The cardinal virtues also ‘‘can be taken in two ways.’’ ‘‘For the existence of virtue four things are required: to know, to will, to persevere amid difficulties, and to attain the mean between excess and deficiency.’’ These general or ‘‘universal conditions’’ of all virtue respectively ‘‘come from’’ prudence, justice, courage, and temperance. It follows that for the cardinal virtues, considered generically, ‘‘whoever has one virtue has all.’’
Taken in a second way, however, a cardinal virtue is considered ‘‘according to the act of its proper power and concerning the proper matter of that power.’’ For the specific cardinal virtues, ‘‘it is not necessary that when one has one virtue one has all.’’ Courage resides in the soul’s irascible power; its object is ‘‘the difficult in the realm of Exterior passions impressed by another,’’ such as fear and confidence. Temperance resides in the concupiscible power; its objects are ‘‘passions generated within us,’’ such as desire and aversion, and especially ‘‘desire of corporeal pleasures.’’ Both prudence and justice reside in the power of reason. Their objects, while different, range wider than those of courage and temperance. Prudence ‘‘does not have its own proper and limited matter’’ because it is concerned with the objects of all the virtues. And the object of justice is also wide: ‘‘to order all these (moral acts) to our proximate end.’’
Since the cardinal virtues are ‘‘universal conditions,’’ there are ‘‘other virtues reduced to these [cardinal] virtues either as parts or as species or as their dispositions.’’ The parts of courage are patience and perseverance; the parts of temperance are modesty, sobriety, continence, virginity, and the ‘‘golden crown’’ awarded an outstanding Christian life. The parts of justice are ‘‘worship’’ owed to God, ‘‘reverence’’ owed to prelates, and ‘‘obedience’’ owed to both. Prudence has no parts.
World History
