Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  All these things demonstrate, as was said above, that close-knit society, instead of mitigating, by its nature increases a thousandfold man’s natural hatred toward his fellows, which is incompatible with the idea, the notion, reason, purpose, nature, etc., of any society at all. I say, it increases the hatred, not the anger, except insofar as it activates the latter a great deal more frequently, and offers it much more frequent and greater opportunities and causes, etc. etc. Other animals never or almost never experience, and then very few of them, hatred toward their fellows, but only anger (which is a chance thing, and a chance disorder which is exercised on their fellows, etc.). With the occasional exception of some of them which we enclose against their nature into society and compel to live together: as sometimes a dog hates habitually from envy another dog which is its companion, and bulls in a herd hate each other out of jealousy, etc. And this itself demonstrates how the close-knit society brings immediately into play the natural hatred even in individuals [3797] and species, etc., which outside that society never experience hatred, or never toward their fellows, and are by nature extremely docile, and toward outsiders, etc. etc.

  I note that generally speaking, the cruelties mentioned, etc., are much more frequent and greater, and wars much more ferocious and continuous and lethal, the closer people are to nature. And leaving aside hatred and its effects, one will not find any people so savage, that is so close to nature, that if there is a close-knit society, it is not dominated by practices, superstitions, etc., so far from and contrary to nature in proportion to how far the state of their society is closer to nature, that is more primitive. What is more contrary to nature than that a species of animal serves as maintenance and food for itself? It would be equally contrary to have destined an animal to feed off itself, effectively destroying those parts of its very own with which it nourishes itself. Nature has destined many species of animal to act as food and sustenance one to another, but that an animal should feed on its fellow, and not because of extraordinary extremes of hunger, but regularly, and should enjoy it, and prefer it to other foods, this incredible absurdity is found in no other species than the human. Entire nations, almost primitive in their practices, except that they are bound together in an amorphous society, practice or practiced as a rule for centuries and centuries this custom, and not just on their enemies, but on their companions, their elders, their old parents, their wives, their children.1 Cannibalism was for many centuries a feature of almost all the barbarous and savage peoples of America, both north and south (I exclude the country controlled by the Incas, who did away with this barbarity,2 and the Mexican empire and all the peoples with some culture, etc.) and still is for many, and it was and is a feature of a great many other savage peoples which are in fact separated from each other and from the Americans. Cannibalism was well known by Pliny3 and by other ancient writers, etc. etc. And it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that all peoples in their beginnings (that is for a very long time) were cannibals. See p. 3811. (See the places quoted on the previous page.) [3798] Superstitions, human victims, even companions of the same nation, sacrificed not out of hatred, but out of fear, as has been said elsewhere [→Z 2208, 2388–89, 2669–70, 3641–43], and then because of tradition; again enemies sacrificed most cruelly to the Gods without any passion, but only out of tradition; torturing, mutilating, etc., themselves through vanity, through superstition, through usage, wives spontaneously burning themselves alive after the death of their husbands; men and women buried alive with their dead lords, as was the practice in very many places in South America, etc. etc., are all well-known facts. There is no practice, or action, or characteristic or belief, etc., so contrary to nature that it has never had nor yet has place among men joined together in society. And travels and all the histories of ancient nations demonstrate that the closer society was or is to its beginnings, the further from or more contrary to nature was or is the life of individuals and peoples. Therefore all primitive and emerging societies can reasonably be considered to be barbarous, and that is generally what they are called, and the more barbarous the closer they are to their beginnings. There has never existed, nor does there exist, nor will exist a society, so to speak, of savages, that is a primitive society, which is not called, and is not in reality, completely barbarous and unnatural (whether one considers those which were never civilized, or those which became civilized later, those which are at this time, etc. etc.). From which observations one deduces as an incontrovertible certainty that man could not have arrived at that state of society which is now considered suitable and natural, and as perfect, or less [3799] imperfect, except by passing through stages evidently totally contrary to nature. So that if any nation whatsoever exists in that state of society which today is called good, if it is or was ever, so to say, civilized, one can with certainty affirm that it was, and for a very long time, truly barbarous, that is in a state absolutely contrary to nature, to the perfection, the happiness of man, and also to the order and general analogy of nature. The first steps which man took or takes toward a close-knit society lead him in one leap to a place so far from nature, and to a state so contrary to nature, that it is only with the passage of a very long period of time, and the help of very many circumstances and infinite fortuitous events (and these very unlikely to happen) that he can bring himself back to a state which is not completely contrary to nature, etc.1

  Now therefore, since all of this is certain and demonstrated by all the histories and information of all the ancient and modern nations, etc., since on the one hand, it must be considered an absolutely established fact that society and man could not have and cannot become civilized without first having become, and remained for a very long time, extremely barbarous, that is in a state completely contrary to nature; and on the other hand, it is claimed that in the state of civilized society lies the perfection and happiness of man, and his true and proper condition, prescribed and intended for him from the beginning by nature, etc.; I ask if it is possible, if it is reasonable, to believe that nature prescribed for a species of beings (and especially for the most perfect) a perfection and happiness, to achieve which involved passing absolutely through one and more states completely contrary to [3800] its nature and to universal nature, and therefore through several states of supreme unhappiness, of supreme imperfection with respect both to itself and to all the rest of nature. A perfection and happiness of which that species for many long ages, and an infinite number of individuals for the whole of their lives, not only could have no part, but were necessarily compelled to have the opposite of it. A perfection and happiness which demanded total extremes of things which were contrary to themselves, that is the extremes of imperfection and unhappiness, without which extremes the very perfection and happiness of the species could never have come about. A perfection and happiness which properly and essentially had to arise from the extreme imperfection and unhappiness of the species, and could not have arisen in any other way nor without the latter. A perfection and happiness which essentially presupposed the supreme corruption and infliction of misery of the species for many ages, and of many of its individuals for ever. Consequently I ask if the supreme barbarity and corruption which took place in ancient times among ancient or modern nations, extinct or surviving, past or present, which afterward became civilized, and that which still takes place in innumerable numbers of still savage peoples, etc. etc., and which will last for an indeterminate period of time and perhaps forever, etc., I ask, I say, if this barbarity and corruption, without which civilization cannot and could not arise, was intended and ordained by nature, which according to those people, intended and ordained man’s civilization. I ask therefore if all that which being contrary to nature took place and still does in savage, primitive societies, etc., was and is in accordance with nature. I ask if nature in relation [3801] to man has need of its opposite, if it requires it, if it presupposes it. If it was nature’s intention, if it is a natural thing that man became and becomes natural (that is perfect) through
a process of existence which is supremely contrary to and different from his own nature and that of nature in general. If man’s proper condition is to acquire his own true proper condition through having put it totally on one side and acted contrary to it, etc. etc. And I ask whether cannibalism, human sacrifices, superstitions, the infinity of barbarous opinions and practices, etc. etc., the most deadly wars which in America, along with cannibalism, etc., right up to recent times, destroyed innumerable populations and emptied many vast countries of men—and since they were once common to all peoples, at a time when the human race was still small in numbers, they necessarily put the whole species in danger of disappearing completely from the world by its own hand—I ask whether all these things are according to nature, intended by nature, presupposed, chosen, ordained by nature; not accidents, nor disorders, but according to order, and deriving from the natural system and from natural principles, whether they are necessary for the achievement and realization of the perfection and happiness of the species. See p. 3882 and see pp. 3920, 3660–61.

  The Californians, with perhaps a unique way of life, because they have no sort of society among themselves, other than that which other animals have, and not the more social animals (such as bees, etc.), and only that which is necessary for the propagation of the species, etc., and I believe, no language or a very imperfect one, or rather any language,1 are savage and not barbarous, that is they do nothing against nature (at least in their practices), either against themselves, or against their fellows, or against any others at all.2 It is not therefore nature, but the close-knit society which determines that all the other savages are or [3802] have been so contrary to nature in their lives and dispositions. Mutual communion, I mean in a close-knit society, cannot begin even in the smallest way in a handful of men, without each of them becoming immediately, not merely far and different from nature, as we are, but directly contrary to it. That is how much close-knit society is in accordance with nature.

  There is no doubt that civilized man is closer to nature than savage and social man. What does this mean? Society is corruption. In the process of time and of circumstances and of moments of enlightenment man attempts to come nearer that nature from which he has moved away, and certainly through no other force or route than that of society. Therefore civilization is a process of coming nearer nature. Now does this not prove that the absolutely primitive state, the one preceding society which is the sole cause of that corruption of man, which civilization by its nature endeavors to remedy, is the only natural one and therefore man’s true, perfect, happy, and proper state? How can that state which is produced by the remedy ever, not only be compared to, but be preferred to that which precedes the illness? Which indeed in our case, I mean the truly primitive and natural state, can never be recovered by man once he has become corrupt (by nothing other than society), and the civilized state (that too very social, indeed supremely social) is very different from it. Certainly it is preferable to the corrupt savage state: this preference is very reasonable, and follows from and is in accordance with our and any sound discourse. But it is not preferable to the true primitive state, etc. etc.1 See p. 3932.

  [3803] From the above reasonings supported and accompanied by the deeds and histories of men, and the latter compared with what happens with other animals, etc., one must deduce from the society which exists among, e.g., bees and beavers, and the other animals which have by their nature a more closely knit communion of life among themselves, and from other such natural examples, that one could well argue that a society more closely knit than that is not suitable for men; but not simply because it is to be found naturally in many species, can it be argued that a similarly close-knit society is suitable for men, since men, contrary to what is believed, that is that they are by nature the most sociable animals, are in fact the least sociable, or certainly less sociable than many others are, that is the animals which are truly sociable by nature. From which one must conclude that a society more close-knit than that of bees is not suitable for man, as the one he presently has is by a long way, and has had from time immemorial, but also that only a much more loosely structured society is suitable for him, etc., as I have indicated on p. 3773, bottom, and as is shown by the evidence of the extreme injuries produced by human close-knit society (injuries to itself and the human species, and also to the other species and the order of life on earth, insofar as it can be and is influenced by man, especially by man in society) which have been considered above, and by the extreme unsociability of man, shown throughout this past discourse.

  [3804] —Very many, in fact the greater part of the arguments which are brought forward to prove the natural sociability of man, have no value whatsoever, although they are very persuasive, since they are in truth not drawn from the consideration of man in nature, of which we know very little, but of man as we know him and are accustomed to observe him, that is of man in society and infinitely changed by his habits.1 Since these are a second nature, this means that what is only their effect is continually taken to be natural, and is very frequently completely contrary to nature, or very different from it. Hence the effects of society, that which only society has rendered necessary, that which does not hold true except when society is established, where without society it would not take place, etc., are continually pressed into service in the arguments of philosophers to demonstrate the natural sociability of man, the necessity of society in absolute terms and according to our nature, etc. Of this sort is that inclination which we all have to share our intense, extraordinary sensations, pleasurable or unpleasurable, etc., an inclination which I have spoken about several times elsewhere [→Z 85–86, 230, 266–68, 339–40, 486–88, 2471–72], and observed, that although it seems completely spontaneous and innate, it is no more than the effect of habit and of our living in society, and in the man who is set outside society for some reason or other, and especially in primitive and truly incorrupt man, it has no place and is unknown to him. And very many others are effects of this type which appear absolutely natural, and indicative of the natural sociability of man, and which are cited as such [3805] all the time, but which in truth are not natural, except insofar as they naturally take place, once society, with its unnatural circumstances and habits, is established. And they arise naturally from such causes, nor can they not arise, given these. It is completely and naturally a very difficult thing to distinguish between the natural absolute, and the effects of habituation, especially of universal habituation, acquired or begun to be acquired right from birth or from the first moments of life, as is habituation to society, and many other subordinate habits which are dependent on it and caused by it, etc., or part of it or presumed by it, etc. And moreover especially in man, who, since he is far more easily persuaded to conform and modify than any other animal, very easily and quickly adapts to habits, no matter how unnatural they may be, and converts them for himself into nature, and embraces and arripit [appropriates], and unites with them so closely that the eye of the most perceptive philosopher is scarcely able to distinguish them from natural dispositions, and their effects from natural qualities and operations, etc. So it is not to be wondered at if so many arguments seem to us to be indicative of the natural sociability of man, and if almost all are deeply persuaded of this, and believe the opposite absurd and impossible, and think this persuasion is entirely natural, and based on the most certain and intimate and spontaneous sensibility, and authenticated by the most clear and sincere and manifest voice of nature, and they will never put aside this belief. Because [3806] all men who are capable of speaking or thinking of these things in any way at all, philosophers or nonphilosophers or plebeians, are born, brought up, formed, and have always lived in society and the habits which pertain to it. Therefore, not truly by first nature, but by second nature, they are in truth all social beings, to whom society is proper and necessary. And someone who is born and grows up outside society does not speak or think of these things, or not before society and its habituations are turned by habit i
nto nature in him. Thus in thinking that man is naturally social, and made for society, and absolutely in need of it, and that society is a natural and indispensable thing for man, wise men and fools, the civilized and the barbarous, the ancients and the moderns, and all the vastly different nations and all the vastly different classes of people, agree and agreed and will agree together perhaps more completely, strongly, constantly, and for a longer time than they ever did or do or are about to do on any other speculative issue. But how far this agreement succeeds in demonstrating the truth of the proposition which it favors, what I have said above ought to ensure that it is justly and adequately assessed.