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The Love of Books - The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury by Richard de Bury
page 80 of 87 (91%)
try the hearts and reins. For as the aim and purpose of our
inmost will is inscrutable to men and is seen of God alone, the
searcher of hearts, they deserve to be rebuked for their
pernicious temerity, who so eagerly set a mark of condemnation
upon human acts, the ultimate springs of which they cannot see.
For the final end in matters of conduct holds the same position
as first principles in speculative science or axioms in
mathematics, as the chief of philosophers, Aristotle, points out
in the seventh book of the Ethics. And therefore, just as the
truth of our conclusions depends upon the correctness of our
premises, so in matters of action the stamp of moral rectitude is
given by the honesty of aim and purpose, in cases where the act
itself would otherwise be held to be morally indifferent.

Now we have long cherished in our heart of hearts the fixed
resolve, when Providence should grant a favourable opportunity,
to found in perpetual charity a Hall in the reverend university
of Oxford, the chief nursing mother of all liberal arts, and to
endow it with the necessary revenues, for the maintenance of a
number of scholars; and moreover to enrich the Hall with the
treasures of our books, that all and every of them should be in
common as regards their use and study, not only to the scholars
of the said Hall, but by their means to all the students of the
before-named university for ever, in the form and manner which
the following chapter shall declare. Wherefore the sincere love
of study and zeal for the strengthening of the orthodox faith to
the edifying of the Church, have begotten in us that solicitude
so marvellous to the lovers of pelf, of collecting books wherever
they were to be purchased, regardless of expense, and of having
those that could not he bought fairly transcribed.
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