II. Replies to the preliminary arguments
ORDINATIO III, D. , Q. UN.
which one tends toward God or (in other words) to love one's love for God.2
In willing that one love God, one loves oneself through charity, because one wills a good of justice for oneself; therefore, through charity one loves oneself immediately after God.
Confirmation: in weighing the characters of goodness and oneness, which are grounds for love, after the Infinite Good—in which the character of goodness is completely perfect—there occurs in oneself another maximal ground for love, namely, oneness, which is perfect identity. For everyone is naturally inclined to love himself after the Infinite Good; a natural inclination is always right; therefore, etc.
II. Replies to the preliminary arguments
To the first argument [n. 2] I say that what the Philosopher is explaining there [Ethics IX, 1168a30–1, 1168b15–17] is how an immoderate lover of self is worthy of disparagement, not a moderate lover of self. Look it up.
To the second argument [n. 3] I say that all those who love through charity love themselves as ordered to the Infinite Good, since they love for themselves the act or habit by which they tend toward that Good. Thus the love of this act or habit tends toward another, in that it tends toward God as the principal object of its act; nonetheless, it is also true that one has charity toward oneself, not as final object but as a proximate object ordered toward the ultimate and first object, which is distinct from the proximate object.
2 Reading scilicet se diligere Deum (Q) for the edition's sive quo vult se diligere Deum.