Cultivating virtue

If cultivating virtue is the first step in the guidelines for living suggested by Buddha, then what is virtue? American Heritage Dictionary defines virtue as moral excellence, righteous, goodness, chastity. How does one know if one is cultivating virtue? One way is to see if one's words and behaviors match. When people's words and actions do not match, I have found the more reliable quality to go by is their actions. It seems that the more unconscious people are, the more their words and actions may not match; and conversely, the more conscious one is, the more words and actions are congruent. Author Karen Armstrong, in A History of God, says that the authentic test for religion (let's substitute virtue), is not what people believe, but what they do. I would say that unless one practices compassion and lovingkindness to all living things, including oneself, then one has not cultivated virtue.