MODERN-DAY dictionaries define “virtue” as “moral excellence; goodness.” It is “right action and thinking; goodness of character.” Lexicographer Marvin R. Vincent says that the original classical sense of the Greek word rendered “virtue” denotes “excellence of any kind.” Not surprisingly, then, such qualities as prudence, courage, self-discipline, fairness, compassion, perseverance, honesty, humility, and loyalty have been hailed as virtues at one time or another. Virtue has also been defined as “conformity to a standard of right.”

To whose standard of excellence, goodness, and right should we conform? “According to the dominant school of moral philosophy,” said Newsweek magazine, “the skepticism engendered by the Enlightenment has reduced all ideas of right and wrong to matters of personal taste, emotional preference or cultural choice.” But is mere taste or preference a satisfactory way of determining right and wrong? No. For us to cultivate virtue, we need a reliable standard of good and bad​—a standard by which a certain act, attitude, or quality may be judged right or wrong.

The Only True Source of Moral Standards

There is only one true Source for standards of morality​—the Creator of mankind, Jehovah God. Soon after creating the first man, Adam, Jehovah God laid this command upon the man: “From every tree of the garden you may eat to satisfaction. But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.” (Genesis 2:16, 17) Jehovah God gave the tree that unique name to denote his exclusive right to decide what is good and what is bad for his creatures. God’s standards of good and bad thus became the basis for judgment, or evaluation, of a person’s deeds, outlook, and personality traits. Without such standards we could not correctly distinguish right from wrong.

The command concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and bad set before Adam and Eve a choice​—to obey or not to obey. For them, virtue meant obedience to that command. In time, Jehovah further revealed what pleases him and what displeases him, and he had this recorded for us in the Bible. Cultivating virtue, then, entails our conforming to Jehovah’s righteous standards set out in the Scriptures.

Virtue is not a passive avoidance of what is bad. It has moral power. A virtuous person has goodness. “Virtue,” says one professor, “needs to be learned with the heart as well as the head.”