When nations grow old the Arts grow coldAnd commerce settles on every tree

When nations grow old the Arts grow cold And commerce settles on every tree

I must Create a System, or be enslaved by another Man's; / I will not Reason and Compare; my business is to Create.

Commerce is so far from being beneficial to arts, or to empire, that it is destructive of both, as all their history shows, for the above reason of individual merit being its great hatred. Empires flourish till they become commercial, and then they are scattered abroad to the four winds.