hly, there are exemplar virtues.'" [*Cf.
Chrysostom's fifteenth homily on St. Matthew, where he says: "The
gentle, the modest, the merciful, the just man does not shut up his
good deeds within himself . . . He that is clean of heart and
peaceful, and suffers persecution for the sake of the truth, lives
for the common weal."]

_I answer that,_ As Augustine says (De Moribus Eccl. vi), "the soul
needs to follow something in order to give birth to virtue: this
something is God: if we follow Him we shall live aright."
Consequently the exemplar of human virtue must needs pre-exist in
God, just as in Him pre-exist the types of all things. Accordingly
virtue may be considered as existing originally in God, and thus we
speak of "exemplar" virtues: so that in God the Divine Mind itself
may be called prudence; while temperance is the turning of God's gaze
on Himself, even as in us it is that which conforms the appetite to
reason. God's fortitude is His unchangeableness; His justice is the
observance of the Eternal Law in His works, as Plotinus states (Cf.
Macrobius, Super Somn. Scip. 1).

Again, since man by his nature is a social [*See above note on
Chrysostom] animal, these virtues, in so far as they are in him
according to the condition of his nature, are called "social"
virtues; since it is by reason of them that man behaves himself well
in the conduct of human affairs. It is in this sense that we have
been speaking of these virtues until now.

But since it behooves a man to do his utmost to strive onward even to
Divine things, as even the Philosopher declares in _Ethic._ x, 7, and
as Scripture often admonishes us--for instance: "Be ye . . . perfect,
as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. 5:48), we must needs place
some virtues between the social or human virtues, and the exemplar
virtues which are Divine. Now these virtues differ by reason of a
difference of movement and term: so that some are virtues of men who
are on their way and tending towards the Divine similitude; and these
are called "perfecting" virtues. Thus prudence, by contemplating the
things of God, counts as nothing all things of the world, and directs
all the thoughts of the soul to God alone: temperance, so far as
nature allows, neglects the needs of the body; fortitude prevents the
soul from being afraid of neglecting the body and rising to heavenly
things; and justice consists in the soul giving a whole-hearted
consent to follow the way thus propose