A Sketch of Universal Wisdom

OUTLINE

...about perpetual confusions, the complaints of wise men in every age are well known (a): and no one is ignorant of them, unless they are either a stranger in the World, such as newly entered infants; or a block and a trunk A Latin idiom for someone who is as senseless and unfeeling as a piece of wood., such as the dullards who pay no attention to what is happening, much less care about it. (b) However, the source of these confusions is that nearly all mortals (even those who seem wise to themselves and to the world) do everything—or certainly their most important affairs—not by counsel and reason, which they are ignorant of, but by chance original: "temerè," meaning rashly or without a plan.. In this sense, Augustine said that most men are fools (Book 1 on Free Will, chapter 9). And Cicero: Nothing is so very common as to have no wisdom. Also: I believe it is more common for a mule to have given birth than for a man to have been wise. Cicero is using a proverbial impossibility; since mules are sterile, a mule giving birth is a miracle. He argues that finding a truly wise man is even more unlikely. Since, therefore, Wisdom, the governess of things, abandons men, what wonder is it that everything is conducted immoderately and through turmoil? And that our affairs are not carried toward their proper ends, but rush beyond their boundaries, and throw us down into various precipices? The salvation of the human race, therefore, would be for the true Ends of things to be uncovered, along with the certain Means leading to those ends, and the legitimate Methods original: "Modos" of those Means...