It may be translated as: "I shall serve as a whetstone, capable of sharpening iron without itself being able to cut."
Here Horace sets out his views on the functions of poetry and its various genres, addressing a fundamental distinction between ars and ingenium. In other words, is poetry a matter of pure genius (ingenium) or of work and learning (ars)?
Horace favors the latter view and imagines himself as the whetstone on which other poets may whet their minds, enabling them to create their masterpiece.
This, no doubt, is the role the young Condorcet sees for himself among his fellow mathematicians through his Essais d’Analyse.
