south. Therein the mighty and incomprehensible God Himself is
apprehensibly contained and worshipped; therein is revealed the
nature of things celestial, terrestrial, and infernal; therein
are discerned the laws by which every state is administered, the
offices of the celestial hierarchy are distinguished, and the
tyrannies of demons described, such as neither the ideas of Plato
transcend, nor the chair of Crato contained.

In books I find the dead as if they were alive; in books I
foresee things to come; in books warlike affairs are set forth;
from books come forth the laws of peace. All things are
corrupted and decay in time; Saturn ceases not to devour the
children that he generates; all the glory of the world would be
buried in oblivion, unless God had provided mortals with the
remedy of books.

Alexander, the conqueror of the earth, Julius, the invader of
Rome and of the world, who, the first in war and arts, assumed
universal empire under his single rule, faithful Fabricius and
stern Cato, would now have been unknown to fame, if the aid of
books had been wanting. Towers have been razed to the ground;
cities have been overthrown; triumphal arches have perished from
decay; nor can either pope or king find any means of more easily
conferring the privilege of perpetuity than by books. The book
that he has made renders its author this service in return, that
so long as the book survives its author remains immortal and
cannot die, as Ptolemy declares in the Prologue to his Almagest:
He is not dead, he says, who has given life to science.

Who therefore will limit by anything of another kind the price of