choice. That man has the power of free choice or free will, is clearly taught in Holy Scripture, and is a dogma of faith. [1] It is also a truth of sound philosophy, [2] vouched for by the consciousness of each individual and by the common sense of mankind. It does not belong to our province to prove the doctrine. We suppose that, at any rate in many of his daily actions, when all the conditions requisite for action are present, a man is free to act or not, to perform this action rather than that other. A man must indeed have a motive for action, but that motive does not constrain him to act; if he has the use and control of his reason, he may as long as he is in life perform or abstain from the action proposed to him. Man has the wonderful power, unique in all the visible creation, of directing his mental and bodily activity in this way or that according to his good pleasure; and it is this wonderful power which makes him a moral agent, and makes it worth while to discuss and formulate rules of human conduct. Man himself is the cause of his human acts; he freely directs them to the end of human existence, or to some perverse end of his own choice.
4. This power of free choice is a property of the rational will, and is the natural complement of the deliberative reason with which man is also endowed. For among the various objects offered to the will's acceptance, the reason can propose motives for the selection of one object rather than of another, and, at any rate in many actions, until the deliberation is finished, the will need not decide between them. If an object capable of satisfying all our desires were presented to us, there would indeed be no room for deliberation; as Dante expresses it:
Such one becomes, admiring that blest Ray,
That, whatsoever else allure the sight,
Impossible it is to turn away;
Because the one sole wished-for Good is there,
And everything defective elsewhere found,
In it is perfected beyond compare.
Paradise, xxxiii 100. Wright's translation.
In the presence of such an, object, the whole man, with all the vehemence of his will made for good, would rush into the embrace of his God. For God alone is capable of wholly satisfying all man's desires. Or again, if some object of ardent natural desire were suddenly thrust upon us, leaving no time for deliberation, overwhelming us with the idea of its power
