Greetings,
We’ve entered February, making it just over a month since the New Year. Across the board, I think it’s safe to say that this time of the year can be one of the toughest for people - a sort of “Wasteland”, if you will (speaking of which, go read John Brigg’s latest article!). We are in the dead of winter, with the warmth of spring still aways off and the fire of the Christmas season has turned to ash. The inertia of our New Year’s resolutions is slowing down and there is a feeling of being bogged down by the cold. What better a time to meditate on perseverance? The concept of perseverance is a seemingly simple one, but let us contemplate it in the abstract sense of the word and admire it in the real-life, concrete sense. After this article, my hope is that your cerebral faculties will be edified and your visceral faculties inspired
As for your cerebral faculties, let us consult some authorities on the definitions surrounding perseverance. I am going to touch on the definition of virtue before focusing specifically on perseverance. According to the theologian, Peter Lombard, who drew from Augustine’s definition, virtue is a “good quality of the mind, by which we live rightly, which no one uses badly, which God alone works in a human.”[1] Aquinas also corroborates this definition, stating that “This definition comprises perfectly the whole essential notion of virtue,” yet more succinctly calling virtue “an operative habit.”[2] The word “operative” here is important because it denotes that the habit is something that is acted out, in contrast to virtue qua virtue, i.e. virtue as being. But the mere act does not make it a habit, and as Aquinas makes clear, it is only in the constancy of the act that one becomes habitually virtuous. For even I, the incontinent man, can partake in an act of virtue once, but that does not make me a virtuous man per se.
It is in the distinction of the habit from the act that perseverance's unique quality as a virtue is revealed. The interesting thing is that perseverance is defined as a virtue, thus making it an operative habit, as defined by Aquinas, yet in its essence, it differentiates itself from all the other virtues. And what I really mean by “differentiates itself” is that perseverance is part of every virtue. In the distinction between the act and the habit, as discussed above, the latter, which is the continuous act of virtue, is in a sense, perseverance itself. Aquinas states that “to persist long in something good until it is accomplished belongs to a special virtue,” that being perseverance.[3] Now, notice how Aquinas uses “persist” to define perseverance: that sort of circular defining bounces the definition right back to the concerned word. To my mind, that establishes the virtue as a sort of genus for all the other virtues. The definition Aquinas provides is also the definition of how we go from acting virtuously to being virtuous. If I am making my point too long-winded, let me distill it down to this: that the virtue of perseverance is the very virtue which takes us from the act to the habit.
Transitioning from the abstract to the concrete, the story of the aptly named ship, The Endurance, comes to mind. If you weren’t already aware of the story, The Endurance and its crew are known for the heroic 1914-1917 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. The purpose of the journey was to make the first land crossing of the continent of Antarctica, and it is known as the last expedition of the “Heroic Age of Antarctic Expedition.” Led by Sir Earnest Shackleton, the crew set out from the island of South Georgia and made way for Vahsel Bay. All went well until they reached the Weddell Sea, where they came across a polar ice pack and their progress grinded to a stop. Throughout the Winter of 1915, they were carried by the ice packs away from their destination, despite their best efforts to break through. Eventually The Endurance was destroyed by the ice. Using lifeboats, the crew made their way to the barren rock, called Elephant Island, where a small group of five then made a heroic 800-mile journey, still in a lifeboat, back to South Georgia Island. From there, Shackleton made arrangements for the rescue of the remaining crew members, all of which survived. [4]
Although a failure in its goal, the story of The Endurance is a great testament to the virtue of perseverance and what men can do in the face of little-to-no hope. Without the perseverance in courage that these men displayed, the death toll from the adventure would have gone from zero to possibly the whole crew. Many a former expedition had ended less fortunately. Similar to the men of The Endurance, we can get caught in the ice pack of whatever problems we encounter. Whether it be fighting for our life or achieving some goal, let us always “persist long in something good until it is accomplished.”
“We had pierced the veneer of outside things. We had ‘suffered, starved, and triumphed, groveled down yet grasped at glory, grown bigger in the bigness of the whole.’ We had seen God in his splendors, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of men.”
- Sir Ernest Shackleton
I highly recommend reading more into the story of The Endurance than the brief overview above. The Imperial Tran-Antarctic Expedition is one of many, all of which are equally harrowing.
Fun fact: there is a pub in Kerry, Ireland, called the “South Pole Inn” which was owned by the legendary crew member, Tom Crean. I did not have time to dive into his story, but besides Shackleton, Crean is at the heart of the story and the embodiment of perseverance. One example of his feats was when he won the Albert Medal for Lifesaving by traversing solo across 35 miles of harsh Antarctic ice shelves to save the life of one of his crew mates.
[1] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Thomas_Aquinas_on_Virtue/DNduEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1
[2] https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2055.htm
[3] https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3137.htm
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Trans-Antarctic_Expedition
Wonderful, this makes me want to read his story again. What did you think of the Brannagh movie?