MereChristianity: Book III. Christian Behaviour 2. The "Cardinal Virtues" -C.S.Lewis

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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.