In other words, talent participates in reality in a way that is more rarefied and arbitrary than is the way of things like wisdom and understanding, and that is because talent, in substance, isn’t as close to virtue as they are. And the reason this matters is because virtue avails itself to everyone, regardless of the circumstances of one’s birth. To be a sporting great, for example, I would need to have been born with the talents that are native to athleticism, and that belong to the realm of physical grace, but to be virtuous all I need is to want to be so, and to act on that want.