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Objection 1: It seems that patience is not a part of fortitude.
For a thing is not part of itself. Now patience is apparently the
same as fortitude: because, as stated above (Question 123,
Article 6), the proper act of fortitude is to endure; and this
belongs also to patience. For it is stated in the Liber Sententiarum
Prosperi [St. Gregory, Hom. xxxv in Evang.] that "patience
consists in enduring evils inflicted by others." Therefore patience
is not a part of fortitude.
Objection 2: Further, fortitude is about fear and daring, as
stated above (Question 123, Article 3), and thus it is in the
irascible. But patience seems to be about sorrow, and consequently
would seem to be in the concupiscible. Therefore patience is not a
part of fortitude but of temperance.
Objection 3: Further, the whole cannot be without its part.
Therefore if patience is a part of fortitude, there can be no
fortitude without patience. Yet sometimes a brave man does not endure
evils patiently, but even attacks the person who inflicts the evil.
Therefore patience is not a part of fortitude.
On the contrary, Tully (De Invent. Rhet. ii) reckons it a part
of fortitude.
I answer that, Patience is a quasi-potential part of fortitude,
because it is annexed thereto as secondary to principal virtue. For it
belongs to patience "to suffer with an equal mind the evils inflicted
by others," as Gregory says in a homily (xxxv in Evang.). Now
of those evils that are inflicted by others, foremost and most
difficult to endure are those that are connected with the danger of
death, and about these evils fortitude is concerned. Hence it is
clear that in this matter fortitude has the principal place, and that
it lays claim to that which is principal in this matter. Wherefore
patience is annexed to fortitude as secondary to principal virtue, for
which reason Prosper calls patience brave (Sent. 811).
Reply to Objection 1: It belongs to fortitude to endure, not
anything indeed, but that which is most difficult to endure, namely
dangers of death: whereas it may pertain to patience to endure any kind
of evil.
Reply to Objection 2: The act of fortitude consists not only in
holding fast to good against the fear of future dangers, but also in
not failing through sorrow or pain occasioned by things present; and it
is in the latter respect that patience is akin to fortitude. Yet
fortitude is chiefly about fear, which of itself evokes flight which
fortitude avoids; while patience is chiefly about sorrow, for a man is
said to be patient, not because he does not fly, but because he
behaves in a praiseworthy manner by suffering [patiendo] things which
hurt him here and now, in such a way as not to be inordinately saddened
by them. Hence fortitude is properly in the irascible, while patience
is in the concupiscible faculty.
Nor does this hinder patience from being a part of fortitude, because
the annexing of virtue to virtue does not regard the subject, but the
matter or the form. Nevertheless patience is not to be reckoned a part
of temperance, although both are in the concupiscible, because
temperance is only about those sorrows that are opposed to pleasures of
touch, such as arise through abstinence from pleasures of food and
sex: whereas patience is chiefly about sorrows inflicted by other
persons. Moreover it belongs to temperance to control these sorrows
besides their contrary pleasures: whereas it belongs to patience that a
man forsake not the good of virtue on account of such like sorrows,
however great they be.
Reply to Objection 3: It may be granted that patience in a certain
respect is an integral part of justice, if we consider the fact that a
man may patiently endure evils pertaining to dangers of death; and it
is from this point of view that the objection argues. Nor is it
inconsistent with patience that a man should, when necessary, rise up
against the man who inflicts evils on him; for Chrysostom [Homily
v. in the Opus Imperfectum] says on Mt. 4:10, "Begone
Satan," that "it is praiseworthy to be patient under our own
wrongs, but to endure God's wrongs patiently is most wicked": and
Augustine says in a letter to Marcellinus (Ep. cxxxviii) that
"the precepts of patience are not opposed to the good of the
commonwealth, since in order to ensure that good we fight against our
enemies." But in so far as patience regards all kinds of evils, it
is annexed to fortitude as secondary to principal virtue.
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