CHAPTER III
OBSTACLES TO VOLUNTARY ACTION
WE have seen that we are responsible only for those actions which are performed with knowledge or advertence and freedom of choice. Whatever tends to prevent or lessen advertence, or to restrict liberty, will tend to diminish our responsibility. Ignorance affects advertence, fear and violence influence freedom of choice, and concupiscence influences both. Something must now be said on each of these causes which affect the voluntariness and imputability of our actions.
SECTION I
On Ignorance
1. Ignorance is the absence of knowledge which the person who is ignorant should have. It is thus distinguished from nescience, which is merely the absence of knowledge, without the implication that the knowledge should be possessed.
Ignorance must also be carefully distinguished from error or mistake, which is a false judgement concerning something. Thus, if I simply do not know the person to whom I am speaking, I am in ignorance of his identity; if I mistake him for someone else, I am in error.
2. (a) With reference to the subject who is ignorant, ignorance is either invincible or vincible.
Invincible ignorance cannot be dispelled by the use of ordinary diligence. This may arise in my mind either because no thought of my want of knowledge occurs to me, and so the idea of making inquiries never enters into my head, or because I have failed to acquire knowledge on the point, though I made all reasonable efforts to do so. What efforts should be made in any given case depends on the character and circumstances of the person and the matter on which he is ignorant. If the matter is of great importance, if it affects the salvation of souls or the spiritual and temporal welfare of large numbers, great efforts must be made to dissipate ignorance; the efforts which would be sufficient in the case of one poorly instructed, or very much occupied with other weighty affairs, would not be
