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[2]
unless indeed we agree with
those who regard morality as intuitive and as owing
nothing to instruction: indeed they go so far as to
acknowledge that handicrafts, not excluding even
those which are most despised among them, can
only be acquired by the result of teaching, whereas
virtue, which of all gifts to man is that which makes
him most near akin to the immortal gods, comes to
him without search or effort, as a natural concomitant
of birth. But can the man who does not know what
abstinence is, claim to be truly abstinent?
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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