ABSTRACT
Many modern psychologists refuse to reckon the will as appetitive. The appetites, they hold, are necessary, and therefore belong to a different order from the will. Hence they distinguish mental activities into desire, will and intellect. When people attribute to God the power of free-will, they are not to be understood as implying that this freedom is absolutely universal, including even the act by which his will is directed to its primary object. In connection with this subject an important distinction is drawn between the antecedent and the consequent will of God. By the moral virtues people signify, when speaking of man, certain stable dispositions inclining him to act in accordance with the law of reason. Justice is the disposition of the will which leads to render to each his due. But justice is of more than one kind. God's essential beatitude lies in his knowledge of himself, the fountain of all reality, all Goodness.
