Chapter 2
The Willed Act
571. To include will in the definition of human acts is not, therefore, entirely accurate. Properly speaking, human acts are the genus, willed acts the species. `Will' was included in the definition of human acts for two reasons: first, because moral authors wished to define acts which were not only human but also moral; second, because `will' was understood as a general faculty by which human beings can move all their powers. When `will' is understood in such a wide sense, every intellective act must simultaneously be conceived as willed.
In my opinion, however, the will is not simply that which moves the understanding. We must define it more strictly as: `The power by which the human being tends to known good,' or more generally: `The power by which the human being tends to a known and pleasing object.' Consequently, I think that it is philosophically inaccurate to extend the meaning of the word `will' excessively; such a use results in equivocations and useless discussions. Declaring the will to be the sole mover of all other powers means including instinct in the definition. A similar extension of meaning is given to the word `knowledge', when it is made to include corporeal sensations.
People are generally inclined to broaden the sense of the words `knowledge' and `will' because they tend to attribute to external objects what they experience in themselves. For example, primitive nations attribute a soul to all the objects of nature because they cannot understand how natural beings are moved without a spirit in them; and in this respect perhaps they reason better than philosophers. Thus, in order to explain the phenomena of brute animals, popular philosophy makes analogous use of what is seen to take place in human beings, attributing knowledge and will to animals solely because in human beings the same effects are seen to arise from knowledge and will. The reasoning is certainly false, but we must not be surprised at finding such loose terminology (in which sensation is taken for knowledge, and instinct for will) in the earliest philosophers. What is surprising is that it still exists.(230)
572. The Scholastics' general acceptance of the will as the principal mover of all the powers gave rise to an extraordinary and truly insoluble question: `Does the intellect move the will, or vice versa?' On the one hand, they said, the will moves the intellect because the will is that which moves all the powers. On the other, the will tends only to what is known; the intellect therefore must move the will, presenting to it an object to which it tends. St. Thomas deals with the question in his Summa Theologica. He first grants that `the will, acting like an agent, moves all the powers of the soul to their acts except the natural, vegetable forces which are not subject to our will'.(231) This was the common opinion. Here the word `will' has the broad meaning which produces the confusion we want to dispel. But the difficulty arising from this principle could not escape the observation of a genius like Thomas.
He himself states the difficulty: `We cannot will anything which the intellect has not first known. Now, although the intellect cannot move without being moved by the will, the will that moves the intellect must have some prior cognition present to it. And so the process continues to infinity if every act of the will must be preceded by an act of the intellect and every act of the intellect preceded by an act of the will.' Thomas replies that the process to infinity is avoided by stopping at the first movement of the intellect. But who causes this first movement of the intellect? God himself, answers St. Thomas, not the will.(232) `Intellectual apprehension necessarily precedes any movement whatsoever of the will, but a movement of the will does not precede every intellectual apprehension. Thus the principle that moves us to consider and understand is an intellective principle higher than our intellect: it is God himself'.(233) This means that the will is not the sole mover of the human intellect.
St. Thomas saw and maintained the strict, rigorous definition of the will. He says that it is `a certain inclination consequent to the form of the intellect'.(234) Hence, the intellect first acts without the intervention of the will, and according to the natural impulse which it posits in its first act, as we have said. By this first act, the intellect is always drawn to intuit being (which is necessarily present to it) and the determinations and realisations of being, that is, of particular, real beings.
573. This natural inclination of the human spirit is exactly like the inclination which moves the animal's life instinct. Just as animal instinct posits feeling, which is the essence of animal, so the first act of the intellect posits understanding, which is the essence of the human being as an intelligent being. In the way that the life instinct, when it changes its matter, shows its activity with different effects, so the intellect, when sense presents it with some determined actions of being, displays its activity with the immediate perception of real objects. Thus the intellect is in continuous act even before the forces of the will move. This intellective activity, devoid of the will's control, embraces the intuition of universal being and the perception of feelable things. As Aquinas says, therefore, the cause of the first act of the intellect, as well as the cause of the act of the life instinct, is found only in God, the Author of nature.(235)
Notes
(230) St. Thomas is quick to observe that knowledge and will can be attributed to brute animals only when these words are used in a metaphorical sense. Certain places in his works, where he seems to attribute knowledge and will to animals, must, according to the intention of the Saint, be interpreted with this observation in mind.
(231) S.T., I, q. 82, art. 4, corp.
(232) Sensists, who claim to have St. Thomas in their favour, should note this.
(233) S.T., I, q. 82, art. 4, ad 3.
(234) S.T., I, q. 87, art 4, corp.
(235) In the Summa St. Thomas also teaches that the natural instinct of brute animals is moved by God (S.T., II-II, q. 83, art. 10, ad 3).