The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci

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