The innovations in the work are that it presents the principles of ethics independently of religious dogma and that it proposes that the five physical senses are emblems and instruments of virtue and vice, but not their agents; thus, a person's inclination to vice is subject to a person's will to change. Gabirol presents a tabular diagram of the relationship of twenty qualities to the five senses, reconstructed at right, and urges his readers to train the qualities of their souls unto good through self-understanding and habituation. He regards man's ability to do so as an example of divine benevolence.