o knows what is good and embraces it, who knows what is bad and
avoids it, is learned and temperate; and when he was asked whether he
believed that they who know very well what ought to be done, but do quite
otherwise, were learned and temperate? "On the contrary," answered he,
"they are very ignorant and very stupid, for, in my opinion, every man
who, in the great number of possible things that offer themselves to him,
can discern what is most advantageous for him to do, never fails to do
it; but all who govern not themselves well and as they ought, are neither
learned nor men of good morals."

He said likewise that justice and every other virtue is only a science,
because all the actions of justice and of the other virtues are good and
honourable; and that all who know the beauty of these actions think
nothing more charming; as, on the contrary, they who are ignorant of them
cannot perform any one virtuous action, or, if they attempt to do it, are
sure to perform it in a wrong manner. So that the persons only who
possess this science can do just and good actions; but all just and good
actions are done by the means of virtue, therefore justice and virtue is
only a science.

He said, moreover, that folly is contrary to knowledge, and yet he did
not allow ignorance to be a folly; but that not to know oneself, or to
imagine one knows what he does not know, is a weakness next to folly. And
he observed that among the vulgar a man is not accused of folly for being
mistaken in things that are unknown to most of the world, but for
mistaking in things which no man mistakes that knows anything at all; as
if any man should think himself so tall as to be obliged to stoop when he
came in at the gates of the city; or if he thought himself so strong as
to undertake to carry away whole houses on his back, or to do any other
thing visibly impossible, the people would say that he had lost his wits,
which they do not say of those who commit only some slight extravagances;
and as they give the name of love to a violent affection only, so they
give the name of folly only to an extraordinary disorder of the mind.

Reflecting on the nature of envy, he said that it is a certain grief of
mind, which proceeds, not from the misfortune of friends or good fortune
of enemies, but (which is very surprising) only from the prosperity of
friends. "For," said he, "those may be truly said to be envious who
cannot endure to see their friends happy."