9. The Nature Of Moral Goodness
PART III Moral Goodness
9. THE NATURE OF MORAL GOODNESS
(Ordinatio I, dist. 17, nn. 62-67) One could say that just as beauty is not some absolute quality in a beautiful body, but a combination of all that is in harmony with such a body (such as size, figure, and color), and a combination of all aspects
(that pertain to all that is agreeable to such a body and are in harmony with one another), so the moral goodness of an act is a kind of decor it has, including a combination of due proportion to all to which it should be proportioned (such as the potency, the object, the end, the time, the place, and the manner), and this especially as right reason dictates should pertain to the act, so that we could say of all these things that it is their conformity to right reason that is essential. If this is given, then the act is good, and if this is not given, then-whatever else the act may have-it is not good. For whatever be the object, and howsoever the act has to do with it, if it is not performed according to right reason (for instance, if right reason did not actually dictate its performance), then the act is not good. The moral goodness of the act, then, consists mainly in its conformity with right reason-dictating fully just how all the circumstances should be that surround the act.
But this goodness, like any other relation, does not have an active principle all its own-especially since this respect follows from the nature of the related terms once they are given. For it is impossible that some act be given existence and right reason be present as its guide, without this conformity to right reason being also present in the act as a necessary consequence of the nature of the two related terms
[i.e., the nature of the act and what right reason dictates of it]. But a relation that necessarily follows, given its terms, has no cause of its own other than the cause of its terms.
I68 Moral Goodness Therefore, so far as this accidental condition of the act, which is moral goodness, is concerned, there is no need that some habit play the role of a proper active principle, save insofar as it functions as a cause of the substance of an act, suited by nature to agree completely with the dictate of prudence: and some habit in virtue of its nature as a habit inclines one to this act in itself, and from this-as a consequence-it inclines the agent to an act in conformity to right reason, if right reason is at work in the agent.
And what was said of moral goodness as an act, applies analogously to the habit in question, that is to say, moral virtue does not add to the substance of the habit-insofar as that habit is a form in the category of quality-anything except this habitual conformity to right reason.
For the same habit in nature, which would be generated by elicited acts of abstinence for an erroneous reason in the person eliciting such, if the habit remained after the error of judgment was corrected by right reason, would become the virtue of abstinence, whereas before that same habit was not a virtuous habit as long as the right reason for abstaining was missing. Nothing changed so far as the habit itself was concerned, but now it is conjoined with prudence, whereas before it was not.
"Joined with prudence," then, makes the habit (as a form in the category of quality) a virtue when that habit is by nature apt to be conformed to prudence-and so nothing else in the way of an absolute entity allows one to call one habit "moral virtue" and another habit of the same nature "not a moral virtue" except that prudence is missing from the latter. Consequently, there can be no other causality involved in the case of virtue than is involved in causing such a natural quality, except that what is implied by "conjoined with prudence" is suited by nature to be a second cause-directed by prudence, as it were-with respect to the common effect of both. But where it is without prudence, it can not be a second cause with respect to the same effect (just as vision in a mad person cannot be a free power by participation, because such a one has not the use of the will, which is a free potency by its essence-but in a sane person, vision has the use of free potency by participation and is as it were a second cause together with the will). But still, when it is a second cause with regard to prudence, the proper causality-pertaining to it in the order of causation-derives precisely from this that it is such a form or certain sort of quality by nature, but not because of a conformity or union with prudence, because although a second cause is conjoined to the first, so that it acts differently than it does without prudence, nevertheless the virtue does not get its proper active principle from such a union, but from the absolute nature [of its cause].