b. About the Connection of the Intellectual, Irascible, and Concupiscible Habits with these Seven Virtues

31. To be noted further is that, just as a habit in the category of quality is a certain intermediate genus, so it has under it many intermediate genera, until we come to the most specific species. For habit is either first divided into intellectual and appetitive (as seems probable), and the intellectual is further divided into acquired and infused, the appetitive likewise being divided into acquired and infused; or habit is first divided into acquired and infused, and then each member is divided into intellectual and appetitive - at any rate acquired intellectual habit is further divided into speculative and practical, and acquired appetitive habit divided into ordered to oneself or ordered to another. Now acquired speculative habit is divided into real and notional [of reason], because it is either about real being or being of reason. Now the acquired speculative habit about real being is divided according to the division set down in Metaphysics 6.1.1026a18-19, which is into physical, mathematical, and divine. And each of these is perhaps further divided into many divisions, before we come to the most specific species. But acquired practical habit is divided into that which concerns doable things and that which concerns makeable things, and the one about makeable things has several divisions, until we come to the most specific species (of which sort is, for instance, the one about this doable thing here). Finally, the building habit and the like, which is also practical about some doable thing, is divisible into many divisions (as will be plain in the question about the connection of the virtues, [d.36 nn.96-97]). For whether it is a practical science or a practical prudence, it is not single as to all doable things (as will be touched on in d.36 nn.98-99).

32. Of this whole division of intellective habits none is included in the number of virtues save the single infused virtue, which is faith, and a certain genus intermediate to many acquired practical virtues, which intermediate genus is called prudence. But even if, by numbering the species, including the sufficiently common ones, there could be got three divisions, namely faith and speculative science and prudence, yet, because speculative science does not perfect a man for operating well morally, for this reason it is not numbered among the virtues. For speculative science is less necessary for a man to live well humanly than prudence is, and less necessary also than faith for living well in the polity of the Church [cf. d.37 n.27].

33. Now, in the genus of appetitive habit, two acquired habits and two infused ones can be set down, if one stops at the first species under infused appetitive habit and the first under acquired appetitive habit. Under the infused indeed are first hope and charity; and under the acquired the virtues disposing appetite in relation to oneself and in relation to another. As to the second of these, it is called by the one common name of justice, but that in relation to oneself has no common name. And perhaps this is the reason that there is no stand made in the enumerating of the cardinal virtues, but further descent is made under the enumeration, because descent is made to proximate others under it [cf. Bonaventure Sent. III d.33 a. un. q.4; Aquinas Commentary on the Ethics 2.8].

34. Of things appetible for oneself, some are appetible of themselves, namely because they are of a nature to be at once agreeable; and some are to be first avoided, namely because they are of a nature to be disagreeable at once. Others are not appetible first nor avoidable first, but secondarily so, and are, because of the former, to be first desired or avoided. The virtue in general that disposes one with respect to appetible things is called temperance; the one with respect to avoidable things is called fortitude, since indeed things appetible belong first to the concupiscible power, and avoidable things first to the irascible power.

35. In order to see the distinction between these two powers, one must note that the concupiscible power has regard to that which is of a nature to be of itself agreeable or disagreeable; so that when nothing else is posited with respect to them save only that they are apprehended, then an act of being delighted or sad, of fleeing or pursuing, is of a nature, as far as concerns itself, to follow on necessarily.

36. Such agreeable things do not regard the irascible power as objects of it, for the act of the irascible power is to be angry; and to be angry, according to the Philosopher in Rhetoric 2.2.1378a31-33, is “to desire revenge according to an apparent end, because of an apparent slight.” The object therefore of the irascible power is revenge. Or more truly, if this is the ‘avengeable’ object of its act, which could be called the ‘angrifying’ object or let it be called, to speak in a more accustomed way, the ‘offending’ object, this offending object is not said to be what is immediately disagreeable to the concupiscible power, but to be what impedes what is first agreeable to it (for instance, if food is first agreeable to the taste appetite of a bird and is for this reason desired, what prohibits or removes this food offends the animal desiring it). This offending object is the object of the irascible power, about which the irascible power has a certain non-willing, not indeed the non-willing of what properly runs away (as the non-willing concupiscible runs away), but rather the non-willing of what repudiates or repels, because the irascible willingly repels it, and does not merely want what impedes it to be removed, but wants actively to remove it and to punish it further (see above d.26 nn.38-39).

37. Because, however, its act is to want to take revenge or not to want the object, and the unwilled object is still present, for this reason ‘to be angry’ is always with sadness (not only with sadness of the concupiscible power but also with sadness of the irascible power). But only at the time or instant when the irascible power perfectly has its act. This happens not by its refusing, as it were, what is desired (such as is the case when it does not avenge but wants to avenge). Rather it is when it is actually avenging that its act is perfect, similar to enjoyment on the part of the concupiscible power. And at that moment the anger of the irascible power is without sadness; indeed it is with its own great delight, according to Aristotle Rhetoric 2.2.1378b5-7 “the anger of a man is as honey.”

38. Therefore, just as the concupiscible power needs to be set in order as to things that are of a nature to be desired first (so that it does not desire them inordinately but according to the moderation of right reason), so too does the irascible power need to be moderated by a habit. This is so that it does not want immoderately to repel the things to be repelled by committing offense itself and taking immoderate revenge, but rather so that it want moderately to repel the things to be repelled and not to repel the things not to be repelled. The habit by which it is disposed to repel the things to be repelled has no name, though it can be called bellicosity or something similar. The habit by which it is of a nature not to repel things not to be repelled but to endure them is called patience. And because not to repel what offends is more difficult than to repel it, for this reason is patience fortitude of the noblest kind, according to the poetic saying “Patience is a noble class of victory; he who suffers patiently wins” [from an anonymous thirteenth century poet]. Therefore, the irascible power does not have for object the arduous or valuable [as Henry thinks] (which is what the concupiscible power has for object). Rather it has offense for object, so that its proper act is ‘to want to avenge’ or ‘not to want the offense’. This not-wanting is indeed, as it were, imperfect when the irascible power is angry but is not yet repelling or enduring, and this is for it what desire is like for the concupiscible power. Perfect not-wanting, when it moderately repels or endures what is not wanted, is for it what enjoyment is for the concupiscible power

39. The not-wanting that is ‘repelling the intruder in the future’ goes along with fear in the concupiscible power (unless the fear is too strong, so as to overcome the force of the irascible power). The not-wanting that is ‘repelling the present force impeding and offending the concupiscible power’ is, as it were, to desire to repel and is accompanied with sadness. The not-wanting that is ‘actually offending what, being an impediment before, was up to then offensive’ is the perfect not-wanting of the irascible power, which brings the power its own delight, and from then on it rests. Thus every act of the irascible power is ‘to want to repel’, and it does not stop there but seeks revenge (for an angry bird pursues a fleeing bird to punish it). Therefore this desiring, since the object does not absolutely have in it any idea of the appetible, does not occur about what exists for the end.

40. Hence there is a greater distinction between anger and concupiscible desire than between enjoying and using. For the irascible power is always sad when it does not have its revenge, as the concupiscible is sad about the absence of what it desires (but then the irascible is not sad about the presence of what it does not want, while the concupiscible is sad about this).

41. A sophism. If the irascible power desires revenge, then it desires the object to be present. One can concede that someone perfectly in anger does not want the offending thing not to be save by his taking revenge on it. Hence it is sad for the concupiscible power that the irascible does not have the object disagreeable to it [sc. so as to take revenge on it].

42. I reply that it is per accidens [sc. that the irascible power does not have that object]. Yet neither is this sad for the irascible power, but only [its not having] the pleasure of revenge, or the victory of the offender over the irascible power.

43. On the contrary: therefore the irascible power does not have a bodily organ [Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet 8 q.15, held that sensible passions belong to diverse sense organs of the body], because some determinate quality would be agreeable and some determinate quality disagreeable to that organ. So not just any impediment is disagreeable to the organ, for to be an offender is just a relation of the agent.

44. The offender does not possess a sensible quality by which he is disagreeable, the way he has something that is sad for the concupiscible power. But the offender, when he offends, offends by asserting or preventing, even if whatever sensible quality he has were displeasing or repugnant to the concupiscible power. So there is no particular organ that is changed by the sensible quality.

45. And if you say ‘not wanting one of the opposites belongs to him to whom belongs wanting the other opposite, therefore etc.’ I reply that when the irascible power has its act, there are always two unwanted things in it: one of them unwanted by the concupiscible power and the other by the irascible. The example given earlier [n.36] makes the fact plain: the thing not wanted by the concupiscible power is ‘lacking food’, and from this not-wanting there follows sadness in the concupiscible power, by which sadness it as it were flees the unwanted thing and does not expel it. For there is another unwanted thing, namely what takes the food away, and it is unwanted by the irascible power - not by an act of fleeing but by an act of expelling or repelling. And while the irascible power is not actually repelling, it suffers its own sadness.

46. Now it appears that these pains of the irascible and concupiscible powers are not the same pain, because for if the offending object is presented under the idea of being impossible to repel, there is greater sadness in the concupiscible power but there will not properly be anger in the irascible power. For no one greatly afraid is angry, according to the Philosopher Rhetoric 2.3.1380a31-33, and yet the more afraid someone afraid is, the more does he have the pain of the concupiscible power in flight from what is feared. And though the irascible power sometimes grieves about not being able to take revenge, namely when it has no power to do so, yet the concupiscible power grieves about something else, namely the lack of the desired object.

47. The pain too of the concupiscible power takes place with a change in the organ of the sensitive part different from the pain of the irascible power (cf. Aristotle De Motu Animalium 7.701b1-32): the pain of the concupiscible constricts just as its opposed delight dilates; and the pain of the irascible heats up, and is the boiling of blood about the heart. And from this it follows that, in the sensitive part, the concupiscible and irascible powers have diverse organs, because the same thing cannot be moved at the same time by contrary motions.

48. Now in the rational part there can be a similar distinction of objects as in the sensitive part.

For something is delightful first to the will, namely the good or what is agreeable to the will in itself, or even what is agreeable to it in the sensitive appetite (since the will is of a nature to experience pleasure along with the sensitive appetite, which it is connected with in the same supposit).

The will too can have an object offending it, both according to right reason and against right reason, and it can look at it as offensive in act, refusing it as offensive by a repelling and commanding act.

There is not, however, as great a distinction between these in the will as there is in the sensitive appetite, because the will is not organic [does not have a bodily organ]. Nor should one say that one of these is rather a force and the other a power, or conversely. But, like reason, it is distinguished into a superior and inferior part by comparison to diverse objects, though it is simply the same power.

49. About the term ‘force’ [n.48] I don’t know what one should say, for it is a superfluous word. The reason for operating about the distinct higher and lower objects is simply the same thing, as was said in II d.24 n.29.

50. In the same way one can say about the first and second classes of delightful and sad things [n.34] that the principle of handling them is altogether the same power and the same force, for a power is that whereby an able man is able and whereby an able man is brave. In spiritual things it is the same thing to be able and to be brave, and therefore this distinction will only be on the part of objects toward which an able man tends. It is as if we were to say that the intellect is distinguished into principles and conclusions, because it tends to the conclusions through the principles. But no one distinguishes the intellect into powers and forces because of such a distinction between principles and conclusions.

51. On the basis of these suppositions about the irascible and concupiscible powers [nn.35-50], I return to the virtues and say that the proper habit of the concupiscible power is called temperance, and the proper habit of the irascible power perfecting it in general is called fortitude, and this holds when speaking of acquired and infused habits. But both these infused habits perfect the concupiscible power, because God, whom these habits have for object, is not in any way not-wantable. Now although both these kinds in general, namely both fortitude and temperance, could be further divided, yet in the enumeration of the cardinal virtues they remain undivided.