A Few Models, Not Many

So that you may reach this more easily, the examples of a perfect life in the community for you to imitate should be sought from a very few, indeed from only one or two, and not from too many. For apart from the fact that a life which has been tested, refined and purified is found only in a few, there is this further gain: a man is more thoroughly instructed and shaped by the example of one person toward the perfection he sets before himself, that is, the perfection of the coenobite life. [a]