on Inherent Virtue

[Mark Kohut]

Suddenly I wondered what I would learn by looking up the opposite of 'inherent vice'?  

1) Besides the ubiquitous Churchill quote, one learns it is, not surprisingly an old usage faded to almost no use these days.

2) It means what you think: a necessary essence of something. From the 16th Century toward ours, there are citations about all the substances which someone says DO NOT HAVE any inherent virtue.---a recent enough secular use comes from john Stuart Mill...[check google book search]

3)BUT, perhaps most interesting concerning our ex-Puritan are uses from such as jonathon Edwards, puritan theologian to the max....see below if interested where he argues against ANY inherent virtue (and vice, too, it seems!?) 

http://books.google.com/books?id=rIc9AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA114&dq=%22inherent+virtue%22&lr=&ei=mc3YSsndDqiOyASv8MWYBw#v=onepage&q=%22inherent%20virtue%22&f=false




http://books.google.com/books?id=rIc9AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA114&dq=%22inherent+virtue%22&lr=&ei=mc3YSsndDqiOyASv8MWYBw#v=onepage&q=%22inherent%20virtue%22&f=false