Starting from the principle that deity is the highest and best conceivable state of existence, but a state which is unattainable to frail humanity, Pindar finds the summum bonum of man in the nearest practicable approximation to the divine state. Prowess and wisdom he considers as the two qualities which bring man nearest to the gods. Continual progress, then, in one or both of these respects, constitutes the perfection of a human life; and the zeal or ambition which prompts such progress, is a divinely implanted instinct or grace in every worthy human soul.
But this progress must consist, not in the acquisition from without of prowess or of wisdom, but in the development from within of such germs of these qualities—inherited, or at any rate innate—as exist in a man from his birth. To one man the gods who rule our destinies give capacities of prowess, to another capacities of wisdom; and these in different measure, and capable (in each case) of expansion up to a given limit, and no further. Legitimate ambition encourages a man to develop his peculiar gift up to this point; and another spiritual grace, discretion, enables him to recognise the limit, and to curb ambition within it.
In strong contrast with this, the only true progress is the attempt to win an artificial excellence by straining after those gifts of prowess or wisdom, which the gods withhold from the unworthy aspirant. Presumption in such a man takes the place of legitimate ambition, and urges him onward to a point at which infatuation is waiting to hurl him into destruction.
