The Interaction of Intellect and Will

Article 2. The Interaction of Intellect and Will

a) The Distinction of Intellect and Will

Between the intellect and the will there is a real distinction. Both are faculties of the soul, but they are faculties for essentially different services, and so are said to be really distinct. They are two faculties, not two phases of one.

We have seen that the faculty of intellect serves man in a variety of ways, as understanding, memory, consciousness, conscience, intelligence, reason. Yet the intellect is one faculty. For the services it renders are all in the realm of supra-organic knowing. There is indeed a distinction between intelligence and reason, but it is not based on an essential divergence of these powers, and hence we do not assert that intelligence (which recognizes truth as self-evident) is a distinct faculty from reason (which recognizes truth by study or by accepting reliable authority). Intelligence and reason are but two functions of one intellect.

Between the intellect and will, however, there is an essential real distinction. For faculties are specified,— determined as essentially of this or that kind or character,—by their operations and by their objects. Two faculties that differ on these essential points are in no wise to be identified. Now, we have seen that the operation of intellect is a _knowing_and the operation of will is an _appetizing-_operation. On this score, intellect and will are seen to be two distinct faculties. Further, the object of the intellect is the true, while the object of will is the good. And truth and goodness are not achievable by a single creatural faculty, but by different faculties. The question has nothing to do with the metaphysical identification of the true and the good, but with the fact that, in the faculties which seek truth and goodness, the quest demands a real distinction of effort and approach. Hence we are justified in saying that the faculty which has truth for its object is a faculty really distinct from that which has goodness for its object.

The intellect and the will are two faculties, not two functions of one faculty. Yet, as we shall see in a moment, there is a close interaction and mutual influence between the human intellect and the human will.

b) Mutual Influence of Intellect and Will

The will is an appetency which is aroused by intellectual knowledge. Hence it is obvious that the operation of the will follows upon the operation of the intellect. The will is an appetizing-faculty, a choosing-faculty, a faculty that strives for a goal. But the will is not a knowing- faculty. The will cannot, of itself, know its object. The intellect must illumine the object, show it as good, present it as desirable, before the will can tend towards it. This truth is sometimes set forth in a somewhat figurative manner as follows: The will is blind, or, rather, it is in the dark. It needs light before it can act. As a man who reads, mends watches, or does any work requiring precise action, cannot work in the dark, but requires light for his work, so the will cannot choose or tend towards an object in the dark. The will requires light to show the field of choice, to indicate the object towards which it may tend. Now, in the case of the workman, the light does not perform his work for him; it is a necessary condition for the work. So the activity of intellect in making the object known as good is the necessary condition for will-activity. To this extent, therefore, the will depends on the intellect, that the intellect furnishes a necessary condition for the operation of the will. The intellect does not perform the will-act, but it renders will-action possible, nay, it invites will-action.

A great deal of argument was once expended on the question of which faculty has the “last word” in a will-act, the intellect or the will. The question is an intriguing one. For the will tends to achieve what the intellect presents as good. Now, may not the intellect present a series of objects, each better than the preceding, so that at each instant when the will is about to exercise its appetency the intellect presents a superior good which invites the will to tend in a new direction? Or again, in a will-act, is not the will determined by what the intellect finally sets before it as the good to be attained ? And in this do we not discern a control exercised over will by the intellect ? On the other hand, however, there are arguments quite as interesting for the superior control exercised by the will. Granted that when the intellect has made its ultimate judgment about the good to be attained the will tends necessarily to that good, it is the will which allows this judgment to be ultimate. For, in many things, the judgment of intellect is the result of a period of mental attention and even of reasoning; the will could have turned the attention of the intellect to other matters, thus not permitting ultimate judgment and will-action on the precise matter in question. Similarly, I must see what I look at in daylight, but I need not look. So the intellect must see the good and present it to the will for achieving, but the will can refuse, so to speak, to “let the intellect look.” Is not the will then the master; has not the will the last word about its action? We may compare the intellect to the brilliant spot-light which shows a motorist his way; but the will is like the motorist’s hand which turns the spotlight here or there. If the motorist must follow the light, he is also free to determine where the light shall fall to be followed. When he finally moves off on one road, rejecting all other paths, he follows indeed where the light shows the way; but, until he was actually “on the way,” the light might have been shifted to one of the paths now rejected, and that would have been the chosen way.

We shall find a sufficiently definite solution for the problem just indicated in the points which now follow:

i. The intellect moves the will by presenting to it a good to be achieved. There is an ancient axiom, “Nothing is willed that is not first known.” The intellect knows an object as good, and then this object can attract the will. Thus the intellect moves the will, and is a cause of the will-act. Since, however, the intellect is a faculty really distinct from will, it is extrinsic to will, and, as a cause of the will-act, it must be an extrinsic cause. Now, there are two kinds of extrinsic cause, namely, efficient cause and final cause. An efficient cause is that which by its own action produces the effect. Thus a sculptor is the efficient cause of the statue which he carves; thus a runner is the efficient cause of his rapid movement. A final cause is an end-in-view which invites the efficient cause to go to work; it is a goal to be achieved, a good to be attained. Thus the efficient cause of a statue,—the sculptor,—is led to the work and kept at it by the force of what we call his reason, motive, or purpose, in making the statue; without some reason or purpose, he would not and, as a rational being, could not, stir hand or mallet or chisel to begin the work or carry it on. It may be that he makes the statue for his own pleasure, for his enjoyment or pastime; it is more likely that he makes it to attain fame or to sell it for a price or to honor the person whose image he carves. Whatever his reason, purpose, or motive, it is the fined cause of his carving the statue. The runner is moved to efficient action (i. e., to the running) by some reason or purpose. He may run for exercise, or as a special act of training for a race, or to win a prize, or to find out how quickly he can “do the hundred”—some reason or other, some motive, he must have, and this is the final cause of the running. A final cause is always a reason for the efficient cause to act, a purpose or end for the efficient cause to achieve; in creatures, the final cause is a motive (that which moves the efficient cause to action), but for the Infinite First Efficient Cause the end or final cause is a reason or purpose but not a motive since the First Cause cannot be moved to action but chooses, with perfect and absolute freedom, the end to be attained.—Now, the intellect (in man) acts upon the will after the manner of a final cause. The intellect, so to speak, proposes the end to be achieved, the good to be attained, by the will. It “sets” the goal for the will, and so shares the attractive power, the drawing power, which the goal exercises upon’ the will. Hence we say that the intellect moves the will after the manner of a final cause.

2, The will moves the intellect after the manner of an efficient cause. That is, the will efficiently moves the intellect. The will does not, and cannot, make the intellect know objects otherwise than it does know them; just as I cannot look at a rose and make myself see a violet instead. But the will can make the intellect turn its attention to this object or that, just as I can look at one thing or turn to look at another. The will is not the efficient cause of the intellect’s knowing, but it is the efficient cause of the intellect’s deliberate attending to this, that, or the other object. The will can apply the intellect, can withdraw it from an object that engages its attention, can fix it upon another object. Thus we are justified in saying that the will moves the intellect, and exercises over intellect the force or power of an efficient cause.

5. In many of its operations the intellect is not moved, nor needs to be moved, by the will, but is determined necessarily by its object. This may be the case, for example, in an act of simple apprehending or in the pronouncement of a self-evident judgment (an immediate inference). Similarly, I see what falls under my eyes in daylight, even if I do not dwell upon or study the object seen.

It is the more common doctrine among Scholastic philosophers that the intellect, considered simply in its essence, is a faculty superior to will. For, taken simply, it is more perfect to know than to experience an appetitive tendency. But, in reference to some special acts, the will is superior to the intellect. The will is superior inasmuch as it can move man to noble and virtuous life, and the attainment of his last end. For it is better to please God (by will, by willed acts) than merely to know God (by act of intellect). Yet in the life to come when our intellect is elevated and fortified by the Light of Glory, we shall see God, that is, we shall have intellectual Vision of God, and in this consists the essence of eternal happiness. We say therefore: The intellect is a faculty essentially superior to will, more noble than will; but in some of its acts in this life the will manifests itself as superior to intellect.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have learned that intellect and will are two distinct faculties of the human soul, not two aspects or phases or activities of one faculty. We have studied the mutual influence or interaction of intellect and will. We have found that, while the will always requires anterior action on the part of intellect, intellect does not always require the activity of will for its function. Further we have learned that the intellect acts as a final cause in moving the will, and the will acts as an efficient cause in moving the intellect. We have added a word about the relative perfection or nobility of intellect and will.