Whether Consent Is to Be Found in Irrational Animals?
Objection 1: It would seem that consent is to be found in irrational
animals. For consent implies a determination of the appetite to one
thing. But the appetite of irrational animals is determinate to one
thing. Therefore consent is to be found in irrational animals.
Obj. 2: Further, if you remove what is first, you remove what
follows. But consent precedes the accomplished act. If therefore
there were no consent in irrational animals, there would be no act
accomplished; which is clearly false.
Obj. 3: Further, men are sometimes said to consent to do something,
through some passion; desire, for instance, or anger. But irrational
animals act through passion. Therefore they consent.
_On the contrary,_ Damascene says (De Fide Orth. ii, 22) that "after
judging, man approves and embraces the judgment of his counselling,
and this is called the sentence," i.e. consent. But counsel is not in
irrational animals. Therefore neither is consent.
_I answer that,_ Consent, properly speaking, is not in irrational
animals. The reason of this is that consent implies an application of
the appetitive movement to something as to be done. Now to apply the
appetitive movement to the doing of something, belongs to the subject
in whose power it is to move the appetite: thus to touch a stone is
an action suitable to a stick, but to apply the stick so that it
touch the stone, belongs to one who has the power of moving the
stick. But irrational animals have not the command of the appetitive
movement; for this is in them through natural instinct. Hence in the
irrational animal, there is indeed the movement of the appetite, but
it does not apply that movement to some particular thing. And hence
it is that the irrational animal is not properly said to consent:
this is proper to the rational nature, which has the command of the
appetitive movement, and is able to apply or not to apply it to this
or that thing.
Reply Obj. 1: In irrational animals the determination of the appetite
to a particular thing is merely passive: whereas consent implies a
determination of the appetite, which is active rather than merely
passive.
Reply Obj. 2: If the first be removed, then what follows is removed,
provided that, properly speaking, it follow from that only. But if
something can follow from several things, it is not removed by the
fact that one of them is removed; thus if hardening is the effect of
heat and of cold (since bricks are hardened by the fire, and frozen
water is hardened by the cold), then by removing heat it does not
follow that there is no hardening. Now the accomplishment of an act
follows not only from consent, but also from the impulse of the
appetite, such as is found in irrational animals.
Reply Obj. 3: The man who acts through passion is able not to follow
the passion: whereas irrational animals have not that power. Hence
the comparison fails.
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