Virtue then, in its more usual sense at the present time, denotes *conduct in accordance with the right*, or with the fitness of things, on the part of one who has the power to do otherwise. But in this sense there are few, if any, perfectly virtuous men. There are, perhaps, none who are equally sensitive to all that the right requires, and it is often the deficiencies of a character that give it its reputation for distinguished excellence in some one form of virtue, the vigilance, self-discipline, and effort which might have sustained the character in a well-balanced mediocrity being so concentrated upon some single department of duty as to excite high admiration and extended praise. There may be a deficient sensitiveness to some classes of obligations, while yet there is no willing or conscious violation of the right, and in such cases the character must be regarded as virtuous. But if in any one department of duty a person is consciously false to his sense of right, even though in all other respects he conforms to the right, he cannot be deemed virtuous, nor can there be any good ground for assurance that he may not, with sufficient inducement, violate the very obligations which he now holds in the most faithful regard. This is what is meant by that saying of St. James, “Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, is guilty of all,”—not that he who commits a single offence through inadvertency or sudden temptation, is thus guilty; but he who willingly and deliberately violates the right as to matters in which he is the most strongly tempted to wrong and evil, shows an indifference to the right which will lead him to observe it only so long and so far as he finds it convenient and easy so to do.