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Ex senatus-consultis et plebiscitis ...

To ask like passages.

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Ex senatus-consultis et plebiscitis scelera exercentur. Sen. 588.[136]

Nihil tam absurde dici potest quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum. Divin.[137]

Quibusdam destinatis sententiis consecrati quae non probant coguntur defendere. Cic.[138]

Ut omnium rerum sic litterarum quoque intemperantia laboramus. Senec.[139]

Id maxime quemque decet, quod est cujusque suum maxime.[140]

Hos natura modos primum dedit.[141] Georg.

Paucis opus est litteris ad bonam mentem.[142]

Si quando turpe non sit, tamen non est non turpe quum id a multitudine laudetur.

Mihi sic usus est, tibi ut opus est facto, fac.[143] Ter.

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Rarum est enim ut satis se quisque vereatur.[144]

Tot circa unum caput tumultuantes deos.[145]

Nihil turpius quam cognitioni assertionem praecurrere. Cic.[146]

Nec me pudet, ut istos, fateri nescire quid nesciam.[147]

Melius non incipient.[148]

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Thought.—­All the dignity of man consists in thought.  Thought is therefore by its nature a wonderful and incomparable thing.  It must have strange defects to be contemptible.  But it has such, so that nothing is more ridiculous.  How great it is in its nature!  How vile it is in its defects!

But what is this thought?  How foolish it is!

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The mind of this sovereign judge of the world is not so independent that it is not liable to be disturbed by the first din about it.  The noise of a cannon is not necessary to hinder its thoughts; it needs only the creaking of a weathercock or a pulley.  Do not wonder if at present it does not reason well; a fly is buzzing in its ears; that is enough to render it incapable of good judgment.  If you wish it to be able to reach the truth, chase away that animal which holds its reason in check and disturbs that powerful intellect which rules towns and kingdoms.  Here is a comical god! O ridicolosissimo eroe!

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The power of flies; they win battles,[149] hinder our soul from acting, eat our body.

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When it is said that heat is only the motions of certain molecules, and light the conatus recedendi which we feel,[150] it astonishes us.  What!  Is pleasure only the ballet of our spirits?  We have conceived so different an idea of it!  And these sensations seem so removed from those others which we say are the same as those with which we compare them!  The sensation from the fire, that warmth which affects us in a manner wholly different from touch, the reception of sound and light, all this appears to us mysterious, and yet it is material like the blow of a stone.  It is true that the smallness of the spirits which enter into the pores touches other nerves, but there are always some nerves touched.