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OF these eight faults then, although they are different in their origin
and in their way of affecting us, yet the six former; viz., gluttony,
fornication, covetousness, anger, dejection, accidie, have a sort of
connexion with each other, and are, so to speak, linked together in a
chain, so that any excess of the one forms a starting point for the next.
For from superfluity of gluttony fornication is sure to spring, and from
fornication covetousness, from covetousness anger, from anger, dejection,
and from dejection, accidie. And so we must fight against them in the same
way, and with the same methods: and having overcome one, we ought always to
enter the lists against the next. For a tall and spreading tree of a
noxious kind will the more easily be made to wither if the roots on which
it depends have first been laid bare or cut; and a pond of water which is
dangerous will be dried up at once if the spring and flowing channel which
produce it are carefully stopped up. Wherefore in order to overcome
accidie, you must first get the better of dejection: in order to get rid of
dejection, anger must first be expelled: in order to quell anger,
covetousness must be trampled under foot: in order to root out
covetousness, fornication must be checked: and in order to destroy
fornication, you must chastise the sin of gluttony. But the two remaining
faults; viz., vainglory and pride, are connected together in a somewhat
similar way as the others of which we have spoken, so that the growth of
the one makes a starting point for the other (for superfluity of vainglory
produces an incentive to pride); but they are altogether different from the
six former faults, and are not joined in the same category with them, since
not only is there no opportunity given for them to spring up from these,
but they are actually aroused in an entirely different way and manner. For
when these others have been eradicated these latter flourish the more
vigorously, and from the death of the others they shoot forth and grow up
all the stronger: and therefore we are attacked by these two faults in
quite a different way. For we fall into each one of those six faults at the
moment when we have been overcome by the ones that went before them; but
into these two we are in danger of falling when we have proved victorious,
and above all after some splendid triumph. In the cases then of all faults
just as they spring up from the growth of those that go before them, so are
they eradicated by getting rid of the earlier ones. And in this way in
order that pride may be driven out vainglory must be stifled, and so if we
always overcome the earlier ones, the later ones will be checked; and
through the extermination of those that lead the way, the rest of our
passions will die down without difficulty. And though these eight faults of
which we have spoken are connected and joined together in the way which we
have shown, yet they may be more exactly divided into four groups and sub-
divisions. For to gluttony fornication is linked by a special tie: to
covetousness anger, to dejection accidie, and to vainglory pride is closely
allied.
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