From our forthcoming Turgot Collection:
Genius, whose course is at first slow, unmarked, and buried in the general oblivion into which time precipitates human affairs, emerges from obscurity with them by means of the invention of writing. Priceless invention!—which seemed to give wings to those peoples who first possessed it, enabling them to outdistance other nations. Incomparable invention!—which rescues from the power of death the memory of great men and models of virtue, unites places and times, arrests fugitive thoughts and guarantees them a lasting existence, by means of which the creations, opinions, experiences, and discoveries of all ages are accumulated, to serve as a foundation and foothold for posterity in raising itself ever higher!
Quoted from his dazzling essay “A Philosophical Review of the Successive Advances of the Human Mind.”
