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The principle which dominates all questions on distinction and
subordination of faculties, and which, consequently, dominates all
moral theology, is formulated as follows: Faculties, habits, and
acts are specifically distinguished by their formal object, or more
precisely, by their formal object which (quod) they attain without
medium and their formal object by which (quo) the object is attained.
This principle, which clarifies all psychology, all ethics, all
moral theology, is one of the three fundamental truths of Thomism.
As formulated, in the seventeenth century, by A. Reginald,
[656] it runs thus: [657] A relative thing becomes
specifically distinct by the absolute thing to which it is essentially
proportioned. Thus sight is specifically distinct from the other
senses by its proportion to color, hearing by its proportion to sound,
intellect by proportion to intelligible reality, will by proportion to
the good which it loves and wills. [658] .
From this principle it follows that the soul faculties are really
distinct realities, not identified with the soul itself. In other
words, when the soul knows, it knows, not immediately of itself, but
by its accidental faculty of intellect, and wills by its faculty of
will, and so on. This truth is not a mere habit of daily speech. It
lies in the very nature of things. The essence of the soul is
certainly a real capacity, a real potency, but since it is not its own
existence, it receives from God that substantial existence to which it
is proportioned. This existence is an act different from the act of
understanding or willing, because a thing must be before it can act.
Therefore, just as the soul's essence is a real capacity for
existence, so must the soul have potencies, faculties, real
capacities for knowing the truth, for loving the good, for imagining,
for feeling emotion, for seeing, hearing, and so on.
In God alone are all these things identified: essence, existence,
intelligence, understanding, willing, loving. In the angel, as in
man, essence is not existence, essence is not faculty, intellect is
not its successive acts, nor will its successive volitions.
[659] .
In place of this real distinction Scotus demands a distinction
formal-actual ex natura rei. Here, too, Thomists answer, that a
medium between real distinction and mental distinction is impossible.
If a distinction is anterior to our mental act, it is real, otherwise
it is merely mental.
Suarez, [660] here again, seeks a medium between Aquinas and
Scotus. He thinks the distinction between soul and soul faculties is
not certain, only probable. This position too derives from his
departure from St. Thomas in the doctrine of potency and act.
How do the soul faculties derive from the soul? As characteristics
derive from essence, so all soul faculties, intellective, sensitive,
and vegetative, derive from the one human soul. But the reason why
the intellective faculties so immeasurably transcend the sense faculties
lies in their respective formal object. Sense faculties, however
perfect, since they are limited to here and now, can never reach the
inward raison d'etre of a thing, never grasp necessary and universal
principles, speculative or practical. In this transcendent power of
the intellective faculty lies the proof for the spirituality of the
soul. [661] .
Thus also the will, by its formal object, is distinguished from sense
appetite, concupiscible and irascible. [662] The will is a
spiritual power, directed by the intellect, and specifically
distinguished by universal good, which cannot be known by sense
faculties, whereas sense appetite, illuminated only by these sense
faculties, is specifically proportioned to sensible good, delectable
or useful. Hence sense appetite as such can never desire that rational
good which is the object of virtue.
This profound distinction, this immeasurable distance, between will
and sense appetite goes unrecognized by many modern psychologists, who
follow Jean Jacques Rousseau.
Does each faculty have its own special and determinate corporeal
organ? Each sense faculty does, and hence the immediate subject of
all sense faculties is, not the soul, but the human composite, soul
and body united. But intellect and will, being independent of the
organism, which is particular and limited, have as their subject, not
the human composite, but the soul alone. [663] .
We cannot here dwell on the intellectual act. [664] Let us
merely note that its adequate object is intelligible being in its
fullest amplitude, by reason of which amplitude man can, in the
natural order, know God, the first cause, and, in the
supernatural, can be elevated to the immediate vision of the divine
essence. Since its proper object, however, is the essence of the
sense world, our intellect can know God and all spiritual beings only
by analogy with the sense world, the lowest of intelligible realities,
to know which it needs the sense faculties as instruments. In this
state of union with body, its manner of knowing the spiritual world is
not immediate like that of the angel. So its very definition of the
spiritual is negative. Spiritual, it says, is what is immaterial,
i. e.: non material. And this negative mode of knowing the
spiritual shows clearly that its proper sphere is in the world of
sense.
This teaching on the nature of human intelligence leads us to the
nature of human freedom. [665] Of this freedom there are two
opposed definitions, one Thomistic, the other, Molinistic. Molina
[666] gives this definition: That agent is free, who,
granting all prerequisites for acting, can either act or not act. Now
this definition, standard among Molinists, however simple and
satisfactory it seems at first sight, is in reality linked necessarily
with Molina's theory of scientia media. [667] .
What does Molina mean by the phrase "granting all prerequisites for
acting"? His explanations show that the phrase includes, not merely
what is prerequired by priority of time, but also what is prerequired
by priority of nature and causality. It includes therefore the actual
grace received at the very moment of performing a salutary act. Hence
this definition, Molina explains, does not mean that the free will,
under efficacious grace, preserves the power of resisting even while,
in fact, it never does resist. What it does mean is this: Grace is
not of itself efficacious, it is efficacious only by our own consent,
pre-known by God (pre-known by God's scientia media of future
conditional things).
Molina's definition, in the eyes of Thomists, is defective because
it leaves out of consideration the object which specifically
distinguishes the free act. It neglects the fundamental principle,
that all faculties, habits, and acts are what they are by their
specific relation to their respective object.
Now if, on the contrary, we consider the specific object of free
will, we will recall the words of St. Thomas: "If we set before
the will an object, which from any point of view is not good, the will
is not drawn to it by necessity." [668] These words contain,
equivalently, the Thomistic definition of free will which runs thus:
[669] Freedom is the will's dominative indifference in relation
to any object which reason proposes as in any way lacking in good.
Let us dwell on this definition. Reason proposes an object which,
here and now, is in one way good but in some other way not good.
Faced with such an object the will can choose it or refuse it. The
will, as faculty, has potential indifference; as act, it has actual
indifference. Even when the will actually chooses such an object,
even when it is already determined to will it, it still goes freely
toward it, with its dominating indifference no longer potential but
actual. Indeed, in God, who is supremely free, there is no
potential indifference, but only an actual and active indifference.
Freedom arises from the disproportion which exists between the will,
specifically distinguished and necessitated by universal good, and this
or that limited and particular good, good in one way, not good in
another way.
Against Suarez, Thomists pronounce thus: It is impossible that
God, even by His absolute power, could necessitate the will to
choose an object which reason proposes as indifferent. Why? Because
it is self-contradictory, that the will should necessarily will an
object which reason says is in some way not good, and which therefore
is absolutely disproportioned to the only object which can necessitate
the will. [670] .
Here enters the twenty-first of the twenty-four theses. [671]
"The will follows, it does not precede the intellect. And the will
necessarily wills only that object which is presented to it as good from
every angle, leaving nothing to be desired. But the will chooses
freely between good things presented by mutable judgment. Hence choice
follows indeed the last practical judgment, but it is the will which
makes that judgment to be the last."
How does the will make the last practical judgment to be the last? It
does this by accepting it as last, instead of turning to a new
consideration which would result in an opposed practical judgment.
Intellect and will are thus reciprocally related, with a kind of
matrimonial relation, since voluntary consent, ending deliberation,
accepts the judgment here and now present as last. Intellectual
direction is indispensable, since the will is of itself blind: nothing
can be willed unless foreknown as good.
Suarez, [672] on the contrary, following Scotus, maintains
that voluntary choice is not necessarily preceded by a practical
judgment immediately directive. The will, when faced with two good
objects, equally or unequally good, can, he says, freely choose
either of them, even though the intellect does not propose that one as
here and now the better. Using their principle as measuring-stick,
Thomists reply: Nothing can be preferred here and now, unless
foreknown as here and now better. That something not really better can
here and now be judged better depends, of course, on the evil
disposition of man's appetites, intellectual and sensitive.
[673] .
We have elsewhere examined at great length this problem: [674]
the special antinomies relative to freedom; the reciprocal influence of
the last practical judgment and free choice; comparison of Thomist
doctrine with the psychological determinism of Leibnitz, on the one
hand, and on the other, with the voluntarism of Scotus, followed
partly by Suarez.
In a brief word, the essential thing for St. Thomas is that the
intellect and will are not coordinated, but mutually subordinated.
The last practical judgment is free when its object (good from one
viewpoint, not good from another) does not necessitate it. Freedom
of will, to speak properly, is to be found in the indifference of
judgment.
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