Miscellanies 6.12.96

By this reasoning the difficulty the heretics raise against us is solved: whether Adam was formed perfect or imperfect. If imperfect, how is the work of a perfect God imperfect, and a human being above all? If perfect, how does he transgress the commandments? They will hear from us, too, that he was not perfect in his constitution, but fitted to receive virtue. For there is surely a difference between having been made fitted for virtue and the possession of it. And he wishes us to be saved by our own efforts. This, then, is the nature of the soul: to move of itself. Then, being rational, since philosophy is rational, we have a certain kinship with it. Aptitude is a tendency toward virtue, but it is not virtue. All, then, as I said, are naturally made for the acquisition of virtue; but one advances more and another less, in learning and in training. That is why some have attained perfect virtue and others have reached a certain point, while some, through neglect, even if otherwise well endowed, have turned to the opposite. Much more is knowledge, which surpasses all branches of learning in greatness and truth, the hardest of all to acquire, and it is won with much toil.