Courage

Writing in 1941, C.S. Lewis considered virtues and vices at the time when the Germans were beginning their bombing campaign over Britain. What will be the response of the British? Courage? Cowardice? Of course, Uncle Screwtape, writing on behalf of his "father below," in The Screwtape Letters wants to carefully promulgate cowardice.

However, Screwtape laments that whenever he and his cohorts succeed in promoting cowardice, the enemy (God) permits a war, an earthquake, or some other calamity, and "at once courage becomes so important that all our work is undone." The danger in producing cowardice is that the human will feel shame, self-loathing, and consequent humility. In danger the issue of good and evil is forced upon him. Courage and cowardice become undisguisable. "Perhaps it is why the enemy (God) has created a dangerous world: a world in which moral issues really come to the point. Courage is not merely one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality."