Читать книгу: «The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. Complete», страница 49
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.
**** TEXT BEYOND THIS POINT STILL NEEDS SOME CLEANUP ****
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
O 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.
[Footnote: These notes were possibly written in preparation for a letter. The meaning is obscure.]
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.
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 inter*preti 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
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
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.
