What is virtue? Beneficence towards the fellow-creature.Can I call virtue things other than those which do me good? I am needy, you are generous.
I am in danger, you help me.I am deceived, you tell me the truth.I am neglected, you console me.I am ignorant, you teach me.Without difficulty I shall call you virtuous.But what will become of the cardinal and divine virtues? Some of them will remain in the schools.
What does it matter to me that you are temperate? you observe a precept of health; you will have better health, and I am happy to hear it.You have faith and hope, and I am happy still; they will procure you eternal life.Your divine virtues are celestial gifts; your cardinal virtues are excellent qualities which serve to guide you : but they are not virtues as regards your fellow-creature.The prudent man does good to himself, the virtuous man does good to mankind.St.Paul was right to tell you that charity prevails over faith and hope.
But shall only those that are useful to one's fellow-creature be admitted as virtues? How can I admit any others? We live in society; really, therefore, the only things that are good for us are those that are good for society.
A recluse will be sober, pious; he will be clad in hair-cloth; he will be a saint: but I shall not call him virtuous until he has done some act of virtue by which other men have profited.So long as he is alone, he is doing neither good nor evil; for us he is nothing.If St.Bruno brought peace to families, if he succoured want, he was virtuous; if he fasted, prayed in solitude, he was a saint.Virtue among men is an interchange of kindness; he who has no part in this interchange should not be counted.
If this saint were in the world, he would doubtless do good; but so long as he is not in the world, the world will be right in refusing him the title of virtuous; he will be good for himself and not for us.
But, you say to me, if a recluse is a glutton, a drunkard, given to secret debauches with himself, he is vicious; he is virtuous, therefore, if he has the Opposite qualities.That is what I cannot agree : he is a very disagreeable fellow if he has the faults you mention; but he is not vicious, wicked, punishable as regards society to whom these infamies do no harm.It is to be presumed that were he to return to society he would do harm there, that he would be very vicious; and it is even more probable that he would be a wicked man, than it is sure that the other temperate and chaste recluse would be a virtuous man, for in society faults increase, and good qualities diminish.
A much stronger objection is made; Nero, Pope Alexander VI., and other monsters of this species, have bestowed kindnesses; I answer hardily that on that day they were virtuous.
A few theologians say that the divine emperor Antonine was not virtuous;that he was a stubborn Stoic who, not content with commanding men, wished further to be esteemed by them; that he attributed to himself the good he did to the human race; that all his life he was just, laborious, beneficent through vanity, and that lie only deceived men through his virtues." My God ! " I exclaim." Give us often rogues like him ! "Philosophical Dictionary: Why? WHY? WHY does one hardly ever do the tenth part of the good one might do?
Why in half Europe do girls pray to God in Latin, which they do not understand?
Why in antiquity was there never a theological quarrel, and why were no people ever distinguished by the name of a sect? The Egyptians were not called Isiacs or Osiriacs; the peoples of Syria did not have the name of Cybelians.The Cretans had a particular devotion to Jupiter, and were never entitled Jupiterians.The ancient Latins were very attached to Saturn;there was not a village in Latium called Saturnian: on the contrary, the disciples of the God of truth taking their master's title, and calling themselves " anointed " like Him, declared, as soon as they could, an eternal war on all the peoples who were not anointed, and made war among themselves for fourteen hundred years, taking the names of Arians, Manicheans, Donatists, Hussites, Papists, Lutherans, Calvinists.And lastly, the Jansenists and the Molinists have had no more poignant mortification than that of not having been able to slaughter each other in pitched battle.Whence does this come?
Why is the great number of hard-working, innocent men who till the land every day of the year that you may eat all its fruits, scorned, vilified, oppressed, robbed; and why is it that the useless and often very wicked man who lives only hy their work, and who is rich only through their poverty, is on the contrary respected, courted, considered?
Why is it that, the fruits of the earth being so necessary for the conservation of men and animals, one yet sees so many years and so many countries where there is entire lack of these fruits?
Why is the half of Africa and America covered with poisons?
Why is there no land where insects are not far in excess of men?
Why does a little whitish, evil-smelling secretion form a being which has hard bones, desires and thoughts? and why do these beings always persecute each other?
Why does so much evil exist, seeing that everytling is formed by a God whom all theists are agreed in naming " good? "Why, since we complain ceaselessly of our ills, do we spend all our time in increasing them?
Why, as we are so miserable, have we imagined that not to be is a great ill, when it is clear that it was not an ill not to be before we were born?
Why and how does one have dreams during sleep, if one has no soul; and how is it that these dreams are always so incoherent, so extravagant, if one has a soul?
Why do the stars move from west to east rather than from east to west?
Why do we exist? why is there anything?
