TREATISE II
Human Acts
CHAPTER I. NATURE and kinds of human acts
9. Definition. Three definitions wliich do not differ essentially from each other are usually given : a human act is one which proceeds from the deliberate will of man ; or, an act which proceeds from the knowledge of the intellect and the impulse of the will ; or, an act of which man himself is the master.
Therefore the following acts are not human : I. Acts which proceed from the vegetative faculty in man, such as nutrition, the pulse of the heart, etc. For man is not the master of such acts, since they do not proceed from his intellect and will.
2. Acts elicited by those who are completely mad, by drunkards, by children without the use of their reason, by those tinder hypnotic influence. Such acts ate not directed by a deliberate will.
3. The so-called “ actus priino-primi ” which occur so quickly that they precede the use of the reason and will, such as those sudden feelings of anger which arise from an unexpected insult. On the other hand those acts which are called “ secundo-primi ” and “ secundo-secundi ” are human acts, although the former arc not so perfect as the latter through lack of complete attention.
4. Forced acts which are performed under the influence of external violence. Man is not the master of such acts.
10. Note. Although moral acts and human acts are materially the same, they arc formally different. An act is human if it proceeds from the deliberate volition of man, whereas it is regarded as a moral act in so far as it does or does not conform to some standard of morality.
11. Kinds.
1. Human acts are either elicited or commanded, in so far as they proceed directly and immediately from a faculty, or from one faculty under the influence of another faculty or habit. Consequently every human act is an elicited act, but not always commanded. Thus, belief is an act elicited by the habit of faith, but to believe through love of God is an act commanded by charity.
One must here guard against confusion since authors do not explain these terms in the same way.
2. Human acts are either internal or external, depending on whether they are completed in the soul of man or are manifested externally. Faith is an internal act ; the profession of faith by word or deed is an external act.
Other authors confine internal acts to those acts elicited by the will and regard as external all acts commanded by the will.
3. Human acts are either good, bad, or indifferent, in so far as they conform or do not conform or are indifferent to right reason. Indifferent acts exist in the abstract but not in the concrete, as will be discussed more fully in 11. 35.
4. Human acts are either natural or supernatural, depending on whether they are elicited by man’s natural powers alone (v.g., thinking, speaking) or with the aid of supernatural grace (v.g., an act of contrition).
5. Human acts are either valid or invalid, according as they possess or lack the conditions required by positive law for producing a certain effect. Baptism with water may be a valid act, but Baptism with wine is always invalid.
CHAPTER II. THE INTERNAL PRINCIPLES OF THE HUMAN ACT
The internal principles or efficient causes of the human act arc the intellect and the will— or, rather, the act of knowing and the act of willing. Each must be considered in turn.
Art. 1 Knowledge required for Human Acts
12. Knowledge — the first efficient cause of a human act — is concerned both with the act itself and with its morality. Actual knowledge or attention is required.
To avoid confusion the question will be treated as follows : 1. attention; 2. its contrary, viz. ignorance ; 3. the influence of ignorance or inadvertence on human acts.
§ 1. Attention
13. Kinds. Attention may be :
1. complete or incomplete, according as man attends perfectly or imperfectly to what he is doing. Actions performed when one is sleepy are usually accompanied by incomplete attention.
2. distinct or confused, depending on whether man recognises the act and its morality clearly and distinctly, or whether he realises only in a superficial manner that he is doing good or evil without distinguishing clearly the morality of his act.
3. actual or virtual, according as man adverts at the moment both to the act and its morality, or adverts incompletely while having the power and the moral obligation to attend to the action. Virtual attention is in fact physical inattention since the individual is not attending to his present action, but morally speaking the attention and actual intention which he gave to the action on a previous occasion influence the act when it is performed and cause it. Therefore virtual attention is sufficient for : a) the commission of venial sin at least ; b) the valid administration of the sacraments ; c) prayer and the recitation of the Divine Office. Each of these points will be considered more fully later.
§ 2. Definition and Kinds of Ignorance
14. Definition. Ignorance is opposed to knowledge and may be defined as the lack of necessary knowledge. It must not be confused with : 1. a mere lack of knowledge which the individual has no obligation to possess, or 2. error which is the act of judgement proceeding from the habit of ignorance.
15. Kinds.
1. In relation to its object, ignorance may be ignorance of a fact, or ignorance of a law, according as man is ignorant either of some fact (v.g., this person is a heretic), or of some law (v.g., it is unlawful to take part in heretical religious functions). Under ignorance of a law must be included ignorance of the punishment inflicted on transgressors of the law. Such punishment is a sanction attached to the law and thus an integral part of it ; consequently to be ignorant of the punishment is to be partially ignorant of the law itself.
2. In relation to its subject, ignorance is either vincible or invincible, depending on whether it can or cannot be removed by reasonable care such as would be employed by prudent and upright men in similar circumstances.
According to the degree of carelessness vincible ignorance is either simply vincible, crass, or studied. Ignorance is simply vincible when there is some slight lack of care ; it is crass or supine when the carelessness is grave and hardly any attempt is made to remove the ignorance. Such ignorance is either gravely or slightly culpable depending on the gravity of the matter of which one is ignorant ; consequently crass ignorance and gravely culpable ignorance are not always the same. Ignorance is studied ( affected ) when it is deliberately fostered by the agent as a means of being excused from sin or of not avoiding some sin.
3. I11 relation to the will, ignorance is either antecedent or consequent. It is antecedent if it exists prior to the act of the will and is therefore completely involuntary. Ignorance is consequent if it is the direct or indirect result of an act of the will which desires this state. Although consequent and vincible ignorance are in reality one and the same thing, they differ in their meaning : ignorance is regarded as consequent when it is the result of an act of the will, but it is vincible in so far as the will could overcome it.
It is customary to include concomitant ignorance which in so far as it exists prior to any act of the will is not desired and therefore, like antecedent ignorance, is invincible ; but unlike antecedent ignorance it is not the cause of the act done in ignorance. It exists in a man who is of such a frame of mind that even if he possessed the knowledge which at present he lacks he would continue with the action, like a man who having a desire to kill his enemy does so accidentally while actually intending to kill a deer.
§ 3 . The Influence of Ignorance and Inadvertence on Human Acts
Introductory. Under ignorance we include also inadvertence and forgetfulness. If these are complete they are equivalent to invincible ignorance ; if incomplete, they have the same influence on the morality of acts as vincible ignorance. Consequently the following principles are equally valid for ignorance and for inadvertence.
16. First Principle. Actions which proceed from invincible ( antecedent ) ignorance are neither voluntary nor imputable.
The reason for this is that nothing can be willed unless it is previously known. Alexander VIII condemned the following proposition : “ Even though there may exist invincible ignorance of the Natural law, in the state of fallen nature this does not excuse from formal sin anyone whose action is the result of such ignorance ” (cf. c. 2202).
17. Second Principle. Vincible ignorance : a) does not destroy the voluntariness of an act, b) but it does diminish the voluntariness, c) unless the ignorance is affected.
The reason for the first part of the statement is that since vincible ignorance itself is voluntary, so also are the effects which result from it. The proof for the second part is derived from the fact that since at the moment when the act is performed perfect knowledge is lacking the act cannot be perfectly voluntary. Therefore, for example, a confessor giving wrong advice through vincible ignorance sins less gravely than if he were to give the same advice with full knowledge.
The third part is evident from the fact that affected ignorance usually arises from an evil will inducing this state in order to give itself greater freedom to commit sin.
18. Scholium i. The inadvertence of those who have contracted habits of sin. Certain habits, such as those of blasphemy or lying, can become almost second nature to a man so that he performs the acts without adverting to them. In such cases the following distinction must be made : if the person sincerely intends through contrition to abandon his evil habit, then the acts he performs through inadvertence are involuntary and therefore blameless ; if the evil habit is not revoked, guilt must be attached to each of the actions since they proceed from a habit which the individual has freely allowed to become deep-rooted. However in the confessional such habitual sinners should not be tormented by too many questions in an attempt to discover the exact number of individual acts performed. It is quite sufficient for the confessor to enquire how long the penitent has possessed this habit and approximately how many acts were committed each day.
19. Scholium 2. Ignorance of the laws and penalties of the Church. Although no form of ignorance can excuse from invalidating and incapacitating laws (such as matrimonial impediments or irregularities), unless the contrary is expressly/stated (c. 16, §1), nevertheless the violation of a law of which one is ignorant through no fault of one’s own is not imputable. The degree of imputability attached to the transgression of a law depends on the culpability of the ignorance (c. 2202). As often as ignorance excuses from serious fault a person who transgresses the law, he does not incur any ecclesiastical penalty (c. 2218, §2). The following principles apply to ignorance of ecclesiastical penalties : a) ignorance of the penalty alone diminishes but docs not destroy the imputability of the delinquency (c. 2202, §2) ; b) studied ignorance does not excuse from any penalty ; crass or supine ignorance excuses from the penalties themselves if the law contains the words : “ shall have presumed, or dared or acted knowingly, temerariously, of set purpose,” or similar terms ; c) other forms of ignorance excuse from medicinal penalties (censures) but not from those that are vindictive (c. 2229).