Virtue

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!

But if, just as the sight of the eyes is wont to be sharpened and cleared by certain medicines, so we are willing to free the keen sight of the mind from its impediments, we shall be able to discern virtue even when it is buried in the body, even when poverty stands in the way, even when lowliness and infamy lie before it.

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

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:

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.

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

\"But he often praises 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;

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

But, my son, have you forgotten the discussion you and I once had—that it was a great task and one worthy of a man, to do the best he could not only to prove himself a truly good and noble man but also to provide a good living both for himself and his household?

But as it is, we see that although theories have power to stimulate and encourage generous youths, and, given an inborn nobility of character and a genuine love of what is noble, can make them susceptible to the influence of virtue, yet they are powerless to stimulate the mass of mankind to moral nobility.

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

If then we have sufficiently discussed in their outlines the subjects of Happiness and of Virtue in its various forms, and also Friendship and Pleasure, may we assume that the investigation we proposed is now complete?

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.

To hand over virtue, that most exalted mistress, as a handmaid to pleasure, is the act of one whose soul can grasp nothing great.

Virtue is something lofty, exalted and kingly, unconquered and untiring;

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

For since we handsome men exert a certain inspiration upon the amorous, we make them more generous in money matters, more strenuous and heroic amid dangers, yes, and more modest and self-controlled also;

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;

The condition in which the rational soul (al-nafs al-nāṭiqah) has mastery over the other two souls is called virtue (faḍīlah);

And as medicine has canons by which the preservation of health and the removal of disease are known, so this science has canons by which the acquisition of the virtues and the removal of the vices are known.

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

Be ye my witnesses, O Earth and Sun, and virtue and Conscience, and Education, by which we distinguish the honorable and the base, that I have heard my country’s call, and have spoken.

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

Or with what other intent are we to suppose that Hesiod composed those verses which all men sing, than to urge the young to virtue—how the road that leads to virtue is at first rough and hard to travel, full of much sweat and toil, and steep?

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;

And since we must descend to our own life by way of virtue, and since virtue has been hymned much by poets, much by prose-writers, and far more by men of philosophy, it is to such writings above all that we must attend.

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.

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

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;

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.

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.

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.

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;

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;

For our forefathers placed such strong emphasis upon sobriety that they put the supervision of decorum in charge of the Council of the Areopagus—a body which was composed exclusively of men who were of noble birth and had exemplified in their lives exceptional virtue and sobriety, and which, therefore, naturally excelled all the other councils of Hellas.

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

For I know that while other regions produce varieties of fruits and trees and animals, each peculiar to its locality and much better than those of other lands, our own country is able to bear and nurture men who are not only the most gifted in the world in the arts and in the powers of action and of speech, but are also above all others in valor and in virtue.

Now other writers should have praised those who in their own time had proved themselves good men, to the end that those who have the ability to glorify the deeds of their contemporaries, by speaking in the presence of those who knew the facts might have employed the truth concerning them, and also that the younger generation might with greater emulation have striven for virtue, knowing well that t …

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?

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.

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.

There are people who frown upon eloquence and censure men who study philosophy, asserting that those who engage in such occupations do so, not for the sake of virtue, but for their own advantage.

Do not strive to gain riches rather than a good name, knowing that both among the Hellenes and the barbarians as well those who have the highest reputation for virtue have at their command the greatest number of good things.

Moreover, it is passing strange if the fact has escaped them that we reverence the gods and practice justice, and cultivate the other virtues, not that we may be worse off than our fellows, but that we may pass our days in the enjoyment of as many good things as possible.

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.

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.

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 while the result of indolence and love of surfeit is that pain follows on the heels of pleasure, on the other hand, devoted toil in the pursuit of virtue, and self-control in the ordering of one’s life always yield delights that are pure and more abiding.

For only those who have travelled this road in life have been able in the true sense to attain to virtue—that possession which is the grandest and the most enduring in the world.

for the present however, I have produced a sample of the nature of Hipponicus, after whom you should pattern your life as after an example, regarding his conduct as your law, and striving to imitate and emulate your father’s 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.

for those who educate men in private stations benefit them alone, but if one can turn those who rule over the multitude toward a life of virtue, he will help both classes, both those who hold positions of authority and their subjects;

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;

This sense is a happiness that exists for every man, and everyone can obtain some of it and enjoy it to the measure of his rank in humanity, and the measure of his awareness of the fine and the foul, and his acquisition of the stations of the virtues and the vices, and the ranks of praise and blame.

and that he should acknowledge, with some measure of acknowledgement, the leaving off of immersion in the appetites and the forsaking of the bodily pleasures, and know that most of them are basenesses and vices, and so hold himself above them.

and these are wanted for themselves, and may also be wanted for something else, I mean so that by them the acts of the souls and their virtues may be completed.

that those going into exile are permitted to carry their virtues with them.

Even if anyone judges each of these too little effective for consoling an exile, he will confess that the two, brought together into one, can do very much.

"Does this lowly hovel surely give room to virtues?