Choose a topic from Part 2A:
1. Counsel is the studious inquiry of the mind into the object proposed for choice. The mind thinks things over, and offers its recommendations to the will. The mind or intellect thus takes counsel within itself, and offers its advice or counsel to the will. To illustrate: a man suffering a malady ponders his suitable course of action; he asks himself whether he had not better go at once to a hospital for surgery; he considers expense, and dependants, and his job and whether he could retain it through along absence; he considers the possibility of deferring radical treatment and of getting on for a time with palliative medicines; he considers danger both in the surgery and in delay in undergoing surgery. These and other matters are pondered by the mind before the will decides. And this pondering and judging is counsel.
2. Counsel, like choice, has to do with means. It is the mind's judgment on the suitability of means to an end.
3. St. Gregory of Nyssa says that we take counsel about things that are within the range of what we can do. Counsel looks on to the act of free choice. It concerns doing, not being; it looks to action, not to facts or truths; it weighs facts and truths with a view to action.
4. Counsel is not concerned with trifles; man does not truly take counsel about slight or insignificant action, but about things of weight and importance. Nor is there any place for counsel about a thing to be done if the thing belongs to the established order of science or art, for science and art have their changeless principles. Counsel has place in the more notable instances of free human conduct, and seeks to know the best mode of procedure.
5. Counsel is a kind of analysis of a situation. It takes into view an end intended, and judges what is here and now to be done as steps or means to that end.
6. And counsel does not result in a diffuse or general recommendation, nor a recommendation of countless steps towards an end. Counsel is definite and precise in its judgments and recommendations.
"Does our conduct correspond with our Faith?"
The Cure D'Ars
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"Whom do you seek, friend, if you seek not God? Seek him, find him, cleave to him; bind your will to his with bands of steel and you will live always at peace in this life and in the next."
St Alphonsus de Liguori
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"Try to turn your heart from the love of things visible and bring yourself to things invisible. For they who follow their own evil passions stain their consciences and lose the grace of God.
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Thomas á Kempis
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