The first conversion has been accomplished and grace begins its gradual work of supernaturalizing the whole man. In this way a man begins to lead an upright life, upright because directed at last towards his true and last end; his life is now straightened out. This is what Scripture means by the word ‘righteousness’. The righteous man is the upright man; he is not bent away from God. He is ‘plumb’. This plumbness begins with the spiritual life of grace. But to build ‘plumb’, a man must have a plumb-line; he must have a measure. Rightness, rectitude, demands a rule, and the righteous man is a man who lives according to rule. St Thomas contrasts this rectitude of moral life with that of justice which deals with external goods, and he says, ‘This type of rectitude which implies the order towards a fitting end and the divine law which is the rule of the human will is common to every virtue’ (I-II, lv, 4 ad 4). To live uprightly is to live virtuously, according to rule, the straight rule of reason coming out from the divine Reason and the divine law.