Whether Truth Is a Virtue?
Objection 1: It seems that truth is not a virtue. For the first of
virtues is faith, whose object is truth. Since then the object
precedes the habit and the act, it seems that truth is not a virtue,
but something prior to virtue.
Obj. 2: Further, according to the Philosopher (Ethic. iv, 7), it
belongs to truth that a man should state things concerning himself to
be neither more nor less than they are. But this is not always
praiseworthy--neither in good things, since according to Prov. 27:2,
"Let another praise thee, and not thy own mouth"--nor even in evil
things, because it is written in condemnation of certain people (Isa.
3:9): "They have proclaimed abroad their sin as Sodom, and they have
not hid it." Therefore truth is not a virtue.
Obj. 3: Further, every virtue is either theological, or intellectual,
or moral. Now truth is not a theological virtue, because its object
is not God but temporal things. For Tully says (De Invent. Rhet. ii)
that by "truth we faithfully represent things as they are, were, or
will be." Likewise it is not one of the intellectual virtues, but
their end. Nor again is it a moral virtue, since it is not a mean
between excess and deficiency, for the more one tells the truth, the
better it is. Therefore truth is not a virtue.
_On the contrary,_ The Philosopher both in the Second and in the
Fourth Book of Ethics places truth among the other virtues.
_I answer that,_ Truth can be taken in two ways. First, for that by
reason of which a thing is said to be true, and thus truth is not a
virtue, but the object or end of a virtue: because, taken in this
way, truth is not a habit, which is the genus containing virtue, but
a certain equality between the understanding or sign and the thing
understood or signified, or again between a thing and its rule, as
stated in the First Part (Q. 16, A. 1; Q. 21, A. 2). Secondly, truth
may stand for that by which a person says what is true, in which
sense one is said to be truthful. This truth or truthfulness must
needs be a virtue, because to say what is true is a good act: and
virtue is "that which makes its possessor good, and renders his
action good."
Reply Obj. 1: This argument takes truth in the first sense.
Reply Obj. 2: To state that which concerns oneself, in so far as it
is a statement of what is true, is good generically. Yet this does
not suffice for it to be an act of virtue, since it is requisite for
that purpose that it should also be clothed with the due
circumstances, and if these be not observed, the act will be sinful.
Accordingly it is sinful to praise oneself without due cause even for
that which is true: and it is also sinful to publish one's sin, by
praising oneself on that account, or in any way proclaiming it
uselessly.
Reply Obj. 3: A person who says what is true, utters certain
signs which are in conformity with things; and such signs are either
words, or external actions, or any external thing. Now such kinds of
things are the subject-matter of the moral virtues alone, for the
latter are concerned with the use of the external members, in so far
as this use is put into effect at the command of the will. Wherefore
truth is neither a theological, nor an intellectual, but a moral
virtue. And it is a mean between excess and deficiency in two ways.
First, on the part of the object, secondly, on the part of the act. On
the part of the object, because the true essentially denotes a kind of
equality, and equal is a mean between more and less. Hence for the
very reason that a man says what is true about himself, he observes
the mean between one that says more than the truth about himself, and
one that says less than the truth. On the part of the act, to observe
the mean is to tell the truth, when one ought, and as one ought.
Excess consists in making known one's own affairs out of season, and
deficiency in hiding them when one ought to make them known.
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