Let us proceed, in a very humdrum way, from the general to the particular. A word first, then about what virtue is. It is a perfection of our nature. It means, literally, strength. The Latin word virtus comes from vir, a man, and the basic idea is one of manliness or manhood, if the ladies will pardon so masculine an attitude; but manliness not so much distinguished from womanliness as from childishness. Virtue is the proper characteristic of the adult. The virtues are firmly rooted dispositions or habits or attitudes by which our faculties are given a bias towards the performance of good actions instead of bad actions—the faculties we are concerned with in the moral life being the will and the sense appetites, not the mind, except for the key virtue of prudence, of which more anon. Left to themselves the other faculties lack direction, and just dissipate their energies aimlessly.