Thus through acts of understanding and reasoning man arrives at scientific knowledge, when possible, or at something less than truth and certainty -opinion, for example. If the end in view is the consideration of truth itself, the intellect is speculative in its mode of knowing. The human intellect is either speculative or practical, a difference deriving from the end to which knowledge is ordered (see cognition speculative-practical). ![]() As a power of the human soul, the intel lect is the principle of all intellectual acts of knowing. The internal principles of human acts include the intellect, the will, and the sense appetites, and the habits - both virtues and vices -with which these powers, or faculties, are endowed (see faculties of the soul). This article deals with the human act primarily in its psychological aspect, which a moral analysis must presuppose. A psychological consideration of the human act distinguishes the internal and external principles of the human act, treats the notion of human freedom, and analyzes the human act into its component parts. A voluntary act proceeds either from the will itself -for example, an act of love or of choice -or from some other human power that can in some way be moved by the will, whether an act of the intellect, of sense cognition, or of emotion even an act of some bodily member as commanded by the will can be a voluntary act.Ī moral analysis of the human act analyzes the human act in relation to the good that is sought and insofar as all acts are moved to their ends by the will. ![]() One can therefore identify the human act with the voluntary act. What makes an act performed by a human being distinctively a human act is that it is voluntary in character, that is, an act in some way under the control or direction of the will, which is proper to man. Acts of man, therefore, are acts shared in common by man and other animals, whereas human acts are proper to human beings. When a human being does such acts, they are called acts of man but not human acts. Some acts that human beings do are performed also by animals, e.g., vegetative acts and acts of perception and of emotion. ![]() Not every act that a human being does is a distinctively human act. An act that is performed only by a human being and thus is proper to man.
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