There is a kind of striving that is appropriate to a human life; and there is a kind of striving that consists in trying to depart from that life to another life. This is what hubris is–the failure to comprehend what sort of life one has actually got, the failure to live within its limits…the failure, being mortal, to think mortal thoughts. Correctly understood, the injunction to avoid hubris is not a penance or denial–it is an instruction as to where the valuable things for us are to be found.