“Les passions même les plus vives ont besoin de la pudeur pour se montrer dans une forme séduisante: elle doit se répandre sur toutes vos actions; elle doit parer et embellir [651] toute votre personne. On dit que Jupiter, en formant les passions, leur donna à chacune sa demeure; la pudeur fut oubliée, et quand elle se présenta, on ne savoit plus où la placer; on lui permit de se mêler avec toutes les autres. Depuis ce temps-là, elle en est inséparable” [“Even the most intense passions need modesty if they are to appear in an attractive guise: it should permeate all your actions; it should adorn and embellish your whole person. It is said that Jupiter, when he created the passions, gave an abode to each; modesty, however, was forgotten, and when it presented itself no one knew where to put it; it was allowed to mingle with all the others. Since then it has been inseparable from them”]. Mme. de Lambert, Avis d’une mère à sa fille, in her Oeuvres complètes quoted above (p. 633), pp. 60–61. What can this mean save that nothing is good without naturalness? Apply these sayings of the Marquise’s to literature also, which is likewise inseparable from modesty, and to what I say about sentiment, and about the sentimental genre, in the Discourse on the Romantics.1 (13 Feb. 1821.)
“La curiosité est une connoissance commencée, qui vous fait aller plus loin et plus vite dans le chemin de la vérité” [“Curiosity is a nascent form of knowledge, which leads you to go further and faster along the path of truth”]. Mme. de Lambert, in the work quoted above, p. 72. I don’t fully grasp the Marquise’s sentiments, but the facts are as follows. Curiosity, or the desire to know, is for the most part simply the effect of knowledge. Examine nature, and [652] you will see how curiosity in primitive man is small, slight, and weak; how the desire to know those things which do not concern him, or which have been hidden by nature (e.g., things physical, astronomical, etc., the origins and destinies of man, animals, plants, and the world) never even enters his head; how he is incapable of embarking upon any serious venture to inform himself about anything, and still less about a matter that is hard to know (and the latter are the very things that were not to be known, and ignorance of which serves man’s happiness perfectly well, even if he is informed about other simple and obvious things. Rather, his imagination suffices, and leads him to believe that he knows a cause, when really it is no such thing, etc. In short, it is not at all true that man is drawn irresistibly toward truth and knowledge. Curiosity, as it is today, and as it has been for a long time now, is one of those corrupt attributes which have a development and a course that are not obligatory, and which, like so many other attributes, passions, etc., are good and useful, indeed necessary, at [653] the level at which nature gave them, but very bad and deadly at other levels, when they have developed more than they should, and changed in various ways. Thus, although these attributes and passions are natural in origin, and human, that does not mean that they are natural in the state in which they are found today, nor should one judge from their present state what the nature and constitution of man is, nor should one deduce from them the consequences concerning our destinies that we do deduce. (13 Feb. 1821.) See p. 657, paragraph 1.
“Les femmes apprennent volontiers l’Italien, qui me paroît dangereux, c’est la langue de l’Amour. Les Auteurs Italiens sont peu châtiés; il règne dans leurs ouvrages un jeu de mots, une imagination sans règle, qui s’oppose à la justesse de l’esprit” [“Women willingly learn Italian, which strikes me as dangerous, for it is the language of love. Italian authors are not very polished; wordplay prevails in their works, and an undisciplined imagination, which works against the sound judgment of the mind”]. Mme. Lambert, the work quoted above, pp. 73–74. (13 Feb. 1821.)
“Plus il y a de monde” [The more people there are] (that is, the more people there are around us, or the more we find ourselves at present in company), “et plus les passions acquièrent d’autorité” [the more the passions prevail]. Ibid., p. 81. “Un philosophe [654] assuroit: ‘… que plus il avoit vu de monde, plus les passions acquéroient d’autorité…’” [“A philosopher was adamant that ‘… the more he had seen of the world, the more the passions prevailed’”]. Mme. Lambert, “Lettre à madame de ***,” or Letter 15 in her Oeuvres complètes quoted above, p. 395. That is generally how things stand. With the truly unfortunate man, however, precisely the opposite occurs. Whenever he goes out into the world, and is rejected, and his self-love is mortified, his desires frustrated or thwarted, and his hopes disappointed, not only does he not harbor any passion except despair but, on the contrary, his passions are extinguished. And in solitude, as things and reality fall away into the distance, passions, desires, and hopes are rekindled in him.1 (13 Feb. 1821.)
“Modérez votre goût pour les sciences extraordinaires, elles sont dangereuses, et elles ne donnent ordinairement que beaucoup d’orgueil; elles démontent les ressorts de l’ame … Notre ame a bien plus de quoi jouir, qu’elle n’a de quoi connoître” [“Temper your taste for the unusual sciences, they are dangerous, and all they ordinarily give is a great deal of pride; they unhinge the springs of the soul … Our soul has far more to enjoy than it has to know”]: (the means of enjoying rather than those of knowing: this is the sense, [655] as is apparent from the context, and from other passages in her works parallel to this one) “nous avons les lumières propres et nécessaires à notre bien être; mais nous ne voulons pas nous en tenir là; nous courons après des vérités qui ne sont pas faites pour nous … Ces réflexions dégoûtent des sciences abstraites” [“we have such lights as are proper and necessary to our well-being; but we do not wish to settle for that; we chase after truths that were not made for us … Reflections such as these put us off the abstract sciences”]. Mme. de Lambert, Avis d’une mère à sa fille, in her Oeuvres complètes quoted above, pp. 74–76.
“Nous avons en nous de quoi jouir, mais nous n’avons pas de quoi connoître. Nous avons les lumières propres et nécessaires à notre bien être; mais nous courons après des vérités qui ne sont pas faites pour nous … Ces réflexions dégoûtent des vérités abstraites” [“We have enough in us to enjoy but we do not have enough to know. We have such lights as are proper and necessary for our well-being; but we chase after truths that were not made for us … Reflections such as these put us off the abstract truths”]. The same, Traité de la vieillesse, loc. cit., pp. 146–47. (13 Feb. 1821.)
“Examinez votre caractère, et mettez à profit vos défauts; il n’y en a point qui ne tienne à quelques vertus, et qui ne les favorise. La Morale n’a pas pour objet de détruire la nature, mais de la perfectionner” [“Examine your character, and profit from your faults; there is not a single one of them that does not border on some virtues, and which does not promote them. It is not the purpose of Ethics to destroy nature but to perfect it”]. Mme. Lambert, Avis d’une mère à sa fille, the place quoted above, p. 84. And she goes on to show through a good number of examples how each [656] imperfection leads to, assists, and almost contains some virtue, concluding that: “Il n’y a pas une foiblesse, dont, si vous voulez, la vertu ne puisse faire quelque usage” [“There is no frailty of which, if you will, virtue cannot make some use”], ibid., page quoted. On the basis of these observations, which many others have also made, a very general and important truth can be deduced, namely, how with only slight modifications those human qualities which are called vicious, and presumed to be natural and inherent vices, turn out in the long run to be none other than good and useful attributes, and how originally and in man’s first constitution what now seems essentially and originally bad was still good. Because those first natural attributes were easily corrupted and diverted from their goal, and it was no longer known to what good end they could be destined, our depravity, which is the work of man, is taken to be natural and innate vice, and the bad use of the attributes termed natural is confused with the good use for which nature destined them, and which cannot now any longer be easily discovered. [657] In short, all of the above confirms the doctrine of the natural and original perfection of man, if we bear
in mind the original goodness even of those attributes which on the one hand are reputed to be natural and innate, and are, and those which on the other hand are reported to be naturally bad, and are not; but this error causes nature to be regarded as vicious, and in need of reason. Which reason is itself, as we have very often demonstrated, a supreme vice, and nevertheless it is innate. But in the form in which it was innate it was not a vice; rather, it is a vice in the form in which it exists and is used today. (14 Feb. 1821.)
For p. 653. Indeed, natural curiosity leads a man, a child, etc., to wish to see, feel, etc., something that is beautiful or extraordinary or remarkable in relation to the individual. But in no way does it spur him or goad him to learn the cause behind a particular effect that he likes to see, hear, etc. Indeed, in the ordinary run of things, natural man settles for wonder, [658] enjoys the pleasure that derives from it, and is content with it. Thus, original curiosity merely leads man naturally to desire and obtain knowledge of those things which, because they are easy to know (and natural man desires to know them insofar as they are easy), and are not therefore hidden by nature, do not harm the original order, do not alter man, do not oppose his nature, and do not jeopardize his happiness and perfection, for such objects do not belong to the order of things that nature wished to keep unknown and neglected. The same may be seen in the case of the other animals. (14 Feb. 1821.)
The reason that it is so difficult, indeed, impossible, as I have several times observed [→Z 461–62], to succeed in those tasks which are performed with too much zeal, and all the more so when such tasks are natural, and when their perfection consists in naturalness, is as follows. Nothing succeeds well and according to nature except what is done naturally. [659] But the said means are not natural, and making use of them is not in accordance with nature. Therefore, etc. It is not enough for an undertaking to be natural. But the more natural it is or ought to be, the more it ought to be done naturally. Indeed, it is not natural unless it is done naturally. (14 Feb. 1821.)
The invention and use of firearms has combined perfectly with the tendency of the world in every manner of thing, one that follows naturally from the predominance of reason and art, I mean the tendency to make everything equal. Thus, firearms have equalized the strong and the weak, the great and the small, the brave and the cowardly, the practiced and the inexperienced, and the modes of combat of the various nations, and war itself has taken on an equilibrium, an equality that seemed wholly contrary to its nature. And artifice, standing in for virtue, [660] and matching it, and even going beyond it, and making it useless, has made all individuals equal, and removed variety and, even in war, killed enthusiasm almost completely, and killed emulation and taken away its reason for being, and killed heroism, since a hero-soldier is worth about as much as a Martano,1 or, if not killed, confused it with cowardice and made it indistinguishable, and hence lacking motivation and reward: in short, it has served to a great extent even in this regard to repress life and the world. So much so that the beautiful, the great, and the varied are nowhere to be found except in nature, and are lost once we leave it, once art and reason replace it, in every manner of thing. (14 Feb. 1821.)
Diogenes “ἐρωτηθεὶς εἰ κακὸς ὁ θάνατος, πῶς, εἶπε, κακὸς, οὗ παρόντος οὐκ αἰσθανόμεθα;” [“being asked whether death was an evil thing, he replied, ‘How can it be evil, when in its presence we are not aware of it?’”] Laertius, in Diogenes the Cynic, bk. 6, § 68. From Ménage’s note we learn that he understood this to refer to our inability to experience the act of dying.2
[661] On the various opinions regarding the supposed natural law, see some sentiments and doctrines of Diogenes, in Laertius’s Diogenes the Cynic, bk. 6, §§ 72–73, and therein Ménage, who reports in this context some words from Sextus Empiricus, whose work Pyrronianarum hypotyposeon, and another work, Adversus mathematicos, or “adversus cuiusvis generis dogmaticos” [“against dogmatic philosophers of all kinds”], is wholly concerned with this argument, and with my own contention, namely, that there is no absolute truth.1 (14 Feb. 1821.)
Regarding the influence of the body on the mind, and the practice of virtue, see the opinions of Diogenes, in Laertius’s Diogenes the Cynic, bk. 6, § 70, and whether Ménage has anything to say about it there. (14 Feb. 1821.)
“On aime à savoir les foiblesses des personnes estimables” [“We like learning about the frailties of estimable persons”], and not indeed only of those whom we hate or envy but of those whom we love, admire, and have dealings with, to whom we are obligated, and who benefit us with their kindness and advice, etc., and this is how Mme. Lambert puts it, in La femme hermite. Nouvelle nouvelle [662] in her Oeuvres complètes quoted above (p. 633), p. 229. You can, however, apply this thought to yourself and make it your own, since Madame extends, develops, and applies it in a routine fashion, so that the thought seems commonplace, has no great impact, and its originality cannot be seen. She applies it chiefly to the trust that it produces in relation to those particular people: “et j’étois trop heureuse de trouver en elle, non-seulement des conseils, mais de ces foiblesses aimables qui nous rendent plus indulgens pour celles d’autrui” [“and I was only too glad to find in her, not only advice, but some of those endearing frailties which make it easier for us to forgive those of others”]. But one may consider this truth on a much larger scale, expand it, note how it relates to others, and even apply it to the theater, poetry, novels, etc., and the mimetic arts, and so confirm Aristotle’s rule, namely, that the hero should not be perfect.1 (15 Feb. 1821.)
“Je crois que son estime” [“I believe that his esteem”] (the reference here is to a person who is loved, but from whom one does not hope for anything, and to whom one has never declared one’s own love) “doit être le prix de tout ce que je fais de bien; et je fais encore plus [663] grand cas d’elle” (de son estime) “que de tous les sentimens les plus tendres que je pourrois lui supposer” [“must be the prize for any good that I do; and I value it” (his esteem) “still more highly than I do all the most tender feelings I might impute to him”]. (The speaker is a woman and the loved one a man.) Mme. Lambert, from the work quoted above, p. 234.
A certain gentleman, hearing it said that life is a comedy,1 remarked that today it is more like a rehearsal of a comedy, or one of those performances that schoolboys or the like sometimes put on for their own amusement. Because there are no longer any spectators, everyone plays a part, and, as for the virtue and good qualities that are feigned, no one has them and no one believes that others have them.
Indeed, he was proposing a new approach, whereby the world finally stopped being a theater, and life became for the first time, or, at any rate, in a very long time, a true form of action. If it was ever such a thing, this was because men, at any rate the greater part, were truly good, or tended toward virtue. Something that is now impossible, and no longer [664] to be hoped for. This goal should therefore be pursued from another, almost opposite direction. The Galateo, the laws, teaching both public and private, child-rearing, books on manners, dictionaries, etc., should be reformed.1 In such a fashion that something no longer necessary, indeed pointless and essentially harmful, should no longer be necessary even in appearance. Thus men would be rid of the need to lie all the time, and to no purpose, since they no longer deceived anyone; of the embarrassment this so often caused them; of the contradiction between the outside and the inside; of falsehood, etc., and truth would be brought back into the world. Life would remain the same, neither more nor less than it is today, and once men were rid of this language and these conventional forms, these pointless and insubstantial bienséances [proprieties], and honor, and respect for an audience that thinks and acts the same way as you do, they would be rid of much trouble, toil, and difficulty, and vain courtesies and empty [665] cares, and life would be a deed and not a performance; at last those two eternally discordant things, what men say and what they do, would be reconciled.
Zibaldone Page 67
