The things that are harder for him to know —things more distant from the immediately sensible — must often be grasped in a likeness before they can be grasped in themselves. [Our Lord's frequent use of parables illustrates this need.] Some things, of course, one thinks about from the very first images he has, or forms he receives. That the whole is greater than its part, for example, or that a thing cannot both be and not be in the same respect at the same time, are possible to understand from the first encounters one has with being. But an understanding of justice and beauty, right and wrong, sacrifice and greed, is going to depend on what the student encounters in his environment, which includes what he reads.

Good stories give the reader experience and show him, in an incarnational way, what virtue is and what it looks like.