Library of Samuel Teleki: Part One

XV

,,original: "fidei robur intensis desideriis affectamus, etc." Translation of preceding text: we affect the strength of faith with intense desires, etc.

Finally, those who, in the headlong haste of judgment, think that because of the current storms of civil insanity, blame should be attributed to letters, which instead should be attributed to the desires of men and other vices, and who trace the causes of new revolutions and popular movements back to letters and the cultivation of talents through them, while avoiding vices, they run into the opposite errors and, careless, wander a long way from the truth. Indeed, prudent men, experienced in affairs and moderate, have already sufficiently shown that the evils from which our age suffers have neither proceeded nor could proceed from the cultivation and doctrine of good letters, unless perhaps in so far as letters were not cultivated enough or, due to other vices of men and affairs, were not rightly cultivated 1.) The celebrated Chr. G. Heynius, stabilizer of Latin eloquence in Germany, in an elegant prologue on the studies of good letters, as if they were wrongly proscribed by hostile empires. and since many precepts and aids have been handed down in the monuments of letters for well establishing, ordering, and adorning and helping cities with healthy institutions, by which to adapt to the time and the present fortune of any state or