For p. 1115, margin, at the end. That if the verb salire has been used by Ariosto, Alamanni, and Caro, and by others to mean the same as the Italian saltare [to jump, to spring, to leap], as Monti asserts (Proposta, etc., “Esame di alcune voci,” at the entry for ascendere [to ascend], vol. 1, part 2, p. 65), well, that does not prove that the verb had this meaning in our language, but only among writers, and used in such a sense it is not really Italian but a Latinism, [1163] like so many others, and not a laudable Latinism, unlike many others, and not worthy of passing into ordinary use in speech or written texts. The French saillir has retained some of the figurative meanings of the Latin salire [to jump], and the Spanish salir for to go or come out (in which sense the Italian salire was also used by Ariosto)1 does indeed come close to the Latin metaphoric use of salire meaning celeriter emergere [to emerge swiftly]. And see if the Spanish salir has other meanings. (13 June 1821.)
The best use and effect of reason and reflection is to destroy or diminish reason and reflection, and their use and effects, in man. (13 June 1821.)
Asked what thing in the world was rarest, he replied, the thing that belongs to everyone, namely, common sense. (13 June 1821.)
Another proof of ancient national hatred. Among the ancient Latins or Romans, foreigner and enemy were denoted by the same word, hostis. See Giordani in the letter to Monti, at the end (Proposta, etc., vol. 1, part 2, p. 265, end, in the entries for Effemeride, Endica, Epidemia), Forcellini, and my thought on this word, p. 205 end, where the similar example from the Celtic language also features. (13 June 1821.)
[1164] Why, if the Tuscans say bi ci di, do they say effe, emme, enne, erre, esse (see the Crusca) and not effi, emmi, etc.? Indeed, iffi, immi, etc.?1 (13 June 1821.)
To what I have noted elsewhere [→Z 111] regarding the antiquity of our expression gridare a testa [yell one’s head off], etc., you may add some French ones, such as crier à pleine tête, à tue tête, du haut de sa tête, on which see Alberti, the entry for Tête, and also see the Spanish Dictionaries. (13 June 1821.)
Envy, an extremely natural passion, and first vice of the first son of man, according to Holy Scripture, is a consequence and a manifest index of man’s natural hatred for man in society no matter how very imperfect and very small it is. For we even envy what we ourselves have, and to a greater degree, we then envy what someone else possesses even though it does us not the least harm, then again we envy still more what is absolutely impossible for us to have and which would not even be in our interest, and finally we can almost be said to envy still more again what we do not desire and which, even if we could have it, we would not want. So that what is simply another’s good, the simple prospect of another’s presumed happiness, weighs heavily upon us on its own account and is subject to the same passion, which as a consequence can only derive from hatred for others, deriving from self-love, but deriving, if I may so [1165] put it, in the same way that the theologians say the person of the Word proceeds from the Father and the Holy Spirit from both, that is, there has never been a moment at which the Father existed and the Word or the Holy Spirit did not exist. (13 June 1821.)
The beauty of all things, outside which no thing is beautiful, lies in their fitness for their purpose and hence in their usefulness, etc. (13 June 1821.)
All young people, though some more some less, are by nature inclined to enthusiasm and experience enthusiasm. But the enthusiasm of the young today dies away when they come into contact with the world and experience things that at first they saw from afar, in the same way that a torch goes out for want of fuel and for no other reason, even while they are still young and the natural power of enthusiasm still endures. (13 June 1821.)
How many controversies there are regarding the meaning of those words of Horace on Cleopatra defeated at the battle of Actium (Ode 37, bk. 1, ll. 23–24)
Nec latentes
Classe cita reparavit oras!
[Nor did she repair with her swift fleet to hidden coasts]
[1166] See Forcellini and the commentators. And no one has correctly understood it. Acro: “Nec latentes Classe cita reparavit oras: fines regni latentes: id est non colligit denuo exercitum ex intimis regni partibus” [“The hidden borders of the kingdom, that is, she does not assemble an army afresh from the innermost parts of the kingdom”]. Porphyry, another early Scholiast: “Nec latentes C.c.r. oras: hoc est: Nec fugit in latentes, id est intimas Aegypti regiones ut vires inde repararet” [“that is to say, nor does she flee into the hidden, that is, the innermost regions of Egypt, so that she might then restore her forces”].1 And it will never be perfectly understood and explained without early Italian, which teaches us a meaning for the verb reparare which is unknown to Latin lexicographers. And this is to take shelter, in which sense our forefathers used to say, and we too can still say, repair, or repair to a place or in a place. Horace therefore means to say, and does expressly say: She did not repair to, she did not seek shelter in the hidden, in the remote parts of Egypt. As if instead of reparavit, he had said petiit [she directed her course to], but reparavit is stronger and better expresses flight and fear.2 (14 June 1821.)
For p. 1155, margin. Likewise nictare and nictari [to wink, to blink] derive from the old participle nictus or the supine nictum from old and unattested nivere, or, as others would have it, from niti. See p. 1150, end. (14 June 1821.)
For p. 1132. Likewise in simplex [simple], duplex [double], [1167] triplex [triple], multiplex [multiple], and other such words, one could discover the monosyllabic root of the verb plicare [to fold] (the Greeks say πλέκειν [to fold]) of which I believe the verb plectare when it means to fold, to intertwine, and the like is an anomalous continuative. (14 June 1821.) See p. 2225, paragraph 1.
For p. 1154, beginning. And the same goes for other forms of verb. As the old participle of noscere [to come to know] may be deduced from the verb noscitare [to know] formed from noscitus, as notare [to mark] from notus. Likewise with pascere [to feed, to pasture] from the verb pascitare [to pasture, to feed], formed from pascitus instead of pastus. And not only for other forms but also for other conjugations. Like doctus: the fact that this is a contraction of docitus can easily be seen from nocitus and nociturus from nocere [to harm], a verb which only differs materially from docere [to teach] by the one letter; from placitus from placere [to please], a highly regular verb of the same second conjugation, and from many other similar participles. If doctus were the real participle, plactus would be the participle directly instead of placitus. From coerceo [to surround], it is not coarctus or coerctus but coercitus, even though subsequently contracted into coarctare, etc. The supine paritum and the participle paritus of parere, that is, partorire [to give birth], in place of which partum and partus are more used, is however necessarily derived from pariturus. And parturus, so far as I know, is never said. See pp. 2009 and 2200, paragraph 2.
I think it probable that the verb sollicitare [to disturb], regarding the origin of which the etymologists who derive it from citare [to put into quick motion] are blundering around in the dark, comes rather [1168] from the same verb from which we saw [→Z 1109–11] formed adlicere [to attract] (that is, from the verb lacere [to entice]), which now gives rise to the participle adlectus, whence adlectare [to allure], and in earlier times used to give rise, in my opinion, to adlicitus. And therefore I think that sollicitare is the same as sublicitare from the participle sublicitus of an old sublicere (another compound of lacere), from which participle contracted into sublectus we in fact have in Plautus the verb sublectare [to wheedle].1 So that the meaning, indeed, of adlicere [to attract] which the lexicographers give to sollicitare as its transferred and secondary meaning should be regarded as its first and proper meaning. However, this is only meant as conjecture on my part. (15 June 1821.)
For p. 1139. From which many proofs could be adduced that we will, however, leave to the scholars, settling for just this one observation which will demonstrate that at most the Hebrew was a p, which sometimes was aspirated, and
resembling the φ of the Greeks, which is an aspirated p, as we have said. The Phoenician alphabet—from which the Greek alphabet derived, and consequently the Latin, whether derived from Greek or from the same source as Greek—was the same as the Samaritan alphabet, and the Samaritan alphabet was the old Hebrew alphabet. Now the lack in the Phoenician alphabet of the letter f, or at the [1169] most its substitution with an aspirated p is demonstrated—along with many other proofs, and aside from the one we have mentioned [→Z 1139], that the φ was missing from the old Greek alphabet known as the Cadmean or the Phoenician—by the fact that the Latins, as is well known, called the Carthaginians, who originated from Phoenicia, Poeni, Poenici, Punici, that is, Fenici, in Greek Φοίνικες, employing as you see a plain p instead of an aspirated p, such as the Greeks used in this name, and an f such as we use in it. And likewise, they also called the color that the Greeks used to call φοινίκεος and, through contraction, φοινικοῦς not only phoeniceum but also poeniceum and puniceum without aspiration. Which may also serve to demonstrate that the ancient Latins (whose alphabet also derived, as we saw [→Z 1136], from Phoenician) lacked a letter of their own to represent the f, and also perhaps the pronunciation of this letter. Or that the Greeks’ φ, from which they may perhaps have taken these names (especially the names of the color, which derive from φοῖνιξ or date palm) was also pronounced like a simple p. See Forcellini, under H; Pontedera, p. 14. (It is of the utmost importance to read his first two letters, which are necessary to my present discourse.)1 The Greeks themselves used once to write ΠΗ for Φ. See Encyclopédie, art. “H,” p. 215. (15 June 1821.)
Youthful ardor is the greatest force, the apex, the perfection, the ἀκμὴ [acme] of human nature. Consider, therefore, the appropriateness of those political systems in which the ἀκμὴ of man, that is, youthful [1170] ardor and force, is not taken into consideration at all, and is kept wholly out of the reckoning, as I have said in another thought [→Z 195–96]. (15 June 1821.)
Consider, on the one hand, what civilization would be without the use of money. Aside from the fact that it would be ungovernable, it would never even have reached a point far inferior to the present. Money is a primary necessity for lively and extended trade, and this lively and extended reciprocal trade, as much between nations as between the individuals of each nation, is perhaps the main source of the progress of civilization, or of human corruption. And if proofs of so obvious a proposition were needed one could adduce, among countless others regarding savage peoples, etc., the example of Sparta. Thanks to Lycurgus’s laws, Sparta made little use of money and, in the middle of what was then the most civilized country in the world, namely Greece, kept itself uncorrupted and practically stationary for so long, or at least its civilization, or corruption, was always many degrees less than that of the other Greek peoples, and it always fell far short of them.
On the other hand, consider the immense [1171] difficulties, the immense space the human mind must have had to traverse, before even thinking of adapting for its everyday use materials so hidden by nature, so hard to drag into the light, so hard, I do not say to work, but to have any inkling that they could ever be worked, simply by being modified and somewhat altered in form. Indeed, before actually finding the metals. And after all that, before thinking of adapting lumps of matter that in themselves (particularly in ancient times) were either useless or of little use and unsuitable and very heavy and (so far as the metals constituting the first currencies, namely copper or iron, etc., were concerned) still very ugly to look at, and turning these lumps of metal into representations of everything that might be useful or necessary or delightful. And one may also deduce just how much time had indeed passed before all that by considering the facts, and by observing that in Homer’s day or at any rate in Trojan times (which were certainly not uncultured) money was either absent or else little and rarely used.
And here I would once again ask if nature could reasonably place such large, numerous, unbelievable obstacles in the way of the discovery of an instrument both crucial and necessary to our obtaining what we call [1172] the perfection and happiness of mankind, that is, civilization; by which I mean the discovery of the use of money.
Observe then, with the modern perfection of the arts, the immense toils and miseries needed to procure money for society. Begin with the labor in the mines and the extraction of metals and go on to the last stage of the process, the minting of coins. Observe how many men are required to suffer constant and unrelenting unhappiness, disease, death, slavery (either unpaid and violent, or mercenary), calamity, pain, suffering, and travails of every kind, in order to procure for other men this instrument of civilization and supposed means of happiness. Tell me then (1) if it is credible that nature had from the beginning put this price, namely, the constant unhappiness of one half of all men (and when I say a half, I have in mind not only this branch of supposed social perfection but also the others that cost the same price) on the perfection and happiness of men. Tell me (2) if these miseries of our fellow human beings are consistent with this same civilization which they serve. It is well known how slavery is [1173] defended by countless political writers, etc., and retained in practice, even against the theories, as necessary for the comfort, perfection, good, and civilization of society. And what I say about money also goes for commodities that come to us from distant parts, by means of the same or similar miseries, slavery, etc., such as sugar, coffee, etc. etc., and are deemed necessary for the perfection of society. See p. 1182.
And you may see from this how it is that civilization (as is the way with all false theories) contradicts itself in theory, too, and furthermore cannot subsist without circumstances that are opposed to its nature and are absolutely uncivilized, indeed barbaric in the true and full sense of the term. So that perfect civilization cannot subsist without perfect barbarism, the perfection of society without the imperfection (and imperfection in the same sense and kind in which perfection is understood), and if this imperfection were removed the roots of the supposed perfection of society would be cut.
I ask again whether it can be assumed that these contradictions and absurdities were ordained and disposed primordially by nature with a view to the perfection, that is, the well-BEING of the principal earthly creature, namely, man.
[1174] And note that the use of money, necessary as it is to what today is called the perfection of the social state, to the same degree harms the perfection I keep on extolling. For its use is one of the principal obstacles to the preservation of equality among men and hence of free states, to the preponderance of true merit and of virtue, etc. etc. And its use is one of the principal reasons that introduce and gradually force society into oppression, despotism, servitude, the burden placed by single classes on others, in short, that extinguish the moral and inner life of the nations, and the nations themselves as nations. (16 June 1821.) What has been said of money can be said of a thousand other practices, etc., necessary to society or civilization, and indeed of very difficult inventions, such as writing, printing, etc.1
I have said several times [→Z 1030, 1039–40] that French literature is the quintessential modern literature, which is as much as to say that it is not literature. Because when we look closely, we shall see that modern times have philosophy, doctrine, sciences of every kind, but do not in the strict sense have literature, and where they do have it it is not modern but ancient in character, virtually a graft of the ancient onto the modern. Imagination, which is the basis of literature strictly understood, [1175] in both poetry and prose is not characteristic of modern times, on the contrary it is uncharacteristic, and even if it is found today in some individuals it is not modern, because not only does it not derive from the nature of the times, but the latter are utterly opposed to it, or rather are its deadly enemy. And you can see, in fact, that French literature, born and formed in modern times, is the least imaginative not only of ancient but also of all modern literatures. And precisely on this account it is a full
y modern literature, one, that is, that is utterly false, because as greatly as the present-day dominance of reason aids the sciences and all notions of the true and the useful (so-called), so too does it do harm to literature and all the arts concerned with the beautiful and the great, whose only foundation, source, and nurse is nature. Nature needs some partial help from reason but has every cause to fear its lethal thrall, which unfortunately we see in our customs and every aspect of our lives today. (16 June 1821.)
The more the world grows with respect to the individual, the more the individual shrinks. Our forebears, though they knew only a very small part of the world, [1176] and were in contact with a still smaller part of it, and very often only with their own homeland, were very great. We, though we know the whole world, and are in contact with the whole world, are very small. Apply this thought to the many different aspects under which we find that, once the world has grown, the individual has shrunk both physically and morally and you will see it to be true in every respect that man and his faculties shrink as the world grows in relation to them. (16 June 1821.)
I have said elsewhere [→Z 714] that excess is often father to nothing. Let us now observe this point in relation to genius and the faculties of the mind. Certain quite extraordinary intelligences that nature has from time to time produced as if by some miracle have been either entirely or very nearly useless, precisely on account of the excessive power of either their intellect or their imagination which ended up unable to issue in anything or to produce any specific result.
(1) Such supreme geniuses have rapidly worn out their bodies and their actual mental faculties, their genius itself. The excessive delicacy of their organs renders them both more liable to wear out and more liable to break down, remaining inferior in capacity to less delicate and more imperfect organs. Witness Pascal, dead at the age of [1177] 39, and he was already subject to a kind of madness. Witness Hermogenes, who was perhaps an illustrious and extraordinary man, although his era did not allow him to appear so to us as well, during the short stretch of time in which he was in full possession of his mental faculties. Witness that Genethlius of whom Hesychius of Miletus and the Suda speak,1 who was merely possessed of a prodigious memory, but what I say about intellect or fantasy also applies to memory, and we have often seen men who were prodigies of memory when young become marvels of forgetfulness when old, or before. See Cancellieri, Degli uomini di gran memoria,2 etc. Were I to set out to list here the illustrious men who have suffered physically, simply on account of their excessive intelligence, and the early deaths that seem to be inevitable for men of remarkably precocious and precociously developed and cultivated genius, I would never finish. See with regard to Chatterton, the famous poet dead at the age of 19, the Spettatore of Milan, Issue 68, p. 276, Foreign section.3
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