Library of Samuel Teleki: Part One

that they seemed to have spent all the time of their lives on nothing other than turning the pages of books. Nor do we contend that no citizen can be useful to the fatherland unless he is learned in letters, but we say only this: unless those who sit at the helm of the republic are refined by letters, they will necessarily be lacking in many, and indeed the chief, parts of their duty. 1.) Muret. Orat. on the praise of letters. Plutarch (on the education of children) judged those to be perfect men who knew how to mingle and temper civil capacity with philosophy. Cicero certainly warns that many men have been of excellent spirit and virtue, and have stood out as moderate and grave by the nearly divine habit of nature itself without doctrine, and that more often nature without doctrine has availed for praise and virtue than doctrine without nature; 2.) For the Poet Archias, Chapter VII. he adds, however, that when a certain reason and conformation of doctrine is added to an exceptional and illustrious nature, then that which is most excellent and singular is accustomed to emerge; and if from the study of letters