Nothing New Under the Sun

“But the greatest drawback of our educational methods is that we pay an excessive amount of attention to the natural sciences and not enough to ethics.  Our chief fault is that we disregard that part of ethics which treats of human character, of its dispositions, its passions, and of the manner of adjusting these factors to public life and eloquence.  We neglect that discipline which deals with the differential features of the virtues and vices, with good and bad behavior-patterns…and with the art of seemly conduct in life, the most difficult of all arts.” - Giambattista Vico, in the year 1708