This
conception of virtue and vice as states of health or sickness, the one
being in itself a good, and the other in itself an evil, was a
fundamental proposition in the ethics of Plato. It was admitted, but
only to a subsidiary place, by the Stoics, and has passed more or less
into all the succeeding systems. It is especially favourable to large
and elevating conceptions of self-culture, for it leads men to dwell
much less upon isolated acts of virtue or vice than upon the habitual
condition of mind from which they spring.
It is possible, in the third place, to argue in favour of virtue by
offering as a motive that sense of pleasure which follows the deliberate
performance of a virtuous act. This emotion is a distinct and isolated
gratification following a distinct action, and may therefore be easily
separated from that habitual placidity of temper which results from the
extinction of vicious and perturbing impulses. It is this theory which
is implied in the common exhortations to enjoy "the luxury of doing
good," and though especially strong in acts of benevolence, in which
case sympathy with the happiness created intensifies the feeling, this
pleasure attends every kind of virtue.
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