Whether Liberality Is About Money?
Objection 1: It seems that liberality is not about money. For every
moral virtue is about operations and passions. Now it is proper to
justice to be about operations, as stated in _Ethic._ v, 1.
Therefore, since liberality is a moral virtue, it seems that it is
about passions and not about money.
Obj. 2: Further, it belongs to a liberal man to make use of any kind
of wealth. Now natural riches are more real than artificial riches,
according to the Philosopher (Polit. i, 5, 6). Therefore liberality
is not chiefly about money.
Obj. 3: Further, different virtues have different matter, since
habits are distinguished by their objects. But external things are
the matter of distributive and commutative justice. Therefore they
are not the matter of liberality.
_On the contrary,_ The Philosopher says (Ethic. iv, 1) that
"liberality seems to be a mean in the matter of money."
_I answer that,_ According to the Philosopher (Ethic. iv, 1) it
belongs to the liberal man to part with things. Hence liberality is
also called open-handedness (_largitas_), because that which is open
does not withhold things but parts with them. The term "liberality"
seems also to allude to this, since when a man quits hold of a thing
he frees it (_liberat_), so to speak, from his keeping and ownership,
and shows his mind to be free of attachment thereto. Now those things
which are the subject of a man's free-handedness towards others are
the goods he possesses, which are denoted by the term "money."
Therefore the proper matter of liberality is money.
Reply Obj. 1: As stated above (A. 1, ad 3), liberality depends not on
the quantity given, but on the heart of the giver. Now the heart of
the giver is disposed according to the passions of love and desire,
and consequently those of pleasure and sorrow, towards the things
given. Hence the interior passions are the immediate matter of
liberality, while exterior money is the object of those same passions.
Reply Obj. 2: As Augustine says in his book _De Disciplina Christi_
(Tract. de divers, i), everything whatsoever man has on earth, and
whatsoever he owns, goes by the name of _pecunia_ (money), because
in olden times men's possessions consisted entirely of _pecora_
(flocks). And the Philosopher says (Ethic. iv, 1): "We give the name
of money to anything that can be valued in currency."
Reply Obj. 3: Justice establishes equality in external things, but
has nothing to do, properly speaking, with the regulation of internal
passions: wherefore money is in one way the matter of liberality, and
in another way of justice.
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