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VOLUME II - SECTION XIX. PHILOSOPHICAL MAXIMS. MORALS. POLEMICS AND SPECULATIONS
Vasari indulges in severe strictures on Leonardo's religious views.
He speaks, among other things, of his_ "capricci nel filosofar delle
cose naturali" _and says on this point:_ "Per il che fece nell'animo
un concetto si eretico che e' non si accostava a qualsi voglia
religione, stimando per avventura assai piu lo esser filosofo che
cristiano" _(see the first edition of_ 'Le Vite'_). But this
accusation on the part of a writer in the days of the Inquisition is
not a very serious one--and the less so, since, throughout the
manuscripts, we find nothing to support it._
Under the heading of "Philosophical Maxims" I have collected all
the passages which can give us a clear comprehension of Leonardo's
ideas of the world at large. It is scarcely necessary to observe
that there is absolutely nothing in them to lead to the inference
that he was an atheist. His views of nature and its laws are no
doubt very unlike those of his contemporaries, and have a much
closer affinity to those which find general acceptance at the
present day. On the other hand, it is obvious from Leonardo's will
(see No._ 1566_) that, in the year before his death, he had
professed to adhere to the fundamental doctrines of the Roman
Catholic faith, and this evidently from his own personal desire and
impulse.
The incredible and demonstrably fictitious legend of Leonardo's
death in the arms of Francis the First, is given, with others, by
Vasari and further embellished by this odious comment:_ "Mostrava
tuttavia quanto avea offeso Dio e gli uomini del mondo, non avendo
operato nell'arte come si conveniva." _This last accusation, it may
be remarked, is above all evidence of the superficial character of
the information which Vasari was in a position to give about
Leonardo. It seems to imply that Leonardo was disdainful of diligent
labour. With regard to the second, referring to Leonardo's morality
and dealings with his fellow men, Vasari himself nullifies it by
asserting the very contrary in several passages. A further
refutation may be found in the following sentence from the letter in
which Melsi, the young Milanese nobleman, announces the Master's
death to Leonardo's brothers:_ Credo siate certificati della morte
di Maestro Lionardo fratello vostro, e mio quanto optimo padre, per
la cui morte sarebbe impossibile che io potesse esprimere il dolore
che io ho preso; e in mentre che queste mia membra si sosterranno
insieme, io possedero una perpetua infelicita, e meritamente perche
sviscerato et ardentissimo amore mi portava giornalmente. E dolto ad
ognuno la perdita di 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)
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 excellent that, even
when it dwells on humble and lowly matters, it is still infinitely
above uncertainty and lies, disguised in high and lofty discourses;
because in our minds, even if lying should be their fifth element,
this does not prevent that the truth of things is the chief
nutriment of superior intellects, though not of wandering wits.
But you who live in dreams are better pleased by the sophistical
reasons and frauds of wits in great and uncertain things, than by
those reasons which are certain and natural and not so far above us.
1169.
Avoid studies of which the result dies with the worker.
1170.
Men are in error when they lament the flight of time, accusing it of
being too swift, and not perceiving that it is sufficient as it
passes; but good memory, with which nature has endowed us, causes
things long past to seem present.
1171.
Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you
understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct
yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.
1172.
The acquisition of any knowledge is always of use to the intellect,
because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good.
For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.
1173.
As a day well spent procures a happy sleep, so a life well employed
procures a happy death.
1174.
The water you touch in a river is the last of that which has passed,
and the first of that which is coming. Thus it is with time present.
Life if well spent, is long.
1175.
Just as food eaten without caring for it is turned into loathsome
nourishment, so study without a taste for it spoils memory, by
retaining nothing which it has taken in.
1176.
Just as eating against one's will is injurious to health, so study
without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it
takes in.
1177.
On Mount Etna the words freeze in your mouth and you may make ice of
them.[Footnote 2: There is no clue to explain this strange
sentence.]
Just as iron rusts unless it is used, and water putrifies or, in
cold, turns to ice, so our intellect spoils unless it is kept in
use.
You do ill if you praise, and still worse if you reprove in a matter
you do not understand.
When Fortune comes, seize her in front with a sure hand, because
behind she is bald.
1178.
It seems to me that men of coarse and clumsy habits and of small
knowledge do not deserve such fine instruments nor so great a
variety of natural mechanism as men of speculation and of great
knowledge; but merely a sack in which their food may be stowed and
whence it may issue, since they cannot be judged to be any thing
else than vehicles for food; for it seems to me they have nothing
about them of the human species but the voice and the figure, and
for all the rest are much below beasts.
1179.
Some there are who are nothing else than a passage for food and
augmentors of excrement and fillers of privies, because through them
no other things in the world, nor any good effects are produced,
since nothing but full privies results from them.
On foolishness and ignorance (1180-1182)
1180.
The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
1181.
Folly is the shield of shame, as unreadiness is that of poverty
glorified.
1182.
Blind ignorance misleads us thus and delights with the results of
lascivious joys.
Because it does not know the true light. Because it does not know
what is the true light.
Vain splendour takes from us the power of being .... behold! for its
vain splendour we go into the fire, thus blind ignorance does
mislead us. That is, blind ignorance so misleads us that ...
O! wretched mortals, open your eyes.
On riches (1183-1187)
1183.
That is not riches, which may be lost; virtue is our true good and
the true reward of its possessor. That cannot be lost; that never
deserts us, but when life leaves us. As to property and external
riches, hold them with trembling; they often leave their possessor
in contempt, and mocked at for having lost them.
1184.
Every man wishes to make money to give it to the doctors, destroyers
of life; they then ought to be rich. [Footnote 2: Compare No. 856.]
Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and
false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a
small truth is better than a great lie.
1185.
He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss.
1186.
He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.
1187.
That man is of supreme folly who always wants for fear of wanting;
and his life flies away while he is still hoping to enjoy the good
things which he has with extreme labour acquired.
Rules of Life (1188-1202)
1188.
If you governed your body by the rules of virtue you would not walk
on all fours in this world.
You grow in reputation like bread in the hands of a child.
[Footnote: The first sentence is obscure. Compare Nos. 825, 826.]
1189.
Savage he is who saves himself.
1190.
We ought not to desire the impossible. [Footnote: The writing of
this note, which is exceedingly minute, is reproduced in facsimile
on Pl. XLI No. 5 above the first diagram.
1191.
Ask counsel of him who rules himself well.
Justice requires power, insight, and will; and it resembles the
queen-bee.
He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.
He who takes the snake by the tail will presently be bitten by it.
The grave will fall in upon him who digs it.
1192.
The man who does not restrain wantonness, allies himself with
beasts.
You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.
He who thinks little, errs much.
It is easier to contend with evil at the first than at the last.
No counsel is more loyal than that given on ships which are in
peril: He may expect loss who acts on the advice of an inexperienced
youth.
1193.
Where there is most feeling, there is the greatest martyrdom;--a
great martyr.
1194.
The memory of benefits is a frail defence against ingratitude.
Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.
Be not false about the past.
1195.
A SIMILE FOR PATIENCE.
Patience serves us against insults precisely as clothes do against
the cold. For if you multiply your garments as the cold increases,
that cold cannot hurt you; in the same way increase your patience
under great offences, and they cannot hurt your feelings.
1196.
To speak well of a base man is much the same as speaking ill of a
good man.
1197.
Envy wounds with false accusations, that is with detraction, a thing
which scares virtue.
1198.
We are deceived by promises and time disappoints us ... [Footnote 2:
The rest of this passage may be rendered in various ways, but none
of them give a satisfactory meaning.]
1199.
Fear arises sooner than any thing else.
1200.
Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.
Threats alone are the weapons of the threatened man.
Wherever good fortune enters, envy lays siege to the place and
attacks it; and when it departs, sorrow and repentance remain
behind.
He who walks straight rarely falls.
It is bad if you praise, and worse if you reprove a thing, I mean,
if you do not understand the matter well.
It is ill to praise, and worse to reprimand in matters that you do
not understand.
1201.
Words which do not satisfy the ear of the hearer weary him or vex
him, and the symptoms of this you will often see in such hearers in
their frequent yawns; you therefore, who speak before men whose good
will you desire, when you see such an excess of fatigue, abridge
your speech, or change your discourse; and if you do otherwise, then
instead of the favour you desire, you will get dislike and
hostility.
And if you would see in what a man takes pleasure, without hearing
him speak, change the subject of your discourse in talking to him,
and when you presently see him intent, without yawning or wrinkling
his brow or other actions of various kinds, you may be certain that
the matter of which you are speaking is such as is agreeable to him
&c.
1202.
The lover is moved by the beloved object as the senses are by
sensible objects; and they unite and become one and the same thing.
The work is the first thing born of this union; if the thing loved
is base the lover becomes base.
When the thing taken into union is perfectly adapted to that which
receives it, the result is delight and pleasure and satisfaction.
When that which loves is united to the thing beloved it can rest
there; when the burden is laid down it finds rest there.
Politics (1203-1204)
1203.
There will be eternal fame also for the inhabitants of that town,
constructed and enlarged by him.
All communities obey and are led by their magnates, and these
magnates ally themselves with the lords and subjugate them in two
ways: either by consanguinity, or by fortune; by consanguinity, when
their children are, as it were, hostages, and a security and pledge
of their suspected fidelity; by property, when you make each of
these build a house or two inside your city which may yield some
revenue and he shall have...; 10 towns, five thousand houses with
thirty thousand inhabitants, and you will disperse this great
congregation of people which stand like goats one behind the other,
filling every place with fetid smells and sowing seeds of pestilence
and death;
And the city will gain beauty worthy of its name and to you it will
be useful by its revenues, and the eternal fame of its
aggrandizement.
[Footnote: These notes were possibly written in preparation for a
letter. The meaning is obscure.]
1204.
To preserve Nature's chiefest boon, that is freedom, I can find
means of offence and defence, when it is assailed by ambitious
tyrants, and first I will speak of the situation of the walls, and
also I shall show how communities can maintain their good and just
Lords.
[Footnote: Compare No. 1266.]
III. POLEMICS.--SPECULATION.
Against Speculators (1205-1206)
1205.
Oh! speculators on things, boast not of knowing the things that
nature ordinarily brings about; but rejoice if you know the end of
those things which you yourself devise.
1206.
Oh! speculators on perpetual motion how many vain projects of the
like character you have created! Go and be the companions of the
searchers for gold. [Footnote: Another short passage in MS. I,
referring also to speculators, is given by LIBRI (_Hist, des
Sciences math._ III, 228): _Sicche voi speculatori non vi fidate
delli autori che anno sol col immaginatione voluto farsi interpreti
tra la natura e l'omo, ma sol di quelli che non coi cienni della
natura, ma cogli effetti delle sue esperienze anno esercitati i loro
ingegni._]
Against alchemists (1207-1208)
1207.
The false interpreters of nature declare that quicksilver is the
common seed of every metal, not remembering that nature varies the
seed according to the variety of the things she desires to produce
in the world.
1208.
And many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles,
deceiving the stupid multitude.
Against friars (1209)
1209.
Pharisees--that is to say, friars.
[Footnote: Compare No. 837, 11. 54-57, No. 1296 (p. 363 and 364),
and No. 1305 (p. 370).]
Against writers of epitomes (1210)
1210.
Abbreviators do harm to knowledge and to love, seeing that the love
of any thing is the offspring of this knowledge, the love being the
more fervent in proportion as the knowledge is more certain. And
this certainty is born of a complete knowledge of all the parts,
which, when combined, compose the totality of the thing which ought
to be loved. Of what use then is he who abridges the details of
those matters of which he professes to give thorough information,
while he leaves behind the chief part of the things of which the
whole is composed? It is true that impatience, the mother of
stupidity, praises brevity, as if such persons had not life long
enough to serve them to acquire a complete knowledge of one single
subject, such as the human body; and then they want to comprehend
the mind of God in which the universe is included, weighing it
minutely and mincing it into infinite parts, as if they had to
dissect it!
Oh! human stupidity, do you not perceive that, though you have been
with yourself all your life, you are not yet aware of the thing you
possess most of, that is of your folly? and then, with the crowd of
sophists, you deceive yourselves and others, despising the
mathematical sciences, in which truth dwells and the knowledge of
the things included in them. And then you occupy yourself with
miracles, and write that you possess information of those things of
which the human mind is incapable and which cannot be proved by any
instance from nature. And you fancy you have wrought miracles when
you spoil a work of some speculative mind, and do not perceive that
you are falling into the same error as that of a man who strips a
tree of the ornament of its branches covered with leaves mingled
with the scented blossoms or fruit....... [Footnote 48: _Givstino_,
Marcus Junianus Justinus, a Roman historian of the second century,
who compiled an epitome from the general history written by Trogus
Pompeius, who lived in the time of Augustus. The work of the latter
writer no longer exist.] as Justinus did, in abridging the histories
written by Trogus Pompeius, who had written in an ornate style all
the worthy deeds of his forefathers, full of the most admirable and
ornamental passages; and so composed a bald work worthy only of
those impatient spirits, who fancy they are losing as much time as
that which they employ usefully in studying the works of nature and
the deeds of men. But these may remain in company of beasts; among
their associates should be dogs and other animals full of rapine and
they may hunt with them after...., and then follow helpless beasts,
which in time of great snows come near to your houses asking alms as
from their master....
On spirits (1211-1213)
1211.
O mathematicians shed light on this error.
The spirit has no voice, because where there is a voice there is a
body, and where there is a body space is occupied, and this prevents
the eye from seeing what is placed behind that space; hence the
surrounding air is filled by the body, that is by its image.
1212.
There can be no voice where there is no motion or percussion of the
air; there can be no percussion of the air where there is no
instrument, there can be no instrument without a body; and this
being so, a spirit can have neither voice, nor form, nor strength.
And if it were to assume a body it could not penetrate nor enter
where the passages are closed. And if any one should say that by
air, compressed and compacted together, a spirit may take bodies of
various forms and by this means speak and move with strength--to him
I reply that when there are neither nerves nor bones there can be no
force exercised in any kind of movement made by such imaginary
spirits.
Beware of the teaching of these speculators, because their reasoning
is not confirmed by experience.
1213.
Of all human opinions that is to be reputed the most foolish which
deals with the belief in Necromancy, the sister of Alchemy, which
gives birth to simple and natural things. But it is all the more
worthy of reprehension than alchemy, because it brings forth nothing
but what is like itself, that is, lies; this does not happen in
Alchemy which deals with simple products of nature and whose
function cannot be exercised by nature itself, because it has no
organic instruments with which it can work, as men do by means of
their hands, who have produced, for instance, glass &c. but this
Necromancy the flag and flying banner, blown by the winds, is the
guide of the stupid crowd which is constantly witness to the
dazzling and endless effects of this art; and there are books full,
declaring that enchantments and spirits can work and speak without
tongues and without organic instruments-- without which it is
impossible to speak-- and can carry heaviest weights and raise
storms and rain; and that men can be turned into cats and wolves and
other beasts, although indeed it is those who affirm these things
who first became beasts.
And surely if this Necromancy did exist, as is believed by small
wits, there is nothing on the earth that would be of so much
importance alike for the detriment and service of men, if it were
true that there were in such an art a power to disturb the calm
serenity of the air, converting it into darkness and making
coruscations or winds, with terrific thunder and lightnings rushing
through the darkness, and with violent storms overthrowing high
buildings and rooting up forests; and thus to oppose armies,
crushing and annihilating them; and, besides these frightful storms
may deprive the peasants of the reward of their labours.--Now what
kind of warfare is there to hurt the enemy so much as to deprive him
of the harvest? What naval warfare could be compared with this? I
say, the man who has power to command the winds and to make ruinous
gales by which any fleet may be submerged, --surely a man who could
command such violent forces would be lord of the nations, and no
human ingenuity could resist his crushing force. The hidden
treasures and gems reposing in the body of the earth would all be
made manifest to him. No lock nor fortress, though impregnable,
would be able to save any one against the will of the necromancer.
He would have himself carried through the air from East to West and
through all the opposite sides of the universe. But why should I
enlarge further upon this? What is there that could not be done by
such a craftsman? Almost nothing, except to escape death. Hereby I
have explained in part the mischief and the usefulness, contained in
this art, if it is real; and if it is real why has it not remained
among men who desire it so much, having nothing to do with any
deity? For I know that there are numberless people who would, to
satisfy a whim, destroy God and all the universe; and if this
necromancy, being, as it were, so necessary to men, has not been
left among them, it can never have existed, nor will it ever exist
according to the definition of the spirit, which is invisible in
substance; for within the elements there are no incorporate things,
because where there is no body, there is a vacuum; and no vacuum can
exist in the elements because it would be immediately filled up.
Turn over.
1214.
OF SPIRITS.
We have said, on the other side of this page, that the definition of
a spirit is a power conjoined to a body; because it cannot move of
its own accord, nor can it have any kind of motion in space; and if
you were to say that it moves itself, this cannot be within the
elements. For, if the spirit is an incorporeal quantity, this
quantity is called a vacuum, and a vacuum does not exist in nature;
and granting that one were formed, it would be immediately filled up
by the rushing in of the element in which the vacuum had been
generated. Therefore, from the definition of weight, which is
this--Gravity is an accidental power, created by one element being
drawn to or suspended in another--it follows that an element, not
weighing anything compared with itself, has weight in the element
above it and lighter than it; as we see that the parts of water have
no gravity or levity compared with other water, but if you draw it
up into the air, then it would acquire weight, and if you were to
draw the air beneath the water then the water which remains above
this air would acquire weight, which weight could not sustain itself
by itself, whence collapse is inevitable. And this happens in water;
wherever the vacuum may be in this water it will fall in; and this
would happen with a spirit amid the elements, where it would
continuously generate a vacuum in whatever element it might find
itself, whence it would be inevitable that it should be constantly
flying towards the sky until it had quitted these elements.
AS TO WHETHER A SPIRIT HAS A BODY AMID THE ELEMENTS.
We have proved that a spirit cannot exist of itself amid the
elements without a body, nor can it move of itself by voluntary
motion unless it be to rise upwards. But now we will say how such a
spirit taking an aerial body would be inevitably melt into air;
because if it remained united, it would be separated and fall to
form a vacuum, as is said above; therefore it is inevitable, if it
is to be able to remain suspended in the air, that it should absorb
a certain quantity of air; and if it were mingled with the air, two
difficulties arise; that is to say: It must rarefy that portion of
the air with which it mingles; and for this cause the rarefied air
must fly up of itself and will not remain among the air that is
heavier than itself; and besides this the subtle spiritual essence
disunites itself, and its nature is modified, by which that nature
loses some of its first virtue. Added to these there is a third
difficulty, and this is that such a body formed of air assumed by
the spirits is exposed to the penetrating winds, which are
incessantly sundering and dispersing the united portions of the air,
revolving and whirling amidst the rest of the atmosphere; therefore
the spirit which is infused in this
1215.
air would be dismembered or rent and broken up with the rending of
the air into which it was incorporated.
AS TO WHETHER THE SPIRIT, HAVING TAKEN THIS BODY OF AIR, CAN MOVE OF
ITSELF OR NOT.
It is impossible that the spirit infused into a certain quantity of
air, should move this air; and this is proved by the above passage
where it is said: the spirit rarefies that portion of the air in
which it incorporates itself; therefore this air will rise high
above the other air and there will be a motion of the air caused by
its lightness and not by a voluntary movement of the spirit, and if
this air is encountered by the wind, according to the 3rd of this,
the air will be moved by the wind and not by the spirit incorporated
in it.
AS TO WHETHER THE SPIRIT CAN SPEAK OR NOT.
In order to prove whether the spirit can speak or not, it is
necessary in the first place to define what a voice is and how it is
generated; and we will say that the voice is, as it were, the
movement of air in friction against a dense body, or a dense body in
friction against the air,--which is the same thing. And this
friction of the dense and the rare condenses the rare and causes
resistance; again, the rare, when in swift motion, and the rare in
slow motion condense each other when they come in contact and make a
noise and very great uproar; and the sound or murmur made by the
rare moving through the rare with only moderate swiftness, like a
great flame generating noises in the air; and the tremendous uproar
made by the rare mingling with the rare, and when that air which is
both swift and rare rushes into that which is itself rare and in
motion, it is like the flame of fire which issues from a big gun and
striking against the air; and again when a flame issues from the
cloud, there is a concussion in the air as the bolt is generated.
Therefore we may say that the spirit cannot produce a voice without
movement of the air, and air in it there is none, nor can it emit
what it has not; and if desires to move that air in which it is
incorporated, it is necessary that the spirit should multiply
itself, and that cannot multiply which has no quantity. And in the
4th place it is said that no rare body can move, if it has not a
stable spot, whence it may take its motion; much more is it so when
an element has to move within its own element, which does not move
of itself, excepting by uniform evaporation at the centre of the
thing evaporated; as occurs in a sponge squeezed in the hand held
under water; the water escapes in every direction with equal
movement through the openings between the fingers of the hand in
which it is squeezed.
As to whether the spirit has an articulate voice, and whether the
spirit can be heard, and what hearing is, and seeing; the wave of
the voice passes through the air as the images of objects pass to
the eye.
Nonentity (1216)
1216.
Every quantity is intellectually conceivable as infinitely
divisible.
[Amid the vastness of the things among which we live, the existence
of nothingness holds the first place; its function extends over all
things that have no existence, and its essence, as regards time,
lies precisely between the past and the future, and has nothing in
the present. This nothingness has the part equal to the whole, and
the whole to the part, the divisible to the indivisible; and the
product of the sum is the same whether we divide or multiply, and in
addition as in subtraction; as is proved by arithmeticians by their
tenth figure which represents zero; and its power has not extension
among the things of Nature.]
[What is called Nothingness is to be found only in time and in
speech. In time it stands between the past and future and has no
existence in the present; and thus in speech it is one of the things
of which we say: They are not, or they are impossible.]
With regard to time, nothingness lies between the past and the
future, and has nothing to do with the present, and as to its nature
it is to be classed among things impossible: hence, from what has
been said, it has no existence; because where there is nothing there
would necessarily be a vacuum.
[Footnote: Compare No. 916.]
Reflections on Nature (1217-1219)
1217.
EXAMPLE OF THE LIGHTNING IN CLOUDS.
[O mighty and once living instrument of formative nature. Incapable
of availing thyself of thy vast strength thou hast to abandon a life
of stillness and to obey the law which God and time gave to
procreative nature.]
Ah! how many a time the shoals of terrified dolphins and the huge
tunny-fish were seen to flee before thy cruel fury, to escape;
whilst thy fulminations raised in the sea a sudden tempest with
buffeting and submersion of ships in the great waves; and filling
the uncovered shores with the terrified and desperate fishes which
fled from thee, and left by the sea, remained in spots where they
became the abundant prey of the people in the neighbourhood.
O time, swift robber of all created things, how many kings, how many
nations hast thou undone, and how many changes of states and of
various events have happened since the wondrous forms of this fish
perished here in this cavernous and winding recess. Now destroyed by
time thou liest patiently in this confined space with bones stripped
and bare; serving as a support and prop for the superimposed
mountain.
[Footnote: The character of the handwriting points to an early
period of Leonardo's life. It has become very indistinct, and is at
present exceedingly difficult to decipher. Some passages remain
doubtful.]
[Footnote: Compare No. 1339, written on the same sheet.]
1218.
The watery element was left enclosed between the raised banks of the
rivers, and the sea was seen between the uplifted earth and the
surrounding air which has to envelope and enclose the complicated
machine of the earth, and whose mass, standing between the water and
the element of fire, remained much restricted and deprived of its
indispensable moisture; the rivers will be deprived of their waters,
the fruitful earth will put forth no more her light verdure; the
fields will no more be decked with waving corn; all the animals,
finding no fresh grass for pasture, will die and food will then be
lacking to the lions and wolves and other beasts of prey, and to men
who after many efforts will be compelled to abandon their life, and
the human race will die out. In this way the fertile and fruitful
earth will remain deserted, arid and sterile from the water being
shut up in its interior, and from the activity of nature it will
continue a little time to increase until the cold and subtle air
being gone, it will be forced to end with the element of fire; and
then its surface will be left burnt up to cinder and this will be
the end of all terrestrial nature. [Footnote: Compare No. 1339,
written on the same sheet.]
1219.
Why did nature not ordain that one animal should not live by the
death of another? Nature, being inconstant and taking pleasure in
creating and making constantly new lives and forms, because she
knows that her terrestrial materials become thereby augmented, is
more ready and more swift in her creating, than time in his
destruction; and so she has ordained that many animals shall be food
for others. Nay, this not satisfying her desire, to the same end she
frequently sends forth certain poisonous and pestilential vapours
upon the vast increase and congregation of animals; and most of all
upon men, who increase vastly because other animals do not feed upon
them; and, the causes being removed, the effects would not follow.
This earth therefore seeks to lose its life, desiring only continual
reproduction; and as, by the argument you bring forward and
demonstrate, like effects always follow like causes, animals are the
image of the world. _
Read next: VOLUME II: SECTION XX. HUMOROUS WRITINGS
Read previous: VOLUME II: SECTION XVIII. NAVAL WARFARE. --MECHANICAL APPLIANCES. --MUSIC.
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