(3) Whether it is a part of justice?
(4) Whether it inclines to that which is less? _______________________
FIRST ARTICLE [II-II, Q. 109, Art. 1]
Whether Truth Is a Virtue?
Objection 1: It seems that truth is not a virtue. For the first of virtues is faith, whose object is truth. Since then the object precedes the habit and the act, it seems that truth is not a virtue, but something prior to virtue.
Obj. 2: Further, according to the Philosopher (Ethic. iv, 7), it belongs to truth that a man should state things concerning himself to be neither more nor less than they are. But this is not always praiseworthy—neither in good things, since according to Prov. 27:2, "Let another praise thee, and not thy own mouth"—nor even in evil things, because it is written in condemnation of certain people (Isa. 3:9): "They have proclaimed abroad their sin as Sodom, and they have not hid it." Therefore truth is not a virtue.
Obj. 3: Further, every virtue is either theological, or intellectual, or moral. Now truth is not a theological virtue, because its object is not God but temporal things. For Tully says (De Invent. Rhet. ii) that by "truth we faithfully represent things as they are, were, or will be." Likewise it is not one of the intellectual virtues, but their end. Nor again is it a moral virtue, since it is not a mean between excess and deficiency, for the more one tells the truth, the better it is. Therefore truth is not a virtue.
On the contrary, The Philosopher both in the Second and in the Fourth Book of Ethics places truth among the other virtues.
I answer that, Truth can be taken in two ways. First, for that by reason of which a thing is said to be true, and thus truth is not a virtue, but the object or end of a virtue: because, taken in this way, truth is not a habit, which is the genus containing virtue, but a certain equality between the understanding or sign and the thing understood or signified, or again between a thing and its rule, as stated in the First Part (Q. 16, A. 1; Q. 21, A. 2). Secondly, truth may stand for that by which a person says what is true, in which sense one is said to be truthful. This truth or truthfulness must needs be a virtue, because to say what is true is a good act: and virtue is "that which makes its possessor good, and renders his action good."
Reply Obj. 1: This argument takes truth in the first sense.