*The term virtue* is employed in various senses, which, though they cover a wide range, are yet very closely allied to one another, and to the initial conception in which they all have birth. Its primitive signification, as its structure(6) indicates, is _manliness_. Now what preëminently distinguishes, not so much the human race from the lower animals, as the full-grown and strong man from the feebler members of his own race, is the power of resolute, strenuous, persevering conflict and resistance. It is the part of a man worthy of the name to maintain his own position, to hold his ground against all invaders, to show a firm front against all hostile force, and to prefer death to conquest. All this is implied in the Greek and Roman idea of virtue, and is included in the Latin _virtus_, when it is used with reference to military transactions, so that its earliest meaning was, simply, _military prowess_. But with the growth of ethical philosophy, and especially with the cultivation by the Stoics of the sterner and hardier traits of moral excellence, men learned that there was open to them a more perilous battle-ground, a severer conflict, and a more glorious victory, than in mere physical warfare,—that there was a higher type of manliness in self-conquest, in the resistance and subdual of appetite and passion, in the maintenance of integrity and purity under intense temptation and amidst vicious surroundings, than in the proudest achievements of military valour. Virtue thus came to mean, not moral goodness in itself considered, but goodness militant and triumphant.(7) But *words which have a complex signification always tend to slough off a part of their meaning*; and, especially, words that denote a state or property, together with its mode of growth or of manifestation, are prone to drop the latter, even though it may have given them root and form. Thus the term _virtue_ is often used to denote the qualities that constitute human excellence, without direct reference to the conflict with evil, whence it gets its name, and in which those qualities have their surest growth and most conspicuous manifestation. There is still, however, a tacit reference to temptation and conflict in our use of the term. Though we employ it to denote goodness that has stood no very severe test, we use it only where such a test may be regarded as possible. Though we call a man virtuous who has been shielded from all corrupt examples and influences, and has had no inducements to be otherwise than good, we do not apply the epithet to the little child who cannot by any possibility have been exposed to temptation. Nor yet would we apply it to the perfect purity and holiness of the Supreme Being, who “cannot be tempted with evil.”