Unseasonable Virtues

Unseasonable Virtues by Samuel M. Crothers

“Unseasonable Virtues” argues that human judgment is shaped not only by permanent standards of right and wrong but also by changing expectations of time, custom, mood, and social development. Though philosophers may dismiss Time as unreal, the essayist values temporal sequence because life, drama, expectation, and the meaning of actions depend on what comes before and after. A good thing done at the wrong time may appear absurd, offensive, or even wicked. The essay calls for charity toward those whose virtues are belated or premature. Saint Cerbonius, bishop of Piombino, is accused of neglecting religious duties because citizens find the cathedral empty at the customary hour while he and his clergy are at breakfast. Investigation reveals that they have already celebrated mass before dawn. His error is not irreligion but unseasonable virtue: his early rising inconveniences the people. The author distinguishes such a breach of temporary convention from deliberate violation of enduring moral law. Many quarrels, the essay suggests, arise because people’s moods and rhythms do not coincide. People may share convictions, humor, seriousness, or tempers while expressing them at opposite moments, so that each misjudges the other. Literary artists resent readers who use serious art for amusement or rest, yet those same artists may treat civic duties lightly in order to gather “local color.” Creatures such as the owl or lark also seem idle only because they keep different hours from human observers. The author extends this idea to intellectual and cultural development. Individuals repeatedly revert from civilization to primitiveness according to the subject at hand: a man may discuss disinterested virtue and then become fiercely combative over a dogfight, afterward returning calmly to religious reading. To think well of others, one should place them in their proper chronological setting. The isolated “poor whites” of Southern mountains become “contemporary ancestors” when understood as preserving the habits of an earlier generation. Illiterate or isolated people may likewise resemble ancient thinkers, and the author describes an amateur cosmogonist whose self-contained theory of the universe recalls early Greek physics, as well as the inventor of an “Amphibious Vehicle,” a literal wheel within a wheel inspired by Ezekiel. Belated philosophy or invention may be harmless, but belated morality is more painful. Ethical revolutions change the standards by which reputations are judged, leaving formerly respected people stranded in a new moral world. The essay compares such a person to a polar bear on a melting iceberg. The temperance movement made the idea of a pious drunkard grotesque, while the recognition of the slave trade’s evil transformed public views of slave traders. Ezra Stiles could praise a former Guinea captain as charitable, devout, upright, and beloved, treating his trade as scarcely more than an incidental blemish; within years, Stiles himself called the slave trade iniquitous, and later generations regarded it as piracy. The essay concludes that a similar awakening of social conscience is condemning business practices once tolerated beside private respectability. The Christian monopolist, who destroys competitors through every available trick, may still regard himself as righteous, as the Guinea captain once did. His contemporaries praise his private virtues, but a newer generation that names his methods robbery may find such praise absurd.

By Samuel M. Crothers · First published 1921 · Genre: Essay, Philosophical Essay, Social Commentary · 5,044 words

First lines

There are certain philosophers who have fallen into the habit of speaking slightingly of Time and Space. Time, they say, is only a poor concept of ours corresponding to no ultimate reality, and Space is little better. They are merely mental receptacles into which we put our sensations. We are assured that could we get at the right point of view we should see that real existence is timeless. Of course we cannot get at the right point of view, but that does not matter.

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philosophical essay · humorous social criticism · time and temporality · moral judgment · social conventions · ethical relativism · enduring moral law · changing moral standards · unseasonable virtue · charity and tolerance · misunderstanding · human relationships

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