Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/192

 182 that the brain had not filled up its natural place, but being oblong, like an egg, had collected from all parts of the vessel which contained it, in a point to that place from whence the root of the horn took its rise. And that, for that time, Anaxagoras was much admired for his explanation by those that were present; and Lampon no less a little while after, when Thucydides was overpowered, and the whole affairs of the state and government came into the hands of Pericles. And yet, in my opinion, it is no absurdity to say that they were both in the right, both natural philosopher and diviner, one justly detecting the cause of this event, by which it was produced, the other the end for which it was designed. For it was the business of the one to find out and give an account of what it was made, and in what manner and by what means it grew as it did; and of the other to foretell to what end and purpose it was so made, and what it might mean or portend. Those who say that to find out the cause of a prodigy is in effect to destroy its supposed signification as such, do not take notice that, at the same time, together with divine prodigies, they also do away with signs and signals of human art and concert, as, for instance, the clashings of quoits, fire-beacons, and the shadows on sun-dials, every one of which things has its cause, and by that cause and contrivance is a sign of something else. But these are subjects, perhaps, that would better befit another place."

HIS CURIOSITY AND HIS PATRIOTISM

Plutarch was a widely read man. The world in which he lived was rather the world which his mind portrayed than that upon which his eyes looked. In other words, he lived in his past much more fully than in his present. For everything that had happened he had a gentle but persistent curiosity. Customs hallowed by time evoked in him the utmost tenderness; but his nature was without a vestige of fanaticism. To the hot, strenuous youth of his age, to zealots for preserving the old, and to harsh innovators alike he seemed probably a trifler and perhaps a bore. They must have turned with impatience from his universal charity; for he was a widely loyal man, loyal to his petty civic duties, his family obligations, his friends, his reputation, his race. By his interest in, and profession of, practical morality Plutarch