Disputationes metaphysicae

1. Every rational agent, and only such, is capable of freedom.—In the third and fourth reasons for doubting proposed in sect. 2, it is asked that we declare more distinctly which created causes are not subject to necessity in acting, and through what faculty they have this dominion. And indeed, concerning principal causes, or those operating ut quod, the resolution is easy from what has been said; for we showed that all things lacking reason also lack freedom on account of their imperfection. Whence it comes about, conversely, that all rational or intellectual agents are also free agents; for that negation of the use of reason is the sufficient and adequate reason of the lack of freedom; therefore the opposite affirmation is also the adequate reason of the opposite affirmation. And it is confirmed; for it has been shown in particular that man is a free agent, although in the intellectual grade he is the lowest of all; therefore a fortiori it must be said that all created agents which have intellect also have freedom. Which we shall say again of the created intelligences in particular below, in disputing about them. Nor does the argument taken from the motions or influences of the heavens stand against this. For, as regards the intelligences that move the heavens, although they are free in other things, they can be led by some necessity in moving the heavens, either from the motion and command of a superior agent or from a preconceived end which they immutably love and intend. As regards the influence of the heavens, however, it must be said that it does not extend directly and per se to spiritual and immaterial things, both because they inflow only through physical motion, of which a spiritual thing is incapable, and also because a spiritual thing is of a superior order, and therefore a material thing cannot act directly on it. But the minds of men are in themselves immaterial and have freedom inasmuch as they are immaterial and operate through an immaterial power; and therefore the influence of the heavens cannot impede the use of freedom in men, even if indirectly, by means of the body and its affections, it can incline them more or less to one or the other side, which inclination man can overcome by his freedom and rule the stars.

2. A spiritual substance is the radical principle of free action.—From which it is further established that the principal principle quo of free action is always some substance or spiritual substantial form. It is proved, because a principle of this kind is either the rational soul or some superior substance; but the rational soul is immaterial, and much more every superior substance; therefore. And it is confirmed, for every material form, as such, operates without intelligence and reason, and therefore operates in a merely natural mode; therefore the form which is the principle of free action must be spiritual.

3. The proximate principle of free action is always a spiritual power.—A free act is either elicited or commanded.—Thirdly, it is hence also established that the proximate principle of free action is some power of a spiritual substance inasmuch as it is spiritual or intellectual. Which I add on account of the human soul, which, although it has many faculties, many of them are nevertheless material, because they do not belong to it inasmuch as it is intellectual, and therefore they are not the proximate principle of free action. The reason of this assertion is that the proximate principle must be accommodated to the principal. Likewise, because a thing does not have dominion over its act except inasmuch as it is intellectual; therefore it does not have this dominion except through a faculty pertaining to the intellectual grade; but this grade is immaterial according to itself and according to all the powers proximate to it; therefore. It is only to be noted that an action is denominated free in two ways, namely, as an elicited act, or proximately in order to the power effecting the action, in which way willing itself is free; or as a commanded act, or remotely in order to the power moving or applying an inferior faculty to acting, in which way walking is free. When, therefore, we treat of the proximate principle of free action, it is to be understood of action properly free in order to its immediate principle; and in this way we say that the proximate principle of free action is a spiritual faculty; for the proximate principle of an action which is free only imperatively can sometimes be a material faculty, as is the motive power according to place residing in the members of the body, because it can be subordinated to a superior spiritual substance, in which is the proper dominating power over its own act, and by means of that over the inferior power and its action. Hence it can also be said that, although an imperatively free action, physically and according to its entity, is proximately made by another power, yet it does not have the denomination of freedom except from the superior power by means of its act; that power, therefore, which is the proximate principle of an act per se and immediately free must be spiritual and per se pertaining to the intellectual grade, inasmuch as it is such.

Free choice consists not in an act or a habit, but in some power

4. And hence, fourthly, we conclude that created free choice directly and formally consists in a power of this kind, which has the aforesaid force and dominion over its own act. Nor is it necessary to linger in refuting the opinions of those who said that free choice consists in some act, or in a habit, or in a power as affected by some habit. Of which opinions Hervaeus held the first, Quodl. I, q. 1; Bonaventure the second, In II, dist. 25, a. 1, q. 4; Albert the third, In II, dist. 24, a. 5. But these opinions either are not probable or use words otherwise. For man has free choice even when he would operate nothing; otherwise he would lose free choice by mere cessation from act, which is absurd; free choice, therefore, cannot consist in an act. Likewise, man is of free choice because he can operate and not operate, all the requisites for acting being posited; but he is proximately able to operate through some power; therefore he has freedom proximately through some power of the soul; such a power, therefore, will be free choice. Next, if the freedom of choice consists in some act, I ask whether that act is elicited by a free power or not. If the first is said, then freedom precedes that act; it is, therefore, in the power itself before the act. But if the second is said, that act is necessary; how, then, can the freedom of choice consist in it?

5. An objection is answered.—It will perhaps be said that that act, although it is necessary, can be the principle of free election or deliberation; for so Hervaeus seemed to philosophize. For he thinks that a power is not apt to elicit a free act unless a necessary act precedes which is its principle; for a free act (he says) is preceded by deliberation, and deliberation by the will to deliberate. But this can be understood of an act of the intellect or of an act of the will. It is true, then, that before the first freely elicited act there must necessarily precede an act of the intellect, not free nor properly voluntary, but natural; because, since nothing can be willed unless it is foreknown, before every volition some judgement must precede; that judgement, therefore, which precedes the first volition cannot have proceeded from the will, and consequently cannot be free. But it will be said most improperly and falsely that that judgement is free choice itself because in its genus it can be the foundation and origin of free use, because it is only a required condition and an application of the object in order that the free power may be able to use its faculty. And even if we granted that that judgement concurs actively to the act freely elicited by the will, freedom would nevertheless not consist in it; for rather it of itself inflows naturally, but it awaits (so to speak) the consent or influx of the will, in whose power it is to grant it or suspend it; freedom, therefore, is not rightly attributed to the judgement or act of the intellect as to the principle in which it proximately resides.

6. But if it is understood of an act of the will, it is not universally true that before every free act of the will there precedes some natural act which is the principle of the free act; for what is such an act, or what necessity is there why it should precede? It will be answered that it is the will to deliberate. But against this: in the first place, in God there is perfect freedom without such a will, there pre-existing in the intellect (according to our way of understanding) a perfect knowledge of things merely natural and necessary. The angel too in the first instant had a free act of the will without a previous will to deliberate through the intellect, but supposing only some actual cognition of the intellect, which it had concreated and received rather than acquired by its own will. And similarly man, if he has in the intellect sufficient proposal and consideration of the object, even if he does not have it from the application of the will but from the arousing of an object offered, or from the speech or infusion of another, can immediately freely will or not will such an object. And next, although in man the will to deliberate, or to inquire or consider something further about such an object, often precedes, that will to deliberate too is not natural, but free, because there is nothing which necessitates having it; therefore neither does that will to deliberate always precede another free act about every object, nor, when it precedes, is it always natural and necessary. And the reason is that, in order that the will will an object, it is not necessary that it have first willed the consideration of the object, but it is enough that it have such consideration, whether it has that consideration from nature, or from the will, or from elsewhere. For of the necessity of the object to be willed there is only that it be foreknown; but that that cognition comes from here or there is accidental. And for the same reason, even if it often happens that the consultation and inquiry of the intellect is directly voluntary, it is not necessary that it be from some natural or necessary volition, but it can be from a free volition; indeed morally it so happens, and therefore inconsideration is often culpable, because the consideration could have been had through the free will. From this head, therefore, it is not necessary that some natural act of the will precede the free one.

7. Whether every intention of the end is necessary.—It can be objected otherwise, because the intention of the end always precedes the election of means; but the intention of the end is necessary; for freedom, as Aristotle and St. Thomas think, is only in the election of means; therefore from this head before a free act there always precedes some necessary act, which is the proximate principle and reason of free election; therefore the freedom of choice is first to be placed in it. I answer that both something false is assumed and the inference is badly drawn. For not every intention of the end is necessary; for there are many particular ends which we will freely not only as to exercise but also as to specification, and only the ultimate or highest end do we love necessarily, and that only as to specification, not as to exercise, at least for the state of this life, as we shall touch upon a little below, and there we shall declare how freedom is said to be concerned with election. Next, even when the intention of the end precedes, the freedom which is in the election of means is not to be attributed to it as to its proper principle, but the faculty from which both the intention and the election are; both because it is still uncertain whether the intention is the proper and per se principle of effecting the election, or only a previous disposition or condition necessary for it, and most of all because, even if the intention concurs actively with the power to the election, yet the determination to choosing this means rather than others is not from the intention, but from the power of the will itself, from whose influx the election itself is intrinsically voluntary, and consequently determined to this means rather than to another. In no way, therefore, can it be understood that the faculty of freedom properly resides in some act, but in the power from which the free act proximately is.

8. And by similar arguments it can easily be shown that free choice is not some habit. First indeed, because such a habit would be either natural and congenital with the power, or acquired through acts (I omit infused habits, because we are now speaking of natural freedom and of acts of the natural order); the first cannot be said, because, according to the true doctrine, there is no natural habit naturally implanted in the will, if we speak properly of habit as it is a quality distinct from the power, adding facility or inclination; for this nature does not give, but use. Nor does experience or reason teach anything else; for the inclination or power which nature implanted in the power is nothing other than the power itself. Hence, if perhaps St. Bonaventure or Albert understand by the name of habit the ability or connatural force of such a power, they differ from us only in name. Nor can the second be said, because the habits of a free faculty are acquired through free acts; the use of free choice, therefore, precedes a habit of this kind; therefore free choice itself cannot consist in such a habit. Moreover, there is the general reason that a habit can be the principle of a free act only in so far as we can use it when we will; the habit itself, therefore, does not give freedom, but rather (so to speak) receives it from the power in which it resides, inasmuch as it is the power that uses the habit, and in whose faculty it is placed to use it or not use it. Let the third reason be that a habit does not give being able to operate, but gives facility in operating; hence the will affected with a habit can effect no act of the natural order which it could not absolutely effect without the habit; but free choice does not necessarily require this facility in operating, but absolute power of acting and not acting, all requisites being posited; hence a man using reason is free from the beginning, before he acquires that facility; freedom, therefore, does not consist in some habit, nor in the power together with a habit, since the power of itself has absolute power. Only in per se infused habits can this seem probable, inasmuch as these habits give not only facility but also being able itself. Hence it can be granted that these habits complete from this side intrinsic freedom with respect to supernatural acts. Although even without them the power, if it otherwise has proportioned help, can be called simply free for such acts, because for not eliciting them it suffices per se; for eliciting them, however, it can be completed not only through habits but also through helps. Nor does any difficulty occur in this doctrine, nor do St. Bonaventure or Albert object any argument which needs our reply.

Free choice is not a power distinct from intellect and will

9. The opinion of Alexander of Hales is disproved.—Supposing, then, that the free faculty is proximately placed in some power of the soul or of the intellectual substance, it remains to inquire which power that is. And in the first place there were not lacking those who said that it is a power distinct from intellect and will. So holds Alexander of Hales, II p., q. 72, memb. 2, a. 1, § 3, where he says that free choice, taken properly and specially, is a certain motive power distinct from intellect and will. Nevertheless this opinion can be neither proved nor understood. For either the discourse is of a power moving according to place, or of a power moving the other powers to their acts. Of the former it is probable that there is in the soul, or also in the intelligences, one distinct from intellect and will, whether for moving itself or for moving other things, as was touched upon above and will also be said below in treating of the created intelligences. Nevertheless freedom cannot be formally constituted in this power. First, because that power does not properly elicit an immanent act, but a transient action; and therefore it is more imperfect than is necessary in order that it be capable of formal freedom. Secondly, because that power does not go forth into act unless applied by the will; for the angel or man moves himself or other things when he wills; indeed, universally, the principle of motion in more perfect living things is appetite; therefore that power is not free actively (so to speak) or elicitively, but passively or imperatively; it is not, therefore, in itself a free power, but is subject to a free power. Hence its act is voluntary only by denomination from the act of another power, not intrinsically through itself, which is necessary for a formally free power, as I shall expound a little below. But if the discourse is of a power moving the other powers, such a power in an intellectual creature is not other than the will and the intellect; for, speaking of objective motion, the intellect so moves the will; but if of effective motion, or application to the work, so it is the will which moves both itself and the other powers; for we are not applied to operating freely except because we will; to devise another power, therefore, is both superfluous and unintelligible, because we are not inclined and applied to operating except by appetising and willing.

10. But if perhaps Alexander of Hales distinguishes this power moving the powers from the will not in reality but in reason, and in this sense calls free choice a power distinct from the will, first, he will differ from us only in words. Next, he does not sufficiently declare the office of free choice; for it does not adequately consist in the motion of other powers, but also in willing any object, with the power of not willing it. Let it be constant and certain, then, that this faculty in which formal freedom proximately is, is not other than intellect and will. But which of these powers it is remains to be explained.

Formal freedom is not in the intellect, but in the will alone

11. Freedom does not formally coalesce from reason and will.—In which matter there can be three ways of speaking. The first is that intellect and will together and formally complete the freedom of choice, so that each of these powers is formally free in its acts and the perfect freedom of man with his human acts consists of the freedom of both. This Durandus held, In II, dist. 24, q. 3, where he first says that the intellect together with the will is a formally free power; and he thinks it is the opinion of Aristotle, IX Metaph., c. 3, where he says indistinctly that rational powers are free. Next, Durandus adds that the intellect is prior and more perfectly free, because, since it is proper to a rational power to be free, that which is more perfectly rational will be more perfectly free; but the intellect is the more perfect rational power; indeed it alone is properly and as it were essentially rational, while the will is so only by participation or a certain subordination, inasmuch as it is apt to be directed by reason; therefore the intellect is also primarily free. And it is confirmed, for the intellect is not only free but is also the root of the freedom of the will; for from the indifference of the judgement, which pertains to the intellect, arises the indifference of election, which pertains to the will; therefore freedom is prior and more perfect in the intellect, for that on account of which each thing is such is itself more such. Finally, Durandus seems tacitly to conclude from this that free choice formally coalesces as it were from intellect and will. Hence it is also defined by the Master there, and by St. Thomas, I-II, q. 1, a. 1, that free choice is a faculty of will and reason; for that particle and is to be taken not copulatively but collectively. Hence the office of free choice consists not in the judgement alone nor in the election alone, but in both together.

12. Freedom is not formally in the intellect alone.—A second way of speaking can be that freedom is formally in the intellect alone and not in the will. I do not find this in any author; it seems, however, that it can be founded quite probably on a certain opinion received by many, namely, that the will is wholly determined to election by the judgement of the intellect, so that neither without it can it be determined to choosing anything, nor, it being posited, can it diverge from it or not conform to it. For from this principle it openly follows, first, that the power of the will is not formally free. First, because it is never in its power to act and not act, all requisites being posited antecedently, as was declared above. For one of these requisites is the judgement of reason, which being posited it is not in the power of the will either not to act, if it has been judged that it must act, or to act, if it has been judged that it must not act. Secondly, because the will in its determination behaves more passively than actively, since it follows with a certain necessity the motion of another faculty; but formal freedom cannot be in a power as moved, but as moving itself, as has been shown. Thirdly, it is declared by the example of the executive power, or power moving according to place; for it can both move and cease from motion, and effect this motion or the contrary, and yet it is not formally free, because it cannot do this as moving or determining itself, but as moved and necessarily following the motion of the will; therefore the same will have to be said of the will, since with equal necessity it obeys the judgement of the intellect. But from this part so proved the other is necessarily concluded, namely, that freedom is formally in the intellect as regards the power of passing judgement and not passing judgement, because otherwise no formal freedom would be left anywhere. And this part too can be confirmed by the arguments of Durandus.

13. Freedom formally resides in the will alone.—The third way of speaking is that freedom is formally in the will and not in the intellect. This is the opinion of St. Thomas, I, q. 83, a. 3, and I-II, q. 13, a. 1, together with a. 6, and In II, dist. 24, q. 1, in which places Cajetan, Capreolus, Conrad and other Thomists hold the same; Richard too agrees, the said dist. 24; and Scotus, dist. 25; from Henry, Quodl. I, q. 16. And I judge this opinion to be most true; which will have been sufficiently proved against the preceding ones if we show that formal freedom is not in the intellect, because no power besides the will is left in which it could be. This, however, can be demonstrated in this way: because the intellect according to itself is free neither as to the specification of its act nor as to exercise; therefore it is in no way free; for no other mode of freedom can be devised.

14. The first part is proved, because the intellect from its nature is determined to assent to the true and to dissent from the false; but if neither of these notions is in the object, or it itself does not perceive it, it can elicit neither act, because it cannot operate without an object. You will say that between these members there can be a middle, namely, that in the object the intellect does not clearly see truth or falsity, yet it appears in some way through probable reasons or through the testimony of someone. Then, therefore, the intellect could be free as to the specification of the act. It is answered, first, that the intellect cannot of itself be determined to the species of the act unless it can also determine itself to exercise, because a power does not determine itself to such an act except by exercising it, and because, as we said above, freedom is first and per se discerned in the exercise of the act; if, therefore, we show that the intellect is not of itself free as to the exercise of its act, it will also be established that about such objects it does not have formal freedom as to specification.

15. Moreover, it can be declared and proved a priori, because the intellect, about such objects so proposed, does not remain of itself as it were suspended and undetermined because it has intrinsic power and dominion over its act, but only because the object is not sufficiently applied for it to be borne to it of necessity by the natural impulse by which it is inclined to the true. In which is discerned a great difference between the will and the intellect; for the intellect cannot be in any way undetermined about its act except on account of imperfect proposal of the object. But the will, even about an object exactly proposed, can be indifferent according to the capacity of the object. And for this reason in the divine intellect there is properly no indifference as to judgement, because there is always an evident act of knowledge and with perfect manifestation of the object; but in the will there is indifference with respect to objects, even if they are most perfectly proposed.

16. And a reason more a priori can be taken from the diversity of the objects of intellect and will; for the formal object of the intellect is truth; but in the same object there cannot be truth and falsity, because truth consists in an indivisible, as was treated above; and therefore per se, and so far as concerns the merits of the object, the intellect is always determined to one as to the species of the act; hence, if sometimes it is not sufficiently determined, it is only because the object is not sufficiently proposed or does not sufficiently appear, not from the internal power and dominion of the intellect itself over its act. But the object of the will is the good; and the same object can be at once good and evil, or fitting and unfitting in order to diverse things or under diverse notions; and therefore, perfect proposal or cognition of the object standing, the appetitive power can be indifferent as to specification for pursuing or rejecting such an object; indifference, therefore, as to specification is not per se and formally found in the intellect, but in the will.

17. The other part, about necessity as to exercise, is proved, because no power whose act is not intrinsically voluntary can be formally free as to exercise; but the act of the intellect is not intrinsically voluntary; therefore the intellect is not a formally free power. In order that the antecedent be understood, I suppose that an act can be voluntary in two ways: first, extrinsically, by denomination from the act of another power moving or applying another power to the work, in which way walking is voluntary when someone moves himself of his own accord. In the second way, an act is voluntary intrinsically and through itself, as the act of love is voluntary; for what is more spontaneous than to love? And yet, per se speaking, it is not voluntary by denomination from another act, but through itself. For it is not necessary that he who loves should will to love by a prior and distinct act; and although sometimes someone can do this for his freedom, yet it is accidental to voluntary love; for someone can elicit love immediately and without a prior act, and to love itself is intrinsically to will love. But there is the difference that in the former mode of the voluntary, the act which is denominated voluntary from another is its object and effect; object indeed, because the prior act tends to it; effect, however, because such an act is not only willed as object but also caused, at least mediately, inasmuch as by virtue of the act of the will or of appetite the inferior power is applied to operating. But the act which through itself is intrinsically voluntary is not compared as proper object or effect to that act by which it is voluntary, because it is voluntary by itself, and is not properly the object or effect of itself; it has, therefore, another object to which it directly tends, and is the effect of the power by which it is elicited, and is voluntary only through a certain virtual reflection which it includes in itself; hence it is commonly said to be willed by way of act, not by way of object.

18. An act voluntary in itself is always elicited by appetite.—From which it is understood that no act can be intrinsically and through itself voluntary except that which is elicited by an appetitive power. It is proved, because the proper voluntary, as it is distinguished from the connatural, formally comes from some act elicited by vital appetite; and thus in the former mode of the voluntary the act which is extrinsically called voluntary receives that denomination from some act elicited by some vital appetite by which it is commanded; therefore the act which through itself is voluntary, since it does not receive this denomination from another act elicited by appetite, must necessarily be elicited by vital appetite. And the reason can also be given from the very notion and mode of such an act; for the act elicited by the will is by way of intrinsic and spontaneous tendency and inclination to the object, and therefore such tendency is also spontaneous of itself; but this mode of tendency is proper to the appetitive power; therefore it is also proper to it that its act be through itself intrinsically voluntary; since, therefore, the intellect is not an appetitive power, it is established that its act is not through itself intrinsically voluntary, which was the latter part of the assumed antecedent.

19. The former part, however, namely, that only that power can be free as to exercise whose act is intrinsically voluntary, is declared in this way: because the exercise of an act, or (what is the same) the determination of a power to operating, must be either natural, from the sole impulse of nature, or voluntary, from the elicited inclination of the operator. For no other reason can be understood why some cause goes forth into some work, except either because it is of such a nature as is of itself determined to that work, or because it wills and appetises such operation. But a power free as to exercise is not determined to the work from the sole impulse of nature; therefore it is to be determined voluntarily; therefore either extrinsically, through a voluntary elicited by another power, and so it will not be a formally free power, but imperatively, because it does not move itself as to exercise, but is moved and determined by another; or through an intrinsic voluntary, and so it is necessary that such a power be appetitive; therefore, in order that some power be formally free as to exercise, that is, able to determine itself to exercising a free act, it is necessary that it be a power intrinsically operating voluntarily through its act; since, therefore, the intellect is not such a power, as is established per se, it is rightly concluded that it is not a formally free power in the exercise of its act.

20. Which indeed can be confirmed, first, from the common mode of thinking and speaking of all men; for, since a man can consider this thing or that, if someone is asked why he is occupied in the consideration of this thing rather than of another, he will answer that he does it because he wills to; indeed he too who believes those things which he does not manifestly see believes because he wills to, with a will regulated by reason, if he believes prudently; and therefore theologians say that to believe is meritorious and depends on the pious affection of the will; it is a sign, therefore, that the intellect is never freely determined to either side except through the will; it is not, therefore, in itself formally free. And it is confirmed finally, for when an act, or the exercise of an act, of the intellect is not had from necessity of nature, it cannot be taken up or preferred by man to the lack of such act or exercise except through a certain election by which this is preferred to the other; but election is an act of the will; therefore the determination of a power to the exercise of an act is always through the command or motion of the electing will, and so the whole freedom of such an act is formally from the will and not from the intellect. And the same is concluded with greater reason when the election is not only about the exercise of the act of the intellect but also about its species, as when someone chooses to believe firmly rather than to disbelieve or doubt; for this must be done through the will determining the intellect, as St. Thomas rightly said, II-II, q. 2, a. 1, ad 3.

21. The use of reason is the root of freedom.—From the proof of this part, then, the opinion of Durandus is left sufficiently disproved in the first place; for if the intellect is not formally free, free choice cannot formally consist in the collection or aggregate of both powers, intellect and will. I say, however, formally, for radically the intellect or reason pertains to free choice. In which sense it has been said that free choice is a faculty of will and reason. For it is of the will formally, of reason presuppositively or radically. Nor is it necessary to dispute with Scotus, Henry and others, who deny that reason is to be called the root of freedom, but only a condition necessary for freedom; for these authors seem to contend about the mode of speaking rather than about the thing. For, because cognition is only a necessary condition previous to volition, they therefore wish to call the mode of cognition only a condition necessary for the mode of volition, which consists in freedom. Yet it can very well be said that the root of freedom is the use of reason or intelligence; for, if we speak of the powers themselves, appetitive powers follow cognitive ones, so that, although their root is the soul, yet it is immediately the root of the cognitive power, and by means of that of the appetitive; and so a more perfect appetite is rooted proximately in a more perfect cognitive power; therefore this perfection of formal freedom too arises from the perfection of understanding or reasoning. As, therefore, one passion is the root of another, so the freedom of the will will be said to be rooted in the intelligence of reason. And the proportion is the same between acts, because, just as there is a per se order between powers, so between their acts; and because morally this is per se causality, while the foundation of all moral being is freedom, therefore the indifference in the acts of the will also comes from the judgement of reason, as St. Thomas rightly teaches, I, q. 83, a. 1, and in other places cited above, whom the Thomists follow in the same places; and Soncinas, Javellus and others, IX Metaph.

22. It is only necessary to observe that the said authors often say that the indifference of the act of the will arises from the indifference of the judgement of reason, in which expression an equivocation of the word indifference must be avoided; for, attributed to the will, in the power itself it signifies formal freedom or power for either alternative; but in its act it signifies the immediate relation to the power eliciting the act, with proximate power for the opposite. Hence, if it is said in the same sense that the indifference of the act of the will arises from the indifference of the judgement, the opinion is not true, because in the judgement, as it precedes the will, there cannot be this formal indifference, as has been demonstrated. The indifference attributed to the judgement as the root of freedom, therefore, must be taken otherwise, and can be called not formal but objective indifference; for because the judgement of reason, on account of its perfection and amplitude, proposes in the object various notions of fittingness or unfittingness, and similarly proposes a means not always as necessary but as indifferent, because it both discerns the grade of its utility and difficulty and at the same time finds or proposes other means, it is therefore the foundation of the free election of the will. But that no other indifference or freedom is necessary in the judgement is sufficiently established from what was said above against the opinion of Hervaeus. And it is easily evident in the divine freedom; for, only the natural knowledge of all possible objects being presupposed, the divine will freely wills this or that outside itself, on account of the sole indifference or non-necessity of the objects, which through natural knowledge it most clearly and necessarily understands.

23. And so all the foundations of Durandus have been satisfied; for to be a formally free power is not the same as to be a rational power, nor necessarily concomitant with it, but it accompanies only the rational appetitive power; but upon the rational power as such it only follows that it be free either formally or radically. And in this way Aristotle is to be understood, IX Metaph., where he speaks indistinctly of the rational powers by way of one, and only intends to teach that in the rational part which we call mind there is indifference in operating; but how the single powers of that superior part concur to this indifference he does not treat; it has, however, been declared by us.

24. Secondly, from the proof of the same part the second opinion is left disproved, which denied formal freedom in the will; for, if formal freedom is not in the intellect, as has been shown, it is necessary that it be in the will, otherwise it would be nowhere. Next, that opinion is of itself very improbable and foreign to the whole sense of men; for all judge that man is free because, if he wills, he operates, and, if he wills, he ceases. Hence sacred Scripture too attributes this indifferent power most of all to the will, I Cor. 7: Having no necessity, but having power over his own will; and therefore also all goodness and malice, and every notion of reward or punishment, is judged to be in the will, as theologians hand down more at length. And the Council of Trent expressly, sess. VI, c. 5, when it had taught that it is in the power of man freely to cooperate with or resist grace, expressly declares that man does this by his free will, either alone, if he resists, or helped by the grace of God, if he cooperates. And finally the ancient Fathers for this reason often name free choice itself free will, as may be seen in Augustine, bk. III De Lib. arb., c. 1 and following, and in Damascene, bk. II De Fide, c. 25; sometimes, however, they call it the free choice of the will, as is evident in Augustine, bk. V De Civit., c. 9, and Ambrose, bk. II De Fide, c. 3.

25. And from this part, that the will is formally free, the other can be confirmed, namely, that the intellect is not formally free, because there are not to be posited in man acts elicited by two powers per se free from their sole relations to their powers; otherwise there would be a twofold moral disorder in acts of this kind of intellect and will. Thus, as soon as the intellect judged this evil object to be eligible, in this act taken precisely, and before another consent of the will, there would be malice, because of itself it is discordant with reason and otherwise is formally free. Again, in the election of such an object there would be a new malice, because that is a new free act which man could avoid, and about an object contrary to reason. But if, that judgement standing, the will still did not consent, the man would nevertheless be worthy of reproof by reason of such judgement, not by reason of any prior will, formal or virtual, but precisely on account of the freedom of the intellect. And by the same reason inconsideration or error could be culpable by reason of the intellect alone without the intervention of the will, all which are absurd, since nothing is more repugnant than that there be sin without the voluntary. As, therefore, there is in man no other formal moral goodness or malice except that which comes from the will, so neither is there another formally free power besides the will. Nor is this against the perfection of the intellect, because it is simply a greater perfection to be the rule of the will, to which perfection formal freedom in the same power is repugnant, both because a rule must be certain and of itself immutable, and also because that operation which is a rule is not through inclination and tendency to the thing regulated, but through a certain commensuration to it, which commensuration is not indifferent, but certain and determinate; but the will, because it is as it were blind, needs the rule or direction of the intellect; because, however, it tends to its object by perfect voluntary inclination, it is capable of freedom; and in this it can exceed the intellect in a qualified sense, although simply it is inferior in perfection.