C.S. Lewis wrote in his book ‘Mere Christianity:
“One great piece of mischief has been done by the modern restriction of the word Temperance to the question of drink. It helps people to forget that you can be just as intemperate about a lot of other things. A man who makes his golf or his motorcycle the center of his life, or a woman who devotes all thoughts to clothes or bridge or her dog is being just as “intemperate” as someone who gets drunk every evening. Of course, it does not show on the outside so easily: bridge mania or golf mania does not make you fall down in the middle of the road. But God is not deceived by externals.
Justice means much more than the sort of thing that goes on in the law courts. It is the old name for everything we should call “fairness”; it includes honesty, give and take, truthfulness, keeping promises, and all that side of life. And 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 English. You will notice, of course, that you cannot practice any of the other virtues very long without bringing this one into play.
There is one further point about virtues that ought to be noticed. There is a difference between doing some particular just or temperate action and being a just or temperate man. Someone who is not a good tennis player may now and then make a good shot. What you mean by a good player is the man whose eye and muscles and nerves have been so trained by making innumerable good shots that they can now be relied on. They have a certain tone or quality which is there even when he is not playing, just as a mathematician’s mind has a certain habit and outlook which is there even when he is not doing mathematics. In the same way a man who perseveres in doing just actions gets in the end a certain quality of character. Now it is that quality rather than the particular actions which we mean when we talk of virtue.
The distinction is important for the following reason. If we thought only of particular actions we might encourage wrong ideas.
(1) We might think that, provided you did the right thing, it did not matter how or why you did it—whether you did it willingly or unwillingly, sulkily or cheerfully, through fear of public opinion or for its own sake. But the truth is that right actions done for the wrong reason do not help to build the internal quality or character that really matters. (If the bad tennis player hits very hard not because he sees that a very hard stroke is required, but because he has lost his temper, his stroke might possibly, by luck, help him win that particular game; but it will not be helping him to become a reliable player.
(2) We might think that God wanted simply obedience to a set of rules: whereas He really wants people of a particular sort.
(3) We might think that the “virtues” were necessary only for this present life—that in the other world we could stop being just because there is nothing to quarrel about and stop being brave because there is no danger. Now it is quite true that there will probably be no occasion for just or courageous acts in the next world, but there will be every occasion for being the sort of people that we can become only as a result of doing such acts here. The point is not that God will refuse you admission to His eternal world if you have not got certain qualities of character: the point is that if people have not got at least the beginnings of those qualities inside them, then no possible external conditions could make a “Heaven” for them—that is, make them happy with the deep, strong, unshakable kind of happiness God intends for us.” ~C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Macmillan Publishing Co., 1943, 1945,1952) 74-76 (pocket book)
(Posts with a preamble asterisk * are for a more general audience, and not specific to teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)
