De virtutibus et vitiis

Of Our Father among the Saints John of Damascus, On Virtues and Vices, Psychic and Somatic. It must be known, then, that since man is twofold, that is, composed of soul and body, he has twofold senses and their virtues as well; and there are five of the soul and five of the body. The psychic senses, which the wise also call powers, are these: intellect, discursive thought, opinion, imagination, and perception. The somatic senses are: sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. Hence their virtues are twofold, and their vices are twofold as well; so that it is necessary for every man to know clearly how many the psychic passions are, and which are the somatic ones. We say that the psychic virtues are, primarily and most generically, these four: courage, prudence, temperance, and justice; and from these are born psychic virtues: faith, hope, love, prayer, humility, meekness, long-suffering, forbearance, kindness, freedom from anger, divine knowledge, cheerfulness, simplicity, tranquility, sincerity, freedom from vanity, freedom from pride, freedom from envy, guilelessness, freedom from avarice, compassion, mercifulness, generosity, fearlessness, freedom from grief, compunction, reverence, piety, desire for future goods, longing for the Kingdom of God, yearning for adoption. The somatic virtues are these—or rather, instruments of virtues, when performed with knowledge and according to God, and apart from all hypocrisy and human pleasing, leading man to progress in humility and dispassion.

standing all night, bending the knees, continence, fasting, thirst, wakefulness, constant, lack of bathing, wearing a single garment, dry eating, slow eating, eating little, drinking water, sleeping on the ground, poverty, possessionlessness, the austere, the unadorned, the unselfish, the solitary, the quiet, the non-gadding, the needy, the self-sufficient, the silent, working with one's own hands at manual labor, and every form of endurance and bodily asceticism. All these, when the body is strong and troubled by carnal passions, are most necessary and beneficial; but when it is weak and these are overcome with God's help, they are not so necessary, as holy humility and prayer, which fills all things. We must therefore speak also about the psychic and somatic, that is, passions. And the psychic passions are these: forgetfulness, indolence, and ignorance.

by which these passions darken the eye of the soul, that is, the mind, and it is dominated by all the passions, which are these: impiety, false belief, that is, every heresy, blasphemy, wrath, anger, bitterness, irascibility, misanthropy, rancor, slander, condemnation, irrational grief, fear, cowardice, strife, jealousy, envy, vainglory, pride, hypocrisy, falsehood, faithlessness, greed, love of matter, attachment, worldly inclination, listlessness, faint-heartedness, ingratitude, murmuring, arrogance, self-conceit, haughtiness, boastfulness, love of rule, people-pleasing, craftiness, shamelessness, insensibility, flattery, insidiousness, irony, duplicity, the assents to sins from the passible part, and the constant practice of these, error of thoughts, self-love the mother of evils, and the root of all evils, love of money, malice and wickedness. Bodily passions: gluttony, gourmandizing, luxury, drunkenness, stealthy eating, varied love of pleasure, fornication, adultery, licentiousness, impurity, incest, pederasty, bestiality, evil desires, and all unnatural and shameful passions, theft, sacrilege, robbery, murder, bodily ease and enjoyment of the desires of the flesh, especially when the body is healthy, divinations, magic, sorcery, auguries, omens, love of adornment, ostentation, foolishness, beautifications, facial cosmetics, condemned idleness, distractions, gambling, the passionate misuse of the world's pleasures, the body-loving life, which, thickening the mind, renders it earthy and brutish, and never allows it to be renewed toward God and the practice of the virtues.

The roots of all the passions, and, as one might say, their precipitancies, are love of pleasure, love of glory, love of money, from which every evil is born. Man commits no sin unless these mighty giants, as the most wise among ascetics, Mark, says, first overcome and dominate him: that is, forgetfulness, indolence, and ignorance. These are begotten by pleasure and relaxation, by loving the opinion of men, and by distraction. The primary cause of all these, and like a most evil mother, as has been said, is self-love, that is, irrational love of the body and passionate attachment. For diffusion and dissolution of the mind, along with levity and foul speech, are the procurers of many evils and falls, as are boldness and laughter. In addition to all this, one must know that passionate love of pleasure is something varied and manifold, and there are many pleasures that deceive the soul when it is not vigilant toward God, not lifted by divine fear and the love of Christ, and not attending to the practice of the virtues. For countless pleasures are borne along, drawing the eyes of the soul to themselves: those of bodies, of wealth, of luxury, of glory, of indolence, of anger, of power, of avarice, of greed. And they appear in deception, having bright and pleasing faces, sufficient to attract those who are excited about these things and do not greatly love virtue or endure its harshness. For every earthly attachment and every passionate inclination toward any material thing produces pleasure and delight for the one who is passionately attached, and it is useless and harmful.

The passionate part of the soul is shown in this: that on account of it, the one overcome is subjected to anger and wrath, grief and resentment, by the deprivation of the desired object. If, along with the attachment, even a small habit prevails, it imperceptibly, so to speak, and incurably clings to the irrational attachment until the end, preparing the one caught by the hidden pleasure here. For the pleasure of desire is manifold, as has been said, and it is fulfilled not only by fornication and other bodily enjoyment, but also by the remaining passions. For being temperate is not only this: to abstain from fornication and the pleasures of the belly, but also to be free from the other pleasures. Hence, the lover of money, the lover of silver, and the lover of greed are intemperate; for just as that one loves the body, so this one loves money. Rather, this one is more intemperate, inasmuch as he does not have so much compulsion from nature urging him on. For that one would truly and especially be called an ignorant charioteer, not the one who fails to restrain the hard and unruly horse, but the one who cannot subdue the tame and more gentle one. And it is clear from all sides that the desire for money is superfluous and not according to nature, since it does not have its compulsion from nature, but from a depraved choice. Therefore, the one who willingly yields to it sins unforgivably; so we must clearly recognize that love of pleasure is defined not only by luxury and the enjoyment of bodies, but in every manner and thing.

choice of the soul, with the beloved and with attachment. And so that the passions might be still more clearly distinguished according to the tripartite division of the soul, we have decided to add the following in summary. On the tripartite division of the soul. The soul is divided into three parts: the rational, the irascible, and the appetitive. From the rational part come these sins: unbelief, heresy, folly, blasphemy, ingratitude, and the assents to bodily sins which arise from the passionate part. The cure and treatment of these evils is unwavering faith in God, the true, unerring, and orthodox doctrines of piety, the constant study of the words of the Spirit, pure and unceasing prayer, and thanksgiving to God. On the irascible part. The sins of the irascible part are these: lack of compassion, hatred, unsympatheia, rancor, envy, and murder, and the constant practice of such things. The cure and treatment of these is love of humanity, love, and kindness.

Concerning the Desiderative Part. The sins of the desiderative part are these: gluttony, gourmandizing, drunkenness, fornication, adultery, unchastity, licentiousness, love of money, desire for vainglory, for gold and wealth, and for carnal pleasures. The cure and treatment of these are: fasting, continence, endurance of hardship, poverty, the scattering of money to the poor, the longing for those future immortal goods, the desire for the Kingdom of God, and the desire for adoption as sons. It is therefore necessary for us to set forth also the discernment of the passionate thoughts, through which every sin is accomplished. There are eight all-encompassing thoughts of evil: that of gluttony, that of fornication, that of avarice, that of anger, that of grief, that of acedia, that of vainglory, and that of pride. That these eight thoughts should beset us, or not beset us, is not in our power; but to abide in them, or to arouse passion, or not to arouse it, is in our power. Assault is one thing, and intercourse is another, and struggle is another, and passion is another, and consent, which approaches and resembles action, is another, and action is another, and captivity is another. Assault is the simple suggestion made by the enemy; for example, "Do this or that." As in the case of our Lord and God: "Say that these stones become bread." This, as has been said, is not in our power. Intercourse is the reception of the thought suggested by the enemy, and, as it were, a study and pleasurable conversation with it, which proceeds from our own choice.

Passion is a state produced by the pairing with a passion suggested by the enemy, and is, as it were, a continuous practice and fantasy. Struggle is the resistance of reason, directed either toward the removal of the passion in the reason, that is, of the passionate thought, or toward assent, as the Apostle says: “For the flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. These are opposed to one another.” Captivity is a violent and involuntary leading away of the heart, oppressed by preconception and long habit. Assent is the nod of reason toward the passion. Action is the very deed of the passionate thought in assent. Therefore, one who from the first reasons dispassionately, or who repels the attack by refutation and severity from the outset, cuts off all the later stages at once. Gluttony is destroyed by temperance; fornication by divine longing and desire for future goods; love of money by compassion toward the poor; anger by goodness and love toward all; worldly grief by spiritual joy; acedia by patience, endurance, and thanksgiving toward God; vainglory by the hidden practice of the virtues and by continuous prayer with a contrite heart; pride by not judging or despising anyone, like the boastful Pharisee, but by considering oneself the last of all. Thus, when the mind is freed from the said passions and raised up to God, it lives the blessed life from this point onward, receiving the pledge of the Holy Spirit.

Having departed from this world, with dispassion and true knowledge, he stands before the light of the holy Trinity, together with the divine angels, illumined for endless ages. The soul, then, being tripartite, as has been previously shown—for there are, as has been said, three parts of it: reason, spirit, and desire—if in the spirited part there is love and philanthropy, and in the desiring part purity and temperance, the reason is enlightened. But if in the spirited part there is misanthropy, and in the desiring part licentiousness, the reason is darkened. Reason, then, is healthy, temperate, and enlightened when it has the passions subordinated, and when it contemplates the principles of creatures purely, and is led up to the blessed and holy Trinity. Spirit, again, then moves according to nature when it loves all people and holds no grief or rancor against any of them. And desire, when through humility, continence, and poverty it has mortified the passions—that is, the pleasure of the flesh, and the longing for money and passing glory—and turns toward divine and immortal love. For desire has its motion toward three things: either toward pleasure of the flesh, or toward vainglory, or toward the deceit of money; and through this irrational longing it despises God and his divine commandments, forgets its divine nobility, becomes brutish toward its neighbor, darkens reason, and does not allow it to look up toward the truth.

The one who has acquired a higher mind, as has been said, receives from here the kingdom of heaven, and lives a blessed life, in expectation of the blessedness that awaits those who love God; may we also be deemed worthy of it through the grace of Christ. Amen. But these things we have set forth thus, as we were able in our ignorance, simply, having sketched out a concise and clear discourse on virtues and passions, so that one may easily distinguish and discern their division and difference, with their detail and clarity. For this very reason, we have also set forth each as varied and manifold, so that no form of virtue or vice, if possible, might be unknown; and thus we may cheerfully draw to ourselves the virtues, especially the psychic ones, through which we approach God, and we may flee the vices, strongly avoiding them; for blessed, truly, is the one who seeks virtue and pursues it, and who diligently investigates what virtue is, as through it he approaches God and consorts with him intellectually. For this is properly prudence, wisdom, and true knowledge, and an inalienable wealth: to be led through practical virtue to the contemplation of the Creator. And it is called virtue because it is chosen; for it is choiceworthy and willed, because we do good by choice and free will, not unwillingly and under compulsion; and prudence is so called because it bears in the mind what is beneficial.

If you wish, let us add to this profitable discourse, as a golden seal, also concerning the image and likeness, a little about the most precious of all God's creatures, the intellectual and rational living being, man, who alone of all is according to the image and likeness of God. According to the image is said every man, in respect of the dignity of the mind and of the soul, that is, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the immortal, the self-willed, and indeed also the ruling, generative, and constructive; according to the likeness, however, in respect of the principle of virtue and these divinely-named and God-imitating actions, that is, in being disposed philanthropically toward one's own kind: to pity and to have compassion, and to love one's fellow servant, and to show all compassion and sympathy. "For," says Christ God, "become compassionate, just as your Father in heaven is compassionate." And the according to the image every man possesses; for the gifts of God are irrevocable; but the according to the likeness, few, and only the virtuous and holy, and those imitating the goodness of God as far as possible for men; may we also be deemed worthy of such superabundant philanthropy, having pleased him through good works, and having become imitators of those who from eternity have pleased Christ; for to him belongs mercy, and to him is due all glory, honor, and worship, and to the Father without beginning, and to his all-holy and good and life-giving Spirit, now and always, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.