Whether Patience Is a Part of Fortitude?
Objection 1: It seems that patience is not a part of fortitude. For a
thing is not part of itself. Now patience is apparently the same as
fortitude: because, as stated above (Q. 123, A. 6), the proper act of
fortitude is to endure; and this belongs also to patience. For it is
stated in the Liber Sententiarum Prosperi [*The quotation is from St.
Gregory, Hom. xxxv in Evang.] that "patience consists in enduring
evils inflicted by others." Therefore patience is not a part of
fortitude.
Obj. 2: Further, fortitude is about fear and daring, as stated above
(Q. 123, A. 3), and thus it is in the irascible. But patience seems
to be about sorrow, and consequently would seem to be in the
concupiscible. Therefore patience is not a part of fortitude but of
temperance.
Obj. 3: Further, the whole cannot be without its part. Therefore if
patience is a part of fortitude, there can be no fortitude without
patience. Yet sometimes a brave man does not endure evils patiently,
but even attacks the person who inflicts the evil. Therefore patience
is not a part of fortitude.
_On the contrary,_ Tully (De Invent. Rhet. ii) reckons it a part of
fortitude.
_I answer that,_ Patience is a quasi-potential part of fortitude,
because it is annexed thereto as secondary to principal virtue. For
it belongs to patience "to suffer with an equal mind the evils
inflicted by others," as Gregory says in a homily (xxxv in Evang.).
Now of those evils that are inflicted by others, foremost and most
difficult to endure are those that are connected with the danger of
death, and about these evils fortitude is concerned. Hence it is
clear that in this matter fortitude has the principal place, and that
it lays claim to that which is principal in this matter. Wherefore
patience is annexed to fortitude as secondary to principal virtue,
for which reason Prosper calls patience brave (Sent. 811).
Reply Obj. 1: It belongs to fortitude to endure, not anything indeed,
but that which is most difficult to endure, namely dangers of death:
whereas it may pertain to patience to endure any kind of evil.
Reply Obj. 2: The act of fortitude consists not only in holding fast
to good against the fear of future dangers, but also in not failing
through sorrow or pain occasioned by things present; and it is in the
latter respect that patience is akin to fortitude. Yet fortitude is
chiefly about fear, which of itself evokes flight which fortitude
avoids; while patience is chiefly about sorrow, for a man is said to
be patient, not because he does not fly, but because he behaves in a
praiseworthy manner by suffering (_patiendo_) things which hurt him
here and now, in such a way as not to be inordinately saddened by
them. Hence fortitude is properly in the irascible, while patience is
in the concupiscible faculty.
Nor does this hinder patience from being a part of fortitude, because
the annexing of virtue to virtue does not regard the subject, but the
matter or the form. Nevertheless patience is not to be reckoned a
part of temperance, although both are in the concupiscible, because
temperance is only about those sorrows that are opposed to pleasures
of touch, such as arise through abstinence from pleasures of food and
sex: whereas patience is chiefly about sorrows inflicted by other
persons. Moreover it belongs to temperance to control these sorrows
besides their contrary pleasures: whereas it belongs to patience that
a man forsake not the good of virtue on account of such like sorrows,
however great they be.
Reply Obj. 3: It may be granted that patience in a certain respect is
an integral part of justice, if we consider the fact that a man may
patiently endure evils pertaining to dangers of death; and it is from
this point of view that the objection argues. Nor is it inconsistent
with patience that a man should, when necessary, rise up against the
man who inflicts evils on him; for Chrysostom [*Homily v. in the Opus
Imperfectum, falsely ascribed to St. John Chrysostom] says on Matt.
4:10, "Begone Satan," that "it is praiseworthy to be patient under
our own wrongs, but to endure God's wrongs patiently is most wicked":
and Augustine says in a letter to Marcellinus (Ep. cxxxviii) that
"the precepts of patience are not opposed to the good of the
commonwealth, since in order to ensure that good we fight against our
enemies." But in so far as patience regards all kinds of evils, it is
annexed to fortitude as secondary to principal virtue.
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