“Virtue”, says Augustine, “is a good habit consonant with our nature.” From Saint Thomas’s entire Question on the essence of virtue may be gathered his brief but complete definition of virtue: “habitus operativus bonus”, an operative habit essentially good, as distinguished from vice, an operative habit essentially evil. In its strictest meaning, however, as used by moral philosophers and theologians, it signifies a habit super-added to a faculty of the soul, disposing it to elicit with readiness acts conformable to our rational nature. Taken in its widest sense virtue means the excellence or perfection of a thing, just as vice, its contrary, denotes a defect or absence of perfection due to a thing. “Appelata est enim a viro virtus: viri autem propria maxime est fortitudo” (“The term virtue is from the word that signifies man a man’s chief quality is fortitude” Cicero, “Tuscul.”, I, xi, 18). According to its etymology the word virtue (Latin virtus) signifies manliness or courage. The subject will be treated under the following heads: I.
