_a part or phase of the total end_.
=The Problem of Equating Personal and General Happiness.=--Much moral speculation has been devoted to the problem of equating personal happiness and regard for the general good. Right moral action, it is assumed, consists especially of justice and benevolence,--attitudes which aim at the good of others. But, it is also assumed, a just and righteous order of the universe requires that the man who seeks the happiness of others should also himself be a happy man. Much ingenuity has been directed to explaining away and accounting for the seeming discrepancies: the cases where men not conspicuous for regard for others or for maintaining a serious and noble view of life seem to maintain a banking-credit on the side of happiness; while men devoted to others, men conspicuous for range of sympathetic affections, seem to have a debit balance. The problem is the more serious because the respective good and ill fortunes do not seem to be entirely accidental and external, but to come as results from the moral factors in behavior. It would not be difficult to build up an argument to show that while extreme viciousness or isolated egoism is unfavorable to happiness, so also are keenness and breadth of affections. The argument would claim that the most comfortable course of life is one in which the man cultivates enough intimacies with enough persons to secure for himself their support and aid, but avoids engaging his sympathies too closely in their affairs and entangling himself in any associations which would require self-sacrifice or exposure to the sufferings of others: a course of life in which the individual shuns those excesses of vice which injure health, wealth, and lessen the decent esteem of others, but also shuns enterprises of precarious virtue and devotion to high and difficult ends.
=Real and Artificial Aspects of the Problem.=--The problem thus put seems insoluble, or soluble only upon the supposition of some prolongation of life under conditions very different from those of the present, in which the present lack of balance between happiness and goodness will be redressed. _But the problem is insoluble because it is artificial._[183] It assumes a ready-made self and hence a ready-made type of satisfaction of happiness. It is not the business of moral theory to demonstrate the existence of mathematical equations, in this life or another one, between goodness and virtue. It is the business of men to develop such capacities and desires, such selves as render them capable of finding their own satisfaction, their invaluable value, in fulfilling the demands which grow out of their associated life. Such happiness may be short in duration and slight in bulk: but that it outweighs in quality all accompanying discomforts as well as all enjoyments which may have been missed by not doing something else, is attested by the simple fact that men do consciously choose it. Such a person has found _himself_, and has solved the problem in the only place and in the only way in which it can be solved: _in action_. To demand in advance of voluntary desire and deliberate choice that it be demonstrated that an individual shall get happiness in the measure of the rightness of his act, is to demand the obliteration of the essential factor in morality: the constant discovery, formation, and reformation of the self in the ends which an individual is called upon to sustain and develop in virtue of his membership in a social whole. The solution of the problem through the individual's voluntary identification of himself with social relations and aims is neither rare nor utopian. It is achieved not only by conspicuous social figures, but by multitudes of "obscure" figures who are faithful to the callings of their social relationships and offices. That the conditions of life for all should be enlarged, that wider opportunities and richer fields of activity should be opened, in order that happiness may be of a more noble and variegated sort, that those inequalities of status which lead men to find their advantage in disregard of others should be destroyed--these things are indeed necessary. But under the most ideal conditions which can be imagined, if there remain any moral element whatsoever, it will be only through personal deliberation and personal preference as to objective and social ends that the individual will discover and constitute himself, and hence discover the sort of happiness required as his good.
Our final word about the place of the self in the moral life is, then, that the problem of morality is the formation, out of the body of original instinctive impulses which compose the natural self, of a voluntary self in which socialized desires and affections are dominant, and in which the last and controlling principle of deliberation is the love of the objects which will make this transformation possible. If we identify, as we must do, the interests of such a character with the virtues, we may say with Spinoza that happiness is not the reward of virtue, but is virtue itself. What, then, are the virtues?
LITERATURE For asceticism, see Lecky, _History of European Morals_.
For self-denial, Mackenzie, _International Journal of Ethics_, Vol. V., pp. 273-295.
For egoism and altruism: Comte, _System of Positive Politics_, Introduction, ch. iii., and Part II., ch. ii.; Spencer, _Principles of ch. vi.; Paulsen, _System of Ethics_, pp. 379-399; Sorley, _Recent Tendencies in Ethics_; Sidgwick, _Methods of Ethics_, pp. 494-507.
For the doctrine of self-interest, see Mandeville, _Fable of Bees_; Sidgwick, _Methods of Ethics_, Book I., ch. vii., and Book II., ch. v.; Stephen, _Science of Ethics_, ch. x.; Martineau, _Types of Ethical Theory_, Part II., Book II., Branch I., ch. i.; Fite, _Introductory Study_, ch. ii.
For historic development of sympathy, see Sutherland, _Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct_.
For the doctrine of self-realization, see Aristotle, _Ethics_; Green, _Prolegomena to Ethics_; Seth, _Principles of Ethics_, Part I., ch.
iii.; Bradley, _Ethical Studies_, Essay II.; Fite, _Introductory Study_, ch. xi.; Paulsen, _System of Ethics_, Book II., ch. i.; Taylor, _International Journal of Ethics_, Vol. VI., pp. 356-371; Palmer, _The Heart of Ethics_, and _The Nature of Goodness_; Calderwood, Review_, Vol. II., pp. 652-664; Bryant, _Studies in Character_, pp.
97-117.
For the ethics of success, besides the writings of Nietzsche, see Plato, _Gorgias_ and _Republic_, Book I., and Sumner, _Folkways_, ch. xx.
For the social self: Cooley, _Human Nature and the Social Order_, chs.
v. and vi.; for the antagonistic self, chs. vii.-ix.
For a general discussion of the Moral Self, see Bosanquet, _Psychology of the Moral Self_; Ladd, _Philosophy of Conduct_, ch. ix. (see also ch.
xviii. on the Good Man).
FOOTNOTES: [170] Compare the opening words of Emerson's _Essay on Compensation_.
[171] The principle of a "higher law" for the few who are leaders was first explicitly asserted in modern thought by Machiavelli.
[172] Some phases of the writings of Nietzsche supply relevant material for this sketch. See especially his _Will for Power, Beyond Good and Evil_, and such statements as: "The loss of force which suffering has already brought upon life is still further increased and multiplied by sympathy. Suffering itself becomes contagious through sympathy" (overlooking the reaction of sympathy to abolish the source of suffering and thus increase force). "Sympathy thwarts, on the whole, in general, the law of development, which is the law of selection."--_Works_, Vol.
XI., p. 242.
[173] This phase of the matter has been brought out (possibly with some counter-exaggeration) by Kropotkin in his _Mutual Aid_.
[174] Spencer puts the matter truly, if ponderously, in the following: "The citizens of a large nation industrially organized, have reached their possible ideal of happiness when the producing, distributing and other activities, are such in their kinds and amounts, that each individual finds in them a place for all his energies and aptitudes, while he obtains the means of satisfying all his desires. Once more we may recognize as not only possible, but probable, the eventual existence of a community, also industrial, the members of which, having natures similarly responding to these requirements, are also characterized by dominant æsthetic faculties, and achieve complete happiness only when a large part of life is filled with æsthetic activities" (_Principles of [175] Machiavelli, transferring from theology to statecraft the notion of the corruption and selfishness of all men, was the first modern to preach this doctrine.
[176] See, for example, Hobbes, _Leviathan_; Mandeville, _Fable of the Bees_; and Rochefoucauld, _Maxims_.
[177] Compare what was said above, p. 273, on the confusion of pleasure as end, and as motive. Compare also the following from Leslie Stephen, _Science of Ethics_, p. 241. It is often "insinuated that I dislike your pain because it is painful to me in some special relation. I do not dislike it as your pain, but in virtue of some particular consequence, such, for example, as its making you less able to render me a service.
In that case I do not really object to your pain as your pain at all, but only to some removable and accidental consequences." The entire discussion of sympathy (pp. 230-245), which is admirable, should be consulted.
is very important.
[179] See, for example, James, _Principles of Psychology_, Vol. II., ch.
xxiv.
[180] Measures of public or state activity in the extension, for example, of education (furnishing free text-books, adequate medical inspection, and remedy of defects), are opposed by "good people" because there are "charitable" agencies for doing these things.
[181] Compare Spencer's criticisms of Bentham's view of happiness as a social standard in contrast with his own ideal of freedom. See _Ethics_, Vol. I., pp. 162-168.
[182] See Addams, _Democracy and Social Ethics_, ch. ii.
[183] Compare the following extreme words of Sumner (_Folkways_, p. 9): "The great question of world philosophy always has been, what is the real relation between happiness and goodness? It is only within a few generations that men have found courage to say there is none." But when Sumner, in the next sentence, says, "The whole strength of the notion that they are correlated is in the opposite experience which proves that no evil thing brings happiness," one may well ask what more relation any reasonable man would want. For it indicates that "goodness" consists in active interest in those things which really bring happiness; and while it by no means follows that this interest will _bring_ even a preponderance of pleasure over pain to the person, it is always open to him to _find_ and _take_ his dominant happiness in making this interest dominant in his life.
CHAPTER XIX THE VIRTUES INTRODUCTORY =Definition of Virtue.=--It is upon the self, upon the agent, that ultimately falls the burden of maintaining and of extending the values which make life reasonable and good. The worth of science, of art, of industry, of relationship of man and wife, parent and child, teacher and pupil, friend and friend, citizen and State, exists only as there are characters consistently interested in such goods. Hence any trait of character which makes for these goods is esteemed; it is given positive value; while any disposition of selfhood found to have a contrary tendency is condemned--has negative value. The habits of character whose effect is to sustain and spread the rational or common good are virtues; the traits of character which have the opposite effect are vices.
=Virtue and Approbation; Vice and Condemnation.=--The approbation and disapprobation visited upon conduct are never purely intellectual. They are also emotional and practical. We are stirred to hostility at whatever disturbs the order of society; we are moved to admiring sympathy of whatever makes for its welfare. And these emotions express themselves in appropriate conduct. To disapprove and dislike is to reprove, blame, and punish. To approve is to encourage, to aid, and support. Hence the judgments express the character of the one who utters them--they are traits of his conduct and character; and they react into the character of the agent upon whom they are directed. They are part of the process of forming character. The commendation is of the nature of a reward calculated to confirm the person in the right course of action. The reprobation is of the nature of punishment, fitted to dissuade the agent from the wrong course. This encouragement and blame are not necessarily of an external sort; the reward and the punishment may not be in material things. It is not from ulterior design that society esteems and respects those attributes of an agent which tend to its own peace and welfare; it is from natural, instinctive response to acknowledge whatever makes for its good. None the less, the social esteem, the honor which attend certain acts inevitably educate the individual who performs these acts, and they strengthen, emotionally and practically, his interest in the right. Similarly, there is an instinctive reaction of society against an infringement of its customs and ideals; it naturally "makes it hot" for any one who disturbs its values. And this disagreeable attention instructs the individual as to the consequences of his act, and works to hinder the formation of dispositions of the socially disliked kind.
=Natural Ability and Virtue.=--There is a tendency to use the term virtue in an abstract "moralistic" sense--a way which makes it almost Pharisaic in character. Hard and fast lines are drawn between certain traits of character labeled "virtues" and others called talents, natural abilities, or gifts of nature. Apart from deliberate or reflective nurture, modesty or generosity is no less and no more a purely natural ability than is good-humor, a turn for mechanics, or presence of mind.
Every natural capacity, every talent or ability, whether of inquiring mind, of gentle affection or of executive skill, becomes a virtue when it is turned to account in supporting or extending the fabric of social values; and it turns, if not to vice at least to delinquency, when not thus utilized. The important habits conventionally reckoned virtues are barren unless they are the cumulative assemblage of a multitude of anonymous interests and capacities. Such natural aptitudes vary widely in different individuals. Their endowments and circumstances occasion and exact different virtues, and yet one person is not more or less virtuous than another because his virtues take a different form.
=Changes in Virtues.=--It follows also that the meaning, or content, of virtues changes from time to time. Their abstract form, the man's attitude towards the good, remains the same. But when institutions and customs change and natural abilities are differently stimulated and evoked, ends vary, and habits of character are differently esteemed both by the individual agent and by others who judge. No social group could be maintained without patriotism and chastity, but the actual meaning of chastity and patriotism is widely different in contemporary society from what it was in savage tribes or from what we may expect it to be five hundred years from now. Courage in one society may consist almost wholly in willingness to face physical danger and death in voluntary devotion to one's community; in another, it may be willingness to support an unpopular cause in the face of ridicule.
=Conventional and Genuine Virtue.=--When we take these social changes on a broad scale, in the gross, the point just made is probably clear without emphasis. But we are apt to forget that minor changes are going on all the while. The community's formulated code of esteem and regard and praise at any given time is likely to lag somewhat behind its practical level of achievement and possibility. It is more or less traditional, describing what used to be, rather than what are, virtues.
The "respectable" comes to mean tolerable, passable, conventional.
Accordingly the prevailing scheme of assigning merit and blame, while on the whole a mainstay of moral guidance and instruction, is also a menace to moral growth. Hence men must look behind the current valuation to the real value. Otherwise, mere conformity to custom is conceived to be virtue;[184] and the individual who deviates from custom in the interest of wider and deeper good is censured.
=Moral Responsibility for Praise and Blame.=--The practical assigning of value, of blame and praise, is a measure and exponent of the character of the one from whom it issues. In judging others, in commending and condemning, we judge ourselves. What we find to be praiseworthy and blameworthy is a revelation of our own affections. Very literally the measure we mete to others is meted to us. To be free in our attributions of blame is to be censorious and uncharitable; to be unresentful to evil is to be indifferent, or interested perhaps chiefly in one's own popularity, so that one avoids giving offense to others. To engage profusely in blame and approbation in speech without acts which back up or attack the ends verbally honored or condemned, is to have a perfunctory morality. To cultivate complacency and remorse apart from effort to improve is to indulge in sentimentality. In short, to approve or to condemn is itself a moral act for which we are as much responsible as we are for any other deed.
=Impossibility of Cataloguing Virtues.=--These last three considerations: (1) the intimate connection of virtues with all sorts of individual capacities and endowments, (2) the change in types of habit required with change of social customs and institutions, (3) the dependence of judgment of vice and virtue upon the character of the one judging,[185] make undesirable and impossible a catalogued list of virtues with an exact definition of each. Virtues are numberless. Every situation, not of a routine order, brings in some special shading, some unique adaptation, of disposition.
=Twofold Classification.=--We may, however, classify the chief institutions of social life--language, scientific investigation, artistic production, industrial efficiency, family, local community, nation, humanity--and specify the types of mental disposition and interest which are fitted to maintain them flourishingly; or, starting from typical impulsive and instinctive tendencies, we may consider the form they assume when they become intelligently exercised habits. A virtue may be defined, accordingly, either as _the settled intelligent identification of an agent's capacity with some aspect of the reasonable or common happiness_; or, as _a social custom or tendency organized into a personal habit of valuation_. From the latter standpoint, truthfulness is the social institution of language maintained at its best pitch of efficiency through the habitual purposes of individuals; from the former, it is an instinctive capacity and tendency to communicate emotions and ideas directed so as to maintain social peace and prosperity. In like fashion, one might catalogue all forms of social custom and institution on one hand; and all the species and varieties of individual equipment on the other, and enumerate a virtue for each. But the performance is so formal as not to amount to much.
=Aspects of Virtue.=--Any virtuous disposition of character exhibits, however, certain main traits, a consideration of which will serve to review and summarize our analysis of the moral life.
=I. The Interest Must be Entire or Whole-hearted.=--The whole self, without division or reservation, must go out into the proposed object and find therein its own satisfaction. Virtue is integrity; vice duplicity. Goodness is straight, right; badness is crooked, indirect.
Interest that is incomplete is not interest, but (so far as incomplete) indifference and disregard. This totality of interest we call affection, love; and love is the fulfilling of the law. A grudging virtue is next to no virtue at all; thorough heartiness in even a bad cause stirs admiration, and lukewarmness in every direction is always despised as meaning lack of character. Surrender, abandonment, is of the essence of identification of self with an object.
=II. The Interest Must be Energetic and Hence Persistent.=--One swallow does not make a summer nor a sporadic right act a virtuous habit.
Fair-weather character has a proverbially bad name. Endurance through discouragement, through good repute and ill, weal and woe, tests the vigor of interest in the good, and both builds up and expresses a formed character.
=III. The Interest Must be Pure or Sincere.=--Honesty is, doubtless, the best policy, and it is better a man should be honest from policy than not honest at all. If genuinely honest from considerations of prudence, he is on the road to learn better reasons for honesty. None the less, we are suspicious of a man if we believe that motives of personal profit are the only stay of his honesty. For circumstances might arise in which, in the exceptional case, it would be clear that personal advantage lay in dishonesty. The motive for honesty would hold in most cases, in ordinary and routine circumstances and in the glare of publicity, but not in the dark of secrecy, or in the turmoil of disturbed circumstance. The eye single to the good, the "disinterested interest" of moralists, is required. The motive that has to be coaxed or coerced to its work by some promise or threat is imperfect.
=Cardinal or Indispensable Aspects of Virtue.=--Bearing in mind that we are not attempting to classify various acts or habits, but only to state traits essential to all morality, we have the "cardinal virtues" of moral theory. As whole-hearted, as complete interest, any habit or attitude of character involves justice and love; as persistently active, it is courage, fortitude, or vigor; as unmixed and single, it is temperance--in its classic sense. And since no habitual interest can be integral, enduring, or sincere, save as it is reasonable, save, that is, as it is rooted in the deliberate habit of viewing the part in the light of the whole, the present in the light of the past and future, interest in the good is also wisdom or conscientiousness:--interest in the discovery of the true good of the situation. Without this interest, all our interest is likely to be perverted and misleading--requiring to be repented of.
Wisdom, or (in modern phrase) conscientiousness, is the nurse of all the virtues. Our most devoted courage is in the will to know the good and the fair by unflinching attention to the painful and disagreeable. Our severest discipline in self-control is that which checks the exorbitant pretensions of an appetite by insisting upon knowing it in its true proportions. The most exacting justice is that of an intelligence which gives due weight to each desire and demand in deliberation before it is allowed to pass into overt action. That affection and wisdom lie close to each other is evidenced by our language; thoughtfulness, regard, consideration for others, recognition of others, attention to others.
§ 1. TEMPERANCE The English word "temperance" (particularly in its local association with agitation regarding use of intoxicating liquors) is a poor substitute for the Greek _sophrosyne_ which, through the Latin _temperantia_, it represents. The Athenian Greek was impressed with the fact that just as there are lawless, despotically ruled, and self-governed communities, so there are lawless, and servile, and self-ruled individuals. Whenever there is a self-governed soul, there is a happy blending of the authority of reason with the force of appetite. The individual's diverse nature is tempered into a living harmony of desire and intelligence. Reason governs not as a tyrant from without, but as a guide to which the impulses and emotions are gladly responsive. Such a well-attuned nature, as far from asceticism on one side as from random indulgence on the other, represented the ideal of what was fair and graceful in character, an ideal embodied in the notion of _sophrosyne_. This was a _whole-mindedness_ which resulted from the happy furtherance of all the elements of human nature under the self-accepted direction of intelligence. It implied an _æsthetic_ view of character; of harmony in structure and rhythm in action. It was the virtue of judgment exercised in the estimate of pleasures:--since it is the agreeable, the pleasant, which gives an end excessive hold upon us.
=Roman Temperantia.=--The Roman conceived this virtue under the term _temperantia_, which conveys the same idea, but accommodated to the Roman genius. It is connected with the word _tempus_, time, which is connected also with a root meaning divide, distribute; it suggests a consecutive orderliness of behavior, a freedom from excessive and reckless action, first this way, and then that. It means seemliness, decorum, decency. It was "moderation," not as quantity of indulgence, but as a moderating of each act in a series by the thought of other and succeeding acts--keeping each in sequence with others in a whole. The idea of time involves time to think; the sobering second thought expressed in seriousness and gravity. The negative side, the side of restraint, of inhibition, is strong, and functions for the consistent calm and gravity of life.
=Christian Purity.=--Through the Christian influence, the connotation which is marked in the notion of control of sexual appetite, became most obvious--_purity_. Passion is not so much something which disturbs the harmony of man's nature, or which interrupts its orderliness, as it is something which defiles the purity of spiritual nature. It is the grossness, the contamination of appetite which is insisted upon, and temperance is the maintenance of the soul spotless and unsullied.
restraint, inhibition is everywhere involved.[186] It is not, however, desire, or appetite, or passion, or impulse, which has to be checked (much less eliminated); it is rather that tendency of desire and passion so to engross attention as to destroy our sense of the other ends which have a claim upon us. This moderation of pretension is indispensable for every desire. In one direction, it is modesty, humility; the restraint of the tendency of self-conceit to distort the relative importance of the agent's and others' concerns; in another direction, it is chastity; in another, "temperance" in the narrower sense of that word--keeping the indulgence of hunger and thirst from passing reasonable bounds; in another, it is calmness, self-possession--moderation of the transporting power of excitement; in yet another, it is discretion, imposing limits upon the use of the hand, eye, or tongue. In matters of wealth, it is decent regulation of display and ostentation. In general, it is prudence, control of the present impulse and desire by a view of the "long run," of proximate by remote consequences.[187] =Positive Phase: Reverence.=--The tendency of dominant passion is to rush us along, to prevent our thinking. The one thing that desire emphasizes is, for the time being, the most important thing in the universe. This is necessary to heartiness and effectiveness of interest and behavior. But it is important that the thing which thus absorbs desire should be an end capable of justifying its power to absorb. This is possible only if it expresses the entire self. Otherwise capacities and desires which will occur later will be inconsistent and antagonistic, and conduct will be unregulated and unstable. The underlying idea in "temperance" is then a care of details for the sake of the whole course of behavior of which they are parts; heedfulness, painstaking devotion. Laxness in conduct means carelessness; lack of regard for the whole life permits temporary inclinations to get a sway that the outcome will not justify. In its more striking forms, we call this care and respect _reverence_; recognition of the unique, invaluable worth embodied in any situation or act of life, a recognition which checks that flippancy of surrender to momentary excitement coming from a superficial view of behavior. A sense of momentous issues at stake means a sobering and deepening of the mental attitude. The consciousness that every deed of life has an import clear beyond its immediate, or first significance, attaches dignity to every act. To live in the sense of the larger values attaching to our passing desires and deeds is to be possessed by the virtue of temperance.
=Control of Excitement.=--What hinders such living is, as we have seen, the exaggerated intensity, the lack of proportion and perspective, with which any appetite or desire is likely to present itself. It is this which moralists of all ages have attacked under the name of pleasure--the alluring and distracting power of the momentarily agreeable. Seeing in this the enemy which prevents the rational survey of the whole field and the calm, steady insight into the true good, it is hardly surprising that moralists have attacked "pleasure" as the source of every temptation to stray from the straight path of reason.
But it is not pleasure, it is one form of pleasure, the _pleasure of excitement_, which is the obstacle and danger.[188] Every impulse and desire marks a certain disturbance in the order of life, an exaltation above the existing level, a pressure beyond its existing limit. To give way to desire, to let it grow, to taste to the full its increasing and intensifying excitement, is the temptation. The bodily appetites of hunger and thirst and sex, with which we associate the grossest forms of indulgence and laxity, exemplify the principle of expanding waves of organic stimulation. But so also do many of the subtler forms of unrestraint or intemperate action. The one with a clever and lively tongue is tempted to let it run away with him; the vain man feeds upon the excitement of a personality heightened by display and the notice of others; the angry man, even though he knows he will later regret his surrender, gives away to the sense of expanding power coincident with his discharge of rage. The shiftless person finds it easier to take chances and let consequences take care of themselves, while he enjoys local and casual stimulations. Trivialities and superficialities entangle us in a flippant life, because each one as it comes promises to be "thrilling," while the very fear that this promise will not be kept hurries us on to new experiences. To think of alternatives and consequences is not "thrilling," but serious.
=Necessity of Superior Interest.=--Now calculation of the utilitarian type is not adequate to deal with this temptation. Those who are prone to reflection upon results are just those who are least likely to be carried away by excitement--unless, as is the case with some specialists, thinking is itself the mode of indulgence in excitement.[189] With those who are carried away habitually by some mode of excitement, the disease and the incapacity to take the proffered remedy of reflection are the same thing. Only some _other_ passion will accomplish the desired control. With the Greeks, it was æsthetic passion, love of the grace and beauty, the rhythm and harmony, of a self-controlled life. With the Romans, it was the passion for dignity, power, honor of personality, evidenced in rule of appetite. Both of these motives remain among the strong allies of ordered conduct. But the passion for purity, the sense of something degrading and foul in surrender to the base, an interest in something spotless, free from adulteration, are, in some form or other, the chief resource in overcoming the tendency of excitement to usurp the governance of the self.[190] § 2. COURAGE[191] OR PERSISTENT VIGOR While love of excitement allures man from the path of reason, fear of pain, dislike to hardship, and laborious effort, hold him back from entering it. Dislike of the disagreeable inhibits or contracts the putting forth of energy, just as liking for agreeable stimulation discharges and exhausts it. Intensity of active interest in the good alone subdues that instinctive shrinking from the unpleasant and hard which slackens energy or turns it aside. Such energy of devotion is courage. Its etymological connection with the Latin word for _heart_, suggests a certain abundant spontaneity, a certain overflow of positive energy; the word was applied to this aspect of virtue when the heart was regarded as literally (not metaphorically) the seat of vital impulse and abundant forcefulness.
=Courage and the Common Good.=--One of the problems of early Greek thought was that of discriminating courage as virtuous from a sort of animal keenness and alacrity, easily running into recklessness and bravado. It was uniformly differentiated from mere overflow of physical energy by the fact that it was exhibited in support of some common or social good. It bore witness to its voluntary character by abiding in the face of threatened evil. Its simplest form was patriotism--willingness to brave the danger of death in facing the country's enemy from love of country. And this basic largeness of spirit in which the individual sinks considerations of personal loss and harm in allegiance to an objective good remains a cardinal aspect of all right disposition.
=Courage is Preëminently the Executive Side of Every Virtue.=--The good will, as we saw, means endeavor, effort, towards certain ends; unless the end stirs to strenuous exertion, it is a sentimental, not a moral or practical end. And endeavor implies obstacles to overcome, resistance to what diverts, painful labor. It is the degree of threatened harm--in spite of which one does not swerve--which measures this depth and sincerity of interest in the good.
=Aspects of Interest in Execution.=--Certain formal traits of courage follow at once from this general definition. In its onset, willingness in behalf of the common good to endure attendant private evils is alacrity, promptness. In its abiding and unswerving devotion, it is constancy, loyalty, and faithfulness. In its continual resistance to evil, it is fortitude, patience, perseverance, willingness to abide for justification an ultimate issue. The _totality_ of commitment of self to the good is decision and firmness. Conviction and resolution accompany all true moral endeavor. These various dimensions (intensity, duration, extent, and fullness) are, however, only differing expressions of one and the same attitude of vigorous, energetic identification of agency with the object.
=Goodness and Effectiveness.=--It is the failure to give due weight to