108
Since any desire of the will presumes some awareness of the good, the desires of the will cannot themselves give rise to that awareness.
109
The inclinations of the will always follow upon some awareness of the good; consequently, we must first be aware of the good —by first knowing some other inclination — before the will itself is inclined to that good. For every natural inclination from another part of human nature, the will has its own corresponding natural inclination; the intellect is inclined to know the truth, and so also is the will inclined toward knowledge. The will, it seems, always provides an echo inclination, but does it provide any original inclinations of its own?
117
We are left with no inclination peculiar to the will. All conscious inclinations of the will echo some prior nonconscious inclinations, found in other powers.
117
The will does, however, relate to the apple under a distinctive formality, namely, insofar as the apple is good. The apple is good insofar as it relates to the intellect, to the nourishing power, and to the power of taste, but none of these powers relate to the apple precisely insofar as it is good. The intellect relates to the apple insofar as it is known as true; this truth is itself a good, but the intellect does not move toward it as good. Similarly, the nourishing power moves into the apple insofar as it is sustenance, which sustenance is a certain good; nevertheless, the nourishing power does not move toward it precisely as good. Only the will moves to an object precisely as good.
The good of which we speak is the good of the person. As we have seen, the good always relates to some subject. Being sharp is the good of a knife and not the good of a hammer, which is good by being blunt. The will is not inclined to the good of a tree or to the good of a beaver, except insofar as these things in some way might be good for a human being. The goods to which the will is inclined, then, must be goods of the person.
118
Since the’will is directed toward all these goods insofar as each is a good of the person, we may conclude that only the will is directed to the whole good of the person. Each inclination is directed to some particular good, but the will is directed to each and every good. The object of the will is the good in common; it is not just some singular good but the whole good of the person. Consequently, the will can be called the inclination of the whole person.
II. De veritate, ii, 5, ad 3 (Leonine ed., v. 22, 624, 238-43). "Inteilectus enim etsi habeat inclinationem in aliquid non tamen nominat ipsam inclinationem hominis, sed voluntas ipsam inclinationem hominis nominat. Unde quicquid fit secundum voluntatem fit secundum hominis inclinationem."
120
The picture that unfolds involves two stages. First, the intellect recognizes some nonconscious inclination of the person, such as the inclination of the intellect to know the truth; the intellect then perceives a human good. At this point, the second stage begins, for the will, presented with its object, has a corresponding natural inclination to this good, for instance, a voluntary desire to know the truth. Following upon this natural inclination of the will, reason then perceives that the truth is fully good for the individual insofar as it is realized voluntarily.

121
For Aquinas, the will and the power it moves are wedded into a single inclination moving to a single good. There is no good of a power independent of the person and his will, to which the will must respond. Neither is there an independent will, seeking goods apart from human activities embedded in human powers. Rather, there is a movement of the whole person, will and power united, toward some good.
According to the new natural law theory, descriptivism has forgotten about the will, because it has focused upon nature. The argument presupposes an opposition between nature and will. Certainly, we can use the word "nature" in this way In the most profound sense, however, Aquinas holds that the will is part of nature. To discover moral truths in nature is not to discover morality apart from the will. It is to discover the good natural to human beings, which is a good realized through acts of will. Perhaps the objections against perverted faculty reasoning are valid, but they are not objections against the natural law of Aquinas.
125 The dynamic character of nature, then, propels our minds to discover the good in things. When we strip nature of its teleological impetus, making it into a kind of mathematical nature, then we also strip nature of its good. Then it becomes a mystery how we come to know the good. Certainly not by way of nature. The very meaning of the good becomes a mystery.
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