three others to the means for the attaining of the end. A wish is a simple inclination of the will or an ineffectual desire of an object; an intention is a firm resolve to attain an object by the use of the appropriate means; fruition is a peaceful delight in the possession, real or imagined, of a loved object. The act of selection between various means to an end is called choice; if no alternative is offered by the intellect, acceptance of the means by the will is called consent, though this term is more commonly used of every act of acceptance by the will of an object proposed to it; use or execution is said of the act of the will which applies the means chosen to the obtaining of the end proposed.

Commanded acts are executed by other faculties than the will by which they are commanded.

(c) Natural acts are performed by man’s faculties unaided by divine grace; supernatural, by the help of God’s grace.

(d) Good actions are conformed to the rules of morality; bad actions are contrary to them; those that are indifferent may be good or bad according to circumstances.

(e) Valid acts are such as have all the conditions requisite, and so produce their effect; invalid acts are destitute of some condition necessary to produce their effect.