A man who tries to surpass another may perhaps succeed in equaling in not actually surpassing him, but one who merely follows can never quite come up with him: a follower, necessarily, is always behind.
The soul languishing in obscurity contracts a kind of rust, or abandons itself to the chimera of presumption; for it is natural for it to acquire something, even when separated from any one.
For it would have been better that man should have been born dumb, nay, void of all reason, rather than that he should employ the gifts of Providence to the destruction of his neighbor.
