Human Excellence

Our judgments on the manliness of a man or the womanliness of a woman are not based on vegetable or animal grounds. Our eyes are not made merely to see, our ears merely to hear; they are to furnish the rough material for a vision and an understanding far beyond the world of the senses. Our human touch has a meaning or it is not human, our human taste leads to judgments possible only to a man or it is the animal's guzzling. Our passions are brutalized beyond all human resemblance when they are in command of our actions; in that false role, they destroy both the man and the passions themselves. Our passions are made to operate under reason, and it is under reason that they reach their greatest perfection. The grounds of our judgment of excellence among men are human grounds: control, capable direction, mastery, responsibility. Or, to put it in one word, the norm of excellence is virtue.

- My Way of Life
Confraternity of the Precious Blood