In Question 24, Aquinas examines the passions in relation to good and evil. Against both the Stoics and the Epicureans, and taking Augustine as his model, Aquinas elaborates and defends the view that, when governed by reason, the passions can make an important contribution to the moral goodness of actions (§4.1). Thomas does not, however, restrict the potential moral goodness of the passions to discrete human actions. He assigns the passions a surprisingly large role in the overall return of the rational creature toward the ultimate end. This assignment goes some way toward explaining why Aquinas would devote such a large portion of the 1a2ae to the passions (§4.2). If the passions are potent sources of energy for the journey of the human person (and not simply the mind) toward God, do they have any cognitive value? Some have doubted that they do, at least for Thomas. I argue that, to the contrary, Aquinas considers the passions to play an important role in elevating the power of human cognition (§4.3). In light of the close relation of the passions to moral action and human cognition, it would seem that we are responsible for our passions. Yet it is difficult to see how we can be directly responsible for the passions, since (as Aquinas has argued, contrary to the Stoics) they are neither judgments nor acts of will. Nonetheless, Aquinas argues that we are ultimately responsible for our passions, even if it is beyond our power to control the occurrence of a passion in any particular case (§4.4).