3.
CHAPTER III
WHAT WE ARE TO THINK OF THE PRICE IN
THE BUYING OF BOOKS
FROM what has been said we draw this
corollary welcome to us, but (as we believe)
acceptable to few: namely, that no dearness of
price ought to hinder a man from the buying of
books, if he has the money that is demanded for
them, unless it be to withstand the malice of the
seller or to await a more favourable opportunity
of buying. For if it is wisdom only that makes
the price of books, which is an infinite treasure to
mankind, and if the value of books is unspeakable,
as the premises show, how shall the bargain be shown
to be dear where an infinite good is being bought?
Wherefore, that books are to be gladly bought and
unwillingly sold, Solomon, the sun of men, exhorts
us in the Proverbs:
Buy the truth, he says,
and sell not
wisdom. But what we are trying to show by rhetoric
or logic, let us prove by examples from history. The
arch-philosopher Aristotle, whom Averroes regards as
the law of Nature, bought a few books of Speusippus
straightway after his death for 72,000 sesterces.
Plato, before him in time, but after him in learning,
bought the book of Philolaus the Pythagorean, from
which he is said to have taken the
Timæus, for 10,000
denaries, as Aulus Gellius relates in the
Noctes Atticæ.
Now Aulus Gellius relates this that the foolish may
consider how wise men despise money in comparison
with books. And on the other hand, that we may
know that folly and pride go together, let us here
relate the folly of Tarquin the Proud in despising
books, as also related by Aulus Gellius. An old
woman, utterly unknown, is said to have come to
Tarquin the Proud, the seventh king of Rome, offering
to sell nine books, in which (as she declared)
sacred oracles were contained, but she asked an immense
sum for them, insomuch that the king said she
was mad. In anger she flung three books into the
fire, and still asked the same sum for the rest. When
the king refused it, again she flung three others into
the fire and still asked the same price for the three
that were left. At last, astonied beyond measure,
Tarquin was glad to pay for three books the same
price for which he might have bought nine. The
old woman straightway disappeared, and was never
seen before or after. These were the Sibylline books,
which the Romans consulted as a divine oracle by
some one of the Quindecemvirs, and this is believed to
have been the origin of the Quindecemvirate. What
did this Sibyl teach the proud king by this bold deed,
except that the vessels of wisdom, holy books, exceed
all human estimation; and, as Gregory says of the
kingdom of Heaven: They are worth all that thou
hast?
