How Socrates in the Republic arranged the account concerning the virtues, after he isolated both the political classes and the parts of the soul, is itself something that we might learn once we have first sought for ourselves an answer to this question: ‘What is the distinctive feature of every virtue?’ I do not use the word ‘virtue’ homonymously in the sense in which it is customarily applied even to things that are lifeless, as when one talks about the virtue of an implement or some such thing, but I mean instead when the term is used strictly.22 In this sense we will inevitably be speaking about something that relates to its vital character and the way that it perfects its life, since it is the cause of things going well for those in which it is present rather than of their existence.