FORTUNATO
148
FORTUNATO
ageous men whose action is hardly moral: of courage
where hope is largely in excess over dread: of igno-
rance which does not apprehend the risk: and of civic
virtue which is moved by the sanction of reward and
penalty. In the above instances the test ol iivifitioi ota.
rb KoSiiv TrpaTTovffi — " the exercise of fortitude is vir-
tue ", a principle which is opposed to the mere pragma-
tism that would measure courage by efficiency in sol-
diership — fails. Aristotle says that mercenaries, who
have not a high appreciation of the value of their own
lives, may very well expose their lives with more readi-
ness than could be found in the virtuous man who
understands the worth of his own life, and who regards
death as the tt^/jos — the end of his own individual ex-
istence ((pofSepwTaTof 5' 6 fldxaros iripas yip). Some have
admired Russian nihilists going to certain death with
no hope for themselves, here or hereafter, but with a
hope for future generations of Russians. It is in the
hope for the end that Aristotle places the stimulus for
the brave act which of itself brings pain. Didce et de-
corum est pro patria mori (" It is sweet and noble to die
for one's native land" — Horace, Odes, III, ii, 13): the
nobility is in the act, the sweetness chiefly in the an-
ticipated consequences, excepting so far as there is a
strongly felt nobility (Aristotle, Eth. Nic, III, 5-9) in
the self-sacrifice.
(3) St. Thomas keeps as close to Aristotle as he may, departing from him as to the dignity, perhaps, which is to be found in the passive martyr's death, as to the hope of future life, and as to the character of virtue as a matter mainly of fine conduct testhetically. He calls the specific virtue of fortitude that which braves the greatest dangers and therefore that which meets the risk of life in battle. Fortitude is concerned not so much with audacia as with timor: not so much with aggredi (attack) as with sustinere (endurance) : which means that the courageous man ha,s to attend rather to bearing up against terrifying circumstances than to mastering his impetuosity or else to arousing it to the the requisite degree: principalior actus fortitudinis est sustinere, immobiliter sistere in periculis, quam aggredi. Seneca as a Stoic also attacks Aristotle's use of anger as an instrument in the hand of virtue; he treats the passion as bad and to be suppressed. In the on- slaught is displayed the animal excitement, the battle rage, which vSt. Thomas calls the irascible passion; and of "this St. Thomas says, what Aristotle says of Bvpi^, that it is an agency to be usetj by the rational will within due limits. Anything like a malignant desire to slaughter a hated enemy out of vengeance or out of savage delight in blood-shedding should be excluded. For the endurance (sustinere), says St. Thomas, the irascible part is not demanded, since the reasonable will suffice, " as the act of endurance rests only with the reason per se". As a cardinal virtue, which is a consideration not taken up by Aristotle, fortitude is treated by St. Thomas from the aspect of its need for ensuring the stability of the virtues in general: Cardi- nales principales dicuntur virtutes, quce prcecipue sibi vindicant id quod pertinet communiter ad virtutes. Vir- tues in general must act with that firmness which for- titude bestows (II-II, Q, cxxiii).
(4) Fortitude as one of the gifts from the Holy Ghost is a supernatural virtue, and passes beyond the Aristotelian range. It is what, as Christians, we must always have in mind in order to make our actions ac- ceptable for eternal life. But we still keep hold upon the natural principles of fortitude as those whereon grace has to build. In the spiritual life of the ordi- nary Christian much that Aristotle has said remains in its own degree true, though we have to depart es- pecially from the master's insistence upon the field of battle. Our exercise is mainly not in war strictly so- called, but in moral courage against the evil spirit of the times, against improper fashions, against human respect, against the common tendency to seek at least the comfortable, if not the voluptuous. We need
courage also to be patient under poverty or privation,
and to make laudable struggles to rise in the social
scale. It requires fortitude to mount above the dead
level of average Christianity into the region of mag-
nanimity, and, if opportunity allow it, of magnifi-
cence, which are the allied virtues of fortitude, while
another is perseverance, which tolerates no occasional
remissness, still less occasional bouts of dissipation to
relieve the strain of high-toned morality and religion.
(5) The physical conditions of fortitude are treated for instance by Bain in " The Emotions and the Will ", and they are such as these: " goodness of nervous tone which keeps all the currents in their proper courses with a certain robust persistence; health and fresh- ness; tonic coolness; light and buoyant spirit; elate and sanguine temperament; acquired mastery over terror, as when the soldier gets over the cannon fever of his first engagement, and the public speaker over the nervousness of his first speech" (Chap V, no. 17). These physical matters, though not directly moral, are worthy of attention; there is much interaction be- tween moral and physical qualities, and our duty is to cultivate the two departments of Fortitude conjointly.
See authors quoted in this article and in the article CARniNAL ^'"•^^S- J. RiCKABY.
Fortunate of Brescia, morphologist and Minorite of the Reform of Lombardy; b. at Brescia, 1701; d. at Madrid, 1754. He received the religious habit in 1718. A distinguished philosopher and theologian, Fortunato was also renowned for his studies in the natural sciences. He was secretary general of his order, and stood m high favour at the Bourbon court of Spain. A special importance attaches to his philo- sophical works, as he was among the first to bring to- gether the teachings of Scholastic philosophy and the discoveries of the physical sciences. His scientific work is rendered important by his extensive use of the microscope, in which he followed the lead of Malpighi. Avoiding the then prevalent discussions on vitalism, he devoted himself to a positive study of the problems of natural science. Convinced that a knowledge of microscopic anatomy is the key to the secrets of na- ture, he deemed two things to be of prime importance: first, an experimental study of the histological consti- tution of the various organs, to learn their functions; and second, the separation of these organs into their elements, to determine their embiyological origin. In spite of all opposition, this view, so clearly set forth in the works of Fortunato, has prevailed in pathological and physiological schools, and has indicated a method of examining what was formerly considered the most complex and delicate part of the human body, namely the central nervous system. The same view has also led to some of the most remarkable discoveries in biology. In this sense Fortimato is a pioneer. In fact it was a century after that Bichat, following Bourdeu's lead, and, later on, Cuvier, advanced in the same direction. True to his purpose, Fortunato gave no heed to the anti-vitalistic controversies of his day, and spent no time investigating plastic forc^ and the nisus formatimis; he confined himself to the micro- scopic study of the parts of the organism, and in this way succeeded in classifying tissues and organs many years before Bichat (1800), who received all the credit for the classification. Fortunato was the first to dis- tinguish between tissues and organs. He established the idea of tissues, or, as he wrote, "of those organic parts which possess a definite .structure visible with the microscope and characterized by their component elements". With sufficient accuracy he described connective and bony tissue. The morphological com- plexus of the various tissues he calls the "system of tissues"; and the physiological complexus of the vari- ous organs he calls the "system of organs". These exact notions must have been the reward of wide and difficult investigation, as at that time there was no
