14.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE
2. The "Cardinal Virtues"
The previous section was originally composed to be given as a short
talk on the air.
If you are allowed to talk for only ten minutes, pretty well everything
else has to be sacrificed to brevity. One of my chief reasons for dividing
morality up into three parts (with my picture of the ships sailing in
convoy) was that this seemed the shortest way of covering the ground. Here I
want to give some idea of another way in which the subject has been divided
by old writers, which was too long to use in my talk, but which is a very
good one.
According to this longer scheme there are seven "virtues." Four of them
are called "Cardinal" virtues, and the remaining three are called
"Theological" virtues. The "Cardinal" ones are those which all civilised
people recognise: the "Theological" are those which, as a rule, only
Christians know about. I shall deal with the Theological ones later on: at
present I am talking about the four Cardinal virtues. (The word "cardinal"
has nothing to do with "Cardinals" in the Roman Church. It comes from a
Latin word meaning "the hinge of a door." These were called "cardinal"
virtues because they are, as we should say, "pivotal.") They are PRUDENCE,
TEMPERANCE, JUSTICE, and FORTITUDE.
Prudence means practical common sense, taking the trouble to think out
what you are doing and what is likely to come of it. Nowadays most people
hardly think of Prudence as one of the "virtues." In fact, because Christ
said we could only get into His world by being like children, many
Christians have the idea that, provided you are "good," it does not matter
being a fool. But that is a misunderstanding. In the first place, most
children show plenty of "prudence" about doing the things they are really
interested in, and think them out quite sensibly. In the second place, as
St, Paul points out, Christ never meant that we were to remain children in
intelligence: on the contrary, He told us to be not only "as harmless as
doves," but also "as wise as serpents." He wants a child's heart, but a
grown-up's head. He wants us to be simple, single-minded, affectionate, and
teachable, as good children are; but He also wants every bit of intelligence
we have to be alert at its job, and in first-class fighting trim. The fact
that you are giving money to a charity does not mean that you need not try
to find out whether that charity is a fraud or not. The fact that what you
are thinking about is God Himself (for example, when you are praying) does
not mean that you can be content with the same babyish ideas which you had
when you were a five-year-old. It is, of course, quite true that God will
not love you any the less, or have less use for you, if you happen to have
been born with a very second-rate brain. He has room for people with very
little sense, but He wants every one to use what sense they have. The proper
motto is not "Be good, sweet maid, and let who can be clever," but "Be good,
sweet maid, and don't forget that this involves being as clever as you can."
God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers. If you
are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you you are embarking on
something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all. But,
fortunately, it works the other way round. Anyone who is honestly trying to
be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened: one of the
reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that
Christianity is an education itself. That is why an uneducated believer like
Bunyan was able to write a book that has astonished the whole world.
Temperance is, unfortunately, one of those words that has changed its
meaning. It now usually means teetotalism. But in the days when the second
Cardinal virtue was christened "Temperance," it meant nothing of the sort.
Temperance referred not specially to drink, but to all pleasures; and it
meant not abstaining, but going the right length and no further. It is a
mistake to think that Christians ought all to be teetotallers;
Mohammedanism, not Christianity, is the teetotal religion. Of course it may
be the duty of a particular Christian, or of any Christian, at a particular
time, to abstain from strong drink, either because he is the sort of man who
cannot drink at all without drinking too much, or because he wants to give
the money to the poor, or because he is with people who are inclined to
drunkenness and must not encourage them by drinking himself. But the whole
point is that he is abstaining, for a good reason, from something which he
does not condemn and which he likes to see other people enjoying. One of the
marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself
without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way.
An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for
special reasons-marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he
starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at
other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.
One great piece of mischief has been done by the modern restriction of
the word Temperance to the question of drink. It helps people to forget that
you can be just as intemperate about lots of other things. A man who makes
his golf or his motor-bicycle the centre of his life, or a woman who devotes
all her thoughts to clothes or bridge or her dog, is being just as
"intemperate" as someone who gets drunk every evening. Of course, it does
not show on the outside so easily: bridge-mania or golf-mania do not make
you fall down in the middle of the road. But God is not deceived by
externals.
Justice means much more than the sort of thing that goes on in law
courts. It is the old name for everything we should now call "fairness"; it
includes honesty, give and take, truthfulness, keeping promises, and all
that side of life. And Fortitude includes both kinds of courage-the kind
that faces danger as well as the kind that "sticks it" under pain. "Guts" is
perhaps the nearest modern English. You will notice, of course, that you
cannot practise any of the other virtues very long without bringing this one
into play.
There is one further point about the virtues that ought to be noticed.
There is a difference between doing some particular just or temperate action
and being a just or temperate man. Someone who is not a good tennis player
may now and then make a good shot. What you mean by a good player is the man
whose eye and muscles and nerves have been so trained by making innumerable
good shots that they can now be relied on. They have a certain tone or
quality which is there even when he is not playing, just as a
mathematician's mind has a certain habit and outlook which is there even
when he is not doing mathematics. In the same way a man who perseveres in
doing just actions gets in the end a certain quality of character. Now it is
that quality rather than the particular actions which we mean when we talk
of "virtue."
This distinction is important for the following reason. If we thought
only of the particular actions we might encourage three wrong ideas.
(1) We might think that, provided you did the right thing, it did not
matter how or why you did it-whether you did it willingly or unwillingly,
sulkily or cheerfully, through fear of public opinion or for its own sake.
But the truth is that right actions done for the wrong reason do not help to
build the internal quality or character called a "virtue," and it is this
quality or character that really matters. (If the bad tennis player hits
very hard, not because he sees that a very hard stroke is required, but
because he has lost his temper, his stroke might possibly, by luck, help him
to win that particular game; but it will not be helping him to become a
reliable player.)
(2) We might think that God wanted simply obedience to a set of rules:
whereas He really wants people of a particular sort.
(3) We might think that the "virtues" were necessary only for this
present life-that in the other world we could stop being just because there
is nothing to quarrel about and stop being brave because there is no danger.
Now it is quite true that there will probably be no occasion for just or
courageous acts in the next world, but there will be every occasion for
being the sort of people that we can become only as the result of doing such
acts here. The point is not that God will refuse you admission to His
eternal world if you have not got certain qualities of character: the point
is that if people have not got at least the beginnings of those qualities
inside them, then no possible external conditions could make a "Heaven" for
them-that is, could make them happy with the deep, strong, unshakable kind
of happiness God intends for us.
