Aratus

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. XI. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1926.

Therefore, though he won many unexpected successes where he showed courage, he seems to have lost no fewer favourable opportunities through over-caution. For not only in the case of certain wild beasts, as it would seem, is the vision strong by night but wholly blinded in the day-time (since the humour in their eyes is too dry and delicate to bear contact with the light), but there is also in some men a cleverness and sagacity which is prone to be confounded in transactions that are carried out under the open sky and proclaimed abroad by public criers, but when confronting hidden and secret enterprises recovers its courage.

Such unevenness a lack of philosophy may cause in men of good natural parts; they produce virtue without scientific knowledge, and it is like spontaneous and uncultivated fruit. This can be proved by examples.