Lifelong learning

Kästner, Abraham Gotthelf, mathematician and poet (1719-1800). Autograph quotation signed.

€ 1,500.00

Greek quotation, transmitted by Sextus Pomponius and usually attributed to the jurist Salvius Julianus: "kan ton heteron poda en te soro echo, prosmathein ti bouloimen" ("And even if I have one foot in the grave, I still seek to learn more"). This saying forms a variation on a famous verse by Solon, "gerasko d' aiei polla didaskomenos" ("I grow older every day, but every day I learn more", fragment 22.7) - a thought which "for the first time in history conceives of learning as a mental process" (cf. Snell, Die Entdeckung des Geistes [The Discovery of the Mind], p. 75).

Apparently removed from an old album amicorum. Light staining to upper right corner; old number "70" to upper left corner. On the reverse is a Latin quotation ("Sola bona quae honesta") written by the Göttingen juristen Christian Friedrich Georg Meister (1718-82), dated 16 November 1769.