Virtue Beyond Good Nature — The Essays of Montaigne

Montaigne says virtue is more than good nature: the word imports something greater and more active than being gently drawn to reason by a happy disposition. He who masters revenge after provocation acts virtuously, while natural sweetness only does well; virtue presupposes difficulty and an opponent, which is why we call God good but not virtuous. Cruelty he ranks among the basest vices, worse when seasoned with sport and custom, and mildness in power earns his praise.

Caesar appears mild in his revenges, tempering punishment where others would spill blood for display; clemency in command contrasts with the appetite for unnecessary hurt. Hunting for pleasure troubles Montaigne deeply: we call it sport while teaching children delight in killing, and cowardice and cruelty intertwine when pain is inflicted from safety. He cannot well refuse to play with his dog when it unseasonably importunes him, yet condemns torturing beasts for pastime; small tenderness and large savagery can live in the same household.

He weighs laws, punishments, and war's ordinary horrors against virtue's demand for restraint, confessing his own debauches were not the worst sort yet accusing himself more severely than others because he opposed too little resistance. His judgment was never infected by them, but he inclines too much to the other side of the balance and must moderate faults so they do not cling to worse company. Facility and habit degrade the soul; Alexander's friends said cruelty earned him a harsher body at death, and Montaigne contracts his faults to keep them from mixing with worse vices.

Ancient peoples honoured animals: Turks maintained hospitals for them, Athenians freed temple mules, Agrigentines buried beloved horses and dogs, Egyptians embalmed cats and crocodiles, and Plutarch's Xantippus scrupled selling a long-serving ox. Montaigne closes that virtue refuses facility for a companion and rejects the easy descending way regular custom invites; tenderness toward suffering is closer to true strength than theatrical hardness, and the path of least resistance is the path that corrupts. What looks like natural goodness may be only disposition; what looks like hardness may be only habit. He asks us to measure virtue by the struggle required, not by how easily a nature already mild can spare an enemy.