ChapterTwoBookOne71

Germany owes a lot to M. Thomasius,[^1] Privy Counselor to the Prussian King (283) and Rector of the Royal University of Halle[^2] in Saxony, because he led the way in teaching all the sciences in our language and purged them of an infinite amount of nonsense which prevents truly educating[^3] and perfecting our minds. The sciences that concern perfecting the human mind are for everyone: no one, not even women, should be excluded from them. But it is impossible for everyone to know the dead languages, and I argue once again that no one can know them perfectly. A German or a Frenchman does not think in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew, but in their native language. Why then do we not want to speak to them in their (284) language when we are teaching them to think well? But there is what seems to me a great secret of charlatanry hidden in the old method of teaching all the arts in Latin: either to hide their ignorance or to make their so-called science more respectable and more lucrative and to exclude those they deemed appropriate.[^4]

Is it not also intolerable for a state that the laws are written in a foreign language, which most of those who must live and be judged by these laws do not understand, and besides this, that their interpretation depends solely on the caprice of an infinite number of jurisconsults, who are always opposed to each other, and not on the prince who gives (285) strength and validity to these foreign laws? The harm that this unfortunate situation does to the wealth of our Germany is infinite, and princes should not waste a moment to think of the remedy and to overcome by a noble firmness all the obstacles that could arise on the part of those who have an interest in this disease of the state. Because a prince who wants to enrich his states must never pay attention to interests nor to particular views, especially with regard to what contributes to the necessary education[^5] of the minds of the contributors[^6] to public wealth; it is due to everyone without any exception, like the daily bread that preserves and strengthens our bodies.