Subsection 11. The Will

Will is the other power of the rational soul. It desires or avoids things that the understanding has already apprehended and judged. If they are good, it approves them; if evil, it rejects them. Its object is therefore good or evil. Aristotle calls it our rational appetite: just as, in the sensitive soul, appetite moves us towards good or bad under the guidance and direction of sense, so here reason moves us. Moreover, sensitive appetite has a particular object, good or bad, while the will has a universal, immaterial object. The former concerns only what is delightful and pleasant; the latter, what is morally honourable.

They also differ in freedom. When sensitive appetite encounters an object, it cannot help desiring it if it is a good suited to it, or avoiding it if it is evil. The will, however, is free in its essence. Though now greatly corrupted, clouded and fallen from its original perfection, it remains free in some of its operations: to go, walk or move as it pleases; to choose whether to act or refrain, to steal or not to steal. Otherwise laws, deliberations, exhortations, advice, precepts, rewards, promises, threats and punishments would be useless, and God would be the author of sin.

But in spiritual matters we will no good and incline to evil, unless we are born again and led by the Spirit. Our natural concupiscence urges us on, and there is disorder—a confusion in our powers. Our whole will turns away from God and his law, not only in natural matters such as eating, drinking and sexual desire, towards which our temperament and unruly appetite drive us headlong:

We have not strength enough to struggle against it Or to exert ourselves so far.

We cannot resist. Our concupiscence is bad from its origin; our evil heart, the seat of our emotions, enslaves and compels our will. Thus, in voluntary actions we turn away from God and goodness: bad by nature, worse through ignorance. Through art, training and custom we acquire many bad habits and allow them to dominate and tyrannize over us. The devil is always at hand with his evil suggestions, ready to tempt our corrupted will into some wicked action and plunge us into destruction,

unless our will is brought back into balance by divine precepts and good impulses from the Spirit. These often restrain, obstruct and check us when we are rushing at full speed along our dissolute course. Thus David checked himself when he had Saul at his mercy. Revenge and malice pressed violently upon him on one side; moral integrity, religion and the fear of God held him back on the other.

The will’s acts are willing and refusing: these two words cover them all. They are good or bad according to their direction, and some are freely performed by the will itself. The Stoics deny this absolutely, holding that everything occurs inevitably through destiny, which imposes an inescapable necessity upon us. Yet we say that our will is free in relation to ourselves and to contingent things, however inevitable and necessary they may be in relation to God’s fixed purpose.

Other acts of the will are performed by the lower powers that obey it, such as sensitive appetite and the appetite that moves the body: opening our eyes, going here and there, not touching a book, speaking courteously or abusively. But this appetite often rebels in us and refuses to stay within the bounds of sobriety and self-restraint. As I said, it once agreed well with reason, and an excellent accord and harmony existed between them. That harmony has now dissolved; they often clash, and passion overpowers reason:

The horses carry the driver away; the chariot ignores the reins.

As wild horses run away with a chariot and refuse the curb. We often know what is good but will not do it, as she said:

A new force drags me on against my will; Desire urges one course, reason another.

Lust advises one thing, reason another; a new struggle arises within us.

I hate what I am, yet cannot cease to be it, though I long to.

We cannot resist. As Phaedra confessed to her nurse, “What you say is true, but passion urges me to follow the worse course.” She acknowledged that the nurse spoke well and truly, yet headstrong passion and frenzy made her do the opposite. So David knew the vileness of his deed and what a loathsome, foul, flagrant sin adultery was. Nevertheless, he would commit murder and take another man’s wife, compelled to follow his appetite against reason and religion.

The natural and vegetative powers are not commanded by the will at all—for who can add a cubit to his height? The other powers can be governed, but are not. Hence come all those headstrong passions and violent disturbances of the mind, and often vicious habits, customs and deadly diseases, because we give such free rein to our appetite and follow our inclinations like so many beasts. There are two principal habits, virtue and vice. Their particular definitions, descriptions, distinctions and kinds are discussed at length in ethics and are indeed the subject of moral philosophy.