Moral Philosophy by S. J. Joseph Rickaby
page 38 of 356 (10%)
page 38 of 356 (10%)
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submission. He suspects that a little more prayer and search, and he
shall be a Roman Catholic. To escape this, he resolves to go travelling and give up prayer. This is _affected ignorance_. Another has no such perception of the claims of Catholicism. He has no religion that satisfies him. He is aware speculatively of the importance of the religious question; but his heart is not in religion at all. With Demas, he loves the things of this world. Very attractive and interesting does he find this life; and for the life to come he is content to chance it. This is _crass ignorance_ of religious truth. Such a man is not a formal heretic, for he is not altogether wilful and contumacious in his error. Still neither is it wholly involuntary, nor he wholly guiltless. 6. _Passionate desire_ is not an affection of the will, but of the sensitive appetite. The will may cooperate, but the passion is not in the will. The will may neglect to check the passion, when it might: it may abet and inflame it: in these ways an act done in passion is a voluntary act. Still it becomes voluntary only by the influx of the will, positively permitting or stimulating: it is not voluntary precisely as it proceeds from passion: for voluntary is that which is of the will. It belongs to passion to bring on a momentary darkness in the understanding: where such darkness is, there is so much the less of a human act. But passion in an adult of sane mind is hardly strong enough, of itself and wholly without the will, to execute any considerable outward action, involving the voluntary muscles. Things are often said and done, and put down to passion: but that is not the whole account of the matter. The will has been for a long time either feeding the passions, or letting them range unchecked: that is the reason of their present outburst, which is voluntary at least _in its cause_. Once this evil preponderance has been brought about, it is to |
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