Handbook of Ethical Theory | Page 9

fellow-man, and save us from a life "solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish and short," recommends among other virtues:
Justice Equity Requital of benefits Sociability A moderate degree of
forgiveness The avoidance of pride and arrogance.
Locke [Footnote: Essay, Book IV, chapter iii, Sec. 18; Of Civil
Government, Book II, chapter ii.], who believes that moral principles
must be intuitively evident to one who contemplates the nature of God
and the relations of men to Him and to each other, thinks it worth while
to set down such random maxims as:
No government allows absolute liberty. Where there is no property
there is no injustice. All men are originally equal. Men ought not to
harm one another. Parents have a right to control their children.
Hume, [Footnote: An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals,
Sec 6,

Part I] whose two classes of virtues comprise
the qualities immediately

agreeable or useful to ourselves and those immediately agreeable or
useful to others, offers us an extended list. He puts into the first class:
Discretion Caution Enterprise Industry Frugality Economy Good Sense,
etc. Temperance Sobriety Patience Perseverance Considerateness
Secrecy Order, etc.
In the second class he includes:
Benevolence Justice Veracity Fidelity Politeness Wit Modesty
Cleanliness.
Manifestly, the lists may be indefinitely prolonged. Why not add to the
first class the pachydermatous indifference to rebuffs which is of such
service to the social climber, and, to the second, taste in dress and the
habit of not repeating stories?
Thomas Reid lays stress upon the deliverances of the individual
conscience, when consulted in a quiet hour. Nevertheless he proposes
five fundamental maxims: [Footnote: On the Active Powers of Man,
Essay V, chapter i.]
We ought to exercise a rational self-love, and prefer a greater to a lesser
good. We should follow nature, as revealed in the constitution of man.
We should exercise benevolence. Right and wrong are the same for all
in the same circumstances. We should venerate and obey God.
With such writers we may contrast the Utilitarians and the adherents of
the doctrine of Self-realization, [Footnote: These will be discussed
below, chapters xxv and xxvi.] who lay little stress upon lists of virtues
or duties, but aim, respectively, at the greatest happiness of the greatest
number, and at the harmonious development of the faculties of man,
regarding as virtues such qualities of character as make for the
attainment, in the long run, of the one or the other of these ends.
11. THE STRETCHING OF MORAL CONCEPTS.--The instances
given suffice to show that the moralists speak with a variety of tongues.
The code of one age is apt to seem strange and foreign to the men of
another. Even where there is apparent agreement, a closer scrutiny
often reveals that it has been attained by a process of stretching
conceptions. Take for example the so-called "cardinal" virtues
[Footnote: From cardo, a hinge. These virtues were supposed to be
fundamental. The name given to them was first used by AMBROSE in
the fourth century A.D. See SIDGWICK, History of Ethics, chap, ii, p.
44.] dwelt upon by Plato. The Stoics, who made use of his list, changed

its spirit. Cicero stretches justice so as to make it cover a watery
benevolence. St. Augustine finds the cardinal virtues to be different
aspects of Love to God. The great scholastic philosopher of the
thirteenth century, St. Thomas, places in the first rank the Christian
graces of Faith, Hope and Charity, but still finds it convenient to use
the Platonic scheme in ordering a list of the self- regarding virtues
taken from Aristotle. Thus may the pillars of a pagan temple be utilized
as structural units in, or embellishments of, a Christian church.
Our own age reveals the same tendency. Thomas Hill Green, the
Oxford professor, follows Plato. But with him we find wisdom
stretched to cover artistic creation; we see that courage and temperance
have taken on new faces; and justice appears to be able to gather under
its wings both benevolence and veracity. [Footnote: Prolegomena to
Ethics, Book III, chapter iii, and Book IV, chapter v.] A still wider
divergence from the original understanding of the cardinal virtues is
that of Dewey, who conceives of them as "traits essential to all
morality." He treats, under temperance, of purity and reverence; he
makes courage synonymous with persistent vigor; he extends justice so
as to include love and sympathy; he transforms wisdom into
conscientiousness. [Footnote: DEWEY AND TUFTS, Ethics, pp.
404-423.]
This variation in the content of moral concepts may be illustrated from
any quarter in the field of ethics. Cicero's circumspect "benevolence"
advances the doctrine that "whatever one can give without suffering
loss should be given even to an entire stranger." Among such
obligations he reckons: to prohibit no one from drinking at a stream of
running water; to