The Acts which Concur to Constitute a Deliberate Act of the Will

Since day by day the number increases of those who not only theoretically attack the liberty of the will, but also infer practical consequences from its denial and contend that crimes committed cannot be imputed to criminals, and that for this reason they are by no means worthy of punishment, necessity demands that the existence of liberty be demonstrated and vindicated from the attacks of adversaries.

1. The Liberty Of The Will Is Asserted

19. On the different meanings. 1. Liberty in general signifies immunity from a bond; and since the bonds which can constrain us are various, the term liberty is also used in various senses.

a. Liberty from sin, which in this life is immunity from sin whereby we can not sin, and is called the liberty of grace; in the other life it is immunity from sin whereby we cannot sin, and is called the liberty of glory.

a. In this life the possibility, and through grace the facility, of performing moral good is available to us, although diverse difficulties stand in the way. In the other life there cease the difficulties and impediments which here sometimes render the choice of moral good difficult even for those who are in the state of grace.

b. This liberty of grace, which is sometimes called moral liberty, can and must be continually developed and perfected, to such a degree that man, already in this life, may gradually come to the liberty of the sons of God and may no longer be hindered by difficulties in choosing the good. For sometimes already here on earth it happens that the will, strengthened by the grace of God, yields to no temptations, but, the allurements of the senses having been rejected, without any trouble chooses the good of virtue; and to this the words of the Lord promise: "the truth shall make you free," namely from the determining influence of the passions.

b. Liberty from obligation, or from law, which is also called moral liberty, is immunity from the moral obligation of doing that which is commanded by a superior power.

It is clear that man is not endowed with this liberty: he has physical liberty of acting against the law, but he does not have moral liberty. Moral liberty is also called liberty of choosing between good and evil.

c. Liberty from coercion, or from external necessity, is immunity from force brought in from outside against the inclination of the will.

It is clear: a. that coercion can be brought to bear both upon one unwilling to act, as when someone is dragged unwillingly to prison, and upon one willing to act, as when exit is prohibited to someone shut up in prison; b. that liberty from coercion is rather liberty of acting than liberty of willing; c. that the will is immune from coercion, since a coerced act of the will is impossible.

d. Liberty from internal necessity is immunity from an internal force which would determine the will to acting or to acting in this way. This liberty is proper to the human will.

Internal necessity, therefore, would be a determination innate to the will itself toward willing or toward willing in this way. A determination of this kind is present in the human will with respect to good in general, which it must will, so that it cannot will evil as such, and with respect to happiness, which each one necessarily wills, so that he cannot will to be unhappy.

2. By reason of the object which is chosen, liberty is called liberty of contradiction, or of exercise, if the will can choose between acting and not acting; liberty of contrariety, if the will can choose a thing and its opposite, as to love and to turn away, good and evil; liberty of specification, if the will can choose between things diverse in species, this or that, to study or to walk.

a. Liberty of contrariety in the moral order, that is, liberty of choosing between good and evil, does not belong to the essence of liberty, but is a defect proper to human liberty in the state of the way.

b. Only liberty of contradiction is required and suffices for the will to be able to be called truly free, or mistress of its acts; nevertheless in man as wayfarer the other species are also found.

¹ Meyer, Institutiones iuris naturalis (Freiburg: Herder, 1906), I, n. 100 ff. Cathrein, Moralphilosophie^4 (Freiburg: Herder, 1904), I, p. 30 ff. Mach, Die Willensfreiheit des Menschen (Paderborn: Schoningh, 1887). Gutberlet, Die Willensfreiheit und ihre Gegner^2 (Fulda: Actiendruckerei, 1907). A. Beck, Die menschliche Willensfreiheit (Munich: Volksschriftenverlag, 1906). Encyclical of Leo XIII, Libertas (June 20, 1888).

20. In what it consists. 1. The liberty of the human will consists in that property and perfection of it by which, once all things required for acting have been posited, the will is not determined to acting or to acting in this way, but can and must determine itself to this. Therefore a twofold element is required for the notion of liberty, one negative and one positive: a. the absence of internal necessity; b. one's own determination to acting.

a. The liberty of the human will is called liberty of indifference, because once all things required for acting have been posited, the will remains indifferent, that is, it is not determined to one thing, namely to acting, but can act or not act, can do this or that. It is also called liberty of election, for it belongs to its nature that the will can choose between one thing and another. Indifference is opposed to determination to one thing. The indifference which belongs to the human will and essentially constitutes its liberty is active indifference, by which the will itself can determine itself to opposites or diverse things. It is distinguished from passive indifference, which consists in this, that something can be determined from without to opposites or diverse things.

b. The doctrine of those who defend liberty of the will is today called indeterminism; on the contrary, the theory of those who deny liberty is called determinism. But the doctrine concerning liberty is less aptly called indeterminism, both because the liberty of the will does not consist in a merely negative element, namely in the negation of determination or internal necessity to acting or to acting in this way, and because liberty does not exclude every determination of the will, but only necessity. That is, it is not denied that conditions preceding a free act exercise an influence upon the will, which influence can be called a determination of the will; nevertheless it does not exclude free choice.

c. Those things are called required for acting which must precede, or in fact do precede, a free act or free choice: some good proposed by the intellect together with motives for choosing or rejecting it, the consideration of these, the power of willing, the inclinations of the will, and the disposition of the soul, whether habitual or actual.

d. Today determinists of every kind chiefly deny liberty of indifference, affirming that our will is determined to one thing, or to acting and to acting in this way.¹ Most philosophers, except the Scholastics, are addicted to determinism. It is known that Luther denied human liberty and substituted the servile will for the free will of the Scholastics. Protestant theologians, having abandoned this doctrine of Luther, had until now defended liberty of the will; now, however, those Protestant theologians who adhere to monism return to Luther's servile will.

e. Liberty does not exclude an antecedent inclination of the will toward the proposed object, or diverse goods, but only internal necessity for willing or not willing the proposed good. For if some good is proposed to the will, the will naturally and necessarily is inclined toward it, but is not necessarily drawn to willing it; for the will determines itself to willing and pursuing it. The same must be said respectively of evil proposed to the will.

2. A free act is not an act elicited arbitrarily and without a cause, but an act produced by the will after the motives of acting have been considered.

a. Since determinists with one voice affirm that in our theory of liberty a free act is an effect without a cause, and therefore that indeterminism offends against the principle of causality, it is asked what the cause of a free act is. There are those who say that the cause of a free act is twofold: one objective, which is constituted by the good and the motives provoking to the act; the other subjective, which is constituted by the very power of freely willing. For, when the good and the motives for choosing it have been proposed, the will is not necessitated to choosing, but is furnished by nature with a force by which it itself can and must determine itself to choosing, so that the act may come to be. Others refer the objective element rather to the prerequisite conditions, and call the will, furnished with an innate force for producing the act, the cause of free choice. Therefore it has a cause, but one that acts not necessarily, but freely.

b. From the force and power in the will of determining itself to an act, there must be distinguished the virtue and energy of choosing the good, especially the moral good, although the choice appears arduous and impediments and difficulties stand in the way. The will is strengthened and helped both by exercise and by divine grace, so that choices may be prudent and consonant with reason, even if they are difficult for corrupt nature.

c. Pedagogy and ascetic theology treat of the means of strengthening and increasing the energy of the will. These consist especially in hardening and exercising the body, in strenuous labor whether bodily or spiritual, in good habits acquired through continual mortification of the passions, and finally in divine grace obtained by prayer and the use of the sacraments.

¹ Cf. A. Seitz, Willensfreiheit und Determinismus (Cologne: Bachem). Cathrein, loc. cit., p. 30 ff.

21. That it exists. Liberty from internal necessity, or liberty of indifference, belongs to the human will.

1. Theological arguments. a. There are many testimonies of Scripture by which the liberty of the human will is formally asserted.

"I call heaven and earth to witness today, that I have proposed to you life and death, blessing and curse; choose therefore life."¹ "He added His commandments and precepts; if thou wilt keep the commandments, they shall preserve thee ... Before man are life and death, good and evil; what pleases him shall be given to him."² "Blessed is the man ... who could have transgressed and did not transgress, could have done evil and did not do it."³

Likewise there are many testimonies by which the liberty of the human will is virtually asserted.

Here belong all those testimonies by which counsels are given to man, precepts are proposed, and by which man is affirmed to be worthy of praise and reward, blame and punishment, on account of his works.

b. Since liberty is the foundation of moral imputation, the Church at all times, against heretics denying it, upholds and defends the liberty of the human will.⁴ Therefore those who deny liberty are considered heretics.

2. Philosophical arguments. a. The will is the power by which man can desire every good. Therefore, if some particular good is exhibited to it, it can desire that good because it is good; but it can also not desire it, or positively reject it, because, since it is a particular good, a defect is joined with it. Therefore the will, to which a particular good is exhibited, is indifferent; hence if it embraces that good, this happens because the will determines itself to embracing it.

a. The defect which is joined with a particular good consists in this, that it either brings some inconvenience, or impedes another good, or at least is too slight to be able to fill the breadth of the power or the desire for beatitude.

b. From these things it is clear that choice must be preceded by knowledge by which either we know the diverse respects of the proposed good, good and evil, advantage and disadvantage, or we know and compare several goods at once. Without this preceding knowledge no choice could have place.

b. One's own conscience manifests to us with inescapable certitude that in very many of our actions we are not led by internal necessity, but that we ourselves determine ourselves to acting or to acting in this way, to such a degree that we can also not act or act otherwise. But this testimony of conscience is evidently true.⁵

Some determinists deny the testimony of conscience itself; others say that it is an illusion. Cathrein refutes them briefly, p. 35 ff.; Gutberlet at length, p. 31 ff.

c. Liberty is also demonstrated by penal or criminal law, which among all nations not only visits crimes with punishments, but also accurately distinguishes between purpose, negligence (Fahrlassigkeit), and fault; indeed it also contains an entire system of punishments, which are heavier or lighter according to the gravity of the fault and the evil action. But all these things would be empty if crimes were nothing but signs of disease and not of true fault.

2. The Liberty Of The Will Is Vindicated

Three diverse sciences recently cultivated attack the liberty of the will: moral statistics, criminal anthropology, and psychopathology. Each tries in its own way to show that man in all his actions is governed and determined by necessary laws and impulses just as irrational and material beings are, and therefore that committed crimes cannot be morally imputed to him.

¹ Deut. 30:19.

² Ecclus. 15:15-16, 18.

³ Ecclus. 31:10.

⁴ Cf. Council of Trent, sess. 6, can. 5. Vatican Council, sess. 3, c. 3, De fide.

⁵ For arguments from the universal consent of the human race and from the consequences which would follow if liberty were denied, consult the cited authors.

22. On moral statistics. Moral statistics collects moral facts, especially criminal facts, in great number, and investigates their causes, both internal and external. Now, when statistical lists are considered, it appears that the same phenomena, namely crimes, under the same conditions constantly return in almost the same number. Therefore, just as in the physical order, so also in the moral order, there must exist a stable law by which these facts are governed and determined. Hence they conclude against liberty in this way: since from the same causes, especially from the same passions, the same crimes are constantly perpetrated, these must be attributed not to free will, but to passions and other circumstances determining one to the act, and therefore cannot be morally imputed to man. For facts which, according to a stable law, constantly happen in the same way and number cannot proceed from a free will. The conclusion is then extended to all acts of the will, and its liberty is simply denied. Concerning these matters the following must be noted.

a. A free action is not a merely arbitrary action, independent of every norm and law; on the contrary, even the will in its choices observes certain norms, both physical and moral. Moreover, there are several conditions, both external and internal, especially moral character, education, the example of others, and the like, which influence human choices and determine them more or less. For ordinarily man follows in his actions his own inclinations and customs, yet not under compulsion but freely. Therefore it is no wonder that men who are found in the same conditions act in the same way.

b. In order that anything could be gathered from moral statistics against liberty of the will, it would at least have to be established that a determinate passion in the same circumstances impels a great number of men to perpetrating the same crime, and that no man troubled by such a passion has overcome the temptation. But from moral statistics this is not established, nor can it be established. Besides, not even in this way would the inescapable and necessitating influence of the passions upon the will be proved, since men placed in the same circumstances freely determine themselves to the same action; thus, when winter approaches, all freely put on thicker garments. Finally, it is useful to note that statistics considers only external phenomena, and these criminal or indifferent, and their constancy; but it does not explore internal facts and external virtues. Therefore it can pronounce nothing about their origin, whether necessary or free.

c. The stability and constancy which is discerned in the perpetration of crimes from moral statistics is explained from the existence and influence of the same motives upon the human will. For it is established that men placed in the same external circumstances and subject to the same passions and temptations generally commit the same offenses. Nevertheless it cannot be denied that many others, troubled by the same passions, overcome the temptation, which statistics cannot report. Indeed this too must be affirmed, that most of those who yield to temptation, at least aided by the supernatural powers of grace, could have overcome the temptation and were conscious of this power in themselves.

From moral statistics two things are gathered: a. that in his choices man has great dependence upon the habitual disposition of the will and upon external conditions; b. since now very many are swept away to perpetrating the same crimes, that in our time certain passions, on account of social circumstances, rage more vehemently, and that there are very many men who, as languishing in faith and in religious life, and deprived of both natural and supernatural fortitude, are easily overcome by temptations.¹

¹ Cf. Gutberlet, loc. cit., chap. 3: "Die Moralstatistik." Lehmkuhl, "Der Selbstmord und die Misshandlung der Statistik" (Stimmen aus M. L. XX, II, p. 345 ff.). Huber, loc. cit., "Moralstatistik," p. 181 ff.

23. On criminal anthropology. 1. The theory is set forth. a. This science, first cultivated by Cesare Lombroso, professor at Turin, was afterwards variously changed and developed by his disciples. The account of criminal anthropology is this. Crimes in the human race are manifest facts; therefore their causes must be investigated. Both Lombroso himself and his disciples are addicted to materialism and Darwinian evolutionism. Therefore, in investigating the cause of crimes, some explain the atavistic theory and consider the delinquent as a man who has remained behind in the progress of evolution - an infant not yet developed, a savage man. Others, setting forth the pathological theory, consider the delinquent as a man sick in soul, indeed lacking the use of reason - morally insane, epileptic. Therefore, just as according to the former, crimes are necessary phenomena of an abnormal state of the body, so according to the latter, crimes are necessary phenomena of an abnormal habit of soul. Man therefore does not become a delinquent by free will, but is born a delinquent.

b. They investigate the abnormal marks and qualities which are found in delinquents, and these bodily, biological, and psychological. Delinquents, so they say, have the greatest conformity both in qualities of body and in habits of soul with epileptics and those laboring under moral dementia; therefore they are morally insane. And from these marks they construct, as it were, a universal form of the delinquent man, a Verbrechertypus. Indeed they affirm that a peculiar form corresponds to the individual kinds of crimes; thus thieves and murderers each display their own form. The form congenital to delinquents, according to them, is transmitted to descendants by heredity, so that from a thief a thief is born, from a murderer a murderer.

2. The theory is refuted. If the things which are affirmed were true, at most it would follow that men abnormal in body and sick in mind lack liberty; but it is not demonstrated that healthy men are lacking it. In particular these things must be noted.

a. The theory itself is founded upon inadequate experiments, arbitrary hypotheses, many exaggerations, and false explanations of facts.

b. If delinquents were infants not yet developed or savage men, all infants likewise and all savage men ought to be delinquents.

c. The theory is founded upon the Darwinian hypothesis of evolution, which in relation to men is false. The delinquent is not a man not yet developed, but a man who, by his own fault, has fallen away from the moral perfection which others have attained and which he himself also could and ought to have attained.

d. It can be conceded that there are delinquents who are not of sound mind, and in like manner it can be conceded that in the concrete it is sometimes difficult to determine whether a man is of sound mind or of a somewhat disturbed mind. Nevertheless in most cases we certainly know that delinquents are sane. Therefore it is equally false that all delinquents are insane and that all insane persons are delinquents.

24. On psychopathology. a. Psychopathology, or psychiatry, is the science which considers the abnormal life of the soul, so that from this it may draw rules concerning the education of children, the imputation of crimes, and the care of those sick in soul. This science itself brings great usefulness to pedagogues, judges in criminal cases, and moralists. Nevertheless there are some who draw arguments from the same science against liberty of the will. For they consider the way of acting of men laboring under diverse diseases of the soul - insanity, dementia, paranoia, epilepsy, hysteria - who, since they lack liberty in their actions, lead them to infer this general principle, that man is not furnished with liberty.

b. But: a. from the fact that those sick in soul, or psychopathics, appear to be lacking liberty in acting, it does not follow that those sound in mind are also lacking liberty, unless someone wishes to affirm that there is no man perfectly sound in mind, but that all are more or less insane. b. It cannot be conceded that psychopathics are altogether lacking liberty: for just as disease of soul itself has diverse grades, so also liberty, from the influence of the same disease, is in some lessened more or less, and in others entirely extinguished. Besides, discussion will return to this matter below, where the impediments of the human act are treated.

3. On Those Things Which Influence Free Choice

25. Here we consider free moral activity, by which the will chooses between good and evil. The exercise of liberty is perfect if the will determines itself to an act fully from itself, without any other influence besides that which the nature of the will requires; this happens when the intellect adequately knows the object, and the will, according to the norm of reason, moves itself promptly to willing or rejecting it. Now there are many things, whether in man himself or outside man, which exercise an influence upon his free activity or upon his choice, and determine it more or less. And these indeed diminish the liberty of the will and the imputability of the action, yet they do not remove them.

26. On the relation of the knowledge of the intellect to the free act. a. The intellect must exhibit the thing to be desired in such a way that we know both its merits, namely perfection, goodness, usefulness, and its demerits, namely imperfection, detriment, inconvenience, which it has for us. This knowledge is the more perfect, the more accurately the moments of each side are apprehended. By these are supplied the reasons and motives which direct us in making a choice. Hence the more adequately the merits and demerits of a thing are exhibited, the more easily a choice can be made which is according to reason. But if more the merits than the demerits of the proposed thing are known, or conversely more the demerits than the merits, the choice will indeed be free, but less according to reason. Choice becomes impossible if only one motive is known.

b. From these things it is understood that all those things exercise a determining influence upon the free choices of man which impede the merits and demerits of desirable things, especially moral things, from being adequately known. Although they do not remove the physical liberty of choice, nevertheless they bring it about that choices are imprudent, irrational, and morally evil. Moments of this sort are especially education and the social and political circumstances of the times in which we live.¹ Since in many men a defective and inadequate knowledge of things and actions, on account of these circumstances, is more or less involuntary and inculpable, even morally evil actions which proceed from it cannot be imputed to them according to their whole malice.

¹ Cf. Huber, Die Hemmnisse der Willensfreiheit (Munster: Schoningh, 1904), p. 112 ff., 152 ff.

27. On the relation of the inclination of the will to the free act. a. When the object has been sufficiently proposed, there necessarily arises in the will an inclination, or aversion, which is sometimes slight, but sometimes more vehement. These inclinations, although inveterate and vehement, do not introduce necessity, but the will retains the power of resisting them; this the experience of all those teaches who, after a life long passed in sins, have returned to the path of virtue. Nevertheless they draw the will so that, by a free determination, it wills that to which it is already vehemently inclined; and therefore they render morally good choice difficult, and the more difficult the more intense the opposite inclination is. Vicious affections render free choice impossible only when, in a particular case, having suddenly arisen, they so cloud or impede the mind that it can no longer weigh contrary motives.

b. From these things it is understood that everything exercises an influence upon moral choices which brings it about that, on the one hand, bad inclinations and vices arise and grow strong in the appetite, and on the other hand, the energy of the will in repressing bad inclinations grows weak and is debilitated. Of this kind are heredity, age, temperament, habit, nourishment, temperature of the air, and so forth.¹

¹ Cf. Huber, p. 102 ff., 130 ff.

To constitute an entire deliberate act of the will, twelve acts concur, six of which pertain to the intellect and just as many to the will.

The first act of the intellect is simple apprehension, by which it apprehends some good, for example an act of lust, and proposes it to the will.

To simple apprehension there corresponds in the will simple volition, by which it is inclined by affective love toward the good proposed to it. This inclination is not free, but natural.

If the simple volition is efficacious,¹ the will applies the intellect to inquiring whether that good is expedient and possible to attain. Hence there follows an act of the intellect which is called judgment, by which the intellect proposes that good to the will as possible and fitting.

Judgment is followed by the intention of the will, by which the will determines to attain the good by the means which conduce to it.

Intention is followed by the first counsel of the intellect; that is, the will applies the intellect to inquiring into the means more suitable for attaining the end and proposing them to the will.

The first counsel is followed by the consent of the will, by which the will approves or accepts in general the proposed means.

By force of this consent, the intellect is moved to the second counsel, that is, to discerning and proposing to the will the more fitting means.

The second counsel is followed by the choice of the will, by which the will embraces and chooses the means proposed as more fitting.

The choice of the will is followed by the command of the intellect; that is, by force of the said choice, the intellect intimates and declares what must be done through the other powers, so that the will may attain what it chooses (St. Thomas, I-II, q. 17, a. 3, ad 3).

The command of the intellect is followed by the use of the will, by which the will employs the powers subject to it for assuming and executing the means.

Through the operations of the powers which the will uses, the end is obtained; from possession of it there follows fruition of the will, or its rest in the possessed good. By this fruition the whole deliberate act is completed.

It is disputed, however, whether command is formally an act of reason or of the will; concerning this dispute, see n. 73.

¹ Often simple apprehension and simple volition are inefficacious and pass away without effecting anything.

1. Arnulfus, an upright man, but of a petulant disposition, when, first, he had met his enemy, and had been provoked and attacked by him not only with words but also with blows, burns with the desire of killing him, and, having seized a dagger, rushes upon him. But, the impulse of anger having been restrained, he flees from the enemy. Afterwards, however, having become master of himself, he fears lest he has committed a mortal fault, and therefore, no delay having intervened, he throws himself at the feet of the confessor, about to accuse the sin.

2. The same man, although he had made serious efforts to destroy the evil habit of blaspheming, in a quarrel had with a certain adversary breaks out into blasphemies, and therefore again seeks a confessor to wash away this stain of conscience.

3. On another occasion, knowing that he was accustomed to quarrel in drunkenness, he carefully attends lest in drinking he exceed the limits of sobriety. But behold, urged by his companions to drink beyond custom, he is overtaken by drunkenness before he has adverted to its danger, and, being furious, mixes in quarrels with others. But having returned to himself he strives to do penance, and again has recourse to the confessor.

Q. 1. What is the voluntary? 2. Has Arnulfus sinned in that threefold case?

R. To the first, cf. I. M. 6-8. To the second, Arnulfus does not seem to have sinned, at least gravely, in any of the three proposed cases. For the perfectly voluntary was lacking. Not in the first, for he is said, and appears, truly to be an upright man, and an upright man does not so easily resolve deliberately to kill a man. He is said, moreover, to be prone to anger, and that his enemy met him; whence, from his presence, he could at once be moved to anger. Likewise it is said that he was provoked and attacked with words and blows, and so he could be much moved to anger, so that he lacked at least full and perfect knowledge of the malice and deliberation of mind. Finally it is said that, the impulse of anger having been restrained, having become master of himself, he feared lest perhaps he had sinned, and at once went to the confessor to expiate the guilt of soul, if perhaps he had incurred it; and this indeed shows that Arnulfus acted at least without full deliberation of mind.

Not in the second; for, if he had sinned gravely, in the case this would have been only on account of the neglected habit of blaspheming. But he had made serious efforts to root it out. For since he is prone to anger, he is easily to be judged to have acted from a first-first movement.

Not in the third, since he carefully attended lest in drinking he exceed the limits of sobriety, and then, not adverting to the danger of drunkenness, he was seized by drunkenness. - G. 1.

2. Elpidius, habitually given to drinking and of a quarrelsome disposition, furious in drunkenness, after having had a dispute with Titius, resolved to seek vengeance from him; yet he put off the purpose to another time. Afterwards he went to a nearby tavern, that he might calm his anger in wine; but behold, when at night he was leaving the tavern perfectly drunk, by an unfortunate chance he came upon Titius himself, and beat him so gravely that for many weeks he was forced to abstain from his accustomed work and suffered great damage.

Q. 1. What is the free? 2. Are the damages inflicted by Titius in drunkenness imputable to him, and therefore is he held to repair them?

R. To the first, cf. I. M. 10-12. To the second: "Affirmatively. The reason is that the damages are truly voluntary and sufficiently foreseen in the cause itself, at least confusedly. For Elpidius willed to inflict damage on Titius, and drank with the danger of drunkenness, since he was habitually given to drinking. Moreover he is judged to have foreseen, at least implicitly, that in the state of drunkenness he would inflict damages; since he could not be ignorant that in wine he became furious and could harm someone. Therefore Elpidius is excused neither from grave sin against justice, nor from the obligation of repairing the damages." Thus G. 3.

But that resolution is not without difficulty. For Elpidius entered the nearby tavern, not in order then to carry out his evil purpose, but, on the contrary, to calm his anger; and so it does not appear that even confusedly Elpidius then foresaw damage to be inflicted on Titius. Nor is it valid to say that he is judged to have foreseen, at least implicitly, that in the state of drunkenness he would inflict damages. For if in fact, in the case, he did not foresee it, this general presumption must yield to the truth. And the presumption in the case is rather the contrary; since, stirred by anger, he entered the tavern to calm his anger; whence Elpidius rather seems, for that time, to have willed to abstain from every vengeance and from inflicting damage. But when Elpidius gravely beat Titius, Elpidius was already perfectly drunk, and so then the voluntary, the free, and sin were entirely lacking. - I. M. 288.

1. We have spoken of the voluntary of human acts in the first Commentary; now, in this second Commentary, we must speak of the free. That the free is found in human acts is a truth of faith, which is established with all evidence and certitude from Sacred Scripture and Tradition. Cf. Suarez, in 1. 2. tr. 2. D. 1. S. 2. The reason is that “if some good is proposed to the will which has the complete notion of good, and the ultimate end, on account of which all things are desired, it cannot not will to be happy, or will to be miserable. But in those things which are ordered to the ultimate end, nothing is found so evil that it does not have some good mixed in, nor anything so good that it suffices in all things; whence, however much it is shown to be good or evil, it can always adhere and flee into the contrary by reason of the other which is in it, from which it is taken, if it is evil simply, as an apparent good, and, if it is good simply, as an apparent evil; and thence it is that in all things which fall under choice, the will remains free, having determination in this alone, that it desires natural happiness, and not determinately in this or that.” St. Thomas, 2. Dist. 25. q. 1. a. 2., 1. 2. q. 10. a. 2.; Suarez, in 1. 2. tr. 2. D. 6. S. 3., D. 8. S. 4.; Lessius on q. 10. St. Thomas; Würzburg Theology, n. 144 ff.

2. The free adds, above the act of the will, only a relation to the power eliciting the act of the will and having the power to suspend that act, or to elicit another act diverse only in species or even opposed. In the first case it is called liberty of exercise or of contradiction; in the other case, liberty of specification; in the third case, liberty of contrariety. Cf. Becanus, tr. 1. c. 2. q. 1., c. 3. q. 3. The exercise of the act is from the application of the will to willing; specification is from the various nature of the object. Therefore the free certainly requires in the will an active power of act and non-act, of this or that act; but it by no means requires immunity also from infirmity, namely from concupiscence and other passions and miseries of human life; since these are extrinsic, they cannot change the intrinsic manner of acting of the human will. Hence St. Thomas says: “it must be said that that infirmity which is in voluntary evils is subject to the power of man; and therefore it neither removes nor diminishes the notion of fault.” 1. 2. q. 21. a. 2. ad 3. This liberty, concerning which we are treating, is physical liberty. But moral liberty involves in its concept only the lack of obligation in conscience, or under fault, by force of a law commanding or prohibiting; which obligation presupposes physical liberty. Wherefore moral liberty connotes physical liberty. St. Thomas, 1. 2. q. 10. a. 2. 3., q. 15. a. 2., q. 24. a. 3.

3. The aforesaid active power of the will essentially requires immunity from intrinsic necessity. The reason is that otherwise there would now be no further distinction between natural or necessary acts, and voluntary or free acts; now all acts of the will would be necessary, as being from intrinsic necessity, or all would be free if intrinsic necessity does not take away the liberty of the act. And thus the very acts of the will concerning the ultimate end or happiness, or concerning good in common, would be free. “Will,” says St. Thomas, “is divided against nature, as one cause against another, for some things happen naturally, and some things happen voluntarily.” 1. 2. q. 10. a. 1. ad 1. Namely, acts are divided into necessary acts and free acts. The former happen naturally, but the latter voluntarily. For an act to happen naturally is for it to happen from the instinct of nature, from intrinsic necessity. But for an act to happen voluntarily is for it to happen neither from the instinct of nature nor from intrinsic necessity. St. Thomas, 1. 2. q. 10. a. 2. 4.; Würzburg Theology, n. 94 ff.

4. Besides immunity from intrinsic necessity, that active power of the will which is contained in the liberty of the same will further requires intrinsic active indifference to acting, namely a power intrinsically indifferent to acting or not acting, to acting this or that, once all conditions prerequired for acting have been posited. - Proof of the first part: the free excludes intrinsic necessity of acting. Therefore it necessarily implies intrinsic power of acting or not acting, of acting this or that. But this power is a power intrinsically and actively indifferent. Therefore. Proof of the second part: if that active indifference were to be understood only antecedently to the necessary prerequisites for acting, a free cause would differ in nothing from a necessary cause. Würzburg Theology, n. 100 ff. - The voluntary, according to the Angelic Doctor, 1. 2. q. 6. a. 1, imports the motion or act of those things which, from their own inclination and not inclined by another, perfectly move themselves. How therefore, if the aforesaid active intrinsic indifference of the will were lacking, would the voluntary still be had from one's own inclination and from perfect motion by oneself to act?

5. The doctrine concerning the free, proposed in the preceding number, both as to the matter and even as to the words themselves, is truly the doctrine of St. Thomas. For the Angelic Doctor explains the free through dominion of the act. “Those actions alone are called properly human of which man is master. But he is master of his acts through reason and will; whence also free choice is said to be the faculty of will and reason.” 1. 2. q. 1. a. 1. - He explains it through moving oneself to the end. “Therefore those things which have reason move themselves to the end, because they have dominion of their acts through free choice.” 1. 2. q. 1. a. 2. “Perfect cognition of the end is followed by the voluntary according to the perfect notion, insofar, namely, as, the end having been apprehended, someone can, deliberating about the end and about those things which are to the end, be moved into the end or not be moved.” 1. 2. q. 6. a. 2. - He explains it through power for opposite acts. “From this, that deliberating reason is disposed toward opposites, the will is able toward either.” Ibid. ad 2. - He explains it through the determination of the faculty itself to act. “Man through reason determines himself to willing this or that, which is truly good or apparently good,” 1. 2. q. 9. a. 6. ad 3; and he excludes God's determination to one from without; for he opposes this determination to particular good, proceeding from the will itself, to the motion of God toward good in common. Likewise he excludes intrinsic determination to one, saying: “But there is another mode of causing proper to the will, which is mistress of its act, besides the mode which belongs to nature, which is determined to one.” 1. 2. q. 10. a. 1. ad 1. ad 3. “But the will is indeed, according to the order of nature, determined to one common thing, which is good, but it is indeterminately disposed with respect to particular goods.” 1. 2. q. 13. a. 2. And here it must be noted that St. Thomas so truly excludes from a freely acting cause determination to one, that he explains a necessary cause in acting through this determination to one, taking necessity in acting and determination to one in acting for one and the same thing. And thus in 1. 2 q. 13. a. 2 he says: “But there is a difference between the sensitive appetite and the will, because, as is clear from what has been said above q. 1. a. 2. ad 3, the sensitive appetite is determined to one particular thing according to the order of nature; but the will is indeed, according to the order of nature, determined to one common thing, which is good, but it is indeterminately disposed with respect to particular goods.” And ad 2.um: “The brute animal takes one thing before another, because its appetite is naturally determined to it; whence immediately, when through sense or through imagination something is represented to it, to which its appetite is naturally inclined, it is moved to it without choice, just as also without choice fire is moved upward and not downward.” These things specifically concerning the distinction between the will and the sensitive appetite. But speaking altogether generally about causes, St. Thomas divides them into natural and voluntary, or into necessary and free, q. 10. a. 1. ad 1, q. 21. a. 1. 2, etc.; and he explains the mode of causing of a natural, or necessary, cause by determination to one, without power toward either. Wherefore, according to the Angelic Doctor, a necessary cause is a cause determined to one; a free cause is a cause actively indifferent toward either. The Angelic Doctor furthermore explains the free expressly through the active indifference of the will. “Therefore because the will is an active principle not determined to one, but holding itself indifferently toward many things, God so moves it that he does not determine it of necessity to one, but its motion remains contingent and not necessary, except in those things to which it is moved naturally.” 1. 2. q. 10. a. 4.

6. And in this last place the Angelic Doctor explicitly, in the very words, excludes determination by God to one; wherefore he also excludes predetermination to one. But if by the name of premotion is understood that motion of God concerning which the Angelic Doctor says, God moves the will, divine premotion can very well be admitted, indeed must be admitted, since God's motion is prior by nature to the motion itself of the will. “It must be said,” says St. Thomas in the cited place, namely q. 9. a. 6. ad 3, “that God moves the will of man as universal mover to the universal object of the will, which is good; and without this universal motion man cannot will anything. But man through reason determines himself to willing this or that... good.” Moreover it is evident that that universal motion is prior by nature to this determination; whence, without that preceding universal motion of God, the particular determination of the human will cannot be had.

7. But if by the name of premotion is understood premotion to one certain act, to one determined act, just as St. Thomas excludes determination, or predetermination, by God to one, so also he excludes motion or premotion by God to one. Whence the Angelic Doctor immediately adds that God so moves the will that its motion remains contingent and not necessary: it certainly remains contingent and not necessary, as flowing from the human will, in the composite sense of the divine motion itself. He so moves that it remains contingent. Wherefore the explanation of the Angelic Doctor differs in nothing from the explanation of liberty given above in the preceding number.

8. Moreover, the Angelic Doctor explains liberty through choice, 1. 2. q. 13. a. 2. 6, which altogether excludes determination to one, and is indeterminately disposed toward many things, or is actively indifferent toward choosing them. Nor indeed can choice be understood without this intrinsic active indifference. “It must be said,” says St. Thomas in the cited place, “that since choice is the pre-acceptance of one thing with respect to another, it is necessary that choice be with respect to many things which can be chosen; therefore in those things which are determined to one, choice has no place. But there is a difference between appetite and the will, because, as is clear from what has been said above, q. 1. a. 2. ad 3, the sensitive appetite is determined to one particular thing according to the order of nature; but the will is indeed, according to the order of nature, determined to one common thing; but it is indeterminately disposed with respect to particular goods. And therefore properly it belongs to the will to choose, but not to the sensitive appetite, which alone is in brute animals; and on account of this it does not belong to brute animals.” Cf. Contra Gentiles, l. 2. c. 48, l. 3. c. 88. 89.

9. Finally, the Angelic Doctor explains the free through the active application of appetitive motion to something, which also excludes any intrinsic and extrinsic determination to one. “Consent,” he says, “properly speaking, is not in brute animals. The reason for this is that consent imports application of appetitive motion to the doing of something. But it belongs to him in whose power the appetitive motion is to apply appetitive motion to the doing of something: just as touching a stone indeed belongs to a staff, but applying the staff to the touch of the stone belongs to him who has it in his power to move the staff. But brute animals do not have appetitive motion in their own power; rather such a motion in them is from the instinct of nature, whence a brute animal indeed desires, but does not apply appetitive motion to something. And on account of this it is not properly said to consent, but only a rational nature is, which has appetitive motion in its own power, and can apply it or not apply it to this or to that.” 1. 2. q. 15. a. 2.

10. Wherefore it must be concluded that, as the free excludes any intrinsic necessity, and consequently any extrinsic coercion, so also it excludes any intrinsic and extrinsic determination to acting. Nor indeed does it avail to object those things which the Angelic Doctor has in the same cited place, q. 10. a. 4. ad 3, where he says: “it must be said that, if God moves the will to something, it is incompossible with this position that the will not be moved to that thing; nevertheless it is not impossible simply. Whence it does not follow that the will is moved by God of necessity.” From these words indeed the Holy Doctor can seem to teach that the will is not determined to one before the divine motion, but, once the divine motion has been posited, is now determined to one. And this would be to teach, in almost the same number of words, the noted distinction of the composite and divided sense. Namely, in the composite sense of the divine motion it is impossible or incompossible that the act not be posited; but that this is possible simply, possible namely in the divided sense of the divine motion. - But the Holy Doctor in that response ad 3 certainly says this, which is quite different: once the divine motion has been posited, it is impossible that the act not be posited. But since the divine motion is of such efficacy that through it not only is something done, “but also that it be done in that mode which agrees with the nature of the thing itself; and therefore it would be more repugnant to the divine motion if the will were moved from necessity, which does not belong to its nature, than if it were moved freely, as belongs to its nature,” ibid. ad 1; consequently it cannot be said to be impossible simply that the act not follow; for what is impossible simply cannot be that which is, but contingently is toward either, for the acting will can act or not act. What is impossible simply is not contingent, but is altogether determined. And it must be noted that the act remains contingent and free in the composite sense of the divine motion itself, and in the same composite sense that act consequently proceeds from a will actively indifferent and able toward either. For the Holy Doctor says, both in the said response ad 1.um and in the body, that that motion accommodates itself to the nature of things and of the will, and consequently does not move this will by necessity and with determination to one. If that motion agrees with the nature of the will, if it does not move by necessity by determining to one, it certainly moves in such a way that, with the divine motion itself standing, the will remains what it is, and, as the Holy Doctor says in the body of the article, this is the will, namely an active principle not determined to one, but holding itself indifferently toward many things. Therefore the will remains, in the composite sense of the motion, wholly what it is, and therefore actively indifferent and able toward either, not determined to one; and likewise, with that motion standing, the motion of the will remains contingent and free, and therefore proceeded from the will, under that motion, as not determined to one. God so moves it that he does not determine it of necessity to one, but its motion remains contingent, in the evidently composite sense of the divine motion itself. Nevertheless, once this divine motion to something has been posited, it is incompossible with this position that the will not be moved to that thing, since that divine motion already implies with itself the concomitant motion of the will itself, though contingent and free, because most certainly the motion of the will remains contingent and free. Cf. 1. p. q. 19. a. 8.

11. According to the Angelic Doctor, the free is founded in the objective indifference of the preceding judgment of reason, proposing the thing not as absolutely to be chosen, but only as choosable on account of the various reasons of fittingness and unfittingness which can be present in it. For he says that the free is had “insofar as, the end having been apprehended, someone can, deliberating about the end and about those things which are to the end, be moved into the end or not be moved.” 1. 2. q. 6. a. 3. “From this it happens that man is master of his act, that he has deliberation concerning his acts. For from this, that deliberating reason is disposed toward opposites, the will is able toward either.” Now deliberation cannot be had unless reason proposes to the will the various fittingnesses and unfittingnesses which are in the object. Moreover in 1. 2. q. 10. a. 2 the Angelic Doctor has these words: “In the motion of any power by its object, the account must be considered through which the object moves the power.... Whence, if some object is proposed to the will which is universally good, and according to every consideration, of necessity the will tends into it , if it wills anything; for it will not be able to will the opposite. But if some object is proposed to it which is not good according to every consideration, the will is not borne into it of necessity.” Therefore the free is founded in this proposing of the object on the part of reason under diverse considerations, according to which the same object can be rejected or approved by the will. And in 1. 2. q. 13. a. 6: “In all particular goods, (reason) can consider the notion of some good and the defect of some good, which has the notion of evil. And according to this it can apprehend each of goods of this kind as choosable or fleeable. But perfect good alone, which is beatitude, reason cannot apprehend under the notion of evil, or of some defect. And therefore man wills beatitude of necessity, nor can he will not to be blessed, or to be miserable. But choice, since it is not about the end, but about those things which are to the end, is not of perfect good, which is beatitude, but of other particular goods. And therefore man chooses not of necessity, but freely.” And 1. 2. q. 17. a. 1. ad 2: “It must be said that the root of liberty is the will, as subject; but reason is so as cause. For from this the will can freely be borne to diverse things, because reason can have diverse conceptions of good. And therefore the Philosophers define free choice as a free judgment concerning reason, as though reason were the cause of liberty.”

12. “It is inferred that, when a grave temptation has arisen, and after the sensitive appetite, whether concupiscible, venereal, or irascible, is vehemently excited by phantasy or from elsewhere, that then, I say, acts of a threefold kind can be given in the will. First, those which precede the use of reason and are elicited by the tempted person in that instant or time in which the intellect has not yet proposed to the will motives deterring it, but only those enticing it toward that object into which the appetite is borne. And these acts of the will are called first-first motions. Secondly, those which follow upon some use of reason, and are elicited by the tempted person in that instant in which the intellect proposes deterring motives only obscurely, but motives enticing toward illicit love or toward hatred so vividly that the will is moved by the deterring motives only weakly and imperfectly. And these acts of the will are called second-first motions. Thirdly, finally, those which follow upon the perfect use of reason and are elicited by the will in that instant in which the intellect has proposed to the will, sufficiently clearly and intensely, deterring motives or the unfittingness and moral malice, by which the will could be freely deterred, if it seriously willed. And these acts of the will are called deliberate acts. Acts of the 1.i kind are not free, and consequently neither are they formally sinful. Acts of the 2.i kind are imperfectly free, and only venially sinful. But acts of the 3.ii kind are perfectly free, and consequently, if there is gravity of matter, they are mortally sinful.” Struggl, Moral Theology, tr. 1. q. 1. a. 1. n. 10. Cf. St. Thomas, 1. 2. q. 10. a. 3.

13. A question arises from the established doctrine of the preceding number 11: whether for the exercise of liberty there is prerequired a practical judgment, or command of reason, by which it is defined that the object here and now, all things considered, is to be chosen or rejected? - R. Bellarmine (On Grace and Free Choice, l. 3. c. 8. 9.) indeed concedes that a judgment of this kind is required, and he further concedes that the will is determined to one from this judgment, but he denies that liberty is weakened thereby. For he says that that very practical judgment by which the will is determined is in the power of the will, insofar as, various objects or reasons of fittingness or utility having been proposed to the will, the will permits itself to be moved rather by one than by another object, rather by one than by another reason of fittingness or utility, from which permission of the will one practical judgment rather than another flows. Wherefore, although the will is determined by practical judgment, nevertheless this practical judgment follows upon the exercise of liberty. And thus liberty remains whole. But although the authority of Cardinal Bellarmine is great, still we cannot follow his opinion in this matter. For that practical judgment by which the will is determined to one: is it absolutely necessary, or is it absolutely free? If the 1.um, therefore all liberty is ended. If the 2.um, either it is free intrinsically, or extrinsically from the command of the will. The first cannot be said, because the formally free faculty is not the intellect but the will. But if the second is said, then either that command of the will is determined from another judgment of the intellect, and thus one must proceed to infinity, or it is not determined from a previous practical judgment, and then it is false that the will in all its free acts is determined by the last practical judgment of the intellect. Wherefore, with Suarez in 1. 2. tr. 2. D. 1. S. 2, D. 6. S. 5. 6, D. 8. S. 4, Lessius in q. 6 of St. Thomas, and others, it is rather to be said that, for having the free determination of the will, such a practical judgment altogether determining it is not necessary. For to have the exercise of the will it is enough that the intellect propose the object to it as choosable; for by thus proposing the object, it proposes that object under some notion of good. Cfr. Becanus, tr. 1. c. 2. q. 5. 6. 7.

14. As has already been said, “the will is moved in two ways. In one way as to the exercise of the act; in another way as to the specification of the act, which is from the object. - Therefore in the first way the will is moved by no object of necessity. For someone can fail to think about any object whatever, and consequently neither actually will it.” St. Thomas, 1. 2. q. 10. a. 2. And De Malo q. 6. a. un.: “The appetite for beatitude itself also is from necessity as to the determination of the act, because one cannot will the opposite; but not as to the exercise of the act, because someone can then not will to think about beatitude, because even the acts themselves of intellect and will are particular.” “But as to the second mode of motion, the will is moved by some object of necessity, but by some not.” 1. 2. q. 10. a. 2. The reason is that there are some objects, namely good in common, the ultimate end in common, and the means necessary to it, 1. 2. q. 10. a. 1. 2, which are not proposed to the will by reason except under the consideration of good. “But any other particular goods, insofar as they fall short of some good, can be taken as not good. And according to this consideration they can be rejected or approved by the will,” 1. 2. q. 10. a. 2, rejected as not good, approved as good; for thus indeed there is had, on the part of the object, a moving reason of the faculty toward act, but a sufficient moving reason is not had. “The sufficient motive of any power is only an object which totally has the notion of motive. But if it is deficient in something, it will not move of necessity.” 1. 2. q. 10. a. 2. ad 1.

11. • DEFINITION. That is called free which proceeds from the will determining itself with the power of not acting. But liberty is the faculty of acting or not acting, or the faculty of choosing one thing before another. Hence every free thing is voluntary, but not vice versa.

Although the free and the voluntary are distinguished in themselves, as is clear from the definition of each, nevertheless in the acts by which man as wayfarer tends to his end, they are not distinguished in reality; for as often as some act is voluntary, it is also free, and vice versa. The reason is that man as wayfarer, master of himself, in those things which are toward the end, never acts necessarily ¹.

¹ Excellently, after his manner, St. Thomas (2, Dist. 25, q. 1, art. 2, o): If some good is proposed to the will which has the completed notion of good, as the last end, on account of which all things are desired, the will cannot not will this: whence no one cannot not wish to be happy, or wish to be wretched. But in those things which are ordered to the last end, nothing is found so evil that it does not have some good mixed in; nor anything so good that it suffices in all respects: whence however much good or evil is shown, it can always adhere to and do the contrary by reason of another thing which is in it, from which it is taken, if it is evil simply, as an apparent good, and if it is good simply, as an apparent evil; and hence it is that in all things which fall under election, the will remains free, having determination in this alone, that it naturally desires happiness, and not determinately in this or that. This doctrine, indeed, no less consonant with right reason than with the Catholic faith, manifestly shows in what place one must hold a certain recent philosophy, which under the pretext of the limits of human liberty vainly brings in innumerable acts to which man as wayfarer, otherwise master of himself, is necessarily borne.

DIVISION. A manifold species of liberty is distinguished.

1. Liberty from necessity, or liberty of indifference, or of election, which is immunity from every antecedent intrinsic necessity; and this is liberty properly and strictly so called.

2. Liberty from coercion, or liberty of spontaneity, which is immunity from every violence inflicted extrinsically.

3. Liberty of contradiction, which is the faculty of bearing oneself toward contradictories, for example, of studying or not studying.

4. Liberty of contrariety, through which someone can choose one thing, or the contrary of this, for example, to love, or to hold in hatred.

5. Liberty of specification, which is the faculty of bearing oneself toward diverse things, for example, to walk, to play, etc.

These things having been set forth, the chief foundations of Catholic doctrine are to be submitted in a few words.

12. • Man in the state of fallen nature is free from every intrinsic necessity.

It is clear 1. from sacred Scripture. For thus Eccli. 31. 10: Eternal glory shall be to him who could transgress, and has not transgressed; to do evil things, and he has not done them. And Eccli. 15. 14: God from the beginning constituted man, and left him in the hand of his own counsel. He added his commandments and precepts: if thou wilt keep the commandments, they shall preserve thee... Before man are life and death, good and evil; that which shall please him shall be given to him. The same doctrine is confirmed from six hundred other places of sacred Scripture.

2. From reason. Man, by the consent of all, can merit and demerit, or elicit meritorious and demeritorious acts; but for this liberty from necessity is required: and indeed unless man were free for positing or not positing an act, he would not be master of his own act; therefore that act could not be imputed to him either unto merit or unto punishment. Besides, to what purpose would precepts be imposed on man? To what purpose would exhortations profit? To what purpose rewards, threats, and punishments, unless man possessed liberty? Finally, this is clear from intimate sense, since man senses himself to be free, and besides, intimate sense cannot deceive. Therefore...

3. From the definition of the Church. For thus it was sanctioned in the Council of Trent, session 6, canon 5: If anyone shall say that the free will of man after the sin of Adam has been lost and extinguished, or that it is a thing of title alone..., let him be anathema.

It is confirmed from the condemnation of the following proposition of Jansenius made by Innocent X: For meriting or demeriting in the state of fallen nature, liberty from necessity is not required, but liberty from coercion suffices ².

² Observe besides that the liberty of Adam sinning does not suffice so that the actions of fallen man become moral and demeritorious. We have this defined in the proscription of this thesis of Christian Lupus, which is the first among the 31 condemned by Alexander VIII: In the state of fallen nature, for formal sin and demerit, that liberty suffices by which it was voluntary and free in its cause, original sin and the liberty of Adam sinning.

Man as wayfarer is not only free with liberty of contradiction, but also with liberty of contrariety, by which he can be borne toward evil.

It is clear from all the arguments and testimonies just related, for example, from those words: He could transgress..., do evil things, etc.

Moreover, the whole essence of free will is found in liberty of contradiction; for it consists in this, that it is the faculty of acting, or not acting: but liberty of contradiction supplies this, as is clear. Therefore... Hence the power of sinning is not of the notion of free will. - See more on liberty in Dogmatic Theology.

77. When it is a question of a merely natural act, the internal principles which concur toward its production are the various faculties which are described in Psychology; if it is a question of a supernatural and meritorious act, there are required besides certain supernatural gifts, by which the faculties are completed and elevated; these are declared more fully in the treatise concerning Grace. Here it is sufficient to recall to memory those things which are more useful for the understanding of a free and meritorious act.

The subject of morality is man as a rational creature, able to know the moral law and conscious of being responsible for his acts and omissions.

Man's chief ethical faculty is free-will, i. e., the power to determine his own actions or to choose for himself between right and wrong (liberum arbitrium, vis electiva). By virtue of this faculty man is truly and properly the master of his own actions (dominus actuum suorum).

Only those acts are properly called human (actus humani, in opposition to actus hominis) of which man is master, i. e., which he performs with consciousness and free-will (actus morales). ¹

¹ Cfr. St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 1a, qu. 83, art. 3: "Choice is proper to free judgment. We are said to possess free judgment because we can accept one thing while refusing another, which is to choose; and therefore the nature of free judgment must be considered from choice." —Ibid., 1a 2ae, qu. 1, art. 1: "Man differs from other irrational creatures in this: that he is master of his acts. Hence those actions alone are called properly human of which he is master. Man is master of his acts through reason and will; hence free choice is said to be a faculty of will and reason. Therefore those actions are called properly human which proceed from a deliberate will. If any other actions belong to man, they can indeed be called actions of a man, but not properly human actions, since they do not belong to man insofar as he is man."

The liberty of the human will, which we take as an axiom from philosophy and Dogmatic Theology, ² is not merely a Catholic dogma,³ but a fundamental truth of revealed religion,⁴ and the pivot of all morality.⁵ Without free-will man could perform no ethical acts, either good or bad; there would be no moral responsibility, no imputability, no virtues or vices, neither guilt nor merit, and no redemption.⁶ To deny the freedom of the will, therefore, is to deny Christianity itself.

² See Readings at the end of this chapter.

³ Cfr. Conc. Trident., Sess. VI, can. 5: "If anyone says that man's free will was lost and extinguished after Adam's sin, or that it is a thing only in name—indeed, a name without a reality—and finally a fiction introduced into the Church by Satan, let him be anathema."

⁴ Cfr. Gen. IV, 7; Deut. XXX, 19-20; Ecclus. XV, 14-18; Matth. XXIII, 37.—St. Augustine, De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, II, n. 2, says: "He has revealed to us through His Holy Scriptures that there is free choice of the will in man. ... The divine precepts themselves would not profit man unless he had free choice of the will, by which, in doing them, he might attain the promised rewards."—Ibid., n. 4: "What of the fact that in so many places God commands all His commandments to be kept and done? How does He command this if there is no free will?" (Migne, P. L., XLIV, 882 sq.)—Cfr. E. Janvier, Exposition de la Morale Catholique, Vol. II, Paris 1904, pp. 51 sqq.

⁵ Cfr. St. Thomas, Comment, in Sent., II, dist. 24, qu. 3, art. 2: "The will is the principle of moral things, and therefore the moral order begins where dominion of the will is first found."

⁶ Cfr. St. Augustine, De Libero Arbitrio, II, c. 1, n. 3: "Both punishment and reward would be unjust if man did not have a free will."—IDEM, De Vera Religione, c. 14, n. 27: "If we do evil not by the will, no one at all should be rebuked or admonished; and if these are removed, the Christian law and every discipline of religion must be taken away. Therefore sin is committed by the will. And since there is no doubt that sin is committed, I see that there should likewise be no doubt that souls possess free choice of the will." —IDEM, Enarrat. in Ps., CI, serm. 1, n. 11: "If You had not given me free choice and by this reason made me better than beasts, just condemnation would not follow me when I sinned." —IDEM, Retract., I, c. 9, n. 4. (See Migne, P. L., XXXII, 1241; XXXIV, 133; XXXVII, 1302; XXXII, 596).—Cfr. St. Jerome, Adv. Iovin., II, c. 3: "God created us with free choice, and we are drawn by necessity neither to virtues nor to vices. Otherwise, where there is necessity, there is no crown." (Cfr. ibid., XXIII, 286). —St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 1a, qu. 83, art. 1: "Man possesses free choice; otherwise counsels, exhortations, precepts, prohibitions, rewards, and punishments would be in vain."

Free-will is capable of development and cultivation, and hence is not the beginning but the end of moral endeavor. Man, by "going from virtue to virtue," and by ''growing unto salvation," ⁷ is called to attain "moral liberty," to develop into "a perfect man unto the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ," and thereby to reach that blessed freedom which is "the glory of the children of God." 8 Moreover, free-will is not absolute but relative and limited in various ways:—metaphysically, by man's dependence upon the will of His Creator, and ethically, by certain natural, individual, personal, and social factors which constitute as many intrinsic determinants of liberty.

⁷ Ps. LXXXIII, 8; Phil. III, 13; 1 Pet. II, 2.—Cfr. Conc. Trident., Sess. VI, c. 11.

READINGS. —St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 1a, qu. ⁸ sqq., 13, 83. —C. Gutberlet, Die Willensfreiheit und ihre Gegner, Fulda 1893, pp. 26 sqq. —M. Maher, S.J., Psychology; Empirical and Rational, 4th ed., London 1900, pp. 394 sqq. —IDEM, in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VI, pp. 259 sqq. —Jos. Rickaby, S.J., Political and Moral Essays, New York 1902, pp. 249 sqq. —IDEM, Free Will and Four English Philosophers (Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Mill), London 1906. —W. von Rohland, Die Willensfreiheit und ihre Gegner, Leipsic 1905. —A. Janvier, Exposition de la Morale Catholique, Vol. I, Paris 1904. —H. Gründer, S.J., Free Will, the Greatest of the Seven World-Riddles, St. Louis 1911. —E. Müller, Theol. Mor., Vol. I, 5th ed., pp. 329 sqq. —W. McDonald, Principles of Moral Science, Dublin 1910, Ch. VIII. —J. E. Ross, Christian Ethics, New York 1919, pp. 21 sqq.

⁸ 2 Cor. III, 17; Eph. IV, 13; Rom. VIII, 21.

I. Man was created for both time and eternity. Here on earth, where he is to prepare himself for the life beyond, he is subject to the same laws as other terrestrial creatures. However, since he holds first rank among, and was made to rule over these creatures,¹ he is empowered to use them as means to achieve his own particular ends.²

¹ Gen. I, 26 sqq.; II, 19 sq.; IX, 2.—Cfr. St. Augustine, Tract, in loa., 33, c. 6; Vergil, Aeneis, VI, 727; Sophocles, Antigone, 332 sqq.; A. Jakob, Der Mensch, die Krone der irdischen Schöpfung, Freiburg 1890.

² 1 Cor. III, 22.

But man is not created for this world alone. He has an immortal soul,³ and is bound so to employ his earthly sojourn that he may attain eternal beatitude. This is the express will of God, which man cannot change, and to that extent his freedom is limited by his supernatural end. However, this limitation by no means abrogates free-will, but rather elevates it to a higher plane of perfection.⁴

³ Rom. XIV, 7 sq.; Acts XVII, 28; Job XIV, 5 sqq.

⁴ Job I, 21; Prov. XXVII, 1; Luke XII, 20; 1 Tim. VI, 7; Jas. IV, 13 sqq.—St. Polycarp, Ep. ad Phil, IV, 1 (ed. Funk, Vol. I, 2nd ed., p. 301). —Tertullian, Ad Uxorem, I, c. 7: "Beyond these things, I advise you to reflect that no one is taken from this world except by God's will, if not even a leaf falls from a tree without God's will. The same One who brings us into the world must also lead us out." (Ed. Leopold, P. II, 68).—Horace, Carm., I, 4, 13; 28, 15.

II. Though he is the lord of the physical universe, man is in several respects subject to nature.

1. His moral life is influenced by natural causes. Certain physical disturbances are regularly followed by definite phenomena in the ethical domain. Statistics show how greatly men are dependent on climate, the weather, seasonal changes, and other physical agencies. They are compelled to battle with nature for their existence and well-being, and this struggle involves a constant expenditure of physical as well as intellectual energy.

2. Man's control of his own actions is limited by the life of the body.⁵ His intellectual knowledge depends upon the senses. Through the organs of the body man receives impressions by the aid of which he forms mental images, concepts or ideas. Moreover, the intellectual and moral life of man is influenced by various bodily conditions, e. g., the need of food and sleep, the sexual instinct, disease. Man has to devote considerable thought and attention to the care of his body and is frequently compelled to combat its impulses. The body has been compared to a dead weight or a prison impeding the intellect in its movements. But this comparison is one-sided. The body is an essential constituent of the compound, man. It is the organ of the soul, subject to its elevating influence. Animated and, as it were, spiritualized by the soul, the body becomes the source of sentiments conducive to moral improvement. ⁶ The life of the body, moreover, furnishes the soul with many occasions for practicing virtue and acts as a strong counterpoise to pride and self-conceit.

⁵ Wisd. IX, 15.—Cfr. J. B. Hirscher, Die christliche Moral, Vol. I, 5th ed., pp. 174 sqq.

⁶ St. John Chrysostom, Orat. de Angusta Porta, i, says that the body is the harp of the soul; the spirit moves the strings, and if this is done in the right way, the instrument gives forth the beautiful melody of virtue. (Migne, P. G., LI, 41).

Whereas the Old Testament emphasizes man's mastery over the earth, the New insists that the body be kept holy because it is a temple of the Holy Ghost.⁷

⁷ 1 Cor. I, 19; III, 16; Rom. VIII, 11; VI, 16-22.

READINGS. —A. Huber, Die Hemmnisse der Willensfreiheit. 2nd ed., Münster 1908.—M. Cronin, The Science of Ethics, Vol. I, Dublin 1909, pp. 169 sqq. —Ellsworth Huntington, World Power and Evolution, Yale University Press, 1919. —J. E. Ross, C. S. P., Christian Ethics, New York 1919, pp. 30 sqq.

Man as an individual is constituted by a material body and a spiritual soul,¹ and endowed with impulses and inclinations which give rise to definite temptations, virtues, and vices. The individual determinants of free-will are chiefly three: 1. AGE. —Age exercises a notable influence on the human organism and offers to the will a special field in which to exert itself. Though the individual continues the same, and his personality is essentially unaffected by age, the differences wrought by the latter are so far-reaching that moral science must take account of them.

¹ See Scholastic Psychology and Pohle-Preuss, The Author of Nature and the Supernatural, 2nd ed., St. Louis 1916, pp. 124 sqq.

Each age has its peculiar ethical tasks and problems. ² In infancy man is almost completely ruled by egoism, but the egoism of the child has a redeeming feature in his ready submission to God (faith) and parents (filial love, pietas).³ In early childhood the operation of the will, so far as it acts independently, is negative rather than positive, characterized by a tendency to obstinacy, destructiveness, and cruelty.

² 1 Cor. XIII, 11; Tit. II, 1-6; John II, 12-14.

³ Cfr. Matth. XVIII, 1-6; XIX, 13-15; Mark X, 13-16; Matth. XI, 25. —St. Jerome, Ep., 52 (al. 2), n.

³ (Migne, P. L., XXII, 528); W. Preyer and K. L. Schafer, Die Seele des Kindes, 8th ed., Leipsic 1908; R. Gaupp, Die Psychologie des Kindes, Leipsic 1908.

The period of adolescence is marked by a struggle between liberty and control. Though very receptive at first, the boy soon begins to assert himself against his elders. He is inclined to follow the bent of his sensual nature, to enjoy himself, to substitute knowledge for faith, to criticize and doubt, to engage in airy speculations, to waver to and fro between optimism and pessimism, hope and despair. Over against these tendencies are the faculty and inclination to labor, to cultivate tender sentiments, and to seek noble ideals. Unless these faculties are properly trained, the young man is liable to become an egoist, a dreamer, and a sentimentalist.⁴

⁴ Cfr. Sophocles, Antigone, 705 sqq.; Horace, Ep., II, 3, 156 sqq. (De Arts Poetica)', I, 2, 67 sq.; Homer, Ilias, III, 108; IV, 320.

Manhood, the age of maturity, is marked by full control of the vital energies, by a certain fixity of both the bodily and the intellectual type, and by a preponderance of the active over the receptive faculties. The peculiar dangers that beset middle life are pride, vainglory, isolation, heartlessness and obtuseness of mind resulting from untoward experiences. These perils can be avoided by cultivating a strong sense of duty and devoting oneself to the service of God and one's fellowmen and to the contemplation of nature. ⁵ Thus each succeeding period of life has its peculiar ethical stamp; each its special dangers and pitfalls; each its own capacity for virtue. This truth is exemplified in the lives of the saints, who belong to every age, clime, and condition.

⁵ Cfr. Job XII, 12-13; Prov. XVI, 31; Ecclus. XXV, 6-8; Wisd. IV, 8-9.—J. Ehring, Des Priesters Greisenalter, Münster 1896, pp. 3 sqq., 59 sqq.

2. TEMPERAMENT. —By temperament we understand the peculiar physical and mental character of an individual. The ancients enumerated four types —the sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric (or bilious), and melancholic. None of these temperaments is found unmixed in any one individual. Nevertheless, as the temperaments contain the germs of definite inclinations and tendencies, a study of them is of great importance for the formation of character. The temperaments undoubtedly influence the will, though by no means irresistibly. Besides, every man is more or less responsible for the faults peculiar to his temperament. Hence arises the duty of acquiring control over one's temperament and its idiosyncrasies. In this matter the Apostles furnish splendid models.⁶

⁶ Cfr. A. Fouillee, Temperament et Caractere selon les Individus, les Sexes et les Races, Paris 1895; P. Michel, Theologiae Moralis Principia, Vol. I, pp. 445 sqq.

3. NATURAL TALENT. —Talent is a special aptitude or faculty for effective action along certain lines. Talents differ and are differently distributed. Some men are more talented than others. Some are highly gifted in more than one respect, while others scarcely show any trace of talent at all. The presence or absence of special aptitudes necessarily influences man's intellectual and moral development, and hence is an ethical factor of considerable importance. A man's choice of vocation and his social standing are largely conditioned by his talents, and experience teaches that, as a general rule at least, the moral sense develops in proportion to the growth of intelligence.

However, while talent has a place among the individual determinants of free-will, its influence is by no means compelling. Whether endowed with many talents or few, great or small, man remains master of his actions. There is no hard and fast relation between morality and intellectual culture. Intellectually inferior men sometimes attain to great moral perfection. Moreover, man's ethical development depends upon other factors besides natural aptitudes. Even infidel savants admit that the low mental and moral state of many primitive races is the result, not of natural inferiority, but of a process of depravation.⁷ For some reason or other their natural faculties and aptitudes were not properly developed. The Catholic Church teaches that every normal human being is able to distinguish good from evil and to observe the more general or absolutely necessary precepts of the Gospel. It is this conviction that inspires Catholic missionary activity among the heathen. History testifies that nations which have attained to some degree of culture are more easily converted than those completely immersed in savagery.

⁷ Cfr. W. Schneider, Die Naturvölker, Vol. I, Paderborn 1885, pp. 3 sqq.; C. Gutberlet, Der Mensch, 2nd ed., Paderborn 1903, pp. 474 sqq.

READINGS. —J. B. Hirscher, Die christliche Moral, Vol. I, 5th ed., pp. 251 sqq.; Vol. II, 5th ed., pp. 268 sqq., 418 sqq. —C. Krieg, Die Wissenschaft der Seelenleitung, Vol. I, Freiburg 1904, pp. 99 sqq., 131 sqq. —A. Huber, Die Hemmnisse der Willensfreiheit, 2nd ed., Münster 1908, pp. 132 sqq. —M. Maher, S.J., Psychology, 4th ed., London 1900, p. 393. —T. Pesch, S.J., Instit. Psychologicae, § 1078 sq. —O. Brüssau, Die Temperamente und das christliche Leben, Hamburg 1906. —M. Maher, S.J., in the Cath. Encyclopedia, Vol. II, p. 585.—A. C. O'Neil, ibid., XIV, 8. —A. Waldron, O.P., ibid., XV, 474. —F. Muszinski, Die Temperamente, Paderborn 1907. —A. Tanquerey, Synopsis Theologiae Moralis, Vol. II, Tournai 1905, pp. 65 sqq. —Fr. a Barbens, O. M. Cap., Introductio Pathologica ad Studium Theologiae Moralis, Tarracona 1917.

Man is not merely an individual, he is also a social being, and as such his liberty of choice is influenced by several other factors in addition to those already enumerated. They are: 1. SEX. —Sex is the sum-total of the peculiarities of structure and function that distinguish the male from the female organism. Its influence is not limited to the body, but extends to the intellect and the will, and consequently affects the moral character.¹

¹ See Readings at the end of this Section.

The male sex, generally speaking, possesses greater spontaneity, energy, and strength than the female. These advantages are counterbalanced by certain defects, e. g., lack of delicacy and sentiment. The female sex, on the other hand, enjoys greater receptivity, a more delicate sense of modesty, a more intense religious sentiment² and greater patience, but is less strong in resisting evil,³ and more prone to fall.⁴

² The liturgical phrase, "devotus femineus sexus," be it remarked in passing, is merely a synonym for "virgines Deo devotae," i. e. the members of female religious orders.

³ Cfr. 1 Pet. III, 7, and the hymn for Matins in the Commune Virginum of the Roman Breviary.

⁴ Cfr. R. Stade, Aus der Gefängnisseelsorge, Leipsic 1901, pp. 56 sqq., 105 sqq.; IDEM, Frauentypen aus dem Gefängnisleben (1903), pp. 40 sqq., 57 sqq., 67 sqq.; H. F. Beneke, Gefängnisstudien, Hamburg 1903, pp. 13 sq., 76 sqq.

But though sex is a determinant of morality, it does not neutralize free-will. For in the first place the human soul or spirit is non-sexual ⁵ and the same law binds both male and female. "There is one law for men and women." as the Schoolmen put it. The assumption of a so-called double standard of morals is unchristian.⁶ Secondly, all virtues are attainable by both sexes, and neither enjoys any intellectual or moral privilege that is denied the other.⁷ Third, the sexual relations of men and women, unlike those of irrational brutes, are not governed by physical necessity, but controlled by the will,⁸ which can ennoble and spiritualize them.⁹

⁵ Cfr. St. Ambrose, Expos. Evang. sec. Luc., II, n. 28: "The soul, which has no sex." (Migne, P. L., XV, 1562); St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 1a, qu. 93, art. 6, ad 2: "The image of God is common to both sexes, since it is according to the mind, in which there is no distinction of sexes."

⁶ Cfr. 1 Cor. VII, 3-4: "Let the husband render the debt to his wife, and the wife also in like manner to the husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband; and in like manner the husband also hath not power of his own body, but the wife." —Cfr. the Shepherd of Hermas, Mand. IV, 8: "This is the course of action for wife and husband." Ibid., 10: "For this reason it was enjoined on you to live by yourselves, whether husband or wife." (Ed. Funk, Vol. I, 2nd ed., p. 476, 8 and 13; Kirsopp Lake, The Apostolic Fathers, Vol. II, London 1913, p. 81). —The Corpus Iuris Canonici quotes the following from St. Ambrose (C. 4, C. XXXII, qu. 4): "A man is not permitted what a woman is not permitted. The same chastity is required of the husband as of the wife." And this from Innocent I (c. 23, C. XXXII, qu. 5): "The Christian religion condemns adultery on equal grounds in both sexes." St. Jerome in speaking on the same subject centuries before the days of Gratian insists on the striking contrast between the pagan double code of morality for men and women, and the single or equal code of Christian teaching. (Ad Oceanum, Ep. LXXVII). "The laws of the Caesars are one thing," he writes, "those of Christ another: Papinian commands one thing, our Paul another." And after describing the larger licence the Roman laws allowed to men and husbands, he sets against this the Christian code of equality: "Among us, what is not permitted to women is equally not permitted to men; and the same servitude is assessed on equal terms." Such is the contrast presented, in the judgment of St. Jerome, at the close of the fourth century, between the Christian and Pagan ideas on this question. And yet, after the lapse of fifteen hundred years, a candid historian of morals is fain to confess that the pagan idea still predominates in modern Europe.

⁷ Cfr. Gal. III, 28; Matth. XXVIII, 10; Acts XVII, 12, 34; XVIII, 2. —St. Ambrose, Expos. Evang. sec. Lucam, IV, n. 57: "The Lord came to heal both sexes, and he who 'was created first' had to be healed first; nor was she who had sinned more through fickleness of mind than through depravity to be passed over." (Migne, P. L., XV, 1629).—St. Augustine, Serm., 12 (al. 16 de Diversis), n. 12: "Wishing to bring both sexes to the hope of renewal and restoration, He chose the male sex, in which He would be born, and the female, through which He would be born." —IDEM, Serm., 190 (al. 61 de Diversis), n. 2: "Since He Himself assuredly created both sexes, that is, male and female, He therefore also wished by being born to honor both sexes, which He had come to liberate. ... The Lord, coming to seek what had been lost, wished to commend both by honoring them, because both had been lost. Therefore in neither sex ought we to do injury to Christ: the Lord's Nativity commended both to the hope of salvation. The honor of the male sex is in the flesh of Christ; the honor of the female is in the mother of Christ. The grace of Jesus Christ conquered the serpent's cunning." (Migne, P. L., XXXVIII, 106, 1008).—St. Leo the Great, Serm., 74 (al. 72), c. 3: "For this faith throughout the whole world not only men but also women, and not only immature boys but also tender virgins, contended even to the shedding of their blood." (Migne, P. L., LIV, 398).—In the benediction of the baptismal font in the Roman Missal we read: "And may mother grace bring forth into one infancy all those whom either sex distinguishes in body or age distinguishes in time."

⁸ Cfr. Matth. XIX, 11-12: "All men take not this word, but they to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs, who were born so from their mother's womb: and there are eunuchs, who were made so by men: and there are eunuchs, who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. He that can take, let him take it." —Rom. VIII, 12-14: "Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you shall die: but if by the spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live." —Cfr. 1 Cor. VII, 25 sqq.

⁹ Matth. XXII, 30: "For in the resurrection they shall neither marry nor be married; but shall be as the angels of God in heaven." — Cfr. Tertullian, Ad Uxorem, I, c. 1 (ed. P. Leopold, II, 62 sq.) —St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, XXII, c. 17 (Migne, P. L., XLI, 778 sq.); IDEM, Serm., 243 (al. 6 de Divers.), n. 6 (Migne, P. L., XXXVIII, 1146). —St. Jerome, Adv. Iovin., I, c. 36 (P. L., XXIII, 261).

2. EDUCATION. —Education signifies the process of imparting and drawing out (e-ducere) knowledge, skill or discipline of character. As society is at present constituted, education is imparted partly in the home and partly at school. The early training a child receives at home is of supreme importance for his future welfare because it leaves upon the mind deep traces of good or evil.¹⁰ Whether a man will be virtuous or vicious, whether his life will redound to the advantage or detriment of his fellowmen, depends largely upon the character of the domestic circle in which he spends his youth. No other factor, agency, or institution can fully supplant a good Christian home.

¹⁰ Cfr. Plato, Politia, II, 17: For it is then especially that a character is molded and takes on the impression which anyone may wish to stamp upon each one. —Cfr. Horace, Carm., IV, 4, 29, 32 sqq.: "The brave are born of the brave and good; ... but instruction advances the inborn power, and right cultivation strengthens the heart: whenever either is lacking, faults disgrace what was well-born."

In spite of all this, however, home-life does not give a necessary predetermination for either good or evil. The will remains free, and even the most excellent training sometimes fails to bend it in the right direction. It happens that good parents have bad children,¹¹ whereas, on the other hand, a naturally good child will often preserve its innocence in spite of a bad example.

¹¹ " Filii heroum nequam."

The school supplements and completes the training received at home, and its influence on the formation of character is second only to that of the family.¹² Its chief defect is that it cannot give to each child the individual care required, and hence the influence of the school upon the moral character is less pronounced than that of the home.

¹² Cfr. the Greek proverb: Πολλοὶ μαθηταὶ κρείσσονες τῶν διδασκάλων. —Many pupils are better than their masters.

3. SOCIETY. —Human society is the sum-total of living men, considered as an aggregate, of which each individual is a member. Every man is more or less a child of his time, nation, and country, —not merely in a physical sense, i. e., by the external characteristics due to soil, climate and national type; but also intellectually and ethically, in regard to his views of right and wrong, his likes and dislikes, etc.¹³

¹³ Cfr. Ps. XVII, 26-27: "Withthe holy, thou wilt be holy; and with the innocent man thou wilt be innocent; and with the elect thou wilt be elect: and with the perverse thou wilt be perverted." —Pope Hadrian VI composed this epitaph for his tombstone: "Alas, how much it matters into what times the virtue of even the best man may fall!"

The relation existing between man's free acts and the social environment in which he lives (milieu) has been carefully investigated in recent times. It was found that certain crimes and misdemeanors recur more or less regularly under certain conditions. This observation led Lombroso and others to conclude that the law of physical causation applies to ethics and that human conduct is governed by necessity.¹⁴ With this conclusion we cannot agree, for three reasons:

¹⁴ Cesare Lombroso's writings in particular, some of which have been translated into English, have exercised a malign influence on contemporary thought. Cfr. Krauss, Der Kampf gegen die Verbrechensursachen, pp. 17 sqq.; R. Frank, Die Lehre Lombrosos, Tübingen 1908. — Enrico Ferri, another popular author, contends that crime is "a biologico-social abnormality," which has "its origin in an anti-social biological constitution, cosmic or physical," and is "the resultant of anthropological, cosmic, and social factors." (Cfr. Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri, tr. by J. I. Kelly, Boston 1917)- Ferri too often makes words serve in place of ideas. Put to the logical test, his system fails completely. Cfr. Charles Goring, The English Convict: A Statistical Study, London 1920.

a) That men think, feel, calculate, and act alike under similar conditions is no proof that they lack liberty of choice. b) At all times there have been many who, under identically the same circumstances, have attained a degree of moral perfection that raised them far above their fellows. c) Statistics are limited to external acts, whereas the individual inclinations and dispositions as well as the intentions and motives from which individual actions spring, and which therefore constitute the true essence of morality, elude observation and inquiry. All that science can demonstrate is to what extent men observe the law or, rather, in what degree they are given to immoral practices. Even those acts which are common to a large number of men and can therefore be statistically tabulated, remain rational and ethically free—actus humani—regardless of social and economic environment. ¹⁵ The science of what is called moral (or, more correctly, criminal) statistics devotes its attention entirely to vice and crime. Virtue, as a rule, makes no noise. An ancient Chinese proverb says: "If you do a good deed, your neighbor will never find it out; but if you commit a crime, everybody for a hundred miles around will talk about it." To regard only the evil that men do will never lead to an adequate knowledge of human nature.

¹⁵ Cfr. C. Gutberlet, Willensfreiheit, pp. 40 sqq.

READINGS. —Cath. Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 163; XV, 687. —A. Rosier, C.SS.R., Die Frauenfrage vom Standpunkt der Natur, der Geschichte und der Offenbarung, 2nd ed., Freiburg 1907, pp. 18 sqq., 26 sqq. —H. Marion, Psychologie de la Femme, Paris 1900.—Ch. Turgeon, Le Féminisme Français, Vol. II, Paris 1902, pp. 152 sqq. —C. Krieg, Die Wissenschaft der Seelenleitung, Vol. I, pp. 138 sqq. —A. Tanquerey, Synopsis Theologiae Moralis, Vol. II, Tournai 1905, pp. 69 sqq.

L. Desers, L'Education Morale et ses Conditions, Paris 1909. —W. Toischer, Die Macht der Schule, Prague 1897.—F. W. Foerster, Schule und Charakter, 7th ed., Zurich 1909.

1. INSTINCT. —Instinct, which is the first and lowest stage of the appetitive faculty, may be defined as "an impulse of the sensitive appetite towards certain acts and objects, the suitableness of which transcends the range of knowledge of the agent that performs them."¹ All instinctive actions are performed under internal compulsion. The primary form to which all instincts may be reduced, is an impulse towards happiness. This impulse is irresistible, i. e., the will cannot decide against it because no man has it in his power not to will to be happy. The case is different with the secondary forms that proceed from this primary form of instinct —the impulse to self-preservation, the sexual instinct, and others. These are subject to the will. Intimately connected with the instinct of self-preservation are modesty, anger, and fear. (a) Modesty is directed to the preservation of personal integrity. This instinct reacts with particular vigor to attacks against chastity and truth. Modesty furnishes an invaluable protection against sin, and for this reason it should be assiduously cultivated, especially since it is weak and tender and can easily be destroyed. Under conscientious cultivation modesty ceases to be a mere instinct and becomes a virtue.² (b) Anger is defined as a violent desire to wreak vengeance on persons or objects that oppose or thwart the Ego in the prosecution of its ends. This instinct tends to destroy that which opposes it. Anger is a dangerous instinct because it makes deliberation difficult. For the same reason, of course, it diminishes accountability and inspires foolish and injurious actions.

¹ Cfr. E. Wasmann, S.J., Modern Biology and the Theory of Evolution (tr. by A. M. Buchanan), London 1910; IDEM, Instinct and Intelligence in the Animal Kingdom, St. Louis 1903.

² Cfr. St. Ambrose, De Offic., I, c. 18, n. 69: "Modesty is the companion of chastity, in whose company chastity itself is safer. For shame is a good companion in governing chastity; if it places itself before the first dangers, it does not allow chastity to be violated." (Migne, P. L., XVI, 44). —Cfr. W. Schneider, Die Naturvölker, Vol. II, pp. 426 sqq.

Anger is essentially a craving for vengeance on account of wrong done. Though there is a just and holy anger, the stirrings of this passion in the weakened state in which humanity exists since the Fall, mostly spring from sinful egotism. Anger, in the words of Father Rickaby, "is then only a safe course to enter on, when it proceeds not upon personal but upon public grounds; a nd even by this maxim many deceive themselves." ³ (c) Fear (metus) will be treated later.⁴

³ Jos. Rickaby, S.J., Moral Philosophy, p. 64. —Cfr. Mark III, 5; Matth. XXI, 12; John II, 15-17.

⁴ Infra, p. 116.

2. AFFECTIONS AND PASSIONS. —When the intellect proposes some good to the will, or when sensual perception presents something as desirable to the lower appetites, there ensues a tendency towards that object. This tendency is either spiritual or sensual, according to the nature of the object. The stirrings of the rational appetite are called affections; those of the sensual appetite, passions (passiones).

The passions, in so far as they are excited by external objects, are involuntary in their origin because independent of free-will. Consequently man is not accountable for them, unless he has willed them in the cause (voluntarium in causa).

The affections, on the other hand, whether pure or mixed, are either wholly or partially subject to the will, according as they proceed from it either entirely or in part.⁵

⁵ Cfr. St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, XIV, c. 6: "It matters what sort of will a man has; for if it is perverse, it will have these movements in a perverse form; but if it is right, they will be not only blameless but even praiseworthy. For the will is in them all [that is, the movements]; indeed, they are all nothing other than wills. For what are desire and joy but a will consenting to the things we will? And what are fear and sorrow but a will dissenting from the things we do not will?" (Migne, P. L., XLI, 409).

There is a difference between the affections and passions on the one hand, and instinct on the other. The former may proceed mediately from the will and presuppose a clear knowledge of their object, whereas the latter springs from sentiment and cannot be elicited by an act of the will. However this difference is not always easy to discern.

An affection is distinguished from a free act of the will in that, when a man is under the influence of an affection, willing immediately follows knowledge, and no choice takes place. For this reason the affections, though they may be voluntary in the highest degree, are not free, unless indeed the knowledge from which they spring was caused by the will, or if they are made the object of reflection. But the will is never accountable for an affection unless it has cooperated in its production, or consented to it after due deliberation, i. e., from the moment when it began to participate in what was originally no more than a physical impulse. (a) A motus primo primus is an impulse which, resulting immediately from an involuntary act of knowledge, precedes all rational deliberation and therefore is neither free nor imputable. (b) A motus secundo primus is an impulse which causes the desired object to enter more or less into the consciousness of the subject, thus affording a possibility of deliberation and free choice. Such acts are not entirely compulsory; nor, on the other hand, are they entirely free. It follows that while they may be to some extent imputable, they never constitute more than a venial sin. (c) If the knowledge that gives birth to an impulse is caused by the will, or if the will positively and deliberately acquiesces in the impulse and makes its own the object towards which it tends, we have a motus secundus. This happens, e. g., when the will, instead of rejecting sinful thoughts, deliberately entertains and nourishes them. Hence the Scholastic maxim, "Motus sentire est naturale, motibus consentire est criminale." ⁶ The motus secundus, being a voluntary and deliberate act of the will, is fully imputable and, when the matter at stake is sinful and important, involves a mortal offence.

⁶ Cfr. St. Augustine, In Ep. ad Rom., prop. 13-18: "We sin not in the evil desire itself, but in our consent." (Migne, P. L., XXXV, 2066). —IDEM, Enarrat. in Ps., CXVIII, s. 3, n. 1: "What does sin accomplish when we are unwilling except illicit desires alone? If the assent of the will is not given to them, some affection is indeed stirred, but no effect is permitted to it." (P. L., XXXVII, 1507).

It needs no argument to show how strongly man's actions are influenced by the affections and the passions. As affectus antecedentes they precede, incite, and elicit the decision of the will, and are frequently the very requisites of freewill actions, capable of becoming concurrent causes in their production, thus entering as important factors into man's accountability for his deeds. Not every good impulse or emotion —enthusiasm, love, hatred, anger —is supernaturally meritorious. Neither is every evil impulse sinful. Many of these stirrings are purely natural and involve no deliberate choice.

I. The conjunction of the voluntary and of liberty. In the present condition of man as wayfarer, a voluntary act is at the same time psychologically free. Only the appetite for beatitude is necessary for him "as to the determination of the act, because he cannot will the opposite; but not as to the exercise of the act, because someone can be unwilling then to think about beatitude, because even the acts themselves of intellect and will are particular" ¹.

Nor in Aristotle does a word occur by which the free is distinguished from the voluntary. Whence, in this article, we consider the voluntary act merely under another respect, and we can proceed from this principle: as much as the voluntary is deficient, so much liberty is deficient; and every defect of liberty declares an act imperfectly voluntary.

We must treat of the conditions and impediments of liberty.

¹ St. Thomas, De Malo, q. 6, art. un.; cf. in 1, 2, d. 25, q. 1, art. 2.

II. Conditions of liberty. The use of free choice requires:

1. That reason, habitually and actually, have the ability of judging concerning the good formally taken, and concerning the proportion by which a particular good fits the subject and his inclination or appetite. Otherwise, the object cannot be proposed as indifferent, that is, as such a thing as is at the same time appetible and incapable of satisfying the appetite. Now in that indifference of judgment the first root of liberty consists.

2. That reason be unimpeded for following the direction of the will, under whose direction things are considered under various aspects and diverse practical judgments are effected. For since the will is a rational appetite, man wills or prefers nothing which at the same time he does not judge to be to-be-willed or to-be-preferred: wherefore between our willing and our final practical judging there is a necessary concord. And so, unless the judgment itself is in the power of the will, neither will the proper act of willing be in its power.

3. That reflex knowledge of the object and of the acts be had. For without conscious possession, the use of dominion cannot be had.

To say the same thing more briefly: free choice requires an intellect developed and unimpeded for representing, docile for obeying, and reflex consciousness. And so:

a) whatever conquers the intellect;

b) whatever carries away the will, impedes the use of free choice;

c) nor can that be free which does not proceed from our will.

Those impediments and limits of free choice are now to be considered by us, first in the healthy man, then in the sick or badly affected man.

I. The voluntary, or "that whose principle is within with the addition of knowledge," is divided under various respects.

II. According as end and means are objectively proposed to the will, the will can love the end by simple complacency, intend the same, and, when it is obtained, enjoy it; but the means it either, by consenting, merely accepts as they are proposed, or by consulting among several chooses the better; finally it uses the powers for applying the means.

III. According to the mode of attaining objects: already, without bodily mutation, it has the eleven prosecutive or aversive movements of the sensitive appetite; moreover, as rational appetite, it wills certain things in themselves, or directly, certain things in another, or indirectly. And an effect foreseen with an action or omission and yet not loved is called permitted (actively or passively).

IV. From external species, the voluntary is distinguished positively, by action, and negatively, by omission: which some call the indirect voluntary.

Then there is the explicit voluntary, and the implicit, which is contained in the former.

V. From its manifestation, the voluntary can be formally expressed, or tacitly signified in some deed or omission, or be presumed for the present, that is, conjectured from an inclination of the mind.

From this is gathered the prudent use of the adage: He who is silent seems to consent.

VI. According to its varied perfection, there is distinguished the perfect voluntary, to which neither knowledge nor deliberation is lacking, and the imperfectly deliberated voluntary; then the voluntary simply, which embraces the object as it is in the concrete, and according to something, which embraces the same under a definite note to which attention is given. There is also the formal or true voluntary, and the interpretative voluntary, which is not, but would be if the object were proposed: it is called presumed for the future. Finally there is the actual voluntary, in present act; the virtual, in a series efficaciously commanded; and the habitual, which once was and has not been retracted: this voluntary can have force for no physical effect, but indeed for juridical effects.

VII. From the voluntary we know what, and of how many kinds, the involuntary is.

VIII. Psychological liberty, which is now had in every human act, requires as conditions an intellect developed and unimpeded for representing, docile for obeying, and reflex consciousness.

S. Th. I-II, q. 10 and 13.

84. The free is that which is immune from a bond. But the bond is twofold:

1. An external bond, that is, an extrinsically acting and determining cause, from which whatever is voluntary is immune; and therefore it is called free from coercion and violence, or from an extrinsic force compelling to the act against the inclination of the will. Freedom from coercion, or of execution (spontaneity), therefore is inseparable from the human will, because the will cannot be coerced, not even by God; for no one can unwillingly will, because no one can will while unwilling. It is freedom of acting rather than of willing.

2. An internal bond, or intrinsic necessity and natural determination of the power to one thing; hence the free properly so called, from natural necessity, is that which proceeds from election of a will not naturally determined, or that to which the will determines itself through deliberation. Hence there is called free choice "which is the cause of itself," that is, of its own movement, namely, through its own judgment and its own determination (De Veritate 24, a. 1; Contra Gentiles I, 72 and 88); and freedom properly so called is called freedom from necessity, of indifference (to opposites), of election, and of exercise. It is true freedom of willing.

But in human acts the voluntary is always free, and therefore these terms are often used indiscriminately by moralists.

85. Freedom is the abstract quality which belongs to the will insofar as it is furnished with free choice; but free choice is a rational power (choice) toward opposites (free), as St. Thomas says, De Veritate 24, a. 3; and it is defined by him (I, q. 83, a. 4; and q. 62, a. 8, ad 3): an elective power of means, the order of the end being preserved, that is, an active faculty of acting, not acting, or doing another thing at pleasure. It is said:

1. A power, that is, an active potency or faculty, not an act, because free choice is natural and permanent in man even when he is not acting.

2. Elective: it consists in taking one thing while the other is refused. But election is an act of the will: namely, to seek something (that is, to will one thing before another) for attaining another; although it presupposes choice or practical judgment and therefore counsel or deliberation of the intellect, by which motives of acting are comparatively estimated (according to the diverse reason of good and advantage or evil and disadvantage), and it is judged what is to be preferred to another.

Therefore freedom formally is in the will, which from the judgment of the intellect freely determines itself to this or that, while it can will or choose another thing; radically and presuppositively it is in the intellect, which proposes objects with some indifference. For it is "in the will as in the subject, because the adequate object of the will by which its capacity is filled is not any good whatever but universal good; whence it does not efficaciously and necessarily will whatsoever things are proposed to it as particular, participated, and relative goods. Therefore that from which freedom immediately arises is the eminence of the will above particular goods, and its amplitude and capacity for all goods: therefore particular goods cannot satiate its capacity nor equal its amplitude.

But it is originatively from reason directing and ruling as from a cause: for from this the will can freely be borne to diverse things, because reason can have diverse conceptions of good (I-II, q. 17, a. 1, ad 2). For in various particular objects it sees at once advantage and defect; whence it can propose them as appetible and choosable under one respect, and as hateful and avoidable under another respect. And therefore the will can choose them insofar as they are goods, but also can not choose them insofar as they have the notion of disadvantage or defect. For the will is essentially a rational appetite, and therefore it is borne not freely but necessarily into an object which is proposed by the intellect as simply good without defect (I, q. 82, a. 1 and 2; I-II, q. 13, a. 6).

3. Of means: election in operable things stands as conclusion in speculative things, and the end as principle; therefore the end as end is not chosen, because it stands as principle in operable things, but only the means are chosen, just as a conclusion is not about principles but about things consequent upon them. But if sometimes the end is chosen, then it is considered as a means to the ultimate end; but the ultimate end as such, or complete good as such, is not chosen, because it cannot be ordered to another.

4. The order of the end being preserved: for means are for the sake of the end; hence if freedom turns aside from the end, there is defect, which is not of the essence and perfection of free choice, just as a conclusion which departs from principles.

86. Division of Freedom.

By reason of object, freedom is:

1. One of contradiction or exercise (concerning the very act of the will), by which we can choose between two contradictories, or will to love and will not to love, will to act and will not to act, will to will and will not to will, etc.;

2. Another of specification (concerning the objects of the act of the will), by which we can choose between two acts diverse in species, or between two diverse goods, for example to will to stand or sit, to walk or study, faith or hope, to do this or that;

3. Another of contrariety or moral freedom (concerning the order of the end), by which we can choose between two contrary acts in relation to the end, for example to love and to hate, to will good and evil. This is not a new species of freedom, but the very freedom of specification for choosing between contraries (cf. St. Thomas, Q. D. De Veritate 22, a. 6; on John VIII, 34).

1. Moral freedom among modern authors is taken in a diverse sense, namely, in opposition to freedom from a physical bond, or natural and physical freedom, as immunity from a moral bond, that is, from law and obligation (cf. Leo XIII, enc. Libertas). And thus physical freedom is the foundation of moral freedom.

The first is of the essence of freedom, without which freedom cannot exist; the second is of its perfection; the third is a defect proper to the state of wayfaring, whence it is called an imperfection and sign of freedom, just as sickness is a sign of life. For the way of means to the end is more perfect the more securely it attains the end.

87. Thesis. Man has free choice, even in the present state of fallen nature. - It is of faith from the Council of Trent, session 6, chapter 1 and canons 4, 5, and 6; and from the Vatican Council, session 3, chapter 3, canon 5 (cf. the condemned propositions of Baius 39, 66, 67; the third proposition of Jansenius; and the first condemned by Alexander VIII).

The first part is proved: the will is the power by which man can seek every good. Therefore, if a particular good is shown to it, it can seek it because it is good, and not seek it because a defect is joined to it, or because it is not complete good itself nor perfectly satiating. Cf. St. Thomas I, q. 82, a. 2; q. 83, a. 1; I-II, q. 10, a. 2; q. 13, a. 6; De Malo VI, a. 1.

The second part is proved: 1) from the Scriptures, in which the faculty of choosing is asserted formally and directly (Eccli. XV, 14; XXXI, 10; Gen. IV, 7; Deut. XXX, 15, 19; I Cor. VII, 36-37), and also virtually and indirectly, namely, by precepts and counsels, exhortations, trials, rewards, and punishments;

2. from the testimony of conscience and the common sense of men;

3. from the perpetual tradition of the Church:

a) It is proposed by the apostolic Fathers, especially by the Apologists. Cf. Justin, Apology I, 43; Dialogue 102; Tatian, Against the Greeks, or. 7; Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus II, 27; Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV, 37.

b) It is defended and vindicated among the Fathers:

Against the Gnostics: thus Tertullian, De anima; Methodius, De libero arbitrio; Origen, De Principiis; Ephraem, etc.

Against the Manichaeans: thus Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine.

1. For the doctrine of St. Augustine the theologians can be consulted where they treat of grace.

Against the Predestinarians of the eighth-ninth century: thus Adrian I, ep. Instit. universal., the Council of Quierzy, the Council of Valence. Cf. Leo IX, symbol of faith.

c) In the Middle Ages the Scholastics also prove freedom by philosophical arguments.

d) Later Luther, Baius, and Jansenius were condemned, denying the freedom of fallen man.

4. by reason: fallen man does not cease to be of intellectual nature. But free choice inseparably follows intellectual nature.

88. Observation.

The will a) as to specification is naturally and necessarily moved by some object, as St. Thomas says, q. 10, a. 1: those things which are not in something per se, but can be in it and not in it, are reduced to something which is in it per se and necessarily as to a first; otherwise there would be a process to infinity. And therefore it is necessary that always the principle in those things which belong to a thing be natural. Whence the principle of the movements of the will must be something naturally willed. But this is:

1. Good in common, or indeterminate universal good (any good whatsoever, so that it is nothing but good), toward which the will naturally tends as any power tends toward its object;

2. The ultimate end itself or beatitude in the abstract, as our highest and complete good, because it is the first principle in operable things;

3. Those things which are necessary to the one willing according to his nature, such as to be and to live and to know truth, insofar as they are thus considered according to themselves and by reason of themselves as suitable to nature (on the part of the object), because thus they appear only as good; nevertheless per accidens and by reason of circumstances they can appear as evil, and then they are not naturally sought (for example, in suicide).

b) As to exercise, at least in the present state, it is moved necessarily by no object, not even by good or beatitude in common, because man can always not think of that object and thus not actually will it (a. 2). It is not so in the state of the term, in which the intellect is always in act and necessarily understands God to be its beatitude (I, q. 82, a. 2).

Hence it is understood: 1) that the will necessarily wills that which is thought by the intellect as absolutely and under every respect good; 2) if something evidently appears to be so necessarily connected with the end and beatitude that without it the end cannot be had, then the will cannot not will it; 3) nevertheless, because all particular goods, even those in which the ultimate end is constituted, do not necessarily and always appear as good from every side and necessary, but can appear as connected with evils (for example, on account of difficulties), therefore they are freely sought as to specification; and because man can fail to consider them, they are freely sought as to exercise.

275. Things to be noted beforehand. Liberty, in general, is immunity from servitude and subjection: whence, as many as are the species of servitude, so many are the species of liberty.

But a fivefold liberty is customarily assigned: 1. LIBERTY OF SPONTANEITY, which consists in exemption from violence and from coercion. This is common to all living things; indeed by analogy it is transferred to inanimate things: thus water is said to flow spontaneously.

2. LIBERTY OF INDIFFERENCE, or of choice, which consists in exemption from necessity and natural inclination determining to one. This belongs to intellectual nature alone.

3. LIBERTY OF INDEPENDENCE, which consists in exemption from obligation to law and any Superior commanding. This absolutely belongs to God alone, who, subject to no one, alone is law and rule to Himself; but participatively and relatively, also to intellectual creatures, namely outside the ambit of those obligations by which each is bound, and then it is called moral liberty, or the power of acting licitly (cf. n. 279). See St. Alph., Diss. dell'Uso moder. (1765), c. 4, n. 11-16.

4. LIBERTY OF GRACE and Virtue, which consists in immunity from sin, and from habits inclining to evil. This belongs only to the good, in whom, the motions of cupidity having been extinguished or mitigated, and the yoke of sin having been shaken off, there is the tranquil kingdom and rule of will and reason, subject to God alone. The just man has all his affections right; whence, even if no law had been imposed upon him, as if connaturally and from his own inclination, he would observe those things which are of the law; concerning which the Apostle, speaking, said (1 Tim. 1:9): Law is not placed for the just, but for the unjust.

5. LIBERTY OF HAPPINESS, which consists in exemption from all misery and penalty. This belongs to those who have already entered into the joy of the Lord.

Only liberty of indifference, or of choice, refers to our matter; for this alone is the principle of imputability, and constitutes man master of his acts. As regards the other species of liberty, it suffices to note these things: Concerning liberty of spontaneity no peculiar treatment occurs, since it is included in liberty of choice, of which it is the foundation. Liberty of independence is circumscribed by laws, which determine the right use of choice. But the observance of laws leads to liberty of grace and virtue, which brings forth the liberty of glory (Billuart, Diss. 2).

276. DEFINITION. Liberty of choice is elective force, or the faculty by which the will is endowed, of choosing or not choosing, at pleasure. We call that act free which is done with no necessity compelling, or which can be omitted at pleasure.

DIVISION. "LIBERTY OF CHOICE, or liberty from necessity, is subdivided: into liberty of contradiction, by which someone can act or not act; into liberty of contrariety, by which he can act thus or act the opposite, for example, to love or to have hatred; and into liberty of disparity, by which he can do this or another thing, but not the opposite, for example, to write or to walk" (V, n. XXX).

To liberty is opposed NECESSITY, and it is the state of a thing which cannot have itself otherwise. One is called necessity of coercion, which is the same as violence; it arises from an extrinsic principle, and if it is absolute, it takes away the free and the voluntary, as will be said below (n. 282). Another is necessity of nature, or of natural inclination, which consists in a certain propensity implanted in the will by nature itself, toward something necessarily pursued or avoided. It is from an intrinsic principle determining to one, and takes away the free, but not the voluntary. Thus the Blessed necessarily love God, and man as wayfarer necessarily seeks good in general.

The things which regard the question of free choice are customarily treated at length in Dogmatic Institutions; wherefore we shall recall only the following principles. Cf. St. Alph., Op. dogm. (ed. Walt.), II, p. 220, 411, 463, 495.

277. PRINCIPLES. I. Man, even after the fall of Adam, enjoys free choice. It is of faith, from Trent, Sess. 6, can. 5: "If anyone shall have said that man's free choice, after Adam's sin, was lost and extinguished, or that it is a thing of title alone...: let him be anathema." See V, n. XXXII ff.

278. II. For meriting or demeriting, in the state of fallen nature, liberty from coercion does not suffice, but liberty from necessity, or of indifference, is required. It is similarly of faith, from the third proposition of Jansenius condemned as heretical: "For meriting or demeriting, in the state of fallen nature, there is not required in man liberty from necessity, but liberty from coercion suffices."

279. III. The power of sinning, which is in man as wayfarer, is not of the notion of liberty, but rather of its imperfection. And indeed truly, "if to be able to sin," says St. Anselm (de lib. Arb., c. 1), "were part of free choice, God and the Angels would not have free choice: which is absurd." The reason is evident: for since free choice is a quality of the will, it is ordered of itself to the good; but to be able to deflect from its own proper object is the defect or vice of any power whatever: therefore the faculty of sinning is a defect of liberty. Whence St. Thomas (de Verit., q. 22, a. 6): "To will evil is neither liberty nor part of liberty, although it is a certain sign of liberty, just as sickness, for example, is a sign of life." And St. Augustine (de Civ. Dei, l. 22, c. ult., n. 3): "Choice will be the more powerful, the more it will not be able to sin."

It is helpful here to add the things which St. Alphonsus (H. Ap., III, 11) writes concerning the root of liberty, briefly and learnedly in this way: "It must be noted that the root of liberty of indifference arises from the indifference of judgment, which is nothing other than deliberation concerning the good or evil which is considered in the action. This indifference of judgment does not now constitute liberty, but, as was said, is the root of liberty, so that afterwards the will can choose freely and indifferently what shall have pleased it."

280. From the things said you will gather: 1. Man's proclivity to evil never becomes a necessity of sinning; wherefore judges sin gravely against natural and civil right who absolve those guilty of great crimes, under the imaginary pretext that, in acting, they lacked liberty. See, however, the things to be said n. 291 and 292, note.

2. They speak absurdly who, under the pretext of liberty, maintain license of opining, writing, teaching, and operating all things at pleasure. These confuse the physical liberty of choice with moral liberty or independence. The former is natural to man; the latter by no means, unless, as was said, it is contained within the limits of the good and the licit (n. 275, 3.). See the work Verita della fede, P. II, c. 11; Confut. del libro dello spirito, n. 24.

To the point Pope Leo XIII (Encycl. Immortale Dei): "Nor can the Church approve that liberty," he says, "which begets disgust for the most holy laws of God and strips off due obedience to legitimate power. For it is more truly license than liberty; and most rightly by Augustine it is called liberty of perdition, by Peter the Apostle a veil of malice (1 Pet. 2:16): indeed, since it is beyond reason, it is true servitude: for he who commits sin is the slave of sin (John 8:34). On the contrary, that is genuine and desirable liberty which, if it is considered privately, does not allow man to serve errors and passions, most hideous masters; if publicly, it wisely presides over citizens, supplies widely the faculty of increasing advantages, and defends the republic from another's arbitrary power." A. S. S., vol. 18, p. 175.

Note. Certain things should be said here concerning the principles which concur for the production of a free act: namely concerning advertence and the consent of the will. But concerning these things below, n. 317, when the discourse will be concerning sins.

9. Definition. - Free is said of that which proceeds from the will determining itself with the power of not acting. But liberty is the faculty of acting or not acting, or the faculty of choosing one thing before another. Hence everything free is voluntary, but not conversely. See above n. 4 under 4°.

Division. - Manifold species of liberty are distinguished.

1° Liberty from necessity, or liberty

of indifference, or of election, which is immunity from every antecedent intrinsic necessity; and this is liberty properly and strictly so called.

2° Liberty from coercion, or liberty of spontaneity, which is immunity from every extrinsic violence brought upon one.

3° Liberty of contradiction, which is the faculty of bearing oneself toward contradictories, for example of studying or not studying.

4° Liberty of contrariety, by which someone can choose one thing, or the contrary of this, for example to love or to hate.

5° Liberty of specification, which is the faculty of bearing oneself toward diverse things, for example to walk, to play, etc.

St. Thomas, I p., q. 83; q. 24 de Veritate; q. 6 de Malo, and elsewhere.

Note 1° that among the various acceptations of liberty two especially are distinguished.

The first is liberty from violence or coercion, and it is called spontaneity or free inclination. It is found in all who act not compelled by external force, but from inclination, even though necessitating. With this liberty the blessed love God, and God loves himself. It extends even to brute animals, nay even to inanimate things. Thus water is said to flow spontaneously, the stone to descend downward of itself.

The second liberty is from necessity, and it is immunity not only from coercion or violence, but also from natural instinct and determination to one thing without power toward the opposite : with which liberty he enjoys who can will or not will, will this or that. It is called the liberty of indifference, because it is toward opposites. And since indifference is twofold, namely as regards specification and exercise, so liberty from necessity is twofold, namely of specification and of exercise. Liberty of exercise, which is also called liberty of contradiction, is toward an act and its omission, whereby indeed one can act and not act, love and not love. Liberty of specification is toward acts specifically diverse, which acts, if they be contraries, as to love and to hate, to sit and to stand, is called liberty of contrariety; if they be disparate acts, as to pray or to study, it is called liberty of disparity. That the liberty of the will lies in this liberty from necessity we now suppose, and we shall prove below.

Note 2° the various errors concerning free will. The Stoics denied it, from fate; the astrologers, from the influx of the stars; the Manichaeans, from a twofold soul, one good, the other evil, one of which necessarily coerced the other by this very fact that it prevailed; the Wiclefites, Lutherans and Calvinists, from original sin and from the force of necessitating grace; Baius and Jansenius¹, from the same principles. ¹ Baius said : « What is done voluntarily, although it be done necessarily, is nevertheless done freely. » This is his proposition 39, condemned by St. Pius V. « Only violence is repugnant to the liberty of man. » It is proposition 66. — Jansenius, lib. IV de Statu naturae lapsae, c. 24 : for Augustine « it is abundantly enough that the sinner... knowing and prudent, be borne into evil with full will, whether he can extricate himself from that necessity of loving the evil, or cannot. » He teaches the same in lib. IV de Gratia Christi, c. 9, that, « with carnal delectation prevailing, it is impossible that the consideration of virtue and honesty should prevail. » And he draws this also from that saying of St. Augustine which he repeats a thousand times and badly understands, in cap. v Epist. ad Galat. : « By what we are more delighted, according to that it behooves us to work, »

As regards Jansenius, it must be observed that he admits verbatim a liberty of the will compatible with necessity. He says therefore that the liberty of the will, which he calls essential, is compatible with a necessity fixed, invariable and perpetual, which can vary in no circumstances, such as that by which God loves himself, by which the blessed love God. The liberty of the will as regards the present state of man wayfarer he says subsists with a necessity not fixed and invariable, but transitory and relative, which, the present circumstances standing, relatively to a superior opposing force cannot be overcome, although absolutely and in other circumstances it could be overcome. Whence the whole liberty of the will which Jansenius acknowledges in this state of fallen nature is nothing else than alternative necessity, or turnability from one necessity to another; because wayfarers are not immovably fixed in evil, like the damned, but flexible now toward good, now toward evil, according as celestial or earthly delectation prevails, yet always necessarily : in almost the manner in which a dog now fawns, now grows angry, yet always necessarily.

^{1 1} Baius said : « What is done voluntarily, although it be done necessarily, is nevertheless done freely. » This is his proposition 39, condemned by St. Pius V. « Only violence is repugnant to the liberty of man. » It is proposition 66. — Jansenius, lib. IV de Statu naturae lapsae, c. 24 : for Augustine « it is abundantly enough that the sinner... knowing and prudent, be borne into evil with full will, whether he can extricate himself from that necessity of loving the evil, or cannot. » He teaches the same in lib. IV de Gratia Christi, c. 9, that, « with carnal delectation prevailing, it is impossible that the consideration of virtue and honesty should prevail. » And he draws this also from that saying of St. Augustine which he repeats a thousand times and badly understands, in cap. v Epist. ad Galat. : « By what we are more delighted, according to that it behooves us to work, »

On the other hand the Pelagians erred concerning free will, extolling it too much. They said 1° that it avails toward good just as toward evil without the grace of God; 2° that it cannot stand together with the necessity of preventing grace; 3° that Jesus was in no way touched by the sin of Adam, which they denied was transmitted to posterity; but that, placed as it were in equilibrium, he had equal indifference and facility either toward good or toward evil, as in the state of innocence; 4° they wished the power of sinning to belong to the essence of liberty.

Note 3° that there is a twofold root of liberty, one external, the other intrinsic. The intrinsic root of liberty is the supreme efficacy of the divine will¹ ; because, since God is the most universal cause of all being and all its modes, and the liberty of the will, both potential and actual, is one of its modes and perfections, as well as of all its actions, it plainly follows that liberty flows from the efficacy of the divine will, as from an external root. ¹ Ia p., q. 19, a. 8, c.

The intrinsic root of liberty is threefold. The first and remote is the very condition of intellectual nature² , which, on account of its immateriality, obtains that capacity that, without alteration of itself, it can receive within itself the forms of all things and become all things in intentional being. Hence follows the universality of the intellect, by which it can know all things, search them out, examine them, turn itself in all directions, judge of them what is to be fled, what pursued, likewise reflect upon its own judgment above itself, amend it, change it and reprove it. And this is the second intrinsic root of liberty. Now upon this universal intellectual form follows the inclination of like condition, namely the will capable of every universal and infinite good, and its eminence above all particular goods. And this is the third and proximate root of liberty; for from it there results in the will dominion over its own acts, and the right of disposing of them at a nod, in which formally consists the liberty of the will. ² Ia p., q. 14, a. 1, c ; q. 82, a. 2, c ; q. 24 de Verit., a. 2 ; q. 6 de Malo, a. unico, and elsewhere.

Note 4° that among the various definitions of liberty which St. Thomas hands down, the following is more frequently used by him, and is the best¹ , namely : « The elective power of means, the order of the end being preserved. » ¹ Ia p., q. 62, a. 8, ad 3 and q. 83, a. 4, c, and elsewhere.

It is explained. It is called power, that is, faculty or active potency. It is called elective power, because from this we are said to have free will, that we can take one thing, another refused; which is to choose. It is called elective power of means, because election properly is not about the end as end² , but only about means; because election, in things doable, stands to them as conclusion stands in things speculative, and the end as principle; whence, as conclusion is not about principles, but about their consequences, so election is not about the end, but about the means to it. I said, « about the end as end; » because, as in speculative matters nothing hinders what is the principle of one demonstration from being the conclusion of another demonstration (yet the first principle among demonstrables cannot be the conclusion of another demonstration), so also it happens that what is as end in one operation is ordered to something else as to an end, and in this way the end falls under election : thus, in the operation of a physician, health stands as end, whence it does not fall under the physician's election, but he supposes it as principle; but bodily health is ordered to the good of the soul, whence for him who has care of the salvation of the soul, being healthy or being sick can fall under election. But the last end falls under election in no way, because it cannot be ordered to anything else. ² Here q. 13, a. 3, c.

It is called, the order of the end being preserved ; because free will stands to choosing those things that are toward the end as intellect stands to the conclusion. But it is manifest that it pertains to the power of the intellect that it can proceed into various conclusions according to given principles; but that it proceed into some conclusion passing over the order of principles, this is from its defect. Similarly therefore, that free will can choose various things while preserving the order of the end, this pertains to the perfection of liberty; but that it choose something turning aside from the order of the end, this pertains to the defect of liberty. Whence the liberty of the will is greater and more perfect in God, in Christ and in the angels, who cannot sin, than in us, who can sin. And hence already it is clear that the power of sinning is not of the essence of liberty, but is its blemish : of which again below.

The other definition, now very commonly circulated, of liberty, is namely : « The faculty by which, all prerequisites for acting being posited, one can act or not act. » Truly that definition is ambiguous, and put forward by those who reject physical premotions. If then it be understood of the requisites temporally prior to acting, we admit it, both in the composite and divided sense, both of consequent and antecedent potency. But if it be understood of the requisites naturally prior only to acting, we do not admit it except in the divided sense and of antecedent potency for not acting; because, in this very instant in which the requisites for acting exist naturally only, there is action, and so with requisites of this kind for acting there remains indeed a potency for not acting, but it cannot conjoin non-act with them. Whence, according to this sense, it is improperly said in the definition, « by which one can act or not act », but it ought to be said, ibid. « which actually acts with the potency of not acting. »

Therefore R. P. Franciscus Henno was gravely hallucinated when, tract. de Principiis actuum humanorum, q. 3, he wrote that Thomists teach a physical premotion, « while it stands, non-action cannot be, unless in the divided sense of premotion, that is, premotion taken away, » and similar things. This doctrine is Calvinian, not Thomistic. For the Thomists teach that, the premotion to act standing, and in the composite sense of premotion, there remains a complete and expedite potency for non-act, because premotion supposes on both sides the complete potency, and holds itself only on the side of second act.

Note 5° that it does not pertain to free will to be the first determiner.

It is evident, first, from the nature of created being, to which dependence both in being and in operating upon uncreated being is so essential that it can by no reason be torn from it; since indeed the character of created being cannot be conceived, nor any of its perfections, which does not arise from God and depend upon him. Whence God is called not only first being, but first cause, first principle, first mover, first determiner, first free; because, as no being exists except participated from him, so no cause, no mover, no determiner, no free agent, except subordinated to him. And as, if there were some being not participated from him, it would cease to be first being; so, if the will were the first mover and determiner of itself, it would cease to be first cause, first principle, first mover, first free, and a creature would be adorned with these prerogatives, and would become as it were another God; for first is said of that which supposes no other prior.

Neither say you, with the adversaries, that although the will determined itself first, it would not therefore be the first cause and first principle; because the character of first cause and first principle requires not only that it be not moved by another, but also that it be from itself. This character indeed St. Thomas attacks as false in II Sentent., dist. 37, q. 2, a. 2, c. Because, he says, « it seems unfitting that what has not being from itself can act from itself...; for all power proceeds from essence, and operation from power. Whence whose essence is from another, his power and operation must be from another. » He adds : « Besides, although by this answer it were avoided that it not be simply first, still it could not be avoided that it be the first agent, if its action were not reduced to some prior agent, as to cause. »

It is evident, secondly, from observation, because nothing forbids the will to be first moved and determined by God, if under that motion of God it also moves and determines itself, and so preserves its liberty, and the character of praise and merit. For the adversaries deny that the will is first determined by God for no other reason than that they think, under that determination, the will does not move and determine itself, but is so determined to one that the opposite is not possible, and so is despoiled of its liberty. But it is thus that under the determination of God the will itself moves and determines itself. For to what purpose is given that motion and determination of God? Certainly not that the will do nothing, but that it act in a manner consonant to itself, that is, freely, so that it can act and not act. Whence the divine motion and determination not only does not prevent the will from moving and determining itself, but rather effects this very thing, that under that motion and determination it moves and determines itself. Therefore.

And this is the constant and perpetual doctrine of D. Thomas in all his works. Ia p., q. 83, a. 1, ad 3 : « Free will, he says, is the cause of its own motion, because man by free will moves himself to act. Not however is it of the necessity of liberty, that that which is free be the first cause of itself : as neither for a thing to be the cause of another is it required that it be the first cause of it. God therefore is the first moving cause both of natural causes and of voluntary ones. And as by moving natural causes he does not take away that their actions be natural; so, by moving voluntary causes, he does not take away that their actions be voluntary, but rather he effects this in them; for he operates in each thing according to its property. »

I say: Of faith it is that there exists in fallen man liberty of arbitrium or of indifference ¹. It is against Lutherans and Calvinists, to whom, as to the thing, Jansenius subscribed, although, as to the word, he admits free will, as is plain from what was said in the preceding article. ¹ I p., q. 83, a. 1, c; q. 24 de Veritate, a. 1; q. 6 de Malo, sole article.

It is proved from Scripture. Ecclus., XV, 17 and 18: He added water and fire before thee: stretch forth thy hand unto which thou wilt. Before man is life and death, good and evil, that which shall please thee shall be given thee. ibid., XXXI, 10: Eternal glory shall be his who could transgress, and hath not transgressed, could do evil, and hath not done it. I Cor., VII, 36: Let him do what he will; he sinneth not if he marry. And soon after, 37: Having no necessity, but having power of his own will.

It is proved from the Council of Trent, session VI, canon 5: « If anyone say that it is not in the power of man to make his ways evil... ; let him be anathema. »

It is proved from the Fathers, especially from Augustine, whom the heretics claim. Above all, St. Augustine wrote the book On Grace and Free Will for this very end, that he might prove that both ought to be admitted: « Because, he says, c. 1, n. 1, there are certain ones who so defend the grace of God that they deny the free will of man, I therefore took care..... to write something. » And cap. 2, n. 2: « The divine precepts themselves would profit man nothing, unless he had the free choice of will, by which, doing them, he might arrive at the promised rewards. » And further below, n. 4: « How does he command, if there is no free will? » Lib. II de Nuptiis et Concupisc., c. 3, n. 8, addressing the Pelagians: « That free will exists in men..., we say to both parties. Hence you are not Celestians and Pelagians. » For this indeed speaks the Catholic faith.

It is proved by reason, which Augustine himself urges in the places cited and in many others ¹. If man were not free with liberty of arbitrium and indifference, vain would be counsels, exhortations, precepts, prohibitions, rewards and punishments. For either man would be necessarily determined to do the things commanded or counseled, and thus in vain would be commanded or counseled what he could not fail to do; or he would be necessarily determined not to do them, and thus in vain would he be prohibited from that from which he could not abstain. Therefore. ¹ I p., q. 83, a. 1 cit.

It is confirmed. Man in this state of fallen nature sometimes elicits meritorious and demeritorious acts ¹. But for this is required liberty from necessity ¹, as I shall say in the following article. Therefore. ¹ I p., q. 83, a. 1 cit. ¹ I p., q. 83, a. 1 cit.

It is proved by reason a priori ¹. Man by sin did not cease to be of intellectual nature. But intellectual nature free will follows inseparably, as is plain from what was said of the root of liberty. Therefore. ¹ I p., q. 83, a. 1 cit.

It is proved from experience, whereby it appears that man freely chooses one thing and rejects another ². ² Q. 24 de Veritate cit.

Obj. from Augustine: The holy Doctor 1° in Enchir., c. 30, says: « By ill using free will, man lost both himself and it. » 2° In the imperfect Work against Julian he is wholly bent upon impugning the liberty of indifference, as the basis of the whole Pelagian heresy. 3° Ibid., lib. I, c. 105, acknowledges from original sin a necessity of sinning: « Thou errest greatly, he says, who thinkest that there is no necessity whatever of sinning. » 4° In cap. v ad Galat., that famous saying: « That which more delights us, according to it we must needs work. »

I answer, to the first: free will is said by Augustine to have been lost by the sin of Adam, not as though it were extinguished as to substance, but because it was made worse and weakened as to good; in about that sense in which a father is said to lose a son whom excessive indulgence suffers to become scandalous. Moreover this is plainer not from the Pelagian sense, but from the very words objected. For he says that man by sin lost free will, just as he lost himself. But he lost himself not as to substance, as though he had ceased to be man, but as to perfection of justice and facility of virtue, insofar as he lies subject to ignorance, concupiscence and disease. Thus Augustine himself explains himself in express terms lib. I ad Bonifac., against two Epistles of Pelagius, c. 2, n. 5: « Who of us, he says, would say that by the sin of the first man free will perished from the human race? Liberty indeed perished through sin, but that which was in paradise, of possessing full justice together with

¹ — ^{2 1} Ibid. ² Q. 24 de Veritate cit.

immortality; wherefore human nature needs divine grace. »

To the second. St. Augustine impugns the liberty of indifference, not in the sense of Catholics, but in the sense of Pelagians, against whom he is writing. The Pelagians contended that the liberty of man was in no wise wounded by original sin, whose existence they denied, nor inclined more to sin than to good, but constituted in perfect equilibrium, moving itself with equal moment toward virtues and vices, as in nature integral. This Pelagian indifference Augustine impugns, but not that which the Catholic faith establishes, whereby, although attenuated in force and inclined to evil, man so remains lord of his own acts that he can act or not act, act this or that — aided, namely, by grace, where the question is of salutary work; but grace, urgent necessity pressing, fails him not according to its exigency, as I said in the treatise on God.

To the third ¹. St. Augustine speaks of a moral necessity of sinning, taken for great difficulty of abstaining from sin, because of the vice of nature corrupted by original sin, whence follows a certain vague and indeterminate necessity of sometimes sinning. Moreover Augustine sometimes speaks of sins taken materially, such as the undeliberate motions of concupiscence and involuntary ignorance, which are called sins materially and improperly, inasmuch as they are effects of sin and move to sin, and from which man cannot be without in this life. ¹ St. Th., Opusc. I contra errores Graecorum, c. 28.

To the fourth. Augustine speaks either of delight deliberate or undeliberate. If of the undeliberate, a moral necessity must be understood, taken for great difficulty of acting otherwise. For Augustine himself teaches that resistance can be made to greater delight: « Man, he says, lib. LXXXIII quaest., q. 70, even with pain can restrain the great delight of hunting ². » If he speak of deliberate delight, as it is commonly understood, necessity must indeed be understood ² Here the sense of Augustine is reported, not his very words.

¹ — ^{2 1} St. Th., Opusc. I contra errores Graecorum, c. 28. ² Here the sense of Augustine is reported, not his very words.

simply so called, but hypothetical, and consequent upon the will. For that which delights us the more deliberately is that which we deliberately love and choose before another. But we must needs embrace and follow in external work what we deliberately choose before another, just as it is necessary that I speak while I am speaking. But this necessity, as is plain, follows the very free determination of the will, and thus injures not its liberty. Of which again, when treating of grace.

The dogma of faith being posited, namely that man in the state of fallen nature enjoys liberty from necessity or indifference, which we call liberty of arbitrium, we now ask whether this liberty from necessity is altogether required for meriting or demeriting in this same state; — or whether the liberty of spontaneity, or from coercion, does not suffice.

I say 1° : To merit or demerit in the state of fallen nature there is required in man liberty from necessity, or liberty of indifference, and the liberty from coercion does not suffice ¹ . ¹ Q. 6 de Malo, a. unico, c.

Thus defined it Innocent XII and Alexander VII, condemning as heretical this third proposition of Jansenius contradictory to our conclusion, in the sense intended by the author: « To merit and demerit, in the state of fallen nature, there is not required in man liberty from necessity, but the liberty from coercion suffices. » S. Pius V and Greg. XIII, condemning this 67th proposition of Baius: « Man sins, even damnably, in that which he does necessarily. » St. Thomas preceded these Pontiffs, q. 6 cit. de Malo, where he says the contrary opinion to be