In terms of gaining good traits and fear of God, a lot depends of getting them when one is young. As Howard Bloom points out in The Lucifer Principle one's thought patterns at a certain point get hardened into one mind like a circuit board that after one places the connections in the right places, then heats it up to retain the connections.
That book is I think one of the great books to come out from the twentieth century [along with The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom. It is a wake up call that I think fell mainly on deaf ears. Still I think some people got the idea.]
The whole issue of needing to work consciously one one traits was certainly a motivating factor of Reb Israel Salanter in creating the Musar Movement--that is the idea of learning medieval books on ethics. [The advantage of the Middle Ages in terms of this kind of study is that it was the period when the scholastic thinkers were at their peak in finding the balance between Faith and Reason. ]
The idea really did not end with the Middle Ages. A lot of good work was done later by the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter. They also wrote a few Musar books--some of which are remarkable [Navardok and the אור צפון and אור ישראל come to mind]
That book is I think one of the great books to come out from the twentieth century [along with The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom. It is a wake up call that I think fell mainly on deaf ears. Still I think some people got the idea.]
The whole issue of needing to work consciously one one traits was certainly a motivating factor of Reb Israel Salanter in creating the Musar Movement--that is the idea of learning medieval books on ethics. [The advantage of the Middle Ages in terms of this kind of study is that it was the period when the scholastic thinkers were at their peak in finding the balance between Faith and Reason. ]
The idea really did not end with the Middle Ages. A lot of good work was done later by the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter. They also wrote a few Musar books--some of which are remarkable [Navardok and the אור צפון and אור ישראל come to mind]
