Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  10th. From the above it follows that Christianity does not prove that man is not indifferent to absolute truth, or that man’s happiness consists in knowledge. With the predominance of reason and knowledge, man was no longer able to believe what he naturally believed, and he needed to return to believing it by way of this same reason and knowledge that could no longer be extinguished. Knowledge of the truth was therefore necessary to him, not as a pointer toward the truth but as the sole source of that belief which he needed in order to reacquire that happiness which knowledge itself had taken away from him. Whether true or false, the only thing that mattered and was sufficient was that man believed those things, without which he could not be happy. But whereas in the natural state he could have firmly believed false things, in the state of reason he could not firmly believe anything other than the truth. It was necessary for him therefore to find real truths in those convictions and in [414] those judgments upon which human life is formed and founded. But those convictions and judgments could not be found to be really true without the presumption of a Religion, and a true Religion, one that was universally and firmly believable. That is why reason could not lead to happiness without revelation. Truth was necessary to man not as truth but as firm believability. Now, only truth is firmly believable in the state of reason and knowing. And man with no firm belief has no firm ground on which to decide, therefore to act, therefore to live.

  But as truth was necessary to man only as the sole source of those beliefs which are necessary to his life, so all that part of truth which does not serve as the basis for these beliefs is irrelevant to man, indeed harmful, even in his present state of corruption. The opposite of what would happen if the happiness of man, whether he be natural or corrupted, had necessarily to consist in absolute knowledge. Since the object of this is knowledge absolutely, not even the tiniest truth would be irrelevant to man, and man would be unhappy as long as he did not know the whole general and particular extension of truth, because until he had reached this point he would not have reached [415] perfection. Which point, however, it is formally impossible for him to reach, as I have said elsewhere. See pp. 385–86 and pp. 389–90. Whereas Religion, having taught mankind those truths which realize the beliefs necessary for his happiness, not only does not teach or assume the other truths but, indeed, as I have said above, and as experience shows, has no greater enemy than an age full of knowledge. And the Christian religion adapts itself, and has to adapt itself, to the capabilities of the ignorant, and accords with, indeed finds its best position within, ignorance of the other truths. These truths, even leaving religion aside, prejudice man’s happiness, however reasonable he may already be, because they are none other than an extension of this reason and knowledge that destroy human happiness, and a yet greater massacre of those partial convictions and illusions, which, even after reason has prevailed, can be firmly believed, if knowledge, experience, etc., do not set about partially to weed them out, that is, as long as partial ignorance lasts. Such ignorance can occupy greater or lesser space, and the more it occupies then the happier man is. For example, geographical discoveries are irrelevant to religion. But by geometricizing the world1 they destroy those beautiful illusions which still remained because of partial ignorance on the subject. [416] And the perfection of reason does not consist in knowing these truths, because it does not consist in knowing truth as truth, but in knowing truth as a firm basis for beliefs that are necessary or useful to life. And it must call us back to nature or natural happiness by some route other than the original one, which is lost forever.1 Now, if some of the said beliefs are firmly based in partial ignorance, then reason and knowledge, by destroying them, are harmful to our happiness and do not correspond to their own perfection, which consists in calling us back to nature. Whereas by uncovering these partial truths that were firmly hidden, they take us farther away from nature, and therefore from happiness. See p. 420, paragraph 1.

  11th. My system is not based on Christianity, but accords with it, so that everything I’ve said so far essentially supposes the real truth of Christianity: but if this supposition is removed, my system remains intact. In the meantime, I will observe that Christianity, when linked with my system, can help explain that part of the nature of things which remains intact in my system, that is, obscure and difficult. I. The origin of the world and of man, which [417] is explained through Christianity by the creation. II. Through Christianity it is explained why man can so easily lose his primitive state, and why it can be said that no people or individual is to be found who perfectly retains this state, which I predicate as the only perfect, happy one, ordained for and belonging to him, whereas almost all other living beings (if we exclude various accidental causes, brought about mostly by man) conserve their primary state. (Although several examples can perhaps be found of nations that retain their natural state almost entirely, and are happy and content because of it.1 They have only enough social contact to satisfy their needs, as animals do, but with that extra which our species requires, as a result of its bodily organization, especially in relation to the organs of speech. Animals, too, have a greater or lesser degree of society, depending on their respective natures, and apes more than others, because they are closer to our system of organization.) This phenomenon can be explained naturally by the different kinds of bodily organization, which in us is such as to give the greatest opportunity for experience, and therefore to know, and therefore to change our primary state. For experience alone is the mother of cognition [418] and knowledge, and also of some specific imaginings (though not of the imaginative faculty), and this is the case in all living beings, it being recognized as a myth that ideas can be absolutely innate. Likewise also perhaps our different internal organization, such as the brain, etc. But from this explanation one might conclude that man, instead of being first in the order of earthly things, is instead the lowest,1 because it is he who most easily loses his happiness, or rather his perfection, and finds it almost impossible to preserve. (This consequence would not be absurd except for someone who has an absolute idea of perfection, that is, who thinks of perfection absolutely according to our ideas in our present state. Someone who thinks of perfection and everything else as relative would have no difficulty in believing man to be the lowest of earthly beings.) Christianity clearly explains why reason and knowledge, corruptors of man, so easily prevail in him, for it attributes the original and root cause of his corruption to sin, which introduced the imbalance between reason and his nature—reason and nature, which are very well balanced or subordinated one to the other, or in short are combined, in other living beings. And it is quite consistent with reason and plausible to suppose that God, wishing to make manifest his mercy and all his glory to the earth, and having chosen [419] to do so, as was natural, in the most noble of earthly creatures, had wished to test that creature, and allow its corruption and temporal unhappiness, which gave rise to God’s whole manifestation resulting from the increase of human reason, to the Redemption, etc. A manifestation that would not have occurred if man had retained his natural place and happiness, even if it was more perfect relative to his nature. This supposition is consistent not only with reason but expressly with Christianity, which teaches (and cannot do otherwise) that God allowed man to sin for his greater glory.1 Now, according to Christianity itself, it would certainly have been better if man had not sinned. He would have remained more perfect and more good by not sinning, and by not corrupting himself, and to this he was originally destined. And yet God allowed him to sin. Therefore, according to Christianity itself, God permitted actual evil for a good, he allowed something that was contrary to what man was destined for. Therefore, this destiny was less suited to God’s glory, according to his mysterious judgment. [420] Otherwise God would have permitted an evil (and a great evil such as sin) without reason, he would have allowed the order established by him to be violated and corrupted without reason, and he would have done not the best but the worst.1

  In this way, Christianity h
elps my system by filling the necessary gaps in places that our reasoning is unable to reach. What’s more, it provides clear support, as is apparent from what I have said above, especially in expounding those passages in Genesis, which provide a formal and detailed religious demonstration of the main point in my system, namely that the corruption and consequent unhappiness of man have been produced by reason and knowledge (9–15 Dec. 1820), and consist directly in their increase.

  For page 416. Partial ignorance can continue to exist, as I have said, even in mankind corrupted by reason, even in mankind reduced to living in society. It can therefore serve as a firm foundation for a greater or lesser number of natural beliefs, therefore hold man more or less close to his primitive state, and therefore make him more or less happy. As a [421] result, the wider and deeper this partial ignorance, the happier man will be. This is very clear, in fact, when we look at children, young people, the uneducated, savages. What is understood here, however, is ignorance that serves as the basis of natural beliefs, judgments, errors, illusions, not those errors which are not primitive, and which derive from the corruption of man or nations. Natural ignorance is one thing, artificial ignorance another. The errors inspired by nature, and therefore appropriate to man, and conducive to happiness, are one thing, those fabricated by man are another. These lead not to happiness but, rather, to its opposite, as being a corruption of his natural state, and like everything that is contrary to that state. Therefore, superstitions, barbarism, etc., lead not to happiness but to unhappiness. See p. 314. So it is that, after the precisely natural state, the happiest state possible in this life is that of a middling civilization, in which a certain balance between reason and nature, a certain middling ignorance, [422] preserves natural beliefs and errors as much as possible (and therefore the customs, habits, and actions that arise from them), and excludes and drives away artificial errors, or at any rate the most onerous, important, and barbarizing of them. This precisely was the state of ancient civilized peoples, who were therefore full of life, because they were so much closer to nature, and to natural happiness. Consequently, the ancient Religions (except for their unnatural and therefore harmful and barbarous errors, which were neither numerous nor very serious) undoubtedly bestowed much more on worldly happiness than Christianity can; because they contained a greater and more significant number of natural beliefs, founded on more extensive and deeper ignorance, they kept man closer to the natural state. In short, they were more in keeping with nature, and gave less space to reason. (The opposite case, of the barbarism of late antiquity arising from ignorance that was not natural but generated by corruption, not from negative but from positive ignorance. This could not contribute to happiness, but only to unhappiness, drawing man further from nature, except [423] in that ignorance restored some part of natural beliefs and habits, because nature generally triumphs, easily and naturally, in the absence of its greatest obstacle, which is knowledge. And so that barbarism produced a life less distant from nature and less unhappy, more active, etc., than that produced by our own century’s not middling but excessive civilization. In any case, see p. 162, paragraph 1 in this respect. Between barbarism and excessive civilization, there is no doubt that the former is more in keeping with nature, and is less unhappy, if for no other reason than that it has less knowledge of its unhappiness.1 For the rest, the barbarism and ignorance of the Asian people in general, the Barbary Africans, Mohammedans, ancient Persians after Cyrus, the Sybarites, etc. etc., are contrary to happiness and nature for the same reason as the barbarism of late antiquity. Likewise proportionately for Spain and other more modern and European countries.)

  But this effect of the ancient religions could last only as long as the belief in the actual truth of these religions lasted, that is to say, as long as that degree and depth of ignorance lasted which made it possible to believe truly [424] and firmly in those religions, and in the natural errors and illusions based on them. As reason and knowledge increasingly prevailed and partial ignorance diminished, those more natural and happier (but for this reason also cruder) religions could no longer be believed, nor could they serve as a basis for real and firm illusions, for the actions arising from them, and thus for happiness. The nations in the meantime little by little were disabused, and, as they lost the illusions, so they lost all life. It was necessary to bring those illusions back. But how, if reason and knowledge, the destroyer of illusions, remained and would no longer disappear, and reason and knowledge were masters over man? (Observe here the useless efforts of Cicero in his Philippics, where he sought to bring back illusions as illusions, and no longer as truths, because they were no longer believed as such, and how, no longer having any other foundation for such illusions, he sought to convince himself of the immortality of the soul and of the benefit of good works in the next life. In other words, he sought once again to justify illusions by means of some kind of religion, and see my other thoughts [→Z 22, 161]). It was therefore necessary to bring back those illusions with the consent of, indeed by means of, [425] reason itself and knowledge. I say by means of, because there was no other way of bringing them back, other than by judging them once again to be true, and judgment could not be made except by reason and already established knowledge. But how could this same reason and knowledge that had destroyed illusions allow them to be revived, indeed introduce them once again into the soul? It would have meant that reason denied itself (as any modern philosopher should do who wants to live). There was no other way except through a new religion, accepted and believed by reason to be true, and consistent with the wisdom of that time, a religion that could return to form the basis for lost illusions (otherwise what value could it have in our case?) in such a way that these illusions regained the firm appearance of truth in the eyes of men. In short, it was necessary that this religion, as the new basis for natural and necessary illusions, be the fruit of reason and knowledge. Or in Christian terms, it was necessary that an explicit revelation should reassure reason that those beliefs which it had repudiated were true. Here then was the need for a perfectly rational religion [426] (that is, a revealed religion, because, without the foundation of revelation, how can perfect reason believe, or return to believing, something that, in human terms, is truly false?) or a religion that was at least perfectly in keeping with the measure of reason and knowledge that existed in those times. And this was the point at which Christianity appeared, that is, the moment when the excessive progress of reason and knowledge, denying everything or doubting everything (because everything is truly false or doubtful without revelation), extinguishing all primitive illusions or beliefs, cast man into inaction, indifference, egoism (and therefore wickedness), and turned life into something entirely dead and barbarous, with that horrendous barbarity into which, to an even greater extent, we have fallen in recent centuries. This was the moment when virtue, heroism, love of country, mutual love, etc., were considered the very phantasms that they are (in human terms). The moment when, as a result, all social and individual ties, in other words, all ties that man had with himself and life, were broken, the moment when not only primitive illusions were extinguished but also those which develop naturally in man living in society (as are almost all of those described above), [427] the moment that saw perhaps the greatest progress of the Skeptic or Pyrrhonist sect. (See Diogenes Laertius, bk. 9, Lucian, passim, and Sextus Empiricus, all of whom lived under Marcus Aurelius, and Commodus, that is, after the birth of Christianity, but before it had spread, indeed was still in its infancy.)1

  In this way, it can be explained why Christianity was revealed at that time, and not before or after. And by the famous “fullness of time”2 of the Old Testament one might ingeniously and solidly understand the point at which reason and knowledge, having become preponderant and overwhelming, had begun a work of devastation, and a deadly revolution in man, and a general mortification of civilized peoples and individuals. In such a way that this was the point at which (if there is a God who cares about human affairs) a great r
evelation of truth in relation to man became precisely necessary for the first time.3

  And Christianity certainly did great good, and sustained a world that was collapsing, administering a medicine made up of reason to the mortal illness caused by that same reason. But precisely because the medicine was made up of reason, and because the origins of Christianity were those I have described, that is, the damage caused by reason and the need for a rational remedy, [428] this was indeed the only remedy that could be applied at that time, and it worked, but relative to the worse state in which they then were, not the one that existed before the harm was done. For the latter was necessarily more natural, and therefore more conducive to happiness here below. And indeed life, although it returned to being life, was in fact much poorer, less active, less beautiful, less varied, and, precisely, more unhappy, since Christianity had not taught man that life is reasonable, and that he must live, except by teaching him that this life must be directed toward another life, and that this alone gives rational meaning to this life, and that this life must necessarily be unhappy.