Delphic (
Greek characters). To translate nil admirari "to
admire nothing" is quite wrong. This Horatian maxim
does not concern the theoretical so much as the practical,
and its real meaning is: "Prize no object unconditionally.
Do not fall in love with anything; do not believe that the
possession of anything can give you happiness. Every
intense longing for an object is only a delusive chimera,
which one may just as well, and much more easily, get
quit of by fuller knowledge as by attained possession."
Cicero also uses admirari in this sense (De Divinatione,
ii. 2). What Horace means is thus the (Greek characters) and
(Greek characters), also (Greek characters), which Democritus before
him prized as the highest good (see Clem. Alex. Strom., ii.
21, and cf. Strabo, i. p. 98 and 105). Such reasonableness
of conduct has properly nothing to do with virtue and
vice; but this practical use of reason is what gives man
his pre-eminence over the brute, and only in this sense
has it any meaning and is it permissible to speak of a
dignity of man.
In all the cases given, and indeed in all conceivable cases, the distinction between rational and irrational action runs back to the question whether the motives are abstract conceptions or ideas of perception. Therefore the explanation which I have given of reason agrees exactly with the use of language at all times and among all peoples – a circumstance which will not be regarded as merely accidental or arbitrary, but will be seen to arise from the distinction of which every man is conscious, of the different faculties of the mind, in accordance with which consciousness he speaks, though certainly he does not raise it to the distinctness of an abstract definition. Our ancestors did not make the words without attaching to them a definite meaning, in order, perhaps, that they might lie ready for philosophers who might possibly come centuries after and determine what ought to be thought in connection with them; but they denoted by them quite definite conceptions. Thus the words are no
