Of the lie properly so-called.—How and why it lowers the mind.
Of silence.—To distinguish between dissimulation and discretion.
Duty of silence: in what cases?
Of the oath and of perjury.—Perjury is a double lie.
The different duties of man toward himself, considered as a moral being, are naturally deduced from the divers faculties of which this moral being is composed. Plato is the first, to our knowledge, who has employed this mode of deduction.[108] It is after having distinguished three parts or three faculties in the soul, that he attributes to each of them a virtue proper, “virtue being,” he says, “the quality by means of which one does a thing well.” It is thus that the virtue of wisdom corresponds to the faculty of the understanding; the virtue of courage to the irascible or courageous faculty, or to the heart; temperance, to that of desire or appetite. To these three virtues, Plato adds another which is but the harmony, the accord, the equilibrium between these, namely, justice. Cicero afterwards took up this deduction from another standpoint.[109]
In applying this ancient method to the present divisions of psychology, we shall admit, with Plato and Cicero, an order of virtues relative to the mind, and which we will call wisdom; and another class of virtues relating to the will, and which would correspond with courage or strength of mind (virtus, magnitudo animi). As to sensibility, if we take into consideration the appetites and physical desires, the virtue relating to them is temperance, of which we have already spoken. There remain the emotions, the affections of the heart which relate more particularly to the duties toward others. Yet they may, in a certain respect, be also considered as duties toward one’s self, although language does not designate this kind of virtue by a particular name.[110]
147. Duties relative to the investigation of truth.—Intellectual virtues.—There are two classes of virtues which have been often distinguished: the strict duties and the broad duties: the strict duties to consist in not injuring one’s faculties; the broad, to develop and perfect them; it is not easy to apply this distinction here; and, concerning intelligence, to separate self-preservation from self-improvement. In such a case, not to gain is inevitably to lose; he who does not cultivate his intellect, impairs it by that very fact.
One could not then, without pedantic investigation and subtlety, try to distinguish here, in one and the same duty, two distinct duties: the one prohibitive, the other imperative. They are both bound up in the general duty to cultivate one’s intellect. It is not so with the relations existing between one’s own intellect and the intellect of others; the expression of a thought gives rise to a strict duty: not to lie; which is the immediate consequence of the duty of the intellect toward itself, and which consequently should, by way of corollary, also belong to the present chapter.
The first question which presents itself to us is to know whether we should admit, with Aristotle, intellectual virtues, properly so called, distinct from the moral virtues, the first having regard to the intellect, the second to the passions. It would seem that the various faculties pointed out by Aristotle under the name of intellectual virtues, are rather qualities of the mind than virtues: art, science, prudence, wisdom, intelligence[111] (not to mention the difficulty of determining the various shades of meaning of these terms), are natural or acquired aptitudes, but which do not appear to have any moral merit: a scholar, an artist, a clever man, a man of good sense and good counsel are naturally distinguished from virtuous men. It would seem then that the intellectual virtues are opposed to the moral virtues, as the mind is to the heart: now, for every one, it is the heart rather than the mind that is the seat of virtue.
These difficulties are only apparent, and Aristotle himself gives us the means of solving them: