EVEN THE LOWER VIRTUES ARE MUTUALLY RELATED.
7. Within the soul the virtues have the same interconnection obtaining within Intelligence between the types superior to virtue. For Intelligence, it is thought that constitutes wisdom and prudence; conversion towards oneself is temperance; the fulfillment of one’s proper function is justice, and the intelligence’s perseverance in remaining within itself, in maintaining itself pure and separated from matter, is analogous to courage. To contemplate intelligence will therefore, for the soul, constitute wisdom and prudence, which then become virtues, and no longer remain mere intellectual types. For the soul is not identical with the essences she thinks, as is intelligence. Similarly, the other soul-virtues will correspond to the superior types. It is not otherwise with purification, for since every virtue is a purification, virtue exacts preliminary purification; otherwise, it would not be perfect.
THE HIGHER VIRTUES IMPLY THE LOWER; BUT NOT CONVERSELY.
The possessor of the higher virtues necessarily possesses the potentiality for the inferior virtues; but the possessor of the lower does not, conversely, possess the higher. Such are the characteristics of the virtuous man.
PRUDENCE TO DECIDE WHETHER IT IS POSSIBLE TO POSSESS VIRTUES UNSYMMETRICALLY ?
(Many interesting questions remain). Is it possible for a man to possess the higher or lower virtues in accomplished reality, or otherwise (merely theoretically) ? To decide that, we would have individually to examine each, as, for example, prudence. How could such a virtue exist merely potentially, borrowing its principles from elsewhere? What would happen if one virtue advanced naturally to a certain degree, and another virtue to another? What would you think of a temperance which would moderate certain (impulses), while entirely suppressing others? Similar questions might be raised about other virtues, and the arbiter of the degree to which the virtues have attained would have to be prudence.
THE HOMELY VIRTUES MUST BE SUPPLEMENTED BY DIVINE DISCONTENT.
No doubt, under certain circumstances, the virtuous man, in his actions, will make use of some of the lower, or homely virtues; but even so he will supplement them by standards or ideas derived from higher virtues. For instance, he will not be satisfied with a temperance which would consist in mere moderation, but he will gradually seek to separate himself more and more from matter. Again, he will supplement the life of a respectable man, exacted by common-sense homely virtues; he will be continually aspiring higher, to the life of the divinities; for our effort at assimilation should be directed not at mere respectability, but to the gods themselves. To seek no more than to become assimilated to respectable individuals would be like trying to make an image by limiting oneself to copying another image, itself modelled after another image (but not copying the original). The assimilation here recommended results from taking as model a superior being.