Brevity is the soul of lingerie. ~~ Dorothy Parker

I recently found myself writing the phrase, “For the sake of Brevity…” When I realized I actually think of Brevity as a proper noun. Brevity is a wonderful idea and is a virtue in a lot of circumstances, but is it a proper noun? I say yes and the whole thing got me wondering, when did we decide virtues (and vices) were no longer proper nouns?

Here is the Jones's Version of this question, with absolutely no corroborating evidence or proof. I think the capitalization of nouns is a tacitly Platonic practice and acknowledges Plato’s Theory of Forms.* That is, this or that particular noun refers to an abstract Noun. For instance, we do not confuse specific acts of courage with cowardice, why? Because we have the idea of Courage in our mind and that idea informs the specifics of any given situation. Plato took this too far (give the man a break, he was a pagan after all), saying that this world was a shadow of a true world that existed in a different metaphysical place, but many Christians have found a kernel of truth in Plato’s Forms.

The Christianization of this philosophy runs like this: somewhere in the mind of God exists his idea of what a throne is (thinking of a specific throne here in Revelation 4:2, “At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it.”). All other thrones are more or less throne-like in accordance to how much they resemble the Throne as it resides in God’s mind. I can look at something that sits on a dais, that is incrusted in rubies and emeralds, and can judge whether it is really a throne or simply a chair dressed up in its Sunday best. Similarly, I can tell the difference between a rampart and a wall, even though they share some characteristics.

Chairs.

But I digress. I suspect that the rise of Empiricism (starting at specifics in order to discover generalities rather than thinking the universal informs the specific) has something to do with why virtues are no longer proper nouns. As for me and mine, Courage, Duty, Gentleness, Strength, Joy, Peace, Goodness, Faith, Meekness, Temperance and, of course, Love, reside in their perfection within the mind of God. And forcefully do we stride toward them through the Grace of Jesus Christ our Lord.

* I am aware of the danger of Gnosticism on one side of this but I feel Materialism lurks equally near on the other side. Like all extra-Biblical ideas this only goes as far as it goes.