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    Virtue and Vice: A Dictionary of the Good Life
    Virtue and Vice: A Dictionary of the Good Life
    Virtue and Vice: A Dictionary of the Good Life
    Ebook65 pages1 hour

    Virtue and Vice: A Dictionary of the Good Life

    By C. S. Lewis

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    A Pocket Guide to Goodness

    Few writers have inspired more readers than author C. S. Lewis -- both through the enchanting volumes of his children's series and through his captivating adult classics such as Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, and numerous others.

    Drawn from many works, this volume collects dictionary-like entries of Lewis's keenest observations and best advice on how to live a truly good life. From ambition to charity, despair to duty, hope to humility, Lewis delivers clear, illuminating definitions to live by.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJun 16, 2009
    ISBN9780061950209
    Virtue and Vice: A Dictionary of the Good Life
    Author

    C. S. Lewis

    Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a fellow and tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954 when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement.

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      Book preview

      Virtue and Vice - C. S. Lewis

      Virtue and Vice

      A Dictionary of the Good Life

      C. S. Lewis

      Edited by Patricia S. Klein

      Contents

      Introduction

      Begin Reading

      Index of Sources Quoted

      About the Author

      Other Books in this series

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

      INTRODUCTION

      Vice and virtue. To the modern ear these words convey meanings twisted by our own culture and behavior. The word vice sounds benign, describing fundamentally harmless habits and attitudes, the kinds of things normal people do and feel. The word virtue, by contrast, communicates a prudish self-righteousness, the sort of character we’re not interested in being around, much less becoming.

      Of course, the point of redefining these terms is to neutralize them so we can prove that we’re not really so bad after all. If vice is just a few bad acts, the occasional vulgarity, and, yes, okay, a bad temper—but who’s perfect?—then I’m better than most folks. And if virtue is an annoying holier-than-thou creature, well, let’s just set the record straight by proving that that person’s not really so great, certainly not better than we are.

      Both virtue and vice have been gutted, stripped of their power, and left empty of truth. Sadly, eviscerating the words does nothing to alter the conditions the words originally described, and then, more sadly still, we are left with no words to describe powerful and real matters. Without the words, how can we ever hope to learn, to understand, to change?

      To C. S. Lewis, these words were not empty, bereft of meaning. Virtue and vice were precise terms, describing specific and vital aspects of good and evil. And for him, good and evil were the ultimate reality. In Lewis’s writing, we see a vitality in the workings of good and evil in our lives. Lewis believed, We Christians think man lives for ever. Therefore, what really matters is those little marks or twists on the central, inside part of the soul which are going to turn it, in the long run, into a heavenly or a hellish creature. Virtue and vice are not simply passive indicators of character; it turns out that they are also active predictors of future character.

      How does that happen? Well, it seems we are participants in shaping our own character. We get to choose; we decide whether it will be evil or good that forms our selves. But it’s never the big decisions that trip us up, is it? It’s the little choices—the petty untruth, the hidden pilfering, the secret lewdness, the lick of pride or cruelty or selfishness. Each small indulgence makes the next one easier. And it is the small kindness, the unexpected act of courage or forgiveness or charity or duty—each decision for good or virtue—that makes our next decision for good that much easier. Lewis says it best: Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.

      Few writers are better than Lewis at exploring and explaining the nuances of good and evil. Gathered here are pieces of Lewis’s most vibrant writing on the fundamental matters of virtue and vice—writing in which he unwraps, unmasks, disarms, engages, and in the end, lays before us truth, vivid and irresistible. What we do with this truth, he no doubt would say, is our choice.

      —Patricia S. Klein

      AMBITION. Ambition! We must be careful what we mean by it. If it means the desire to get ahead of other people—which is what I think it does mean—then it is bad. If it means simply wanting to do a thing well, then it is good. It isn’t wrong for an actor to want to act his part as well as it can possibly be acted, but the wish to have his name in bigger type than the other actors is a bad one.

      CHARACTER. 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 a 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 a ‘virtue’.

      CHARITY. ‘Charity’ now means simply what used to be called ‘alms’—that

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