The Human Act in Itself

a) Definition of the Human Act

A human act is an act which proceeds from the deliberate free will of man. In a wide sense, the term human act means any sort of activity, internal or external, bodily or spiritual, performed by a human being. Ethics, however, employs the term in a stricter sense, and calls human only those acts that are proper to man as man. Now man is an animal, and he has many activities in common with brutes. Thus, man feels, hears, sees, employs the senses of taste and smell, is influenced by bodily tendencies or appetites. But man is more than animal; he is rational, that is to say, he has understanding and free will. Hence it is only the act that proceeds from the knowing and freely willing human being that has the full character of a human act. Such an act alone is proper to man as man. And therefore Ethics understands by human acts only those acts that proceed from a deliberate (i. e., advertent, knowing) and freely willing human being. Man’s animal acts of sensation (i. e., use of the senses) and appetition (i. e., bodily tendencies), as well as acts that man performs indeliberately or without advertence and the exercise of free choice, are called acts of man. Thus, such acts as are effected in sleep, in delirium, in the state of unconsciousness; acts done abstractedly or with complete inadvertence; acts performed in infancy; acts due to infirmity of mind or the weakness of senility—all these are acts of man, but they are not human acts. It is to be noticed that acts which are in themselves acts of man may sometimes become human acts by the advertence and consent of the human agent (and by agent is meant the one who does or performs an act). Thus, if I hear words of blasphemy as I walk along the street, my act of hearing is an act of man; but the act becomes a human act if I deliberately pay attention and listen. Again, my eyes may fall upon an indecent sight, or upon a page of obscene reading matter. The act of seeing, and even of reading and understanding the words, is an act of man; but it becomes a human act the moment I deliberately consent to look or to read. Ethics is not concerned with acts of man, but only with human acts. Human acts are moral acts, as we shall see later on. For human acts man is responsible, and they are imputed to him as worthy of praise or blame, of reward or punishment. Human acts tend to repeat themselves and to form habits. Habits coalesce into what we call a man’s character. Thus we find verified the dictum of Ethics: “A man is what his human acts make him.”

b) Classification of Human Acts

Human acts may be classified under the following heads: i. Their complete or adequate cause; and ii. Their relation to the dictates of reason. i. The Adequate Cause of Human Acts.—While all human acts have their source in man’s free rational nature, there are some acts that begin and are perfected in the will itself, and the rest begin in the will and are perfected by other faculties under control of the will. Thus, some human acts find their adequate cause in the will alone (always remembering that we speak of the will of advertent, knowing man, i. e., of the deliberate will); and these are called elicited acts. Other human acts do not find their adequate cause in the simple will-act, but are perfected by the action of mental or bodily powers under the control of the will, or, so to speak, under orders from the will; and these acts are called commanded acts. To illustrate: I intend to go to my room and study. My intention is a simple will-act, begun and completed in the will. It is therefore an elicited act. But to carry out the intention, commanded acts, of body and mind, must be exercised. Thus, I walk to my room, turn on the light, sit at my desk, take down a book, turn to the lesson, bend my eyes upon the page. All these bodily acts are (if done advertently) human acts, commanded, so to speak, by the will for carrying out its intention. Now I start to study: I control the imagination, keeping out distracting fancies; I focus my mind upon the matter to be understood. These internal mental acts are also acts commanded by the will. Under the head of “Adequate Cause” we therefore consider:

(A) Elicited Acts

(B) Commanded Acts

(A) Elicited Acts are the following:

(a) Wish: the simple love of anything; the first tendency of the will towards a thing, whether this thing be realizable or not. Every human act begins with the wish to act. Wish is exemplified in the will-act which enables one truthfully to say: “I wish it would rain“I do so long to see you“I should like to go to Europe next summer.”

(b) Intention: the purposive tendency of the will towards a thing regarded as realizable, whether the thing is actually done or not. We find intention expressed in the following sentences: “I am going to Europe next summer“The cause is in my will; I will not come: that is enough to satisfy the Senate.”— Intention is distinguished as actual, virtual, habitual, and interpretative intention. We shall study these degrees of intention in the Article on the Voluntariness of Human Acts.

(c) Consent: the acceptance by the will of the means necessary to carry out intention. Consent is a further intention of doing what is necessary to realize the first or main intention. Thus, if I intend to go to Europe, I consent to the necessary preparation for the journey. I cannot really intend a thing honestly unless I consent to the means of carrying it out or realizing it. If I make an Act of Contrition, I make an intention (usually called a resolution of amendment). Now I am not honest in my act, if I do not consent to avoid the near occasions of sin; for these are necessarily to be avoided if the intention is to be realized. Here we see justified the ancient saying: “He that wills (intends) a thing, wills (consents to) the means required to accomplish it.”

(d) Election: the selection by the will of the precise means to be employed (consented to) in carrying out an intention. Thus, while I may go to Europe either by ship or by airplane, I cannot go by both simultaneously, but must elect or select one of the means. By election I choose to sail on a certain day, from a certain port, etc.

(e) Use: the employment by the will of powers (of body, mind, or both) to carry out its intention by the means elected. Thus, if I intend to go to a neighboring town, and elect to walk thither, I exercise the will-act of use by putting my body in motion. True, the movement itself is a commanded act, but the commanding, the putting to employment of bodily action, is the elicited will-act of use.

(f) Fruition: the enjoyment of a thing willed and done; the will’s act of satisfaction in intention fulfilled.

Of the elicited acts listed, three appertain to the objective thing willed, and three to the means of accomplishing it. Suppose the thing willed is a trip to Europe. Then:

I wish… . I intend. -a trip to Europe I enjoy when accomplished,

I consent to. the means required I elect. to make the trip I use my faculties on

(B) Commanded Acts are:

(a) Internal: acts done by internal mental powers under command of the will. Examples: effort to remember; conscious reasoning; nerving oneself to meet an issue; effort to control anger; deliberate use of the imagination in visualizing a scene.

(b) External: acts effected by bodily powers under command of the will. Examples: deliberate walking, eating, writing, speaking. Such acts as walking and eating are very often acts of man, but they become human acts when done with advertence and intention.

(c) Mixed: acts that involve the employment of bodily powers and mental powers. Example: study, which involves use of intellect, and use of eyes in reading the lesson.

Of course, all human acts are internal inasmuch as all originate in the will which elicits or commands them. Again, all external acts are mixed inasmuch as the outer activity which perfects them is but the expression and fulfillment of the interior act of will. But, for sake of simplicity, we call those human acts external which are perfected or completed by the exterior powers of body; and we call mixed only those acts which involve the use of bodily powers as well as internal powers distinct from the will.

ii. The Relation of Human Acts to Reason—Human acts are either in agreement or in disagreement with the dictates of reason, and this relation (agreement or disagreement) with reason constitutes their morality. The subject of the Morality of Human Acts is to be dealt with in detail in a later Chapter, but passing mention of the matter is required here for the proper classification of human acts. On the score of their morality, or relation to reason, human acts are:

(a) Good, when they are in harmony with the dictates of right reason;

(b) Evil, when they are in opposition to these dictates ;

(c) Indifferent, when they stand in no positive relation to the dictates of reason. Indifferent human acts exist in theory, but not as a matter of practical experience. A human act that is indifferent in itself becomes good or evil according to the circumstances which affect its performance, especially the end in view (or motive or purpose) of the agent.

c) Constituents of the Human Act

In order that an act be human, it must possess three essential qualities : it must be knowing, free, and voluntary. Hence we list the essential elements, or constituents, of the human act as : i. Knowledge; ii. Freedom; iii. Voluntariness. i. Knowledge.—A human act proceeds from the deliberate will; it requires deliberation. Now “deliberation” does not mean quiet, slow, painstaking action. It means merely advertence, or knowledge in intellect of what one is about and what this means. An act may be done in the twinkling of an eye, and still be deliberate. Consider an illustration: A hunter flushes game; the birds rise; the hunter whips up his gun and fires. The act of firing is the work of a split second, and yet it is a deliberate act. The hunter adverts to what he is doing, and, so adverting, wills and does it. In a word, the hunter knows what he is doing. His knowledge makes the act deliberate. For the purposes of Ethics, then, deliberation means knowledge. Now, a human act is by definition a deliberate act; that is, it is a knowing act. No human act is possible without knowledge. The will cannot act in the dark, for the will is a “blind” faculty in itself. It cannot choose unless it “see” to choose, and the light, the power to see, is afforded by intellectual knowledge. I cannot will to go to the island of Mauritius unless I know that there is such an island. I cannot choose to eat oranges or not to eat oranges, if I have never seen nor heard of oranges. I cannot will to play the sacbut if I know of no such musical instrument. I cannot will to love and serve God if I do not know God. Knowledge, then, is an essential element of the human act.

ii. Freedom—A human act is an act determined (elicited or commanded) by the will and by nothing else. It is an act, therefore, that is under control of the will, an act that the will can do or leave undone. Such an act is called a free act. Thus every human act must be free. In other words, freedom is an essential element of the human act.

iii. Voluntariness—The Latin word for will is voluntas, and from this word we derive the English terms, voluntary and voluntariness. To say, therefore, that a human act must be voluntary, or must have voluntariness, is simply to say that it must be a will-act. This we already know by the very definition of the human act. Voluntariness is the formal essential quality of the human act, and for it to be present, there must ordinarily be both knowledge and freedom in the agent. Hence the term voluntary act is synonymous with human act. In the next Article we treat of the voluntariness of human acts in some detail. To illustrate the place of the constituents just considered in a particular human act, the following example is proposed: A Catholic is aware that to-day is Sunday and that he has the obligation of hearing Mass (knowledge). He is free to attend Mass or to stay away—not, indeed, free from duty in the matter, but physically free to perform the duty or leave it unperformed (freedom). He wills to do his duty and to hear Mass (voluntariness).

Summary of the Article

We have defined human act, and have contrasted it with act of man. We have noticed in passing that the human act stands related to the dictates of reason, and is, in consequence, a moral act. We have classified human acts as elicited and commanded acts, and have viewed them in their moral aspect as good, evil, and indifferent acts. We have seen that the human act is essentially the product of the will (voluntary act) acting with native freedom in the light of intellectual knowledge.