Whether Consent Is an Act of the Appetitive or of the Apprehensive
Power?
Objection 1: It would seem that consent belongs only to the
apprehensive part of the soul. For Augustine (De Trin. xii, 12)
ascribes consent to the higher reason. But the reason is an
apprehensive power. Therefore consent belongs to an apprehensive
power.
Obj. 2: Further, consent is "co-sense." But sense is an apprehensive
power. Therefore consent is the act of an apprehensive power.
Obj. 3: Further, just as assent is an application of the intellect to
something, so is consent. But assent belongs to the intellect, which
is an apprehensive power. Therefore consent also belongs to an
apprehensive power.
_On the contrary,_ Damascene says (De Fide Orth. ii, 22) that "if a
man judge without affection for that of which he judges, there is no
sentence," i.e. consent. But affection belongs to the appetitive
power. Therefore consent does also.
_I answer that,_ Consent implies application of sense to something.
Now it is proper to sense to take cognizance of things present; for
the imagination apprehends the similitude of corporeal things, even
in the absence of the things of which they bear the likeness; while
the intellect apprehends universal ideas, which it can apprehend
indifferently, whether the singulars be present or absent. And since
the act of an appetitive power is a kind of inclination to the thing
itself, the application of the appetitive power to the thing, in so
far as it cleaves to it, gets by a kind of similitude, the name of
sense, since, as it were, it acquires direct knowledge of the thing
to which it cleaves, in so far as it takes complacency in it. Hence
it is written (Wis. 1:1): "Think of (_Sentite_) the Lord in goodness."
And on these grounds consent is an act of the appetitive power.
Reply Obj. 1: As stated in _De Anima_ iii, 9, "the will is in the
reason." Hence, when Augustine ascribes consent to the reason, he
takes reason as including the will.
Reply Obj. 2: Sense, properly speaking, belongs to the apprehensive
faculty; but by way of similitude, in so far as it implies seeking
acquaintance, it belongs to the appetitive power, as stated above.
Reply Obj. 3: _Assentire_ (to assent) is, to speak, _ad aliud
sentire_ (to feel towards something); and thus it implies a certain
distance from that to which assent is given. But _consentire_ (to
consent) is "to feel with," and this implies a certain union to the
object of consent. Hence the will, to which it belongs to tend to the
thing itself, is more properly said to consent: whereas the
intellect, whose act does not consist in a movement towards the
thing, but rather the reverse, as we have stated in the First Part
(Q. 16, A. 1; Q. 27, A. 4; Q. 59, A. 2), is more properly said to
assent: although one word is wont to be used for the other [*In Latin
rather than in English.]. We may also say that the intellect assents,
in so far as it is moved by the will.
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