 If loyalty is a virtue, what kind of virtue is it? The virtues are a mixed bag, conceptually and normatively. There are, for example, moral and intellectual virtues, Christian and pagan virtues. In the instant case, there is a distinction between substantive and executive virtues. The substantive virtues include compassion, fellow-feeling, kindness, and generosity, whereas the executive virtues include sincerity, courage, industriousness, and conscientiousness. Substantive virtues motivate us to act well, that is, to do good, and are critical to our moral relations with others (and, in the case of prudence, to our own interests as well). The executive virtues, or, as they are sometimes known, virtues of the will, are important to the implementation of what the substantive virtues require of us—sincerity in our compassion, courage in our kindness, conscientiousness in our generosity. They help us to surmount obstacles to our doing good. Loyalty, like sincerity, is an executive virtue, and its worth in a particular case is especially sensitive to the value of its object. Like other executive virtues, it can become attached to unworthy objects—one may be a loyal Nazi or sincere racist. But that does not make their virtuousness merely contingent or optional. A world or person without sincerity or conscientiousness or loyalty would be a seriously deficient one. The capacity and ability to persevere in human associations that may require sacrifices from us are important to develop and exercise, and are what the virtue of loyalty consists in. Thus, insofar as we express loyalty in particular loyalties, we should distinguish the assessment of whether someone has the virtue of loyalty from assessments of the worth of particular loyalties.