To the second one proceeds thus. It seems that it is not proper to the notion of human virtue that it be working habitude. For Tully says, in Tuscul. quest. IV, that as health and bodily beauty, so too virtue of the soul. But health and beauty are not working habitudes. Thus neither is virtue.
Further, in natural things virtue is found not only to be to act but also to being, as is obvious from the Philosopher in On the Heavens I, that some things have virtue so that they are always, but some not so that they are always, but for some determinate time. But as virtue has itself in natural things, so human virtue has itself in rational things. Therefore human virtue is also not only to act but to being.
Further, the Philosopher says in Physic. VII that virtue is the disposition of the complete to the optimal. But the optimal to which human beings should be disposed through virtue is God himself, as Augustine proves in book II of the customs of the Church; to whom the soul is disposed through likening to him. Therefore it seems that virtue names a sort of quality of soul in ordering to God to the extent of likening to him but not in ordering to operation. Therefore it is not a working habitude.
But contrariwise is what the Philosopher says in Ethic. II, that virtue in whatsoever thing is that which renders it work good.
I reply that it must be said that virtue, from the very notion of the name, involves a sort of completion of power, as said above. Thus, as power is twofold, to wit, power to be and power to act, the completion of each being called virtue. But the power to be holds on the part of matter, which is potential being, but the power to act holds on the part of form, which is the source of acting, because each thing acts inasmuch as it is actual. But in human constitution, body has itself as matter but soul as form. And with respect to the body, the human being shares with other animals, and likewise with impulses common to soul and body, but those powers that only are proper to the soul, to wit, rational, are human as such. And thus human virtue, of which one speaks, is not able to pertain to the body, but pertains as such to what is proper to the soul. Thus human virtue does not involve ordering to being but rather to acting. And so it is in the notion of virtue that it is working habitude.
To the first, therefore, it must be said that the mode of action follows the disposition of the one acting, for each thing, in the way it is, works in such a way. And so, because virtue is the source of some working, it ought to be that in the one working there pre-exists according to some virtue some corresponding [conformis] disposition. Now virtue makes an ordered working. And so virtue itself is a sort of ordered disposition in the soul, to wit, inasmuch as powers of the soul are ordered to one another somehow, and to what is outside them. And so, virtue, inasmuch as it is fitting disposition of the soul, is likened to health and beauty, which are due dispositions of body. But this does not hinder virtue from being a source of working.
To the second it must be said that virtue that is to being is not proper to the human being, but only virtue that is to rational works, which are proper to the human being.
To the third it must be said that, because the substance of God is his action, the highest likening of the human being to God is according to some working. Thus, as was said above, happiness or blessedness, through which the human being is most conformed to God, which is the end of human life, consists in working.
[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.55.2, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.]
In Habitude VIII, we completed a taxonomy of natural habitudes that looked like this:
NATURAL HABITUDES INSOFAR AS THEY ARE ORDERED TO NATURE
(1) According to the nature of the species
--- --- (i) as wholly from nature (e.g., natural disposition pertaining to human species, presumably those natural balances that are necessary for vital human functions)
--- --- (ii) as partly from nature, partly from external source (e.g., one's vital functions as restored or corrected by medicine)
(2) According to the nature of the individual
--- --- (i) as wholly from nature (e.g., variant forms arising from the latitude of the natural disposition pertaining to human species, such as sickly or healthy physical temperament)
--- --- (ii) as partly from nature, partly from external source (perhaps as examples we could include healthiness in part from dietary regimen, or physical fitness, which refine the natural health of the body)
NATURAL HABITUDES INSOFAR AS THEY ARE ORDERED TO OPERATION
(1) According to the nature of the species (in human beings, on the part of the soul)
--- --- (i) as wholly from nature (do not exist in human beings, although angels have them, e.g., innate intelligible species through which the angel understands by nature)
--- --- (ii) as partly from nature, partly from external source (in natural incipience or inchoation)
--- --- --- --- (a) in apprehensive powers (e.g., understanding of first principles)
--- --- --- --- (b) in appetitive powers (do not properly exist, although in a loose sense seminal virtues in the apprehensive powers, insofar as they prepare for appetitive operation, can be considered as standing proxy for them)
(2) According to the nature of the individual (on the part of the body)
--- --- (i) as wholly from nature (do not properly exist)
--- --- (ii) as partly from nature, partly from external source (in natural incipience or inchoation)
--- --- --- --- (a) in apprehensive powers (e.g., sensitive virtues, i.e., better disposition of the physical organs so as to facilitate understanding, like quickness of imagination or clarity of memory)
--- --- --- --- (b) in appetitive powers (e.g., bodily temperaments facilitating character)
What this and the previous article are investigating is how virtues, as rational habitudes, relate to this taxonomy. They have established
(1) Virtues are rational habitudes;
(2) Rational habitudes are not natural habitudes, and therefore require their own compartment in the classification;
(3) The analogy between rational habitudes and natural habitudes is real but limited;
(4) All rational habitudes, as orderings of rational powers, are ordered to operation on the part of the soul.
