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306 u o b s e rv a t i o n i i u From an internal principle a man can move himself to undertake or to leave undone a certain action. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. An act of the will. A spontaneous action. An allowed action. Compulsion. Free choice of will. The will commands man’s faculties. 7. 8. 9. 10. The will cannot be compelled. The will can conform itself to the norm. Whence it comes that it is capable of obligation. Where obligation is wanting the will is free. 1. Since man was to be made by the Creator an animal to be governed by laws, he had to have a will as an internal moderator of his actions, to wit, in order that, when objects had been placed before him and recognized, he might move himself towards them from an intrinsic principle, without some physical necessity, and might be able to choose that which seemed most suitable to himself. This will is conceived as exerting itself through two faculties, as it were, through one of which it actsspontaneously, through the other, freely. To spontaneity are commonly attributed definite acts or movements, of which there are certain interior ones called elicited, certain exterior ones called commanded. Elicited acts are those which are directly produced by the will and received in the same. Some of them are occupied with the end, as volition, intention, fruition; others with the means, asconsent , election, and utilization. Volition is applied to an act of the will whereby the will itself simply moves to an end, without regard to whether that be present or absent, or, in other words, simply where an end approves itself to the will. Intention, or moral choice, is an effectual desire to obtain the end, or, in other words, it is an act of the will by which it effectually will governs human action 307 moves to an absent end and strives to attain it.1 Although there are several grades of this, nevertheless, it is commonly divided into complete and incomplete . Men call a complete intention that whereby the will, afterhaving weighed a matter sufficiently, and without being swept away by the vehemence of emotions, moves to something. They call an intention incomplete when it was accompanied by no sufficient deliberation, or reason was shattered by a whirlwind of emotions. Fruition is the rest or the delight of the will in the end already obtained and present. Now consent is applied to a simple approval of means, as far as they are judged useful to the end; and these means, when in our power, election destines to the obtaining of the end, and utilization employs. They call those acts commanded acts which are entrusted by others to the faculties of the mind for execution. 2. Now to spontaneous actions, which, of course, are undertaken from an internal movement of the will together with previous cognition, are to be referred also those which men commonly call mixed, when aminornonmoral evil, useless or unpleasant, is undertaken for the purpose of escaping a greater evil, which could not be avoided in any other way. For, whatever reduction can be made in a greater evil, otherwise inevitable, is to be reckoned as a gain; and so, in this case, a less evil is in very fact rendered desirable , and one to which the will in its present state spontaneously moves, seeing that for it the avoidance of the whole evil, or merely a part, is the equivalent of a good. This is the source of that trite saying: “Of two evils (non-moral) the less is to be chosen, if it be necessary to undergo one or the other.” Thus, although, for example, the casting of merchandise into the sea is not in itself something desirable, nevertheless, under definite circumstances , it is, as a matter of fact, eagerly done, supposing, for example, if I am unable to save my life in any other way when a storm has arisen. 1. Pufendorf’s distinction between volition that simply approves an end andintention or . . . choice that is the “effectual desire to obtain an end” follows Aristotle’s distinction of wish (boúlhsic), which might relate to impossibles (Nicomachean Ethics III, 1111b20ff), from choice (proaírhsic) as the “deliberate desire of things in our own power”; cf. JNG, 1, 4, §1. Choice in particular qualifies an action as “voluntary . . . of which the moving principle is in...

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