From our stupid notion of the absolutely beautiful comes the absolutely stupid view that useful things ought not or cannot be beautiful. Consider, for example, a scientific work. If it is not beautiful, we excuse it on the grounds that it is useful, indeed, they say that beauty does not suit it. And I say that if it is not beautiful, and is therefore ugly, then it is faulty in this regard, however valuable in every other respect. For what reason is Celsus’s Treatise,2 which is a treatise on medicine, beautiful? Is it because it has poetic and rhetorical ornaments? On the contrary, it is beautiful first and foremost because it doesn’t have any at all, and because it has the bare candor and simplicity that befit such works. Next, because it is clear and precise, and because it has pure language and pure style. These are merits or beauties that suit any book. Every book is obliged to be beautiful in the strictest sense of that term, that is, to be wholly good. If it is not beautiful, in this regard it is faulty, and there is no mid term between not being beautiful and not being perfectly good, and hence being in this respect faulty. And what I say about books must be extended to every [950] other kind of thing known as useful, and generally to everything. (16 April 1821.)
“The Indian, says the Author” (Collin de Bar, Storia dell’India antica e moderna, ossia l’Indostan considerato relativamente alle sue antichità, etc., Paris 1815), “is resigned and subdued, because with the nature of the inhabitants being determined by the nature of the climate, he is made up at one and the same time of goodness and indifference, and is capable of the most magnanimous efforts. The peoples of the north of the peninsula, being less softened by sensual pleasures and the climate, have long been the terror of the East India Company and as time passes will perhaps be the liberators of the Ganges regions.” (Among these he must certainly mean the Marattas.) Spettatore of Milan, Issue 43, p. 113, Foreign Section, 30 December 1815.1 On the situation and peaceful spirit of the ancient Indians, see p. 922. On the Chinese, likewise southern, see p. 943, last paragraph. (16 April 1821.)
For p. 949. Lacking a system altogether (whatever it may be) is the same as lacking an order, a connection of ideas, and therefore, being without a system, there cannot be a discourse on anything. Consequently, those who do not discourse lack a system, or do not have a precise one. But the system, that is, the connection and dependence of ideas, thoughts, reflections, opinions, is the certain, and at the same time indispensable, distinguishing mark of the philosopher. (17 April 1821.)
The Spettatore of Milan, 15 February 1816, Issue 46, p. 244, Foreign Section, in an article extracted from the Leipziger Literaturzeitung, giving a very brief review of a German [951] pamphlet by Peter Heinrich Holthaus entitled In our language too we can and must be German, published in Schwelm by Scherz, 1814, large 8vo, says that, among other things, the author sets out to prove “That the admixture of foreign words does harm to the clarity of ideas.” (The pamphlet is chiefly aimed at the Gallicism that has been introduced into and triumphed in the German language, as in Italian.)1 This sentiment tallies with what I have expounded in other thoughts [→Z 110–11, 808], where I have said that in our language, Greek words are always terms, and the same should, in fact, be said of other foreign words in our language; and where I have explained what terms are and how they are to be distinguished from words. And it is in fact the case that terms, and words taken wholesale from a foreign language, can be precise but not clear, and thus the idea that they evoke will be precise and exact without being clear, because those words do not express the nature of things for us; they are not extracted from the actual qualities of things, as the original words in any language are. Thus, even though by using them we may be able to address the object that they express in our minds with precision and definition, we will not be able to express it with clarity, because words which do not derive immediately from the qualities of things, or which at any rate through habituation do not seem to us to do so, do not have the power to arouse in our mind a perceptible idea of the thing, do not have [952] the power to make us feel the thing in any way whatsoever, but only to let it be understood by us, as occurs with those things that cannot be formally expressed. For this indeed is the case with objects signified to us by wholly foreign words. From which it is plain how much harm is done to the clarity of ideas, as it is to the beauty and the power of discourse, which chiefly consists in its life, and this life of discourse consists in the efficacy, liveliness, and sensibility with which it enables us to conceive of the things of which it treats. (17 April 1821.)
The same author, in the same pamphlet, as may be seen in the passage quoted, at the end of p. 244 already mentioned, “criticizes Herder, who has introduced so many words drawn from Latin and Greek.” This criticism may perhaps be justified even in relation to Latin, so far as the German language is concerned, which is not in the same situation as Italian, not being the daughter, as Italian is, of Latin; nor indeed as French, not being its sister, as our language is. And so as far as Latin is concerned, German should make do with what it took in the circumstances of ancient times, through its communication with the Romans, etc., but now it is quite reasonable to regard this source as closed to it, for it did not originally come from there and made contact with it for accidental reasons only. English would be the language most suited to communicating its sources to German, and vice versa. See p. 1011, paragraph 2. But the case of the Italian language is different because, coming from Latin, we should not regard the source as shut off, so long as the river runs and does not stagnate. Indeed, if we do not want it to stagnate and silt over, we must above all be careful not to shut off its spring, since this is the surest and swiftest means of corrupting it and making it run dry. How can we suppose that the language which produced our own—and not only produced it but formed it and made it grow so generously—[953] cannot nurture and increase it, that there is nothing more our own language can take from it? How could we believe, and say, that the soil which produced a tree from its own substance and its own sap, and then raised it and brought it to the most perfect maturity and strength and vigor, etc., is not good to feed it and make it grow as long as it is not uprooted? Why should we want to uproot our own language? For it no longer to be fed, perhaps, and its roots no longer serve, so that it will finally dry out? Or to transplant it perhaps? Where to? Into what better, more fitting soil than that which produced it and raised it to such a size, such prosperity and health?
I observe further that Italian derives from the corruption of Latin, so that the words and expressions of late Latin, barbarous though they may be in relation to Latin, are not so in relation to Italian, and late Latin is also a very rich and fitting source for our language, and I can say this on the basis of the observations and the particular experience I have of them, and of the care I have devoted to them. What a great number of words there are, in fact, in the very best Italian that do indeed belong to late Latin! Nor should we talk in a prejudicial way and regard what is only relatively barbarous as absolutely barbarous. For example, [954] ancient Persian, that is, “before it was overwhelmed by Arabic words through the conquest of Persia, effected by the Caliphs and by the immediate successors of Mohammed,”a1 was a very pure language, a very pure script, it was greatly concerned with purity in writing and had authors who were “Classics and no less revered at one time in the East” for the purity of their language “than Menander was among the Greeks (but most of whose writings have perished).” And “Ferdowsi in his Shahnameh and many of his contemporaries boast of using authentic Persian, and to be free of any Arab or foreign word” (and thus Richardson’s Dictionary lacks nine-tenths of the words used by them, thanks to this Dictionary having been made for the modern Persian language and dialects).2 Now, the purest of Persian words, or words from the purest of any language from the East, ancient or modern, would seem to us not only impure or barbarous but intolerable, and would sound worse than barbarous to us, and would taste more than barbarous on our tongues. So it is, then, that if late Latin words prove to be barbarous in Latin, they sho
uld not be judged to be either barbarous or impure in Italian, which comes more directly from late than it does from classical Latin. Otherwise we would have to judge as barbarous so many of the purest and most Italian words that come from late Latin (and so too, I say, in the case of French words) and are recorded as such in barbarian Latin Glossaries.3
Admittedly it is necessary to differentiate between the various kinds of late Latin. For Germanic late Latin, for example, insofar as it is full of Germanic words, etc., will be suited to furnishing material to other languages, but not to our own. And consequently we have to consider whether the nature [955] of the words and phrases, etc., of the Middle Ages corresponds to the nature of the language from which the Italian language was specifically derived. (17 April 1821.)
For p. 940. What I have said of language with regard to places, should be applied in the same measure to times. For it is certain and obvious that languages are forever altering, not just slightly, but in such a way that in the end they die and others replace them, depending on the variation in customs, usages, opinions, etc., and in the physical, political, moral, etc., circumstances characteristic of the various ages of society. So that it can be said that just as no language has lasted in perpetuity, so none ever will. (18 April 1821.)
“The antiquity and excellence of the sacred language of the Indians” (Sanskrit) “have naturally attracted the attention, and roused the curiosity of Europeans. Its plausible claim to be considered as the oldest language known to mankind prompts in us the same interest as surrounds the most venerable ages of the world. Built upon perhaps the most perfect plan that has ever been imagined by the human mind, it invites us to inquire whether its perfection is limited to its structure alone, or whether the merits of Indian compositions share in the beauty of the language in which they are written.” Spettatore of Milan, 15 July 1817, Issue 80, foreign section, p. 273. Article by D. Bertolotti on the English translation of the Megha [956] Duta, Sanskrit poem by Kalidasa, Calcutta 1814, extracted, however, without any doubt, from a foreign journal, and not from the translation itself, as is apparent in quite a few passages, and, among others, from the ellipses which Bertolotti puts after some paragraphs of this article, as on pp. 274, 275, etc.1 (18 April 1821.)
Greek should be considered the mother (or grandmother) tongue of Italian, but as regards expressions not words. If I say expressions, this is especially because of its natural conformity or similarity in this regard to Latin, its sister and the mother of our own language, and furthermore because Latin authors modeled the forms of their language on Greek from the birth of their literature onward, and have thus transmitted to us a language shaped to a very large extent after Greek expressions. On which see a fine article by Baron Winspear (Biblioteca Italiana, tome 8, p. 163) in the Spettatore of Milan, 1 September 1817, Italian section, Issue 83, p. 442, from the middle to the end of the page.2 And so also, in part because of the immediate study of Greek models (on which see ibid., p. 443, from the beginning to the middle), in part because of the study of Latin models and the derivation of the Italian language from Latin, in part (and especially) because of a natural conformity which, perhaps by accident, the structure and construction of our language has with Greek (as Staël expressly says in the Biblioteca Italiana, [957] vol. 1, p. 15, “the grammatical construction of that language is capable of a perfect imitation of Greek concepts,” by contrast with German, of which she said the opposite),1 for all of these reasons there is a very evident and great affinity between the rhythm of Greek and that of Italian, and especially in the purest, most native, and truest Italian, that is, in the Italian of the fourteenth century. It follows from all this that the Greek language, being the mother of our own as regards expressions, is theoretically and in practice most suited to enrich and refurbish the Italian language with countless and very varied forms, phrases, and constructions (Cesari)2 and particular idioms, etc. This is not the case with words, which we cannot derive from the Greek language, which is not the mother of our language with respect to words, except for those which Latin writers or Latin usage derived from the Greek, and which, once they had become Latin, passed over into our language as Latin and with a Latin flavor, not as Greek. These words again, however, while their place in Italian usage cannot be contested, are nonetheless subject in part, despite our long habituation to them, to the defects I have noted, pp. 951–52. So that, for example, someone who says filosofia [philosophy] elicits a less perceptible idea than someone who says sapienza [wisdom], since in the former word we cannot see or feel the etymology as we do in the latter, that is, the derivation of the word from the thing, and it is this feeling that produces the vividness and efficacy [958] and limpid clarity of the idea when we listen to a word. (19 April 1821.)
One of the main reasons why unhappiness makes a man unable to act and weakens him and wears him out, robbing him of his strength, is simply that unhappiness weakens our love of self. And I particularly mean serious, prolonged unhappiness. Because of its continued resistance to the love of self in the sufferer, because of its fierce and unrelenting war on this love, driving it into a state that is wholly contrary to its purpose, object, and desire, such unhappiness does in the end enfeeble the love of self, and makes man less gentle with himself, as though inured to feeling unhappy in spite of his struggle against it. Indeed, such unhappiness, if it does not reduce man to intense desperation, and to suicide or hatred of himself—which is the highest degree and the most intense form assumed by self-love in such circumstances—must necessarily reduce him to an opposite state, that is, to coldness and indifference toward himself. For if he were to continue to be as inflamed against himself as he was at the start, how could he bear life, or be content to survive and see and feel that this object of his greatest love, and of his entire life in every regard, is always unhappy?
But love of self is the only possible spring of human actions and feelings, according to whether it is applied to one or other virtuous or vicious, great or lowly purpose, etc. [959] Once the elasticity and power of the spring has diminished, decreased, and been reduced to very little (that is, to as low a level as is possible and a man still live), man is no longer capable either of actions or of intense and strong feelings, etc., neither toward himself nor toward others, since even toward others, and even in relation to sacrifices, etc., no other force but self-love, as applied and directed in a certain way, can drive him. And thus the man who has unwillingly become indifferent to himself is indifferent to everything, and is reduced to physical and moral inaction. And the weakening of self-love, as self-love and radically so (not as directed to one thing or another), that is, the true weakening of this love, is the cause of the weakening of virtue, enthusiasm, heroism, magnanimity, everything that seems at first glance the most hostile to self-love, everything that would seem most to need its humiliation in order to triumph and manifest itself and that is the most opposed and injured by the force of individual love. So this weakening dries up the vein of poetry and of imagination, and when a man does not love himself, or loves himself only a little, he no longer loves nature; when he no longer senses his own emotions, he no longer feels nature, nor the efficacy of its beauty, etc. A thick fog of indifference, the immediate source of inaction and lack of feeling, spreads over his whole mind, and all his faculties, from the moment [960] he becomes indifferent or insensitive toward that object which is the only one capable of interesting him and of moving him morally or physically in any way toward all other objects, I mean himself.
Another cause of the debilitation produced in man by unhappiness is lack of confidence in himself and things, a deadly affection, just as confidence, and especially in oneself, is life-giving, and paramount in the world among living creatures, and this is a basic and natural quality in man and living creatures, prior to experience, etc. etc. So it is indeed that a man who has lost his self-esteem, either through cowardice and vice, or by dint of adversities, setbacks, humiliations, and slights suffered, is no longer good for anything great or magnani
mous. And when I say esteem, I distinguish this quality from confidence, which, if you think about it carefully, is a very different thing. (19 April 1821.)
These considerations can lead to a major generalization, and simplify the idea we have of the system of human things, or the theory of man, by making us realize how the single principle of self-love is operative in all respects and in all possible circumstances of life, and how everything that happens in human life is in proportion to the greater or lesser strength, the greater or lesser weakness, and the varying direction of that cause alone, however much these effects present themselves at first glance as deriving from various causes. (19 April 1821.)
[961] For p. 786. And given that, prior to Athenian might and the expansion of the republic, Ionic, it seems, was the richest of all the dialects then in existence, thanks to the great amount of trade on the part of the nation or nations and republics that used it, the Ionic dialect prevailed in Greek literature, and was used by Homer, by Hecataeus of Miletus, a historian who was very ancient, and came before Herodotus, who took much from him, by Herodotus, by Hippocrates, by Democritus, and by many others of great repute. So it is that Giordani believes (Biblioteca Italiana, vol. 2, p. 20) “that Empedocles” (who also wrote in this dialect) “left off employing the” (Doric) “dialect of his homeland and his” (Pythagorean) “school not because it was more difficult or less pleasing to the Greeks, but because he saw that Ionic, for which Homer, Herodotus, and Hippocrates had won more universal fame, was more widely used outside Greece.”1 So that, even after Attic had prevailed, some continued to write in Ionic, not as their own dialect, but out of habit, and as if in memory of its ancient fame. Thus Arrian continued the 7 books of the Anabasis of Alexander, written in pure Attic, with the Indian history, or book of Indian matters written in Ionic dialect, out of pure caprice. Now, everyone knows what this Ionic dialect is in Homer, namely, a mixture of all the dialects, and of foreign words, simply with Ionic prevailing and Hermogenes, περὶ ἰδεῶν [On Types of Style], bk. 2, p. 513, *“notes that Hecataeus of Miletus from whom Herodotus learned much (as Porphyry also notes in Eusebius, bk. 10 of the Praeparatio evangelica, ch. 2, p. 466) had used ἀκράτῳ ᾿Ιάδι, but Herodotus ποικίλῃ”* (Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, 2, ch. 20, § 2, tome 1, p. 697, note k),2 that is to say, the one with the pure Ionic dialect, the other with the varied or mixed Ionic dialect. And nonetheless Herodotus was called [962] by his fellow citizen Dionysius of Halicarnassus (“Letter to Gnaeus Pompeius,” p. 130, Fabricius) “᾿Ιάδος ἄριστος κανὼν” [“the perfect model of the Ionic dialect”]. (20 April, Good Friday, 1821.)1
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