Strangely enough, however, no complete catalogue of either the virtues or the vices exists. Moreover, every list which the different philosophies and religions furnish reflects a different bias or determining tendency. One need only to scan the Platonic, the Aristotelian, and the Christian inventories[20] in order to verify this remark. The determining tendency thus revealed turns out upon analysis to contain two elements:—first, the desire to reduce the essential virtues to the smallest number possible, and second, the inclination to rank them from the highest, or supreme virtue, to the lowest. Such a procedure as the latter,—that of building the edifice of virtue down from the top,—is, in our estimation, no part of a scientific method in ethics. Neither does it tell us what _a_ virtue is. Besides, as might be expected from such biased and provincial system-making, what one philosophy or religion calls a virtue, may be classified by another as a vice. Witness the ambiguous status of _humility_ as treated now by the followers of Nietzsche, and again by the early Christians. Perhaps, however, such ambiguities may be traced to the fact that the term “vice” is of uncertain etymology, while no such perplexity arises concerning the origin of the word “virtue.” This lack of unanimity or completeness in the various invoices of virtue is not in any way fatal to our purpose. In spite of special emphases philosophies and religions may exhibit or insist upon, every particular virtue is undeniably _some quality, trait, or performance which is admired or esteemed_. Taking this description as our point of departure, let us first consider what sort of traits and performances have been thus commended, after which we shall be able to discover to what an extent virtue and vice are contradictory. For it is by no means obvious at the start that they are true antonyms.