Intellect and Will: The Difference between Rational and Non-Rational

In certain films of recent decades, animals are portrayed as cunning creatures that can create, build, intellectualize, and make choices. In the 2007 Pixar movie, Ratatouille, for example, an ambitious mouse finds his way into a Parisian Cafe and proves to become the glowing star after cooking up delectable, mouth-watering recipes and along the way brings about justice and romance along the banks of the Sein. As long as media can make the distinctions between the different levels of life, there wouldn't be a problem with talking animals in children's stories. But contemporary society is losing sight of the elevated status of man, imprinted with the image of God, above the rest of creation and attempt to display humanity as merely a more developed creature that will soon by equaled by chimpanzees and dolphins. Could they be more wrong? They have overlooked(or ignored) the two marvelous faculties of a human being that sets him apart from the rest of creation: the powers of intellect and will.

Aristotle gives a very clean cut definition of man: “man is a rational animal.” The word rational comes from the Latin ratio, meaning reason. Man is the only creature capable of reason which means that he is an intellectual creature that can move from one judgment to another in his mind and accept one of them as true. He has an intellect that deliberates and chooses and a free will that puts the result of his deliberation and choice into action. Animals, however clever or sharp God created their instinct, are vastly inferior to mankind because of their lack of capacity to reason. If animals were truly man's equal than a grizzly bear would be put on trial for killing a hunter in Alaska and be accused of murder. Raccoons would be accused of theft and violation of property when digging into trash cans, deer would be convicted for jaywalking, and the list goes on. As anyone can clearly see, this never happens. These animals don't have the intellect to see through the results of their actions.

The word “intellect” originates from the Latin intus legere, which means “to read within.” It is through his intellect that man is able to abstract in which he can de-materialize an object and bring it within the immaterial walls of his mind. A man can sit down and read a passage of Aristotle and abstract the meaning of the words to contemplate them. This power is immaterial, like the rational soul, and can learn and develop as he goes through his various experiences. This power of abstraction proves that man is a spiritual being, contrary to the philosophy and belief of Charles Darwin, and can contemplate eternal truths and theorize about other hidden ones. Another clue to man's amazing intellect is the power of grasping universals. Man does not see particulars just as particulars, but as part of another category or species.

The second amazing faculty of a man is his will. Man's intellect allows him to deliberate on means for an end, but it is the will that realizes the decision. The will is often referred to as the intellectual appetite because “it is an activating power, directing the subject toward goods and away from evils.” This aptitude of man is clearly free, allowing him to choose either good or evil therefore earning merit or punishment. If man were not free to choose between good or evil, laws, love and all of life would be meaningless. It would be useless to accuse someone of a crime that he didn't want to commit, he wouldn't be driven by any desire of a higher good than himself, and life would be just a robotic exercise in which man is a machine determined in his actions. No, man is free.

These powers of intellect and will truly show God's love for man. He can abstract from a material object and contemplate and then deliberate, decide, and act. He is quite distinct from an non-rational animal, which can neither reason nor exercise free will. Man is an image of God endowed with gifts that enable him to know, love, and serve God, the source and end of all things. He can ascend or fall with his intellect like many evil men who used it for their own selfish ideologies or twisted philosophies and remain stagnant in his actions or rise up against the evil tide and push with his will, directed by his intellect, for the conquering of himself and the world for our Father, who is in Heaven.