Integrity

Apply your counsel to your own conduct when doing so is inconvenient.

Consistency between considered ethical convictions and deliberate action.

Integrity brings considered ethical convictions into deliberate conduct. Wisdom grows practical when you let an insight govern a choice that costs convenience. Counsel becomes something you can examine in your own life, as well as offer in words.

Try a practice

The orange mascot places a blue stapler from an open cloth bag onto a small shelf.

A scene of understanding

You have just explained why borrowed things should be returned promptly. Then you recognize the community hall’s stapler in your own bag. You carry it back before beginning the next explanation. At last, a tool has secured your argument more effectively than a footnote.

An invented illustrative scene.

Integrity gives…

Integrity gives advice an honest home. Returning the stapler does the work of the principle at the point where a private exception would be easiest.

What Integrity makes possible

You can test a conviction by applying it when no audience is present. That may reveal a need to refine the principle, repair a lapse or change an arrangement. Understanding becomes more accountable through that work.

Integrity: finding the balance

Too little

Private exemption: explain the principle, then keep the stapler because returning it is inconvenient.

A fitting response

Consistent action: return it and adjust the habit that caused the lapse.

Pursued too far

Rigid consistency: preserve a mistaken rule after its harmful effects become clear.

A considered conviction can be revised. Integrity requires ethical thought as well as consistency; stubborn loyalty to a cruel principle is not its success.

Integrity in ordinary life

Shared credit

Apply the standard for acknowledging contributions when it is your own work being praised.

An inconvenient promise

Honor a freely made ordinary commitment, or explain and repair a change rather than silently exempting yourself.

Nearby virtues, different work

Intellectual Honesty

Intellectual Honesty permits evidence to correct a belief; Integrity acts by the considered conviction.

Humility

Humility recognizes a limit or lapse; Integrity addresses it in deliberate conduct.

Integrity and its counterfeits

Principled performance counterfeits Integrity when a public explanation conceals a private exception. Integrity carries the same considered standard into the unobserved choice.

How to cultivate Integrity

Identify a conviction you actually endorse.
Notice the private exception you are tempted to allow.
Make a fitting repair where conduct has departed from it.

Try it today

Apply one piece of ordinary ethical advice you give to a minor choice of your own. If the advice is unsound, revise it before asking anyone to follow it.

What became clearer when the principle had to guide an action instead of a sentence?

Use a bounded choice of your own. The practice requires no public confession, disclosure of protected information or confrontation with an unsafe authority.

Questions worth returning to

Which exception would I reject if someone else used it?
Does my principle deserve the consistency I am giving it?

Keep the practice proportionate

Use a bounded choice of your own. The practice requires no public confession, disclosure of protected information or confrontation with an unsafe authority.

These pages offer ideas for reflection and character practice, not professional advice. Choose practices suited to your circumstances and abilities. You may adapt, pause, or skip an exercise; putting yourself or someone else at risk is not proof of virtue.

About these practices

Quotations and further reading

Seven readings, one for each day. All remain available here. Historical arguments and fictional dialogue are identified in their source notes.

… He acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his actions. …
Confucius · The Analects
(zero-based); exact span 154–227
Confucius, Analects II.13 · Legge translation of The Chinese Classics; current Gutenberg 3330 transcription
English translation by James Legge
The Master makes action precede the corresponding words. Returning the borrowed stapler supplies counsel with a deliberate act.
… Let each man direct himself first to what is proper, then let him teach others; thus a wise man will not suffer.
Dhammapada · Dhammapada
(zero-based); exact span 5–117
Canonical Buddhist verse, in Müller’s translation · Sacred Books of the East, volume X, part I; current Gutenberg 2017 transcription
English translation by F. Max Müller
The verse turns instruction first toward one’s own conduct. The page applies it to a minor commitment, without treating the promised absence of suffering as a guarantee.
… I must march my pen as I do my feet. …
Michel de Montaigne · Essays
(zero-based); exact span 257–293
Michel de Montaigne’s essay voice · 1877 Cotton/Hazlitt edition; current Gutenberg 3600 transcription
English translation by Charles Cotton; revised and edited by William Carew Hazlitt
Montaigne brings writing and walking into the same account of self. A principle needs contact with the writer’s own deliberate conduct.
… And not only ought each to see to his discourses but also to his actions whether he regards utility more than show, and truth more than display. …
Plutarch · Morals: Ethical Essays
(zero-based); exact span 5–149
Plutarch’s essay voice; ancient report rather than modern evidence · 1888 George Bell and Sons translation; current Gutenberg 23639 transcription
English translation by Arthur Richard Shilleto
Plutarch tests both words and actions for truth rather than display. A returned tool can establish the practical point that a polished lecture leaves untested.
… There has been plenty of insistance on the evil of swearing by the words of a master, and having the judgment uniformly controlled by a "He said it;" but a much worse woe to befall a man is to have every judgment controlled by an "I said it"—to make a divinity of his own short-sightedness or passion-led aberration and explain the world in its honour. …
George Eliot · Impressions of Theophrastus Such
(zero-based); exact span 827–1179
The fictional narrator Theophrastus Such · 1879 work; current Gutenberg 10762 transcription
The narrator warns against allowing “I said it” to govern judgment. Integrity must follow considered ethical convictions rather than stubborn protection of a prior declaration.
… The reason why the ancients did not readily give utterance to their words, was that they feared lest their actions should not come up to them. …
Confucius · The Analects
(zero-based); exact span 460–602
Confucius, Analects IV.22 · Legge translation of The Chinese Classics; current Gutenberg 3330 transcription
English translation by James Legge
Concern that actions fall short gives words a reason for restraint. The borrowed tool offers a small occasion to close that gap.
… Like a beautiful flower, full of colour, but without scent, are the fine but fruitless words of him who does not act accordingly.
Dhammapada · Dhammapada
(zero-based); exact span 4–133
Canonical Buddhist verse, in Müller’s translation · Sacred Books of the East, volume X, part I; current Gutenberg 2017 transcription
English translation by F. Max Müller
Fine words without corresponding action are a flower without scent. The page gives the principle an ordinary practical expression instead of more verbal ornament.

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