Fourth Monday in Lent.
THE DETERMINATION OF THE WILL.
We have seen now what the Free Will in man can do. It can choose, or refuse, or remain inert.
Now we will go a little further, and see how it decides. It can aim directly or indirectly at a certain end.
(a) The Will can bedirectwhen it decides for that which is evil,because it is evil.
Or when it decides for that which is evil,because of the pleasure or profitaccruing therefrom.
Naturally, the first of these decisions is the worst; it implies a radical hostility of the will to God. It is the condition into which the will of the devils has fallen through persevering opposition to God. They love evil for its own sake. The transgression of God’s Law affords them no gratification, the prospect of transgression holds out to them nothing but a deepening of their woe; nevertheless, their wills have become so set in opposition that they hate what is good, and love what is evil, simply because good is good and evil is evil. The more any man suffers his will to deflect from the Will of God, and he allows himself consciously to choose evil, the nearer he approaches to this condition of rooted and hopeless antagonismto God, and separation from the source of life, light, and happiness.
The second condition is the usual one, in which man chooses evil because of the gratification to his senses, or his pride, that the commission of a forbidden act, or the adoption of a forbidden course, or the dereliction of a commanded duty, will entail on him, or that he fancies it will entail. He does not love evil because it is evil, but he loves pleasure or what flatters his pride, and he accepts the evil because of what it promises.
(b) The Will can be indirect in its pursuit of evil when (1) It does evil that good may come,or(2) When it does good that evil may come.
Inthe first case, the Will proposes to itself to attain to a good end, but it allows a certain course which it admits to be against God’s Law, in the hopes that the lesser evil will result in the greater good. Thus, a lie is told to gain the conversion of a heretic. It is good to draw a man from heresy into the way of true religion, but to use a forbidden means to do this is to sin. Or an act of injustice may be done for the sake of doing some great and manifest good. This is not permissible. Not only must the end aimed at be good, but the means by which it is attained must be good also. Better leave the end unreached than use illegitimate methods for obtaining it.
Inthe second case, the Will proposes to itself to attain a bad end, and to reach that uses good and legitimate means. For instance, the truth is spoken when we know that by speaking the truth we shall rouse violent passions and produce discord. We do not mean that the truth should be perverted into untruth, but that it may be withheld. We are not boundalwaysto say everything we know, but to maintain a prudent reserve. If A. has said something harsh of B., we are not bound to tell B. what A. has said of him. It may be perfectly true what we retail, but if we do retail it we know it will be productive of discord. So it is quite possible for a person with an ill intention to use quite legitimate means—that is, means in themselves unobjectionable—to attain an evil end. Self-deception may, and does sometimes, blind people to the badness of the object they seek, by representing to them that they have done nothing wrong in the way by which they have worked to reach it.
Simple Maltese Cross