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Objection 1: It would seem that moral virtues are not divided into
those which are about operations and those which are about passions.
For the Philosopher says (Ethic. ii, 3) that moral virtue is
"an operative habit whereby we do what is best in matters of pleasure
or sorrow." Now pleasure and sorrow are passions, as stated above
(Question 31, Article 1; Question 35, Article 1).
Therefore the same virtue which is about passions is also about
operations, since it is an operative habit.
Objection 2: Further, the passions are principles of external
action. If therefore some virtues regulate the passions, they must,
as a consequence, regulate operations also. Therefore the same moral
virtues are about both passions and operations.
Objection 3: Further, the sensitive appetite is moved well or ill
towards every external operation. Now movements of the sensitive
appetite are passions. Therefore the same virtues that are about
operations are also about passions.
On the contrary, The Philosopher reckons justice to be about
operations; and temperance, fortitude and gentleness, about passions
(Ethic. ii, 3,7; v, 1, seqq.).
I answer that, Operation and passion stand in a twofold relation to
virtue. First, as its effects; and in this way every moral virtue
has some good operations as its product; and a certain pleasure or
sorrow which are passions, as stated above (Question 59, Article
4, ad 1).
Secondly, operation may be compared to moral virtue as the matter
about which virtue is concerned: and in this sense those moral virtues
which are about operations must needs differ from those which are about
passions. The reason for this is that good and evil, in certain
operations, are taken from the very nature of those operations, no
matter how man may be affected towards them: viz. in so far as good
and evil in them depend on their being commensurate with someone else.
In operations of this kind there needs to be some power to regulate the
operations in themselves: such are buying and selling, and all such
operations in which there is an element of something due or undue to
another. For this reason justice and its parts are properly about
operations as their proper matter. On the other hand, in some
operations, good and evil depend only on commensuration with the
agent. Consequently good and evil in these operations depend on the
way in which man is affected to them. And for this reason in such like
operations virtue must needs be chiefly about internal emotions which
are called the passions of the soul, as is evidently the case with
temperance, fortitude and the like.
It happens, however, in operations which are directed to another,
that the good of virtue is overlooked by reason of some inordinate
passion of the soul. In such cases justice is destroyed in so far as
the due measure of the external act is destroyed: while some other
virtue is destroyed in so far as the internal passions exceed their due
measure. Thus when through anger, one man strikes another, justice
is destroyed in the undue blow; while gentleness is destroyed by the
immoderate anger. The same may be clearly applied to other virtues.
This suffices for the Replies to the Objections. For the first
considers operations as the effect of virtue, while the other two
consider operation and passion as concurring in the same effect. But
in some cases virtue is chiefly about operations, in others, about
passions, for the reason given above.
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