[157]
And again, as swarms of bees do not gather for
the sake of making honeycomb but make the honeycomb because they are gregarious by nature, so human
beings—and to a much higher degree—exercise their
skill together in action and thought because they are
naturally gregarious. And so, if that virtue [Justice] 1
which centres in the safeguarding of human interests, that is, in the maintenance of human society,
were not to accompany the pursuit of knowledge,
that knowledge would seem isolated and barren of
results. In the same way, courage [Fortitude], if
unrestrained by the uniting bonds of society, would
be but a sort of brutality and savagery. Hence it
follows that the claims of human society and the
bonds that unite men together take precedence of
the pursuit of speculative knowledge.
1 Justice more valuable than Wisdom and Fortitude.
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
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