of contributing to the progress of mind and the advancement of civilization.
Thus the human mind has followed, since the fifteenth century, a course opposed to that which it followed up to that epoch; and certainly the important and decided progress which has resulted therefrom, in every direction of knowledge, proves, incontestably, how much our ancestors of the middle age were deceived in estimating the study of particular facts of secondary principles, and the analysis of private interests, as of secondary utility.
But it is equally true that a very great evil has resulted to society from the state of abandonment, in which, since the fifteenth century, they have left the works that relate to the study of general facts, general principles, and general interests. This abandonment has given birth to a feeling of egotism, which has become prevalent amongst all classes, and all individuals. This feeling, prevalent amongst all classes and all individuals, has facilitated to Cæsar the means of recovering a great part of the political power which he had lost before the fifteenth century. It is to this egotism that we must attribute the political malady of our epoch; a malady which brings into suffering all the useful labourers of society—a malady which enables kings to absorb a great part of the income of the poor for their own expenses, those of their courtezans and their soldiers—a malady which occasions an enormous superiority on the part of royalty, and the aristocracy of birth, over the respect due to the men of science, artists, and the chiefs of industrious labour, for the services of a direct and positive utility which they render to the community.
It is, then, very desirable that those labours, which have for their object the perfecting of our knowledge relative to general facts, general principles, and general interests, be promptly restored to activity, and henceforth protected by society equally with those which have for their object the study of particular facts, secondary principles, and private interest.
