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Objection 1: It would seem that consent belongs only to the
apprehensive part of the soul. For Augustine (De Trin. xii,
12) ascribes consent to the higher reason. But the reason is an
apprehensive power. Therefore consent belongs to an apprehensive
power.
Objection 2: Further, consent is "co-sense." But sense is an
apprehensive power. Therefore consent is the act of an apprehensive
power.
Objection 3: Further, just as assent is an application of the
intellect to something, so is consent. But assent belongs to the
intellect, which is an apprehensive power. Therefore consent also
belongs to an apprehensive power.
On the contrary, Damascene says (De Fide Orth. ii, 22) that
"if a man judge without affection for that of which he judges, there
is no sentence," i.e. consent. But affection belongs to the
appetitive power. Therefore consent does also.
I answer that, Consent implies application of sense to something.
Now it is proper to sense to take cognizance of things present; for
the imagination apprehends the similitude of corporeal things, even in
the absence of the things of which they bear the likeness; while the
intellect apprehends universal ideas, which it can apprehend
indifferently, whether the singulars be present or absent. And since
the act of an appetitive power is a kind of inclination to the thing
itself, the application of the appetitive power to the thing, in so
far as it cleaves to it, gets by a kind of similitude, the name of
sense, since, as it were, it acquires direct knowledge of the thing
to which it cleaves, in so far as it takes complacency in it. Hence
it is written (Wis. 1:1): "Think of [Sentite] the Lord in
goodness." And on these grounds consent is an act of the appetitive
power.
Reply to Objection 1: As stated in De Anima iii, 9, "the will
is in the reason." Hence, when Augustine ascribes consent to the
reason, he takes reason as including the will.
Reply to Objection 2: Sense, properly speaking, belongs to the
apprehensive faculty; but by way of similitude, in so far as it
implies seeking acquaintance, it belongs to the appetitive power, as
stated above.
Reply to Objection 3: "Assentire" [to assent] is, to speak,
"ad aliud sentire" [to feel towards something]; and thus it implies
a certain distance from that to which assent is given. But
"consentire" [to consent] is "to feel with," and this implies a
certain union to the object of consent. Hence the will, to which it
belongs to tend to the thing itself, is more properly said to consent:
whereas the intellect, whose act does not consist in a movement towards
the thing, but rather the reverse, as we have stated in the FP,
Question 16, Article 1; FP, Question 27, Article 4;
FP, Question 59, Article 2, is more properly said to assent:
although one word is wont to be used for the other. We may also say
that the intellect assents, in so far as it is moved by the will.
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