Virtue

" She will be present and will lighten it, if we are willing to worship her.

If it were permitted us to look into the mind of a good man, oh, what a fair face we should see, how holy, how shining with a magnificent calm—here justice gleaming, there courage, here temperance and prudence!

If anyone saw this face, loftier and more shining than is wont to be seen among human things, would he not halt, stupefied as though at the meeting of a divinity, and silently pray that it might be lawful to have seen it?

For those eminent and beautiful virtues of yours — unless they produced pleasure, who would think them either praiseworthy or to be desired?

but I am wholly of this mind — that the Torquatus who first won this surname did not strip that torque from his enemy in order to derive from his body some bodily pleasure, nor fight against the Latins at the Veseris in his third consulship for the sake of pleasure;

For the very theme on which your discourse is most wont to vaunt itself — yours above all, who eagerly pursue antiquity — namely, the commemorating of famous and brave men and the praising of their deeds not for any profit, but for the very beauty of honour itself, is wholly overthrown once that selection of things which I have just described is established:

\"But he often praises virtue.

Epicurus denies that life can be lived pleasantly unless one lives with virtue;

that, although virtue is most of all to be sought, and for the sake of attaining it philosophy was sought, he separated the highest good from virtue.

At any rate, they also spent their time in practising what are considered the works of virtue.

And yet I think that no virtue is practised by men except with the aim that the good, by being such, may have something more than the bad;

but, conscious that from our boyhood on we have practised what is good and honourable, let us go against the enemy, who, I am sure, are too untrained to contend against us.

If so, to know what virtue is is not enough;

Now some thinkers hold that virtue is a gift of nature;

We may doubtless think ourselves fortunate if we attain some measure of virtue when all the things believed to make men virtuous are ours.

and Argos, Agamemnon, who was possessed, not of one or two of the virtues merely, but of all which anyone can name— and these, not in moderate, but in surpassing degree.

Those who have a character which is in accord, not with one of these things, but with all of them—these, I contend, are wise and complete men, possessed of all the virtues.

I intend to discuss the achievements of Athens and the virtues of our ancestors, although I shall not begin with them but with a statement of my personal experience, since it is more urgent, I think, to begin with this.

I suppose we must.

I certainly think not, Socrates.

Then we say, Laches, that we know what it is.

True happiness, therefore, is set in virtue.

Let virtue march in front, let her bear the standards.

But pleasure is extinguished at the very moment when it most delights;

And it is worth noting that wealth of this kind makes people generous, also.

Madness is in those people, too, who do not elect the handsome men as generals;

For my own part, my possessions are so great that I can hardly find them myself;

This I think a man would say whose life had been one of genuine virtue.

But the words which you, Demosthenes, will speak, are the natural expression of a worthless scoundrel, with whom virtue is a pretence.

It is proclaimed in the theater that one is crowned for virtue and nobility and patriotism, a man whose life is shameful and loathsome;

these she displayed, and, promising still more than these, tried to draw Heracles to herself.

And indeed, if any other has hymned virtue in like fashion, let us accept his words as bearing toward the same goal with ours.

And nearly all who have any reputation for wisdom have, each according to his power, set forth in their own writings, in greater or lesser degree, a praise of virtue;

for an art, even when you do not employ it, can still be retained as knowledge, whereas virtue consists wholly in its use;

so great is the necessity of virtue that Nature has set in the race of men, and so great the love of defending the common safety that she has given, that this force has conquered all the enticements of pleasure and ease.

And Plato too, in the Meno, says that virtue is God-given, as these words show:

"Those who have the disposition of their soul well-attuned, not toward one of these only, but toward all of them — these I call both prudent and perfect men, and possessed of all the virtues.

For of all virtue, I say, and I repeat it, the beginning is understanding and the fulfillment is courage;

The considerations that actuated these men one and all to choose to die nobly have now been enumerated,—birth, education, habituation to high standards of conduct, and the underlying principles of our form of government in general.

Now, if it were my view that, of those qualities that constitute virtue, courage alone was their possession, I might praise this and be done with the speaking, but since it fell to their lot also to have been nobly born and strictly brought up and to have lived with lofty ideals, because of all which they had every reason to be good men, I should be ashamed if I were found to have passed over any of these topics.

For they exhort their followers to a kind of virtue and wisdom which is ignored by the rest of the world and is disputed among themselves;

I want now to run through a few topics from a third, in order that it may become even more evident to you that all my writings tend toward virtue and justice.

But, I beg of you, consider well whether I appear to you to corrupt the young by my words, or, on the contrary, to inspire them to a life of valor and of dangers endured for their country;

But in fact, they thought, virtue is not advanced by written laws but by the habits of every-day life;

The strongest proof of this is that those who enjoyed this constitution wrought many noble deeds, won the admiration of all mankind, and took their place, by the common consent of the Hellenes, as the leading power of Hellas;

On the other hand, they compelled those who possessed sufficient means to devote themselves to horsemanship, athletics, hunting, and philosophy, observing that by these pursuits some are enabled to achieve excellence, others to abstain from many vices.

Therefore, I believe that, if any men of the past have by their merit become immortal, Evagoras also has earned this preferment:

But the spoken words which should adequately recount the deeds of Evagoras would make his virtues never to be forgotten among all mankind.

In truth, how could one reveal the courage, the wisdom, or the virtues generally of Evagoras more clearly than by pointing to such deeds and perilous enterprises?

and finally, he revealed his other virtues and his prudence, not only in the deeds already recited, but especially in the manner in which he governed our city.

but as it is, while in the case of other men who have won renown we shall find that one is deficient in courage, another in wisdom, and another in some kindred virtue, yet this hero alone was lacking in naught, but had attained consummate virtue.

Do not imagine that vice can profit more than virtue, and that it is only its name which is uglier;

Exhort the young to virtue not only by your precepts but by exemplifying in your conduct what good men ought to be.

however, I regard those as the best and most worthy of a king, and most appropriate to me, which give directions on good morals and good government;

They fail to see that nothing in the world can contribute so powerfully to material gain, to good repute, to right action, in a word, to happiness, as virtue and the qualities of virtue.

Well then, the qualities which we must possess as a foundation if we are to be happy and prosperous, namely, piety and moderation and justice and virtue in all its phases, I mentioned a moment ago.

But I marvel if anyone thinks that those who practise piety and justice remain constant and steadfast in these virtues because they expect to be worse off than the wicked and not because they consider that both among gods and among men they will have the advantage over others.

For he did not belittle virtue nor pass his life in indolence;

But virtue, when it grows up with us in our hearts without alloy, is the one possession which abides with us in old age;

Neither did he order his existence sordidly, but was a lover of beauty, munificent in his manner of life, and generous to his friends;

This thought you must lay to heart, and see to it that in proportion as you are above the others in rank so shall you surpass them in virtue;

Do not show yourself ambitious for those things which lie within the power of base men also to achieve, but show that you pride yourself on virtue, in which base men have no part.

In the worship of the gods, follow the example of your ancestors, but believe that the noblest sacrifice and the greatest devotion is to show yourself in the highest degree a good and just man;

It must.

That is true.

That is probable.

for measure and proportion are everywhere identified with beauty and virtue.

But the true and pure pleasures, of which you spoke, you must consider almost our own by nature, and also those which are united with health and self-restraint, and furthermore all those which are handmaids of virtue in general and follow everywhere in its train as if it were a god,—add these to the mixture;