Plato wrote that to be virtuous, we must both understand what contributes to our overall good and have our spirited and appetitive desires educated properly and guided by the rational part of the soul. The path he prescribes is that a potentially virtuous person should learn when young to love and take pleasure in virtuous actions, but he must wait until late in life to develop the understanding of why what he loves is good. An obvious problem is that this reasoning is circular.