Csipegetés – Nicholas Roerich – Beautiful unity – 1946

Culture is the accumulation of highest Bliss, highest Beauty, highest Knowledge.

“Not so long ago, the combining of Gothic primitives with modern aspirations would have been considered a proof of dilettantism. It would have been regarded as completely taboo to simply have a collection of beautiful medals and coins. Pedantry was wont to confine its scope of vision to a certain epoch, limiting it to the objects of a certain type and character. Thus icons and primitives glowing with color were turned into iconography in which the descriptive part obliterated the true and artistic meaning.”

“Plato ordained in his treatises on statesmanship: “It is difficult to imagine a better method of education than the one that has been discovered and verified by the experience of centuries; it can be expressed in two propositions: gymnastics for the body and music for the soul. In view of this, one must consider education in music as the most important; thanks to it, Rhythm and Harmony are deeply enrooted into the soul, dominate it, fill it with beauty and transform man into a beautiful thinker. . . . He will partake of the Beautiful and rejoice in it, gladly realize it, become saturated with it and will arrange his life in conformity with it.”

“Such limited conceptions of the word Museum, as a storage place, so deeply entered our understanding, that when one pronounces this concept in its original meaning—Muzeon—then no one understands what is really meant. Yet every Hellene of even average education would at once know that Muzeon means first of all the home of Muses.

Foremost all Muzeon is the abode of all aspects of the Beautiful; not at all in the sense of only storing different kinds of art creations, but in the sense of the most vital and creative application of them in life. Thus nowadays one often hears that people express surprise when a Museum, as such, occupies itself with all spheres of art, with the education of good taste and with the spreading of the feeling for the Beautiful.”

“Every librarian is a friend of the artist and scientist. The librarian is the first messenger of Beauty and Knowledge. It is he who opens the gates and from the dead shelves extracts the hidden word to enlighten the searching mind…..”