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Often appears with: themistocles · the passions and the emotions · rhetoric and persuasion · provision for family · providence and divine governance · poverty and wealth · poverty and virtue · justice as a virtue · cato the elder · athens
Usually: argument (1) · reflection (1) · injustice endured (1) · censure (1) · curiosity (1) · exhortation (1)
“Here,” says he, “they are not philosophers, to whom it is easy in their schools to establish the finest maxims and most sublime rules of morality, who decide that interest ought never to prevail above justice.” David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature · observation
“The image of the past pleasure being strong and violent, bestows these qualities on the idea of the future pleasure, which is connected with it by the relation of resemblance.” David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature · insight
“What most of all enables a man to serve the public is not wealth, but content and independence;” Plutarch, Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans · insight
“Riches ought to be proportioned to the use we have of them; for he that scrapes together a great deal, making use of but little, is not independent;” Plutarch, Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans · precept
Plutarch argues that a just man should not be judged by lack of wealth, contrasting Aristides’s poverty and failure to provide for his daughters with Cato’s long line of Roman glory.
was not dear, nor household cares to me, Whose increase rears the thriving family; But well-rigged ships were always my delight, And wars, and darts, and arrows of the fight: as if the same characters carelessly neglected their own estates, and lived by injustice and rapine from others. For it is not as the physicians say of oil, that outwardly applied, it is very wholesome, but taken inwardly detrimental, that thu…
Hume argues that imagination and belief drive the passions, explains how memory, life-suitability, eloquence, and sympathy amplify emotions, and then recounts Themistocles and Aristides’ proposal fire the Greek fleet that Athens rejected as unjust.
that nothing could be more advantageous than the design of Themistocles but at the same time that nothing could be more unjust: Upon which the people unanimously rejected the project. A late celebrated historian[1] admires this passage of antient history, as one of the most singular that is any where to be met. [1] Mons. Rollin {Charles Rollin, HISTOIRE ANCIENNE.(Paris 1730-38)}. "Here," says he, "they are not phi…