Commentary Magazine  Tales of Virtue  The success of William J.
Bennett’s admirable anthology of moral tales, The Book of
Virtues1—which has become a major best-seller—is both heartening
and puzzling: heartening because we want to think that people
hunger for literature that teaches virtue, puzzling because it
is not obvious why literature might have that effect.  Almost
every account we have from psychologists of the moral
development of the child emphasizes reinforcements and
imitation. Children acquire rules of conduct by having
compliance with those rules rewarded and violations punished and
by observing and imitating the behavior of their parents and
friends.  We are, however, neither rewarded nor punished in any
palpable sense by stories about imaginary people. We may wish to
imitate a fictional character who succeeds, but why should we
identify with one who suffers? Bennett’s answer to this question
is that such stories create “moral literacy”: they supply
examples that tell readers how to recognize th