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The Structure of Virtue

The human mind grasps objects more easily when it can divide them into categories. This is a fact of human life, found the world over. It is also the case, however, that one given object may admit of many different sorts of divisions. The object "animals" may be divided into those that swim, those that crawl, and those that fly; or into the wild and the tame; or into the edible and inedible; or into the Lynnaean taxonomy that we all learned as schoolchildren; or into more recent taxonomies based on cladistics; and according to many other means.

Excellence in human beings, also called in English "virtue," from the Latin "virtus," is no exception to this rule. Virtue taken as a whole is best pursued by being divided into several virtues which may be pursued separately. There are, however, many ways of doing this, and cultures the world over have produced lists 4, or 5, or 7, or 9 sub-virtures which, taken together, produce the entire quality Virtue.

Here are several examples.

For Plato and his contemporaries, the highest virtues are four, and these are Courage, Justice, Temperance, and Wisdom.

The Neoplatonists elaborated on Plato's scheme by producing a set of 7 gradations of virtue, fit for the various stages of human development.

The Christians also elaborated on this scheme, labeling the Four as the Cardinal or Natural Virtues, and appending to them the Supernatural or Theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity.

Confucius also taught virtue, but his categories are different. For Confucius and his intellectual descendants, the Five Constant Virtues are Benevolence, Righteousness, Trustworthiness, Propriety, and Wisdom. (Those are the English translations, in any case; the Chinese words do not always translate exactly.

What matters is not what particular organization of the virtues that one chooses to follow, but only that one chooses a set, and follows them.

How We Become Virtuous

Virtue is not natural to human beings except in a very limited sense. A newborn baby is able to eat, cry, sleep and defecate, and not much else. While natural aptitudes exist, so that one, owing to a larger mental capacity, has a greater aptitude toward Wisdom, while another, owing to a naturally strong constitution, is more given to Courage, the virtues are only attained through learning.

In On the Virtues of Women Plutarch of Chaeronea asked whether virtue was the same in men as it is in women, and answered that it must be so. If painting is the same art whether done by a man or a woman, and if poetry is the same, why would virtue be different? Courage consists in the ability to endure steadfastly through both danger and pleasure, as Plato taught in the Laws. This is the same whether it is a man or a woman tempted to flee from danger, or to pleasure.

Moreover, if, whilst we go to make appear that the poetic or comic art is not one thing in men and another in women, we compare Sappho's verses with Anacreon's, or the Sibylline oracles with those of Bacis, can any one justly blame this way of argumentation, because it insinuates a credence into the pleased and delighted hearers? No one surely would say this. Neither can a man truly any waybetter learn the resemblance and the difference between feminine and virile virtue than by comparing together lives with lives, exploits with exploits, as the products of some great art; duly considering whether the magnanimity of Semiramis carries with it the same character and impression with that of Sesostris, or the cunning of Tanaquil the same with that of King Servius, or the discretion of Porcia the same with that of Brutus, or that of Pelopidas with Timoclea,— regarding that quality of these virtues wherein lie their chiefest point and force. Moreover, virtues do admit some other differences, like peculiar colors, by reason of men's dispositions, and are assimilated to the manners and temperaments of the bodies wherein they are, yea, to the education and manner of diet. Achilles was courageous in one manner, Ajax in another; the subtlety of Ulysses was not like that of Nestor, neither were Cato and Agesilaus just after the same manner; neither was Eirene a lover of her husband as Alcestis was; neither was Cornelia magnanimous in the same way with Olympias. But, for all this, we do not say that there are many kinds of fortitude, prudence, and justice specifically distinct, so long as their individual dissimilitudes exclude none of them from the specific definitions.

Men, Women, Boys, Girls

There is a difference between a man and a woman, and there is a difference between a man and a boy. There is also a difference between a man and a man who acts like a boy. The differences are clear in each case:

A man is an adult human who possesses the virtues, and who takes the masculine role in acts of generation. A woman is an adult human who possesses the virtues in whole or in part, and who takes the feminine role in acts of generation.

Make no mistake about what masculinity and femininity are as they pertain to generation. To take the masculine role in generation means to participate in generation by providing semen. The feminine role in generation means to participate in generation by providing an ovum. Considered with respect to creation as a whole, masculinity means to create by going outside of oneself, while femininity means to create by drawing something from the outside into oneself. Masculinity and femininity in this sense pertain only to acts of creation. To attend a party is masculinity; to host a party, femininity. In relation to creative activity, masculinity and femininity have no other meaning.

A boy is an immature human male, who necessarily does not yet possess the virtues, because he has not yet had the opportunity to attain them.

A man who acts like a boy is a mature human male who lacks the virtues, because he has refused to attain them.

From this it is easy enough to define a girl, and a woman who acts like a girl.

Now a man who acts like a man is called masculine, while a woman who acts like a woman is called feminine. Note, though, that "masculine" and "feminine" have here a different meaning than above, because they pertain to virtue as a whole, not to generation in particular. A man who acts like a boy is called puerile. The female equivalent, for a woman who acts like a girl, would be "puellile," and as far as I know this word does not exist. But it ought to, because men who act like boys and women who act like girls, and also men who act like girls and women who act like boys, are in very large supply right now.

More on the Topic of Virtue

Three more things need to be said on this topic before we can continue.

Though the virtues are the same in men and in women, men and women have different natural aptitudes, taken as a whole. There is a virtue which we may call gentleness or nurturing; there is another which we may call severity or strictness. Men often find strictness easier to practice than women, and women often find gentleness easier to practice than men. We can call the virtues that come more easily to women "feminine virtues," and those that come more easily to men "masculine virtues." But we can only do this if we understand that we mean men in general and women in general, and that knowing the general gives us no knowledge about the particular. Gentleness practiced by a man is still gentleness, and strictness practiced by a woman still strictness, and there will always be some men more inclined to the feminine virtues, and some women more inclined to the masculine.

The opposite to virtue is vice. However, this isn't precisely true, as virtue, as Aristotle discussed in the Nichomachaean Ethics, can also be seen as a mean between two vices. Thus Courage is a mean between cowardice and rashness, temperance a mean between gluttony and self-denial. And so on, for the entire list of virtues.

Moreover, the virtues can conflict with one another. In the Statesman, Plato gives the examples of courage and temperance, the latter of which can also be understood as self-restraint. A state whose citizens have an overabundance of courage will go to war regularly, until they either start a fight with an enemy too great for themselves, or else induce their neighbors to league against them, and are conquered. But a state whose citizens have an overabundance of temperance will suffer the same fate, as they will be unwilling to fight even when it is necessary.

Children and the Childish

Children are not naturally vicious, but they do lack virtue, having not yet attained it; thus their behavior is akin to vice, even if it isn't properly called vice. Some of these vices or semi-vices are more common in boys, others more common in girls. Social pettiness, vengefulness, and hatred of boys or men are more common vices in girls; violence, sexual profligacy, and hatred of girls or women more common in boys.

Adults who act like children are properly called vicious, because they have chosen to live without virtue.

This has been a great many words to bring us to a very simple point.

An adult male who acts like a man is masculine, and he is virtuous.

An adult male who acts like a boy is puerile, and he is vicious.

An adult male who acts like a girl is girlish, and he is also vicious.

What of an adult male who acts like a woman?

He cannot be a woman, because this requires the ability to take a feminine role in acts of generation. But he can possess those virtues which are more common to women than to men. And if that is the case, he is virtuous, not vicious. Moreover, an adult woman who possesses those virtues more common to men than to women is masculine, and she is also virtuous, not vicious. But an adult woman who possesses the vices common to boys is puerile, or boyish, and she is also vicious.

What's the Point?

This is all necessary to say because an enormous amount of nonsense has been written on this topic in recent years. In particular, on the internet, an entire cottage industry has grown up dedicated to teaching men "masculinity." This is called the "manosphere" or "mgtow" and any number of other silly names. It's been my experience that in almost every case, what is actually being taught is puerility. To possess the vices of a boy is to be vicious.

Of course, the "manosphere" came into existence as a reaction to the radical feminist movement, which, at the present time, is no mere cottage industry but a big business on the scale of oil, pharma or tobacco. This movement sought to liberate women from men, and in so doing it taught women that they only have value insofar as they are able to be men. Since most women are more naturally inclined toward the feminine than the masculine virtues, it therefore set them up for failure. It then compensated for this by blaming men, thus descending from a mere failure of femininity to a full-on embrace of girlish vice. From there, it has set about, especially through the entertainment industry, to teaching women to act not with the vices of girls but those of boys. Thus our whole society becomes vicious.

Nothing can be understood to exist without an opposite. White can be seen because of black, sweet tasted because of bitter, hardness felt because of softness. Everything, then, only exists in relation to an opposite. The same for men and women. But the opposite to a man is not a woman, but a boy, because a boy can become a man, but a woman cannot. The opposite to a woman is not a man but a girl, because a girl can become a woman, but a man cannot. Many men are only capable of the masculine virtues; a few, only of the feminine; most, a balance, tilting toward the masculine side. Similarly, many women are only capable of the feminine virtues; a few, only of the masculine; most, a balance, tilting toward the feminine side. But it is better by far for a man to have the virtues of a woman than the vices of a boy, and vice versa.

True masculinity, then, consists in embracing manhood not in opposition to womanhood, but in opposition to boyhood.