b. Second Possible Solution and the Weighing of it

128. However, if anyone wants to assign in the lower will a cause of sadness that was not in the higher will (by saying that the lower will did absolutely not want the pain, which was not the case for the higher will), he can posit that the lower part considers the Passion in abstraction from its order to the ultimate end, because to consider the Passion under the circumstance of the ultimate end belongs to the higher reason; but when that circumstance is removed, the Passion is not something wanted, for it was only to be wanted because of the ultimate end; therefore the lower reason does not say the Passion is to be willed, and so neither does the lower will want it.

129. Against this way of proceeding [n.128] one can argue as follows:

First that the reason on which it rests only shows the possibility of the lower will not wanting what the higher will absolutely wants, which is not the point at issue, for ‘not wanting it absolutely to be’ does not imply ‘absolutely wanting it not to be’, and the latter is what the other way of proceeding denies [n. 117].

130. Again, one can argue that the intended conclusion about ‘wanting it not to be’ cannot be inferred; for if a circumstance that the lower reason considers is enough for concluding that ‘this thing is not to be wanted’, then the circumstance in question is not determinable by the other circumstance [the circumstance of the ultimate end] whereby it is concluded that the Passion is to be willed; for something that is ‘per se not to be willed’ cannot be made ‘to be willed’ by anything else. The point is clear as follows: if the lower reason shows an object a without the circumstance of the ultimate end (because of which circumstance it is something to be willed), then it does not show the object is either to be willed or not to be willed but that it is as it were neutral; for an object that can be made by circumstances into something to be willed is not an object that is determinately not to be willed, for then nothing could make it into something to be willed.

131. Third, it also seems that the lower reason could display the Passion along with the circumstance that makes it to be wanted [the circumstance of the ultimate end]; for otherwise the practical lower reason could not be directed by principles taken from a nobler end (because ‘being directed by those principles’ means to consider the end from which they are taken); and so someone who is morally brave could not, insofar as he is prudent (for prudence belongs to the lower reason), direct himself in acts of courage by considering happiness. But if this result is unacceptable, then the lower reason, when, as far as it can, it shows the object completely and does not show a part of it (with the circumstance of the ultimate end removed), it will show it as something to be willed.

132. There is also a fourth argument — about the morally brave man, that an absolute not-willing seems to be a reason to avoid the thing not willed so as to prevent it happening, and the determination is not ‘so as to prevent it happening through himself’ but ‘so as to prevent it happening to himself’.