Il natural desiderio di sapere - Pontifical Academy of Sciences

ON THE NATURAL DESIRE FOR KNOWLEDGE 149Here we have virtuous friendship and its sweetness and of its meetings,far from any spite or rancor and full of charity, which always makesus take pleasure in the pleasures of our companions and always wish forthem such as are equal to our own, and this 115 with the counseling, advising,conferring, examining, animating, helping and other mutual offices,much more ardent and much more profitable in the enterprise, and thattruly can be said of companions so dearly united and so fervent in theirwork and detached from every other vile business or entertainmenttogether with Ovid himself:Credibile est illos pariter vitiisque locisquealtius humanis exseruisse caput.Non Venus et vinum sublimia pectora fregit,officiumve fori militiaeve labor:nec levis ambitio, perfusaque gloria fuco,magnarumve fames sollicitavit opum. 116The number of the learned thus multiplying more and more, and beingthus ever more facilitated the acquisition of disciplines continually illustratedand declared, it shan’t be possible to say that the natural desire isvain nor that only the few and rare can fulfill it, and since we see that menin whatever kind of occupation they choose to exercise and profess arriveat admirable subtlety and excellence, whether it be constructions on theearth, or on the sea, 117 painting, sculpture, weaving, or artifice of whateversort, so also in this of the cognition of things which is proper to them fortheir reasonable degree 118 they will not remain shamefully behind, but theywill keep moving ahead, with the hope of arriving at the desired goal. 119Nor is it so that of all this there will come little profit to the public orlittle service to princes; it is certain that from science and virtue springforth good morals, the capacity to act, the search for peace, hence in their115 Virtuous friendship.116 ‘It is to be believed that they raised their heads above the vices and the dwellingsof men. Neither Venus nor Bacchus, neither the forensic activity nor the military onecorrupted their elevated hearts; nor were they moved by vain ambition, a glory mantledin purple or the desire for great riches’, Fast., I, vv. 299 ff.117 Land or naval construction; machinery as well as buildings.118 By virtue of being rational. The philosophical basis of the thesis of the speech isreiterated once again.119 Cf. F. Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 74; also 73 and passim.