(3) I have described at other points how the French language really did continue to degenerate after the classic authors of the age of Louis XIV—taking into account the difference between historical periods, much less, of course, than that dividing the present time from the formation of, e.g., the Italian language—and what may be the particular danger faced by present-day French, a danger that is faced indeed not only by French but by all languages, not only by languages but by literatures, too, not only by literatures but by the men, nations, and life of our times: the danger, that is, of becoming mathematical, having been philosophical and rational for a period of time leading up to the present, and natural in ancient times. (14 May 1821.)
Regarding the Greeks’ ignorance of Latin, see Lucian, How to write history.2 (14 May 1821.)
For p. 988. The Romans (such as Cicero in the book De senectute) not infrequently quoted even quite long passages from Greek writers that they translated into Latin. The Greeks did not reciprocate, except occasionally (and in periods a good deal later than the beginnings of the Greek Church) some passage from the Latin Church Fathers or ecclesiastical authors done into Greek. But this was very rare, especially when measured against the many authorities among the Greek Fathers, etc., whom Latin writers would quote [1053] and translate into their own language. And by and large, the use of Latin Fathers, etc., in the Greek Church and in Greek writers was always incontrovertibly less than that of Greek authorities in the Latin Church and in Latin ecclesiastical Writers, notwithstanding the acknowledged supremacy of the Roman Church. (15 May 1821.)
Weighing up, on the one hand, what I have said pp. 937ff. regarding the natural restriction and poverty of languages and how it is that nature had firmly provided that man made none but the smallest advances in language and that human language was limited to very few signs serving only the extrinsic and bodily needs of life, and, on the other hand, the very true observations made by Soave (Appendix 1 to chapter 11, Book 3 of Locke’s Essay)1 and Sulzer (“Osservazioni intorno all’influenza reciproca della ragione sul linguaggio, e del linguaggio sulla ragione,” in the Memorie della R. Accademia di Prussia, and in the Scelta di opuscoli interessanti, Milan 1775, vol. 4, pp. 42–102)2 regarding the near impossibility of concepts without language, and in relation to the extension and perfection, etc., of concepts without the perfection, enrichment, etc., of language: weighing up all of the above, we obtain a new and crucial proof of how much our present [1054] state and our ideas are directly and violently contrary to nature, and how many obstacles nature placed in their way. (15 May 1821.)
In the same way that without a language concepts and ideas, especially incorporeal or immaterial ones, are impossible, and without a rich and perfect language the abundance and perfection of such concepts and ideas is impossible, and the perfecting or simple expansion of languages contributes to that of ideas—as has been clearly demonstrated by Sulzer in the “Osservazioni” quoted on the page above, in agreement with so many older authors from Locke onward (Sulzer, loc. cit. above, p. 101, Soave’s note)1 and especially more modern ones—so, proportionately, if you do not have a supple, varied, free, etc., language (of your own) it is very difficult to have perfect understanding and a perfect sense and feel for the signs peculiar to other languages, because you lack or can rarely find the instrument by which signs can be conceived, as in the other case mentioned above, the instrument by which to conceive of things and ideas in a clear, fixed, definite, and fully formed way, and to conceive of the memory of those conceptions. (15 May 1821.)
Not only does the Greek word Ψυχή [soul] derive, as I said elsewhere [→Z 602], from spirare [to breathe, to blow], etc., but the Latin animus [mind] and hence anima [soul] from ἄνεμος, wind. See Sulzer, passage quoted, on the page referred to above [→Z 1053], p. 62. And the ancient sense of wind in the word anima was often employed by the Romans. (Especially, I believe, by the earliest writers, or their imitators.) See Forcellini, and the Saggio sugli errori popolari degli antichi.2 (15 May 1821.)
[1055] Couper [to cut] must come from κόπτειν [to cut]. (16 May 1821.)
On the truth of the claim that you can achieve an almost perfect understanding of Chinese writing without knowing the language at all, see Soave, if you will, Appendix 2 to Chapter 11, Bk. 3, of the Locke Compendium, Venice, 3rd ed., tome 2, p. 63, beginning.1 (16 May 1821.)
Incredulity of whatever kind is often characteristic of someone who knows little and has thought little, for the same reason that such people do not know or get into a tangle when they try to find out how or why so many things which they cannot deny can be true. Knowing few things, they know a small number of causes, a small number of possibilities, a small number of ways of being, or of happening, etc., a small number of probabilities. Someone who does not know or think very much and, apart from that, does not reason readily believes because he is not concerned to find out how that thing could be. But someone who although he does not know or think very much does nevertheless reason, or prides himself on reasoning, if he cannot see how a thing can be, and knowing that what cannot be is not, does not believe it. And this not only for appearance’s sake or out of pride, affectation, etc., but very often in good conscience, and naturally. (17 May 1821.)
[1056] For p. 1038. Prior to the period in question, the Latin language did indeed have some truly outstanding writers from both a literary and a linguistic point of view, and some indeed who in their genre were so perfect that Roman literature subsequently had no one to surpass them. Setting to one side the Orators mentioned by Cicero, and principally the Gracchi (or Gaius Gracchus), setting to one side so many other writers now lost, among them some very elegant comic writers, it is enough to mention Plautus and Terence, whom we still admire, one never surpassed in comic vigor by any Roman subsequently, the other likewise never rivaled in the most pure, perfect, and native elegance. And certainly (if I am not much mistaken) Latin comedy after Cicero and in his day, went backward rather than beyond the level of perfection to which it had been raised by his forebears. And yet who would place the perfection of the Latin language, or its formation, etc., in the age of Terence rather than in that of Cicero and Virgil? And Lucretius, a century after Terence, used to complain, as is well known, about the poverty of the Latin language.
How much more valid my argument should then be for the 14th century writers. Of whom, excepting 3 alone, none belongs to literature.
But notwithstanding the huge literature of the 16th century, the Italian language could still not, nor can it now be called perfect. The application of a language [1057] to literature does not suffice to perfect it and to form it completely. It also has to be applied to a perfect literature, and one that is perfect not in this or that genre but in all genres. Otherwise, I repeat, the key century for the Latin language would not be Cicero’s but that of Plautus and Terence, it being an older, more primitive century, one less influenced by foreign trade.
Now I will grant that in the very areas of literature that stand out the most and were most cultivated in Italy, in the areas where we surpass all foreigners, our literature still falls well short of the perfection and refinement of Greek and Latin literature, which were and are effectively taken as models by our writers in these areas, which are therefore, strictly speaking, still imperfect. But our eloquence and also our philosophy (and Lucretius found the Latin language to be poor in philosophy)1 are not simply imperfect, but can scarcely be said to have begun. How many other genres of literature (taking this word in its broadest sense) in poetry as well as prose we either lack entirely or are in the cradle or are extremely deficient! Leaving aside the countless other genres, whom, apart from Petrarch who belongs more to elegy, can Italian lyric poetry show to Europe without shame, an area in which Italy in Verri’s opinion (Preface to Giacomelli’s Xenophon) [1058] and in that of almost all Italians is unrivaled?1 Parini’s efforts (which truly are efforts, and stilted ones at that, in my opinion) show both how much we lack and how little ground we have made up.
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Furthermore, supposing that the genres cultivated by us in the 16th or even the 14th century were all perfect, who does not know that, since one and the same genre may change shape and appearance and even character and nature with the inevitable changes in men and the times, ancient perfection no longer suffices in a language nor in a literature if it does not also have modern perfection in the same genre? If Lysias was a perfect orator at the time of the 30 tyrants, Demosthenes and Aeschines, who were no less perfect orators at the time of Philip and of Alexander, belong to a kind of oratorical genre so different from that of Lysias that they can be called opposites (the ἰσχνὸς [plain] and the δεινὸς [vehement]),2 and certainly in an absolute sense they far surpass him in merit and in fame. And we could call to mind countless examples of such renewed and modernized perfections within the same genre, in the ancient literatures themselves and in Italian literature from the 14th century to the 16th, and perhaps even within the boundaries of the 16th century itself. Now, if Italian literature does not have modern [1059] perfection in any genre, indeed, if Italy has no literature that can be called modern, if, etc. (rehearse what was said above), how then should the Italian language regard itself as perfect, and so perfect that no element of perfection or richness could be added to it (something that occurs with no human thing which yet can worthily be called perfect), when it is invariably the case that no language is perfected save by means of literature? And that the perfection of languages depends above all on literature? (17 May 1821.)
Chinese writing is not really written language since something that, one could say, has nothing to do with words is not language but another kind of sign; just as painting is not language, even though it expresses and signifies the concerns and the thoughts of the painter. So that Chinese literature can have little or no influence on language and therefore the Chinese language cannot make any great progress. (18 May 1821.)
Is it not a paradox that the Christian Religion has in large part been the source of atheism or more generally of religious unbelief? Yet I think that this is the case. Man is not naturally incredulous because he does not reason much and does not care a great deal about the [1060] causes of things. (See p. 1055, and another, similar thought in another passage [→Z 383–84].) Naturally, man for the most part imagines, conceives, and believes a religion, as is borne out by experience, in the same way that he imagines, conceives, and believes so many illusions some of which are uniform in all men, whereas religion is imagined by different natural men in very different forms. Metaphysics delving into the hidden causes of things and examining nature, our imaginations and ideas, etc., the profound, philosophical, and reasoning spirit, these are the sources of unbelief. Now, such things were propagated by the Jewish and Christian religion in particular, which teach and train men to look higher than the bell tower and lower than the pavement, in short, to engage in reflection, in the quest for hidden causes, in the examination and often in the condemnation and abandonment of natural beliefs, spontaneous and ill-founded imaginings, etc. See p. 1065, paragraph 2. And even though all religions are a kind of metaphysics, and therefore all religions that are even partly formed may be considered a cause of irreligion, that is, of their contrary (wonderful contrivance of the system of man, who would not be irreligious had he not been religious first), nevertheless this quality chiefly belongs, as everyone may see, to the Jewish and [1061] Christian Religion.
And it is truly odd to consider within this same Religion, and in our own times, the phases, epochs, and gradations of the human mind, all of which still subsist and have accumulated in one and the same century and something like a series of generations, none of which is yet extinct, and all of which still live, without failing to produce new ones, which live alongside the original forms. Here is a sort of genealogical tree:
For p. 1034. It is one thing for literature to influence the language of the people and to modify, shape, and perfect it when this language is essentially the same as the written one. It is quite another for it actually to change the language of the people and make it speak a language that is substantially or considerably different from the one it was accustomed to speak (however much it may be able to alter and corrupt popular language by introducing words and phrases into it little by little), and this in times when the literature was very weak and meager and barbarous in itself and when it had almost no influence on the multitude, and when men of letters, even indeed scholars and above all writers, were very scarce and few in number. (18 May 1821.)
What use reflection is to life, how much the system of profundity, reason, and scrutiny is in accord with nature, how far it is conducive to, indeed compatible [1063] with action, may be seen from the following. If we ponder the question, we shall find that the habit of boldness, ease, etc., which is so strongly recommended in society and which is indispensable in the managing of business affairs of every sort, and constitutes a large part of the skill of the individuals involved in the handling of such affairs, is simply the habit of not pausing to reflect. A habit that a young man altered by education will only recover gradually, if at all, especially if he is possessed of great intelligence, of a profound and reflective kind (like Goethe’s, whose initial approach, Mme. de Staël says, is always un peu roide [a little stiff], until he is à son aise [at his ease]).1
A child is always bold and fancy-free and therefore ready and fit for action so far as the natural forces of that age will carry him. Which he employs to the utmost. Unless, however, he is altered by education, which may happen sooner or later. And everyone observes that timidity, self-doubt, shame, in short, finding it hard to act, are signs of reflection in a child. There you have the admirable effect of reflection: inhibiting action, self-confidence, putting yourself and your forces to good use, so large a part of life. The youngster altered [1064] by education is timid, cramped, irresolute, has absolutely no confidence in himself. Through frequent and lengthy acquaintance with the world he must recover the same quality he already had through nature, and had as a boy, that is, the habit of not reflecting, without which boldness and the capacity to make use of himself according to the full measure of his valor is impossible. And you can see it in all circumstances of life, not just on those occasions when courage is needed and which involve physical dangers. But someone who has not to a certain degree recovered the habit of not reflecting is utterly useless in conversation, can do nothing with women, nothing in business, and, more particularly, nothing in those circumstances which bring, so to speak, a degree of danger, not physical but moral, and which require boldness and ease, and, so to speak, social intrepidness. A quality that is simply not to be found in one who reflects by habit and cannot put reflection aside when he needs to, and cannot abandon himself and let go, which are the states that are most sought after and prized and necessary for someone living in society, and generally in almost every kind and sphere of life. And see my other thoughts [→Z 538–39, 595–97] on the impossibility of even carrying out physical actions without the habit of not reflecting, [1065] a habit which, with respect to these actions, since everyone has it by nature, few lose, but once it is lost the loss renders the most concrete, routine, and natural operations quite impossible. (19 May 1821.)
For p. 1062. It is undeniable that the Christian Religion, even when one chooses to regard it as a product of human reason placed in the circumstances of such and such a time and such and such a place, etc.,1 has exerted a considerable influence in its turn upon reason itself, by having directed it toward the profound, the abstruse, and the metaphysical, by perhaps having propagated it more than any other medium has done, and by having brought about a very large part, indeed, the chief part of its progress. Now it is evident that religious unbelief stems from the progress of reason and that when either men or the nations did not reason, they believed, and were religious. (19 May 1821.)
For p. 1060. The religions are the beginning, and at the same time the chief and largest part of metaphysics, and moreover the most intensely metaphysical p
art of metaphysics itself, pertaining as they do to the nature, order, and most remote, hidden, and general causes of things. (19 May 1821.)
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