The Virtuous Life

Extract

It is not out of place, perhaps, to consider the influence of the Platonic habit of thought upon the conception of the virtuous life, particularly of the beginner. The general characteristic of the beginner is that of acquiring the virtues, so that the virtuous life appears to him at first as something outside himself, something that has to be grasped and brought into his own possession. The Golden Epistle of William of St Thierry sets this out very clearly in terms of what he calls the ‘animal man’, the man who lives by his senses rather than by the interior grace within him. Such a man is first moved by authority or admonished by a teacher; he accepts the good where he finds it, but he finds it always in what otheis say and do. So he begins by being obedient and by imitating the ways of others.