Before proceeding with this analysis, we must examine the question of choice.  To be praiseworthy, an act must be voluntary.  An act is not voluntary if it is the outcome of external compulsion.  Where there is a margin of choice, an act must still, on the whole, be regarded as voluntary, though done “against our will.”  Of properly involuntary acts, we must distinguish between the unintentional and the unwilling, meaning by the latter, in effect, what the agent would not have done if he had known.

Choice is not the same thing as a voluntary act; nor is it desire, or emotion, or exactly “wish,” since we may wish for, but cannot make choice of, the unattainable.  Nor is it Deliberation—­rather, it is the act of decision following deliberation.  If man has the power to say yes, he has equally the power to say no, and is master of his own action.  If we make a wrong choice through ignorance for which we are ourselves responsible, the ignorance itself is culpable, and cannot excuse the wrong choice; and so, when the choice is the outcome of a judgment disordered by bad habits, men cannot escape by saying they were made so—­they made themselves so.  To say they “could not help” doing wrong things is only an evasion.

II.—­THE MORAL VIRTUES EXAMINED

Virtues, then, are habits, issuing in acts corresponding to those by which the habit was established, directed by Right Reason, every such act being voluntary, and the whole process a voluntary process.

We may now turn to the analysis of the several virtues.

Courage has to do with fear.  Not all kinds; for there are some things we ought to fear, such as dishonour and pauperism, the fear of which is compatible with dauntless courage, while the coward may not fear them.  Fearlessness of what is in our control, and endurance of what is not, for the sake of true honour, constitute the courageous habit.  Its excess is rashness or foolhardiness, the deficiency cowardice.  Akin to it, but still spurious, is the courage of which the motive is not Honour but honours or reputation.  Spurious also is the courage which arises from the knowledge that the danger is infinitesimal; so is that which is born of blind anger, or of elated self-confidence, or of mere unconsciousness of danger.  True Courage lies in resisting a temptation to pleasure or to escaping pain, and, above all, death, for Honour’s sake.  The exercise of a virtue may be very far from pleasant, except, of course, in so far as the end for which it was exercised is achieved.

Temperance is concerned with pleasures of the senses; mainly of touch, in a much less degree of taste; but not of sight, hearing, or smell, except indirectly.  Of carnal pleasures, some are common to all, some have an individual application.  Temperance lies in being content to do without them, and desiring them only so far as they conduce to health and comfort.  The characteristic of intemperance is that it has to do with pleasures only, not with pains.  Hence, it is more purely voluntary than cowardice, as being less influenced by perturbing outward circumstances as concerns the particular case, though not the habit.