Article — Vermeersch, Theologia Moralis
Article I: Limits and Impediments Common to All
Distribution of the argument. Both by age, sleep, and the state of drunkenness, even the free choice of a healthy man is commonly impeded. Moreover various movements of appetite anticipate deliberation, beyond which psychological liberty cannot extend itself.
Hence:
I. Common impediments. 1. A child is not free. For, the development of the brain being deficient, he lacks conscious possession of universal notions.
One sleeping is not free. For, according to the varied perfection of sleep, the senses are impeded more fully or less fully. Nor is liberty restored by any dream. For in a dream phantasms are joined in the fatal order in which either they were already previously connected, or by some accidental fact, as for instance by hearing a sound or by contact with a heavy or cold thing; one thing succeeds another 1; and, the normal communication between the higher centers and external perceptions being broken, consciousness cannot judge concerning the objective state; finally every conscious direction is taken away from the will. If sometimes we seem to ourselves to deliberate and to act freely, we rather dream the use of free choice than truly have it. If we resist an evil suggestion, it is an indication of virtue which, confirmed by long exercise, has phantasms of its own acts sufficiently strong that they are presented together with the phantasms of the passions and of lower propensions. Yet men are accustomed to be led through dreams more by instinct than by acquired virtue. Nor are the commands of dreams completed by execution.
One perfectly drunk is not free in act, although the drunkenness could have been voluntary.
One imperfectly awake does not yet enjoy an unimpeded use of the exterior senses and of the interior sense. And by those impediments of the senses the higher powers are prohibited from procuring for themselves the supplements of strength which would be necessary for overcoming the temptation or suggestion 2. Therefore the efficacy of command is deficient, and a perfect consciousness of things and of self is not yet present. Wherefore, if the respect of moral goodness or malice was not present before the mind, then there will be no liberty; but if thought about a good action or about moral obligation has entered the mind, the will which with diminished strength overcomes the temptation can greatly merit; but if it has yielded to the temptation, it cannot be gravely blamed. For as long as man is prohibited by his subjective state from estimating and intending the ultimate end according to its dignity and with fitting efficacy, he cannot by his own proper act determine concerning that end, so that his disorder is only venial.
1 Often two recent memories are mingled. A friend occurs; then, with another, a question was raised about a meal: we dream that we dine with the friend.
2 Helps are sought by diverting the mind to other things, by renewing purposes or vows.
On non-deliberated movements. 1. In the sense itself, various concupiscences 1 spontaneously follow sensible apprehension. These are not from the will. Wherefore only the act by which those concupiscences thereafter either are admitted or fostered, or are repelled, can be free. With what obligation of repelling: this will be said in the proper place.
The will itself, as it is the appetite of man, experiences in itself spontaneous affections toward all things which also by lower reason are proposed in some way as goods of man. (We call lower reason that which proposes motives drawn from the present goods of this life and of the world; which goods, moreover, with the aid of sense, are represented more vividly.) Those movements of the will, since they precede comparison with the motives of higher reason, or considerations of the honorable good, are not from the will as it is rational appetite. Wherefore those movements, which are called first-first, are outside the limits of liberty and are not governed by moral law.
Moreover the will has, even in the state of wakefulness, on account of distraction of mind or the force of involuntary concupiscence, imperfectly deliberated acts, concerning which one must pronounce as concerning the acts of a half-sleeping man. Wherefore those movements, second-first, if good, will be very praiseworthy; if they tend toward evil, they cannot induce grave guilt.
1 We are not treating here of concupiscence insofar as, according to its force, it makes the use of free choice more impeded, but of spontaneous concupiscences which can even aid honorable appetite: for example, the movement of love toward offspring.