Library of Samuel Teleki: Part One

XVI

for the common security or utility one can provide: that with letters flourishing and rightly cultivated, talents soften and minds are formed to humanity, the roughness of morals is smoothed away, 1.) Ovid, Ex Ponto, Book II, Ep. IX: "Faithfully learning the liberal arts softens morals and does not allow them to be fierce." the wealth of states is increased, and the commerce of things is promoted, is a matter better known from the history of all time than that it is worth the effort to demonstrate at length, 2.) "We are all drawn and led to the desire for knowledge and science, in which we think it beautiful to excel; however, we consider it both an evil and a shameful thing to slip, to err, to be ignorant, or to be deceived." Cicero, De Officiis, Book I, chap. VI. and that letters and the culture of nations through them have great moment for strengthening the majesty of an empire in the arts of peace and war and for increasing power, to pass over old examples in silence, the memory of our own times and those of our fathers is a document, Russia with the immortal glory of the name of Peter I and Catherine II. Therefore, it is permitted to wonder how it could have entered the minds of men that these very letters are hostile to empires and dominions, which recently, in the popular license of the French, declaimers who flatter the plebs and who would make all the lowest equal to the highest, proclaimed should be expelled from the state as harmful to the liberty and equality of citizens: