On Virtue

"My child, there is no happiness without courage nor virtue without struggle. The word virtue comes from strength. Strength is the foundation of all virtue. Virtue belongs only to a being that is weak by nature and strong by will. It is in this that the merit of the just man consists.... I have waited for you to be in a position to understand me before explaining this much profaned word to you. So long as virtue costs nothing to practice, there is little need to know it. This need comes when the passions are awakened. It has already come for you. Raising you in all the simplicity of nature, I have not preached painful duties to you but instead have protected you from the vices that make these duties painful. I have made lying more useless than odious to you; I have taught you not so much to give unto each what belongs to him as to care only for what is yours. I have made you good rather than virtuous. But he who is only good remains so only as long as he takes pleasure in being so. Goodness is broken and perishes under the impact of the human passions. The man who is only good is good only for himself.

Who, then, is the virtuous man? It is he who knows how to conquer his affections; for then he follows his reason and his conscience; he does his duty; he keeps himself in order, and nothing can make him deviate from it. Up to now you were only apparently free. You had only the precarious freedom of a slave to whom nothing has been commanded. Now be really free. Learn to become your own master. Command your heart, Emile, and you will be virtuous.

Here, then, is another apprenticeship, and this apprenticeship is more painful than the first; for nature delivers us from the ills it imposes on us, or it teaches us to bear them. But nature says nothing to us about those which come from ourselves. It abandons us to ourselves. It lets us, as victims of our own passions, succumb to our vain sorrows and then glorify ourselves for the tears at which we should have blushed.

You now have your first passion. It is perhaps the only one worthy of you. [i.e. the love of a chaste, modest, and virtuous woman. --ed.] If you know how to rule it like a man, it will be the last. You will subject all the others, and you will obey only the passion for virtue."

-- Rousseau


Rousseau, being a deist and a naturist, of course doesn't understand grace. And he is theologically mistaken in a sentence I have omitted from the quote, when he says that God is good but not virtuous, because it takes no effort for Him to be good (Jesus, in his humanity, exerted the supreme effort in undergoing all temptations and sufferings known to man).

Apart from those shortcomings, however, this is no less than inspiring. We modern Christians tend to think almost exclusively of grace, and not of effort. But although God forgives us for our failings, he wants us to learn to live virtuously in this life: we cannot, because we know we will be forgiven, neglect or refuse to try to be good. It is for this reason that our loving Father allows us to be injured and insulted; to be rejected and ridiculed; to have our dreams crushed and our hearts broken. For only through overcoming the trials and vicissitudes of this life can we become truly good.