Consolation of Philosophy ; translated into English Prose and Verse by H. R. JamesThe philosophical message of the book fit well with the religious piety of the Middle Ages. Readers were encouraged not to seek worldly goods such as money and power, but to seek internalized virtues. Evil had a purpose, to provide a lesson to help change for good; while suffering from evil was seen as virtuous. Because God ruled the universe through Love, prayer to God and the application of Love would lead to true happiness. The Middle Ages, with their vivid sense of an overruling fate, found in Boethius an interpretation of life closely akin to the spirit of Christianity. The Consolation of Philosophy stands, by its note of fatalism and its affinities with the Christian doctrine of humility, midway between the pagan philosophy of Seneca the Younger and the later Christian philosophy of consolation represented by Thomas Aquinas.The book is heavily influenced by Plato and his dialogues (as was Boethius himself). Its popularity can in part be explained by its neoplatonic and Christian ethical messages, although current scholarly research is still far from clear exactly why and how the work became so vastly popular in the Middle Ages. Notably, the book has not received much attention in the recent modern era, possibly in part because of its foreign inward looking virtues and rejection of the modern emphasis on material productiveness.