Upon this principle I doubt not that we should interpret the sayings
attributed to the seven wise men of Greece. If we regard them as
insulated aphorisms, they strike us all as mere impertinences; for by
what right is some one prudential admonition separarately illuminated
and left as a solemn legacy to all posterity in slight of others equally
cogent? For instance, _Meden agan_--nothing in excess--is a maxim not
to be neglected, but still not entitled to the exclusive homage which
is implied in its present acceptation. The mistake, meantime, I believe
to be, not in the Grecian pleiad of sages, but in ourselves, who have
falsely apprehended them. The man, for instance (Bias was it, or who?),
who left me this old saw about excess, did not mean to bias me in favor
of that one moral caution; this would have argued a craze in favor of
one element amongst many. What he meant was, to indicate the _radix_
out of which his particular system was expanded. It was the key-note
out of which, under the laws of thorough-bass, were generated the whole
chord and its affinities. Whilst the whole evolution of the system was
in lively remembrance, there needed no more than this short-hand memento
for recalling it. But now, when the lapse of time has left the little
maxim stranded on a shore of wrecks, naturally it happens that what
was in old days the keystone of an arch has come to be compounded with
its superfluous rubbish.