Rectitude. Purity of morals, bearing, and words. Cicero defined it as wise conduct, where actions, manners, and discourse correspond to what one is and what one ought to be. He did not put it at the rank of fashions, but of virtues and duties, because it is one of them, giving some examples of the practice of all that is good. Simple omissions of prevailing customs of proprieties, attached only to time, places, and people, are only the outward appearance of rectitude . I admit that it demands the regularity of exterior actions, but it is above all founded on the interior sentiments of the soul. If the fall of draperies in painting produces one of the great embellishments of the picture, one knows that their principal merit is to leave a glimpse of the naked, without disguising the joints and fittings. The draperies must always conform to the character of the subject they want to imitate. Thus, rectitude consists in 1. doing nothing that does not carry with it a character of kindness, uprightness, and sincerity; this is the main point; 2. doing only what natural law permits or orders, in the manner and with the reserves prescribed by decency. For that which concerns rectitude in natural law, see Upstanding.