CARDINAL VIRTUES. According to the ancients, the virtues of justice, prudence, tem perance, fortitude. They were so called because the whole of human virtue was supposed to hinge or turn upon them. In other words. they were considered as a full and comprehensive classification of a man's various duties.
This mode of dividing the virtues is to be found as far back as Socrates. The ancient moralists treated under ethics the whole sum of human duty and virtue. Thus, Aristotle con siders the great problem of the science to be the determination of man's highest good, to gether with the means of realizing it. Hence, he includes both the social virtues and the pru dential regard to the welfare of the individual in the same scheme. Of the four cardinal vir tues, it will be seen that the first, justice, is the social virtue: that prudence (which, proper ly speaking, includes temperance also) regards the well-being of the individual: while fortitude is necessary to both. This last was a virtue greatly esteemed in the ancient world : each one's lot being much less secure than with us in the present day, it was impossible to say what suf ferings might be in store for the most prosper ously situated of men.
Dr. Whewell has made an attempt to correct the more obvious defects of the classification, and has substituted one which he deems free from those defects. The most notable omission in the ancient scheme, judged from the modern point of view, is the absence of all reference, either expressly or by implication, to the virtue of goodness or benevolence.
Accordingly, to adapt the classification to the altered point of view, benevolence has to be add ed to the list. This is Dr. Whewell's first vir tue; the others are justice, truth, purity, and order. But the scheme, as thus amended, is scarcely less objectionable than before. The virtue named last, order, which means obedience to authority, cannot but contain a very large portion of all the rest; seeing that justice, truth, etc., are enjoined by positive law. Then, what is understood by purity, including the control of the two powerful appetites—hunger and sex —is partly prudential and partly social.
In Roman Catholic systems of theology, there are declared to be four cardinal rirtues—"pru donee. fortitude, temperance, and justice"— from which all other 'moral' virtues are repre sented as flowing. But there is a prior division
of virtues into the two classes of theological and ?fiord, the theological virtues being faith, hope, and charity. The distinction between these two classes is represented as consisting in this, that the theological virtues "immediately regard God," and the moral virtues do not immediately regard God, but are commanded and rewarded by God, and are beneficial to ourselves.
This method of discussion may be said to be engaged upon the form of the virtues. There is need of one which shall touch their matter. The tendency of ethics during the Nineteenth Century in America was to emphasize love as the true `cardinal' virtue or as the element which must enter into every moral act in order that it may acquire the character of virtue. Even forms of philosophy which have seemed to ignore this principle have brought it in again under other names, such as 'altruism.' That modern tenden cy which has emphasized 'self-realization' as the watchword of ethics has plainly seen that the true realization of self is its fullest adjustment to all its environment, and that this involve; to the self-realization of every other moral being, Nvhich is what is meant by love.
Considered under the light of this principle. as the informing and controlling, principle of all action that is really good. the cardinal virtues assume more distinctness. Love regards the fun damental interests of all moral agents as the object of moral effort, or it seeks to do in every ease that which will give the fullest possible amount of good to all concerned. But this is exactly what justice is—not the apportioning out of something good or bad upon the basis of an abstract and unreal standard, but the rendering to each that which shall now and here promote most fully the best good of each, while also pro moting the best good of all. The same is true, mutatis mutamlis, of the remaining virtues. A classification of virtues into the personal and the social may be valuable for certain purpose., but personal acts are virtues only as they have respect also to social relations, and vice versa. In fact, no virtue is such in isolation from others, or in disregard of the totality of concrete conditions. See ETHICS.