When people go to war, they need an arsenal. Their strength lies entirely outside of themselves. The complete opposite of war is virtue whose arsenal is entirely within the self. I prefer to use the word “storehouse” rather than “arsenal” since it is gentler and lacks any militaristic implications.
War occurs because people underestimate themselves and fail to recognize the means of reconciliation that exists within them. Virtue is the road to peace. War results when virtue remains unexercised.
War is one substitute for virtue. Elixirs, magic potions, strategies, and trickery are other ways in which people try to gain victory over another. They are unsatisfactory methods of achieving what one desires since they divide the winner from the loser. “He who lives by the sword perishes by the sword.” Virtue is blessed because it has a salutary effect, like mercy, on both the giver and the receiver. There are no losers when virtue enters the fray.
Two elementary factors are required in order for virtue to flourish. The first is love since love is the root of every virtue. It is the fertile soil from which each virtue will flower. Every virtue, from courtesy to courage, gratitude to generosity, derives its virtuousness through its association with love. Certain actions have the image of virtue, but unless they are established in love, they are counterfeit.
The second factor is God who is Love and the ultimate source of all love. Our love is strengthened by its relationship with God. We do not become virtuous by sheer willpower. Egoism gets in the way. God is the perfect antidote and corrective for our excessive concern for self. Friedrich Nietzsche, who was a sworn enemy of Christian virtues, believed he could achieve his “salvation,” as he put it, through pride alone. The “will to power” was his battle cry.
The Italian-Swiss poet Arturo Fornaro has expressed the futility of pride and the benevolence of God in a short poem entitled, “Il Silenzio”: Signore, Ho provato su tutti gli strumenti, la nota piu alta. Ma nessuna arrivava fino a Te. Ho toccato il silenzio, e Tu mi hai risposto (“God, I have sought in vain upon every instrument for that highest note whose sound would reach You. But when I touched the silence, then You answered me”).
It is God who provides both the wisdom and the love that are needed for virtue. Novelist Walker Percy, in his own whimsical way, alluded to the futility of relying too much on oneself to achieve virtue in the title of his book, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. We are lost in God’s cosmos because we have forgotten who created it and assume we are tenants without a superintendent.
Percy has a point. An endless series of self-help books remains in need of even more self-help books. Consider the following as a case in point: You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay; The Mountain is You by Brianna Wiest; The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene; The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel; Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill; Winning Through Intimidation by Robert J. Ringer; and I’m OK—You’re OK by Thomas A. Harris.
Virtue is our love that has been invigorated by God’s Love and directed to others in a specific form. The forms that virtue takes on are manifold: mercy, moderation, modesty, mirthfulness, and meekness (and that is just the virtues starting with the letter M).
Virtues need not be heroic. In the words of Blaise Pascal, “The strength of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.” Virtues should be everyday expressions that greet our neighbors with “cordiality,” a fine word whose etymology refers to the heart which is the fountainhead of all virtues. As such, they can be habit forming and expressed with ease in a most natural way. And their beneficial influence should never be underestimated. Consider a line from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice: “How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world” (Act V, Sc. 1, 90-91).
Virtues brighten the day. They remind the world that we are all creatures of Love. Canadian humorist Thomas Chandler Haliburton, in his 1855 book, Nature and Human Nature, tells us that “God has made many sunny spots in the heart; why should we exclude the light from them?” These “sunny spots” are part of the storehouse of virtues we have that are ready and waiting to be expressed. As Confucius has stated, “Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.”
Virtues are wonderful ways of countering grievances. Rather than respond to an annoyance with frustration, we should show patience; rather than becoming angered by an insult, we should show forgiveness; rather than reaping vengeance on being wronged, we should show mercy. Virtue has a way of defusing vice, stripping it of its power. It doses the fire of hostility while inaugurating the fire of love.
We need not look elsewhere for what is needed to improve the life around us. We need to look only at the storehouse within ourselves that has been blessed with God’s love. A smile, in the geometry of virtue, is the shortest distance between two persons. Sympathy warms the heart. Kindness means that our neighbor is one of us. And our supply of virtue does not diminish as it is spent on others.
Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash
