Chapter V.
Of the faults which are contracted through our own
fault, without natural impulses.
But
we affirm that some faults
grow up without any natural occasion giving birth to them, but simply
from the free choice of a corrupt and evil will, as envy and this very
sin of covetousness; which are caught (so to speak) from without,
having no origination in us from natural instincts. But these, in
proportion as they are easily guarded against and readily avoided, just
so do they make wretched the mind that they have got hold of and
seized, and hardly do they suffer it to get at the remedies which would
cure it: either because these who are wounded by persons whom they
might either have ignored, or avoided, or easily overcome, do not
deserve to be healed by a speedy cure, or else because, having laid the
foundations badly, they are unworthy to raise an edifice of virtue and
reach the summit of perfection.