Virtue is the power in every organic thing to become what it was created or designed to be, or, alternatively, the success of that thing in doing so. And the complicating factor when it comes to a modern person trying to understand the good or virtuous is that we think that the good is some standard outside of us to which we must conform.

That is almost completely opposite the classical view of virtue.

The Latin word virtus was the word Caesar used in his Gallic Wars to describe a soldier acting courageously on the battlefield. He uses it implicitly to refer to a strength or power that comes from within. A man exemplified virtus on the battlefield by simply acting in the way a man should act—that is, in a manly way. He was more of a man by virtue of the fact that he acted courageously (among other things)—in other words, he was more of a man by virtue of acting like a man.

This virtus seems somehow connected to a thing's nature. It is in some way an outworking of the nature of a thing in its actions (including its thought). So in one sense, virtue is a power. When Aragorn finds Frodo injured by the weapon of one of the Nazgul in the fight on Weathertop Hill, he is disheartened because of the seriousness of Frodo's injury. Aragorn (still known as "Strider" at this point in the story) attempts to treat his wound. He uses an herb "that the Men of the West brought to Middle Earth." It's name is "Athelas." He is not sure it is strong enough to heal the would, but, he says, "It has great virtues." It's easy to miss, but Tolkien is using the old meaning of the word, which is something like "power" or “strength."

Virtue may paradoxically be defined as the power to be what you are.

So, in asking the question, "What is virtue and is it the chief end of education?,” we are asking a somewhat self-referential question, since virtue is precisely the extent to which a thing achieves its end. Virtue, or goodness, is the success of a thing insofar as it becomes what it is supposed to be.

We say this of men in a way we would never say it about a plant or an animal. The reason we talk about virtue in men in a way that we do not talk about it in plants or animals is because plants and animals always do that they are supposed to do (unless they are prevented from doing so by something outside themselves). A plant simply does what plants are supposed to do; animals always act in the way they are made to act. It is only human beings who act against their own nature.

We may define "sin" in this light as acting against our nature. Unlike plants and animals, man deviates from his nature constantly, his nature being the image God. And when he does so, we say he is acting “badly," or that he is “sinning." He was not acting as he was made to act. He is going against the purpose that was placed within him.

Sin is not acting in violation of a rule unless by "rule" we mean the godlike pattern according to which God has made us. It is not, as the philosopher Immanuel Kant might think, some outside, or external standard we are violating. We are violating our own humanity. The Ten Commandments are certainly rules, but they only describe the actions that would take us away from the way we are made.

When we ask what the place of virtue is in education, we are essentially asking how or to what extent education (however we define that word) helps to fashion us in the image in which we have been made. Does this thing we call "education" make us into better human beings? Does it make us think and act in accordance with our God-made nature?

One of the ways in which education can do this is by bringing before us the great exemplars of history and literature, the characters who do what they are made to do. It is hard to identify particular pedagogical principles that constitute classical pedagogy, but one we can cite with certainty is imitation—imitation of great examples, the heroes and heroines with which our literature is filled.

If we are to teach virtue, we must have in mind the ideal human being, who is Christ. In addition, we must have in mind those mortals—in history and in literature—who most successfully imitate Him. It is a thing not best taught through admonition or explanation. It is best taught by inspiration.

This may be why so many great philosophers were doubtful that virtue could be taught. Socrates thought it could, but Aristotle and Isocrates had serious doubts about it.

Virtue is caught, not taught. It is, as C. S. Lewis once said, "a good infection." We may try to push our students toward virtue, but it is a hard moral hill to climb. Let them be pulled by the attraction that great examples of virtue exude.

 

Martin Cothran

 

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