Wish

The good has been seen; now the will responds to it. This is simple volition — a genuine motion of the will toward the good as good, but an unconditioned one. It wants, without yet willing anything in particular to be done.

The scholastic tradition gave the weak form of this a name worth keeping: velleity, the wish that never becomes a will. It is what we mean by “I’d love to speak Italian” from someone who will never open a grammar. The attraction is sincere. It is simply not the kind of wanting that moves a hand.

Aquinas does not treat velleity as a vice. It is an ordinary and necessary stage — we are drawn to far more goods than we can pursue, and that abundance is a feature of a creature made for the infinite. The error is only in mistaking the wish for the deed, and thereby feeling one has begun.

In Actus Humani

Most lists are full of wishes wearing the costume of goals. The app’s insistence on a criterion — a sentence stating what would make this end attained — is designed to expose the difference. A wish resists being given a criterion, because a criterion would let it fail.