The Political Writings (Hackett Classics) by John Locke & David Wootton

Author:John Locke & David Wootton [Locke, John & Wootton, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
Published: 2003-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

16: ‘Virtus’ (1681; from the 1661 Commonplace Book)

Virtue, as in its obligation it is the will of God, discovered by natural reason, and thus has the force of a law; so in the matter of it, it is nothing else but doing of good, either to oneself or others; and the contrary hereunto, vice, is nothing else but doing of harm. Thus the bounds of temperance are prescribed by the health, estates, and the use of our time: justice, truth, and mercy by the good or evil they are likely to produce; since everybody allows one may with justice deny another the possession of his own sword, when there is reason to believe he would make use of it to his own harm.

But since men in society are in a far different estate than when considered single and alone, the instances and measures of virtue and vice are very different under these two considerations; for though, as I said before, the measures of temperance, to a solitary man, be none but those above-mentioned, yet if he be a member of a society, it may, according to the station he has in it, receive measures from reputation and example; so that which would be no vicious excess in a retired obscurity may be a very great one amongst people who think ill of such excess because, by lessening his esteem amongst them, it makes a man incapable of having the authority, and doing the good, which otherwise he might. For esteem and reputation being a sort of moral strength, whereby a man is enabled to do, as it were, by an augmented force, that which others, of equal natural parts and natural power, cannot do without it; he that by any intemperance weakens this his moral strength, does himself as much harm as if by intemperance he weakened the natural strength either of his mind or body, and so is equally vicious by doing harm to himself.

This, if well considered, will give us better boundaries of virtue and vice than curious questions stated with the nicest distinctions; that being always the greatest vice whose consequences draw after it the greatest harm; and therefore the injuries and mischiefs done to societies are much more culpable than those done to private men, though with greater personal aggravations. And so many things naturally become vices amongst men in society, which without that would be innocent actions. Thus for a man to cohabit and have children by one or more women, who are at their own disposal, and, when they think fit, to part again, I see not how it can be condemned as a vice, since nobody is harmed, supposing it done amongst persons considered as separate from the rest of mankind. But yet this hinders not but it is a vice of deep dye when the same thing is done in a society wherein modesty, the great virtue of the weaker sex, has often other rules and bounds set by custom and reputation,

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