The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

The saying lays out a hierarchy of how different kinds of people (and animals) learn: the best are guided by rational deliberation before events force their hand; the merely “average” need the school of lived experience; the “stupid” change only under compulsion; and the “brute” operates without reflective learning at all, driven by instinct. In a Ciceronian frame, it echoes the Roman ideal that reason (ratio) should govern action and that moral and civic excellence depends on foresight and self-command rather than reactive adaptation. The aphorism also functions as a warning: if one refuses to be led by reason, life will teach harsher lessons through necessity.