Again, we choose to take or avoid, and so on, but we opine what a thing is, or for what it is serviceable, or how; but we do not opine to take or avoid.
Further, Moral Choice is commended rather for having a right object than for being judicious, but Opinion for being formed in accordance with truth.
Again, we choose such things as we pretty well know to be good, but we form opinions respecting such as we do not know at all.
And it is not thought that choosing and opining best always go together, but that some opine the better course and yet by reason of viciousness choose not the things which they should.
It may be urged, that Opinion always precedes or accompanies Moral Choice; be it so, this makes no difference, for this is not the point in question, but whether Moral Choice is the same as Opinion of a certain kind.
Since then it is none of the aforementioned things, what is it, or how is it characterised? Voluntary it plainly is, but not all voluntary action is an object of Moral Choice. May we not say then, it is “that voluntary which has passed through a stage of previous deliberation?” because Moral Choice is attended with reasoning and intellectual process. The etymology of its Greek name seems to give a hint of it, being when analysed “chosen in preference to somewhat else.”
Chapter V.
Well then; do men deliberate about everything, and is anything soever the object of Deliberation, or are there some matters with respect to which there is none? (It may be as well perhaps to say, that by “object of Deliberation” is meant such matter as a sensible man would deliberate upon, not what any fool or madman might.)