It may be remembered that the Athenian peasant voted for the banishment of Aristides, because he was called the Just. Shakspeare forcibly expresses the same thought:— “Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o’ nights: Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.” If Bacon had completed his intended work upon “Sympathy and Antipathy,” the constant hatred evinced by ignorance of intellectual superiority, originating sometimes in the painful feeling of inferiority, sometimes in the fear of worldly injury would not have escaped his notice.
Thus we see that Orpheus denotes learning; Eurydice, things, or the subject of learning; Bacchus, and the Thracian women, men’s ungoverned passions and appetites, &c. And in the same manner all the ancient fables might be familiarly illustrated, and brought down to the capacities of children.
“Quod procul a nobis flectat Fortuna gubernans; Et ratio potius quam res persuadeat ipsa.”
Proteus properly signifies primary, oldest, or first.