own foolishness,
which we thereby confess; therefore no one who reasons, and
consequently no one who participates, can be wise; in short, all men are
fools.

TANS. I do not intend to infer that; for I will hold of highest wisdom
him who could really say at one time the opposite of what he says at
another--never was I less gay than now; or, never was I less sad than at
present.

CIC. How? Do you not make two contrary qualities where there are two
opposite affections? Why, I say, do you take as two virtues, and not as
one vice and one virtue, the being less gay and the being less sad?

TANS. Because both the contraries in excess--that is, in so far as they
exceed--are vices, because they pass the line; and the same, in so far
as they diminish, come to be virtues, because they are contained within
limits.

CIC. How? The being less merry and the being less sad are not one virtue
and one vice, but are two virtues?

TANS. On the contrary, I say they are one and the same virtue; because
the vice is there where the opposite is; the opposite is chiefly there
where the extreme is; the greatest opposite is the nearest to the
extreme; the least or nothing is in the middle, where the opposites
meet, and are one and identical; as between the coldest and hottest and
the hotter and colder, in the middle point is that which you may call
hot and cold, or neither hot nor cold, without contradiction. In that
way whoso is least content and least joyful is in the degree of
indifference, and finds himself in the habitation of temperance, where
the virtue and condition of a strong soul exist, which bends not to the
south wind nor to the north. This, then, to return to the point, is how
this enthusiastic hero, who explains himself in the present part, is
different from the other baser ones--not as virtue from vice, but as a
vice which exists in a subject more divine or divinely, from a vice
which exists in a subject more savage or savagely; so that the
difference is according to the different subjects and modes, and not
according to the form of vice.

CIC. I can very well conceive, from what you have said, the condition of
that heroic enthusiast, who says, "My hopes are ice and my desires are
glowing," because he is not in the temperance of mediocrity, but, in the
excess of contradictions, his soul is discordant, he shivers in his
frozen hopes and burns in his glowing desires; in his eagerness he is
clamorous, and he is mute from fear;