Short Words on Love, Virtue and Vice.

The real mark of human excellence is love - the willing the good of the other as other, and then doing something about it. The more we love, the more beautiful our souls become, and we become good in any situation, no matter what the conditions. Love is an act of the will, not of the feelings. Feelings of love are good, but they are not always around. Hence, it is possible to love ones enemies. Aristotle was right when he said that human excellence is created by developing the virtues. Given that real human excellence is love, then the virtues can be said to be particular modes of love. Each virtue can be said to be a colour, all the colours of the rainbow subsumed into white light.

When we fail to love, we slowly lose that which makes us beautiful. As we do evil more and more, it is easy to become blinded by vice. Sometimes the only way to be woken up is by facing the painful consequences of selfishness. Suffering shakes us out of the transformation from human to monster if we let it. Boethius in the "Consolations of Philosophy" was quite right when he said that vice turns man into an animal, and that it is a tragedy when the evil prosper. For when the evil prosper, it becomes easier for them to delude themselves into thinking they are perfectly fine, when in reality they are spiritually dying or dead.