Question Three: On the Excellence of Justice

146. Justice is a virtue simply so called, or a moral virtue. - For moral virtue renders the man having it simply good, and makes his work honorable. But justice does this. For the good of man is to operate according to reason. But nothing is more consonant with reason than to render to each one his own. Therefore.

Nor is it an obstacle that justice does that which is necessary, and consequently acts from necessity. For it does not act from the physical necessity of coercion, but from obligation or moral necessity of the end. And with prompt and spontaneous will it does that which it ought, and thus it does a work of virtue.

Justice is a special virtue, because it has a special object: the ordering of man to another, so that it renders to him what is owed.

Nevertheless, it is not one virtue in the ultimate species, but comprises several species, according to the diversity of the object: for someone can be ordered to another in common, namely, to the whole community, to which especially a debt, even strict, must be rendered; and he can be ordered to another in the singular, or to a private person to whom he renders the debt. This last is done by particular justice, which in turn is distinguished into two species: commutative and distributive, according as it directs men in commutations or in distributions. The first is done by the first species of justice, which renders what is required for the common good, and is called legal justice, because it pertains to law to order to the common good; - it is also called general justice, not by reason of essence, as if it were every virtue or the complex of all virtues, but by reason of its proper object, because it immediately orders to the general good, and by reason of its effect, because it orders and directs the acts of all virtues, at least exterior acts, to the common good.

147.

147. Justice is a cardinal virtue, because it is concerned with that which is principal and more difficult in its proper matter, namely, in external operations toward another. For the just or the good owed is found perfectly and completely in the operations by which we render an equal thing to another, and therefore it has principality relative to other things; and the chief and more difficult thing is to render the debt so that an entirely strict equality is preserved, by which we do not decline from it even in the least, or without the least deviation. Whence justice, because it perfectly pays to another a perfect debt, is the foundation of the other virtues, insofar as it disposes to that in which the same is less perfectly verified: for he who in all circumstances preserves strict equality in rendering a strict debt toward equals, by this very fact becomes prompt or at least capable of rendering whatever non-strict debts, and is disposed to rendering to superiors those things which cannot be rendered up to strict equality.

148. Justice is a virtue more excellent than the other moral virtues. - Among the various genera of virtues, justice excels the other moral virtues which are concerned with passions, and thus is called first among the moral virtues. For:

1st, the first species of justice, namely, legal justice, has the more excellent object, the common good;

2nd, all justice is in the nobler part of the soul, the will, and is ordered not only to the good of man himself but also to the good of another.

Nevertheless it is not the greatest of virtues: for the theological virtues excel because they pertain to divine good; - likewise prudence, because it regards the good of all virtues and acts; - indeed, among the virtues annexed to justice, religion (likewise penance) is more excellent, because it approaches more nearly to God, since it operates those things which are directly and immediately ordered to the divine honor. Whence although justice is more perfect than religion in the character of justice, because it renders the debt more perfectly, it is less perfect in the character of virtue.