This insight brings needed precision to the account of natural virtue defended in chapter 2. In the strictest sense, a virtue is a natural feature of our shared humanity when its principal act regards a specific matter found in every human life, when this act helps us achieve specific instances of a general end that all human beings consider good and desirable, and when its constancy with respect to this act helps us overcome the difficulties that must be addressed whenever this end is intended and pursued. Regular and unavoidable resort to the act, consistent success in the achievement of its end, and recurrent overcoming of those difficulties—these will eventually generate our recognition of a virtue. We will come to see that the habitual performance of this act in the face of those difficulties is in fact a moral excellence, a perfection of our agency and thus of our humanity. In this strict sense, a natural