The Latin modus originally meant “measure,” “manner,” referring not to a thing or condition per se, but to a relation to something else, the “good” which arose from its particular ontological status. Horace used the term in the sense of a qualification by a certain quantification (“right measure”) that also thereby acquires an ethical dimension: “Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines./Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum” (Sermones 1,1…