In Italian, we use this word to mean you're getting in trouble, or the direct translation means contempt.

The General knowledge of something

In the broad scheme of things this is stating that protecting the physical objects we know, such as books, is not as important as protecting that ideologies and history we've learned from those books in the first place.

This section reminds me of the quote from Adam Smith where he said "Virtue is to be more feared than Vice because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience". I wonder if the author is making a reference to this?

I find the gendering of terms such as nature to be interesting. The idea of nature being a woman was very prevalent during the enlightenment and seems to continually show up in literature and even some scientific articles.