Ars Brevis

11. Questions
11. 9 Subjects

9. The Instrumentative

11.9 Questions about the Ninth Subject, or the Instrumentative

Earlier we put questions about natural instrumentality. Here we will deal with moral instrumentality.

128. Question: what is morality?

129. Question: what are justice and prudence?

130. And then we ask: what are avarice, gluttony etc?

Go to the ninth subject, which is the instrumentative, and deal with it following the things the text indicates to you.

131. Now we ask: is justice good? And the answer is yes, or else injustice would not be evil.

132. Further, we ask: does justice have correlatives? And we say that it does, or else, it could not be a habit, nor have anything in which it can be sustained ans situated. And as we dealt with these matters, we can likewise make questions about justice from all its principles and rules. And what we said about justice also applies to all other virtuous habits.

133. Are the vices simply privative principles? And we reply that they are. Now they in no way agree with the virtues. In virtues, the doer, the doable and the instruments convene together in a virtuous object. And this is enough about morality, for the sake of brevity, especially as we deal with these matters at length in Ars Magna.