BEATING THE POISONED DRUM

“The gods, then, have filled the whole world both with themselves and their own names, and, having contemplated these before their birth, and yearning to resemble the gods, but not knowing the way of achieving this, souls become lovers of command and long for the mere representations of those realities and to fill the whole race of men with their name and power. The conceptions of such souls are grand and admirable, but when put into practice they become petty, ignoble, and vaporous because they are pursued without insight. Their aspirations are in accord with nature and appropriate, but their actions are unnatural; their grand ideas arise from … what has been inseminated into us but their expression of it comes from oblivion and ignorance.” — Proclus