We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable
than the monuments of power or of the hands. For have not the verses of
Homer continued twenty-five hundred years, or more, without the loss of
a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples,
castles, cities, have been decayed and demolished? It is not possible to
have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar, no, nor
of the kings or great personages of much later years; for the originals
cannot last, and the copies cannot but leese of the life and truth. But
the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from
the wrong of time and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they
fitly to be called images, because they generate still, and cast their
seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and
opinions in succeeding ages. So that if the invention of the ship was
thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to
place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of
their fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified, which as ships
pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to
participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the
other?--F. BACON, LORD VERULAM. _Of the Advancement of Learning._