Just as whatsoever stars there be, their radiance avails not the sixteenth part of the radiance of the moon.
In answering this question, Hutcheson avails himself of the scholastic distinction between " material " and " formal " goodness.
What avails it that you are Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious?
The supplication of a righteous man avails much in its working.
Thus his famous general formula for virtue, that it is a mean or middle state, always to be found somewhere between the vices which stand to it in the relation of excess and defect, scarcely avails to render his treatment more systematic.