The Four Pivotal Virtues—Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

The Four Cardinal Virtues: From the Latin Word for the Hinge of a Door

C.S. Lewis gives us a glimpse of what it was like for him addressing a nation at war on the BBC: "If you are allowed to talk for only ten minutes, pretty well everything else has to be sacrificed to brevity. One of my chief reasons for dividing morality up into three parts (with my picture of the ships sailing in convoy in the last chapter) was that this seemed the shortest way of covering the ground. Here I want to give some idea of another way in which the subject has been divided by old writers." The four cardinal virtues "are those which all civilized people recognize.... The word cardinal has nothing to do with Cardinals in the Roman Church. It comes from a Latin word meaning 'the hinge of a door.' These were called 'cardinal' virtues because they are ... pivotal." They are PRUDENCE, TEMPERANCE, JUSTICE and FORTITUDE.

 
Prudence = Practical Sense. This means "taking the trouble to think out what you are doing and what is likely to come of it.... Because Christ said we could only get into His world by being like children, many Christians have the idea that, provided you are 'good,' it does not matter being a fool. But that is a misunderstanding. In the first place, most children show plenty of prudence about doing the things they are really interested in, and think them out quite sensibly. In the second place, as St. Paul points out (Ephesians 4:14), Christ never meant that we were to remain children in intelligence: on the contrary. He told us to be not only 'as harmless as doves,' but also 'as wise as serpents' (Matthew 10:16). He wants a child's heart, but a grown-up's head. He wants us to be simple, single-minded, affectionate, and teachable, as good children are; but He also wants every bit of intelligence we have to be alert at its job, and in first-class fighting trim. God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers. If you are thinking of becoming a Christian ... you are embarking on something that is going to take the whole of you, brains and all.... Christianity is an education itself. That is why an uneducated believer like Bunyan was able to write a book that has astonished the whole world" (John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress).

 
Temperance = Moderation in All Things.  "Temperance referred not specially to drink, but to all pleasures; and it meant not abstaining, but going the right length and no further.... One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting everyone else to give it up. That is not the Christian way.  An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons—marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.... A man who makes his ... motorcycle the center of his life, or a woman who devotes all her thoughts to clothes ... is being just as 'intemperate' as someone who gets drunk every evening. Of course, it doesn't show on the outside so easily ... but God is not deceived by externals."

 

 
Justice = Fairness. "Justice means much more than the sort of thing that goes on in law courts. It is the old name for everything we should now call 'fairness'; it includes honesty, give and take, truthfulness, keeping promises." C.S. Lewis provides an example of this promise-keeping aspect of justice in his chapter on marriage.

Fortitude = Courage. "Fortitude includes both kinds of courage—the kind that faces danger as well as the kind that 'sticks it' under pain. 'Guts' is perhaps the nearest modern equivalent." C.S. Lewis spoke of this elsewhere in one of his first books, The Abolition of Man. This thought-provoking quote is one of the most famous from it: "We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise.  We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."

"There is a difference between doing some particular just or temperate action and being a just or temperate man.... A man who perseveres in doing just actions gets in the end a certain quality of character.... It is that quality ... we mean when we talk of a virtue.... Right actions done for the wrong reason do not help to build the internal quality or character.... We might think that God wanted simply obedience.... He really wants people of a particular sort ... for ... the deep, strong unshakable kind of happiness [He] intends for us."

Pictorial Chapter Highlights

First-Class Fighting Trim: Military

First-Class Fighting Trim: Boxing

A Book That Still Astonishes the World

 You Decide for Yourself!

Highlights from chapter 2: The Cardinal Virtues, book 3: Christian Behavior in Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.  Click here for a clear view of how this chapter relates to the whole book.

We Have Cause to Be Uneasy—Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

"We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place ... you want to be.... If you are on the wrong road ... the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. We have all seen this when doing arithmetic. When I have started a sum the wrong way, the sooner I admit this and go back and start again, the faster I shall get on. There is nothing progressive about being pig headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world, It is pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake."

"We have only got as far as a Somebody or Something behind the Moral Law. We are not taking anything from the Bible or the Churches; we are trying to see what we can find out about this Somebody on our own steam.... We have two bits of evidence about the Somebody"—the Mind behind the Moral Law—"one is the universe He has made.... I think we should have to conclude that He was a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place), but ... the universe is [also] a very dangerous ... place." The Moral Law is better evidence than the created universe "because it is inside information.... The Being behind the universe is intensely interested in right conduct—in fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty and truthfulness," but not "indulgent or soft.... The Moral Law ... is as hard as nails. It tells you ... the straight thing and it does not seem to care how painful ... dangerous, or difficult it is to do."

"It is no use ... saying that if there is a God of that sort ... then you do not like Him and are not going to bother about Him.... One part of you is on His side and really agrees with His disapproval of human greed and trickery and exploitation.... God is the only comfort; He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger—according to the way you react to it. And we have all reacted the wrong way."

"Christianity simply does not make any sense until you have faced the sort of facts I have been describing. Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing ... to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need any forgiveness. It is after you have realized that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the Law, and that you have broken that Law and put yourself wrong with that Power—it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk. When you know you are sick, you will listen to the doctor. When you have realized that our position is nearly desperate you will begin to understand what the Christians are talking about. They offer an explanation of how we got into our present state of both hating goodness and loving it. They offer an explanation of how God can be this impersonal mind at the back of the Moral Law and yet also a Person. They tell you how the demands of this Law—which you and I cannot meet—have been met on our behalf [and] how God Himself becomes a man to save man from the disapproval of God."

"The Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it begins in the dismay I have been describing, and it is no use at all trying to go on to that comfort without first going through that dismay. In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get neither comfort nor truth—only ... wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair. Most of us have got over ... wishful thinking about international politics. It is time we did the same about religion."

Christianity Honestly Faces Why We Are Ill at Ease and Offers Hope

Highlights from chapter 5: We Have Cause to Be Uneasy, book 1: Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe in Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.  Click here for a clear view of how this chapter relates to the whole book.