• Author: B-6594
• Editor: B-6591
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume 2
• Page Number:
• Date: 10 29 1913
• Tags:
• advice

MORAL ESSAYS By B 6594 THE VIRTUOUS MIND A virtuous mind in a fair body is indeed a fair picture in a good light, and therefore it is no wonder that it makes the beautiful sex all over charms. As virtue in general is of an amiable and lovely nature, there are some particular kinds of it which are more so than others, and these are such as dispose us to do good to mankind. Temperance and abstinence, faith and devotion, are in themselves, perhaps, as laudable as any other virtues; but those which make a man popular and beloved, are justice, charity, munificence, and, in short, all the good qualities which render us beneficial to each other. For this reason even an extravagant man, who has nothing else to recommend him but a false, generosity, is often more beloved and esteemed than a person of a much more finished character, who is defective in this particular. The two great armaments of virtue, which show her in the most advantageous views, and make her altogether lovely, are cheerfulness and good nature. These generally go together, as a man cannot be agreeable to others who is not easy within himself. They are both very requisite in a virtuous mind, to keep out melancholy from the many serious thoughts it is engaged in, and to hinder its natural hatred of vice from soaring into severity and censoriousness A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable: who believes there is no virtue but on his own side, and that there are not men as honest as himself who may differ from him in some principles. Men may oppose one another in some particulars, but ought not to carry their hatred to those qualities which are of so amiable a nature in themselves, and have nothing to do with the points in dispute. Men of virtue, though of different interests, ought to consider themselves as more nearly united with one another, than with the vicious part of mankind who embark with them in the same civil concerns. Esteem virtue though in a foe, and abhor vice though in a friend.