When I read the lives of the philosophers in Diogenes Laertius, I arrive
at the conclusion that Epicurus, Zeno, Diogenes, Protagoras and the
others were nothing more than men who had common sense. Clearly, as a
corollary, I am obliged to conclude that the people we meet nowadays
upon the street, whether they wear gowns, uniforms or blouses, are mere
animals masquerading in human shape.
Contradicting the assumption that the great men of antiquity were only
ordinary normal beings, we must concede the fact that most extraordinary
conditions must have existed and, indeed, have been pre-exquisite,
before a Greece could have arisen in antiquity, or an Athens in Greece,
or a man such as Plato in Athens.
By very nature, the sources of admiration are as mysterious to my mind
as the roots of genius. Do we admire what we understand, or what we do
not understand? Admiration is of two kinds, of which the more common
proceeds from wonder at something which we do not understand. There is,
however, an admiration which goes with understanding.
Edgar Poe composed several stories, of which _The Goldbug_ is one,
in which an impenetrable enigma is first presented, to be solved
afterwards as by a talisman; but, then, a lesson in cryptography ensues,
wherein the talisman is explained away, and the miraculous gives place
to the reasoning faculties of a mind of unusual power.
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