5538. MORALITY (National), Progress in.—
The eighteenth century certainly witnessed
the sciences and arts, manners and
morals, advanced to a higher degree than the
world had ever before seen. And might we
not go back to the era of the Borgias, by which
time the barbarous ages had reduced national
morality to its lowest point of depravity, and
observe that the arts and sciences, rising from
that point, advanced gradually through all the
sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
softening and correcting the manners and
morals of man?—
To John Adams. Washington ed. vi, 523.
(M.
1816)
