Library of Samuel Teleki: Part One

They are therefore like a hungry man who satisfies his hunger and correctly provides for the health of his body by taking a large amount of a single, healthy, and well-seasoned food; whereas these moderns are rightly and deservedly compared to those fastidious and delicate people who sample countless foods at a banquet set with many dishes, yet leave without being satisfied. For, as Seneca says, things that are ingested when they are varied and diverse pollute rather than nourish. 1.) Whence Cornelius Agrippa, in his invective declamation On the Uncertainty and Vanity of the Sciences, scrubbed away the abuse of letters and the vices of scholars with a satirical salt.

These and other things almost similar to these are brought forward by those who, having transferred the vices of men to the arts and disciplines themselves, as is usually done, are induced in their minds to criticize and disparage the commendable efforts of those who have devoted great study and industry to acquiring erudition and equipping libraries.

1.) Epistolae II. On Reading and Poverty. It is thus arranged with the nature of the human mind, as testified by Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, Book I, Chapter II, just as with an amphora of a narrow neck, which receives liquid if it is poured in sparingly; but if it is poured in more copiously than is right, it spills out.