Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [102]
Even within ourselves, there are many things we cannot bring about by a simple command. If, for instance, our reason approves of an event and our will consequently acclaims it as something that ought to evoke joy, we may nevertheless not be able to evince actual joy at the mere command of our will; similarly, when we are ashamed of feeling a certain malicious pleasure, a mere act of will may not suffice to uproot and to dissolve that pleasure. Our loves, hopes, enthusiasms, and other emotional attitudes, are by no means so definitely subject to our will as are our actions (their outward possibility taken for granted).
Again, among the things exempt from our will we must make a distinction. Some of them are strictly outside our range of power: thus, it is impossible for us to raise a dead man to life or to transform a stupid person into an intelligent one. On the other hand, there are also things which we cannot bring about by command but to whose securing we can yet indirectly contribute a great deal. In general, our affective attitudes, as well as those of others with whom we are in contact, belong to this class.
If it is true that we cannot feel love, joy, or fervor at the command of our will, it does not follow from this that we are as little responsible for feeling or not feeling them as we are for some physiological process in our brain or for the outbreak of a tempest. In an indirect sense, we do contribute in a high measure towards the presence or absence of such emotional attitudes in ourselves, We can consciously prepare the ground (in our inner world) for the rise of the adequate affective response to values, remove the obstacles from its path, and pull down the towers of pride and concupiscence within us so that Christ may extend His realm in our souls.
Sanction and disavowal are deeper and more important than free action
The first dimension of man’s freedom, his capacity for a free assent to values, is by far deeper and more important than the second. Whereas in relation to all that directly falls within his power—notably, his actions—his will plays a master’s part, his relation to values is not that of a master but of a partner acting in humble self-subordination. In exercising our freedom in the sense of its second function, we command; in regard to its first function, we on the contrary obey the demand that emanates from values. Our freedom in the first sense is our fundamental and decisive moral freedom.
By the same token, it is that of which no external power can rob us. Our range of power proper can be grievously restricted—by imprisonment, for instance, or bodily diseases like a paralysis of our limbs or a loss of our power of speech. Yet, no outward force nor any bodily ailment can ever take from us our capacity for the right response to value. Also, it is on our first kind of freedom that the second one is based. It is by virtue of the former that we select the object for whose attainment we require the latter. Whether we make the right use of our first freedom essentially decides the value of the use we make of the other.
Virtue calls for the proper training of both dimensions of freedom
These two dimensions of freedom are by no means always kept apart with sufficient clarity. Hence it comes that too often an education of the will as such, aimed at enabling the pupil to overcome the inhibitions that may hinder him from translating his decisions into actions—destined, in other words, to temper his will and to make him a disciplined person—is by itself supposed to furnish him with an adequate moral training. A person thus disciplined, it is believed, will ipso facto be more fit to display the right response to values.
Now a cruder error than this is hard to imagine. There are many people who, while possessed of an iron will, able to pursue their aims