Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  It is true that in nature many accidents will occur which run contrary to its system without spoiling it, etc. But self-love is no accident, indeed it is the very first and essential principle and hinge of the whole machine of nature. Now, it is absolutely certain that self-love hinders man both in the natural state and, still more, in any other state, from ever being able to be perfectly good, that is, with thought and deeds perfectly and perpetually in accordance with the law which they call natural. And it hinders him not in frivolous but in utterly crucial matters, and not rarely but unceasingly. Not to speak of the most natural passions, etc. etc. etc. How, then, has nature made man repugnant to it, that is, to himself? And what is this natural law, which other animals (perfect subjects of nature) do not follow, and cannot follow, being hindered by self-love itself, nor do they know [1459] it in any way? They do not have reason. They do, however, have instinct, or so you say, and natural law, so you say, and the term has the sense of innate instinct, etc., independent of reflection and hence of reason. Natural law would therefore be so much more suitable for animals who do not have reason to put in its stead, while it would be almost an animal quality in free and rational man. In my opinion they, too, have the principle of ratiocination; they have complete liberty, and if natural law is useful, indeed, necessary to man, why is it not to animals, whether they are free or not? Now animals—although they are not corrupt and have not extinguished impulse, inner voice, etc., as you say that we have—act every day, and in every one of their needs, and in an opposite direction to natural law.1 (6 Aug. 1821.)

  The less civilized men are (as are the savages, as were the Americans, etc.), the greater the number and variety of languages or dialects to be found in a smaller stretch of country, and in a smaller number of people. A fact proven by history, by travels, etc., and correspondingly by the observation itself of more or less civilized, lettered peoples, etc. See p. 1386, end.2 From which it may be seen just how much nature clashes with the uniformity of languages, etc., as I have said elsewhere [→Z 937–40, 1022]. (6 Aug. 1821.)

  [1460] The dominion that Christianity exercised for so many centuries (both before and after the rebirth of civilization) over minds, opinions, private and public customs and over the temporal governance of states and the universal politics of the Christian world, and generally, in short, over human life, was in effect a dominion by philosophy, the establishment of philosophical authority, an influence, a general superiority acquired in the world by reason over nature, natural illusions, etc., and by the spirit over the body. An establishment whose origins lie in the metaphysical era that produced Christianity, and that endured by dint of enlightenment and intellect, and through force of habit, etc. The world then was virtually a philosophical republic, or rather a state subject to an intolerant, universal, narrow, powerful despotism of philosophy, recognized by everyone as just, or invincible, even if all its strength (as is usual with tyrannies, and with almost every kind of government) resided in opinion. The Pope, respected and feared by every private person and by every Christian prince, an unarmed man, a pauper, respected and feared by armed men and by the rich, was the real head of a philosophical republic. You only have to consider the ceremony [1461] for his coronation, when tow is burned before his eyes, and “Beatissime pater,” he is told, “sic transit gloria mundi” [“O Most Holy Father, thus passes the glory of the world”]. A maxim prompting the most serious and profound philosophical reflections, a glory that really was great, indeed, supreme, a century and a half ago, nor certainly did the Pope despise it, nor did he often heed that admonition. Today, this gigantic colossus of philosophical rule has been destroyed by that of a different philosophy, a new rule appropriate to the century which founded and produced it. And it is much more likely that the latter will fall than that the former will rise up again. (7 August 1821.)

  We ourselves in the least profound of our everyday reflections know and feel that virtue (for example) is a phantasm, and that there is no reason why a particular thing should be virtue, if it does not do good, or vice, if it does not do harm. And since a thing sometimes does good and sometimes does harm, benefits one person but not another, one kind of being but not another, etc. etc., so we end up confessing that virtue, vice, the bad, and the good are relative. We [1462] do not find any reason in the order of this world why something that benefits me (even to a great extent) and harms others (even only slightly) cannot be done and is a sin, why a secret act that benefits neither me nor others, and does not harm anyone, and does not have witnesses, can be virtuous or vicious, why, e.g., a lie that does no harm to anyone, and does not even set a bad example, because it is not known, a lie that greatly benefits others and myself, without harming anyone, is bad and a sin. We are compelled to locate the causes of all this in a Being in which we personify the good, virtue, truth, justice, etc., making it absolutely, and by virtue of absolute necessity, good. For if we did not act thus, not even in him would we find the boundary of things, and the cause as to why one person or another is absolutely good or bad. We therefore regard this Being as akin to a type, in accordance with which it is fitting to judge the goodness or beauty, etc., the ugliness or wickedness of things (and here you have Plato’s ἰδέαι [ideas]). Whatever [1463] resembles or pleases it is therefore absolutely, primordially, universally, and necessarily good, and vice versa. Splendid. There can, in fact, be no other reason for absolute good, etc., and, as I have said elsewhere [→Z 1340–42], once Plato’s ideas have been taken away, the absolute is lost. But what reason is there for this type to be as we imagine it, and not otherwise? How do we know that those qualities we ascribe to it do belong to it? —They are good, and necessity is the reason that they belong to it, and why it exists in that guise, and not otherwise. —But are they good necessarily? Are they good absolutely? Primordially? universally? What reason do we have to believe so when, as I have just said, we do not encounter any of them in this world, that is to say, inasmuch as we are able to know it, when indeed observation testifies to the contrary here below, even though within one and the same order of things? The reason that we have is God. —Therefore, we prove the idea of the absolute with the idea of God, and the idea of God with the idea of the absolute. God is the sole proof of our ideas, and our ideas the sole proof of God. [1464] All this confirms what I have said elsewhere that the first principle of things is nothingness [→Z 1341–42].

  The human mind is so constituted that it derives far more satisfaction from a small pleasure, from an idea of a small sensation, but whose limits it does not know, than from a large one, whose boundaries it sees or senses. Hope for a small good is a pleasure absolutely greater than the possession of a large good already experienced (because if it is not yet experienced, it is still in the category of hope). Science destroys the principal pleasures of our minds because it defines things and shows their boundaries, even though in a great many spheres it has materially extended our ideas a very great deal. I say materially, and not spiritually, since, e.g., the distance from the sun to the earth was much greater in the human mind when it was believed to be just a few miles, and it was not known how many, than it is now, when it is known to be precisely so many thousand miles. Thus science is hostile to the greatness of ideas, even if it has immeasurably [1465] extended natural opinions. It has extended them as clear ideas, but a very small confused idea is always greater than one that is very large and wholly clear. Uncertainty as to whether a thing is or is not at all is also a source of greatness, which is destroyed by the certainty that the thing really is. How much greater was the idea of the Antipodes, when Petrarch said that perhaps they exist, than the one we got as soon as it was known that they did exist.1 What I say about science applies also to experience, etc. etc. The fullest, indeed the only greatness with which man can be satisfied, is indeterminate greatness, as shown by my theory of pleasure. (7 Aug. 1821.) Hence ignorance, which alone can hide the boundaries of things, is the principal source of indefinite ideas, etc. Hence it is the greatest source of ha
ppiness, and consequently childhood is the happiest age of man, the most contented, the least subject to boredom. Experience necessarily shows the boundaries of many things even to natural and unsociable man.

  In what respect have the mad philosophies of the ancients, scholasticism itself, setting aside all the rest, supremely, and perhaps principally, assisted the advance of the human mind? With respect to names. Their profound meditations, their extremely acute sophistries, their wracking their brains about abstractions, hidden qualities, and other pipe dreams have given us the naming and hence the fixing of original, elementary, very secret ideas, ideas that were exceedingly hard [1466] to conceive, to define, to express, but so necessary, frequent, etc., that without such names philosophy would not yet amount to anything. Abstract and concrete, essence, substance and accident, and other such terms from ontology, logic, etc. What would man’s thought be if it did not have a clear idea of such highly recondite but highly universal matters? And how would it have that without the names which, after such complete revolutions in philosophy, etc., are, and indeed always will be, in the mouths of philosophers. But the difficulty of inventing them was undoubtedly supreme, and such that modern philosophy perhaps would not have been capable of it. And while the ideas that are the most difficult to conceive clearly, to define through thought and to name, are the most elementary ones, it is certain that no philosophy will ever be able to conceive nor represent ideas more elementary than these. Theology itself has been highly useful in this regard. For it has done the most to spread and popularize such words, and has discovered others, too, habituating, endearing, and inciting the human mind to abstractions with such stimuli [1467] that no other discipline could have done as much, nor any other circumstance but that of theological disputes, in which princes and nations took part, and theological studies, which interested all of human life, and the whole of the civilized world, for so long. And what I have said elsewhere [→Z 641–43, 1317–18] about the benefit one can derive from the scholastic language of the philosophers, etc., I mean also to apply to theological language of every kind, dogmatic, moral, scholastic, etc. (7 Aug. 1821.)

  Indeed, in view of the considerations above, I believe that such studies (note well) would enhance not only our own language or others, but the progress of the human mind. (7 Aug. 1821.)

  I mean, by applying such studies to modern philosophy. Science makes a significant advance when it succeeds in making an elementary, etc., idea clear, fixed, and distinct from the others by means of a proper name, which is the only means available. And this is the most difficult task, but the ultimate goal of philosophy. Now perhaps quite a few abstract, etc., [1468] ideas, which remain obscure in modern philosophy for want of a specific, or sufficiently precise, etc., name, have their perfect name, and hence are clear in the many-sided philosophy of antiquity, or in scholasticism, or in theology, etc. (7 Aug. 1821.)

  I don’t think that the application mentioned above has ever been undertaken, or at any rate not adequately. When Descartes set about the reform of the old philosophy, he was obliged, in accordance with the temper of the age (and unfortunately of every age), to go into open battle with the Schools as they were then, and the world would have reckoned that he was prevaricating, or showing signs of poverty of spirit or weakness, if he had sought to make use to more than a certain extent of the language of his enemies. So little by little, as the new language came to prevail, not so much because of logic as because of novelty, and once the old philosophy was cast aside, no one took sufficient care to sort the good from the bad, and to throw away the bad, but retain or retrieve the good, especially where language was concerned. With theology, the situation was far worse. Theology has been abandoned by all whose scholarship now influences the mind of Europe, etc.,1 not in order to improve or renew it, but completely, as old science, and [1469] almost as if it were alchemy. Yet just how great is the number of theological writers and thinkers, ranging across many different periods, countries, languages, and opinions, systems, and sects, and consequently how rich must be the language of this science, a language that is wholly abstract because the science itself is abstract, a language that has been wholly forsaken and forgotten along with it—this is something that is easily understood. (8 Aug. 1821.)

  To fashion our God from the attributes that seem good to us, even if they are so only relative to us, is an opinion that is less absurd but of the same nature, tendency, and origin as the one which used to ascribe an almost wholly human shape and quality and nature to the Gods, of a nature such that, as Xenophanes says in Clement of Alexandria, if the horse or the ox knew how to paint, they would paint and imagine their Gods in the form and guise of horses or oxen. See my Discourse on the Romantics where this passage is quoted, along with other observations.1 Indeed, our opinion is a refinement of, and an improvement on, this ancient opinion (see the discourse cited), which is as absurd as it is natural, [1470] a refinement produced by the metaphysical spirit that produced Christianity, or by that which among the peoples of the ancient East (whose history goes so much further back than our own) produced the system of a single God, followed by the Jews and transmitted by them to the Gentiles of a more modern era and civilization, when the age was better adapted to making sure that such a doctrine was welcomed and became universally popular. I have said that this opinion is less absurd, but by this I mean less absurd so far as our own mode of reasoning, and our ordinary system of concepts, is concerned, because in an absolute sense it is just as absurd, or rather false, since the absurd is measured by its divergence from our own mode of reasoning. After all, our own opinion regarding a God composed of the attributes judged by men to be good truly is a continuation of the ancient system whereby he was composed of human attributes, etc. The ancient and the modern Divinity are alike modeled on purely human ideas, albeit ones that differ with the times. Its model is always man, etc. (8 Aug. 1821.)

  One of the principal, universal, and unfailingly characteristic attributes of the style of [1471] old writers who were not corrupt, that is, who either were classical, or lived before their literature achieved perfection, is forcefulness and efficacy. This is the first, indeed the only quality I have heard men little versed in the classics take heed of whenever they had just read some book by a classical author, or some modern book modeled on that style. And it was the only such quality because they were perhaps not capable of discerning or appreciating others, whereas this one hits you right between the eyes, and may easily be distinguished and separated off from the others. Note, then, how true it is that nature is a source of forcefulness, and this is its characteristic quality, just as weakness is reason’s. Because (1) early writers, especially those living before literature achieved perfection, are ordinarily more energetic than others but did not particularly seek out energy, nor did they prize it, nor did they pride themselves on this, etc., as I have said elsewhere [→Z 691–94, 1325, 1420, 1435–36, 1449–50] with regard to simplicity, elegance, and purity of language, etc. Such are the writers of the [1472] fourteenth century, etc. Yet without seeking it out, they proved to be extremely robust and vigorous, by virtue of the sheer force of nature that spoke and held sway in them, and hence by virtue of their own forcefulness. (2) Even when they did seek it out, first of all they did so much less than we do, we who find it so much less, and then if they sought it as much as their success suggests, this means that they sought it above all else, and that consequently at a time when nature held sway, efficacy and energy were deemed the principal gifts of style. And this is how it was with everything, and thus the first and perennial source of forcefulness, whether in style or in language, in concepts or in actions, will always be the example of the old writers, that is to say, nature. And although modern times may be profoundly enlightened, they can never make up for this source.

  The efficacy mentioned above is also a kind of eternal and universal beauty, which, however, does not pertain to the beautiful, but to man’s general inclination toward forcefulness, toward intense sensations,
toward what excites him and disrupts the monotony of existence, etc., and to nature, etc. (8 Aug. 1821.)

  They are not mistaken, those fathers and mothers who love a life that is ordered, without variety, without [1473] upheavals, without too much exertion, who love peace and quiet, etc. Their tastes, their inclinations can certainly be defended, and there is as much to be said for death as there is for life, as Staël says.1 But the great mistake of educators is wanting young people to like what is liked by the old and middle-aged, wanting the life of youth to be no different from that of maturity, wanting to suppress the difference in tastes, desires, etc., which invincible, immutable nature has put between their pupils’ era and their own, either not wanting to acknowledge it or ignoring it altogether and believing that the youth of their pupils should or could prove to be essentially, and as if spontaneously, different from their own, and from that of past, present, and future pupils—and wanting lessons, commands, and the force of necessity to stand in for experience, etc. (9 Aug. 1821.)

  If a youth who was heroic in virtue (such as all those born with a strong and vivid imagination and sensibility are) reaches the point of abandoning it through experience, [1474] misfortune, the example set by others, and disillusionment with virtue itself, he will become heroic in vice, and capable of far greater errors than others are, etc. Not because of a persisting enthusiasm applied to evil, but because of an excess of coldness that always accompanies wickedness. He becomes a hero of coldness, and all the more intrepid, hard, and icy as he had formerly been ardent. Like those mists which turn into hail and would not be compressed into the hardest, densest, and most compact ice that can form in the air had not extraordinary heat raised them to an extraordinary sublimity. In all things, extremes are closer to each other than they are to their mean, and a man prone to excess in whatever sphere is far more inclined and prone to the opposite excess than to the mean. And it is far easier, more logical and natural for the forcefulness and quality of an excessive temperament to leap from one extreme to the other than to go and settle at the mean, etc. etc. (9 Aug. 1821.)