Library of Samuel Teleki: Part One

XIX

as we suspect they were under the Augustuses, and that this can best consist with the administration of republics and the waging of wars, no one would easily deny. It remains, therefore, certain and established that the knowledge of letters and true and liberal erudition, as a singular gift of God to the human race, has always been not only an ornament but also a very great benefit, and just as the character of a republic has the greatest power for forming the morals of men and helping their happiness, so in turn, with the rightly tempered cultivation of reason and intellect, men are kept in their duty and states themselves flourish. Therefore, it is no wonder that in all the most cultured peoples and nations, libraries, as instruments of erudition, have been held in the highest esteem from every age and are today valued very highly. For just as the ancient Stoics 1.) Cicero, De Oratore, Book II, chap. 5. considered life without studies to be nothing and leisure, as Seneca says in Ep. 82, is death without letters, so with letters flourishing, a state is well and happily situated; conversely, with the study of them neglected, it becomes like a world lacking the sun: