Feynman, a complicated legacy

Ethan Siegel is the author of the “Starts with a Bang” newsletter on BigThink, which is a great read and I recommend it to everyone interested in the latest developments in Astronomy, but also in Physics in general. He is also a facebook friend. In his Nov 1st newsletter Ethan addresses a question from one of his readers, which ends with: “It seems to me that you have a somewhat ambivalent relationship with R. Feynman. Is there a deeper reason for this?”. Ethan here gives a very detailed answer acknowledging Feynman’s scientific accomplishments before going on to highlight some of Feynman’s more controversial character aspects, and I certainly agree with his conclusion that “We can rightfully laud [Feynman] for his great accomplishments while still being critical of his unacceptable behaviors, and I would argue we have an obligation to share the full truth about Feynman, both the physicist and the human being, with subsequent generations of scientists and science-literate citizens.” But after reading the whole article, and not finding anything specific I could disagree with, I was left with a feeling that something was missing, and it took me a while to fully conceptualise the origins of my discomfort and put it down to words.

Feynman was born in 1918, was mostly active during the 40s to the 60s, and died in 1988 when he was 69 years old. He was successfully treated for abdominal cancer in 1980, but then the cancer came back with a vengeance in 1988, at which point it had gotten so bad that Feynman refused treatment. In many ways his social views were a product of his time, yet his patterns of behaviour were not predictably consistent. Ethan’s article does a good job of pointing out the negatives, when viewed anachronistically through a modern lens, but in leaving out the aspects of Feynman’s character that made him “curious”, ends up with an incomplete picture of who Feynman really was as a person.

Fundamentally, Feynman was an iconoclast, and it is through this lens that his character contradictions can be reconciled. He was also a prankster with  little regard for authority. While working for the Manhattan project, he famously amused himself by breaking into secure safes containing nuclear secrets—not to undermine the project, but to expose how lax security was. Sometimes he would even leave notes in the safes, like “I borrowed document no. LA4312–Feynman the safecracker.” He loved the arts and was an avid bongo player who also learned to paint for fun (even holding an exhibition under a pseudonym), occasionally having intense discussions about art vs. science with his artist/mentor/friend Jirayr “Jerry” Zorthian (check out the Ode to a Flower monologue). An older contemporary colleague of his from Caltech once told me that Feynman could sometimes be found smoking weed in the Professor’s common room, much to the chagrin of everyone else. He was also a regular at the local strip club, and knew all the girls working there. He would pick up an orange juice from the bar (by that time he wasn’t a big fan of alcohol), together with a bunch of napkins or place mats, and he would watch the show or just sit there and think, scribbling down equations on the napkins, alone or with company. This was the kind of environment he felt more at ease in and he actually did quite a number of his calculations in that place. When the county tried to close the place down on account of “uncovered breasts”, he was the bar’s only regular customer willing to come forward and testify publicly in court in defense of the bar. 

Such stories reveal Feynman as a gadfly—a horsefly, if you will—who delighted in seeing how the social and academic order would reconfigure itself when challenged. He cared little for social norms or accolades and famously eschewed honorary degrees and pomp. His devotion was to truth, inquiry, and the freedom to explore without inhibition.

Ethan’s article rightly discusses the biases prevalent in academia during Feynman’s time (and later) and how he sometimes mirrored those biases. Like most people of his time, it doesn’t seem like Feynman had carefully thought through the harmful implications of maintaining these problematic attitudes. Take, for example, a talk he gave in 1966 at the National Science Teachers Association. The topic he was asked to talk about was “What is Science?”, a title that he didn’t really like. It is a fantastic talk and I strongly encourage everyone to read the transcript, but it is also a product of its time. At some point during this talk Feynman says the following: 

“I listened to a conversation between two girls, and one was explaining that if you want to make a straight line, you see, you go over a certain number to the right for each row you go up–that is, if you go over each time the same amount when you go up a row, you make a straight line–a deep principle of analytic geometry! It went on. I was rather amazed. I didn’t realize the female mind was capable of understanding analytic geometry. She went on and said, “Suppose you have another line coming in from the other side, and you want to figure out where they are going to intersect.  Suppose on one line you go over two to the right for every one you go up, and the other line goes over three to the right for every one that it goes up, and they start twenty steps apart,” etc.–I was flabbergasted.  She figured out where the intersection was. It turned out that one girl was explaining to the other how to knit argyle socks.“ 

This passage clearly comes across as sexist, reflecting the prevalent attitudes of that time. However, what is more revealing about how Feynman thought, is what comes after it. Feynman doesn’t end there, but continues the thought in this fashion: “I, therefore, did learn a lesson: The female mind is capable of understanding analytic geometry. Those people who have for years been insisting (in the face of all obvious evidence to the contrary) that the male and female are equally capable of rational thought may have something. The difficulty may just be that we have never yet discovered a way to communicate with the female mind.” 

Feynman here seems to acknowledge the possibility that systemic issues, rather than innate differences, limited women’s participation in science. But he offers no solution to this problem and moves back to his main topic. He does not own it as his problem to solve for the whole of the country. Society for him is one thing, the scientific enterprise another, and he is primarily interested in the latter. 

Richard Feynman also had a younger sister, Joan. Although they were separated by nine years, Joan and Richard were close, as Joan was also very curious about how the world worked. Their mother was a sophisticated woman who had marched for women’s suffrage in her youth, but believed that women lacked the capacity to understand maths and physics. Despite that negative attitude at home, the young Richard encouraged Joan’s interest in science. From a very young age, he would train her to solve simple math problems and rewarded each correct answer by letting her tug on his hair while he made funny faces. By the time she was 5, Richard was hiring her for 2 cents a week to assist him in the electronics lab he’d built in his room. Joan grew up to become an astrophysicist, crediting her brother’s mentorship as a key influence. In his later years, Richard became acutely aware of the discrimination women faced in physics, because he saw how it affected his sister. For her part, Joan Feynman was awarded NASA’s Exceptional Science Achievement medal in 2002, for her continued support and encouragement for women to persevere and make their marks in science.

Feynman’s first marriage, to Arline Greenbaum, adds another layer of complexity. They were high-school sweethearts and by all accounts their love was profound and marked by mutual respect. Feynman wrote her heartfelt letters that revealed his deep admiration for her intellect and spirit. Arline was sick for a long time, even before their marriage, and eventually died of tuberculosis in 1945, while Richard was working on the Manhattan project. When she was near death, he rushed from Los Alamos to be by her side. You can read here a remarkable letter he wrote two years after Arlene’s death, where he pours out his heart. The letter was discovered in a stash of old letters by Feynman’s biographer James Gleick.

Richard Feynman got married again in 1952 to Mary Louise Bell. This second marriage was difficult, strained by differences in temperament and lifestyle choices, and ended in divorce. Mary had very conservative views and they quarrelled often. She was so fed up with his obsession with calculus and physics and reported that on several occasions, when she disturbed his calculations, which he would sometimes even do while he was lying in bed at night, or his bongo playing, he would fly into a rage. She filed for divorce in 1956. His third marriage, to Gweneth Howarth, who shared his enthusiasm for travelling and playfulness, was far more harmonious.

In the book “What do YOU care about what other people think?” Feynman recalls an incident where feminist protesters (led by a man, ironically) entered a hall and picketed a lecture he was about to make in San Francisco, holding up placards and handing out leaflets calling him a "sexist pig". As soon as he got up to speak, some of the protesters marched to the front of the lecture hall and, holding their placards signs high, started chanting “Feynman sexist pig!”. Instead of reacting defensively, Feynman addressed the protesters saying: “Perhaps, after all, it is good that you came. For women do indeed suffer from prejudice and discrimination in Physics, and your presence here today serves to remind us of these difficulties and the need to remedy them”.

Feynman’s attitudes certainly weren’t those of a consistent advocate for gender equality, as we might expect today, but they weren’t wholly regressive either. The idea of dismantling systemic barriers wasn’t part of his worldview, but he was not resistant to change and was willing to support those who defied convention.

Criticisms of Feynman’s legacy through the lens of presentism risks overlooking the full complexity of his character and how progressive some of his views were for his time. He was a complicated individual, whose brilliance was tempered by human imperfections.

He achieved remarkable things in his lifetime and inspired many physicists that came after him, both male and female. 

As with every figure who has left a mark on the landscape of history, fairness requires that we should be honest about who he was, acknowledging both his achievements and flaws, while considering the context of his time. His legacy cannot be flattened into an uncomplicated hero or villain narrative. 

Perhaps Feynman's most enduring legacy is to remind us that progress is born from questioning, curiosity, and the willingness to defy convention --all driven by the joy of discovery. To reduce such a complicated life to binary judgments, to refuse to celebrate it, pointing out warts and all, would be to forget why we study these figures at all—to question, to learn, and to grow.

Thomas Paine - Agrarian Justice

"... Having now gone through all the necessary calculations, and stated the particulars of the plan, I shall conclude with some observations. It is not charity but a right, not bounty but justice, that I am pleading for. The present state of civilization is as odious as it is unjust. It is absolutely the opposite of what it should be, and it is necessary that a revolution should be made in it. The contrast of affluence and wretchedness continually meeting and offending the eye, is like dead and living bodies chained together. Though I care as little about riches as any man, I am a friend to riches because they are capable of good.

I care not how affluent some may be, provided that none be miserable in consequence of it. But it is impossible to enjoy affluence with the felicity it is capable of being enjoyed, while so much misery is mingled in the scene. The sight of the misery, and the unpleasant sensations it suggests, which, though they may be suffocated cannot be extinguished, are a greater drawback upon the felicity of affluence than the proposed ten per cent upon property is worth. He that would not give the one to get rid of the other has no charity, even for himself.

There are, in every country, some magnificent charities established by individuals. It is, however, but little that any individual can do, when the whole extent of the misery to be relieved is considered. He may satisfy his conscience, but not his heart. He may give all that he has, and that all will relieve but little. It is only by organizing civilization upon such principles as to act like a system of pulleys, that the whole weight of misery can be removed.

...

In all great cases it is necessary to have a principle more universally active than charity; and, with respect to justice, it ought not to be left to the choice of detached individuals whether they will do justice or not. Considering, then, the plan on the ground of justice, it ought to be the act of the whole growing spontaneously out of the principles of the revolution, and the reputation of it ought to be national and not individual.

...

Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.

...

When wealth and splendor, instead of fascinating the multitude, excite emotions of disgust; when, instead of drawing forth admiration, it is beheld as an insult on wretchedness; when the ostentatious appearance it makes serves to call the right of it in question, the case of property becomes critical, and it is only in a system of justice that the possessor can contemplate security.
To remove the danger, it is necessary to remove the antipathies, and this can only be done by making property productive of a national blessing, extending to every individual. When the riches of one man above another shall increase the national fund in the same proportion; when it shall be seen that the prosperity of that fund depends on the prosperity of individuals; when the more riches a man acquires, the better it shall for the general mass; it is then that antipathies will cease, and property be placed on the permanent basis of national interest and protection."
- Thomas Paine, 1795

It boils down to this.

In the end you have to consider the rights of the individual.

Yes, it is possible to identify antisocial behavioural trends in different groups of people and cautiousness is a perfectly acceptable response - provided it does not come with crass generalizations.

Yes, decisive action must be taken to ensure that the perpetrators of heinous acts are swiftly apprehended and brought to justice. Failure to do so will only cause further damage to the victims and inevitably lead the gullible and fearful to the extremes of the political spectrum.

Yes, our borders need better monitoring; not through raising fences, but by ensuring that there is a system in place to identify the people who are most in need of asylum and guarantee that they are the first to get it - as required by Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Safe passages need to be established.  More needs to be done by governments and local communities to facilitate the process of integration. This is what sowing the seeds of positive change involves.

All the while we witness a counter current of growing xenophobia and bigotry gradually paving the way for institutionalized group discrimination. Loud and vulgar voices evoke the spectre of oppressive regimes whose memories still linger in the scar tissue of our body politic.

Our modern secular societies are founded on the ideas of liberty and equality before the law. We must take heed and not fall into the trap of thinking it is okay to sacrifice some of our rights to gain some temporary safety; or we risk eroding the very fabric of our civilization.

And we must not forget that rights exist precisely to protect minorities from the whims of majorities; the smallest minority being the individual.

Pericles' Funeral Oration

Thucidides: Pericles' Funeral Oration
 (Θουκιδίδης: Περικλέους Επιτάφιος λόγος)

From History of the Peloponnesian War  (Book 2. 34-46)

"Most of my predecessors in this place have commended him who made this speech part of the law, telling us that it is well that it should be delivered at the burial of those who fall in battle. For myself, I should have thought that the worth which had displayed itself in deeds would be sufficiently rewarded by honours also shown by deeds; such as you now see in this funeral prepared at the people's cost. And I could have wished that the reputations of many brave men were not to be imperilled in the mouth of a single individual, to stand or fall according as he spoke well or ill. For it is hard to speak properly upon a subject where it is even difficult to convince your hearers that you are speaking the truth. On the one hand, the friend who is familiar with every fact of the story may think that some point has not been set forth with that fullness which he wishes and knows it to deserve; on the other, he who is a stranger to the matter may be led by envy to suspect exaggeration if he hears anything above his own nature. For men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity. However, since our ancestors have stamped this custom with their approval, it becomes my duty to obey the law and to try to satisfy your several wishes and opinions as best I may.

"I shall begin with our ancestors: it is both just and proper that they should have the honour of the first mention on an occasion like the present. They dwelt in the country without break in the succession from generation to generation, and handed it down free to the present time by their valour. And if our more remote ancestors deserve praise, much more do our own fathers, who added to their inheritance the empire which we now possess, and spared no pains to be able to leave their acquisitions to us of the present generation. Lastly, there are few parts of our dominions that have not been augmented by those of us here, who are still more or less in the vigour of life; while the mother country has been furnished by us with everything that can enable her to depend on her own resources whether for war or for peace. That part of our history which tells of the military achievements which gave us our several possessions, or of the ready valour with which either we or our fathers stemmed the tide of Hellenic or foreign aggression, is a theme too familiar to my hearers for me to dilate on, and I shall therefore pass it by. But what was the road by which we reached our position, what the form of government under which our greatness grew, what the national habits out of which it sprang; these are questions which I may try to solve before I proceed to my panegyric upon these men; since I think this to be a subject upon which on the present occasion a speaker may properly dwell, and to which the whole assemblage, whether citizens or foreigners, may listen with advantage.

"Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighbouring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favours the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease in our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book, or belong to that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace.
"Further, we provide plenty of means for the mind to refresh itself from business. We celebrate games and sacrifices all the year round, and the elegance of our private establishments forms a daily source of pleasure and helps to banish the spleen; while the magnitude of our city draws the produce of the world into our harbour, so that to the Athenian the fruits of other countries are as familiar a luxury as those of his own.

"If we turn to our military policy, there also we differ from our antagonists. We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality; trusting less in system and policy than to the native spirit of our citizens; while in education, where our rivals from their very cradles by a painful discipline seek after manliness, at Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger. In proof of this it may be noticed that the Lacedaemonians do not invade our country alone, but bring with them all their confederates; while we Athenians advance unsupported into the territory of a neighbour, and fighting upon a foreign soil usually vanquish with ease men who are defending their homes. Our united force was never yet encountered by any enemy, because we have at once to attend to our marine and to dispatch our citizens by land upon a hundred different services; so that, wherever they engage with some such fraction of our strength, a success against a detachment is magnified into a victory over the nation, and a defeat into a reverse suffered at the hands of our entire people. And yet if with habits not of labour but of ease, and courage not of art but of nature, we are still willing to encounter danger, we have the double advantage of escaping the experience of hardships in anticipation and of facing them in the hour of need as fearlessly as those who are never free from them.

"Nor are these the only points in which our city is worthy of admiration. We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters; for, unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless, we Athenians are able to judge at all events if we cannot originate, and, instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all. Again, in our enterprises we present the singular spectacle of daring and deliberation, each carried to its highest point, and both united in the same persons; although usually decision is the fruit of ignorance, hesitation of reflection. But the palm of courage will surely be adjudged most justly to those, who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger. In generosity we are equally singular, acquiring our friends by conferring, not by receiving, favours. Yet, of course, the doer of the favour is the firmer friend of the two, in order by continued kindness to keep the recipient in his debt; while the debtor feels less keenly from the very consciousness that the return he makes will be a payment, not a free gift. And it is only the Athenians, who, fearless of consequences, confer their benefits not from calculations of expediency, but in the confidence of liberality.

"In short, I say that as a city we are the school of Hellas, while I doubt if the world can produce a man who, where he has only himself to depend upon, is equal to so many emergencies, and graced by so happy a versatility, as the Athenian. And that this is no mere boast thrown out for the occasion, but plain matter of fact, the power of the state acquired by these habits proves. For Athens alone of her contemporaries is found when tested to be greater than her reputation, and alone gives no occasion to her assailants to blush at the antagonist by whom they have been worsted, or to her subjects to question her title by merit to rule. Rather, the admiration of the present and succeeding ages will be ours, since we have not left our power without witness, but have shown it by mighty proofs; and far from needing a Homer for our panegyrist, or other of his craft whose verses might charm for the moment only for the impression which they gave to melt at the touch of fact, we have forced every sea and land to be the highway of our daring, and everywhere, whether for evil or for good, have left imperishable monuments behind us. Such is the Athens for which these men, in the assertion of their resolve not to lose her, nobly fought and died; and well may every one of their survivors be ready to suffer in her cause.

"Indeed if I have dwelt at some length upon the character of our country, it has been to show that our stake in the struggle is not the same as theirs who have no such blessings to lose, and also that the panegyric of the men over whom I am now speaking might be by definite proofs established. That panegyric is now in a great measure complete; for the Athens that I have celebrated is only what the heroism of these and their like have made her, men whose fame, unlike that of most Hellenes, will be found to be only commensurate with their deserts. And if a test of worth be wanted, it is to be found in their closing scene, and this not only in cases in which it set the final seal upon their merit, but also in those in which it gave the first intimation of their having any. For there is justice in the claim that steadfastness in his country's battles should be as a cloak to cover a man's other imperfections; since the good action has blotted out the bad, and his merit as a citizen more than outweighed his demerits as an individual. But none of these allowed either wealth with its prospect of future enjoyment to unnerve his spirit, or poverty with its hope of a day of freedom and riches to tempt him to shrink from danger. No, holding that vengeance upon their enemies was more to be desired than any personal blessings, and reckoning this to be the most glorious of hazards, they joyfully determined to accept the risk, to make sure of their vengeance, and to let their wishes wait; and while committing to hope the uncertainty of final success, in the business before them they thought fit to act boldly and trust in themselves. Thus choosing to die resisting, rather than to live submitting, they fled only from dishonour, but met danger face to face, and after one brief moment, while at the summit of their fortune, escaped, not from their fear, but from their glory.

"So died these men as became Athenians. You, their survivors, must determine to have as unfaltering a resolution in the field, though you may pray that it may have a happier issue. And not contented with ideas derived only from words of the advantages which are bound up with the defence of your country, though these would furnish a valuable text to a speaker even before an audience so alive to them as the present, you must yourselves realize the power of Athens, and feed your eyes upon her from day to day, till love of her fills your hearts; and then, when all her greatness shall break upon you, you must reflect that it was by courage, sense of duty, and a keen feeling of honour in action that men were enabled to win all this, and that no personal failure in an enterprise could make them consent to deprive their country of their valour, but they laid it at her feet as the most glorious contribution that they could offer. For this offering of their lives made in common by them all they each of them individually received that renown which never grows old, and for a sepulchre, not so much that in which their bones have been deposited, but that noblest of shrines wherein their glory is laid up to be eternally remembered upon every occasion on which deed or story shall call for its commemoration. For heroes have the whole earth for their tomb; and in lands far from their own, where the column with its epitaph declares it, there is enshrined in every breast a record unwritten with no tablet to preserve it, except that of the heart. These take as your model and, judging happiness to be the fruit of freedom and freedom of valour, never decline the dangers of war. For it is not the miserable that would most justly be unsparing of their lives; these have nothing to hope for: it is rather they to whom continued life may bring reverses as yet unknown, and to whom a fall, if it came, would be most tremendous in its consequences. And surely, to a man of spirit, the degradation of cowardice must be immeasurably more grievous than the unfelt death which strikes him in the midst of his strength and patriotism!

"Comfort, therefore, not condolence, is what I have to offer to the parents of the dead who may be here. Numberless are the chances to which, as they know, the life of man is subject; but fortunate indeed are they who draw for their lot a death so glorious as that which has caused your mourning, and to whom life has been so exactly measured as to terminate in the happiness in which it has been passed. Still I know that this is a hard saying, especially when those are in question of whom you will constantly be reminded by seeing in the homes of others blessings of which once you also boasted: for grief is felt not so much for the want of what we have never known, as for the loss of that to which we have been long accustomed. Yet you who are still of an age to beget children must bear up in the hope of having others in their stead; not only will they help you to forget those whom you have lost, but will be to the state at once a reinforcement and a security; for never can a fair or just policy be expected of the citizen who does not, like his fellows, bring to the decision the interests and apprehensions of a father. While those of you who have passed your prime must congratulate yourselves with the thought that the best part of your life was fortunate, and that the brief span that remains will be cheered by the fame of the departed. For it is only the love of honour that never grows old; and honour it is, not gain, as some would have it, that rejoices the heart of age and helplessness.

"Turning to the sons or brothers of the dead, I see an arduous struggle before you. When a man is gone, all are wont to praise him, and should your merit be ever so transcendent, you will still find it difficult not merely to overtake, but even to approach their renown. The living have envy to contend with, while those who are no longer in our path are honoured with a goodwill into which rivalry does not enter. On the other hand, if I must say anything on the subject of female excellence to those of you who will now be in widowhood, it will be all comprised in this brief exhortation. Great will be your glory in not falling short of your natural character; and greatest will be hers who is least talked of among the men, whether for good or for bad.

"My task is now finished. I have performed it to the best of my ability, and in word, at least, the requirements of the law are now satisfied. If deeds be in question, those who are here interred have received part of their honours already, and for the rest, their children will be brought up till manhood at the public expense: the state thus offers a valuable prize, as the garland of victory in this race of valour, for the reward both of those who have fallen and their survivors. And where the rewards for merit are greatest, there are found the best citizens.

"And now that you have brought to a close your lamentations for your relatives, you may depart."

The three virtues

Introduction to Citizen Ethics in a Time of Crisis by Philip Pullman.

At first sight, of course, vice is more attractive. She is sexier, she promises to be better company than her plain sister virtue. Every novelist, and every reader too, has more fun with the villains than with the good guys. Goodness is staunch and patient, but wickedness is vivid and dynamic; we admire the first, but we thrill to the second.
Nevertheless, I want to say a word in praise of virtue: the quality or qualities that enable a nation and its citizens to live well, by which I mean morally well.
And to see what virtue looks like, we need to look not to lists of laws and commandments, but to literature. Was a lesson on the importance of kindness ever delivered more devastatingly, or learned more securely, than Mr Knightley's reproof of Emma in the novel that bears her name? Was the value of play in childhood (a profoundly ethical matter) ever more memorably conveyed than by Dickens's description of the Smallweed children in Bleak House?

The house of Smallweed … has strengthened itself in its practical character, has discarded all amusements, discountenanced all story-books, fairy tales, fictions and fables, and banished all levities altogether. Hence the gratifying fact, that it has had no child born to it, and that the complete little men and women whom it has produced, have been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with something depressing on their minds.

The lesson of every story in which the good is illustrated is, as Jesus said after telling the parable of the Good Samaritan, "Go, and do thou likewise." The genius of Jesus – and Jane Austen, and Dickens, and every other storyteller whose tales are as memorable – gives us no excuse to say we don't know what the good looks like.
When it comes to public virtue, William Blake's great poem Auguries of Innocence reminds us in forthright and indeed prophetic terms that the personal and the political are one:

A dog starv'd at his Master's Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.
A Horse misus'd upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood ...
The wanton Boy that kills the Fly
Shall feel the Spider's enmity

And, in a couplet the Blair government should have remembered before licensing the creation of super-casinos:

The Whore & Gambler, by the State
Licens'd, build that Nation's Fate

In fact, ethical guidance is something we have never actually been short of. Those who insist that all ethical teaching must be religious in origin are talking nonsense. Some of it is: much of it isn't.

But when it comes to public or political virtues, are there any in particular that ought to characterise a virtuous state? I can think of three that would make a good start.
The first is courage. Courage is foundational: it's what we need so as to be able to act kindly even when we're afraid, in order to exercise good and steady judgment even in the midst of confusion and panic, in order to deal with long-term necessity even when short-term expediency would be easier. A courageous nation would not be afraid of its own newspapers, or toady to their proprietors; it would continue to do what was right even when loud voices were urging it to do wrong. It would stand up to economic interests when others were more important, and yes, there are interests that are more important than short-term economic benefits. And when it came to the threat of external danger, a courageous nation would take a clear look at the danger and take realistic steps to avert it. It would not take up a machine-gun to defend itself against a wasp.

The second virtue I want to praise is modesty. Modesty in a nation consists among other things of fitting the form to the meaning, and not mistaking style for substance. A modest kingdom, for instance, would have to think for a moment to remember whether or not it was a republic, because the members of the royal family would be allowed to spend most of their time in useful and interesting careers as well as being royal, and their love affairs would remain their own business; and people would always be glad to see them cycling past. Acquiring modesty in our public life would be a big step towards developing a realistic sense of our size and position in the world.

The third virtue I'd like to see in a nation (all right: in our nation, now) is intellectual curiosity. Wakefulness of mind might be another term for it. A nation with that quality would be conscious of itself and of its history, and of every thread that made up the tapestry of its culture. It would believe that the highest knowledge of itself had been expressed by its artists, its writers and poets, and it would teach its children how to know and how to love their work, believing that this activity would give them, the children, an important part to play in the self-knowledge and memory of the nation. A nation where this virtue was strong would be active and enquiring of mind, quick to perceive and compare and consider. Such a nation would know at once when a government tried to interfere with its freedoms. It would remember how all those freedoms had been gained, because each one would have a story attached to it, and an attack on any of them would feel like a personal affront. That's the value of wakefulness.

To finish I want to say something briefly about how virtue manifests itself in daily life, local life. I saw two little things recently that give me hope that the spirit of common, public, civic virtue is still alive in this nation of ours when people are free to act without interference.
The first is an example of "folk traffic-calming". People living in a residential road in Oxford, home to a lot of families and children, a road which normally functions as a rat-run for cars, recently decided to take matters into their own hands and demonstrate that the street is a place for everyone, not just for people in large heavy mobile steel objects. They set up a living room right in the road, with a sofa, a carpet, a coffee table, and held a tea-party. They parked their own cars in a chevron formation all the way along the road and put planters containing bushes and small trees there too to calm the traffic down. They set up a walk-in petrol addiction clinic. The result was that cars could easily get through, but drivers couldn't see clear from one end of the road to the other and didn't feel it was just for driving along at 30 miles an hour. Everyone shared the whole space. It was a triumph: wit in the service of a decent human standard of life.

The second thing I saw was a television programme. It was about the work done by Michael Rosen when he was children's laureate, a project he undertook with a school in South Wales where books had been undervalued. He showed the children, and the teachers, and the parents the profound value of reading and all it could do to deepen and enrich their lives, and he did so not by following curriculum guidelines and aiming at targets and putting the children through tests, but by beginning with delight. Enchantment. Joy. The librarians there were practically weeping with relief and pleasure at seeing so many children now coming in to search the shelves and sit and read and talk about the books they're enjoying.
But I seem to be describing delight. Is that a virtue too? Well, it's like the canary in a coal mine: while it continues to sing, we know the great public virtue of liberty is still alive. A nation whose laws express fear and suspicion and hostility cannot sustain delight for very long. If joy goes, freedom is in danger.

So I would say that to sustain the virtue of a nation, we need to remember how the private connects with the public, the poetic with the political. We need to praise and cherish every example we can find of imaginative play, of the energy of creation, of the enchantment of art and the wonder of science. A nation that was brave, and modest, and curious sounds to me like one that understood that if it told its children stories, they might grow up to feel that virtue was in fact as interesting as vice.