ChapterTwoBookOne72

After the prince has made (286) the necessary regulations in his states to make the language of the country perfect, to make it easy for everyone to know how to speak, read, and write well, to teach all the arts and sciences, and especially to put all the laws and regulations of the state in the language that everyone knows, he can think of making all the languages of neighboring nations with which his people trade very common and have them taught in public schools. This will be a great help to merchants, soldiers, and the gentlemen who travel, and the utility that the public derives from it will be greater than that which it derives from the knowledge (287) of dead languages.

Next, the prince will turn his attention to the education itself that is taught to his subjects through language. If the whole secret and mystery of good government boils down to a single general maxim of uniting so many feelings and so many different and opposing wills into one and making sure that everything meets at one point, which is opulence and public felicity, it is undoubtedly of great consequence for the prince to take over and to be the master of, so to speak, the education that puts into motion the minds and the wills of all the individuals who make up the body of the state. It is even necessary that—in imitation of what concerns the preservation of our bodies—(288) he tries to establish the same proportion that prevents some from dying of repletion and others from hunger, that is to say, some from knowing more than they can implement and others nothing at all. Because it is indisputable that the same advantage would return to a state from a fair distribution of the necessary nourishments for the mind as from that of the foods for the body.