The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci - Leonardo Da Vinci (ebook reader below 3000 txt) 📗

tal uomo, quale non e piu in podesta della natura, ecc.

It is true that, in April 1476, we find the names of Leonardo and Verrocchio entered in the “Libro degli Uffiziali di notte e de’ Monasteri” as breaking the laws; but we immediately after find the note “Absoluti cum condizione ut retamburentur” (Tamburini was the name given to the warrant cases of the night police). The acquittal therefore did not exclude the possibility of a repetition of the charge. It was in fact repeated, two months later, and on this occasion the Master and his pupil were again fully acquitted. Verrocchio was at this time forty and Leonardo four-and-twenty. The documents referring to this affair are in the State Archives of Florence; they have been withheld from publication, but it seemed to me desirable to give the reader this brief account of the leading facts of the story, as the vague hints of it, which have recently been made public, may have given to the incident an aspect which it had not in reality, and which it does not deserve.

The passages here classed under the head “Morals” reveal Leonardo to us as a man whose life and conduct were unfailingly governed by lofty principles and aims. He could scarcely have recorded his stern reprobation and unmeasured contempt for men who do nothing useful and strive only for riches, if his own life and ambitions had been such as they have so often been misrepresented.

At a period like that, when superstition still exercised unlimited dominion over the minds not merely of the illiterate crowd, but of the cultivated and learned classes, it was very natural that Leonardo’s views as to Alchemy, Ghosts, Magicians, and the like should be met with stern reprobation whenever and wherever he may have expressed them; this accounts for the argumentative tone of all his utterances on such subjects which I have collected in Subdivision III of this section. To these I have added some passages which throw light on Leonardo’s personal views on the Universe. They are, without exception, characterised by a broad spirit of naturalism of which the principles are more strictly applied in his essays on Astronomy, and still more on Physical Geography.

To avoid repetition, only such notes on Philosophy, Morals and Polemics, have been included in this section as occur as independent texts in the original MSS. Several moral reflections have already been given in Vol. I, in section “Allegorical representations, Mottoes and Emblems”. Others will be found in the following section. Nos. 9 to 12, Vol. I, are also passages of an argumentative character. It did not seem requisite to repeat here these and similar passages, since their direct connection with the context is far closer in places where they have appeared already, than it would be here.

I.

PHILOSOPHICAL MAXIMS.

Prayers to God (1132. 1133).

 

1132.

 

I obey Thee Lord, first for the love I ought, in all reason to bear Thee; secondly for that Thou canst shorten or prolong the lives of men.

 

1133.

 

A PRAYER.

Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price of labour.

The powers of Nature (1134-1139).

 

1134.

 

O admirable impartiality of Thine, Thou first Mover; Thou hast not permitted that any force should fail of the order or quality of its necessary results.

 

1135.

 

Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature.

Necessity is the theme and the inventress, the eternal curb and law of nature.

 

1136.

 

In many cases one and the same thing is attracted by two strong forces, namely Necessity and Potency. Water falls in rain; the earth absorbs it from the necessity for moisture; and the sun evaporates it, not from necessity, but by its power.

 

1137.

 

Weight, force and casual impulse, together with resistance, are the four external powers in which all the visible actions of mortals have their being and their end.

 

1138.

 

Our body is dependant on heaven and heaven on the Spirit.

 

1139.

 

The motive power is the cause of all life.

Psychology (1140-1147).

 

1140.

 

And you, O Man, who will discern in this work of mine the wonderful works of Nature, if you think it would be a criminal thing to destroy it, reflect how much more criminal it is to take the life of a man; and if this, his external form, appears to thee marvellously constructed, remember that it is nothing as compared with the soul that dwells in that structure; for that indeed, be it what it may, is a thing divine. Leave it then to dwell in His work at His good will and pleasure, and let not your rage or malice destroy a life—for indeed, he who does not value it, does not himself deserve it [Footnote 19: In MS. II 15a is the note: chi no stima la vita, non la merita.].

[Footnote: This text is on the back of the drawings reproduced on Pl. CVII. Compare No. 798, 35 note on p. 111: Compare also No. 837 and 838.]

 

1141.

 

The soul can never be corrupted with the corruption of the body,, but is in the body as it were the air which causes the sound of the organ, where when a pipe bursts, the wind would cease to have any good effect. [Footnote: Compare No. 845.]

 

1142.

 

The part always has a tendency to reunite with its whole in order to escape from its imperfection.

The spirit desires to remain with its body, because, without the organic instruments of that body, it can neither act, nor feel anything.

 

1143.

 

If any one wishes to see how the soul dwells in its body, let him observe how this body uses its daily habitation; that is to say, if this is devoid of order and confused, the body will be kept in disorder and confusion by its soul.

 

1144.

 

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than with the imagination being awake?

 

1145.

 

The senses are of the earth; Reason, stands apart in contemplation.

[Footnote: Compare No. 842.]

 

1146.

 

Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.

To know and to will are two operations of the human mind.

Discerning, judging, deliberating are acts of the human mind.

 

1147.

 

All our knowledge has its origin in our preceptions.

Science, its principles and rules (1148—1161)

 

1148.

 

Science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is the knowledge of things which may come to pass, though but slowly.

 

1149.

 

Experience, the interpreter between formative nature and the human race, teaches how that nature acts among mortals; and being constrained by necessity cannot act otherwise than as reason, which is its helm, requires her to act.

 

1150.

 

Wisdom is the daughter of experience.

 

1151.

 

Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occured in experience.

 

1152.

 

Truth was the only daughter of Time.

 

1153.

 

Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.

Experience does not err; only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power. Men wrongly complain of Experience; with great abuse they accuse her of leading them astray but they set Experience aside, turning from it with complaints as to our ignorance causing us to be carried away by vain and foolish desires to promise ourselves, in her name, things that are not in her power; saying that she is fallacious. Men are unjust in complaining of innocent Experience, constantly accusing her of error and of false evidence.

 

1154.

 

Instrumental or mechanical science is of all the noblest and the most useful, seeing that by means of this all animated bodies that have movement perform all their actions; and these movements are based on the centre of gravity which is placed in the middle dividing unequal weights, and it has dearth and wealth of muscles and also lever and counterlever.

 

1155.

 

OF MECHANICS.

Mechanics are the Paradise of mathematical science, because here we come to the fruits of mathematics. [Footnote: Compare No. 660, 11. 19—22 (Vol. I., p. 332). 1156.

Every instrument requires to be made by experience.

 

1157.

 

The man who blames the supreme certainty of mathematics feeds on confusion, and can never silence the contradictions of sophistical sciences which lead to an eternal quackery.

 

1158.

 

There is no certainty in sciences where one of the mathematical sciences cannot be applied, or which are not in relation with these mathematics.

 

1159.

 

Any one who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory. Good culture is born of a good disposition; and since the cause is more to be praised than the effect, I will rather praise a good disposition without culture, than good culture without the disposition.

 

1160.

 

Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.

 

1161.

 

OF THE ERRORS OF THOSE WHO DEPEND ON PRACTICE WITHOUT SCIENCE.

Those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who enters a ship without a helm or a compass, and who never can be certain whither he is going.

II.

MORALS.

What is life? (1162. 1163).

 

1162.

 

Now you see that the hope and the desire of returning home and to one’s former state is like the moth to the light, and that the man who with constant longing awaits with joy each new spring time, each new summer, each new month and new year—deeming that the things he longs for are ever too late in coming—does not perceive that he is longing for his own destruction. But this desire is the very quintessence, the spirit of the elements, which finding itself imprisoned with the soul is ever longing to return from the human body to its giver. And you must know that this same longing is that quintessence, inseparable from nature, and that man is the image of the world.

 

1163.

 

O Time! consumer of all things; O envious age! thou dost destroy all things and devour all things with the relentless teeth of years, little by little in a slow death. Helen, when she looked in her mirror, seeing the withered wrinkles made in her face by old age, wept and wondered why she had twice been carried away.

O Time! consumer of all things, and O envious age! by which all things are all devoured.

Death.

 

1164.

 

Every evil leaves behind a grief in our memory, except the supreme evil, that is death, which destroys this memory together with life.

How to spend life (1165-1170).

 

1165.

 

0 sleepers! what a thing is slumber! Sleep resembles death. Ah, why then dost thou not work in such wise as that after death thou mayst retain a resemblance to perfect life, when, during life, thou art in sleep so like to the hapless dead? [Footnote: Compare No. 676, Vol. I. p. 353.]

 

1166.

 

One pushes down the other.

By these square-blocks are meant the life and the studies of men.

 

1167.

 

The knowledge of past times and of the places on the earth is both an ornament and nutriment to the human mind.

 

1168.

 

To lie is so vile, that even if it were in speaking well of godly things it would take off something from God’s grace; and Truth is so excellent, that if it praises but small things they become noble.

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness; and this truth is in itself so