Il natural desiderio di sapere - Pontifical Academy of Sciences

ON THE NATURAL DESIRE FOR KNOWLEDGE 143sweet and so much our own that every delay and cessation of them bringsus pain and annoyance, and the works and the fruits that ensue from suchoperations shall be all the greater the more it is that (which is proper inthis Academy) by no force, 104 but only by well-enkindled and enamoredfree will are we moved to assiduous labor or rather enjoyment.Knowledge itself is the objective, and suffices to move; and where thismore weakly pushes some, there is the desire for the glory of true andlaudable pleasure, of profit, of comfort, of quiet and other consequentgoods without number; and who can doubt then that the intention is tobe happily fulfilled and the desired end fully obtained?We have examples that in no small measure serve to animate us, wehave good earnest of the strength of similar unions; let us look back totimes past, first among the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, ohhow great and how many were those subjects given to us by those assembliesof philosophers, which exercised and governed themselves so well intheir continuous studies; let us admire principally the school ofPythagoras and of Plato, how well-united and how full of doctrine; andwhat fruits? The origin of philosophy, of mathematics, the copious dogmasof the former, the hundreds, thousands of compositions, theTheophrastuses, the Crisippuses and so many contemplators 105 andunremitting writers, with most of whose works, despite ourselves, beingonly recorded by name in Laertius, Pliny and Athenaeus, we are able onlyto whet our insatiable appetite, and we can recognize the advantage forus but also the greater one for our posterity of the discovery of printing;let us look at that beautiful and well united chorus of poets underAugustus, that good league of writers under Trajan, and closer to us thesaints Thomas and Bonaventure, and their companions, who, although ofdifferent religions, 106 yet so united and with friendly conference did philosophize.Closer to us the noble Academy of Florence under Lorenzo theMagnificent, in which came to flower Pico, Poliziano, Ficino, Martius,Chalcondiles, Gaza, Trapezuntius, and others who handed down to us theliterature of Greece. Likewise the Roman Academy under goodNicholas, 107 the Neopolitan of Pontano, Sannazaro and others under theAragonese kings, and many under Leo X; so that in these and such like,104 In the sense of an extrinsic motivation.105 Philosophers.106 Religious orders.107 Pope Nicholas V, protector of the Accademia romana founded by Pomponius Laetus.