"Let's talk about moral goods, the sorts of goods that make us better persons for having them. They are properties of the human spirit. If we have them and if we tend to live in ways that demonstrate them in action, we are on the way to personal excellence.

"We used to call them virtues, qualities that make for excellence, sometimes greatness, but always goodness in people. Consider some examples: courage, compassion, fairness, loyalty, discernment, honesty, and modesty. Most people would consider anyone with a nice blend of qualities like these a good person.

"What makes a person with qualities like these a good person? It is not because we enjoy being around courageous and fair people; they might be quite resistibly unpleasant. It is not because honest and loyal people are especially amusing; in fact they might be depressingly dreary. We have no guarantee that moral goodness always comes with charm thrown in.

"We say that these are moral qualities and that people who have them are good people because they are likely to make life better for others. You can depend on them to keep life human around them. To be there for you when you need them. To care about people getting a fair deal. To help people who need help. To respect your privacy when you want to be left alone. To let you know the truth when they talk to you. And to keep their hands out of your pockets.

"The point is simply this: we call people good because they add to the goodness in other people's lives. Morality is always about keeping life good, or making it better, or preventing it from getting worse than it already is. That is why it is good to be a good person. Not so that you get God to applaud you. But so that you do some good for your friends and neighbors, even for your enemies.

"In human relationships, imagination is the inward vision of love. It is love's educated guess of what will happen to another person if we do what we think is right. Imagination is compassion stretched beyond our prefabricated notions of right and wrong. Imagination is the beginning of responsible morality.

"We fail to use imagination, not because we were not lucky enough to inherit the gift, but because we do not pull ourselves far enough above our own desires, high enough to see ahead into how what we do will touch the lives of people.

"Imagination is love's foresight. Without it we are likely to act irresponsibly. So another way to make the responsibility test is to ask, "Did I stop to use imagination before I acted?"