This isn’t to say that those instances when we yield to temptation should bring us to despair, as if we’d failed irredeemably, for to expect perfection in one’s self is to misapprehend one’s nature, and even to profane the love of the creator by assigning to it a quality that is conditional and human, rather than mysterious and divine. But only that the path of virtue is always there, that it is always beleaguered, and that one’s footing on it will become surer the more attention one pays to it.