"David Hume - Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hume David)

rational beings, we must certainly admit the mind for a
considerable share. Were we to rob the feast of all its
garniture of reason, discourse, sympathy, friendship, and
gaiety, what remains would scarcely be worth acceptance, in
the judgment of the truly elegant and luxurious.

What better school for manners, than the company of virtuous
women; where the mutual endeavour to please must insensibly
polish the mind, where the example of the female softness and
modesty must communicate itself to their admirers, and where
the delicacy of that sex puts every one on his guard, lest he
give offence by any breach of decency.

Among the ancients, the character of the fair-sex was
considered as altogether domestic; nor were they regarded as
part of the polite world or of good company. This, perhaps, is
the true reason why the ancients have not left us one piece of
pleasantry that is excellent, (unless one may except the
Banquet of Xenophon, and the Dialogues of Lucian) though many
of their serious compositions are altogether inimitable.
Horace condemns the coarse railleries and cold jests of
Plautus: But, though the most easy, agreeable, and judicious
writer in the world, is his own talent for ridicule very
striking or refined? This, therefore, is one considerable
improvement, which the polite arts have received from
gallantry, and from courts, where it first arose.

But, to return from this digression, I shall advance it as a
fourth observation on this subject, of the rise and progress
of the arts and sciences, that when the arts and sciences come
to perfection in any state, from that moment they naturally,
or rather necessarily decline, and seldom or never revive in
that nation, where they formerly flourished.

It must be confessed, that this maxim, though conformable to
experience, may, at first sight, be esteemed contrary to
reason. If the natural genius of mankind be the same in all
ages, and in almost all countries, (as seems to be the truth)
it must very much forward and cultivate this genius, to be
possessed of patterns in every art, which may regulate the
taste, and fix the objects of imitation. The models left us by
the ancients gave birth to all the arts about 200 years ago,
and have mightily advanced their progress in every country of
Europe: Why had they not a like effect during the reign of
Trajan and his successors; when they were much more entire,
and were still admired and studied by the whole world? So late
as the emperor Justinian, the Poet, by way of distinction, was
understood, among the Greeks, to be Homer; among the Romans,
Virgil. Such admiration still remained for these divine
geniuses; though no poet had appeared for many centuries, who