Further proof of the above. After a long period of time you see someone again whom you had not seen since they were a child. [1830] In such renewals of acquaintance, it is rare indeed for not only the physiognomy but also the nature, etc., of such people to correspond with the idea you used to have of them, and that was formed out of qualities that were observed in infancy. The facts often prove to be in conflict with opinion here. So small a thing in man is what we call nature, and so small a part do natural qualities play in the formation of the character, etc., of an individual. (3 Oct. 1821.)
For p. 1824. I do not deny that these effects could also derive from the opposite of indifference, namely, a superabundance of life, passion, activity in the human mind, such as is found in southerners, and especially in Orientals. Indeed, in the East it is very common to find poems, fables, and inventions in which the protagonists, or those in whom we are supposed to show an interest, are animals, plants, clouds, mountains, divinities, or fabulous and ideal beings, men in large part different to those who actually exist, etc. etc. And from the East there came with Christianity the first traces, indeed almost the whole system of universal love. With us, however, and [1831] in our own times it is certain that these effects only arise from indifference, while the opposite circumstance caused Greek mythology to transform all natural objects into men, and caused the ancients to have a supreme love for their homeland, and to hate strangers. See p. 1841.
It is notable how directly contrary causes occasion the same effects, and how the superabundance of life in the Orientals brings their poetry, their thoughts, their philosophy, and a good part of their temperament close to that of northerners. Hence the oriental poetry despised in the south of Europe is a great success in the north, and the fantasies of the frozen and gloomy north far more closely resemble those of the hottest and most brilliant south than those of temperate climes. (3 Oct. 1821.) See p. 1859, end.
All out-of-the-way towns1 have some peculiarities in their customs, dialect, accent, temperament, etc., which distinguishes them from both the general run of the nation and from one another. And, speaking proportionately, we find a greater variety in customs when we survey a small out-of-the-way [1832] neighborhood than we do if we take the post roads and survey an entire kingdom from head to toe, or even several kingdoms and nations. So varied is nature, and so monotonous is art. And so true it is that civilization tends essentially to make things uniform. (3 Oct. 1821.)
The power of habituation, prejudice, opinion in judgments on beauty, etc., may also be seen in the effects you experience when looking at a painting, hearing a piece of music, reading a book, etc., if you know its author, if he is familiar to you, etc.1 This circumstance sometimes enhances the beauties and sometimes diminishes them, sometimes pretends they are there when they are not, or reveals those that are hardest to see, and the finest, and makes us very sensitive to every least thing, etc. Sometimes it conceals the beauties that are there, even those that are most worthy of note, etc., and makes us incapable of feeling anything, etc. I mean to exclude from knowledge every kind of relative passion, and I consider only what the reader applies from everything that he reads to the author he knows well. Which spontaneously and inevitably, as also [1833] unforeseeably, modifies judgment and meaning, in a thousand guises that are independent of the actual nature of what is read or seen or heard, etc. (3 Oct. 1821.)
See Guicciardini’s 17th reflection, with regard to my thought that no one wants to gain one man’s benevolence at the cost of bringing down on himself the hatred of another.1 (3 Oct. 1821.)
Someone who does not have nor has ever had imagination, feeling, a capacity for enthusiasm, heroism, vivid and great illusions, strong and varied passions, someone who is not acquainted with the vast system of beauty, who does not read or hear, who has never read or heard the poets, absolutely cannot be a great, true, and perfect philosopher. On the contrary, he will never be anything but a half-philosopher, shortsighted, unable to take things in at a glance, short of insight, no matter how diligent, patient, and subtle, and dialectical and mathematical he may be. He will never know the truth, he will be persuaded of, and will prove by means of plausible evidence, things that are utterly false, etc. etc. Not because [1834] the heart and the imagination speak the truth more often than cold reason does, as is asserted, which I don’t intend to go into, but because cold reason itself needs to know all these things if it is to penetrate the system of nature and unravel it. The analysis of ideas, man, the universal system of beings must necessarily turn in large part and in the main on imagination, natural illusions, beauty, the passions, everything that is poetic in the whole system of nature. Not only is this part of nature useful, it is also necessary in order to know the other part, indeed, the one part cannot be separated off from the other in philosophical meditations, because nature is made this way. This analysis with respect to philosophy should, in fact, be performed not by the imagination or the heart, but rather by cold reason entering into the most hidden secrets of both. But how can such an analysis be performed by one who does not have a perfect knowledge of all these things [1835] through his own experience, or has virtually no knowledge of them at all? Coldest reason, though it be the mortal enemy of nature, has no other foundation or principle, no other object, to meditate, speculate, and experiment upon but nature. A person who does not know nature, knows nothing, and is incapable of reasoning, no matter how reasonable he may be. Now, he who is ignorant of the poetic in nature is ignorant of a very great part of nature, indeed, absolutely does not know nature, because he does not know its mode of being.1
Such have been and are a very great number of the most acclaimed philosophers from the 17th century onward, especially German and English. Accustomed not to read, think about, ponder, study anything but philosophy, dialectics, metaphysics, analysis, mathematics, having wholly abandoned the poetic, having completely depoeticized their minds, habituated to totally disregarding the system of beauty, and to regarding and positioning their profession a thousand miles away from everything concerning imagination and feeling, [1836] having wholly lost the habit of beauty and ardor and having identified with that of pure reasoning, coldness, etc., knowing no other existence in nature but the reasonable, the calculated, etc., and what is free of every passion, illusion, feeling,1 they go astray at every step, and do so stumblingly while reasoning with the most exquisite exactitude. It is most certain that they have been, and still are, ignorant of the greater part of nature, of the very things they discuss, unpoetic though such things may seem (since the poetic in the actual system of nature is absolutely bound up with the whole), and of the greater part of the very truth to which they have been so exclusively devoted.
The science of nature is simply a science of relationships. The progress of our mind consists entirely of discovering such relationships. Now, aside from the fact that the imagination is the most fertile and marvelous discoverer of the most hidden relationships and harmonies, as I have said elsewhere [→Z 1650], it is obvious that someone who is ignorant of a part, or rather a property, an aspect of nature that is bound up with any and every thing that can serve as an object of reasoning, is ignorant of an infinity of relationships, and hence cannot help but reason badly, see falsely, discover imperfectly, fail to see [1837] the most important, the most necessary, and even the most obvious things. Take a very complicated machine apart, take out a quantity of wheels and set them aside without giving them any further thought, then put the machine back together again, and begin reasoning about its properties, its means, its effects. All your reasonings will be false, the machine is not the same, the effects are no longer what they should be, the means have changed, have become weakened, or made useless. You then go on to quibble about this composite thing, you strive to explain the effects of the half-dismantled machine, as if it were whole. You enter into minute speculations about all the wheels of which it still consists, and you attribute to one or other of them an effect that the machine no longer produces, which you had see
n it produce by virtue of the wheels that you had taken away, etc. etc. That’s what happens in the system of nature if the mechanism of beauty—which was assembled with, and identified with, all the other parts of the system, and with each and every one of them—has been [1838] taken away and completely separated from it.1
I have said elsewhere [→Z 1090–91] that a truth is not perfectly known unless all its relationships with all other truths, and with the whole system of things, are perfectly known. What truth can then be known by those philosophers who absolutely and perpetually disregard an essential part of nature?
Reason and man do not learn except through experience. If reason wants to think and operate on its own, and therefore discover and make progress, it has to know things through its own experience. Otherwise, the experience of others in essential parts of nature will only enable it to repeat the operations performed by others.
From this we should perceive how difficult it is to find a true and perfect philosopher. It may be said that this quality is the rarest and strangest that may be conceived, and that barely one appears every ten centuries, if indeed one has ever emerged. (Reflect here on how much [1839] the system of things favors the purported perfecting of man by means of the perfecting of reason and of philosophy.) It is indispensable that such a man should be a supreme and perfect poet, not indeed to reason as a poet, but rather to examine as a cold reasoner and calculator what only a very ardent poet can know. A philosopher is not perfect if he is only a philosopher, and if he devotes his life and himself solely to the perfecting of his philosophy, of his reason, to the pure discovery of the truth, which is however the pure and only aim of the perfect philosopher. Reason needs imagination and the illusions that reason destroys, truth needs falsehood, essence needs appearance, the most perfect insensitivity needs the most intense sensitivity, ice needs fire, patience needs impatience, powerlessness needs supreme power, the very small needs the very large, geometry and algebra need poetry, etc.
All this confirms what I have said [1840] elsewhere [→Z 1650] regarding a great philosopher’s need for imagination. (4 Oct. 1821.) See pp. 1848, end, and 1841.
Nowadays a poet, novelist, etc., would be jeered at, wouldn’t they, not just in France but in any part of the civilized world, if they chose the subject of pederasty or introduced it in any way? Indeed, wouldn’t anyone who was so bold as to name it otherwise than by a periphrasis in a text that had any claim to nobility? Now, the most refined nation in the world, Greece, introduced it into its mythology (Ganymede), wrote very elegant poems on this subject, between woman and woman (Sappho), between a grown man and a youth (Anacreon), etc. etc., made it the subject of rhetorical or philosophical disputes or treatises (Fronto’s first Greek epistle),1 spoke of it in the most noble tales with the same ease as when one speaks of love between man and woman, etc.2 Indeed, it may be said that the whole of Greek erotic poetry, philosophy, and philology revolves chiefly around pederasty, with the love of women being held by the Greeks to be too vulgar, sensual, base, banal, unworthy of poetry, etc., precisely because it was natural. See Plato’s Phaedrus, his Symposium, Lucian’s Amores, etc. The much-vaunted Platonic love (so sublimely expressed in the Phaedrus) is none other than pederasty. All the noble feelings that love inspired in the Greeks, all their feeling regarding love, whether in practice or in texts, are simply about pederasty, and, in the writings of women (as in Sappho’s famous ode, or fragment, φαίνεται),3 love of a woman for a woman. You only need to know a very little of Greek literature from Anacreon to the novelists not to have any doubts about this, as some have doubted (epistles of Philostratus, Aristetenus, etc.). And Virgil, the most circumspect not only of the ancient poets, but of all poets, and perhaps of all writers, certainly the most refined and elegant of any who ever wrote, he, so shrewd, so particular, and a [1841] very model of refinement and exquisite good taste, in an era in which, etc. etc., adapted and applied sentiment to the infamous fact of pederasty and made of it the subject of a sentimental tale in his Nisus and Euryalus.1 (4 Oct. 1821.)
For p. 1831, beginning. See the previous thought, and note that perhaps the universal presence of pederasty in Greece, and in the East (where I believe this vice still prevails), may perhaps be attributed to an exuberant sense of life, whereas with us one must agree that it is an unnatural vice, an inclination that only a libidinal excess distorting the tastes and inclinations of men can produce. Discuss the ancients (who certainly had an exuberant sense of life) in relation to the moderns in these terms.2 (4 Oct. 1821.)
For p. 1840. When reason has no knowledge about the system of beauty, about illusions, enthusiasm, etc., and what belongs to the imagination and the heart, it is itself an illusion, and a creator of mythology, as are those other things. Though of a very ugly, [1842] very harsh mythology.1 Reason’s intrinsic enmity toward nature obliges it to know nature perfectly, which it cannot do without feeling it. How can it combat an enemy it does not know at all? Now nature as nature is essentially poetic through and through. Since nature and reason are, in essence, hostile, one depends on the other or is essentially bound to it, as all opposites are, and one cannot be considered in isolation from the other. Or rather, reason cannot be considered separately from nature (indeed, just the reverse), because reason, though hostile to nature, is posterior to, and dependent on it, and has in nature alone the foundation and object of its existence, and of its mode of being. (4 Oct. 1821.)
Today, the contest for honors applies more to those within the same army than to any conflict between two hostile armies; in former times it was the reverse. As a consequence, a soldier today envies and therefore hates his companion more [1843] than the enemy; in former times it was the reverse. Today he complains more about an advantage gained by a rival of his over the enemy than about the advantages won by the enemy; in former times it was the reverse. In short, today, and even in armies, where that eminently useful and great illusion called the point of honor holds sway, individual egoism is all. Dear philosophers, since one cannot do without one or the other, which strikes you as better? In former times the nations were rivals, today individuals are, and more so within one nation than between different nations. And so, even when glory is sought, a very rare occurrence, and when it is sought serving on behalf of the nation and against its enemies, it is only sought for and its only goal is the individual, not the nation to which he belongs. (5 Oct. 1821.)
The whole of Europe and every cultured language have recognized Greek as the common source from which to draw the words that are needed in order to signify new things accurately, in order to establish and form [1844] new terminologies of every kind and make them uniform, or to perfect and complete them, etc. Italy alone refuses to conform to this custom. I say Italy, though who knows what that means, because its sons conform just as others do, but by contrast with what takes place in other nations, the nation as a whole (or the pedants) do not want to acknowledge this as something well and fittingly done so far as language is concerned. I agree that if instead of a Greek word that will always be alien to us we can use an Italian word, one that is either new or newly applied and expresses the new thing perfectly, we should prefer the latter to the former. (Provided that the Greek or any other word has not prevailed universally in such a way as to become identified with the idea, and that one cannot remove the former without destroying or blurring or altering the latter. In that case, a different word, no matter how national, expressive, fitting, exact, precise it was, would not express the same idea, except after long use, etc., and in the meantime we would not be understood.) But aside from [1845] this situation, which is rarely encountered, why would Italy alone wish to repudiate, first, the general custom of this and other ages and of Europe, a custom that would have the right to be adopted even if it were neither necessary nor good, second, the universal benefit of that marvelous language which, though dead for so many centuries, constantly prefers what is needed to denominate and signify with precision everything that is living, and everything that is
born or discovered or newly observed in the world? (5 Oct. 1821.)
Very many words may be found that are common to several languages, either because they have come down from one language to another and have become part of the language, or because they arise from a common origin. Some of these words are elegant in one language and not in another, entirely noble, indeed sublime, in one, entirely pedestrian in another. The same goes for expressions, etc. The only reason is difference in usage and habit. [1846] In Spanish (the language most like our own that exists, to the extent that perhaps so great an affinity and resemblance is not to be found between any two other cultured languages), we Italians can easily observe many words and expressions or meanings, or metaphors, etc., that are characteristic of poetry alone, which in our language are characteristic of prose alone, and vice versa, words, etc., that are in part derived from the common mother of both, in part derived from Italian and adopted by Spanish, in part vice versa. We can also observe, as indeed can the Spaniards, many other very noteworthy differences in nobility, elegance, taste, etc., in words and phrases that are common to both languages and have the same meaning. The same can be said of English and German, French with regard to the many languages that have drawn from it, or with regard to its two sisters, etc., and again of Greek with regard to Latin, etc. (5 Oct. 1821.)
For p. 1824. In any case, the poems I mention, oriental or northern, really do only leave us indifferent, I mean so far as our interest goes, though they may well bewilder, amaze, and delight for a short [1847] time on account of their novelty, marvelousness, excessive variety, etc. And I mean us, setting aside the Orientals on whom we can assume they produce another effect on account of the observations on p. 1830. As for the northerners, I believe that they are in the same situation as we are, or even more so. (5 Oct. 1821.)
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