Vertue

First, the reading:

‘And where are you travelling to, Mr Vertue?’ she asked.

‘To travel hopefully is better than to arrive,’ said Vertue.

‘Do you mean you are just out for a walk, just for exercise?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Vertue, who was becoming a little confused. ‘I am on a pilgrimage. I must admit, now that you press me, I have not a very clear idea of the end. But that is not the important question. These speculations don’t make one a better walker. The great thing is to do one’s thirty miles a day.’

‘Why?’

‘Because that is the rule.’

‘Ho-ho!’ said John. ‘So you do believe in the Landlord after all.’

‘Not at all. I didn’t say it was the Landlord rule.’

‘Whose is it then?’

‘It is my own rule. I made it myself.’

C. S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress (NB the Landlord means God)

Now, line by line:

‘And where are you travelling to, Mr Vertue?’ she asked.

This is about a character who is the personification of virtue, right action. Except there is a flaw. Not Virtue but Vertue. True virtue is grounded in God. We're going to discover that Mr Vertue's virtue is grounded in something else. 

‘To travel hopefully is better than to arrive,’ said Vertue.

Vertue here is dodging the question. Rather than revealing the fact that there is no end, no objective, he dodges the question with pseudo-spirituality. There is a logical contradiction: hope without a hoped-for object is consequent without ground, is effect without cause. Vertue basks in the self-satisfaction of his pseudo-spirituality and will not question it. 

‘Do you mean you are just out for a walk, just for exercise?’

This might be a noble thing in itself, the enjoyment of a walk, or the maintenance of physical health. The material realm is not bad. It is merely not everything. To do things well here for the sake of the here is well and good, and itself a form of real virtue, because it echoes the transcendental virtues of truth, goodness, and beauty. 

‘Certainly not,’ said Vertue, who was becoming a little confused. ‘I am on a pilgrimage. I must admit, now that you press me, I have not a very clear idea of the end. But that is not the important question. These speculations don’t make one a better walker. The great thing is to do one’s thirty miles a day.’

This is where Vertue reveals the fact that he is neither walking for an ultimate end in the Higher Realm nor for its worthy aspects of pleasure or health benefit in this realm. He's neither a materialist nor an idealist, hence the confusion. He uses words of spirituality or religion, e.g. pilgrimage, without meaning. Pilgrimages have destinations. His walking does not. His failure to engage adequately in this question is revealed as he returns, dismissing the questions of ethics, teleology, eschatology, to a narrow and mindless pragmatism: being a good walker, yet being a good walker has nothing to do with the quality of the walking, merely the fact of its existence and extent.

‘Why?’

‘Because that is the rule.’

Vertue now invokes the real reason that he is walking: he is apparently being obedient to something higher than him. We are now perhaps getting to the core. 

‘Ho-ho!’ said John. ‘So you do believe in the Landlord after all.’

John seizes on this and infers that the reason for the walking is obedience to God, without his understanding why the rule is the way it is. This way of proceeding has a reasonable pedigree: Abraham and others after all committed to obedience before or without understanding. 

‘Not at all. I didn’t say it was the Landlord rule.’

It turns out that not even this reason supports his action. God is nowhere in this picture of virtue. 

‘Whose is it then?’

‘It is my own rule. I made it myself.’

And the truth of the matter is finally revealed: he is his own god and knows no other. This is empty self-reliance with the superficial trappings of religion and spirituality. He has stipulated a set of rules for himself, which he follows, like a snake swallowing its own tail, with no sense of purpose in this world and no sense of purpose in the next, like the mindless labour of Silas Marner.

He seemed to weave, like the spider, from pure impulse, without reflection. Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life.

So, year after year, Silas Marner had lived in this solitude, his guineas rising in the iron pot, and his life narrowing and hardening itself more and more into a mere pulsation of desire and satisfaction that had no relation to any other being. His life had reduced itself to the functions of weaving and hoarding, without any contemplation of an end towards which the functions tended. The same sort of process has perhaps been undergone by wiser men, when they have been cut off from faith and love—only, instead of a loom and a heap of guineas, they have had some erudite research, some ingenious project, or some well-knit theory. (George Eliot, Silas Marner)