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

or entire between modern wits, and those who lived in so
remote an age. Had Waller been born in Rome, during the reign
of Tiberius, his first productions had been despised, when
compared to the finished odes of Horace. But in this island
the superiority of the Roman poet diminished nothing from the
fame of the English. We esteemed ourselves sufficiently happy,
that our climate and language could produce but a faint copy
of so excellent an original.

In short, the arts and sciences, like some plants, require a
fresh soil; and however rich the land may be, and however you
may recruit it by art or care, it will never, when once
exhausted, produce any thing that is perfect or finished in
the kind.

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[1][COPYRIGHT: (c) 1995, Christopher MacLachlan (cjmm@st-
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use the following citation: The Writings of David Hume, ed.
James Fieser (Internet Release 1995)

EDITORIAL CONVENTIONS: Note references ar contained within square
brackets (e.g., [1]). Spelling an punctuation have been modernized

[2]Est Deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo:

Impetus hic, sacrae semina mentis habet.

Ovid, Fast. lib, vi, 5.

[3]Tacitus, hist. lib. i, 37.

[4]If it be asked how we can reconcile to the foregoing
principles the happiness, riches, and good police of the
Chinese, who have always been governed by a sole monarch, and
can scarce form an idea of a free government; I would answer,
that tho' the Chinese government be a pure monarchy, it is
not, properly speaking, absolute. This proceeds from a
peculiarity of the situation of that country: They have no
neighbours, except the Tartars, from whom they wer, in some
measure secured, at least seemed to be secured, by their
famous wall, and by the great superioritv of their numbers. By
this means, military discipline has always been much neglected