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Updated: June 5, 2025
He would not have said, as the author of the "Fable of the Bees" did, that the "hunting after this pulchrum et honestum is not much better than a wild-goose chase." But he had a strong contempt for the humbugs of the world, and among them he placed unflinching optimists. One of the main forms of humbug in his day was the legend that everybody acted nobly for the sake of other people.
I would desire the Fair Sex to consider how impossible it is for them to add any thing that can be ornamental to what is already the Master-piece of Nature. No. 99. Saturday, June 23, 1711. Addison. ... Turpi secernis Honestum. Hor.
Quod autem laudabile est, omne honestum est. Bonum igitur quod est, honestum est.” Here the ambiguous word is laudabile, which in the minor premise means any thing which mankind are accustomed, on good grounds, to admire or value; as beauty, for instance, or good fortune: but in the major, it denotes exclusively moral qualities.
Lord! how he would have howled with panic, if he had heard Cethegus under his bed. It would have been truly diverting to have listened to him; and satisfied I am, gentlemen, that he would have preferred the utile of creeping into a closet, or even into a cloaca, to the honestum of facing the bold artist.
Modern honor flies so high that it leaves honesty sometimes too nearly out of sight; while honesty, though a sterling virtue, ignores those sentiments on which honor is based. "Honestum" includes it all; and Cicero has raised his lessons to such a standard as to comprise it all. But he so teaches that listeners delight to hear. He never preaches.
As a favourable specimen of his style, it will be sufficient to quote his definition of virtue: "Virtus, Albine, est pretium persolvere verum Quis in versamur, quis vivimus rebus potesse. Virtus est homini scire id quod quaeque habeat res. Virtus scire homini rectum, utile, quid sit honestum, Quae bona, quae mala item, quid inutile, turpe, inhonestum.
He who first likened glory to a shadow did better than he was aware of; they are both of them things pre-eminently vain glory also, like a shadow, goes sometimes before the body, and sometimes in length infinitely exceeds it. They who instruct gentlemen only to employ their valour for the obtaining of honour: "Quasi non sit honestum, quod nobilitatum non sit;"
Whoever shall take upon him to watch another's behaviour in such a confusion is not very busy himself, and the testimony he shall give of his companions' deportment will be evidence against himself: "Vera et sapiens animi magnitudo, honestum illud, quod maxime naturam sequitur, in factis positum, non in gloria, judicat."
And for this reason it has ever been impossible to persuade our forefathers but that the victories obtained by dint of force and the hazard of war were not more honourable than those performed in great security by stratagem or practice: "Laetius est, quoties magno sibi constat honestum."
He recognizes this as the only true Bonum or Honestum, to which all other desirable things are referable, as the only thing desirable for itself and in its own nature. He drops or dismisses all those prima naturae that he had begun by desiring. He no longer considers any of them as worthy of being desired in itself, or for its own sake.
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