In Defense of Purity

by Dietrich von Hildebrand

  There are, of course, also humdrum people totally devoid of poetry, who nevertheless could not be called sexually insensible—unsinnlich in the radical sense. They are those fleshly men of whom we spoke just now. But prosiness and jog-trot dullness are certainly incompatible with sensibility to the distinctive quality of sex, Sinnlichkeit in the stricter sense.

  In total contrast to the sexually insensible, the pure man is entirely free from this drabness. Instead of the dreary, humdrum atmosphere which surrounds the former, his being breathes an indescribable fragrance. He is invested with a unique radiance of spirit by which he is raised above the region of humdrum respectability and exerts a potent charm. Indeed, in the highest form of purity this radiance is such that in the poetry of his being he soars high above the sphere of its opposite, uninspired and uninspiring prose.

  The sexually insensible is as such an incomplete man, to whom a very profound zone of human nature is closed. He lacks something indispensable to a complete humanity and, moreover, not something which is confined to the vital sphere, as, for example, moodiness, but something which colors the whole of his nature. For, as we have seen, sensibility to sex, as a temperamental disposition, goes far beyond the domain of sex and penetrates the entire man. The pure man, on the contrary, is the only man who is truly complete. In him a central orientation of human nature is fulfilled, and everything which the sexually insensible lacked he possesses in its entirety. But in this connection we cannot insist too emphatically that the man insensible to sex can obviously be at the same time pure, in which case both the dryness due to his insensibility and the “incompleteness,” even to a residual defect of mere vitality, are removed by the luster of purity.

  Here, however, we must not forget—for the distinction is of enormous, indeed, decisive, importance—that insensibility and sensibility to sex are purely and simply temperamental dispositions, like, for example, a lively or phlegmatic, a musical or unmusical, temperament. Purity, on the contrary, is never a temperament. This will become evident if we briefly consider what, precisely speaking, is meant by a temperament. In the strict sense a temperament, or subordinately a particular temperamental quality, is a personal idiosyncrasy which in no way depends upon a freely chosen general outlook or particular attitude, and involves nothing in the nature of an apprehension, affirmation, or rejection of values, but, like physical characteristics, is simply “given,” and which, if capable of any alteration, can be altered essentially only by means in whose mode of operation the will plays no part. No doubt the part played by temperament can also be influenced by the person’s freely chosen attitude—a temperamental sensibility can remain undeveloped or become starved—but the existence of that temperament is not thereby destroyed. Nor is the distinction between temperament and virtue in the very least affected by the fact that a temperament is not acquired. There is no lack of cases in which a man possesses a particular virtue from the very beginning of his moral life and has never acquired it. There are those who have been gentle from the nursery, others who have only become gentle by dint of long struggles. But in both cases alike, the gentleness is not temperamental in the true sense—in contrast to sham gentleness, lack of spirit, which is a genuine temperament, but also in contrast to the mild temperament due to weak passions, which, though it presents a favorable environment for the virtue of gentleness, has no claim to be regarded itself as gentleness. True gentleness is never a temperament, because it is always bound up with the fundamental orientation of the spirit, and because it is always accompanied by a loving attitude and by what that implies—a perception of the value of others as persons and a corresponding response: indeed, it also involves the will to be gentle and a characteristically delicate perception of the unloveliness, hardness, restlessness and malice inherent in anger and violence.

  True gentleness, therefore, implies, and this is the most important point, a distinctive apprehension of values and a surrender to them which is more or less conscious according to the measure in which the gentleness is due to the soul’s deliberate choices or to a natural disposition. But whether this surrender is difficult or easy, in either case there is here a genuine virtue, a section of morality, something grounded in the general moral attitude, not something which is simply “given.”

  We must guard against introducing into the concept of virtue the notion of achievement, and therefore admitting a virtue only where a particular moral attitude has been acquired by previous struggle. Otherwise we should be involved in the most ridiculous consequences, and the virtue of a St. John as compared with that of a St. Paul would not count as genuine virtue; indeed, the exemplar of all virtues, our Blessed Lady, could not be regarded as in the true sense virtuous, for she came from God’s hand all beautiful (tota pulchra).6 Therefore, in distinguishing between a natural disposition or temperament and virtue, we must, once for all, put aside as irrelevant the question whether the characteristic in question was only acquired in course of time and after a struggle, or by the grace of God belonged to the person from the outset, or was bestowed at a particular moment of his life. The distinction must rather be decided by the relation between the quality in question and the subject’s fundamental moral position, by the degree to which it involves a perception of values and response to them, and is grounded in and upheld by the general attitude its possessor has freely adopted. Naturally, the distinction is also closely connected with the quality of the characteristic. Virtues are always of an entirely different quality from temperamental dispositions. A characteristic identical in quality cannot be sometimes a virtue, sometimes a temperament. No doubt there are temperaments which favor the development of particular virtues. For example, natures in which the instinctive life is weak are adapted by their temperament for spirituality, gentleness, patience, modesty, and so on. For natures whose instincts are stronger and more primitive these virtues are more difficult to attain. Courage, fidelity to truth once perceived, unreserved devotion of the entire person to what has been recognized as good, are, on the contrary, the virtues which have affinity with this temperament. But these temperamental affinities do no more than render the corresponding virtue easier to attain and invite to its attainment, and though they may present a certain counterpart of the virtue on a far lower plane, they are not even its germ, for powerfully developed instincts are equally to be met with in the bestial debauchee who is the slave of his passions and possesses none of the above-mentioned virtues. Such temperamental dispositions in no way predetermine the virtue or otherwise of their possessor, whether a man’s fundamental attitude is good or bad; they simply represent special paths already made which are equally at the disposal of a good or a bad moral attitude. They merely decide which vices and virtues are affine to the person concerned. But this affinity is not a decisive factor. For there are men, for example, who in spite of strong passions are markedly spiritual, gentle, and patient, as was very often the case with the saints.

  All this is but further proof that a quality of temperament can in no case be regarded as a virtue, any more than a genuine virtue, though it has not been acquired, can be explained as a mere temperament. Truthfulness, justice, purity, patience, gentleness, kindliness, humility, may be “natural” virtues in contrast to fully conscious virtues, which are in the strict sense products of the spirit—a distinction obviously accompanied by a profound difference of quality, which we must discuss in greater detail later.7 But mere temperaments they can never be. Their distinctive positively ethical and rationally illuminated quality, their specific beauty, necessarily depends upon their formal character as virtues, a character which is enhanced in so far as a virtue is the deliberate product of the spirit. As we have already hinted, the distinction between virtue and temperament is very largely determined by the part played by the person in their respective production or maintenance. Every virtue, even if from earliest youth it has simply existed without a struggle, is “supported” by the spiritual person in virtue of his fundamental attitude or ethical position. It can th
erefore exist only so long as that person in some way or other freely cooperates in its production. This is due to the fact that every virtue involves a habitual response to some value. For example, the humble man apprehends God’s infinite majesty and incomparable sublimity; he yields himself wholly to God and will be nothing of himself but only from God and to His glory. The truthful man perceives the inner beauty of truth and the loathsomeness of deceit, lies, and trickery. The instant the person renounces this habitual response to a value and replaces it by indifference or even hostility to that value, becomes wholly dominated by pride or lust in his fundamental habitual attitude—his virtue is immediately lost. There is therefore no virtue which a man cannot lose. If, for example, a man yields himself wholly to evil, falls away from God, making himself his end instead of God, breaks away completely from the sphere of values, so that his attitude is no longer one of response to ethical value, but proud and lustful, all his virtues cease ipso facto to exist as such.

  With a mere temperament the case is altogether different. There are, no doubt, many cases in which a man loses some particular quality of temperament, but never as the result of a change in his fundamental moral attitude. Such changes are, on the contrary, produced by causes that lie wholly outside the sphere of volition, which gradually or suddenly destroy the temperament in question. And the more a temperament is physiologically conditioned, the more physiological are these non-volitional causes. The lively energetic temperament produced by a strong vitality can be destroyed by over-fatigue, narcotics, dissipation, illnesses, and so on, as also by excessive misfortunes. But it can never be destroyed from within by changes in the fundamental moral attitude. Or, again, a musical temperament can be destroyed by drink, illness, and so on, but as a pure temperament it is never dependent upon the person’s freely chosen attitude to the world of values.

  With respect to the acquisition of virtues and temperaments the position is similar. Every virtue can be acquired with the help of grace, its germ being always a free response to value. If, for instance, an angry, violent man becomes gentle, the change must involve the victory of the appropriate response to value, whether that victory be won by a protracted struggle or whether by a special grace of God the person in question overcomes his violent temper at one blow. Indeed, the distinction between temperaments and virtues is shown most clearly by the fact that the former can never be in this sense acquired. It is, for example, impossible to acquire by any means whatsoever such specific talents as a musical or mathematical aptitude.

  These general distinctions between temperaments and virtues which have now been explained throw further light on the distinction between purity and sexual insensibility (Unsinnlichkeit). As we have already pointed out, that insensibility and purity are totally distinct is evident at the first glance, from the fact that insensibility is a pure quality of temperament, purity a typical virtue; and it is equally impossible to identify sensuality (Sinnlichkeit), in the sense of strong susceptibility to sex, with impurity. Such sexual insensibility consists simply in the lack of susceptibility to the entire domain of sex, it involves no particular attitude to the sphere of purity and impurity. The insensible man is incapable of understanding the positive and negative significance attaching to sex, just as the man without a musical ear is incapable of grasping the qualities which belong to the world of musical notes. For the man who is completely unmusical the most trivial commonplace melody and the noblest are equally a meaningless noise. Similarly, in sexual insensibility, as such, there is no perception whatsoever of the positive or negative values which belong to the domain of sex and therefore, of course, no attitude of response to them; neither an acceptance of the positive values of sex nor a rejection of its negative values. In complete contrast to this the virtue of purity essentially involves a specific perception of the positive and negative values attaching to sex, and a corresponding positive or negative response. This by itself is sufficient to reveal the profound difference between purity and sexual insensibility.

  But not only are insensibility and purity in no way identical; insensibility, as we have already pointed out, does not even constitute an environment particularly favorable to the virtue of purity. For it is not even the temperament which is affine to that virtue and which makes it easier. That is to say, it is not the temperamental counterpart of purity. It is related to purity as a phlegmatic temperament to gentleness, not as weak passions to gentleness. We shall see this most clearly when we ask what is the temperament which makes the virtue of purity easier and is, in a sense, its counterpart. This, we shall find, is also the opposite of the fleshly temperament; namely, a general softness of the passions, a universal delicacy of feeling, sensitiveness—that temperament which, as we saw, strikes us as spiritual, free from the grossness of matter. Not the absence of sensibility to sex, but weak, as opposed to strong, passions that determine the temperament must be regarded as the environment most favorable to purity.8 On the contrary, if sensibility to the appeal of sex accompanies a temperamental delicacy of feeling, not only does it not change the nature of the latter as an environment favorable to purity, it actually enhances it. For a temperamental susceptibility to the distinctive quality and extraordinary character of sex of its very nature renders it easier to understand the positive and negative values which can be realized in this sphere, an understanding which the sexually insensitive must acquire from outside and indirectly, if he will attain the virtue of purity.9 And, finally, there is required as a constituent of the temperamental counterpart of purity something which also constitutes the temperamental support of modesty—namely, the delicate refined temper which in no situation yields the reins to any clamorous and unrestrained passion; the instinctive reserve which shrinks from exposing its secrets to the glare; and an impulse to shun the uncanny aspect of sex and draw back from it.

  It has now been established beyond the least doubt that sexual insensibility and purity differ toto caelo, and no one is pure simply because he is insensible. The man who is insensible to sex can in certain cases be impure, although impure only in the wide sense of the term,10 and this wider impurity is wholly incompatible with the genuine virtue of purity in that strict sense in which, for our purpose, it is essential to understand it. As insensible to sex he stands outside the sphere of the alternative pure or impure in the stricter sense of the terms. His purity or impurity depends upon factors as to whose presence insensibility decides nothing, either positively or negatively. Since, as we have seen, insensibility, apart from its significance for purity, is in itself a defect, for it involves the absence of a certain warmth, liveliness, and so on—it is as such a disvalue, though, since it is a mere temperament, not a moral disvalue. It would therefore be absurd offhand to declare sexual insensibility a desirable condition, let alone to regard it as the culmination, of purity.

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  1. As this passage shows, there is no English word that covers the same ground. The translator could only omit this passage entirely or use the German word. He has usually rendered it “sexual.” [Trans.]

  2. Sinnlichkeit.

  3. In English such a temperament would certainly be called sensual. In this connection sensuous approaches closer to what is here meant by the German sinnlich. The fleshly man is certainly not sensuous. The man whose senses are highly developed, alert, and sensitive is. But our language does not make the precise distinction here drawn. [Trans.]

  4. If sensual, they are not sensuous. [Trans.]

  5. “Insensibility to sensual pleasure”; “insensuality,” if I may coin this convenient negative. [Trans.]

  6. In contrast to acquired virtue stand not only the virtue which attaches to a man from the outset, but that also which is bestowed upon him at one stroke in some moment of crisis. An instance of the latter is the conversion of St. Paul, when new ethical attitudes came instantaneously to birth in his soul which it would be quite impossible to regard as acquired, and which, nevertheless, were undoubtedly genuine virtues and not mere temperamental dis
positions.

  Even the virtue which slowly matures in us without conscious action on our part, but which at the same time is our reward for moral purpose and striving in other fields, cannot be termed “acquired.”

  7. We shall then see the significance possessed by this difference of quality within the sphere of the virtues. Meanwhile, we cannot too strongly emphasize the fact that even the less conscious natural virtue is wholly different from its temperamental counterpart of which we have just spoken.

  8. The only service rendered by a radical insensibility to sex is the absence of actual impurity in the narrowest sense of the term. No doubt the man wholly insensitive to sex will not feel the tainted breath of sex, taken as its own end—will not surrender to a charm of which he knows nothing. But he may quite well be impure in a wider sense. He may, for example, wholly fail to understand the moral evil of impurity, and approve of impurity in others, as being, for example, the free, unfettered expression of one’s natural instincts. Sex, indeed, even in its purely exterior aspect, has the appearance of something extraordinary, so that even to one who in consequence of a fleshly or a radically insensible temperament is deaf to its language it displays significant warning signals. The sexually insensible can therefore be impure, even in the narrower sense, if, as the result of a shameless attitude, they pay no heed to these signals for whose apprehension a general delicacy of feeling is sufficient.

  From no point of view is sexual insensibility favorable to the positive virtue of purity, as I shall now proceed to show.

  9. This is obviously true only of human purity. The purity of the angels is a purity in which the conditional indispensability of sexual sensitiveness for the understanding of the possible values of sex, positive and negative, is transcended per eminentiam.