The Intellective Appetite in Man: The Will

The will is the intellective or rational appetency. The will tends of necessity to the end for which it is made; it tends towards what is intellectually grasped as desirable or good and towards its own happiness or repose in the possession of good. The will is necessitated in its tendency towards good in general, good in its common aspects. But the will is notnecessitated with respect to particular things presented by the intellect as desirable.

The will, therefore, is not necessitated in its particular acts. Many of the things towards which the will tends have not a desirability of their own, but are understood as things by which good may be obtained. That is, many things are willed as means to the good desired, not as the good itself which is the end. Now, just as a person who is forced to seek a certain city but is free to choose the roads by which he hopes to reach it, so the willis necessitated and not free in its quest of the good, but is free to choose, wisely or unwisely, in the light of intellect, what particular means it shall use in its quest of the goal.

The intellect is, in itself, a more excellent faculty than the will; for the intellect attains its object by knowing it,and the will only tends toward its object. But, under certain aspects, the will is superior to the intellect. For when a good is greater or nobler than the soul itself, it is better to will it(that is, love it) than merely to know it; thus it is a better thing to love God than simply to know God. But when a goodis less noble than the soul, intellect, with respect to this good,is superior to the will; thus to know material things is better than to love them.

The intellect moves the will by showing it what is attractive; thus intellect moves will in the manner of a final cause. The will, in turn, moves the intellect in the manner of an active or agent cause, an effecting cause. For the will can apply the intellect to the study ofthis object or that; it can turn away the attention of the intellect from one thing and fix it on another. The will also exercises an active control over other natural faculties of a man, but it has no control over the vegetalpowers in themselves.

The will is an appetency or appetite. But it has no departments of concupiscible and irascible tendencies. These belong to the sentient order, and the will belongs to the intellectiveorder. The sentient appetites are in the body-and-soul compound;the will belongs to the soul.