=Natural Ability and Virtue.=--There is a tendency to use the term virtue in an abstract "moralistic" sense--a way which makes it almost Pharisaic in character. Hard and fast lines are drawn between certain traits of character labeled "virtues" and others called talents, natural abilities, or gifts of nature. Apart from deliberate or reflective nurture, modesty or generosity is no less and no more a purely natural ability than is good-humor, a turn for mechanics, or presence of mind. Every natural capacity, every talent or ability, whether of inquiring mind, of gentle affection or of executive skill, becomes a virtue when it is turned to account in supporting or extending the fabric of social values; and it turns, if not to vice at least to delinquency, when not thus utilized. The important habits conventionally reckoned virtues are barren unless they are the cumulative assemblage of a multitude of anonymous interests and capacities. Such natural aptitudes vary widely in different individuals. Their endowments and circumstances occasion and exact different virtues, and yet one person is not more or less virtuous than another because his virtues take a different form. =Changes in Virtues.=--It follows also that the meaning, or content, of virtues changes from time to time. Their abstract form, the man's attitude towards the good, remains the same. But when institutions and customs change and natural abilities are differently stimulated and evoked, ends vary, and habits of character are differently esteemed both by the individual agent and by others who judge. No social group could be maintained without patriotism and chastity, but the actual meaning of chastity and patriotism is widely different in contemporary society from what it was in savage tribes or from what we may expect it to be five hundred years from now. Courage in one society may consist almost wholly in willingness to face physical danger and death in voluntary devotion to one's community; in another, it may be willingness to support an unpopular cause in the face of ridicule.