6. Fifth Way

55. It remains now to inquire further about the accidental goodness of the act (which is the sort moral goodness is), and about moral habit, whether moral habit, insofar as it is a virtue, is in any way an active principle with respect to moral goodness in the act.

56. [Arguments for the fifth way] - It seems that it is

Because, according to the Philosopher Ethics 2.5.1106a15-17, virtue is “what perfects the possessor and makes his work good;” but it does not make it good in the idea of passive principle, because it is not the idea of receiving; therefore it does so in the idea of active principle

57. Further, virtue is “the disposition of the perfect in relation to the best”, from Physics 73.246b23; but it is not a passive disposition because - as before - it is not the idea of receiving; therefore it is in the idea of active principle. - There is a confirmation also for the reason, because ‘as good is to good so is best to best’ [Topics 3.2.117b22-26]; but since ‘the best idea’ belongs to the active principle, then according to this reason virtue perfects the power, and so perfects it for acting.

58. Further, virtue is moderator of the passions; but it does not moderate the passions through the idea of passive principle, because the object, by the fact it is the natural cause, causes the action according to the utmost of its power, - therefore as much as it can, if it is not impeded by some contrary agent; therefore the habit, by preventing the object from thus acting completely, moderates it in repressing the passion through the idea of active principle.

59. Further, Ethics 2.3.1105b7-9, the Philosopher says that ‘he who does not have justice, although he could do just things, not however justly’, - and so in the case of other acts; but moral goodness requires acting justly or formally, - and thus in other cases; therefore virtue, insofar as it is good, is such a principle of act, because without it an act could not be good.

60. [Arguments against the fifth way] - But there is an argument to the contrary of this through the fact that moral goodness in an act asserts only relation, because that an act is circumstanced with its due circumstances is not anything absolute in the act but is only a due comparison of it to the things it ought to agree with; therefore this does not have any proper active principle, just as neither does a respect have it.

61. Further, if a habit, insofar as it is a ‘virtue’, were the active principle of the moral goodness in an act, since the habit is not a virtue save in a respect, namely from its conformity with prudence (for it is “an elective habit of the mean, as determined by right reason” Ethics 2.5.1106b36-07a2), therefore some relative idea in virtue would be the idea of active principle, which is impossible.

62. [Response to the fifth way] - As to this article [n.55], it can be said that, just as beauty is not some absolute quality in the beautiful body but is the aggregation of all the things that become such a body (to wit size, figure, and color), and an aggregation too of all the respects (which are aggregations of all the becoming things in relation to the body and to each other), so the moral goodness of an act is as it were a certain comeliness of that act, including the aggregation of a due proportion with all the things that it has to be in proportion with (to wit, with the power, the object, the end, the time, the place, the manner), and that specifically in the way these are determined by right reason to be needing to agree with the act; the result is that we can say on behalf of all of them that the agreement of the act with right reason is that by which, once posited, the act is good, and that by which, when not posited - whatever other things it agrees with - the act is not good, because however much an act is about an object of some kind or other, if it is not according to right reason in the one who does it (to wit if he do not have right reason in his operating), the act is not good. Principally, therefore, the conformity of the act to right reason - a right reason determining fully all the circumstances due to that act - is the moral goodness of an act.

But this goodness has no proper active principle, just as neither does any respect, - especially since this respect is, from the nature of the extreme terms, consequent to the extremes posited; for it is impossible for any act to be posited in existence and for right reason to be posited in existence without there following in the act, from the nature of the extreme terms, such a conformity to right reason; but a relation that necessarily follows the extremes does not have any proper cause other than the extremes.

Therefore, as concerns this accidental condition of the act, which is moral goodness, there is no necessity for any habit to have any idea of proper active principle, save insofar as it has the idea of active principle with respect to the substance of the act -which act is of a nature to agree with the full determination of prudence;Note by Scotus: “This respect - aptitudinal respect - follows from the nature of the extremes [sc. habit and prudence], but actual respect does not; for this habit is fit, of its species, to be subordinate to prudence in acting, but it is not subordinate - in acting - from the nature of the very extremes, even when they exist together in the same thing; for when he [sc. who has both the habit and prudence] has an appetite in accord with this habit and not from the dictate of reason (if this is possible), then the habit is not subordinate, nor is the act morally good. On the contrary: he always uses it as a virtue, because he uses it as it is fit to be subordinate; for it is not a virtue precisely as actually subordinate in acting, because then someone who is not doing anything would not have any virtue. - Again, every respect that is not from the nature of the extremes has a proper cause. What is the cause here? To the first: he uses it but not as making it a virtue. In another way: although he uses that which is a virtue, not however as it is a virtue, because although being fit for subordination is sufficient for the being of virtue, nevertheless for using it ‘as it is a virtue’ requires it to be subordinated, because to use it is to be subordinated. To the second: the respect in an effect is from the two causes, conjoined in the acting; and not from the form of one in relation to itself, nor from the form of the other, nor of both and of both as conjoined in the subject, but of them as conjoined in actually acting, and thus of both as conjoined such that the habit moves to desire from the dictate of prudence. Such conjoining of them, therefore, in actually acting is the source whereby the relation is in the effect; not that it is the source whereby the acting is moral (because this would be got from prudence alone, without the other habit moving), but that it is the source whereby the acting is moral and easy and pleasant, - as in Ethics 2.5.1106a15-21. But what is the source of this conjunction of them in acting, because it is an extrinsic respect? - Response: from their absolute natures there is first this conjunction, and second the relation of them in the effect. But what is the ‘absolute’ from them such that this respect should be caused second? -Response: from prudence there is an absolute act in the intellect, - and from that act as prior cause and rule, and from the appetite as ruled, there is an absolute act of desiring. If the conjunction of the causes precedes in nature the common effect, nothing ‘absolute’ comes from the two causes before their conjunction does (a resulting difficulty: the source of the action primarily is not the source of the second conjunction in the action). If the first - in the order of nature - is a caused ‘absolute’, from it there is a relation of it to each cause, and from it conversely a relation of each cause to it, - from it the conjunction of one with the other. ¹⁷ and toward that act some habit inclines in itself from the nature of the habit, and from this - as a consequence - it inclines to the act which is conform to right reason, if right reason is present in the one acting.

65. What has been said of the moral goodness of an act [n.62] must be said proportionally of the habit, because moral virtue adds over and above the substance of the habit - as it is a form in the genus of quality - only an habitual conformity to right reason. For the same habit in nature, which might be generated from acts of abstinence elicited along with an erroneous reason in the one eliciting them, when it remains afterwards along with right reason, would afterwards be the virtue of abstinence and would before not be a habit of virtue, as long as there was no right reason of abstaining; nor yet has anything changed in that habit in itself but only now it is conjoined with prudence while before it was not.

66. To be conjoined, therefore, to prudenceNote of Scotus: “I do not say ‘conjoined in the same subject’ but, along with this, ‘conjoined to it as to a rule and prior cause’, to which this habit is subordinated insofar as it is a mover, - and this subordination or conformity is the essential idea of virtue; and the absolute form, as it is precisely mover under such a respect, is precisely active for an act that has a like respect (because what agrees with the ruled agrees with the rule), and thus the habit ‘as it is a virtue’ is precisely a mover to an act morally right, which - as it is absolutely such a form - is absolutely active for such an act ‘in its substance’, nor does it there have the idea of subordinate cause with respect to prudence.” ¹⁸ attributes to the habit (as it is a form in the genus of quality) the being of virtue, when the habit is of its nature naturally conform to prudence, - and so the habit that is a moral virtue indicates nothing in absolute entity other than is indicated by a habit such in nature, but does not indicate a virtue, if it be without prudence; and consequently it can have no other causality as it is a virtue than as it is such a natural quality, save that ‘as it is conjoined with prudence’ it is of a nature to be second cause - directed as it were by prudence - with respect to the common effect of both; but as it is without prudence it cannot be second cause with respect to the same effect (just as sight in a phrenetic cannot be a free power by participation, because he is unable to have use of will, which is a free power by essence -but in someone healthy sight does have use of free power by participation, and it is as it were a second cause with respect to the will). But still, when it is a second cause with respect to prudence, it has a proper causality - agreeing with it in its order of causing -precisely from the fact that it is such a form and a certain quality in nature, but not by respect of conformity or conjunction with prudence, because although a second cause joined to a first acts otherwise than when it is without it, yet it does not have its proper active virtue from such conjunction, but from its absolute nature.

67. [Conclusion to the fifth way] - Neither, therefore, on the part of the act insofar as it is morally good, nor on the part of the habit insofar as it is a moral virtue, can there be found any special idea according to which a virtue ‘as it is a virtue’ is a principle of an act insofar as the act is morally good save the one which is on the part of the habit and the act as concerns their nature.

68. [What one should think of the fifth way] - This fifth way, therefore, about the action of a moral virtue with respect to the act as it is morally good, should not be treated as other than the ways that touch on the substance of the habit and the substance of the act [n.67], - and so, in brief, as to the whole of the fifth way, one should hold either the third or the fourth way [nn.32, 46] about every habit.