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You know very well how much trouble those give themselves who maintain this assertion, and what strange questions they raise with regard to it,—for instance, why a wise virtuous man should never perceive how he became such, but should either be quite ignorant, or at least doubt, that ever by little and little, now adding something, now subtracting and removing others, he advanced to the aggregate perfection of virtue. Now if (as they affirm) the change from bad to good were either so quick and sudden, as that he was extremely vicious in the morning may become eminently virtuous at night, or that any one going to bed wicked might chance to rise a virtuous man next morning, and, having all the former day’s errors and imperfections absolutely removed out of his mind, might say to them, as it is in the poet, Vain dreams ! farewell, like spectres haste away, At the new light of virtue’s glorious day; Eurip. Iph. Taur. 669.
