To the first one proceeds thus. It seems that speculative intellectual habitudes are not virtues. For virtue is working habitude, as was said above. But speculative habitudes are not working, since the speculative is distinguised from the practical, that is, the working. Therefore speculative intellectual habitudes are not virtues.
Further, virtue is that by which a human being becomes happy or blessed, because happiness is the reward of virtue, as is said in Ethic. I. But intellectual habitudes do not consider human acts or other human goods through which blessedness is attained by a human being, but rather natural and divine things. Thus habitudes of this sort are not able to be called virtues.
Further, knowledge is speculative habitude, but knowledge and virtue are distinguished as genera not put forward subalternately, as is obvious from the Philosopher in Topic. IV. Therefore speculative habitudes are not virtues.
Contrariwise, only speculative habitudes consider necessities such that it is impossible that they should have themselves otherwise. But the Philosopher posits, in Ethic. VI, sorts of intellectual virtues in the part of the soul that considers necessities that cannot have themselves otherwise. Therefore speculative intellectual habitudes are virtues.
I reply that it must be said that, because each virtue is called so in ordering to good, as was said above, habitude is called virtue in two ways, as was [also] said above: in one way, because it makes the faculty of working well; in another way, because, with the faculty, it also makes a good use, and this, as was said above, pertains only to those habitudes that regard the appetitive part, in that it is the appetitive part that makes use of all powers and habitudes. Therefore, because speculative intellectual habitudes do not complete the appetitive part, nor do they in some way regard it, but only the intellectual, they can be called virtues inasmuch as they make a faculty of good working, which is consideration of the true (which is the good work of intellect), but they are not called virtues in the second way, as making good use of power or habitude. For from this, that someone has a habitude of speculative knowledge, he is not inclined to using, but becomes capable of reflecting [speculari] on the true in those things of which he has knowledge, but that which uses the habitude of knowledge is the moving willing. And thus virtue that completes will, such as charity or justice, also makes good use of these speculative habitudes. And according to this also, there is able to be merit in acts of these habitudes, if they are done out of charity, as Gregory says in Moral. IV, that the contemplative has greater merit than the active.
To the first therefore it must be said that work is twofold, to wit, exterior and interior. Therefore the practical, or working, that is distinguished from the speculative, is drawn from the exterior work, to which speculative habitude has no ordering. Nonetheless, it has an ordering to the interior work of the intellect, which is to reflect on [speculari] the true. And according to this is it is working habitude.
To the second it must be said that virtue belongs to someone in two ways. In one way, as to objects; and thus these sorts of speculative virtues are not about those things through which the human being is made blessed, unless perhaps inasmuch as the 'through' names the efficient cause or complete object of blessedness, which is God, who is the highest object of reflection [summum speculabile]. In another way, virtue is said to belong to something as to acting, and in this way intellectual virtues are those through which a human being is made blessed, both because the acts of these virtues can be meritorious, as was said, and also because they are a sort of beginning [inchoatio] of complete blessedness, which consists in contemplation of the true, as was said above.
To the third it must be said that knowledge is distinguished from virtue according to the second way, which pertains to appetitive impulse.
[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.57.1, my translation. The Dominican Fathers translation is here, the Latin is here.]
