Chapter 4
The Elective Act
579. We have distinguished the moral act from human, from intellective and from volitive acts. We must now distinguish it from acts of choice. The concept of acts of choice is not entirely the same as that of moral acts or of volitive acts. The will can wish without choice. This happens in all affective volitions. Hence, choice is not an essential characteristic of acts of the will.
580. The act of choice is not necessarily included even in evaluative volitions. If only one object were present to our minds, we could evaluate it indeterminately as good and desire it, but no comparison would be made with other objects nor would any kind of choice be involved in this action of our will. The act of choice or election takes place solely in those evaluative volitions in which we give a value to several objects present to our spirit. We choose one of them because we cannot have them all.
We have distinguished three levels of choice, because three kinds of conflict can arise between the good things from which we must choose. There can be conflict: 1. between things good for our animality which we cannot possess simultaneously; 2. between animal good and the subjective spiritual good proper to human nature; and finally, 3. between subjective good on the one hand and the objective order on the other. The first conflict reveals itself in us before the second, and the second before the third. This same sequence takes place at the three levels of choice.
It is clear that as long as we have not conceived the objective order of things, we feel no moral obligation. Hence, there are two levels of choice in the child before the child reaches the age of morality. The concept of the elective act of choice, therefore, is quite different from the concept of the moral act.