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Objection 1: It seems that liberality is not about money. For
every moral virtue is about operations and passions. Now it is proper
to justice to be about operations, as stated in Ethic. v, 1.
Therefore, since liberality is a moral virtue, it seems that it is
about passions and not about money.
Objection 2: Further, it belongs to a liberal man to make use of
any kind of wealth. Now natural riches are more real than artificial
riches, according to the Philosopher (Polit. i, 5,6).
Therefore liberality is not chiefly about money.
Objection 3: Further, different virtues have different matter,
since habits are distinguished by their objects. But external things
are the matter of distributive and commutative justice. Therefore they
are not the matter of liberality.
On the contrary, The Philosopher says (Ethic. iv, 1) that
"liberality seems to be a mean in the matter of money."
I answer that, According to the Philosopher (Ethic. iv, 1) it
belongs to the liberal man to part with things. Hence liberality is
also called open-handedness [largitas], because that which is open
does not withhold things but parts of them. The term "liberality"
seems also to allude to this, since when a man quits hold of a thing he
frees it [liberat], so to speak, from his keeping and ownership,
and shows his mind to be free of attachment thereto. Now those things
which are the subject of a man's free-handedness towards others are
the goods he possesses, which are denoted by the term "money."
Therefore the proper matter of liberality is money.
Reply to Objection 1: As stated above (Article 1, ad 3),
liberality depends not on the quantity given, but on the heart of the
giver. Now the heart of the giver is disposed according to the
passions of love and desire, and consequently those of pleasure and
sorrow, towards the things given. Hence the interior passions are the
immediate matter of liberality, while exterior money is the object of
those same passions.
Reply to Objection 2: As Augustine says in his book De
Disciplina Christi (Tract. de divers, i), everything whatsoever
man has on earth, and whatsoever he owns, goes by the name of
"'pecunia' [money], because in olden times men's possessions
consisted entirely of 'pecora' [flocks]." And the Philosopher
says (Ethic. iv, 1): "We give the name of money to anything
that can be valued in currency."
Reply to Objection 3: Justice establishes equality in external
things, but has nothing to do, properly speaking, with the regulation
of internal passions: wherefore money is in one way the matter of
liberality, and in another way of justice.
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