‘I didn’t flinch, did I? Oh, I do hope I didn’t flinch.’ The young wife who said this to her midwife after her first confinement was expressing the scale of values commonly held in her native village. Flora Thompson finds the same esteem for endurance in the young men: ‘Their favourite virtue was endurance. Not to flinch from pain or hardship was their ideal.’ She describes how a man would say: ‘Ole bull, he comes for me wi’s head down. But I didn’t flinch. I ripped off a bit o’ loose rail an’ went for he. ‘Twas him as did the flinchin’ He! He!’
Nowadays we have nothing but adulation for those who row across the Atlantic, walk to the South Pole and search for the outermost planets. And another form of endurance is claiming our attention as researchers study the changing strategy of a virus as it seeks to evade its attackers.
Endurance may not be top of the list in a systematic ordering of the virtues but it has its place in the Christian scheme of things. There are signs of a new interest in the virtues as an entry point for study of right and wrong. This is no novelty. In Matthew 10.20 we find Jesus saying: ‘…whoever endures to the end will be saved.’ It is often the case that the contestant who keeps going when the rest have stopped is the clear winner. It is possible to regard endurance as the auxiliary that makes other virtues possible.
Traditionally we think of the cardinal virtues as wisdom, justice, temperance and fortitude. Then we add the theological virtues – faith, hope and charity – to make seven. It is possible for humanists, Christians and others to congregate behind these virtues. In Lark Rise or London, in the northern hemisphere or the southern they ring true. Good and evil, right and wrong are the same for villager and townie, for those who work with their hands and those who draw up regulations.
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