says Tacitus.

It is likewise true, that for the use of life and the service of public
commerce, there may be some excesses in the purity and perspicacity of
our minds; that penetrating light has in it too much of subtlety and
curiosity: we must a little stupefy and blunt them to render them more
obedient to example and practice, and a little veil and obscure them, the
better to proportion them to this dark and earthly life. And therefore
common and less speculative souls are found to be more proper for and
more successful in the management of affairs, and the elevated and
exquisite opinions of philosophy unfit for business. This sharp vivacity
of soul, and the supple and restless volubility attending it, disturb our
negotiations. We are to manage human enterprises more superficially and
roughly, and leave a great part to fortune; it is not necessary to
examine affairs with so much subtlety and so deep: a man loses himself in
the consideration of many contrary lustres, and so many various forms:

"Volutantibus res inter se pugnantes, obtorpuerunt.... animi."

["Whilst they considered of things so indifferent in themselves,
they were astonished, and knew not what to do."--Livy, xxxii. 20.]

'Tis what the ancients say of Simonides, that by reason his imagination
suggested to him, upon the question King Hiero had put to him--[What God
was.--Cicero, De Nat. Deor., i. 22.]--(to answer which he had had many
days for thought), several sharp and subtle considerations, whilst he
doubted which was the most likely, he totally despaired of the truth.

He who dives into and in his inquisition comprehends all circumstances