“Virtue is simply a scheme of conduct”

“Virtue is simply a scheme of conduct” names a central claim in Rodin’s argument to Therese: virtue is not an eternal moral good but a conditional way of getting along, adopted for its usefulness in particular circumstances. His image of a rustic shelter makes the point concrete: protection from the sun gives a hut situational worth, not superior status. By the same logic, virtue may be useful without possessing inherent merit.

The Argument from Circumstance

Rodin begins from the variability of social life. In a wholly vicious society, he argues, virtue would be worthless; in societies that are not wholly vicious, it can still be used as a device. The person who practices the locally respected code may be left in peace by those who value it, while that code’s conventional authority can protect against people who profess vice. Virtue’s practical force, on this account, arises from opinion and circumstance rather than any permanent moral truth.

The argument expands from society to geography and climate. Conduct changes across places, Rodin says, and no two peoples practice virtue in exactly the same way. Because virtue lacks constancy, he rejects the claim that it is intrinsically good or worthy of reverence. The expression’s word “scheme” therefore carries an instrumental sense: virtue is a mode of conduct fitted to conditions, not a universal standard that holds independently of them.

Nature, Passion, and Usefulness

Rodin further challenges the idea that virtue is natural by pointing to virtues that some people cannot practice. If a supposed virtue conflicts with a person’s passions or physical constitution, he argues, it cannot be a natural good for that person. Vices opposed to those virtues may instead be the only modes of life agreeable to particular constitutions. He uses this possibility to unsettle the claim that virtue is useful: if what contradicts virtue can be useful, usefulness cannot establish virtue’s exclusive moral authority.

The reasoning is designed to turn an appeal to benefit into a dispute about whose benefit counts. Rodin reports the counterargument that virtue is good because it benefits others, then begins to test the demand that a person should do only what is good for others. The supplied passage ends as he develops that challenge, so the expression is best read here as the premise of an ongoing libertine argument, not as a detached maxim.

Rhetorical Image and Function

The shelter analogy gives the argument a compact structure: a hut’s usefulness during exposure to intense sun does not make it grand, and using it does not make it less contemptible. Rodin transfers this distinction between utility and intrinsic worth from an object to a moral code. The image helps him present virtue not as something to honor in itself, but as a tool one may employ when circumstances make it advantageous.

The claim also sharpens the conflict between Rodin and Therese. Her counsels appeal to virtue as a moral principle; his response denies that his conduct toward her expresses esteem for virtue or a preference for it over vice. In this context, the expression explains how Rodin can appear to defer to virtue while refusing its authority: he treats moral conduct as a situational strategy, not a binding commitment.