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

mountains; and Greece of all countries of Europe. Hence these
regions were naturally divided into several distinct
governments. And hence the sciences arose in Greece; and
Europe has been hitherto the most constant habitation of them.

I have sometimes been inclined to think, that interruptions in
the periods of learning, were they not attended with such a
destruction of ancient books, and the records of history,
would be rather favourable to the arts and sciences, by
breaking the progress of authority, and dethroning the
tyrannical usurpers over human reason. In this particular,
they have the same influence, as interruptions in political
governments and societies. Consider the blind submission of
the ancient philosophers to the several masters in each
school, and you will be convinced, that little good could be
expected from a hundred centuries of such a servile
philosophy. Even the Eclectics, who arose about the age of
Augustus, notwithstanding their professing to chuse freely
what pleased them from every different sect, were yet, in the
main, as slavish and dependent as any of their brethren since
they sought for truth not in nature, but in the several
schools; where they supposed she must necessarily be found,
though not united in a body, yet dispersed in parts. Upon the
revival of learning, those sects of Stoics and Epicureans,
Platonists and Pythagoricians, could never regain any credit
or authority; and, at the same time, by the example of their
fall, kept men from submitting, with such blind deference, to
those new sects, which have attempted to gain an ascendant
over them.

The third observation, which I shall form on this head, of the
rise and progress of the arts and sciences, is, That though
the only proper Nursery of these noble plants be a free state;
yet may they be transplanted into any government; and that a
republic is most favourable to the growth of the sciences, a
civilized monarchy to that of the polite arts.

To balance a large state or society, whether monarchical or
republican, on general laws, is a work of so great difficulty,
that no human genius, however comprehensive, is able, by the
mere dint of reason and reflection, to effect it. The
judgments of many must unite in this work: Experience must
guide their labour: Time must bring it to perfection: And the
feeling of inconveniencies must correct the mistakes, which
they inevitably fall into, in their first trials and
experiments. Hence appears the impossibility, that this
undertaking should be begun and carried on in any monarchy;
since such a form of government, ere civilized, knows no other
secret or policy, than that of entrusting unlimited powers to
every governor or magistrate, and subdividing the people into