1. Exposition of the Opinion

183. One opinion [Aquinas, Sent. IV d.49 q.1 a.1] posits that beatitude consists in an act of intellect principally and essentially, and in act of will as in a certain perfection extrinsic to and supervening on vision - in which vision is the substance of beatitude.

184. The reason for this is of the following sort: beatitude either is the ultimate extrinsic end, which a thing attains by its operation, or is the ultimate intrinsic end, and is that operation alone which conjoins first with the exterior end; an act of will is the ultimate end in neither way; therefore beatitude too does not consist, in this way or that, in the will as an act of it - though it is in the will as object, because the idea of good is the object of the will, and beatitude, as it is the ultimate end, has most of all the idea of good.

185. Proof of the minor [n.184]:

As to its first part [‘an act of will is not the ultimate extrinsic end’]: first because the object of the will is the end, so every willing is a certain being ordered to the end; second because willing cannot be the first thing willed (for it presupposes that something other than willing is willed first, because a reflected act presupposes a direct act that has its term in something other than an act of the power, otherwise there would be an infinite regress). Something like this appears in the intellect, because [an act of] understanding cannot be the first thing understood, but something other than the very [act of] understanding is the object first of a direct act of understanding.

186. Proof of the second part of the minor [n.184, ‘an act of will is not the ultimate intrinsic end’], because the operation that first conjoins with the exterior end is the operation by which the attainment of the exterior end first comes about; an act of will is not of such sort, because there is one act of will before attainment of the end, namely desire, which is a sort of motion toward something not possessed, and another act of will is a sort of resting in the end. It is plain that the will does not first attain the end through the first act, because it lacks the end when it has that act. Nor does it do so through the second act; the proof is that the second act follows attainment; for the will is only now at rest in the thing it was tending to before because it is disposed differently now to the thing than before, or conversely. Therefore, what makes the will to be thus disposed to the end, so as to be (in it or through it) at rest in that which before it was tending toward, is the ultimate attainment of the end; such is the act of vision, because through this a certain contact of God with the intellect comes about (for the thing known is in the knower). Through this contact the object is so disposed to the will that the will can now be at rest in what before it could not.

187. This is confirmed by an example in the sense appetite, that if the sensible object is the extrinsic end, sensation is the intrinsic end, because the sensible object is first possessed through the sensation in such a way that the sense appetite can be at rest in it.

188. This is plain too in another example, that if money is the extrinsic end, possession of money is the intrinsic end, which intrinsic end is followed by the resting of the will in the loved money.