Baroness Staël Holstein, i.e., Madame de Staël, Germany (London, 1813), tr. in three vols., vol. III., pt. 3, ch. xxi., pp. 263-65:
In the idle class of society, it is almost impossible to have any soul without the cultivation of the mind. Formerly nature was sufficient to instruct man, and to expand his imagination; but, since thought (that fading shadow of feeling)1 has turned all things into abstractions, it is necessary to have a great deal of knowledge to have any good sentiment. Our choice is no longer balanced between the bursts of the soul, devoid of instruction, and philosophical studies; but between the importunate noise of common and frivolous society, and that language which has been holden by men of real genius from age to age, even to our own times.
. . . Those only, who fill their lives with good actions, can dispense with study: the ignorance of idle men proves their dryness of soul, as well as their frivolity of understanding.
. . . for no book does harm to him who reads every book. If idle men of the world, on the contrary, are busy for a few moments, the work they meet with is an event in their heads, like that of a stranger's arrival in the desert; and when this work contains dangerous sophistries, they have no arguments to oppose to it. The discovery of printing is truly fatal for those who only read by halves, or by hazard; for knowledge, like the spear of Achilles, ought to cure the wounds which it has inflicted.
1. Quite a Nietzschean remark, aye? (Italics mine.)
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