Four-Square or The Cardinal Virtues - Joseph Rickaby SJ

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THE CARNEGIE LIBRARY
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THE CARDINALHlktlife
ADDRESSES TO YOUNG MEN, BY
JOSEPH RICKABY, S.J.
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That tower of strength
That stood four-square to all the winds that blew.*9
—Tennyson.
JOSEPH F. WAGNER
NEW YORK
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REMIGIUS LAFORT, S. T. L.
Censor Librorum
*JOHN M. FARLEY, D. D.
Archbishop of New i'ork
New York, September 8, 1908
Copyright, 1908, by JOSEPH F. WAGWER, New York
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PREFACE
o
^ These Addresses have appeared in the
4-Homiletic Monthly, They are written
rather with an eye to scientific accuracy
than to unction, eloquence and rhetoric:
for surely conduct is a matter of science.
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CONTENTS
PAGE
I. Virtue in General . m m m . i
II. The Cardinal Virtues ...... 9
III. Prudence . ^...... 16
IV. Temperance r . 23
V. Human Acts ...... 30
.......
c
VI. Of Fortitude 38
VIII. Of Justice 46
VII. Justice and Charity 54
IX. The Virtue of Religion 62
X. Truthfulness, Gratitude, Obedience . . . 69
XI. Magnanimity and Humility • . . . 77
XII. The Infused Virtues ,86
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THE CARDINAL VIRTUES
A Course of Addresses to Young Men
L VIRTUE IN GENERAL
There are infused virtues and acquired virtues. These addresses

deal with the latter, with the acquired virtues. Of infused virtues
we shall have something to say at the end. A virtue is a habit of
doing right; a habit of doing wrong is called a vice. A habit is a
made thing, made by the free human acts of the individual. It
results of acts whereof he is master, to do or not to do, and he

chooses to do them. No one is born with habits. A young child
consequently has neither vices nor virtues. But it has propensities
both virtuous and vicious. These propensities are partly common to
all men, partly peculiar to individuals, depending in the latter case
on the bodily nature inherited from parents and ancestors ac-

cording to what is called the law of heredity. Habits and acts
answer to one another; but a person may do an act, good or evil,
without having yet formed the corresponding habit, be it of virtue

or vice. Clearly, a man may get drunk without being an habitual
drunkard, or give an alms before he has mastered the virtue of
liberality. Otherwise no virtue could ever be acquired; for the
act must precede the habit, and the habit of virtue, or of vice, is
the gradual result of a series of virtuous, or vicious, acts. But,

done without habit, an act is done fitfully, irregularly, with difficulty
and uncertainty and much imperfection.
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2 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES
The best way to understand a habit, and thereby to understand

what a virtue is, is to consider what we understand by skill. Skill
is a habit of proficiency in some art. Skill comes by practice. We

are not born skilful, we are born clumsy creatures ; but this native
clumsiness adheres to some natures more than to others. We
are born with predispositions which may be turned into skill by
practice. Practice presupposes power you can not ; practise running
unless nature has gifted you with the use of your legs. Skill, there-
fore, and virtue, and every habit, presupposes power. Habit is the
determinant of power, not the maker of it. The skill of a trained
singer is a habit. The voice is there from the first; the most ac-
complished vocalist was once a squalling baby; if the baby had had no
lungs and vocal chords to squall with, never could the singer's
voice have been trained to melody. Every habit is in some power,
and perfects that power to act equally, surely, readily, to good effect.
A strong man, seizing a billiard cue for the first time, may make
a cannon and pocket the balls ; but he will not do that again. Only
a practised and skilful player ever makes a break at billiards. The
unskilful player, till his skill begins to come, makes only occasional
flukes. Nor will a man who has not acquired the virtue of meek-
ness succeed in keeping his temper, when provoked at all hours
from Monday to Saturday. His is not the skill so to command

himself. That skill is the virtue, which he has not yet got.
The sum of a person's habits is called his character. Education
is the foundation of character. Education is chiefly of the young,
because young natures are in all things more plastic. Older people
are "set," as in bone and muscle, so likewise in habits. Neverthe-
less, habits go on growing, to a greater or less degree, throughout
life; thus education itself becomes a lifelong process. Whatever
we do consciously and willingly, we are apt to do it again; that
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VIRTUE IN GENERAL 3
aptitude goes to build up habit. And not only what we do, but
what we wilfully omit to do, when there is occasion for doing
it, goes to make habit also—a habit, that is to say, of omitting.
The immediate author of all a person's habits is the person himself,

for habits come of personal acts, of which he is the doer. Every
man thus makes his own character, —we must add, out of pre-
existent materials, which he did not make, and under the influence
of a surrounding atmosphere of circumstances, which he has not
created. Still, though influenced and conditioned, he is not abso-
lutely controlled by present circumstance and pre-existent fact; he
acts for himself, and his acts make him the manner of man that he
becomes. Hence it is possible, indeed, it not uncommonly hap-

pens, for a youth to be educated in one way by his parents and
guardians, and meanwhile to be educating himself in a diametric-
ally opposite direction. His masters put him to study; if he did
study, he would grow studious and, possibly, learned; as it is,
he "cuts" his lessons day by day, and is forming to himself the

character, one degree worse than that of an ignoramus, the char-
acter of a misologus, hater of books and learning. Or worse still,
he has to be much in chapel, for so his companions are; he hears

many prayers recited, he not unfrequently goes to the Sacraments
as those about him do; but because he inwardly repines at all these
things, and has little or no heart in him, the virtue called religion,
whereby we worship God, is not being formed in him at all, but
rather the contrary vice of impiety; and so he will prove himself,
when he goes out his own master, impious and irreligious, for
thereunto is he self-educated.
Once acquired, a habit is not necessarily kept. An inanimate
thing may be kept indefinitely, but a habit, particularly a good habit,
requires the food and exercise of frequent acts, as occasion arises
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if such occasions are missed, and the acts called for are not elicited,
the habit droops and goes near to dying. A habit enables us to
do a thing easily. At the same time it would appear that acts which
we have learnt to perform very easily go very little, if any, way to-
ward strengthening the habit. A swimmer who could almost swim
the Channel is not much improved by taking a few quiet strokes in a
bath. Nor does a very meek man grow particularly in meekness by

enduring the shrill cry of the newsboy in the street A habit grows,
on ground wherever it is not yet perfectly formed, by our doing
that which we have not yet got thoroughly into the way of doing.
Virtue is strengthened only by being exercised under trying circum-
stances. Virtue grows strong in conflict, and is enfeebled by ease.
No one needs to be told that bad habits are easier to form than
good ones. A bad habit comes of a succession of bad acts ; and to
do a bad act, commonly, we have not to exert ourselves, but simply
to let ourselves go. It is so easy to be wicked that one wonders how
anyone could ever be vain of it; yet some people are. A bad habit
is otherwise called a vice. A bad act is a sin. The sin passes,
though its guilt (or liability before God) does not pass; the vice
remains. Nay, when the sin, that is, the guilt of the sin, is taken
away by penance, the vice, or evil habit, is not taken away. The
vice does not put us out of grace or favor with God ; only sin does
that. Nevertheless the vice comes of sin, done in the past; and
predisposes us to sin in the future. A pardoned sinner, one who
has made a good confession, if he has committed the same sin many
times over, must expect a hard struggle with the vice, or evil habit,
thence resultant, still remaining in his soul. Often he will sin again
and again in consequence. The only thing for him is to repent again
and again, and to repent promptly. Repentance gradually will de-
stroy not only the sin but also the vice. Not only will he be par-
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VIRTUE IN GENERAL 5
doned the repeated acts, but the habit will be cured. One of the com-
monest temptations of the young and inexperienced is the thought:
"There's no use trying, I can not be good !" But you must be good,
or you will lose your soul. You must swim out of this abyss of
evil, or you will be drowned there and die for ever. And with
God's grace, and your own good will, and God's Sacraments, you
can swim out of it.
Strictly speaking, it is not the same thing to do a good act and

to do an act of virtue. To do an must have the
act of virtue, I
virtue in my soul; but virtues (we are speaking now of the "ac-
quired virtues") are not in the soul to start with; we start with
doing good acts laboriously, fitfully, with effort and attention that
does not always succeed, as we learn to play a game ; gradually the
good habit is formed, the virtue, or skill in doing good, is acquired
and thenceforth good acts are elicited with fair ease and regularity,
acts which are at once good acts and acts of virtue, this or that
virtue according to the nature of the act.

An act of virtue is always done on principle, from a proper
motive, not on blind, unreasoning impulse, not under mere stress
of passion, —very often, indeed, in the very teeth of an impulse of
passion. Still, when it can be got to work in the right direction,
passion lends force to virtue and is a valuable adjunct to virtuous
action. It is the office of the selective eye of reason to set passion
to work in the right direction. The passions are something like the
elephants that used to be employed in the ancient battles. Often
in rage and terror those beasts would break from all control, and
trample upon the men who had brought them into the field ; at other
times they did good service against the enemy, mostly, I imagine, by
frightening people who knew no better, as the Romans were fright-
ened at first sight of what they called the "Lucanian ox." It is very
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well to act under passion, if you are sure you are going the right
way and are not going too far.
From all that has been said it will appear that it is not enough
for man to have powers; he must further acquire habits, residing
in and perfecting his several powers, else he will use his powers to
no good effect. Some powers, indeed, in man, do not need perfecting
by habit; these are the organic and animal powers, such as cir-
culation, respiration, digestion; these powers need no education.

But all the five senses fall under the discipline of habit, as taste in a
cook, hearing in a musician, touch in a pianist or a surgeon. It
is not enough for a gymnast to be strong, he must acquire muscular

habits of skill by dint of practice. Even walking is a habit, an ac-
quired thing. Articulate speech is a habit founded upon that power
which in a baby comes out in squalling. A baby that could not
squall could never speak. There are habits in the intellect, habits
of knowledge, got by study. These habits of intellect, sense, and

muscle, make for the physical perfection of a man, not for his
moral perfection. In other words, they perfect him toward certain
particular ends, not toward the last end and final reason for
human existence. In front of that final end these habits may be
misdirected and abused, and are daily and continually abused. We
see knowledge, skill, art and science put to the vilest uses. These
habits, therefore, are not commonly called virtues. Virtue, as St
Augustine says (De lib. arbit. I, c. 18, n. 50) is "something that
none can put to ill purpose." Put it to ill purposes, and it ceases to
be virtue; thus what would be an act of liberality is not an act
of that virtue if it be done, not for the proper motive of the vir-
tue, but out of sheer ostentation. You may abuse any other habit or
skill, you can not abuse a virtue.
Mere knowledge and intellectual appreciation of the right thing to
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VIRTUE IN GENERAL 7
do is not virtue. Thus they were foolish philosophers who defined

fortitude, "an understanding of the things that are to be feared
and the things that are not to be feared." A virtue is a guarantee

for the performance of the act corresponding, when occasion arises.
But such knowledge is scarce any guarantee at all The hour of

danger paralyzes the knowledge in the man who has never been
exercised in the act to face danger. He knows that it is foolish, even
shameful, to get into a fright and fly; yet away he runs and all
his philosophy with him. Virtue, indeed, supposes knowledge; it
is not mere routine behavior, mere knack and rule of thumb : it is
a habit acquired by practice of acting up to one's knowledge. Vir-

tue in this resembles other habits. Skill, too, is something more
than knowledge. For example, there are certain rubrics to be ob-
served by a priest at Mass. They are comprised in quite a few

pages ; you might know the little book by heart, but you would blun-
der dreadfully if you had never practised. Nor could one ever
operate as a surgeon who had simply read books on surgery. So
for virtue you must understand and appreciate and keep well in
your mind's eye the motives for virtuous conduct ; but further you
must put your hand to the work ; try, and fail ; blunder, and begin
again; do the virtuous thing in a lame and imperfect way, with
effort and difficulty, overcoming yourself to do it. In time the act
will grow easy, the habit will have been acquired.
A virtue acquired is a guarantee of the corresponding act of
virtue being forthcoming when called for. Not, however, an ab-
solutely unfailing guarantee. The meekest of men has his meek-
ness ruffled by sudden gusts of unreasonable anger. The pru-
dence of the most prudent deserts him at times ; he is taken off his
guard, and behaves not altogether wisely. Stoics and other ancient
philosophers expected too much of human virtue, thinking that it
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should never fail to act The mere fact of man having an animal
body, liable to perturbations from within and without, is enough
to threaten always and sometimes to upset, the perfect equilibrium
of his virtue. For this and other reasons, as we shall see later,
natural virtue needs to be eked out by the grace of God
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THE CARDINAL VIRTUES 9
II. THE CARDINAL VIRTUES
We speak of a "cardinal of the Holy Roman Church" and of the

"principal of the college." Both words have originally the same
meaning. Cardinal is from cardo, a hinge. The college may be
said to hinge upon its principal ; and again a cardinal was originally
and is to this day the principal priest of some parish-church in
Rome. The cardinal virtues, then, are the principal virtues —and
that in two ways. Either they are taken as the main virtues, to
which all other virtues approximate and can be ultimately reduced,
or they are taken for the chief component elements of every virtue
whatsoever. In the latter sense they are spoken of as integral
parts of virtue, their union going to make up virtue in its entirety.
We will consider them in this latter sense first.
We owe the enumeration of the cardinal virtues, not to the He-

brew Scriptures, but to the Greek philosophers. Prudence, tem-
perance, fortitude, justice, were already enumerated at Athens as
far back as B. C. 400. The root idea of justice is the rendering to
every man of his own. But what is a man's own? That may be
said to be determined by law. Let every man have what the law
allows him. Justice, therefore, is conformity to law. But the law
may be said to prescribe all virtues. The saying is debatable, but
it is not worth while debating it here. Every virtue, therefore, is
conformable to law, and in practising any virtue a man is observ-

ing the law, and is, therefore, just. Hence in Scripture the "just"
or "righteous" man is the law-abiding man; the virtuous man
simply the "good man," in contrast with the sinner, who is a law-
breaker. Again, virtue moves a man to do good steadily, regularly
and constantly, even in face of difficulties. But constancy under
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io THE CARDINAL VIRTUES
difficulties belongs to fortitude. There is, therefore, an element of

fortitude in every virtue, by the mere fact of virtue being a habit
Once more, every virtue is a habit of doing things in moderation,

holding on to the golden mean, neither overdoing the thing nor
underdoing it, but doing exactly what is fit and proper under the
circumstances. Such is the great Aristotelian doctrine, that all
virtue lies in a mean between two vicious extremes. Liberality, for

instance, observes the mean between prodigality and stinginess;
fortitude between rashness and cowardice; humility between
haughtiness and meanness of spirit. But moderation is the equivtr
lent of temperance, which is thus shown to be an essential element
in every virtue. It is not easy to discern the golden mean, e. g., in

government between remissness and over-indulgence, when to
punish and when to condone, when to forbid and when to allow
Such discernment is the part of prudence. Prudence is the eye of
every virtue. No virtue goes blind. Thus, to be virtuous in any
department is to be at once prudent, just, courageous and temperate.
More usually, however, the four cardinal virtues are taken as
four distinct virtues and main heads of virtue, under which the
other virtues are severally enumerated. Under prudence come
prudence in one's own affairs and prudence in the affairs of others
whom one has to govern. Justice includes justice distributive (of
rewards), vindictive (punishing), and commutative (enforcing con-

tracts) ; it is further taken to include the virtues of religion, obedi-
ence, truthfulness, liberality and gratitude. Under fortitude come

magnanimity, patience and perseverance. Temperance includes
abstinence (in food), sobriety (in drink), chastity, also modesty,
humility, meekness, clemency. The theological virtues are distinct
from the cardinal, and are not considered here, as being not "ac-
quired" but "infused."
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THE CARDINAL VIRTUES ii
Every habit, as we have seen, resides in some faculty or power.
The habit does not make the power, any more than the school-
master makes the child. It presupposes it as a thing given; then
taking it in hand it disciplines and trains it and teaches it to act to
good purpose; whereas, away from the good habit engendered in
it by training, the power would have acted fitfully and at random.

Virtue being a habit, it is possible to assign for every virtue the power
in which it resides and which it perfects. We shall find the four car-
dinal virtues residing in the powers of the human soul. All these
several powers want virtues to train them and guide them to orderly
behaviour.
You sometimes hear people, who know no better, saying that
all virtue is in the will. That is a mistake. Virtue is the disci-

pline of the soul. It is not enough for the will alone to be disci-
plined, the subordinates must be disciplined as well as the chief,
else you have no ready and regular action. Not only must the
rider be skilled in horsemanship, but the horse also must be broken

in. Virtue, therefore, resides even in appetite. It is put there
(under God) by reason, and consists in the appetite's being habitu-
ally broken in to the obedience of reason. That habitual state is
the result of many acts of conflict, in which reason has subdued

appetite, as a trainer subdues a wild young horse. Plato expresses
it in these terms: "The driver (reason), laying himself back, tugs
with all his might at bit and bridle in the teeth of the wanton horse,
embruing in blood his foul-mouthed tongue and jaws, forcing him
back on his haunches till his legs and hindquarters almost touch
the ground, and putting him to pain." Plato thought, and thought
rightly, that the discipline of the lower appetites, otherwise known
as the virtue of temperance, is not established without strong and
repeated efforts on the part of reason, or the rational appetite, that
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is, the will, to enforce obedience to its commands. It may be added

that the obedience of appetite to reason is never quite complete.
Temperance is like a sovereign insecurely seated on his throne, and
needing, when rebellion waxes high, to call in the aid of a superior
power. The habit will not work automatically: it is not self-
sufficient.
Justice regulates our dealings with other persons. Fortitude and

temperance work within the self, and secure order at home. As
for prudence, there is no department of human action which pru-
dence should not pervade. Therefore, it has been said: "Tem-
perance and fortitude in the home department; justice for foreign
affairs ; with prudence for premier."

The question has been asked whether the virtues are separable
one from another, whether, for instance, one can be courageous
without being temperate, or exercise liberality while neglecting
religion? If the four cardinal virtues are taken, not as distinct
virtues, but as common elements of all virtue, it is clear that they
can not be separated. In all virtue discretion (prudence), rectitude

(justice), moderation (temperance), and firmness (fortitude) are
inseparably conjoined. The question can be raised only when the
virtues are considered as distinct from one another. One cardinal
virtue is not another, e. g., justice is not fortitude, that we allow.
May not in the same person one of these virtues flourish in the
absence of one or more of the other three? Does not plain experi-
ence evince that the sailor is brave, but not temperate; and that
many a man is temperate, and just to fellowmen, but not just to
God in that he wholly discards the virtue of religion? In answer
to this somewhat intricate question we must distinguish between
a virtue and the good acts which that virtue is apt to elicit. Those
acts, as we have seen, may be done in the absence of the virtue : a
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man may show liberality once in a while without having the virtue
of liberality. Much more may he do acts of liberality here and there,
without having some other virtue, as temperance or religion. A
man of no religion may subscribe handsomely to a hospital — it may
be, I allow, out of the virtue of liberality, but his mere subscription
is no certain argument of that virtue. The act may be motived by
ostentation or human respect and fear of public opinion or he may ;
give out of a certain native predisposition to fling his money

about, a predisposition which makes excellent material for virtue,
but is not of itself the virtue of liberality before it has been

trained according to reason. What seems to be virtue may
be a mere chance combination of good nature with happy cir-
cumstances. What seems to be virtue may keep up the semblance

only because it has never been tried by temptation. It may be a
keeping up of appearance out of love of respectability and desire to
make one's way in society ; and that is not virtue. Still I would not
deny that a man may have one virtue and not another — liberality,
for instance, and not religion —provided his lack of that second
virtue be due wholly or chiefly to ignorance, misapprehension, weak-

ness and frailty. But if a man casts any one virtue which carries
duties in its train — casts it out wilfully and against his conscience
I should gravely doubt his possession of any other virtue. How-
ever much he did the acts, I should doubt whether they were mo-
tived by the motive of the virtue. A man who spurns conscience
upon one ground is not likely to be really conscientious upon an-
other. Henry VIII affected zeal for religion and for the sanctity
of marriage. His loose and dissolute life gave the lie to his zeal.
What shall we say of Louis XIV? We must be cautious m judg-
ing of individuals. But we may observe in general. Virtues
this
are like the timbers of a roof. Dry rot, set in on one beam, does
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not at once bring the whole roof down. Nor does the decay of one
particular virtue work the immediate ruin of a man's whole moral

character and destroy all his other virtues, the gradual growth of
years of well-doing. They may remain some considerable time un-
injured. But evil spreads, and things move from bad to worse.
By doing our duty we do acts, from which acts virtues are apt to
result. Nor is a sinner condemned precisely for his vices, but for
those sinful acts which have engendered vices in his soul. We are
not bound to do all good acts possible, else there would be no differ-
ence between counsel and commandment. Good acts indeed are

often inconsistent one with another. It is good to marry, good to re-
ceive holy orders; but you can not do both. In every good man,
grown up, there will be found the cardinal virtues, but not every
subordinate virtue which ranks under those general heads. Some
virtues he may not have been in a position to practise. You can not
practise clemency if you have no authority to punish; nor munifi-
cence if you are not a rich man. Some virtues grow out of acts
which are rarely practicable or obligatory —magnanimity, for ex-

ample, which is the maintenance of a proper attitude of mind in
reference to high honors. Some virtues are as the garments of the
soul, covering its nakedness and its shame; others are as jewelry;
now no one is obliged to wear jewelry.
The ancient Greeks, who first made out the list of cardinal vir-
tues, also enumerated four corresponding goods of man. They
were health, strength, beauty, and what we may call a competence,
or a competent position in society. Fortitude and temperance evi-
dently answer to strength and beauty respectively : they are spiritual
strength and beauty. The drunkard, or the unchaste youth, is
morally and spiritually ugly, though he perceive it not: higher
powers perceive it. The Greeks said : "Vice is unknown to itself/'
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Prudence is the being of sound mind and sound judgment in mat-

ters of primary importance. Prudence takes "a healthy view" of
the general situation. Justice is the moral attribute that fits us to
be members of human society; for no society, not even that of
thieves, could hold together, were the members all unjust to one
another. In this, justice is like a "competence," which means a
place in the social organism, with associates and friends to converse
with, and sufficient pecuniary substances to maintain the position

honorably.
Or we may put the relation in this way. Prudence is the safe-
guard of health; fortitude keeps up strength; temperance, which
includes chastity, is the defender of beauty; while justice prevents
a man abusing his worldly wealth and position. So that, without
the cardinal virtues, health, strength, beauty and social competence,
may prove a curse rather than a blessing to the owner. And the
same of all other corporal and material advantages.
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i6 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES
III. PRUDENCE
Prudence is right reason applied to practice in view of the final
end of life. Prudence is apt to give advice on points that appertain

to the whole life of man and his last end; while in any given art
there is the office of advising on points that appertain to the proper

end of the said art. Hence some persons, as being apt to give ad-
vice on matters of war or seamanship, are called prudent com-
manders, or prudent navigators, but not prudent absolutely ; but they
alone are prudent absolutely who give good advice for the main
conduct of life.
An imprudent person is one who goes the wrong way about getting
what he wants, and in consequence does not get what he wants. He
has no practical discernment of the bearing of given means on a
given end. That is exactly what prudence does discern. Prudence is
concerned with means to ends, not with ends in themselves. Prudence

supposes the end, and that a good end, namely, as has been said,
the final end of human life, which is in fact man's chief good.
To take means cunningly to a bad end is not the virtue of pru-
dence ; it is called in Scriptural language the prudence of the flesh.
St. Paul says : The prudence of the flesh is death (Rom. viii, 6)
and the author of Proverbs warns us : There is no prudence against
the Lord (Prov. xxi, 30). The most imprudent thing for man
is to do anything that involves the loss of his soul, though by
it he gain kingdoms. Hence the instruction with which a Retreat
usually opens, on the end and purpose for which man was created,
is really a lesson in prudence.
Prudence may be called an intellectual virtue, inasmuch as it has
its seat in the understanding: but inasmuch as it directs the under-
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PRUDENCE
standing to a practical purpose, it is a moral virtue. Art also re-
sides in the understanding, and directs it to a practical purpose;
but art is concerned with production, prudence with conduct or

behaviour. Prudence, then, is not mere speculation. He who sees
the rightway to take, but takes it not, can not be called a prudent
person. He may be a philosopher, or a critic, but he is not prudent.
Nor does prudence merely lay down general principles, but it di-
rects their application to a particular case : for prudence is a prac-
tical virtue, and all practise is in particulars. In that it is like con-

science. In fact, prudence may be called a well-enlightened
conscience, in so far as conscience has to do with the future.
None of the other three cardinal virtues can work without pru-
dence. Prudence must enlighten them in their action, pointing out
the measure of temperance, the bounds of fortitude, the path of
justice, everywhere indicating the golden mean, which other virtues

aim at, but which prudence alone discerns. Without prudence
virtue would go ablundering and aslumbering in the dark ; true virtue
walks with eyes open, knowing what it is about, what it wants and
why now: the open eye of virtue is prudence. On the other hand,
prudence itself perishes in the absence of temperance, fortitude, and
justice. For prudence is a guide only to a good end practically
desired. But the soul unendowed with habits of temperance, for-
titude, and justice, readily fixes its desires on evil ends—on base
and immoderate pleasures, on fraudulent gains, or hair-brained
enterprises, or cowardly escapes; and in reference to all such ends,
as we have seen, there is no prudence, though there may be con-
siderable cunning.
There is imprudence in every sin, inasmuch as every sin is an

aberration and a swerving from our last end. But the name of im-
prudence is specially reserved for sins more obviously characterized
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i8 THE CARDINAL VIRTUES
by recklessness, folly, and want of thought, such as many of the

excesses of youth. It was a saying of the old philosophers that
"passion mars the judgment of prudence." Indeed we need no
philosophers to tell us that ; it is matter of daily experience. Under
excitement we lose our heads. This shows how prudence differs
from mere knowledge, and from the critical faculty whereby we

judge of the conduct of others. In their cooler moments men com-
monly discern well enough the ways of wisdom from the ways of
folly, and coolly mark and stigmatize an acquaintance who is tread-
ing the latter path. A much rarer gift is the keeping of knowl-
edge before our eyes in time of action, so as to judge rightly, and
act rightly, and not be Dome away by a blind impulse. That habit
of having your knowledge available in action is the virtue of pru-
dence. In doing wrong a man does not act according to his knowl-
edge, he looks the wrong way; like a perverse scholar, he raises
his eyes from his book and cites his text incorrectly. The land is
made desolate because there is none that thinketh in his heart

(Jerem. xii, n).
The matters in which a young man most needs the restraint of
prudence are (i) the care of his health, (2) the use of his time,
(3) the spending of his money, (4) the choice of his books, (5) the
making of friends, (6) the giving away of his heart, affections and
love, (7) the election of a state of life. There is such a thing as
being what is called "hipped" (hypochondriacal), absurdly anxious
about one's health. This weakness in a young man is pitiful, hap-

pily also rare. Many a young man conducts himself, as the Greeks
said, "like an immortal," as though nothing could possibly impair
his strength, and disease were for him forever out of the question.
Some are thus reckless in giving themselves to work, but far more
in the pursuit of pleasure. Late hours, strong drink, excessive
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PRUDENCE 19
tobacco, mad excitement, are undermining their strength, shorten-

ing their days, storing disease in their system, while they heed it not.
And worse things still are befalling their immortal souls. Pru-
dence is flung to the winds, and every other virtue thrown after it.
Many who avoid these grosser excesses overeat themselves; some

neglect exercise, a neglect for which they must pay dearly in later
life; some, an increasing number perhaps, overdo their exercise,

put so much into muscle that the brain languishes and mental labour
becomes impossible. And some overstrain heart and arteries.
Bodily exercise profiteth but little, wrote St. Paul (I Tim. iv, 8),
in an age and country of athletes. Ask yourself : "Am I going to
be a professional?" "No; a lawyer, doctor, engineer." Then train
accordingly. In middle age, to look no further, the training of an
athlete will profit you little, if it has ousted all other training. Stif-
fening limbs and a stagnant mind make a sad contemplation 'for

one's fiftieth birthday. Even in this world the mind should outlive
the body.
One almost hesitates to preach prudence in the spending of
money, one should seem to recommend avarice, that love of
lest
money which the Apostle pronounces to be the root of all evil

(I Tim. vi, 10). But avarice is not characteristic of youth. The
not buying too many attractive things for yourself, the occasional
going without something that you would like and might very well
have, is an excellent formation in the way of prudence. More
especially excellent is it if a poor neighbour and not yourself reaps
the pecuniary profit of your saving. Almsgiving, in fact, is a
practical method of hitting upon the golden mean between ex-
travagance and miserliness. I once heard a dispute in a railway
carriage as to the nature of charity, or almsgiving. One man would
have it that charity consisted in giving away what you did not want.
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The other contended that the only true charity was giving away
what you did want. At least there can be no doubt which of these
two charities is more like the charity of Christ, who for us gave
away His life-blood.
He has not a prudent care of his health who eats any and all
things, and that without stint or measure. Not more prudent

nay, even less prudent, erring in a graver matter — is he who devours
every book, magazine or paper that he finds at a railway book stall,
or even in less reputable places. Surely it is a good rule neither
to eat trash nor to read it. A well-fed man perhaps may venture
on a little trashy food-stuff now and again but what becomes of him
;
whose staple diet is trash? Ask your doctor. And if a Catholic

reads promiscuously socialist tracts, sickening love stories, sensa-
tional murders, divorce cases, blasphemies against the Bible or
against the goodness of God, but never a book of devotion or of
Catholic instruction, scarce even a Catholic newspaper except for
politics, will he not soon become a spiritual dyspetic? The
poison of all this bad nutriment gets into his blood : on the smallest
irritation the sore breaks out, he dies to God and to His Church,
and is a Catholic no longer. To warrant your reading a book it is
not enough that everyone is talking about it. Books come and go
like songs, nay, they do not stay so long. Who will be talking
about this favorite flashy production this time next year? Read
rather what promises to be of permanent value to heart and mind.
A venerable Vicar Apostolic was once dining at the table of a great
lady. She asked him whether he had read a certain book, which
was making a great stir at the time. He answered drily: "No,
madam, I durst not." On the other side you will find people who
dare not read Catholic books, nor listen to the reproaches of their
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PRUDENCE 21
own conscience. They think it imprudent to be very conscientious,

or to hear a message from Rome.
When not coerced, a man is ruled by his first principles and by
his friends. By an act of free will he may break away from either,
when he thinks it worth his while to deliberate and make up his

mind anew; but he will not ordinarily do so. It is matter, there-
fore, of the highest prudence what first principles, or maxims of
conduct, we admit, and what friends we choose. We need eminently

good principles and good friends. Destitute of principles, or hav-
ing none but bad ones, a man is called "unprincipled." Destitute

of friends, a man is "friendless" ; he, too, is in a bad way, however
rich and powerful he may otherwise be. If friendship be not exactly
a virtue, at least it is a means to the better exercise of all the vir-
tues; everything is done better by being done in concert. You

should have friends, if you can find them. Friends are not to be
found like blackberries, growing in every hedge. They have to be
sought and picked with care; and in some forlorn situations good
friends are not to be found at all: one has to fall back upon God
alone, like Daniel among the lions. The first stage of friendship is
acquaintanceship; it is often impossible, often undesirable, to pass

beyond that stage. An acquaintance passes into a friend, when
we not only know him but lead him, and in turn are led by him.
I am not defining friendship, but this mutual leading and being
led is at least part of its essence. He is not your friend, who
will never alter his course one point at your suggestion. A

pair of friends are not often of equal power. Usually, one on the
whole leads, and the other on the whole is led, though under pro-
test. It is a responsibility to lead ; it is a risk to be led. Responsi-
bility and risk should both be taken up with prudence. Therefore,
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be prudent in making friends. And what shall I say of prudence

in making love? Not to make it to one who never can be your
wife, or who, you are resolved, never shall be your wife, is a point
of prudence and one or two other virtues besides. The Catholic
Church dislikes mixed marriages yet they often become a
; necessity.
It is prudent to hold off from such necessity while you may, while
the matter is only in its first stages: later on it will be too late.
Antecedently to any definite engagement, a Catholic man should

desire a Catholic wife; and this desire should be a true wish and
preference. On this whole matter there is a homely proverb to
bear in mind, "Marry in haste and repent at leisure."
Yet prudence does not always hesitate and hold back. Cases
occur in which it is the highest prudence to venture all. Cases
occur in which it is a mistake to dwell on restraining considerations
—at a charity sermon, for example. It is prudent not to rely on one's
own prudence exclusively. We must consult God in prayer, and
that earnestly and at some length in important matters. We must
take advice in novel situations and under difficulties and temp-
tations never experienced before. Our blessed Saviour in the
cruel surprises of His agony in the garden —the surprise of human
sin all laid at His door —received in humility the comforting words
of the angel, and thrice went to His disciples to seek support from
them. He prayed and sought counsel. He condescended for our
imitation. On the eve of conflict He was prudent.
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TEMPERANCE 23
IV. TEMPERANCE
Temperance is the virtue contrary to the two deadly sins of
gluttony and lust. As against the former it represents abstinence,

or moderation in solid food generally, and sobriety, which is
moderation in the particular matter of intoxicating drinks. In a

scientific treatment of this virtue we must not be led away by
newspaper association. Temperance is not the exclusive appanage
of temperance societies and teetotalers. Temperance does not mean
total abstinence, and abstinence is quite independent of Fridays
and flesh meat. Temperance is the sum of the three subordinate

virtues of abstinence, sobriety and chastity.
Temperance is a habit residing in the sensitive appetite, when

that appetite has come to be "broken in" by frequent acts of self-
restraint. For these acts we have occasion every day ; so that every
day we should be growing in temperance. If we are failing to do
that we must be growing into the habits which make the contrary
vices : gluttony, drunkenness and lust.
Appetite unrestrained easily carries man to the extreme of
excess. Here, then, is the good of temperance. It is solely a re-
straining, not an impelling virtue. Against the extreme of too little,
appetite is its own guardian. Against the extreme of too much appe-
tite is restrained by the habit of temperance, gradually brought to
reside in it, formed and planted there, by repeated acts of reason
and will, forcing appetite back into due bounds, till at last appetite
of itself, like a tamed beast, is more or less apt not to exceed the
just limit. man is said to be "temperate."
Then the
It may be asked how it is that temperance seems sometimes to
push men into an extreme, not merely restraining appetite, but
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refusing it altogether. Thus the total abstainer refuses the crav-

ing for strong drink entirely; he never will gratify it. The priest
and the religious renounce even the lawful indulgences of the

married state. We reply by the enunciation of a principle which
the old sixteenth-century Protestantism stupidly repudiated —that
besides commandment there is counsel, and that not every act
morally praiseworthy is also obligatory. Where duty ends gener-

osity begins. Not every virtue lies between two vicious extremes
immediately conterminous with itself, but sometimes there is a

further virtue intervening between that virtue and the vicious ex-
treme. Thus between justice and the vicious extreme of prodi-
gality there intervenes the further virtue of liberality. Liberality
may be styled a more excellent justice, and virginity (in the pres-
ent order of providence) a more excellent chastity. But observe,
the main central virtue, as justice, is for all men to practise; the
more excellent virtue, as liberality, is not for all, and in some
cases it would be a mistake to attempt it. We say well, be just
before you are generous. Further, the golden mean is not the
same for all persons. Half a bottle of wine is not too much for
some men to drink, for others it would be a sinful excess. For
some persons total abstinence from spirituous liquors is not a work
of supererogation, it is a downright duty. They have lost the
ability to drink in moderation; and their only way of remaining
sober is by never touching alcohol in any shape. They may be
likened to patients where doctors forbid them to touch flesh-
meat. One mutton chop is too much for Henry, and one-half pint
of beer is more than can be safely allowed to George. What looks
like an extreme is sometimes no more than the golden mean of
duty for this particular individual ; sometimes it is a feat of gener-
osity, still in the golden mean, for that mean is not a forever fixed
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TEMPERANCE *5
point But, as I have said, such generous outrunning of duty can

not be inculcated indiscriminately in all cases. In some it would
be downright folly, or even wickedness. Not all men and women
are fit for the religious state. It is questionable whether total
abstinence should be preached to all as a counsel, certainly not to
all as a duty. We have no right to add an eleventh commandment.

To say this much is not to deny that for many in their youth total
abstinence is an excellent counsel; that for many grown men,

never themselves the victims of drunken habits, but obliged to live
in the society of free drinkers, total abstinence is a great preserva-
tive. The simple words, "I am a total abstainer/' have kept many
a man and many a youth out of a den of infamy. Still, be it re-
membered, total abstinence is not the sum and substance of all
Christian virtue. Though hell be full of drunkards, still heaven
is not the birthright of every total abstainer. It is a weakness of
human nature to expect one virtue to do duty for all.
As regards the vices opposite to temperance, an important dis-

tinction is to be drawn between him who sins by outbursts of pas-
sion and him whose very principles are corrupt The former in
doing evil acknowledges it to be evil, and is prone to repent of

it afterwards ; the latter has lost his belief in virtue and his admira-
tion for it; he drinks in iniquity like water, with no after-qualms;
he glories in his shame. The former is reclaimable, the latter is
reprobate — at least it takes a miracle of divine grace to reclaim
him: his intellect as well as his heart is vitiated: faith and works,
fine feeling and sense of honour, all have gone by the board. No
hard and fast line of division, however, can in every case be
drawn between sinning from passion and sinning on principle; but
cases of the one shade into cases of the other, and by frequent
indulgence of passion principle is brought gradually to decay.
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Sinning daily and not repenting, a man loses his good principles.
But repenting daily, or frequently, he keeps them.

The chief sins against temperance are drunkenness and im-
purity. The evil of drunkenness consists in voluntarily parting
with your reason in such a way that under this induced privation
of reason, and under the influence of the stimulant, you are likely
to do acts contrary to reason and God's law. It is true that in
the act of doing them you are not your own master: but in the
renouncement of control over yourself, and submission to the
blind control of liquor, you were your own master, and there and
then in parting with your reason you sinned. You have let the
tiger loose, you can not get him back to his cage ; meanwhile you
are responsible for his devastations. There is no crime of murder,
or lust, or irreligion, that may not be committed in drunken fury.
This holds good even of one solitary act of deliberate drunkenness
but when we come to consider the condition of the house and
family of the habitual drunkard, the case comes out worse. Quite
unnecessary here to describe the interior of a house where father
drinks, or mother drinks, or both. Quite unnecessary to visit the
home for inebriates, or the lunatic asylum. To whom is woe? to
whose father is woef to whom brawling? to whom pitfalls? to
whom wounds without cause? to whom bloodshot eyes? Is it not

to them that linger over their wine, and make a business of empty-
ing cups? Look not on the wine when it is golden, when its colour
gleameth in the glass; it goeth in pleasantly, but in the end it will
sting like a serpent, and spread poison like an asp. Thine eyes
shall see strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse
things; and thou shall be as one who slumbers in the midst of the
sea, and as a steersman fallen asleep that has lost the helm. And
thou shalt say> They have beaten me, but I had no pain, they hauled
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TEMPERANCE 27
me, but I felt it not; when shall I arise and And wine again?
(Prov. xxiii, 29-35).
St. Thomas quaintly enumerates as "daughters," f. e., effects,
of gluttony and drunkenness —inept mirth, buffoonery, unclean-

ness, much talking, and dulness of mind for intellectual things.
Had the saint seen much of the dwellings of drunkards, he might

have enumerated more "daughters" and worse.
Drunkenness is the disgrace of man, but it is the ruin of woman.
Those poor creatures who infest our streets are nearly all of
them victims of drink. They are either actually under its effects
or are seeking money to get it. This, at least, is the case with the
poor; of the well-to-do one had better not speak. If a woman of
the humbler sort is safe from liquor, she is safe from shame and
public misery. Any Catholic man who is sober, frugal, and in-
dustrious, has married a good wife, and approaches the Sacraments

regularly, is fairly safe against the sin of impurity. But drink
spoils all. More than worse sins, drunkenness preys upon the
physical system, upon the nerves and brain; and through the inter-
connection of body and mind the physical disease carries with it
an impotence of will, a thorough untrustworthiness under any

solicitation or temptation, so that the one chance for so debilitated
a subject is entire flight from every occasion of sin—not an easy
thing to realize as life ordinarily goes. Without being a religious,
this person has come to need the graces and also the restrictions
of religious life, simply to keep him in the path of the com-
mandments.
Still it must be confessed that, away from all abuse of alcohol,
in many circumstances of age, temperament, employment and com-
pany, chastity is a most difficult virtue to practise. Quotidiana
pugna, "a daily battle," says St. Augustine, and he adds, rata vie-
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toria, "seldom victorious." Seldom victorious, if we measure victory

by the Christian standard, the standard of Christ Himself (Matt, v,
27-30), which requires chastity in every human act, seen or un-

seen, chastity in every word, chastity in every deliberate thought
and desire. The world pronounces this an unattainable ideal and

substitutes another of own
its setting up, the standard of respecta-
bility. The standard may be formulated thus: "Do as you like,
so long as you do it on the quiet, and do not upset the peace of

families ; there must be no scandals." This is a fair standard, if we
are to be judged by the world only. But if, after the world has
done with us and we with the world,' we must all be made manifest
before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the
proper things of the body (or, as the Greek has it, the things
incurred through the body), according as he hath done, whether it
be good or evil (U Cor. v, 10) —then it will be wise of U3 to live
up to the law that is administered in that court wherein we shall be

tried finally and sentenced irrevocably. We must not give in to the
suggestion of the flesh and of the world, that this is an impossible

law to observe. How do they know ? Neither world nor flesh has
ever made any serious effort to observe the law. We may repeat
in a nobler arena the answer made by a British officer, when told
that the capture of a certain position was impossible : "Impossible ?

why, I have got the order in my pocket." We have the command
of God, and that can not be impossible —with His grace. About
grace, this is not the occasion to speak; let that topic stand over.
Grace will never enable us to dispense with the measures dictated

by natural prudence. These we will consider ; and as the difficulty
is undeniably great, and the danger serious, these precautions must

be adopted in all earnestness. First, then, we must have a clear
understanding of the lie of the law. That is so important that it
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TEMPERANCE *9
shall be made the subject of our next address. For the moment I
say: Keep your will habitually firmly bent on good, and confirm il
by repeated acts. Keep your understanding active on topics in-

nocent, interesting, and elevating. Keep your imagination clean,
so far as it lies under the dominion of your will. Keep your eyes
from the curious study of objects unchaste and provocations of
evil desire. You can not help seeing many such; you need not
stare at them and con them over. Surely it is not your custom to
stare at every person you meet as though you were a backwoods-
man, and a fellowman were a novelty. You may see and not look
hard, hear and not listen or show interest. You are master of
your amusements, if not of your employment and work: where do
you go to enjoy yourself? where do you spend your evenings?
what theatre do you patronize? what music? Avoid artificial in-
centives to sin. Let no temptation take hold of you but such as is
human, or part of the ordinary course of human nature; and God

is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which
you are able, but will make with temptation issue that you may be
able to bear it (I Cor. x, 13). Aim at being too busy for tempta-
tion to settle on you; labour hard in your profession, have hobbies,
take exercise, be manly and play out-of-door games. But re-
member —be this said by way of warning, not of reprobation —for

the matter of purity, athletes have dangers all their own.
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V. HUMAN ACTS
Not everything that a man does is a human act A perfect idiot

does no human acts, nor a child that has not come to the use of
reason, nor a man asleep or under an anesthetic. Things that we
do mechanically, automatically, without thinking, have little of the
human act about them. The beating of the heart is not a human
act, nor digestion, nor respiration for the most part. "Human act,"
then, is a technical term; and a thorough understanding and bear-

ing in mind of this technicality is a wonderful encouragement under
temptation, and a great safeguard against scruples. A human act
is an act of which a man is master, to do or not to do: it is an act

of free will. It is an expression of self. It is a man's own act, not
of other agents about him. It is not an organic process going on
in his body : it is an output of his soul and spirit. Man is responsible
to God for all his human acts, and to his fellowman for many of
them and : for none but his own human acts is any man responsible.
What is not a human act can never be a sin. What is not a human
act can never be an act of virtue, nor go towards the building up
of a habit of virtue. Only through his own human act can a man
ever come to the torment of hell-fire. When a man has sinned
actually and grievously, some human act on his part is a necessary
condition of divine forgiveness. No temptation, as such, is ever a

human act on the part of the tempted. No temptation, therefore,
whatever feeling it involves, however vehement and protracted, is
ever a sin. Sin is a human act of consent to temptation, a consent

whereof the man was master to give or refuse it, a consent which is
no blind vehemence of appetite, but an act discerned by the under-
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HUMAN ACTS 3i
standing and conscience for its value and significance before God,
and so sanctioned by the free will.
In man's mind and body, then, a vast number of things go on

which are not human acts. The soul, philosophers say, is a simple
substance ;
but, then, they are speaking of the soul as separate from
the body, in which condition we know about it wondrous little.
In the body the soul is the "form" of a highly complex organism,

and in its operations, if not in its substance, it becomes as complex
as the body which it informs. That accounts for certain facts of
pathology, which to-day are receiving much attention — I mean the

resolution, in nervous disease, of one personality into three or four
seeming personalities at variance with one another. This disinte-
gration may perhaps be accounted for as a fact of ordinary experi-
ence abnormally magnified and exaggerated by disease. All men

have their moods, often conflicting moods. We hear people saying
such things as this: "I feel quite a different man on Sunday from
what I am on When we feel good (the "Dr.
a weekday." Jekyl"
of Stephenson's story), we have to dread the return of the "other
fellow" ("Mr. Hyde"), who feels anything but good. Not unfre-
quently both Jekyl and Hyde, both the good and the bad man in
us, seem to be present together, or in quick succession, and there

arises a fierce conflict. Alas for the "simple substance" of the
philosophers ! There seem to be two men in one struggling for the
mastery. This situation may readily pass into sin through the weak-
ness of the will. Or the will may stand firm, and the temptation
remain a temptation, and nothing more. In the latter case you have
what Aristotle calls enkrateia and St. Thomas continentia. Where
there is sin, but as yet no habit of sin, you have akrasia. Aristotle
says that akrasia is not wickedness, meaning that it is not a vice.

There is much on this subject in the pages of St. Augustine. The
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classical passage on it is Romans vii, 5 sq. What fact shall make

all the difference between temptation and sin? What remains to
mark the unity of human nature under these divisions? If the man
falls physically into two parts, or becomes wholly other than the
man he was, his responsibility ceases. The original man can not
be taxed with the doings of the man that has supplanted him, nor
of the part that has asserted its independence and seceded from him.
But it is not true that the man does fall physically into two parts, or
becomes wholly other than the man he was. Unity remains, and
the centre of unity, government. The act of government, decisive
and authoritative, is the human act. That act emanates from one
only of the conflicting elements within the man, his will. It is an
act of will, it comes of will, not of blind passion and sense. For the
nonce it is but ill obeyed : its voice is heard but in a narrow region,
while rebellion rages all around ; but the rebels will return to their
duty if the will remains firm.

Meanwhile its utterance suffices in the ethical order to render all
their proceedings nugatory and invalid — racial, not personal ;

physi-
cal, not moral. Young and inexperienced souls are poorly alive to
these distinctions : they little understand how narrow at times is the
circle of will-power, the theatre of responsibility. Finding so much

of their nature for the moment beyond their control, they draw the
blind and cowardly inference that all control is impossible. They
fancy that they have sinned, that they can not but sin, and seeking
no further to restrain themselves they actually do sin. Taking
temptation for sin, and finding no escape from temptation, they
accept sin as inevitable. Christians though they be, with the light
of Christian teaching at hand, and the strength of Christian Sacra-
ments within them, yet they go with the pagan multitude: having
their understandings darkened, through the ignorance that is in
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HUMAN ACTS 33
them, in despair they give themselves over to impurity, to the work-

ing of all uncleanness in unchecked lustful desire (Ephes. iv, 17-19,
Greek text).
A
number of small advantages gained, week by week, over an
enemy in the field may, in the end, necessitate that enemy's entire
surrender. A great "turn-over" in trade is made by an accumula-
tion of small gains, so small that the particular transaction which
brought in each seemed hardly a gain at all. And so it is with the
training of appetite. The will in particular conflicts can do little;
it fights what look like drawn battles. But in the long run the
power of good will shows itself. Appetite, so blustering and
domineering, by a series of steady resistances is brought low and
tamed. This tamed condition of appetite, as we have so often
found occasion to say, is the virtue of temperance. A medical man
once wrote: "No appetite is really so amenable to reason as the
sexual propensities." And generations of virtuous men have verified
the observation.
Here, as so often, a thing that is called hard is done or not done,
according as people go the right or the wrong way about the doing
of it. The right way to go about resisting temptation is to behave
well out of temptation and stand fore-armed against its assaults.
Many things that are not free at the time they come upon us are
said to be free in causa, "free in their cause," having been caused
by some free act of ours, as a man may catch a fever by going

into an infected room; if he knew what he was doing, his fever
is "free in its cause," not in its actual access. And this doctrine
carries us in sight of cases that frequently occur and are hard to

settle. Their settlement must be sought at proper sources as they
occur. A few general principles alone can be laid down here. Al-
though temptations are often "free in their cause," yet we are not
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bound to avoid every cause that may bring on temptation. A rule
like that would make life an intolerable burden. We have to con-

sider whether the cause be naturally allied to the temptation, whether
it be of itself as it were the beginning of the sin. That would be
a cogent reason for avoidance. Again, the likelihood of our yield-
ing to the temptation or withstanding it must be reckoned with in
each case. We should fly from what brings on a temptation to

which we are pretty certain to yield. Again, consider whether the
exciting cause be an action which would be pronounced a "queer
thing to do" for a person in our position, or whether it be a thing
which good men, our equals, ordinarily and laudably do. As a rule,
apart from special proneness to sin, what is laudable and lawful in

our equals is lawful also in us, temptation or no temptation. But
we should not do "queer" things. This rule, not to do "queer"
things, is a rule of high practical value. A cause "naturally allied
to temptation" would be the prolonged and curious study of nude
figures with which we had no professional concern ; the reading of
a book whose whole good was its badness; the looking on at a
play the point of which was the continual covert suggestion of evil.
On the other hand, service in a smart cavalry regiment has its
temptations, yet they are not "naturally allied" to such service, they
are not part and parcel of it as such. Moreover, that service is
entered by good men of your own standing, and none blames them
for Some may foresee in the service certain temptations which,
it.
with their character, are pretty sure to be fatal. These we exhort

to go elsewhere; or, if go to the army they must, we devise for
them special spiritual aids and precautions. In the language of
the Catechism this avoidance of temptations "free in their cause"
is called the avoiding of "occasions of sin." Such occasions are
distinguished as "remote" and "proximate." The latter only are
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HUMAN ACTS 35
we bound to avoid, when we can; or to fortify ourselves against
by special precautions, when we can not.

The will is free, as is supposed in the very definition of a "human
act." At the same time the will is weak. It is weak against any
strong motive presented from without, except it be armed by a
strong habit of resistance, engendered by many acts of resistance,
against such motive. Such a habit is a part of character. Char-

acter, then, which is something lasting, permanent, chronic, is a
fortification against motive, impulsive, transient, acute. Any mo-
tive may be strong against an unformed character, that is, in the
absence of character: but where character has been formed and

exists, those motives alone are strong which fit the character. Those
motives are strong which chime in with pre-existent habits. The
issue of a battle, fought, say, on the second of February, depends
immediately upon the skill of the commander and the valor of the
soldiery that day. Remotely, however, and quite as effectively, it
may depend upon some operations conducted the previous Christ-

mas. The battle was half decided ere ever it was fought. So with
human acts. Not in the fierce rush of temptation only, but in the
quiet current of ordinary life, a man's fidelity is tried. Such as he
is silently making himself, such he will come out, when proved.
To live habitually up to a high standard of holiness is the sole
way of making oneself safe against a sudden access of tempta-
tion. Therein lies the meaning of Our Lord's injunction: Watch,

and what I say to you, I say to all, watch (Mark xiii, 35-37).
The reason why people sin so easily when they are tempted is
because they are too easy-going in daily life and habitually aspire
too low. Knowing that none is ever sent to hell except for great
wickedness, they fancy they may safely indulge themselves in every-
thing, great wickedness alone excepted. They forget that at times
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a great fight is needed to keep out of great wickedness. Tempta-

tion is sudden: the occasion for a great fight comes unexpectedly;
and they are not ready. Many of us have lived through visitations
of influenza. We are familiar with the process: influenza, pleuro-
pneumonia, and then? Much depends on the violence of the at-
tack, much on prompt retirement and careful nursing; ultimately

all may turn on the vigour of the patient's constitution. Some con-
stitutions seem bound to succumb to the first serious assault. Our
character is our spiritual constitution. It is not made for us, as the
Owenites said : it is daily being made and modified by us, by means

of our daily human acts. Countless tiny shell-fish build up a coral-
reef, or a chalk cliff ; and countless acts make in time a character.
Little acts come and go unnoticed; the result endures; and in the
end we are surprised at its magnitude and permanence. Our daily

acts, then, must be well done, excellently well done, at least with
such excellence as is within our reach; in this daily excellence lies
our eternal salvation. The kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain

of mustard seed, which indeed is the least of all seeds; but when
it is grown up, it is greater than any herbs, and becometh a tree
(Matt, xiii, 31, 32). And conversely, of the reign of Satan in the
heart.
A strong character, for good or evil, is built up by the doing of

many human acts. Weakness of character is the result of habitually
neglecting to exercise the will, neglecting to energize and assert
oneself, drifting down stream, passive when the current sets in to
evil, listless even in lawful obedience when the stream happens to
flow the right way. Self-assertion is not necessarily disobedience.
The highest obedience is to assert yourself in the way commanded
to throw yourself, heart and soul, will and intelligence, into the work
prescribed. St. Thomas says there may be sin in mere inaction, in
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HUMAN ACTS 37
simply not rising to the emergency when the hour has struck, with-
out any positive determination not to rise. Inaction certainly pre-
pares the way for sin, and for consent to all temptation. A good
Christian is continually asserting himself, under God, against the
world and the flesh and the devil. He is a man of many acts —not
so much of external, palpable, active achievements, "copy" for the
newspaper correspondent, as of unregistered, ever-recurring de-
terminations of thought and will to God.
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3» THE CARDINAL VIRTUES
VI. OF FORTITUDE
Like temperance, the virtue of fortitude also has its seat in the
irrational appetite. That appetite sovereignly desires whatever makes
for the maintenance of the animal nature in the individual and its
propagation in the race, that is to say, eating and drinking and sexual
intercourse. Temperance curbs the craving for these things. On
the other hand, the same appetite sovereignly shuns that which
is the destruction of the animal nature, namely death. Fortitude
curbs the fear of death. But as the Hebrew Psalm cxxxix has it,
man is fearfully and wonderfully made. Here is a wonder in the

constitution of humanity, and of animal nature generally; the ir-
rational appetite does not in every respect fear death: in some

respects it is only too prone to rush upon death recklessly. We
must recall what we have laid down already, that the irrational
appetite is two fold. There is the blind craving after the pleas-
urable; in that, the lowest portion of the irrational appetite,
temperance has its seat. There is a higher, though still irrational
portion; and this portion, oddly enough—except in Greek, where

Plato named it thumos —has never had a distinctive name to
itself in any language. St. Thomas called it the "irascible part."
We are obliged to call it by such slang names as "pluck," "go,"

for lack of a proper terminology. Perhaps "rage" might be a suit-
able and decent name for this irrational portion. In the portion
called rage {thumos) then there dwells the passion of impetu-
osity. There also dwells in the same portion the counter-passion
of fear. Impetuosity urges one to rush on death; fear, to fly
from it. Fortitude has for its office to curb and moderate both
these passions, but especially the passion of fear. Fortitude is a
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OF FORTITUDE 39
mean between rashness (over-impetuosity) and cowardice (over-

fear), coming, however, nearer to the former than to the latter.
Fortitude thus is a two-sided virtue, moderating two opposite ten-

dencies; while temperance is one-sided, moderating desire alone.
The man of fortitude, whom we will call the "brave man," is
not "fearless," in the sense of being quite a stranger to fear.
The man who has no him

at all is not brave, but fool-
fear in
hardy. The brave man is sensible to fear, but is not carried
away by it. His mind subdues the fear, and braves the danger
that nature shrinks from. Virtue, it may be observed, has not
for its office to extirpate the passions, only to moderate them.

The philosophers called Stoics enjoined the extirpation of the
passions. Fear was never supposed to seize upon their 'Vise
man," or "sage," nor anger, nor desire, nor any other passion or
strong emotion; in all things their sage was calmly and sweetly
reasonable, no more. It may readily be imagined that men would
sin less if they were devoid of all passion. We must take human
nature as we find it, and must make the best of our natural being.
Passions are essential constituents of human nature as it comes un-
der our experience. A being wholly devoid of passion would be
something other than mortal man. Passions lead incidentally to
much evil, but they also do good. To express the fact in a doggerel
rhyme,
"Passion nudges,
Reason judges."
An insult, for instance, rouses one to anger. Thereupon it
is for my reason to judge how far the punishment of the offen-

der would be a public good, and not (what is forbidden) a mere
piece of private revenge. Passion renders some service as a
stimulant ; some service also as a corroborative, helping us on in
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4o THE CARDINAL VIRTUES
a way that reason already approves ; such is the working of great

indignation. Somehow a man who seems wholly passionless and
unemotional is scarcely a lovable man. He is scarcely human.
Like loves like, and humanity loves its kind. Be it admitted then
that the breast of the brave man is not wholly inaccessible to the
passion of fear.
Fortitude is not an intellectual conviction, as Plato thought: it
is a habit resting upon the intellectual conviction that

the physical evil of death is not the worst of evils; but, as
Aristotle says, "there are things which a man should never allow
himself to be forced into doing —he should rather die." So the
martyrs judged, when there was question of denying Christ. The
highest act of fortitude is martyrdom. "Call a person a martyr,"
says St. Ambrose; "you need add no further praise." Establish

the fact of martyrdom, and we may proceed to canonization with-
out ulterior inquiry.
"Agnis sepulcrum est Romulea in domo,

Fortis puellae, martyris inclytae"
"Agnes's tomb is in the house of Romulus, brave girl, glorious

martyr": so the Christian poet Prudentius. I forget the rest of
his eulogium, but really no more is needed. "Of all virtuous
acts," writes St. Thomas, "martyrdom pre-eminently argues the
perfection of charity; because a man proves himself to love a
thing the more, the more lovable the thing that he despises for its
sake, and the more hateful the thing he chooses to suffer rather
than lose it. But of all the goods of the present life man loves
life most, and contrariwise most hates death, especially a death at-
tended with pain and bodily torments. And therefore, of human
acts, martyrdom is the most perfect of its kind, as being the sign
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*
. OF FORTITUDE \]/ *
*
41
- •»
\ • • * 1*
of the greatest charity, accoridmgf'to ^he'fcxt f'Griafer'/^'lAaw

this no man hath, that a mem lay dpwA his $fe:*foi\7iis friends?'
(John xv, 13). In the natural *<Sv6&r;*^bff analogue* of martyr-

dom is a soldier's death on the battle-field. Fortitude is shown
wherever death is braved on right principle in a noble cause;
and, in a less degree, wherever anything painful to bear is smil-
ingly encountered.
Before we commend a daring deed, or a feat of endurance,

as an act of fortitude, we must have reason to think that it is
done on the proper motive of the virtue, i. e., for conscience'
sake, and not on an inferior motive. It is not fortitude to

venture life in what is manifestly a bad cause. It is not for-
titude to stand your ground because mere human respect, or

the threat of punishment, keeps you from running away. Mere
stolidity and toughness of nerve and physical fibre is not forti-
tude, but a predisposition thereto. In this way men are pre-
disposed to fortitude by living much in the open air, like those
Germans of whom we read in Caesar that for thirteen years
they had not gone under a roof. Knowledge that there is no
real danger is not fortitude, nor professional skill bringing the
danger for you almost to zero. Lastly, anger emboldens, but
bold deeds done under mere impulse of anger are not acts of
fortitude. If the angry man is to be accounted brave, we can
hardly refuse the praise of fortitude even to the drunkard, for
"mighty deeds are done by wine."
One would almost like to add a petition to the Litany, A
timiditate bonorum, libera nos, Domine: "from the timidity of
good people, good Lord, deliver us." The good are frequently
at fault in the matter of the two virtues of fortitude and hope.
A certain audacity lends itself to wickedness; the world is full
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42 * "
\„Ttik*CAlii)lNAL VIRTUES
v
• •••••
••• » ••• *
*"T • - • v * r
• • # «.«.».
of bold 1 liad men:" •Timidfty 'restrains from evil, as also does
v
ill-health, thtc "bfftik of T)reages, as Plato named it; but when
the timorous; dr* sickly/ pefsbft^has entered on the ways of vir-
tue, his timidity restrains him from going very far in that direc-
tion. He is no hero. That is one reason why good people are

many, but saints are few. It takes immense courage to start a
saint. That great saint and lion-hearted woman, St. Teresa,

knowing this truth, declares that fortitude is more necessary than
humility, in a beginner. A beginner has little to pride himself
on, much to deter him. Many of us remain moral cowards all
our lives, dreading pain, dreading trouble, dreading the opinion

of men, uneasy in our relations with God, scrupulous, suspicious,
narrow-minded, meticulous. A moral coward never gets far in
sanctity himself, and keeps others back. "Lord, give me faith
and fortitude/' was the prayer of a celebrated Oriental priest

Fortitude is shown in attack, in taking the offensive vigor-
ously, but more in defence and endurance, for the latter is harder,
being done more on principle, with less support from the pas-
sion of impetuosity; also it is more protracted. So much more
difficult is it to endure that it is a rule in war, whenever you can,
to exchange the more difficult for the easier, and convert your
defence into an attack —which is a good rule in controversy also.
The fortitude of a soldier comes out under the hardships of

campaigning quite as much as in the wild rush of battle. The
difficulty of martyrdom is just this, that the martyr has to stand
wholly on the defensive; nay, he does not even defend himself,

he endures. His, therefore, is the sublimest fortitude of all.
The transition, then, is easy from fortitude to patience, which is
usually ranked under fortitude. The object-matter of patience

is not death ; a man is said to die not patiently, but bravely. The
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OF FORTITUDE 43
object-matter of patience is the pain and annoyance of living, not

to be saddened and soured under the burden of life. No virtue
is more practical, none of more daily use. To whatever destina-
tion a man is setting out, you may always advise him to take
as part of his outfit a large store of patience. Those who have
most to do with their fellow-men have most need of patience;
and every man has need of patience with himself. There is
the patience of the poor, which the Psalmist (Ps. ix, 19) assures
us shall never be lost sight of by God; the patience of learner
and teacher, of workman and employer (oh, that there were
more of it!), and as every one knows, patience is sorely tried
by sickness. Bishop Ullathorne, of Birmingham, has written a

large book on "Christian Patience," perhaps the most successful
of all his works. Patience is dearer to God than great ex-
ploits. Better is the patient man than the strong; and he that
governs his temper than the stormer of cities (Prov. xvi, 32).
Impatience is one of the last sins that perfect men thoroughly
overcome. He is a good man, indeed, who is patient on his
death-bed.
Patience and meekness differ in this, that meekness is a curb
upon anger, whereas patience on the whole may be said rather
to curb fear taking the shape of fretfulness. A strong man is
usually good-natured. He feels himself equal to the daily bur-

dens of life, and does not fret over them. He is not querulous,
but he is hot tempered. He is prompt to beat down resistance,
and to right his own and other people's wrongs; he does not
pule and whine over them. People say he is impatient, he is
really passionate and quick to anger —he is lacking in meekness,

not in power to bear. There is a spice of cowardliness in all
genuine impatience. The impatient man thinks that more is
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being put upon him, or fears that more will be put upon him,
than he is able to bear. His spirit is overcome by the pros-
pect of evil, which condition of defeat is a special note of fear.
"The object of fear," says St Thomas, "is something in the
future, difficult and irresistible/' A man is not afraid who
thinks that he can bear what is being put upon him. And
he is not impatient, either. An impatient man does ill in office
—he has not the courage of his position —he lacks that fortitude
which, like charity, beareth all things (I Cor. xiii) ; whereas a
hot-tempered man, if he knows himself, may prove a capable
ruler. What a hot-tempered man, who is also an able man,
dislikes is slowness of execution, or bungling, or failure to per-
ceive what is wanted, all which defects in his subordinates
thwart his enterprises, and to his imagination look like wilful
perversities and slights upon him, the commander. "To his
imagination," I say, for it is imagination rather than intellect
that makes a man angry. His intellect is aware that these de-
fects for the most part are natural rather than voluntary. But
so an impatient man gets into a rage with a pen that will not
write, a lock that will not open, which is an irrational rage, similar
to that of the lower animals. This so-called impatience, how-

ever, is lack of meekness rather than of patience. It is called
"impatience" perhaps because there is no handy word to express

the contrary of meekness. But in all genuine impatience there
is something of the cowardly, for patience ranks under fortitude.
We may call patience a virtue-making virtue. Virtue comes
of repetition of acts done with difficulty, weariness, and disap-
pointment at one's own failures. The virtue is slow in coming;
and when we think we have it, like other skill it fails us at an
emergency. The notion then strikes us that we were not born
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OF FORTITUDE 45
to be virtuous, or cannot be virtuous as yet — let the virtue come,

if it will, in riper life. Such cowardice is to be checked by the
thought that if the virtue be not forthcoming, there will set in
instead the contrary vice, which, once it has become as a second

nature, will be difficult to dislodge. Surely there should be a
dash of heroism in every Christian character, heroism taking the
form of patience and perseverance in well-doing. He that per-
severeth to the end shall be saved (Matt, x, 22). In the list
of those whose portion is the second death, along with the un-
believing and the abominable and evil livers there appear, head-
ing the list, the cowardly (Apoc. xxi, 8). There is a saying in
England among the common people, "It's dogged as does it."
In a recent national crisis there was revived a watchword of the

party that ultimately proved victorious in the great Civil War,
"We will see this thing through." God may well expect the
children of light to dare for salvation what the children of this
world (Luke xvi, 8) dare and bear for temporal ends. To be

in heaven is to be with the martyrs, which means the having led
a life on earth not wholly unlike martyrdom. The spirit of
martyrs, the spirit of fortitude (Isai. xi, 2), that gift of the
Holy Ghost which is breathed into us in Confirmation, should
abide permanently in every Christian heart. Without this readi-
ness to dare to do right and to suffer for doing so, religion
comes to be as a pastime, or a conventionality for Sundays.
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VII. OF JUSTICE
Of justice Aristotle says that "neither evening star nor morning

star is so admirable," Justice is a habit residing in the will, and
disposes the just man, in regard of other intelligent and rational
beings about him, constantly and regularly to render to each his
own. All justice is in relation to another. It is not by justice
that a man governs himself, but by temperance and fortitude ; for
to govern oneself means to govern one's passions, and temperance
and fortitude concern the passions. These virtuous habits, of
course, are gained by acts of the will; and, when possessed, they
are put into operation by the will. But not for that are they in the
will. A habit is not put where it is unnecessary, and it is unnecessary

where the power is competent of itself. Of itself the will as an in-
telligent power is apt to rule the body on intelligent principles. The
difficulty is the appetite getting in the way ;
appetite, a blind power,
bent on other than rational gratifications. Appetite then needs to
be disciplined by virtue. When this discipline is perfect, there is
no longer any obstruction to the will's right management of the

body. Analogically, the habit or skill of bowling at cricket is not
in the will, but in the muscular mechanism. Every youth has will
enough to be a good bowler, but the muscles need training, and

the nervous currents directing in a particular way. It would be a
sarcastic remark to make of your bowler that he showed much
good will, that he meant well, that his intentions were good.
Self-government is secured when fortitude and temperance are
secured; then the will governs at home with ease. But foreign
relations —that is, relations with other selves —involve many difficul-
ties over and above the rebellion of our own passions ; to overcome
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OF JUSTICE 47
these difficulties the will is strengthened by the virtue of justice.

True, as we have seen, the virtues aid, and in a manner presuppose
one another. Whoever is master of his own passions, is thereby
immensely improved in all his dealings with his neighbours, the man
who is master of his anger, for instance. A meek man will not
strike in anger. A temperate woman will not steal to spend the

money in drink. But though striking, stealing and other sins
against justice are often committed under the promptings of pas-

sion, not all sins against justice are traceable to that source. Most
great frauds were perpetrated under the prompting of avarice ; now,
avarice is not strictly a passion; it resides in the intelligence and
imagination. Over and above the virtues that control passion,
then, there is room and need for a further virtue, a virtue in the
will, for the good conduct of foreign relations. Such is the virtue
of justice. An anchorite, a perfect solitary, as was for long years
St. Paul the first hermit, would have no need of justice, except in
reference to his Creator, in which relation justice passes into re-
ligion. But the more you are mixed up with your fellowmen, the
more you require to be just, and it is not easy to be just.
Justice renders to every man his own. But what is his own?
One answer—not a sufficient and complete answer, but an answer
that goes a certain way — is, "What the law allows him, and will
punish you for if you do not render it to him." Justice then is
obedience to law in all our relations with our fellowmen, and in
this sense we call it general, or legal justice. A just man is a law-

abiding man and a
; court of justice is a law-enforcing court. The
law commands acts of all virtues, so far as is requisite for the gen-
eral good of the commonwealth. Whoever thus practises legal

justice, is a good citizen. You can not yet call him a patriotic
citizen, for a patriot will volunteer to do for his country's sake
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4» THE CARDINAL VIRTUES
much more than the law exacts of him. Nor can you be sure that
he is a good man, for a good man will do many acts and abstain
from many, the omission or commission of which is not punishable
in the courts of the realm. He may, for all you know, be another
Shylock, who will have his "pound of flesh" out of every debtor
bound to him by contract, regardless of "equity" (which is the
intention of the legislator) and mercy (which is the attribute of
God). Again, a good man is good within and without, in heart
and in act; but your legally just man, so far as his justice is re-
ferred to the law of the state, is good in overt act only. De internis
non judicat praetor, the civil judge is not cognizant of purely

inward dispositions.
For legal justice to be any way commensurate with all goodness,

it must be referred to the law of God, natural (in the Command-
ments) and revealed (in Christ). In this way a drunkard is not
legally just, because he breaks the Sixth, or whatever Command-
ment we take to include all temperance; nor a Catholic who
neglects Sunday Mass, because he disregards the precept of Christ
to hear the Church (Matt, xviii, 17). On the other hand, for
their fulfilment of the law of God, the parents of the Baptist,
Zachary and Elizabeth, are pronounced legally just; they were
both just before God, walking in all the commandments of the Lord
without blame (Luke i, 6). When a sinner is pardoned he is said
to be justified; that is, after having broken the law and failed in
legal justice, he is reinstated as though he had not broken it, in
the condition of the just who have observed the law. Legal justice,
thus understood, includes the exercise of all the virtues, so far
as their acts are commanded by God. It is an ample virtue, or rather
the virtue of virtues, meaning an habitual avoidance of whatever

displeases God, at least of all that offends Him mortally. It is a
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OF JUSTICE 49
permanent practical horror of mortal sin. That is the primary and

essential requisite for saving your soul. He is not in a state of
salvation at all, he is on the road to hell, who does not possess in
some degree this general virtue of legal justice. To speak in the
words of the Psalm (cviii), he is not written with the just.
This general virtue, however, can not be that justice which
counts for one of the four cardinal virtues; for it is inclusive
of the other three. You can not divide in this way —Maryland,
America, New York and Connecticut. We must look for justice
in some particular form, in which it shall be distinct from other

virtues. So to distinguish it, let us return to our definition of
justice. Justice we defined to be the habit of constantly and regu-
larly rendering to other intelligent and rational beings about us each
his own. The first of "intelligent and rational beings about us" is
God and God

; claims as "his own" our entire obedience to His law
thus our every sin is a sin against justice in our relation with our
Creator; and once more, justice becomes a universal virtue. We
will deal with this difficulty when we come to the virtue of re-
ligion. For the present, not considering religion, nor the angels,
whose rights we can not infringe, we will define justice in relation

to those with whom we are visibly associated on earth. Justice then
is the habit of rendering to our fellowmen each his own* Thus
defined, justice is of two sorts, distributive and corrective, to fol-
low the Aristotelian division. Distributive justice resides in the
rulers of a commonwealth, and involves the awarding of rewards

and punishments to the members of the commonwealth according
to their several deserts. When
The page killed the boar,

The peer had the gloire,
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that was an offense against distributive justice, unless we are to

suppose the page to be indistinguishable from his master. We
call it "favoritism" when the worthy are passed over, and the less
worthy sought out and decorated. Favoritism is a violation of dis-

tributive justice. When it comes to the awarding of punishments,
distributive justice takes the name of retributive justice. And this
is a very common meaning of the term "justice." For this the
multitudes clamoured, rightly or wrongly, when they filled the pre-

cincts of the Palace of Whitehall in the days of Charles I, crying
"Justice! Justice!" for the head of Strafford. In this signification
an English or Irish gentleman signs himself J. P. (Justice of the
Peace).
Still we have not yet reached the innermost core of the virtue
of justice. If a deserving British officer is not knighted or made a
peer, he can not strictly be said to have been kept out of his
own, for peerage or knighthood never have been his. He had

a claim that the honour should be made his, and given him, which
claim is called by Roman lawyers a jus ad rem, a right to the thing
but as the honour never became his, he had not in it a jus in re, a
right of ownership in the thing. His claim remaining unsatisfied,
the rulers of the State remain bound to attend to it; but they owe
him no restitution, for the simple reason that what a man never
has had can not be restored to him. We shall see presently that
a violation of strict justice always involves restitution. Still less
can a rogue unhanged complain that he has been wronged because

he has not come to his own a — halter. He is little likely to com-
plain of that; and the maxim holds, volenti non fit injuria, no
wrong is done to a willing man. Distributive justice then, and re-
tributive justice, though it is part of the cardinal virtue, still is
not justice in the strictest sense of the term.
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OF JUSTICE 5»
To find that sense verified we must fall back upon what Aristotle
calls corrective justice, and Catholic divines generally commutative
justice. The variation of terminology is due to a clerical error in
a translation of Aristotle used in the thirteenth century. We will
keep to the true Aristotelian phrase, corrective justice; and that we

will subdivide at our own convenience into commutative and res-
titutive. In corrective justice, and its two species just enumer-
ated, we shall find the genuine idea of justice. The office of cor*
rective justice is to regulate and rectify men's dealings with fellow-
men, so that every man shall have what is properly his own, what
is part or appanage of himself; shall keep it, or shall have it given
back to him, if it has been wrongfully taken away. A man is well-
nigh beyond instruction, who tells you that he does not know
what own means. However, we may point out to such a man
his
that a thing may be his own in two ways it may be his own legally,
:
and it may be his own by right; and consequently it may be his

own legally and by right, or legally, but not by right, or by right,
but not legally. A thing is a man's own legally when the courts
of his country will support his possession of it. A thing is a
man's own by right when the civil courts ought to support him
in possession of it,* so far as the matter lies within their com-
*"A thing is a man's own by right, when the civil courts ought to sup-
port him in possession of it." It may further be demanded why they ought.
I reply, first, because the thing is necessary to the man's existence and indi-
vidual well-being. Secondly, because it is needed to enable him to discharge
his social function in the commonwealth. Thirdly, because he is established
in that possession by the will of God. Something in the same way, a gar-
den flower requires this or that to grow up as a flower at all. Secondly, it
requires this or that in order, in its proper place, to contribute to the gen-
eral beauty of the garden. Thirdly, the gardener wills it to have these
particular advantages for its purposes above named. It must be added that
many rights are vague and indeterminate by nature, and must be deter-
mined and particularly fixed by the civil law of the State. For further
study of this difficult subject of rights the reader is referred to my Political
and Moral Essays; Moral Philosophy.
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5* THE CARDINAL VIRTUES
petence. The distinction between what the civil courts will and
what they ought to support is founded on the assumption that not
all law, nor all administration of law, is good; evil administration
is conceivable, and evil ought not to be ; an assumption which any

and every party readily enough makes, when itself has the misfor-
tune to lose the upper hand in the conduct of public affairs. What
is a man's own makes a sort of circle about himself. When men
live "cheek by jowl," as they must in human society, these circles
intersect; and it is important that they should intersect peaceably,

on a good mutual understanding, without violent collision and
fracture. This is secured by one neighbour resigning part of what
was his own in favour of another, on condition of the neighbour so
benefited making a reciprocal resignation. Hence a system of
voluntary exchange, formulated by the Roman lawyers as "I give
on condition that you give," "I do on condition that you do,"
do ut des, facto ut facias. Over these voluntary exchanges com-
mutative justice presides. Commutative justice is justice in buy-
ing and selling, justice in all relations of debtor and creditor, jus-
tice between workman and employer, justice in the fulfilment of
every valid contract. When your neighbour makes over to you
something of what was his own, something of his material sub-
stance or something of his personal labour, he does so on the ex-
press understanding that you make over something of your own
in return. The carrying out of this is an act of the virtue of
justice, strictly so-called, namely, commutative justice. Your
neighbour, however, may, and frequently will, make over to you
something of his own without covenanting for a return on your
part; he is then said to give. Giving does not belong to justice
but to some further virtue, as liberality or charity. Unhap-
pily, men will frequently take what is not given them. This is
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OF JUSTICE 53
theft or robbery, according as it be done by stealth or with open

violence. Theft and robbery are punished in the criminal courts
of the land. To the action of those courts we have referred under
the head of retributive justice. Such justice is dispensed on public,
not on private grounds; for the benefit of the commonwealth, not
for the satisfaction of the individual sufferer. It is no satisfac-
tion to me that the man who has stolen my cheese has got a fort-
night in prison. I am not compensated by his imprisonment. I
want my cheese back. In taking away mine without my consent

the thief, all unconsciously, made a contract with me, what divines
call "an involuntary contract." Quite involuntarily on my part, he
became possessed of the cheese; that was the first half of the con-
tract. The second half consists in his making restitution to me of
the cheese, or of its equivalent, voluntarily, if he will (and such resti-
tution is a constituent element in his repentance) ; but otherwise,

if he will not, he must be forced involuntarily to restore. Presiding
over these "involuntary contracts" is restitutive justice, also part
of justice strictly so called. Whenever you sin against strict justice
you are bound to restitution.
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VIII. JUSTICE AND CHARITY
It is impossible to exaggerate the importance to the animal

body of the bony framework called the skeleton. Nevertheless a
mere skeleton neither lives nor moves. To scientific thought our
usual emblem of Death as a walking skeleton is a ludicrous absurd-
ity. However shall bones double one upon the other otherwise
than by the contraction of muscles? Justice Js the solid skeleton
of human society. No society can work without justice. But
again, no society can work on principles of justice alone. The
muscle, the covering flesh of human society, is charity. But charity,
it will be said, is a theological virtue, supernatural and infused ; and
we are not treating of such virtues at present, only of natural vir-
tues acquired by frequent acts, exercise and practice. Still we can
not wholly ignore the supernatural. The supernatural is given us
to be the guide of the natural, grace the motive power of nature
nature should not be destroyed, but should be subordinate to and
commanded by grace, and execute the behests of the spirit. We
are not ignoring the supernatural; nevertheless, for the present,
we prescind from it. And that we do in this instance the more
readily because there is such a thing as natural charity, friendship
and friendliness between man and man, mutual good feeling and
good will, sympathy, benevolence and kindness. Aristotle, the
panegyrist of justice, was so alive to this fact that he wrote:
"Where justice is, there is further need of friendship; but where
friendship is, there is no need of justice." A man needs no justice
in his dealing with himself; he is tender enough of himself and
his own. But a friend is a sort of second self. "Yes," you will
say, "but I like my first self best." Not in all things, if you are a
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JUSTICE AND CHARITY 55
true friend. A man will give his very life for his friend. By
"charity" I mean here, not exactly friendship, for friends must be
few, but friendliness, as it were friend-like-ness, some approach to
friendship, extending in a greater or less degree to all the men
you have dealings with. Friendship and friendliness, or natural
charity, grow from a common stock, love. Man is happily prone,
under favourable conditions, to make man his fellow and love him.
An English philosopher has said that the natural instinct of man
meeting man for the first time would be to regard him as a rival,
and either kill him or make a slave of him. So it might be, if man
grew up to man's estate in perfect solitude, like pearls in separate
shells, as the said philosopher (Hobbes) was apt tacitly to assume

and argue accordingly. But man is born of man and woman,
and grows up among brothers and sisters and playmates; he
springs of love, and is reared in love —not without admixture of
hatred and jealousy, for there is no pure good in this world. The
consequence of friendliness is that men are apt at times to give,
and not always to bargain; sometimes to act on charity, and not

insist upon justice. A friend sends a present of a haunch of venison
for your wedding day. What an oddity you would take him for
if he served you with a butcher's bill next week ! But, it may be

contended, he expects similar presents himself from you in sea-
son. Not if he is rich, and you are poor. But at least he expects
gratitude, that is, some sort of return. But not a specific return.
Justice is always specific, keeps books, sends in accounts and bills,
this for that, the two being taken as equivalents in money value.
Gratitude goes not into bills. Nevertheless, because friendship is
returned, and in a manner repaid by friendship, St. Thomas puts

down liberality, and gratitude, and "the friendliness that is called
affability," as so many "potential" parts of justice; that is, they
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rank under justice, not strictly so called, but in a loose and wide
sense of the term, as having certain affinities with justice. My own
my own ! one thing that is my own is my heart to give away. Life
would not be worth living without love. As the heart is given,
other gifts will follow. Every gift is an abatement of strict justice.
Such is charity.
Three points our Saviour urges in the Gospel with especial in-
sistence — faith in His person and mission, watchfulness for His

second coming, and charity, or love, for one another. And this
charity He would have to take the shape of abatement of the rights

which in strict justice we have against one another. Shy lock,
clamouring for his pound of flesh, is an eminently anti-Christian
character. Christ has put this lesson into the Lord's Prayer:
Forgive us our trespasses, is, more literally, Forgive us our
debts as we forgive our debtors (Matt. vi. 12). And if any man
will go to law with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have thy
cloak also (Matt, v, 40). In St. Matthew (xviii, 21-35) 15 the
parable of the servant who owed his lord ten thousand talents, or
something like eight million dollars, an impossible sum to pay,

was released of the debt, and therefrom proceeded to throttle his
fellow-servant for a twenty-dollar debt ; for which insistence on his

right —for the twenty dollars were really due in strict justice —his
lord handed the implacable creditor over to the torturers till he
paid the last farthing of his own huge liabilities, which he never
could meet for all eternity. Certainly it is well at times to insist
upon one's just rights, but it is also well at times—oftener, perhaps,

than we think —to abate them. The parable is the condemnation of
the hard man, who will never upon any consideration abate one
jot or tittle of what his neighbour in strict justice owes him. And
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this applies not only to money, but to honour, precedence, deference,

and all things that men prize.
A hard bargain may be not merely uncharitable, but positively
unjust. Such a bargain is that between employer and employee,
when the former engrosses all the working strength of the latter,
and pays him in return not enough to live upon "in frugal comfort,"
as Leo XIII teaches in his Encyclical of May, 1891, on the "Con-
dition of Labour." On the other hand, the employer has a right
to all that labour, care, attention, diligence and accuracy of work
for which he pays a just wage —a debt of justice often ignored by
workmen. Justice suffers, and has it edges knocked off, where it
is not covered by charity. In charity the employer will do more

than he is legally bound for his employees. In charity they will
on occasion do more than they are legally bound for him. When
this notion of charity is spurned, and capital and labour behave
as two independent, unfriendly powers, each jealous of the other,
each striving to wring the utmost concession that the law will allow
from the other, there must be acts of injustice done on both sides.
The Lord's Prayer has much to tell us if we will think it over in

remedy of the ills of life.
It should be understood that charity is not always optional, not

always mere matter of counsel, but, like justice, charity also some-
times imposes an obligation under sin. You are bound under sin
to help your neighbour when he is in distress and is unable to help
himself out of it, while you being close at hand can help him with-
out yourself falling into the like distress. Thus you would be
bound under sin to take into your house, or otherwise provide for a
beggar whom you found frozen at your door. You are bound
to rescue a drowning man, if you can get him out without notable
risk to your own life. Charity binds us in our neighbour's need in
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the absence of any special contract to stand by him. Where there

is such special contract the obligation is no longer of charity, but
of justice. The soldier has contracted, and is bound in justice, to
venture his life at the word of command in battle. The parish

priest is bound in justice, even at the risk of infection, to admin-
ister the last Sacraments to a dying sinner in his parish; whereas
a stranger priest passing that way would at most be bound only
in charity. I am fain to add, he is not much of a priest if he
stands on his points in such an occasion. You are also bound in
justice to prevent your neighbour taking harm directly in conse-
quence of your action. Thus, if you have even accidentally pushed
a child into deep water, you are bound to get him out if you can
much more if you have done it on purpose. The difference between
an obligation in justice and an obligation in charity is of great
practical import in casuistry, inasmuch as a neglected obligation
in justice involves reparation and restitution, where the matter
admits of restitution, but no restitution is due for neglect of what
you were bound to do in charity. Therefore, a sin against justice
is called a peccatum caudatum, a sin with a tail, the tail being
the burden of having to restore. As we have seen, restitution is
the second half of the involuntary contract. How many sins, tail
and all, how many deeds of wrong with the wrong never made
good, must come under the final cognizance of the Sovereign Judge
It is n6 rare experience to encounter pious people who are
strangely neglectful of their obligations in justice —leave their
tradesmen's bills unpaid, with the result that other customers, who
do pay, pay for them also in the increased price — to discharge
fail
duties which they are salaried to perform —have young children

under their wardship and custody, and take no pains even to know
how they are going on. These omissions proceed from no deliberate
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contempt of justice ; they may involve no grievous sin ; thoughtless-

ness may be pleaded in palliation of them, but thoughtlessness is
a fool's excuse. A healthy conscience is extremely sensitive to

claims of neighbours, claims in decency and courtesy, claims in
charity, and above all, claims in justice. Of one of the greatest of

the saints, Scripture is satisfied with informing us truly that he
was a just man. Justice is the backbone of charity. If you are
in superiority, and find it not in your nature to be a very loving
father to those under you, be at least just to them. The saying
is well known in England of the schoolboy who in boyish language
described his headmaster as "a beast/' then added on reflection,
"but he is a just beast." The "just beast" became Archbishop of

Canterbury, and in that high station well maintained his character
for justice.
As a man has a right to life, limb, and property, the violation of
which right is a sin against justice and calls for restitution, so
equally has he right to honour and respect and deferential treatment
according to his rank from those about him, be they his equals or
even his superiors. To browbeat a man, to address him in abusive
or scornful language, and generally to insult him, is not merely
uncharitable, it is downright injustice, and calls for restitution in
the shape of an apology, howbeit the injured person, following our

Lord's counsel, will often do well to waive his claim and forgive
freely. Every individual man, likewise every corporate body, has
Thou shall not bear false
a right also to character and reputation.
witness against thy neighbour is a commandment often forgotten
when corporate bodies or societies come under discussion. Yet
the members of such societies are more jealous of the reputation
of the body than of their own individual good name. A man who
does evil in public flings away his reputation ; he has no character
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left to lose. A man who has done evil to his neighbour in secret,
and is in a way to do more, also forfeits his reputation to the extent
of such denunciation as is necessary for the prevention of his fur-
ther injury or harming others. Under this exception a man has a
right to a good character so long as he behaves well in public. To
take such character away is a sin against justice. If the defamation
be false, it is called "calumny"; where it is true it is "detraction."
Both calumny and detraction call for restitution of good name;
but where the story is true, obviously such restitution is hardly
possible. You can not mend broken glass. You must not lie to
undo a wrong. Still less must you do a wrong by spreading lying
reports detrimental to the character of another ; those you are bound
to contradict if you yourself are the author of them, in justice; if
you are not the author, in charity. Altogether it may save much
subsequent distress of mind to be always wary of one's words in
speaking of the absent, particularly if they be persons whom you
dislike.
Concerning vengeance, or revenge, I find that natural tempera-

ments differ curiously on this point. Some are more prone to
revenge an insult, others rather cry for vengeance on cruelty.
The Christian is taught not to seek vengeance for a private wrong,

as such. We may seek restitution, or compensation, but that is
not vengeance. It is not vengeance, it is only the exaction of the

fulfilment of (an involuntary) contract, if I compel him who has
robbed me of property to the extent of five hundred dollars to pay
me in a note to that amount. It would be vengeance were I to
horsewhip him for it. That the law will not allow. In civilized
countries the law has gradually by slow degrees assumed to itself
the function of avenging wrong done by one private citizen to
another. The law punishes wrong-doers on public grounds, by way
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of public example, as a deterrent. In that light I do well to bring

the man who has injured me to public justice, not exactly because
he has injured me (I forgive him that), but reipublicae causa, that
he may not go on injuring others. This is the sense of the text,

Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord (Deut. xxii, 35; Rom. xii, 19).
The retribution meted out by the criminal law of the State is the
vengeance of the Lord, whose minister the civil magistrate is.
He beareth not the sword in vain, for he is God's minister, doing

justice unto anger upon him that doth ill (Rom. xiii, 4).
An old writer has said: "It is praiseworthy to be patient under
one's own wrongs, but the height of impiety to dissemble injuries
done to God." We feel a righteous indignation at injuries done to
the Church, but commonly we must forego vengeance ; for in these
days no public authority is concerned to avenge such wrongs, and
we must not take the business into private hands. Even under
injuries done to Himself Our Lord teaches us patience. His Apostles
were to be as sheep in the midst of wolves (Matt, x, 16). When
James and John would have called down fire from heaven upon the
Samaritan town that shut its gates to their Master, He restrained
them with the words, Ye know not of what spirit ye are
(Luke ix, 55).
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6a THE CARDINAL VIRTUES
IX. THE VIRTUE OF RELIGION
The one Being with whom we have relation for everything that
we are, upon whom all that is in us is dependent, who has rights
over us without limitation, and to whom we are bound in justice
by the most stringent and constraining ties, is God our Creator.
We owe Him in justice, and He claims of us in strict right, the
perfect observance of His law; so that, as we have seen already,
every sin against the law of God is a violation of justice in the
divine regard, and perfect justice toward God would imply the
full observance of that law, and the exercise of all the virtues in
so far as enjoined by that law. One thing, however, God particu-
larly insists on: that is the recognition of this our absolute de-
pendence upon Him, and the signification of our sense of depend-
'
ence by a sensible and external sign. This recognition and sensible
signification of the same is called worship. Justice toward God is
all summed up and specialized in the payment of religious worship.
Worship, indeed, is not the observance of the whole law of God;

but it is at least a recognition that we ought to observe it. Recog-
nition of the debt is the first step to payment. The worship of God
then is the matter of a special virtue of justice toward God, which
is called the virtue of religion.
The word religion comes from the Latin. The Romans them-
selves disputed about the derivation of the word. Some derived
it from religens, a word opposed to negligens, both coming from
lego (I pick up). The negligent man is he who picks up nothing;
while the religious man is he who picks up again and again, a
scrupulous, conscientious, careful man, answering to the prophet's
prescription, to walk solicitously with thy God (Mich, vi, 8).
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THE VIRTUE OF REL1G10M 63
Others preferred the derivation from religare (to bind again), con-
sidering that religion binds men to God. Whichever explanation
be right, both appeal to right principles. Religion is a recognition
of the tie that binds us to God. Religion does make us careful,
to walk reverently and do obeisance in the presence of Majesty Di-

vine. The irreligious man revels in a mistaken freedom; he is
frequently a loose and reckless liver. So much for etymology.
We have put the virtue of religion under justice. Some might

wish it counted a theological virtue, as having relation immedi-
ately with God. Faith, no doubt, is exercised in the Christian ex-
ercise of religion, and hope, too; still religion can not be classified
with faith, hope and charity, for this, among other reasons, that the
theological virtues belong to the supernatural order, whereas re-
ligion is a virtue of the natural order. That is to say, faith (and
say the like of hope and charity) refers us to God as known in
Christ, and is exercised by us in our capacity of Christians, borne

up by the grace of Christ; whereas religion refers us to God in
Himself as God, and to God as our Creator and Lord, which He is
even apart from the Incarnation, and is a virtue which, man as man,
in the order of reason and natural propriety, is bound to exercise.
Religion then is not a theological virtue, because it is a virtue
proper to human be added that God is
nature as such. It may
known immediately by us on earth only through revelation; in
the order of nature, away from revelation, He is known mediately
by process of reasoning. In the light of that mediate knowledge
religion, as a natural virtue, worships Him.
Worship, to be acceptable, must come from the heart. It
•
should be the outpouring of a heart docile and submissive to God.

Our Lord condemned the worship of the Pharisees and of the
Jewish priests, with their multitudinous observances, because their
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hearts were far from Him whom they honored with their lips.
The worship of an insincere heart is called formalism. Formalism,

to be sure, is an evil thing, but that does not make forms, rites and
ceremonies in religious worship, evil things, any more than food
becomes evil by the abuse of food turning to indigestion. Nor
is it to any purpose to allege that rites and ceremonies are of no
use to God. Of course they are of no use to God. The whole of
creation put together is not of the slightest use to God. When we
have done all that we are commanded to do,God bids us say we
are unprofitable servants (Luke xvii, 10). God has nothing to gain
by us. His aims are fixed wholly beyond the category of the useful.
He looks for honour, quite a different thing from utility. He need

not have created either men or angels; but having created them,
He looks to their paying Him honour.
But why not, to use a phrase once famous, "worship mostly of
the silent sort"? Because we are men, and silence on matters that
we are interested in is against our nature. What lover of country
lanes in summer is silent in praise of flowers? Our work will not
be mostly of the silent sort if we really care about religion. Be-
sides, as philosophers are now discovering, religion originally
springs out of the social side of human nature. Once found, God
may be prayed to in solitude, but He is first found in company.
In the order of nature you have first the congregation, then the
spriest and the altar, expressive of the common desire to adore
some power above the community, to whom the community owes
allegiance, the worship of whom paid by all in common is the
cement of that society. In the primitive commonwealth there was
one common worship. And to this day unity of worship is the
ideal for a commonwealth, for lack of attainment of which ideal
we citizens of modern states have many lamentable disputes about
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THE VIRTUE OF RELIGION
education. Religion, then, is not a growth of solitude, but of society

It is a function of social man. But a social function can not be car-
ried on in silence. I have never attended a meeting of the Society
of Friends ; but the members of that society, I understand, are few
and select. Their procedure can not make a rule for the many.
A man may sing by himself, and he may pray by himself, and
should often do so. Nevertheless, nearly all great musical com-

positions involve the harmony of many voices and instruments j
and nearly all religions have their public ritual, even though it be
of the simplest, as in the case of Mohamedanism and Puritanism,
with regard to which it may be debated whether their religion or
their unreligiousness it is that has made their ritual so bald and
plain. Yet even the Mohamedan is publicly called to frequent
prayer; while the Puritan, though his chief interest lay in the ser-
mon, spent hours in congregational singing of psalms.
In the Psalms, sun, moon, stars and light, and all the irrational
creation, are invited to praise God. And so they do, simply by

being what they are, manifestations of God's power, wisdom and
goodness. But the starry heavens are all unconscious of the praise
that they render to God. Man is their mouthpiece. In his mind
their unconscious witness to their Creator passes into consciousness.
Man is the high priest of the material creation. He raises inferior
things to the religious order. The lower animals he sacrifices to

God, or used to do, while God was pleased to accept such victims.
The great sacrifice of the New Law is offered from the fruits of
the earth, the fruit of the vineyard and the cornfield. Man lays gold
and silver plate and jewels, when he has them, upon the altar. He
enshrines the altar in an edifice so majestic and glorious, that even
when defaced and profaned a king's palace looks mean and vulgar
by the side of it. These are the outward splendours of religion:
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thus matter worships God. But the most perfect work among
visible and material things is not any handiwork of man; it is a
work of God's own formation, the body of man. "With my body
I thee worship," says bridegroom to bride in the English marriage
service. "With my body I thee worship," in the higher and strictly
religious sense of the word worship, every man should say to his
Creator. Bowings, genuflections, processions, choral singing,

"making a cheerful noise with psalms" — all things that infidels
rail at —are part of the reasonable service (Rom. xii, i) that
man pays with his body to God. I need not say how much this
service is enhanced, when the body is what the body of a Chris-

tian ever should be, holy, well-pleasing to God, the living temple
of the Holy Ghost, a member of Christ (Rom. ib.; I Cor. vi, 15, 19).
The same men who object to bodily adoration and material ad-
juncts to religion also make light of Sacraments.
The method of this bodily homage should never be left to indi-
vidual caprice. No man has any business to be his own master

of ceremonies. "Honour the Deity after the manner of your ances-
tors," was a maxim with the Greeks. It is a sound rule, wherever
it does not involve idolatrous rites. Where God has not positively
signified the rites and ceremonies, whereby He wishes to be
worshiped, as He once did through Moses, and does now through
the Catholic Church, the approved custom of the country supplies
a rule from which the individual worshiper should not notably
deviate. In dealing with religion we must never forget that there
is such a thing as religious mania, and that religious emotion, un-
controlled, especially when it seizes upon a multitude, is apt tc
issue in practices which are not of the spirit of God, practices in
flagrant violation of morality and His commandments. A well-
ordered public ritual checks these excesses.
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THE VIRTUE OF RELIGION 6?
Religion being a virtue, and virtue being a habit, and a habit

being formed by repetition of acts, and that formation going on
most readily when nature is most plastic, as it is in childhood and
youth, it should be a main aim of the educator to form his charge
to the virtue of religion. To that end they must pray regularly
in private, and often take part—not merely be lookers on, but take
part in —the public prayers and ceremonies of Holy Church. And
here let us get rid of a delusion which our parliamentary orators
on the education question seem often to labour under, the idea that
religion is a "lesson," and may be classified as such with geography

that it is forsooth one of the subjects of a timetable. It is nothing of
the kind. I grant you religious doctrine is a lesson; but religious
doctrine is not religion, albeit religion can not stand without doc-
trine. Men thoroughly irreligious have still been doctors in the-
ology, masters of religious doctrine. Many boys love their re-
ligion, and yet find the lesson in religious doctrine tedious. Religion
is a discipline of the whole man, not of the intellect only; it con-
verts the whole being to the worship of God. Religion is instilled
by Sacraments, by Confession and Communion, by Mass, Rosary

and Benediction, by holy images and the company of religious peo-
ple, not by Catechism alone. Place a boy in surroundings where

these things are not; you will not save his religion by giving him
Catechism to learn and the Bible to read for two hours a day. So
much for the acquirement of the virtue of religion, the first point
in the cycle of true education, indeed the one thing necessary to be
educated in at all.
Debts unpaid, and consequently due in justice to tradesmen and

others, trouble the conscience of a right-minded man. Some even
are found who will concern themselves to pay the debts of their
predecessors, whose fortunes they have inherited. Thus good
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Queen Mary impoverished herself in paying the debts of Henry

VIII and Edward VI. Religious duties neglected are debts un-
paid to God. We are bound in justice to worship God at proper
intervals. The Church's precept of Sunday Mass is no mere arbi-
trary imposition. It determines for us a precept of natural law.
It fixes a limit beyond which we must not go without doing an act
of religion. When Mass is out of our reach, the obligation still
rests upon us at certain proper times to pray. We

must pray with
sufficient frequency to be enabled to resist temptation, and tempta-
tion for many of us is both frequent and strong. That is how it

comes to be unsafe to omit to pray morning and evening. Hence
the tradition of morning and evening prayers.
Man is differentiated from the lower animals by sense of re-
ligion and belief in God. Our dumb servants and pets have not
the least inkling of a God. They enter in some sort into our sor-
rows, never into our prayers. One has but to observe their de-
meanor in church or at prayer time to see how utterly destitute
they are of religious awe and reverence. You train them to keep
quiet for the time, but so you could if you wanted the time for read-
ing and looking over accounts. They are quiet simply out of com-
plaisance to their human master. He stands to them in place of
God. It is said that animals see ghosts; even if they did, that
would not argue any apprehension of the divine. Consequently,
when a man abandons all religion, he divests himself of a badge
of humanity, and steps down into the order of brutes. A high and
spiritual religion marks a high civilization. The decay of religion
means the degradation of humanity. Of this fact the enemies of
religion are continually furnishing evidence by the brutality of their
Homer said well of
language, and the brutality of their behavior.
old, "All men need gods" (Odyssey III, 48). And David has said
much better, My soul hath thirsted after the strong living God
(Ps. x, 41).
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TRUTHFULNESS, GRATITUDE, OBEDIENCE 69
X. TRUTHFULNESS, GRATITUDE, OBEDIENCE
"Because man is a social animal, one man naturally owes another

that without which human society could not go on. But men could
not live with one another, if they did not believe one another
as declaring the truth to one another. And, therefore, the virtue
of truthfulness in some way hinges upon the notion of a thing

due" (St. Thomas). Thus truthfulness comes to be classified
under justice. Not that it is a part of justice strictly so-called.

Ordinarily, the knowledge in my mind is not the property of my
neighbour, it is not his by right; I am not legally bound to make
it over to him ; and if, when he asks for it, I deal out to him some-
thing else, something contrary even to that knowledge, I do not
thereby do him, strictly, an injury and wrong, nor do I owe him
afterwards any restitution. Thus if a person asks me my opinion
on the Tariff Question, and I tell him that I am a Free Trader,
whereas really I am a partisan of Tariff Reform, I tell an untruth,
I lie, I commit a sin, but I have not exactly wronged my inquirer.
I am not bound to write to him next day and avow my Protectionist

sympathies, by way of restitution. A simple lie is not a sin against
strict justice. Nay, a simple lie, whatever Protestants may think
to the contrary, is never a mortal sin; you will not go to hell
for that; but unless you repent and do penance, you will go to
purgatory, for it. This is quite enough deterrent to a Catholic, con-
joined with the fact of the sinfulness of the lie, for venial sin after
all is sin ; and as Ecclesiasticus, xv, says God hath not given permis-
:
sion to every man to sin. By a "simple lie," I mean, first, a lie which
is not against religion and the honour of God, as is the lie when
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7° THE CARDINAL VIRTUES
a Catholic denies his being a Catholic, which is a mortal sin;

secondly, a lie which does no hurt to our neighbour in point of life,
limb, property, or reputation. A lie which does serious hurt to a

neighbour in any of those respects is a mortal sin against justice,
and entails restitution. Somebody is said once to have walked into
a shop where they sold sausages and laid six dead cats on the
counter, with the words, "There are six of them; I'll bring you
the remaining half-dozen to-morrow." This when the shop was
full of customers. No doubt it was a joke, and no customer took
it seriously. But seriously to imply by word or gesture, and make
it believed, that a respectable poor butcher makes his sausages
out of cats, would be more than a simple lie; it would be a lie
edged with a barb of injustice, for which, as for any other strict
injustice, restitution would be due.

However, we have not here to do with calumny, but simply with
the habit of speaking or not speaking the truth, and we will confine
our treatment of it, as the early moralists confined theirs, to the

matter of speaking of one's self, one's own personal advantages and
exploits. A child tells you of itself, and there are grown up people
who will tell you of themselves, their doings, and their difficulties,
with all the simplicity and effusiveness of a child. Their candour is
charming, as being utterly removed from vanity. There is also
an offensive and importunate way of forcing your past adventures,

or present views, upon your neighbour's notice. A really vain
person does not usually speak openly at length, but drops little
sagacious, even self-depreciatory hints, all calculated to heighten
your opinion of the speaker, or force from you a compliment.

Then there are those who are not vain, and seek not admiration
for its own sake, but they are gainful and ambitious persons, greedy
of emolument and advancement, and to this end they will lie down-
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right, cunningly, exaggerating their own value, and depreciating

their neighbour's, with or without cause; detraction or calumny,
neither conies amiss to them. This sort of people is odious before
God and man. I hardly know any worse symptom of character
than the habit of systematic lying for the furtherance of one's own
ends.Henry VIII was a portentous liar and a typical bad man. A
symptom is not necessarily in itself the worst element of the disease;
the evil lies in what it points to. There are worse sins than lying
but steady, reckless lying for the purpose of getting on in life is an

index to much deep-seated moral evil.
This pestilential type of liar must not be confounded with him

whose statements are inexact through constitutional inaccuracy
of mind; or, it may be, from exuberance of imagination and love
of fun. The liar in jest, once his character is established, can not,
I think, be called a liar at all ; for when the mood is on him, and
the matter is trivial enough to permit it, no one takes his exag-
gerations or comical stories seriously. He can not be said to affirm
anything; consequently he does not lie. He only suggests matter
of inquiry, should any one think it worth his while to follow the
subject up. One sole stipulation must be made with -him, that his
jests be never malicious.

Lying is a mark of pride. Humility, as we shall see, is taking one's
proper place in the eyes of God ;
pride is assuming a rank that one has
no right to, and consequently a false rank. / will ascend above the
height of the clouds; I will be like the Most High (Isaias xiv, 14).
Such was the aspiration of the first proud creature, Lucifer. There
was falsehood in his claim; such was not his place, yet he would
have it that it was. He began with a lie ;
upon a lying pretext he
rebelled ;
therefore, our Saviour calls him a liar and the father of
lies (John viii, 44). The proud man is pretentious and unreal
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7* THE CARDINAL VIRTUES
in his makeup. What he is by nature and by the grace of God

is not enough for him. He dotes upon an imaginary self. For
that product of his imagination he claims place and position in
the esteem of man, place and position beyond his proper due. His
whole policy is based upon a fiction. Fiction and falsehood he
loves; they are essential to the character that he plays. He dare
not be himself, and let other people take him for no more than
he is really worth. Pride is always founded upon a wrong view
of self and of the situation. As we are often told, humility is
truth.
I can conceive this last proposition being denied. "No,"

it will be said, "both humility and pride are founded on untruth;
pride an untruth in the way of self-exaltation ; humility an untruth
in the way of self-depreciation. The humble man does not acknowl-
edge his own merits. What shocking things the saints have said
in the way of self-depreciation, but they are the worst of sinners,
that they deserve to lie at the feet of Judas in hell," etc. If I
plead on behalf of the saints that they at least believed what they
said, and therefore told no lie, I shall be met —and I think justly
met —with the rejoinder, that the proud man also believes in his
own estimate of himself. I admit that he does. That is just the

misery of his position. The arch liar lies to himself, and brings
himself to believe himself. That is what Plato calls "the lie in
the soul," the worst of all lies. Satan, I presume, thus lies even
to himself. But though he believe in himself, not for that is his
lying pride excusable. There is such a thing as culpable self-
deception. As for what seems to us the exaggerated language of
the saints, that is a matter admitting of much discussion. To
discuss it at length would carry us from our subject. The key to
the solution is this, that the saints see themselves, not in com-
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TRUTHFULNESS, GRATITUDE, OBEDIENCE
parison with their fellowmen, but as they stand confronted with

the ineffable holiness of God. Before that standard they are con-
founded for their very least defects; and having an eye (like the
publican in the Gospel) on their own misdoings and not (like the
Pharisee) on the misdoings of their neighbours, they humble and
abase themselves below all other men.
Another virtue, ranked under justice, and also in close connection
with humility, is gratitude. I should advise anyone who was

looking for an easy way up the mountain of holiness to try the
path of gratitude, of perennial exuberant thankfulness to God, and
to men as vehicles of the bounties of God. Every master loves
a contented and grateful servant; so does the Best of Masters.
One hearty Deo gratias caroled in the sunny air of enjoy-
ment, or better still, heaved out of the depths of tribulation,
sends Satan away in disgust, for he is an eternal malcontent, and

the Alleluia, the song of praise to God, is no music in his ear.
The grateful man has the humility to own himself not sufficient
for himself, but needing the assistance of others ; and when he gets
it, he does not take it as payment of his dues, or as anything that
he had a right to, but as altogether beyond his claims and deserts.
Obedience, if we take it to mean the fulfilment of a contract
do ut facias, "I give you on condition of your doing for me," may
come under justice strictly so called. If John has contracted with
Andrew to do a piece of work under Andrew's direction for a
money payment, he is bound in justice to do the work, as Andrew
is similarly bound to pay him the money. Working under contract,
however, is not the proper type of obedience. Obedience supposes
superior and inferior, the latter fulfilling the former's command
because this superior is the higher in the hierarchical order, and
is in status the better man of the two. This idea of obedience is
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very repugnant to modern minds. Modern men very generally

will not hear of status, only of contract. But let us turn to the
Commandments. Let us hear the Church. The Church delivers
to us the Fourth Commandment, which is commandment
the of
obedience, honour thy father and thy mother. The relation of
parent and child is not one of contract, but of status. And it is
the most fundamental of all human relations. Civil society is built
up out of families. Consequently the disintegration of the family

is the disruption of the State. Anarchists and socialists know that
well, and loathe the one as they repudiate the other. Parents, un-
skilful how to command, and children, scorning to obey, these are
filling the world with socialists. A servant, or a workman, should

be next thing to a son to his master or employer, and pay not
merely the work and service contracted for under stipulation of
wage, but likewise the "honour" that the Commandment speaks
of, the deference and respect due from inferior to superior. One is
laughed at for saying such a thing nowadays. That civil society
is incurring the most serious peril from the decay of the old-
fashioned virtues of reverence, obedience, purity, religion, no
thoughtful man will deny. Honour thy father and thy mother that
thou may est be long-lived in the land (Exod. xx, 12). Con-
versely, a society in which authority is flouted, and obedience is
taken for a badge of dishonour, may well be shortlived. One good

thing provided by the State, serves as some check on this evil.
The State keeps up an army and a navy; and in army and navy
that obedience to command and that deference to superiors, which
have not been learned in the family, nor probably at school either,
as schools go, are learned at last in the ranks or on shipboard.
When army and navy become mutinous, the hour for the State's
overthrow has struck.
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Obedience keeps a man in his hierarchical order in the society
to which he belongs, domestic, civil or religious. True obedience

is constitutional obedience. Nothing so unconstitutional as to dis-
obey lawful authority commanding within its constitutional province.
Slavery is unconstitutional, happily, in modern times. Tyranny

is unconstitutional. Constitutional obedience is an honour to the
man who pays it, no less than constitutional authority in compe-
tent hands is an honour to him who wields it. It is an honour, be-
cause it becomes him well and sits well on him as a proper fitting
garment. It marks him for the right man in the right place. In
the social hierarchy, duly constituted under God, all right places are
honorable places. The whole is honorable, so are the parts.

Obedience is for the young and for the poor, two classes of
souls who are cherished with singular affection by the Most High.
But even the wealthy full-grown man has to obey. He must
obey the State, and he must obey the Church. The State, making
laws on behalf of property and public decency, commands his ready
homage, except perhaps for the burden of taxation. But the
Church tries the obedience of the rich. Her fasts and abstinences
get in the way of their elegant dinners. Her marriage laws do not
suit their family arrangements. A rich man is more apt than a
poor man to cavil at the authoritative pronouncements of the Holy
See, partly because he is more highly educated and has leisure for
speculation; partly because his judgment, fed with flattery —for

everybody listens and many applaud when the rich man speaks
proudly goes its own way, impatient of control. The most divine
of obediences is obedience to God's Church.
At the Last Day, as a holy man has said, mankind will be divided
on a simple principle. The obedient men will be ranged on one
side of the Judge, the disobedient on the other. Like will be
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assorted with like; some with the arch-rebel, whose banner they
have followed and whose motto they have repeated, / will not
serve ( Jerem.
ii, 20) ; others shall be gathered to eternal rest in
His bosom, who was obedient even unto the death of the cross
(Phil, ii, 8).
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MAGNANIMITY AND HUMILITY 11
XI. MAGNANIMITY AND HUMILITY
St. Thomas makes magnanimity and humility too distinct virtues ;
the former he ranks under fortitude, the latter under temperance.

These divisions of virtues are not wholly arbitrary: one division is
more in accordance with the nature of things than another. Still
there is some room left for difference here as elsewhere in a matter

of classification. Much depends on the point of view from which
the matter is studied. Now the aim of these addresses is practise
rather than theory. In the conduct of those who are aiming at the
practice of the virtue, magnanimity readily passes into pride, while
the man who would be humble may become a sneak, a mean-spirited

creature, from taking no account of magnanimity. We shall be
more easily at once magnanimous and humble if we make of mag-
nanimity and humility one two-sided virtue, a mean between two
excesses, as fortitude itself is a two-sided virtue, checking two
passions which go in two opposite ways, checking the passion of
fear that it pass not into cowardice, checking again the passion of
impetuosity lest it transgress into foolhardiness. The two-sided
virtue of humble magnanimity and magnanimous humility may be
called by the name of either of the constituents, as there is no one
common name to include both. This arrangement will be found
helpful in practise, and I flatter myself it is not so very deficient in
point of theory.
Magnanimity, in common parlance, is taken to be a certain
generosity in ignoring petty annoyances (which is rather longa-
nimity), as also in forgetting and forgiving, not taking advantage
of your enemy when you have him in your power. But the con-
ception of magnanimity originally laid down by Aristotle, and after-
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7« THE CARDINAL VIRTUES
wards adopted, or perhaps we should rather say adapted, by St.
Thomas, embraces a much wider field. The matter of magna-

nimity is honor, which is also the matter of humility. The mag-
nanimous man is defined to be "one who deems .himself worthy of
great honor, and is so worthy indeed," being a thoroughly good
man, exalted in virtue, and therefore deserving also to be exalted
in honor, which is themeed of virtue. Such a man accepts high
honors as his due, makes little account of small compliments, and,
conscious of his own real inner worth, is unmoved by affronts and
ignominies put upon him by persons who do not understand him
and are incapable of measuring his greatness. The mark of the
magnanimous man is serenity. A certain portly habit of body, if
nature has so endowed him, becomes him well. Aristotle says of
him, apparently having some particular person in mind, that "his

gait is slow, his voice deep, his utterance grave and leisurely."
Those are separable accidents, to be sure, but where they are
present they are expressions of character. The magnanimous man
then is worth a great deal, and takes himself for all that he is
worth. He has received God's spirit—or something analogous in

the natural order to the gift of the Holy Ghost that he may
know the things that are given him of God (II Cor. ii, 12).
We must not conceive the magnanimous man to be a god to him-
self, wrapt up in the contemplation of his own excellences. Being
high in all virtue he is far from being wanting in the virtue of
religion. He glorifies God for whatever he has, and owns it all to

be the gift of God. His high thoughts turn not about himself, but
about God. He is lofty minded for what he discerns in God
primarily, and secondarily in himself by the sheer gift and grace
of God. And here we have the defence of the magnanimous man
meeting a grave impeachment preferred against him. It has been
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said of him that he is certainly not conscious of any ideal that he can
not reach —not at all the man to confess that when we have done
all things we are still useless servants (Luke xvii, 10). This is
said with some apparent reference to a sermon of Newman, "Dis-

,,
courses to Mixed Congregations, on "The Religion of the Phari-
see." The Pharisee is there presented as having an ideal and having

come up to it, and consequently living in serene self-complacency.
By this argument the magnanimous man would be a self-righteous

Pharisee, far removed from the standard of Him who was meek and
humble of heart (Matt, xi, 29). The accusation may be leveled with
some justice against the pagan magnanimous man depicted in the
pages of Aristotle. Aristotle thought of man in relation to man,

not in relation to God, and described and classified his virtues ac-
cordingly from a human, social standpoint. He saw no harm in a
man who was much the superior of his fellows making the most of
that superiority, and glorying in himself as of himself. St. Paul,
better taught of God, thought otherwise (II Cor. iii, 5). Every-
thing good in man comes from God and when it is all reckoned up,
;
human goodness does not come to much in the sight of God. Shall
man be justified in comparison with God? Lo, the stars are not
pure in his sight; how much more is man rottenness, and the son of
man a worm! (Job xxv, 4-6). True magnanimity, that is to say,
the magnanimity that parts not company with humility, but coalesces
with it in the unity of one virtue, bears honours gracefully, and insult
unflinchingly, from a consciousness of internal worth. This is our
glory, says St. Paul, the testimony of our conscience (II Cor. i,
12). This internal worth, however, the magnanimous man refers
to the source from whence it comes, and unto God he gives the
glory. The secret of his marvelous virtue is his habit of practical
discernment between the abyss of nothingness within himself and
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So THE CARDINAL VIRTUES
the high gifts, also within him, which come of the bounty of God.
Magnanimity, and therefore also humility, imports grandeur and
elevation of mind. The magnanimously humble man thinks a great
deal of God, and not too much of man, whether of himself or of his
neighbours. He is clear of the weakness of human respect. He is
not afraid of men, least of all wicked men. In his sight the
malignant is brought to nothing (Ps. xiv, 4). As Aristotle humor-
ously puts it, "he is not the man to bolt and run away, swinging
his arms." He harbors in his heart a certain noble scorn for the
impertinence of aggressive wickedness and the pomp and pride of
evil powers. He takes a trifle for a trifle, and a fool for a fool. He
is not easily excited. He will meddle only with big things, and with
little things as they bear on big things. Altogether, the magnani-
mous man is a formidable antagonist to the powers of evil. When
the official of a persecuting government said to St. Basil, "I never
met a man so unmanageable as you are," the saint replied, "Per-
haps you have never yet met with a Bishop." He is known in the
Church as S. Basilius Magnus, which may be rendered St. Basil the
Magnanimous.
Of humility the pagan world had little or no conception. They
had not so much as a name for it. Christianity had to coin a Greek
name, and to elevate the meaning of the Latin word humilitas, which
signified originally baseness, meanness. The nearest pagan equiva-
lent for humility was a virtue which they named modesty, or good
form: it consisted in not taking airs and making yourself offensive
by swaggering in company. This overlooking of humility was due
to the imperfection of pagan ideas about God. The gods of the
ancient world gave poor examples of morality : they were not holy
gods, but powerful beings who used their power to their own
gratification. Walk before me and be perfect, as God said to
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MAGNANIMITY AND HUMILITY Si
Abraham (Gen. xvii, i), would have sounded a strange precept

given by a pagan deity to pagan ears. Consequently the pagan was
little in the habit of contrasting his own moral weaknesses with the
transcendent holiness of the Supreme Being. Many a pagan must
have thought that in point of moral goodness Jupiter and Apollo
were not his superiors: they were materially better off than their
worshiper, not holier. In fact the pagans regarded their gods

much as the poor nowadays regard the rich. Humility is not in-
spired by an attitude of mind like that The ground of humility
is the utter human
inferiority of nature to the divine, and
man's dependence upon God for all that he has, even his
very existence. "Humility," says St. Thomas, "seems prin-

cipally to imply subjection to God : humility principally regards the
reverence whereby man is subject to God." Humility then is the
proper posture for every created mind to assume in presence of its
Creator. To say that man is created to pay to God reverence

and obedience, is to say that man is created to be humble. The first
of the beatitudes, blessed are the poor in spirit (Matt, v, 3), is a

blessing on the humble. The poor in spirit, says St. John Chrysos-
tom, are the humble and contrite of heart; and he quotes for this
explanation Isaias xxvi, 2: Upon whom shall I look but upon him
that is poor and contrite of spirit, and trembleth at my words?
The fear of the Lord, so continually extolled in the Old Testament,
is nothing else than humility. Of the sinner whose foot is the
foot of pride, it is said: The fear of the Lord is not before his
eyes (Ps. xxxv, 2, 12).
Both humility and pride consist in habits of mind rather than in
habits of external conduct. When it comes to outward behaviour,
humility shows itself as obedience, pride as disobedience. Children
in confession accuse themselves of "pride," meaning disobedience:
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therein these little ones are good theologians. Inculcating humil-

ity St. Peter wrote: Be ye subject to every human creature for
God's sake, whether to the king as excelling, or to governors as

sent by him . . . fear God, honour the king (I Pet. ii, 13-17).
How far men generally are from honoring authorities in Church
and State for God's sake; how the fear of God is ceasing to be
before the eyes of men, is patent to every observer. Such is the
fruit of a godless education, which is truly an education in pride.
Humility, as we have seen, was not on the list of pagan virtues.

We are lapsing into paganism. It is more and more the way of the
world to put man in the place of God. Where this substitution
becomes complete, humility vanishes, and pride takes its place,
pride and disobedience and anarchy. Such is the way of Antichrist,

the man of sin, the wicked one, or more literally, the man of law-
lessness, the lawless one, who is lifted up above all that is called
God, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself as if
he were God (II Thess. ii,

3, 4, 8). When God is put out of His
place as governor of human society, and man will hear but of man
when reverence is perished off the earth, and fear of super-
alone,
human powers, and awe of a world to come, the ground is prepared

for socialism. Socialism will not be built four-square on the cardi-
nal virtues ; it will not rest on Christ the Rock, but on the sand of
incoherent speeches, and violence, and blasphemy. When Socialism
is set up we may look for the rain and the Hoods, and the winds,
and the great fall (Matt, vii, 26, 27).
Whatever man be in comparison with his fellowman, he is little
enough compared with God. This is motive for humility even for
the highest and holiest of creatures. We sinners on earth have the
further motive of our sins, and not only our sins, but what is
almost more humiliating, our proneness to sin; and besides our
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sinfulness, our ignorance. We know so little, we can know so little,
that school after school of philosophers have fallen into the plausible
error of maintaining that the human mind has no hold whatever on

truth as it really is, but wanders in an enchanted maze which it has
constructed for itself. The Church has never countenanced that
sceptical, idealist philosophy. Indeed the transition is easy from

ignorance to omniscience. The position that man knows nothing
of reality may be amplified into this, that there is no reality any-
where outside and away from human thought: then man's thought
constitutes all that can be called reality, and man is as God, author
of all, knowing all. The orthodox view, which is also the view
taken by ordinary mankind, is that man does know a little truth,
touching the world and its Creator; but for one thing that man
knows there are a thousand things beyond his conjecture, known
only to God, who knows all. Man, then, is very ignorant before
God, in his present condition. The reward promised to his fidelity
is the sight of God, which will be the dispelling of his ignorance, so
far as ignorance can be dispelled from a finite mind. To aid man to
this goal, God has been pleased to reveal to him sundry truths*
some of which he could not have found out for himself at all while
others he might have found, but could not have held with firm cer-
tainty. These are the truths of the Christian revelation, embodied
in the Creed. So learning them, man is, as our Saviour says, quot-
ing Isaias, taught of God (John vi, 45; Isai. xiv, 13). He is as a
child in God's school, God's school being the Church. The first
requisite in a pupil is docility. God expects man to lend a docile

ear to His teaching as given in the Church. Unless ye become as
little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Who-
soever shall humble himself as this child, he is the greater in the
kingdom of heaven (Matt, xviii, 3, 4). This virtue whereby we
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receive the teaching of God in the Church is called faith. The

faith of an intellectual man is a great abasement of his understand-
ing before God, a great act of humility, in these days especially,
when science is widening and criticism is so keen. Yet after all it
is not science, not criticism, that makes the difficulty of faith, but
the neglect of prayer. Prayer is essentially an act of reverence to
God, and therefore of humility: it is a profession of our total de-
pendence on Him, a confession of our own insufficiency and con-

sequent need of Him: it is usually a confession of our sins besides
and an imploring of His pardon. Humility begets humility. The
humility of prayer engenders and fosters the humility of faith. If
a learned man loses his faith, it is not because of his learning as

such, but because much study has left him prayerless. At the same
time it must be confessed that study and mental acumen, as they
remove many difficulties against faith —the shallow cavillings of
the half-educated —so they raise other difficulties. As you mount
the hill you see other hills, which from the valley you do not see.
Therefore, as the high-strung, nervous organism needs much

prayer to withstand sensual temptation, so the highly trained in-
tellect needs prayer and Sacraments in abundance to surmount what
God detests even beyond sensuality, namely, intellectual pride.
Through such pride fell Lucifer. The intellect that comes nearest
the angels must have a care that it, too, imitate not the sin of the
angels. A keen inquirer must ever remember that, unlike science,
faith is no intuition of genius, no product of elaborate reasoning,

but is ultimately an obedience to the voice of God speaking in the
heart, which voice must be heard in all humility. The ear of the
proud is deaf to that still, small voice. To the Pharisees, because
of their pride, Our Saviour said : Ye shall seek me and not find me,
and where I go ye can not come (John vii, 34).
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Finally, I must repeat, humility, obedience, faith are ever high-
minded and noble hearted, because they bring one in touch with God.
The author and finisher of our faith, who endured the Cross and
despised the shame, and now sitteth at the right hand of the throne of
God (Heb. xii, 2), He who was meek and humble of heart (Matt, xi,
29), is likewise the typical magnanimous man.
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XII. THE INFUSED VIRTUES
By nature we have capacities and predispositions towards virtue,
which capacities and predispositions are by practice converted into

habits ; these habits are the "acquired virtues." Such "acquired vir-
tues" have been our theme hitherto. Now we must note two further
points about them. First, in many men they are very ill acquired.
The habit of sobriety, of veracity, of honesty, of fortitude, in many
a subject is a crude, ill-baked thing; a little temptation breaks
through it, and your teetotaler is taken up for drunkenness, your
honest cashier is in prison for embezzlement. Human nature on
the whole sadly needs to have its virtues reinforced. The "infused
virtues," as we shall see, are a reinforcement to the "acquired."
Secondly, no amount of virtue acquired by mere effort of nature will
ever take a man to heaven, or win for him any reward there. Heaven
means the vision of God, and that vision is simply out of range of
all creatures' unaided strivings. The vision of God is not due either
to the dignity or to the natural merits of any creature that God can
possibly create, let alone man. It is a pure grace and gratuitous
favour done to any creature who attains it. None but God Himself
has a connatural right to see God. As the end to be attained is a
grace, so the means to the attainment must consist of graces also.
Such graces are the "infused virtues." No infused virtues, no

heaven.
The infused virtues, of which I am about to treat, are faith, hope,
and charity. Theologians complicate the matter by additions too
subtle to be gone into here, and not very profitable for practice.
These three virtues are infused in Baptism. Saying that, I do not

mean to say that they can exist only in the baptized, but Baptism is
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THE INFUSED VIRTUES 87
the ordinary means of their infusion. Baptism, then, puts into the
soul a power to believe in the word of God revealing, a power to
hope in the promise of God proffering to man the vision of Himself
in heaven, and a power to love God above all things as a child loves
its father, for in Baptism we are made adopted children of God and
heirs of heaven, neither of which things are we by nature, or merely
by being men. It will be seen that an infused virtue is not so much
a habit as a power. The three infused virtues bestowed in Baptism
are as three new faculties. Man is not born with the faculty of mak-
ing his way to heaven. It is given him when he is baptized.
These new faculties, — faculties of what St. Paul (Eph. iv, 24) calls
the new man, created in Baptism, — like other faculties, need exercise,
else they perish of atrophy. The baptized child is disposed to be-
lieve, but he knows not what to believe until he learns his Catechism.
He can not love an unknown God, nor hope for a heaven of which
he has never been told. He has to be taught to make acts of faith,
hope, and charity; and all his life long the oftener he elicits those
acts with God's grace, the more robust do the infused virtues grow
in him. By utter neglect of such acts he may become, not entirely,
but in many respects, as though he had no infused virtues, as though
he had never been baptized, he may become as the heathen and the
publican (Matt, xviii, 17).
Young Christians generally, as might be expected, and not a few
of longer standing, are strong in "infused virtues," but very weak in
the "acquired virtues." They believe and hope abundantly, but as

they too rarely exercise the acts, so neither have they acquired the
habits of truthfulness, abstinence, sobriety, meekness, justice, obedi-
ence. This is no situation to acquiesce in. To acquiesce in it were to

fall into the heresy called Antinomianism, which means faith without
works.
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The Christian, being bound to keep the Commandments, is bound

in many various ways and recurring occasions to be just, temperate,
brave and prudent. Thus, if he is faithful to his obligations, he forms

in himself, whether he think of it or not, the habits of the cardinal
virtues. A child may be excused for not possessing those virtues
he has not yet had time to form the habits. But the absence of the
said virtues in a grown man, who has truly come to man's estate,
having a man's knowledge and a man's appreciation of the law,
argues in him a culpable neglect of acts which in many contingencies
must have been incumbent upon him as duties. Neither the "infused
virtues" should exist in a grown man without the "acquired vir-
tues," nor the "acquired" virtues without the "infused" ; neither faith
without works, nor works without faith. We notice in the epistles of
SS. Paul, Peter and John, traces of a disposition on the part of some
early Christians to scorn the "acquired virtues" in the exuberance of
the felt graces of their Baptism. This mistaken neglect of the
natural order the Apostles were at pains to correct. (See Romans
xiii, 1-8; I Cor. v, 1-6, 9, 10; x, 1-12; Gal. v, 13-21 ; I Pet ii, 13-18;
I John ii, 3-6.) This also seems to be the main scope of the epistle of
St. James. The Christian is a man sublimated. He ceases not to
be a man and should have the virtues of a man. Grace does not
abolish ethics. The office of "infused virtues" is to foster and take
command of "acquired virtues," and raise their acts to a higher
order.
When to the proper motive of an "acquired virtue" there is super-
added the motive of an "infused virtue," the act thence resulting is
said to be elicited by the acquired, or natural, virtue, and commanded

by the supernatural, or infused virtue. As a rule, in a man leading
a Christian life, all the acts elicited by his acquired virtues are com-
manded by his infused virtues. Thus if he prays, which is an act of
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religion, he is led to pray by motives of faith and hope in Christ.
Martyrdom, elicited by fortitude, is commanded by charity. It is
only by being commanded, at least habitually, by charity that the

virtuous acts of man become meritorious of heaven. The "acquired
virtues/' as such, qualify for well-being on earth. The "infused
virtues," and the "acquired" as commanded by the "infused," qualify
for happiness in heaven. Further, as we have seen, the "infused"
virtues fortify the "acquired."
The "infused virtues" are the care of the Church ; the "acquired
virtues" are the care, although not the exclusive care, of the State, as
such. I say as such, because a Christian State in concert with the

Church will have some concern about the infused virtues. The
State's direct care of virtue is limited to "overt acts" of the same. An
"overt act" is defined "an act which externally manifests the dis-
position of the mind." Virtues are as oil to the machinery of gov-
ernment. In so far as they are needed as an aid to government and
social order, they are called "civil virtues." It must be confessed
that the necessary standard of civil virtue is not very high. A man
may be a good citizen, yet not a good man, still less a good Catholic.
On the other hand, no State can get on without a certain measure of
goodness and virtue among its people. Every government must
trust some of its subjects; the ruler can not constrain everybody,
nor oversee every official's doings, there must be some fortitude,
some justice, some temperance and self-restraint away from the eye
of the policeman. And besides, who shall police the police? Who
shall answer for the fidelity of the soldiers ? A State may become so
morally rotten as scarcely to hold together as a State then : it perishes
under the first strong arm raised against it either from without or
from within. Both Church and State have a common interest in
making the citizens virtuous up to a certain point. Beyond that
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point the Church will wish to raise them to a still higher virtue;
but the State, if it be not a Christian State, is apt to hang
back, to consider the Church importunate, meddlesome, punctilious
and scrupulous, and even actually to thwart its efforts. There-
upon Church and State fall out. We see this in the matter of
marriage laws, and above all in the education question. The State
subsidized school refuses to have Christian Catholic morality and
piety inculcated within its walls. It opens its doors only to "Biblical
morality," whatever that may mean, or "simple ethics."
Without insisting on the divine mission of the Church, which the
heathen statesman will not admit, this practical consideration may be
advanced to move even a heathen. Whatever ideal of conduct you put
up, you may make up your mind that the multitude will fall short of
it in practice. You must propose a high ideal to get the mass of
mankind to be even moderately virtuous. Schoolmasters forget this,
who will not have their charge made "too pious." Preachers forget
it, who are fond of expatiating on the topic how little after all
Christ requires of a layman in the world, — albeit surely the layman

must be Christ's disciple, and Christ's condition of discipleship is to
renounce all things (Luke xiv, 33). Now the Church's ideal of
virtue is a high ideal. The State's ideal of virtue is a low one.
Train men to the Christian standard, and you may reasonably expect
them not to fall short of that human standard which must be attained
for the decent well-being of civil society. He will stop far short of
murder, who dreads violent hatred as a mortal sin for which he may
lose his soul (Matt, v, 21-26). He will not commit adultery, who is
taught to abhor a lustful glance (Matt, v, 27-30). He will not
swear a false oath in court who boggles at an unnecessary one

(Matt, v, 33-37). He who loves his enemy will not fail his friend,
nor be an enemy of lawful government (Matt, v, 43-47). A man
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THE INFUSED VIRTUES 9*
who seriously aims at perfection will not be a bad citizen (Matt, v,
48) . But preach an easy and lax morality, just sufficient for State
purposes, and what sort of practice can you expect? That which
you get in sundry godless schools, where the State, thinking to
subsidize education, is really subsidizing crime, and the coming
socialism.
It remains to consider the motives of virtue. Why be virtuous at

all? Like any other skill, virtue is acquired by training and self-
denial. It is far easier to be vicious ; and though vice itself be not

pleasant, inasmuch as it makes a slave of a man, anyhow the acts
that lead to vice are alluring enough. The Aristotelian motive for
any virtuous act is its being the kalon, the right thing. Of this motive
I desire to speak with all respect. I admit its potency. Hundreds
of heroic deeds have been done with scarce any other motive than
this, that it was the right thing to do. "Duty," or "the right thing/'
has exercised a marvelous sway over human hearts. It has been
obeyed without its claims being questioned, or its title verified. Still,
quite as often, it is flouted and disobeyed. Sceptics have analyzed

it, and some have found to their own satisfaction that duty is only
pleasure in disguise ; whereupon many prefer pleasure undisguised.
Any strengthening of the motive of virtue is of the highest value to
mankind. Such strength is afforded by the infused virtues of faith
and charity. They propose, not an abstract kalon, but a personal
kalos, —One who is all beautiful, all lovable, all holy, because, being
man, He is also God. The Christian aims at virtue for love of "the
right thing," to be sure, but still more for love and imitation of the
adorable person of his Saviour, the living Head of that living Body
of which every Christian is a member; by incorporation in which
he has grace to do all works of virtue requisite for salvation, and
better than Melchisedech, who lived under the ancient dispensation,
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to be assimilated to the Son of God (Heb. vii, 3). Enthusiasm for

a person is wanted to eke out the intellectual grasp of a principle.
Men will do for persons what they will never do for principles. An
impersonal principle, whatever its philosophical merits, too often
leaves the heart cold. We want personal enthusiasm to meet a

crisis, and principle to insure stability. To meet both these wants, the
Catholic Church holds up in her one hand charity and the Sacra-
ments, in her other faith and the Creed. The virtuous Christian is
characterized alike by clear knowledge of and steady adherence to
the principles of faith and reason, and by steady loyalty to the per-
son of his Saviour.
The essential idea of virtue is that of firmness and steadiness.
Virtue is the corrective of impulse. The man of mere impulse may
do many good and generous deeds, still he is not a good man, for
the proneness to do good has not been engrafted on to his nature.
This important psychological fact, that we. are more inclined to act
in some given way for having acted in that way before, the fact
that having often acted in a certain way we arrive to a habit which
inclines so to act always, except under quite abnormal circum-
stances, — this fact is the generator of the whole economy of virtues
and vices. Of itself, in the right order of nature, it is a provision
to steady our wills in good; incidentally, and by abuse, it may fix
the will in evil. As habits form, man approaches to the condition

of an angel, either of a good angel or of a devil. One act is said
tomake a fixed habit in an angel many acts are needed to fix the
;
more volatile will of man. Nor is the fixture ever quite perfect.
You are never quite sure that the virtuous man will elicit his virtuous
act every time that the occasion calls for it. His will always re-
mains in some measure indeterminate and free, and his consequent
action uncertain. Free will in man never passes away into charac-
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ter. Thus plexus of habits, which is called character, never becomes

the sole and adequate determinant of human conduct.
Some room is always left for effort and free choice. But un-
doubtedly the growth of virtues and vices does abridge the freedom
of the will for better or for worse. It anticipates in some measure
that fixed determination of the will to good, which obtains in the
blessed in heaven ; or to evil, in the case of the lost. Nor is it any

loss of perfection, —nay, it is a higher freedom, —to have your will
bent immovably upon good, so immovably that temptation, how-

ever clamorous, offers you no real inducement to act upon it. There
are outrageous sins to which any decent man is never really tempted.
He is above solicitation in that direction. That man would not be
far above the level of a wild beast, who had to exert all the moral
energy of his will, time after time, to restrain himself from cutting
your throat. Growth in virtue gradually raises man above all de-
liberate sins, almost as much as the common man is raised above
murder. Indeliberate acts, "sins of surprise," as they are called, are
an infirmity cleaving to man as long as he lives. They are not com-
mitted on principle. They are triumphs snatched by impulse from
principle when principle is caught napping. But for the avoidance
even of great sins the Christian, however perfect, must never rely
upon his own acquired virtues. He must watch and pray that he
enter not into temptation (Matt, xxvi, 41).
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Gbe Pennsylvania State College

CLASS NO.. i/l.Q-

Gbe Pennsylvania State College

CLASS NO. i.ri.Q-.^t.

Accession No. <c*^_&J&5

ADDRESSES TO YOUNG MEN, BY

JOSEPH RICKABY, S.J.

(Lutn ^ettmsstt sfrttptnotttttt

New York, September 8, 1908

Copyright, 1908, by JOSEPH F. WAGWER, New York

for surely conduct is a matter of science.

II. The Cardinal Virtues ...... 9

III. Prudence . ^...... 16

V. Human Acts ...... 30

VII. Justice and Charity 54

IX. The Virtue of Religion 62

X. Truthfulness, Gratitude, Obedience . . . 69

XI. Magnanimity and Humility • . . . 77

XII. The Infused Virtues ,86

There are infused virtues and acquired virtues. These addresses

results of acts whereof he is master, to do or not to do, and he

on the bodily nature inherited from parents and ancestors ac-

without having yet formed the corresponding habit, be it of virtue

the gradual result of a series of virtuous, or vicious, acts. But,

and uncertainty and much imperfection.

The best way to understand a habit, and thereby to understand

is a habit of proficiency in some art. Skill comes by practice. We

from Monday to Saturday. His is not the skill so to command

what we wilfully omit to do, when there is occasion for doing

it, goes to make habit also—a habit, that is to say, of omitting.

The immediate author of all a person's habits is the person himself,

becomes. Hence it is possible, indeed, it not uncommonly hap-

he "cuts" his lessons day by day, and is forming to himself the

he has to be much in chapel, for so his companions are; he hears

bath. Nor does a very meek man grow particularly in meekness by

Strictly speaking, it is not the same thing to do a good act and

virtue according to the nature of the act.

culation, respiration, digestion; these powers need no education.

is not enough for a gymnast to be strong, he must acquire muscular

of knowledge, got by study. These habits of intellect, sense, and

Mere knowledge and intellectual appreciation of the right thing to

do is not virtue. Thus they were foolish philosophers who defined

and the things that are not to be feared." A virtue is a guarantee

But such knowledge is scarce any guarantee at all The hour of

his philosophy with him. Virtue, indeed, supposes knowledge; it

is not mere routine behavior, mere knack and rule of thumb : it is

a habit acquired by practice of acting up to one's knowledge. Vir-

served by a priest at Mass. They are comprised in quite a few

natural virtue needs to be eked out by the grace of God

II. THE CARDINAL VIRTUES

We speak of a "cardinal of the Holy Roman Church" and of the

We will consider them in this latter sense first.

We owe the enumeration of the cardinal virtues, not to the He-

conformable to law, and in practising any virtue a man is observ-

and constantly, even in face of difficulties. But constancy under

difficulties belongs to fortitude. There is, therefore, an element of