Oufle_, are books also; but it is with books as with men; the very small
number play a great part, the rest are mingled in the crowd.
Who leads the human race in civilized countries? those who know how to
read and write. You do not know either Hippocrates, Boerhaave or
Sydenham; but you put your body in the hands of those who have read
them. You abandon your soul to those who are paid to read the Bible,
although there are not fifty among them who have read it in its entirety
with care.
To such an extent do books govern the world, that those who command
to-day in the city of the Scipios and the Catos have desired that the
books of their law should be only for them; it is their sceptre; they
have made it a crime of _lese-majeste_ for their subjects to look there
without express permission. In other countries it has been forbidden to
think in writing without letters patent.
There are nations among whom thought is regarded purely as an object of
commerce. The operations of the human mind are valued there only at two
sous the sheet.
In another country, the liberty of explaining oneself by books is one of
the most inviolable prerogatives. Print all that you like under pain of
boring or of being punished if you abuse too considerably your natural
right.
Before the admirable invention of printing, books were rarer and more
expensive than precious stones.
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