Note 138 — III The ‘Clerks’—The Great Betrayal (continued 2)

‘If the utility which results from a man’s occupations determined our praise, the inventor of the plough would deserve the praise of being a great mind far more than Aristotle, Galilei, and M. Descartes.’ (Bayle.) Fontenelle and Voltaire have pointed out the utility of certain studies which were considered useless; they never meant that those who cultivated these studies while they thought them useless were therefore contemptible.