A. No, it is not a crime, but a misfortune; it is what the ancients call an unlucky fatality; but even then we have it yet in our power to acquire them; for, as soon as we know on what physical elements such or such a quality is founded, we can promote its growth, and hasten its developments, by a skillful management of those elements; and in this consists the science of education, which, according as it is directed, meliorates or degrades individuals, or the whole race, to such a pitch as totally to change their nature and inclinations; for which reason it is of the greatest importance to be acquainted with the laws of nature by which those operations and changes are certainly and necessarily effected.
Q. Why do you say that activity is a virtue according to the law of nature?
A. Because the man who works and employs his time usefully, derives from it a thousand precious advantages to his existence. If he is born poor, his labor furnishes him with subsistence; and still more so, if he is sober, continent, and prudent, for he soon acquires a competency, and enjoys the sweets of life; his very labor gives him virtues; for, while he occupies his body and mind, he is not affected with unruly desires, time does not lie heavy on him, he contracts mild habits, he augments his strength and health, and attains a peaceful and happy old age.
Q. Are idleness and sloth vices in the law of nature?
A. Yes, and the most pernicious of all vices, for they lead to all the others. By idleness and sloth man remains ignorant, he forgets even the science he had acquired, and falls into all the misfortunes which accompany ignorance and folly; by idleness and sloth man, devoured with disquietude, in order to dissipate it, abandons himself to all the desires of his senses, which, becoming every day more inordinate, render him intemperate, gluttonous, lascivious, enervated, cowardly, vile, and contemptible. By the certain effect of all those vices, he ruins his fortune, consumes his health, and terminates his life in all the agonies of sickness and of poverty.
Q. From what you say, one would think that poverty was a vice?
A. No, it is not a vice; but it is still less a virtue, for it is by far more ready to injure than to be useful; it is even commonly the result, or the beginning of vice, for the effect of all individual vices is to lead to indigence, and to the privation of the necessaries of life; and when a man is in want of necessaries, he is tempted to procure them by vicious means, that is to say, by means injurious to society. All the individual virtues tend, on the contrary, to procure to a man an abundant subsistence; and when he has more than he can consume, it is much easier for him to give to others, and to practice the actions useful to society.
Q. Do you look upon opulence as a virtue?
A. No; but still less as a vice: it is the use alone of wealth that can be called virtuous or vicious, according as it is serviceable or prejudicial to man and to society. Wealth is an instrument, the use and employment alone of which determine its virtue or vice.
CHAPTER IX. ON CLEANLINESS.
Q. Why is cleanliness included among the virtues?
A. Because it is, in reality, one of the most important among them, on account of its powerful influence over the health and preservation of the body. Cleanliness, as well in dress as in residence, obviates the pernicious effects of the humidity, baneful odors, and contagious exhalations, proceeding from all things abandoned to putrefaction. Cleanliness, maintains free transpiration; it renews the air, refreshes the blood, and disposes even the mind to cheerfulness.
From this it appears that persons attentive to the cleanliness of their bodies and habitations are, in general, more healthy, and less subject to disease, than those who live in filth and nastiness; and it is further remarked, that cleanliness carries with it, throughout all the branches of domestic administration, habits of order and arrangement, which are the chief means and first elements of happiness.
Q. Uncleanliness or filthiness is, then, a real vice?
A. Yes, as real a one as drunkenness, or as idleness, from which in a great measure it is derived. Uncleanliness is the second, and often the first, cause of many inconveniences, and even of grievous disorders; it is a fact in medicine, that it brings on the itch, the scurf, tetters, leprosies, as much as the use of tainted or sour aliments; that it favors the contagious influence of the plague and malignant fevers, that it even produces them in hospitals and prisons; that it occasions rheumatisms, by incrusting the skin with dirt, and thereby preventing transpiration; without reckoning the shameful inconvenience of being devoured by vermin-- the foul appendage of misery and depravity.
Most ancient legislators, therefore, considered cleanliness, which they called purity, as one of the essential dogmas of their religions. It was for this reason that they expelled from society, and even punished corporeally those who were infected with distempers produced by uncleanliness; that they instituted and consecrated ceremonies of ablutions baths, baptisms, and of purifications, even by fire and the aromatic fumes of incense, myrrh, benjamin, etc., so that the entire system of pollutions, all those rites of clean and unclean things, degenerated since into abuses and prejudices, were only founded originally on the judicious observation, which wise and learned men had made, of the extreme influence that cleanliness in dress and abode exercises over the health of the body, and by an immediate consequence over that of the mind and moral faculties.
Thus all the individual virtues have for their object, more or less direct, more or less near, the preservation of the man who practises them and by the preservation of each man, they lead to that of families and society, which are composed of the united sum of individuals.
CHAPTER X. ON DOMESTIC VIRTUES.
Q. What do you mean be domestic virtues?
A. I mean the practice of actions useful to a family, supposed to live in the same house.*
* Domestic is derived from the Latin word domus, a house.
Q. What are those virtues?
A. They are economy, paternal love, filial love, conjugal love, fraternal love, and the accomplishment of the duties of master and servant.
Q. What is economy?
A. It is, according to the most extensive meaning of the word, the proper administration of every thing that concerns the existence of the family or house; and as subsistence holds the first rank, the word economy in confined to the employment of money for the wants of life.
Q. Why is economy a virtue?
A. Because a man who makes no useless expenses acquires a superabundancy, which is true wealth, and by means of which he procures for himself and his family everything that is really convenient and useful; without mentioning his securing thereby resources against accidental and unforeseen losses, so that he and his family enjoy an agreeable and undisturbed competency, which is the basis of human felicity.
Q. Dissipation and prodigality, therefore, are vices?
A. Yes, for by them man, in the end, is deprived of the necessaries of life; he falls into poverty and wretchedness; and his very friends, fearing to be obliged to restore to him what he has spent with or for them, avoid him as a debtor does his creditor, and he remains abandoned by the whole world.
Q. What is paternal love?
A. It is the assiduous care taken by parents to make their children contract the habit of every action useful to themselves and to society.
Q. Why is paternal tenderness a virtue in parents?
A. Because parents, who rear their children in those habits, procure for themselves, during the course of their lives, enjoyments and helps that give a sensible satisfaction at every instant, and which assure to them, when advanced in years, supports and consolations against the wants and calamities of all kinds with which old age is beset.
Q. Is paternal love a common virtue?
A. No; notwithstanding the ostentation made of it by parents, it is a rare virtue. They do not love their children, they caress and spoil them. In them they love only the agents of their will, the instruments of their power, the trophies of their vanity, the pastime of their idleness. It is not so much the welfare of their children that they propose to themselves, as their submission and obedience; and if among children so many are seen ungrateful for benefits received, it is because there are among parents as many despotic and ignorant benefactors.