5.2. 2. What is meant by Virtue in a political State.
Virtue in a republic is a most simple thing: it is a love of the republic; it is a sensation,
and not a consequence of acquired knowledge: a sensation that may be
felt by the meanest as well as by the highest person in the state. When
the common people adopt good maxims, they adhere to them more steadily
than those whom we call gentlemen. It is very rarely that corruption
commences with the former: nay, they frequently derive from their
imperfect light a stronger attachment to the established laws and
customs.
The love of our country is conducive to a purity of morals, and the
latter is again conducive to the former. The less we are able to satisfy
our private passions, the more we abandon ourselves to those of a
general nature. How comes it that monks are so fond of their order? It
is owing to the very cause that renders the order insupportable. Their
rule debars them from all those things by which the ordinary passions
are fed; there remains therefore only this passion for the very rule
that torments them. The more austere it is, that is, the more it curbs
their inclinations, the more force it gives to the only passion left
them.
