Summa summae S. Thomae, Tomus II

I say: The will cannot will evil under the character of evil. ¹

It is proved. The will is a certain rational appetite. Yet every appetite is of good only. Ergo. — Prob. min. Appetite is nothing else than a certain inclination of the one appetiting toward something. Yet nothing is inclined except toward something fitting itself; what is fitting to a thing allures and draws inclination, as what is unfitting repugns to it. Ergo every appetite is of the fitting only, consequently of good; for good and fitting are one, as evil and unfitting.

You will say: Those who appetite non-being, as demons and men despairing, appetite evil under the character of evil, for in non-being no character of good can be apprehended. Ergo.

I answer. I deny the antecedent and its proof. For to lack evil is a good, says the Author ², here, ad 3; but demons and despairing men apprehend in non-being the lacking of evil, inasmuch as they apprehend non-being as a means conducing to liberation from their miseries; and thus they appetite non-being materially, formally non-misery, so that the formal character of appetiting non-being be a certain character of good, namely to lack evil and misery.

You will ask whether out of two goods the will can choose the lesser or the equal.

I answer. Although simply and absolutely the will, for its liberty, can out of two goods equal or unequal choose the equal or lesser, yet it cannot do that unless the practical judgment be changed and a new motive proposed, whereby one more eminently stand forth, and be judged here and now better and more fitting. And in this sense it is true that election is always of the better.

Prob. The will is not borne toward any good unless drawn and allured by it; for good is compared to the will as mover to movable, and the motion of good into will is metaphorical, namely by drawing and alluring. Ergo it cannot be borne toward one before another unless by that one it be allured and attracted before the other. — I subjoin. Yet that one draw and allure before another cannot be except because it is judged fitting and good before the other; for fitness alone or goodness proposed through intellect is the motive of the will. Ergo the will cannot choose the lesser or equal out of two, unless it be judged practically better and more fitting.

It is confirmed. The will cannot choose one of two proposed goods before another unless the intellect judge it to be preferred; for the will, as we have said so many times already, is a blind potency following the dictate of reason and tending toward the object as it is proposed to it by intellect. Yet the intellect cannot judge one of two to be preferred except inasmuch as it judges it better and more fitting, because the whole character of eligibility is goodness and fitness; and as it could not judge it to be chosen absolutely unless it judged it absolutely good and fitting, so it cannot judge it preferred unless it judge it better and more fitting. Ergo the will cannot choose one of two before another unless the intellect judge it better and more fitting.