eive their species from the
last end, but from their proximate ends: and these, although they be
infinite in number, are not infinite in species.
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SECOND ARTICLE [I-II, Q. 60, Art. 2]
Whether Moral Virtues About Operations Are Different from Those That
Are About Passions?
Objection 1: It would seem that moral virtues are not divided into
those which are about operations and those which are about passions.
For the Philosopher says (Ethic. ii, 3) that moral virtue is "an
operative habit whereby we do what is best in matters of pleasure or
sorrow." Now pleasure and sorrow are passions, as stated above (Q.
31, A. 1; Q. 35, A. 1). Therefore the same virtue which is about
passions is also about operations, since it is an operative habit.
Obj. 2: Further, the passions are principles of external action. If
therefore some virtues regulate the passions, they must, as a
consequence, regulate operations also. Therefore the same moral
virtues are about both passions and operations.
Obj. 3: Further, the sensitive appetite is moved well or ill towards
every external operation. Now movements of the sensitive appetite are
passions. Therefore the same virtues that are about operations are
also about passions.
_On the contrary,_ The Philosopher reckons justice to be about
operations; and temperance, fortitude and gentleness, about passions
(Ethic. ii, 3, 7; v, 1, seqq.).
_I answer that,_ Operation and passion stand in a twofold relation to
virtue. First, as its effects; and in this way every moral virtue has
some good operations as its product; and a certain pleasure or sorrow
which are passions, as stated above (Q. 59, A. 4, ad 1).
Secondly, operation may be compared to moral virtue as the matter
about which virtue is concerned: and in this sense those moral
virtues which are about operations must needs differ from those which
are about passions. The reason for this is that good and evil, in
certain operations, are taken from the very nature of those
operations, no matter how man may be affected towards them: viz. in
so far as good and evil in them depend on their being commensurate
with someone else. In operations of this kind there needs to be some
power to regulate the operations in themselves: such are buying and
selling, and all such operations in which there is an element of
something due or undue to another. For this reason justice and its
parts are properly about operations as their prop
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