E. To the Arguments for the Fifth Way

92. [At the same time to all of them] - To the arguments adduced for the fifth way, which seem to show that moral habit, insofar as it is a virtue, is an active principle of an act insofar as the act is moral [nn.56-59], I reply that moral goodness in an act (as was said before [n.62]) is the completeness of all the conditions and circumstances, and this principally so that these conditions be dictated by right reason as needing to be present in the act. Simply necessary, then, for the moral goodness of a moral act is that a complete dictate of right reason precede it, to which dictate it be conform as the measured to the measure.

93. But it is not necessary that the declaration be from some intellective habit, namely from prudence, nor that the act conform to the dictate be elicited by some moral appetitive power; for right dictate simply precedes prudence, because by it the first degree of prudence is generated, and thus right choice simply precedes the moral habit, because by the choice itself moral virtue in the first degree is generated; at that point, then, in a first act, and correctly, someone gives a dictate without generated prudence and rightly chooses morally without generated moral virtue. However, prudence, generated from the first act or from several other right dictates, inclines more to eliciting similar dictates, that is, to rightly drawing conclusions of practical syllogisms about all the circumstances that ought to be present in the act to be elicited; likewise moral virtue, generated after the first act, inclines more to eliciting acts similar to those from which it was generated.

94. However, one must understand that what is generated about moral virtue is a certain quality, in whose idea - as it is absolutely such a quality - is not included its conformity with prudence; for the same quality could be generated from similar acts, in the same species, elicited without prudence (nay with erroneous reason, if it were so [n.65]), but that quality - which is generated from those acts according to a species of nature - is not a virtue from the fact that it is a quality, but there is further necessarily required its conformity with prudence, or, which is more express, its coexistence with prudence in the same actor [n.66]. For always indeed, whether prudence is present or not, the habit is of a nature to be conform to prudence, if prudence were there (just as the habit of abstaining, generated from acts done from an erroneous reason, is always - as far as depends on itself - of a nature to be conform to prudence, although prudence not be present in it), in the way that another habit, generated from excessive acts, is not of a nature to be conform. When the quality, therefore, which is of a nature to be conform to prudence, coexists with prudence, then it has not only an aptitudinal but an actual conformity with prudence, because both habits incline to similar things [n.93], - and the act elicited according to the inclination of those two habits is morally good; but if any act were elicited according to the quality alone that is materially moral virtue, and prudence does not coexist in the same actor nor is inclining to that act, the act would not be morally good.

95. Thus, therefore, it is plain that the quality which is materially a moral virtue (which has completely the idea of moral virtue through this, that it coexists with prudence) is related to prudence - when prudence is present - as second cause to first cause, and this in respect of the same common effect to be elicited by them; for then prudence is as it were the prior cause and the moral habit as it were the posterior cause. But these two causes, when they come together at the same time to elicit the act, can attribute to the act the moral goodness which the latter habit alone, if it were without prudence or right reason, could not attribute to it; to attribute moral goodness, indeed, is to attribute conformity to right reason - and this is attributedNote by Scotus: “Nothing: the extreme [sc. prudence] to which the other [sc. the moral habit] is referred does not give anything to its correlative effectively but only terminatively.” I.e. [Vatican editors] the habit as it is completely a moral habit, just as it causes nothing in respect of the act, so it gives nothing to the act. ²² by that quality, not from the fact alone that it is a quality, but from the fact that in causing it coexists with prudence, which is inclining it at the same time.

97. And one must note that this goodness, as it is attributed to prudence so inclining, does not, as was said at the beginning [nn.92-93], necessarily belong to the habit of prudence, nor to it solely, but to the act which would be of a nature to be an act of prudence, which is right dictate; for if right dictate is present, and if appetite desires in accordance with it - as if in accordance with a measure - the act is morally right; and if that right dictate were not present, but prudence was present (according to which the intellect could dictate rightly), still the act - elicited without right dictate - would not be perfectly good. Therefore, when prudence is not present, the act which is right dictate suffices for dictating the right act; but, when prudence is present, prudence does not suffice without its own elicited act, and thus the rightness which prudence attributes to the moral act it attributes by the mediation of the proper act of prudence.

98. [To the individual arguments] - To the authorities, therefore, adduced on behalf of the fifth way, which seem to say that virtue, whereby it is virtue, effectively causes the moral goodness of the act:

First to the statement from Ethics 2 that virtue “makes his work good” [n.56], I say that either it does so by inclining, and this belongs to it from the fact that it is this quality in species of nature, - or, since this is not sufficient (for it would incline thus without prudence), it does so whereby it is virtue, that is, whereby it coexists with prudence; it does so indeed in its own class of cause, because it does so as second cause, - and this by virtue of the superior cause, which is prudence. If therefore the third way is maintained, namely about the activity of the habit [n.32], then it does so actively, but as partial and second cause; but if the fourth way be maintained [n.46], then it does so by way of inclination, and this, not from the fact alone that it inclines, but from the fact that the virtue itself along with prudence-virtue inclines.

99. To the other, about ‘moderating’ [n.58], I say that moral virtue does not actively moderate passion, as if, when the passion has already been excited - by the object - it makes it to be less; for a pleasant object, when present, naturally moves according to the utmost of itself. But the habit can make the object less agreeable to an habituated power than to a non-habituated power; for just as it is more disagreeable for a heavy object to be upwards than for a neutral object (although heaviness were not the active principle of descent), so some pleasant excessive thing would be in itself agreeable to the power, but to the power when habituated by a habit inclining it to moderate acts that pleasant excessive thing is disagreeable - or is not as pleasant and agreeable. And to this extent, as if by formal or virtual repugnance to the habit, the habit moderates the disagreeable or excessive object, lest the pleasant thing give immoderate pleasure; and from this there does not follow any activity of the habit, just as neither of humidity in a piece of wood, although the humidity moderates the fire so that it does not heat immoderately or strongly, as it does a dry body.

In another way it can be said that virtue moderates a passion that is not already generated or inhering but coming to be, to the extent it inclines the power - and this with coexisting prudence - to flee immoderate pleasant things that are of a nature to introduce immoderate pleasures, and only to admit pleasant things that are of a nature to give moderate pleasure. And in this respect indeed it does moderate, not by diminishing an already existing pleasure, but by warding off in advance an immoderate pleasure - which would be present.

100. To the other, about the fact that ‘without justice no one can operate justly’ [n.59], I reply: I say that in the first act, when there is a right dictate generative of prudence and the choice of someone just is conform to it [n.93], there the chooser not only does what is just but does it justly. But one should understand that he operates non-justly - without justice - according to the whole perfection according to which someone could act justly, one of which perfections is pleasure and facility in operating, which does not belong to a non-habituated power as it does to a habituated power.