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A somewhat important distinction can be drawn between the virtues which are primarily due to intellect and negative will (control), and those which are primarily due to emotion and impulse. To the former class belong prudence, temperance, justice; to the latter benevolence, purity, courage. Many virtues present a very different aspect according as they are due primarily to principle, or primarily to impulse. Thus there is a marked difference between temperance and purity, cool fortitude and dashing courage, exactness of statement and passionate desire for truth. Writers and schools lay different stress on the two groups of virtues. The Stoics, Kant and Butler, lay chief emphasis on excellences of principle; the Shaftesbury and the Utilitarian on the excellence arising from good impulse. But all schools necessarily recognize both in some degree. All agree that the virtuous man knows what is right (wisdom); that he knows what is due to others and desires to give it (justice). He has proper regard for the pleasures and pains of others (benevolence), while he has not too much regard for his own pains (courage), or his own pleasures (temperance).

In different ages and stages of development different ideals of virtue have predominated, while not absolutely obliterating the rival ideals. The supreme

virtue with the ancients was self-culture; with the early Christians, purity and self-denial. In the middle ages the veneration for courage and fidelity gives us the ideal of chivalry; the architectonic virtue in the

eighteenth century is prudence. The sexes vary in the importance they attach to purity and candour, courage and pity; so do different ages-the boy, the middle-aged, and the old; so do different nations.

The smallest number of virtues which we can recognize as generic would seem to be six, viz., prudence, courage, temperance, justice, truthfulness, and benevolence.

§ 4. Prudence.

Prudence is used for (1) practical wisdom in the widest sense, and (2) practical wisdom directed to the advantage of self. Note that for the mass of people in the middle classes, prudence in the narrower sense is still the supreme virtue. And generally speaking, it is true that we lay stress on the rational virtues. Generosity, hospitality, reckless courage, are the excellences of an earlier stage of civilization; to-day we chiefly admire justice, sobriety, self-restraint in face of danger.

To some extent the ethical method we accept will help to determine what place we shall allot to prudence. Pure altruism places "wisdom for a man's self," as Bacon calls it, outside the rank of primary virtues, while allowing it a secondary and auxiliary position since I can only be serviceable to others on condition that I pay some attention to my own welfare. Pure egoism makes prudence the architectonic virtue. Utilitarianism places it in a position alongside of benevolence; my happiness counts for one as well as yours.

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Prudence in the widest sense is " a conscious habit of correct thinking on matters of action" (Aristotle, "Nic. Eth.," VI. v.). It involves right choice of ends, and right choice of means. It guarantees both premises of the ethical syllogism and draws the conclusion. It differs from merely speculative knowledge, since it deals with affairs of practice, which it knows concretely in all their details, and not abstractly in propositions. These complex affairs of actual life can only be known by experience, and natural tact is necessary as well. The prudent man necessarily acts from reason and not mere impulse. Hence, other things equal, we must take time before acting (caution), and we must have self-control or firmness, intelligence, and knowledge from which to reason. Hence the obstacles to prudence are haste, strength of feeling, weakness of reason, and want of knowledge. In excess caution becomes hesitation, and firmness becomes obstinacy.

As Aristotle points out, there is a reaction of our general moral condition on our practical intelligence.1 An effective knowledge of what is really worth striving for is impossible to the vicious man; and in some forms of vice-those which imply loss of self-control— the man is ignorant of the minor premise in the ethical syllogism. The angry man often denies that he is angry, the excessive drinker does not realize where excess begins.

"Faults in the life breed errors in the brain."

1 Cf. Nic. Eth. VI. v., xii.; VII. iii.

§ 5. Courage.

Courage is obviously not adequately defined by reference to principle. It is a virtue of impulse, and cannot be resolved into knowledge of what ought to be feared. It implies fearlessness in the face of what may be rationally feared, as well as in the face of what should not. A defect of emotional energy, of combativeness, of strong desires, can only in part be overcome by reflection. And this secondary courage has not the æsthetic attraction of the impulsive sort. It has sometimes been thought that in the progress of modern society, the decay of militarism, and the scientific aspect given even to war itself, less room would be left for this virtue, and that men will learn to do comfortably without it, as well as without hair and teeth. But this is hardly probable. The establishment of socialistic utopias is perhaps less likely to bring peace than a sword; and in any event in colonizing savage parts of the world, room will still be found for impulsive courage when it is banished from the paternal industrialism of civilization.

§ 6. Temperance.

In its full conception self-control is not to be restricted to the bodily appetites and the pleasures of touch and taste. Other desires, and the emotions and sentiments, come within the scope of it. Dante places lust, gluttony, avarice, and prodigality, wrath and

melancholy, together as sins of incontinence. Gush, talkativeness, and self-assertion are as much offences against temperance as drunkenness. In Aristotle's discussion of this virtue the doctrine of the mean does not occupy a prominent place. Of the two extremes, self-indulgence and unnatural insensibility, only the former exists, the latter is theoretical. But Aristotle knew nothing of the asceticism of the East; and to him the Christian practice of chastity would have seemed as truly intemperate as excess.

§ 7. Justice.

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Professor Sidgwick has analysed with great subtlety the common notion of justice.' He points out the following elements:

(1) Mere impartiality, i.e. absence of irrationality in distribution.

(2) Reparation for injury.

(3) Conservative justice, or observance of those relations determined by law and custom which regulate the greater part of our conduct towards others; i.e. (i) observance of laws, and of contracts or definite understandings; (ii) fulfilment of natural and normal expectations.

(4) Ideal justice, or the distribution of things in accordance with what we believe to be fair and right, even when there are no laws or definite understandings to guide us.

1 "Meth. of Ethics," book iii. ch. v.

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