be examined whether the will, in calm moods, is making any efforts to
redress the evil. Such efforts, if made, go towards making the effects
of passion, when they come, involuntary, and gradually preventing them
altogether.

7. What a man does _from fear_, he is said to do _under compulsion_,
especially if the fear be applied to him by some other person in order
to gain a purpose. Such _compulsory action_ is distinguished in
ordinary parlance from voluntary action. And it is certainly less
voluntary, inasmuch as the will is hedged in to make its choice
between two evils, and chooses one or other only as being the less
evil of the two, not for any liking to the thing in itself. Still, all
things considered, the thing is chosen, and the action is so far
voluntary. We may call it _voluntary in the concrete_, and
_involuntary in the abstract_. The thing is willed as matters stand,
but in itself and apart from existing need it is not liked at all. But
as acts must be judged as they stand, by what the man wills now, not
by what he would will, an act done under fear is on the whole
voluntary. At the same time, fear sometimes excuses from the
observance of a law, or of a contract, which from the way in which it
was made was never meant to bind in so hard a case. Not all contracts,
however, are of this accommodating nature; and still less, all laws.
But even where the law binds, the penalty of the law is sometimes not
incurred, when the law was broken through fear.

_Readings_.--Ar., _Eth_., III, i.; St. Thos., 1a 2a, q. 6, art. 3;
_ib_., q. 6, art. 6, 8; _ib_., q. 77, art. 6.


SECTION II.--_Of the determinants of morality in any given action_.