toward it. Enjoyment attaches to will from the presence of the end; but not conversely does anything become present because the will shall delight in it Therefore there must be something besides an act of will, through which the end may become present to the will. This is plain respecting the ends of sense (fines sensibiles). For if to obtain money were an act of will, the miser would have obtained it from the beginning. And so it comes to pass with respect to an end conceived by the mind; we obtain it when it becomes present to us through an act of the intellect; and then the delighted will rests in the end obtained. Thus, therefore, the essence of beatitude consists in an act of mind. But the delight which follows beatitude pertains to will, even in the sense in which Augustine says: 'beatitude est gaudium de veritate,' because indeed joy is the consummation of beatitude."
The supremely intellectual attitude of the Angelic Doctor, shows at once, and as it were universally, in his conviction of the primacy of the true over the good, and of knowledge over will. Sometimes he argues these points directly; and again, his temperamental attitude appears in the course of argument upon other points. For example, Quaestio xvi. of Pars prima has for its subject Veritas. And in the first article, which discusses whether truth is in the thing (in re) or only in the mind, he argues thus:
"As good signifies that upon which desire (appetitus) is bent, so true signifies that at which understanding aims. There is this difference between desire and understanding or any kind of cognition: cognition exists in so far as what is known (cognitum) is in the knower; but desire is as the desirous inclines toward the desired. Thus the end (terminus = finis) of desire, which is the good, is in the desirable thing; but the end of knowing, which is the true, is in mind itself."
In Articulus 4, Thomas comes to his point: that the true secundum rationem (i.e. according to its formal nature) is prior to the good.
"Although both the good and the true have been taken as convertible with being, yet they differ in their conception (ratione); and that the true is prior to the good appears from two considerations: First, the true is more closely related to being, which is prior to the good; for the true regards being itself, simply and directly; while the ratio of the good follows being as in some way perfect, and therefore desirable. Secondly, cognition naturally precedes desire.
