The importance attaching to this division of virtues, the ultimate
basis on which it rests, and the relation which virtues bear, both to
one another and to the common essence of virtue, are topics upon which
Zeno never entered. Plutarch, at least, blames him [645] for treating
virtues as many, and yet inseparable, and at the same time for finding
in all virtues only certain manifestations of the understanding. Aristo
attempted to settle this point more precisely. According to his view,
virtue is in itself only one; in speaking of many virtues, we only
refer to the variety of objects with which that one virtue has to do.
[646] The difference of one virtue from another is not one of inward
quality, but depends on the external conditions under which they are
manifested; it only expresses a definite relation to something else,
or, in the language of Herbart, an accidental aspect. [647] The same
view would seem to be implied in the manner in which Cleanthes
determines the relations of the principal virtues to one another. [648]
It was, however, opposed by Chrysippus. The assumption of many virtues,
he believed, rested upon an inward difference; [649] each definite
virtue, as also each definite fault, becoming what it does by a
peculiar change in the character of the soul itself; [650] in short,
for a particular virtue to come into being, it is not enough that the
constituent element of all virtue should be directed towards a
particular object, but to the common element must be superadded a
further characteristic element, or differentia; the several virtues
being related to one another, as the various species of one genus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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