er watchful guardians of the human race, are
and must always remain the sole remedies for the evils which threaten
us. I do not dispute the beneficent influence of other factors combined
with these, but, taken alone, they would be powerless, and if science
were eclipsed they would be transformed into fresh causes of servitude
and ignorance, as it has often appeared in past times when the laws of
science and of freedom have been set at nought. I therefore declare
science and freedom to be the portion of all, and they should be as
widely diffused as possible, since the way to knowledge and a worthy
life is open to all men. It is a blasphemy against heaven and earth to
presume, in the so-called interest of civil order, to keep the majority
of the people in the ignoble servitude of ignorance, and men do not
perceive that they thus become ready for any disturbance, and the tools
of rogues and agitators.

I hope and pray that reverence for science and freedom may ever
increase in Italy. It will be an evil day for her if such reverence be
lost, and she will become with every other people in like case a
wretched spectacle, and will fall into such abject misery as to become
the laughing-stock of every civilized nation. It will be understood that
I do not erect science and liberty into fetishes to be generally adored:
they are only sacred means to a more sacred end, namely, to enable men
to practise and not merely to apprehend the truth, which in other words
is goodness. Science and freedom are valuable only so far as they teach,
persuade, and enable us to improve ourselves and others; to exercise
every private and public virtue; to claim only what is due to ourselves,
while making the needful sacrifice to the common good; to have a respect
for humanity, and to venerate knowledge only so far as it is combined
with virtue; to attempt in every way to alleviate the miseries of
others, to deliver their minds from ignorance and error; to do right for
its own sake without coveting rewards in heaven or on earth; to submit
to no dictation but that of truth and goodness.

With these sacred objects in view, whatever may be said to the contrary,
we shall, in addition to the ineffable fruition of truth for its own
sake, ever draw nearer to the ideal of the human race, and the time will
come when an apparent Utopia shall be actually realized, in accordance
with the mode and process of growing civilization. Not by excesses,
tumults, and folly