On the Origins or the Antiquity of the Hebrew Language

—all these things? I certainly cannot be silent about what is in the confession and open view of all, judging the lion by his claws, as they say. I certainly do not want to commend you with certain magnificent titles of ancestors and family images, as is customary, or to celebrate the praises of your kin now; to them, indeed, you bring so much light that their own virtue, greatness, and dignity, which are otherwise celebrated, they would hardly have shadowed. Add to this that VIRTUE ALONE MAKES AND AMPLIFIES NOBILITY, not indeed that of ancestors or parents, but one's own. He who lacks this, even if he boasts of the ancestors of Caesar, is not noble. Where I find in you that one virtue by which men become like gods—inasmuch as they approach them most closely through the benefit for which they are famous, which some once estimating its own magnitude called the exercise of God, which is asserted by Christian philosophy to render a man absolute in all respects, and which finally so many worthy men have experienced, declare, and exalt in you—I can judge nothing else but that it is to you the ornament of all virtues, magnanimity, and indeed the source and fountainhead of all others. For it proceeds from greatness of spirit to desire nothing base, and to wish to imitate, through the benefit of liberality, God, the Best and Greatest, who created this temple of ours which we see for the sake of conferring such great benefit upon man. Although the other parts of duty strive to represent this one according to our strength, I am persuaded that the most important of them, when an inequitable fate often vexes mortals, is that which raises, increases, and relieves with things the adverse condition of a man worthy of better fortune. For philosophy and a clear spirit are accustomed to stand in need more of things and resources than of counsel or the other parts of duty. Witnesses to your diligence in this matter are all those most eminent men famous for some virtue (for you do not practice liberality rashly and wastefully upon any random people) who have at some time complained to you of their adverse fortune. I would recite here the most ample benefits which you have conferred upon very many for the sake of their virtue and learning, primarily so that they might meanwhile benefit the Republic, were it not that those learned men everywhere attest to them in their writings and rightly praise them in familiar conversation. I do not want here to touch upon that propensity of your spirit toward Jovius, Rabelais, Bigot, and such men of absolute erudition, neither few nor common, for the day would fail me in counting—