Courage

 

This image should need no caption for any Canadian

C.S. Lewis gives a pre-eminence to courage among the virtues: “Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.” Without courage, one goes with the flow, goes along with everyone else, avoids making moral choices.

Not that courage guarantees that the choices made will be moral. Hitler was a courageous man; the Fascists made a cult of courage. It is necessary, but not sufficient, for general morality.

This has interesting implications. If a society has grown decadent—which is to say, if it has succumbed to vice—it will devalue courage. Courage becomes a threat to the social consensus. Conformity will be valued instead.

Accordingly, a decadent society will scorn the military—contributing to its eventual collapse. It will scorn the cowboy, the entrepreneur, the eccentric; a moral society will celebrate them.

It will also scorn men, inasmuch as courage is a peculiarly masculine virtue. Women too can be courageous—witness Margaret Thatcher, Madeleine de Vercheres, or the Virgin Mary’s “behold the handmaid of the Lord.” But the more common expression of female courage is in cleaving to and supporting a courageous man against the world. Just as men most naturally manifest kindness by cleaving to and supporting a kind woman. The two operate as a team.

All of this sounds like a condemnation of the current state of our society, doesn’t it?