If anyone wishes to know what such benefits are he has only to recall what traits his own group calls virtues and vices, and to ask in every case just what they imply in terms of the needs of the group which sanctions or condemns them. For example, valor, courage, and intrepidity, together with the other spectacular virtues, have certainly been commended because they supply two very obvious and well-nigh universal group needs. The first is a common, stalwart defence, and the second is a healthy progeny. Cripples and deformed persons have never been objects of admiration or praise. As for the unobtrusive virtues, many of these have likewise been commended by such a group as feels itself beset or insecure on account of its inability to compete with the strong on their own terms, and this group has adopted them in a semi-paradoxical attempt to acquire solidarity. To turn at once to the other side of the picture, we find that the vices of gluttony, drunkenness, and lechery have been condemned not only because they effeminate and debilitate, and thereby undermine the defence-power of the group, but also because they tend to reduce the capacity of the group to create a sound and fertile offspring. This is doubtless why certain congenital abnormalities were formerly spoken of as “constitutional vices.” As for the word “vice” being sometimes applied to botchy work, incorrect methods, and the faults of untrained animals, we can see how in special instances a group might regard these things as peculiarly detrimental to its solidarity. Contrariwise, the “virtue” of a medicinal plant might, under the harassing circumstances of a plague or an epidemic, be the chief cause of even a nation’s concern. In thus defining virtue and vice in terms of the assets and liabilities of the group, what becomes of our previous attempt to define virtue in individualistic terms? The answer is that this previous conception remains as a necessary complement to, and check upon, group intolerance. For while the desires of the group and those of the individual may sometimes clash, they do not need to be considered as basically or essentially opposed to one another. The historical fact is often manifest that when group solidarity tends to produce mediocrity, there is a sudden overt demonstration of individualism. Our own generation shows an example of this type of reaction. When, again, extreme individualism fails to yield group assets, the conservative tendencies begin to reassert themselves more powerfully once more. Yet it is doubtful whether exactly the same type of conservatism is ever repeated, since the individualism which it seeks to counteract is, in succeeding generations, different from the type which preceded it. _Is Virtue Its Own Reward?_