Book 3 Chapter 12 Vale

Parini in verse, Filangieri in prose, and Alfieri in drama, prose, and poetry.
Gaetano Filangieri
a passage from Gaetano Filangieri’s La scienza della legislazione (1780-85), inspired by Beccaria and Voltaire:
The philosopher should not be the inventor of systems but the apostle of truth.... So long as the evils that affect humanity are still uncured; so long as error and prejudice are allowed to perpetuate them; so long as the truth is limited to the few and the privileged, and concealed from the greater part of the human species and from the kings; so long will it remain the duty of the philosopher to preach the truth, to sustain it, to promote it, and to illuminate it. Even if the lights he scatters are not useful in his own century and people, they will surely be useful in another country and century. Citizen of every place and every age, the philosopher has the world for his country, the earth for his school, and posterity will be his disciples.