which it behoves him specially to consider in the case. Again, in
every wrong act, it is not the sheer evil that is willed, but the good
through or with the evil. Good, real or supposed, is sought for: evil
is accepted as leading to good in the way of means, or annexed thereto
as a circumstance. Moreover, no act is virtuous that is elicited quite
mechanically, or at the blind instance of passion. To be virtuous, the
thing must be done _on principle_, that is, at the dictate of reason
and by the light of intellect.

4. Still, virtue is not knowledge. There are other than intellectual
habits needed to complete the character of a virtuous man. "I see the
better course and approve it, and follow the worse," said the Roman
poet. [Footnote 3] "The evil which I will not, that I do," said the
Apostle. It is not enough to have an intellectual discernment of and
preference for what is right: but the will must be habituated to
embrace it, and the passions too must be habituated to submit and
square themselves to right being done. In other words, a virtuous man
is made up by the union of enlightened intellect with the moral
virtues. The addition is necessary for several reasons.

[Footnote 3: Video meliora proboque,/Deteriora sequor. (Ovid,
_Metamorph_., vii., 21.)]

(a) Ordinarily, the intellect does not necessitate the will. The will,
then, needs to be clamped and set by habit to choose the right thing
as the intellect proposes it.

(b) Intellect, or Reason, is not absolute in the human constitution.
As Aristotle (_Pol_., I., v., 6) says: "The soul rules the body with a
despotic command: but reason rules appetite with a command