Innumerato for innumerabile [innumerable]. Palmieri (15th-century writer), Della vita civile. See Crusca, Forcellini, etc.
That everyone believes our life consists of more pain than pleasure, more ill than good, is demonstrated by this experiment. I asked many people whether they would be happy to relive their life over again, on condition that they relived it exactly as they had done before. I have often asked myself the same question. [4284] As for starting over again, I and everyone else would be very happy, but no one would do so on that condition; rather than agree to that, everyone answered (as I did to myself) that they would do without that return to their early years which, in and of itself, would be so welcome to everyone. In order to return to childhood, they would want to place themselves blindly in the hands of fortune in the way that their life was to be lived again, and not know how it would be, in the same way as we are unaware what will happen to us for the rest of our life. What does this mean? It means that in the life that we have lived, and which we know, all of us have certainly experienced more ill than good; and that if we are happy, and we still desire to live, this is only because we are ignorant about the future, and have an illusion of hope, without which illusion and ignorance we would no longer wish to live, as we would not wish to relive our life in the same way as we have already lived it.1 (Florence, 1 July 1827.)
It is a sad moment in life when man feels that he no longer inspires anything. The great desire of man, the great motivation for his deeds, his words, his judgments, his behavior until old age, is to inspire, to communicate something of himself to his audience or listeners. (Florence, 1 July 1827.)
One of the reasons for the imperfection and confusion of modern orthographies is that they are almost entirely restricted to the Latin alphabet, having many more sounds, especially vowel sounds, than the sounds which exist in that alphabet. This can be seen especially in English, where one single vowel sign therefore has to express more than one sound, without a fixed rule, and to represent several sounds. The characters in the Latin alphabet are insufficient for many modern languages. And generally it can be seen that the spellings become more imperfect as the languages become more [4285] distant in origin and in propriety from the Latin, upon whose orthography, despite general repugnance, all of them were designed.
The Greek contractions (those used in the various dialects, as well as those Attic contractions which passed into common Greek) are no more than ways of pronouncing certain diphthongs and triphthongs, etc., in exactly the same way as the French au, ai, etc., which are pronounced o, e, etc., the English ea, ee, etc., which are pronounced i, e, etc. etc. Likewise, the Greek εα is contracted, i.e., it is pronounced η, εο is pronounced ου; οο, ου; αει, ᾳ; εω ω, etc. etc. But this is not why the Greeks, when they pronounce (i.e., contract) η, wrote εα, etc., even though this second was the regular form of pronunciation and writing. Instead they wrote η as they pronounced it. And not only common Greek, but also each dialect with all its irregularities and particularities of pronunciation, is written as it is pronounced. Why do the French, the English, etc. (who certainly pronounced au, ai, ea, ee, etc., regularly in ancient times as they write them now), not write the diphthongs as they are pronounced? (Florence, 1 July 1827.)
Successus participle of succedo [to go up, to succeed]. See Cicero, Epistulae ad familiares, bk. 16, letter 21.
“Avvengachè tra gli scrittori che io ho visti, non si trovi in maniera alcuna chi altrimenti” (redundant) “costui si fosse” [“Although among the writers I have read, nothing whatsoever is to be found about who this person was”].1 Giambullari, Istoria dell’Europa, bk. 7, beginning, Pisa, Capurro, 1822, tome 2, p. 173.
“Sull’orlo d’un laghetto, ch’era vicino a certe balze sopra le coste di Agnano, stavano una testuggine, e due altri uccelli pur d’acqua” [“On the edge of a lake, which was close to certain cliffs above the coast of Agnano, were a tortoise, and two other water birds”]. Firenzuola, Discorsi degli animali.2 (Florence, 1 July 1827.)
The love and respect that a man of letters feels toward literature, or a scientist toward science, are on most occasions in inverse proportion to the love and respect that the man of letters or the scientist feels toward himself. (Florence, 5 July 1827.)
[4286] For p. 4245. Of such a kind is also that great hospitality practiced so meticulously by the ancients and regulated by such strict laws, religious beliefs, etc., those rights of hospitality, etc., the kinship of hospitality,1 etc. Very different in that from modern people. (5 July 1827.)
Cuna, cunula, culla [cradle].
FaVOnius–FaUnus. See The Monthly Repertory of English Literature, Paris, No. 51, June 1811, vol. 13, p. 331.2
Wine. The pleasure of wine is a mixture of bodily and spiritual pleasure. It is not simply bodily. Indeed it lies principally in the spirit, etc. etc. (Florence, 17 July 1827.)
A person crippled by debt sold his property for fifty thousand scudi; not wishing to admit to the sale, he said (and certainly just as truthfully) that he had bought fifty thousand scudi.3 (Florence, 19 July 1827.)
“Memories of my life.”4 Often changing my place of abode, where I stayed for longer or shorter periods, either months or years, I saw that I was never content, I never felt centered, I never settled into any place, however excellent it was, until I had memories that I could attach to that certain place, to the rooms in which I lived, to the streets, to the houses that I visited. Such memories consisted of nothing other than being able to say: here I was a certain time ago; here, a certain number of months ago, I did, I saw, I heard, that certain thing; a thing which would otherwise have been of no importance at all. But the recollection, the possibility of my recalling it, made it important and sweet to me. And it is clear that only as time passed could I have this ability and abundance of recollections connected with places where I lived, and over time it would never fail me. Therefore I was always sad in any place for the first months, and as time passed I found myself [4287] increasingly content and affectionate toward whatever place. (Florence, 23 July 1827.) Through recollection, it became almost like my place of birth.
True and perfect compassion cannot be found among men.1 Young men might be thought to be more capable of compassion than others, at that time when they are in the flower of youth, when everything smiles upon them, when they do not suffer (because even if they have cause to suffer, they do not feel it). But young men have never suffered, they have insufficient idea about human unhappiness, they consider it to be almost an illusion, or certainly to be a misfortune from another world, because they can see only happiness. Those who are suffering are incapable of compassion. The only people who would be perfectly capable are those who have suffered, who do not suffer now, and who are fully in possession of their bodily vigor and outward faculties. But only young people (who have not suffered) have such full possession of their faculties and do not suffer anything. If there were nothing else, the decline of youth itself is a misfortune for everyone, which is felt all the more the less one is unfortunate in other things. After the age of twenty-five, every man is conscious in himself of a most bitter misfortune: of the deterioration of his body, of the fading of the flower of his days, of the flight and unrecoverable loss of his cherished youth.2 (Florence, 23 July 1827.)
Vagheggiare, a most beautiful verb.3
Naufragato, naufragé, etc., for one who has been shipwrecked. See Forcellini, etc. Scappato is popularly used, also in Tuscan, to mean a licentious young man, etc. Osé [daring].
Rempli for plein [full]. Foncé for profond [deep].
Béqueter [to peck]. Nutrire, nodrire–nutricare nodricare [to nourish]. See Forcellini. Frigere–fricasser [to fry].
Fra, infra, tra, intra tanto; entre tanto, for in tanto, en tanto [meanwhile].
Embraser [to set alight] with derivatives. Further to what I have said elsewhere [→Z 3064–66, 4025, 4279], that the letters br tend to enter into the composition of words denoting burning, etc.
[4288] As ignotus [someone w
ho doesn’t know], or notus for conoscente [someone who knows], thus vice versa conoscente often means conosciuto [known, an acquaintance], such as: il dolor della morte degli amici e de’ conoscenti [the condolences of friends and acquaintances], etc. etc. (Florence, 17 Sept. 1827.)
It is regarded as paradoxical that matter can think. We set out convinced of its impossibility, and for this reason many great minds, such as Bayle,1 in considering this problem, have not been able to reach a conclusion about what is described, and what had always previously appeared to them, as being an enormous absurdity. Things would be different if the philosopher were to think it paradoxical that matter does not think; if he began from the principle that a denial of the possibility that matter can think is philosophical hair-splitting. Now this is indeed the way the human mind should be disposed toward this problem. That matter thinks is a fact. It is a fact because we ourselves think; and we do not know, we are not aware of being, we are not capable of knowing, of perceiving, anything but matter. It is a fact because we see that the modifications of thought depend entirely upon sensations, upon our physical state, and that our mind fully corresponds to the changes and variations in our body. It is a fact, because we feel our thought corporeally. Each of us can feel that thought is not in our arm, or in our leg. Each of us feels that we think using a material part of ourselves, that is, the brain, in the same way as we can feel that we see with our eyes, and touch with our hands. If the question were considered therefore, as it should be, from this point of view—i.e., that those who deny thought to matter are denying a fact, standing against the evidence, at the least are putting forward an extravagant paradox; that those who believe that matter does think are not only suggesting nothing strange, abstruse, obscure, but are suggesting something obvious, are suggesting what is dictated by nature, the most natural and obvious proposition possible in this respect—then perhaps people’s conclusions on this point would be different from what they are, and the learned spiritualist philosophers [4289] of today and of the past would have found, and would continue to find much less difficulty and absurdity in materialism. (Florence, 18 Sept. 1827.)
There is still much to be recovered from ancient civilization, by which I mean the Greeks and the Romans. Consider the many ancient institutions and customs which have very recently been revived: schools and the use of gymnastics, bathing and similar practices. In the physical education of youths and children, in the bodily regimen of adults and people of every age, in every aspect of practical hygiene, in all the physical aspects of civilization—see p. 4291—the ancients are still much superior, an aspect, unless I am mistaken, which is neither minor nor insignificant. The tendency over these recent years, more marked than ever before, toward social improvement, has brought about, and continues to do so, the renewal of many ancient practices, both physical, and political and moral, which had been abandoned and forgotten during barbarous times, from which we have not yet entirely emerged. The current progress of civilization is still a revival; it still consists, for the most part, in recovering what has been lost.1 (18 Sept. 1827.)
As life is becoming more comfortable,2 as knowledge and the culture of manners spread among the lower classes, and civilization is advancing, we see that major crimes either disappear or become rarer. Whether the absence of major crime and major vice will be replaced by great virtue, great deeds, is a question which will be decided for the first time by the effect and the experience of modern civilization. —Speaking with a famous and eloquent Neapolitan lawyer, Baron Poerio,3 who has dealt with a large number of criminal cases in the capital and in the provinces of the Kingdom of Naples, I have had to wonder, in that semibarbarous or, rather, semicivilized people, at the number of atrocious crimes which defeat the imagination, and the number of heroic actions of virtue (often occasioned by those same crimes) that enflame the coldest spirit (such as mine). Certainly nothing or very little of such a nature is to be found in the less barbarous parts of Italy, or [4290] in the rest of Europe, either of the one kind or the other.1 (Florence, 18 Sept. 1827.)
“C’est en conséquence de ces cruelles opinions, que l’on a vu enseigner publiquement, à la honte du Christianisme, que l’on ne devoit pas garder la foi aux hérétiques; sentiment que Clément VIII, qui d’ailleurs étoit assez honnête homme pour un Pape, approuvoit, ainsi que s’en plaint amèrement le Cardinal d’Ossat. L’inhumaine décision du concile de Constance, sur le mépris des saufs-conduits, est aussi le fruit de cette pernicieuse doctrine. (Histoire du concile de Constance, préface de Lenfant, p. 47.)” [“It is as a consequence of these cruel opinions that we have seen it promulgated publicly, to the shame of Christianity, that one should not keep faith with heretics, a sentiment that Clement VIII, who was besides a passably honest man for a Pope, approved, as Cardinal d’Ossat bitterly complains. The inhuman decision of the Council of Constance, regarding the ignoring of the safe-conducts, is also the fruit of this pernicious doctrine (Histoire du concile de Constance, preface by Lenfant, p. 47.)” Examen critique des apologistes de la religion chrétienne, by Monsieur Fréret, ch. 10, 1766, pp. 188–89.2 (Florence, 19 Sept. 1827.)
I do not accept as true what the critics say about the ancients—e.g., Jews, Greeks, Romans, Orientals, etc.—not having the consonant sound of the v in their languages, but only the u vowel. I believe that the vau in the Hebrew alphabet is in truth a uau or u; I believe that the ancient Romans did not have a sign in their alphabet to express the consonant v, and that the V was originally only a u; but this goes to prove nothing more than that the ancients did not have the v in their alphabet, which does not prove that they did not have it in their language. Considered as an aspiration (no different from the f, which was still absent in the ancient alphabets, since the Hebrew fe was originally pe, and the Greek φ is an additional letter to the ancient alphabet, and considered as a double or compound, i.e., of π and H, or like an aspirate π), this v, due to the imperfection of the ancient alphabets, had no sign of its own, since they were insufficiently subtle to separate it from the letters on which it fell, so as to see that it was a sign in itself, an element of speech. Consequently, in the [4291] beginning it was not written in any way, in the same way as amai for amavi in Latin, which was then written as an aspiration, digamma, etc., e.g., amaϝi, etc.; and finally, still without its own sign, it was written with that same sign that served also for the u; thus it happened that the Latin capital V became both a vowel and a consonant, and the same with the lowercase u in Latin, in relation to which there is still a confusion, even though the modern languages have made this u into two characters, u and v. For it can be seen, despite this, that the dictionaries consider the u and the v as a single element variously modified, and we have (and we learn from childhood) the irrational distinction between the u vowel and the u consonant, a distinction which has no natural reason, other than historical, etc. etc. The same can be said for the f, etc. etc. (20 Sept. 1827, Florence.)
For p. 4289. —in short, in the civilization of the body, so to speak, or if we prefer, that part which concerns the perfecting or the perfection of the body, —
Staël says that the German language is a science,1 and the same can be said, with even more reason, about Greek. It has therefore come about that, as the sciences become more perfect, and the moderns are superior scientifically to the ancients, thanks to the greater number and accuracy of observations, so, and by the same means, the knowledge of Greek, since the rebirth of study,2 has grown and is still growing. The result is that the moderns are much superior to the men of the 1500s or 1400s, and perhaps in some aspects (such as etymology, which was so imaginatively dealt with by Plato),3 better than the ancient Greeks themselves; indeed, that modern Greek scholars know more about it than the masters of past times. And in the same way as sciences have no known, or perhaps attainable, limits, and no one can claim to have complete knowledge of them, this is also the case with the Greek language, understanding of which is always expanding; nor can it be known if and when the non plus ultra wil
l be reached; nor [4292] is it sufficient to have spent a whole life of study in the language in order to claim to be a perfect scholar of Greek.1 (Florence, 20 Sept. 1827.)
The belief that the universe is infinite is an optical illusion: at least, that is my view. I do not suggest that my view can be rigorously demonstrated metaphysically, nor that there is factual proof that the universe is not infinite, but apart from the metaphysical arguments, I believe that analogy makes it materially most probable that the infinity of the universe is only a natural illusion of the imagination.2 “When I look at the sky,” someone once said to me, “and think that beyond the bodies I see, there are others and still others, my thought finds no limit, and probability leads me to believe that there are always more bodies beyond, and still more beyond them.” The same, I suggest, happens to the child, or the ignorant man, who looks around from a high tower or a mountain, or who finds himself on the high sea. He sees a horizon, but knows that beyond it there is still land or water, and more beyond that, and more still; and he concludes, or would willingly conclude, that the land or the sea were infinite. But just as it was found by experience that the terracqueous globe, which appears to be infinite (and certainly for a long time was thought to be so) nevertheless does have its limits, likewise, according to any analogy, it ought to be believed that the entire bulk of the universe, the assemblage of all the globes, which seems to us to be infinite for the same reason—in other words because we do not see the confines and because we are so far from seeing them, but whose vastness is not absolute but relative—does, in fact, have its limits. The child and the savage would have sworn, and primitive men did swear, that the earth, that the sea had no limits; and they were deceived. They also believed, and continue to believe, that the stars we see cannot be counted, in other words that they are infinite in number. (20 Sept. 1827.)
[4293] The extreme imperfection of French orthography is admitted by the French themselves in a très-éclatant [very brilliant] manner in their dictionaries which contain la prononciation figurée [phonetic pronunciation], in other words set out a way which conforms more to the alphabet and to natural reason.1 What should we think about the writing of a nation whose writing needs to be written in another way, to be set out with another writing, and to the people of the nation itself, so that they can understand what it means? For understanding how it should be pronounced is to understand its value. (Florence, 21 Sept. 1827.)
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