Zibaldone
Page 117
From the consonants that necessarily end in an e, we must except our c, and closed g, and the Spaniards’ ch, which [1347] letters cannot be pronounced except with the organs, that is, the tongue, the palate, and the teeth so clenched that the sound, also when it occurs in the middle of the word and anywhere else, inevitably issues in an i, as thin as you like, and this is because i is the thinnest, narrowest vowel. It issues, I repeat, in an i but it then really ends in an e (virtually ie) whenever these letters and their analogous sounds are pronounced in isolation, or at the end of a word or, in short, without any other support from a vowel. The same happens to the sounds that have a share in the above, such as gli (which we never write without the i, or pronounce in any other way), and gn. See p. 1363. On the other hand, we also put our closed c and g before the e, although the latter, together with i, is the only vowel that we put them before. This, though, in writing. But pronunciation always interposes an i between the c and e, etc., and our ancestors used to do the same, even when writing those words from which a none too analytical orthography has excluded the i. (19 July 1821.)
Although I had never read metaphysical writers, had concerned myself with altogether different studies, and had learned nothing of such matters in the Schools (where I had never been),1 I had already grasped the falsity of innate ideas, divined Leibniz’s [1348] Optimism, and discovered the principle that whatever progress there is in knowledge lies in grasping that one idea contains another, which is the essence of the wholly new science of ideology.1 But how ever could I, with my meager intelligence, and without any help, and after very little reflection, find these very profound and all but ultimate truths on my own, which, though unknown for 60 centuries, have changed the face of metaphysics, and human knowledge itself almost? How is it possible that out of so many supreme geniuses, throughout that same span of time, no one managed to see what I, a modest intelligence, have seen by myself, and even with less knowledge in these matters than many of them will have had?
It is therefore not true of itself that the human mind progresses by degrees, by availing itself chiefly of the enlightenment procured for it by time, and the truths already discovered by others, and by deducing further consequences from them, and continuing with the edifice already begun, and employing the materials already prepared.
If we could question the supreme discoverers of the most sublime, profound, and far-reaching [1349] truths, we would know how few of these discoveries are due to the enlightenment provided by the previous ages, how many of those geniuses, as a rule allergic to study, may have been unaware of truths that had already been discovered, etc., how many may have discovered the great truths which they have revealed to the world not by availing themselves of the knowledge of others but for themselves and following only their own thoughts, and that it was after they had made their discoveries that they realized they were the consequences of already known truths rather than deducing their discoveries from such truths and using them and, once they had been found, considering and demonstrating their relationships, etc. etc. etc. Take the case of Pascal, etc. Bacon had already discovered so many truths that astound the most profound and most enlightened moderns. Yet he was writing during the rebirth of philosophy, indeed he was virtually the first modern philosopher, and so the first saw much further than his countless successors would be able to see, despite all the enlightenment later acquired.
What then is the reason that the human mind in the last two centuries has discovered so many very profound truths, so unknown to all past centuries? I mean the principal reason, since the one I have mentioned, although it is certainly a reason, is not the principal reason, or is certainly not universal. Now, because we are discussing how among so many supreme ancient minds none got even close to the truths that many moderns, or several at least, have discovered, either entirely or mainly by [1350] themselves, we must find universal reasons, that is, entire and necessary reasons, to explain the whole effect. I think they are as follows.
(1) The difference between languages, and the greater or lesser abundance of terms, their greater or lesser precision and universality, and certainty of signification and stability. See Sulzer, in the Opuscoli interessanti, Milan, vol. 4, pp. 65–70, 79–80. The greater or lesser abundance of words expressing clear ideas, etc., see ibid., pp. 53–54.1 I am wholly persuaded that one of the main reasons why the Greeks, in abstract and profound studies (both philosophical and grammatical, etc. etc. etc.), as in every other kind of knowledge, surpassed all the ancients, the Romans, etc., is the great capacity their language had to express, and express precisely, new things, and the new and specific ideas of each person. A capacity that is evident even today in the fact that it is that language in preference to any other that supplies us with the names for new or more precise and subtle things and ideas, and with entire terminologies, etc.
In this regard, time has certainly assisted in the discovery of new truths, because knowledge influences language, as language does knowledge. [1351] But it has assisted it indirectly, and I would go on to say that the modern inventors did not so much avail themselves directly of already prepared knowledge as of the language which they had, which, by contrast with the ancient languages, sufficed to fix and define in their minds the new ideas that they conceived, to elucidate them, that is, to make them clear to themselves, constant and not transient, etc. etc.
(2) The new nations that have devoted themselves to thought. Ancient culture was wholly southern. In ancient times, the north did not yet know how to think, or had neither time nor leisure to do so, or if it thought, did not write it down or communicate it, nor did it fix and define its thoughts through writing. The north—England, Germany, “the homeland of thought” (Staël)1—is new and modern in the philosophy that is indeed made for it. New and modern because the same nature that makes the north so suited to abstract notions, also made it more resistant toward and belated in its reception of civilization. And of itself, nature distances the north from philosophy as much as she then leads it there with the aid of culture. [1352] But no sooner did the north devote itself to philosophy than it made progress such as the south, despite its far more dazzling civilization and literature, did not yet dream of doing. Bacon, as mentioned above, was English, and Leibniz German. Newton, Locke, etc. Germany, rising long after England, that is, after Frederick II, to a universal and stable literature, has become in a moment the seat of abstract philosophy, etc.
(3) And the chief cause is as follows. To assume a natural difference in intelligence between the ancients and the moderns would be absurd. But it is certainly true that circumstances modify intellects in such a way that they are made to seem of a different nature. Now I have already many times explained how it is that men’s modern circumstances, as much physical as moral, political, etc., greatly encourage reflection and reason, and how ancient circumstances, because they assisted and promoted imagination to so great an extent, discouraged profound reflection. Whence I maintain that a man of genius who twenty or more centuries ago had found himself in the circumstances in which a private citizen finds himself today, notwithstanding the different level of enlightenment, and the smaller sum of knowledge, would have [1353] been able to arrive on his own at virtually that point at which the modern philosophers and supreme metaphysicians have arrived, or at any rate come very near to those truths which the ancients either did not even glimpse, or which through a shortcoming in the language, etc., they could not define, or communicate to others, or fix in their own minds. But a specific man in specific circumstances would probably, in fact, also have fashioned an adequate language, etc. This is confirmed by our finding (i) that among the ancients, where there are small differences in the times and in levels of enlightenment, very great differences may be found in thinking and in philosophy, depending upon the various circumstances. How distant is Tacitus from Livy? Barely a century. Livy died in the year 17. According to Lipsius (Vita Taciti), Tacitus was born around 54 years after Christ, that is to say, 37 years later.1 How muc
h progress could universal knowledge, etc., and the human mind generally, have made in so short a time? Yet what a difference in profundity. Indeed, it may be said that Livy is the model of the ancient historian, Tacitus of the modern. (ii) That among the moderns the same differences may also be found in one and the same period, etc., on account of the different circumstances of life. Who is unaware that man and intelligence, and the offspring and fruits of intelligence, indeed, that all of it is the work of circumstances?
[1354] From these observations, you may deduce that just as present circumstances, which are so favorable to reflection, and the investigation of abstract matters, are not natural, so too nature had also made ample provision for man’s social state, even for those truths which were supposed to assist this state, and serve as a foundation for it, truths well known to the ancients, who were so much less profound than we are. What do abstract truths in the end avail us, if even in an excess of metaphysics the human mind went astray? How much more useful were those truths which I established with regard to politics, etc., than these more metaphysical ones, to which the advance and natural course and subsequent refinement of my intellect now brings me!1 So that it may be said that philosophy (by which I mean moral philosophy, which is the greater, and perhaps the most useful part of philosophy) was, so far as usefulness was concerned, already perfected at the time of Socrates, who was the first philosopher from the better known nations, or, if we will, at the time of Solomon. And now philosophy, although so much more advanced, is not more perfect, indeed it is less so, because it is immoderate, and hence it too is corrupted, and reason likewise is corrupted, as are civilization and nature. [1355] Corrupted, I mean, through excess, as they are, etc. For perfection or imperfection and corruption must be measured in terms of the end of each thing, and not indeed absolutely. (20 July 1821.)
A thing is the more perfect the better its attributes are ordered to suit its end. This obviously relative perfection can be measured, and compared even to perfection of other kinds. But how can the greater or lesser perfection of the various ends be measured? How can the various ends be measured? What absolute logic, what comparative norm exists independently of anything at all, to judge this end to be more perfect or better than that one, outside of one and the same system of ends? (For within one and the same system, subordinated ends can be compared; they are not really ends, however, but means, and parts, and they too are attributes of the system.) How then can one judge absolutely the greater or lesser abstract perfection of things? And how can an absolute good or evil, an absolute goodness or beauty, or their contraries, exist? (20 July 1821.)
[1356] A very beautiful face, which bears some resemblance to a physiognomy disliked by us, or which gives the impression and has the air of another ugly physiognomy, etc. etc., does not strike us as beautiful. (20 July 1821.)
It is a known fact that literature and poetry go against the tide of the sciences. The former, when reduced to the status of arts, become sterile, whereas the latter flourish. The former, once they have reached a certain mark, go into decline, while the more the latter advance, the more they grow. The former are always greater, more beautiful, more marvelous among the ancients, whereas the latter are greater, etc., among the moderns. The more the former distance themselves from their origins, the more they deteriorate, until they become corrupted, whereas the latter are more imperfect, weak, impoverished, and often inane, the closer they are to their origins. The reason is that the principal foundation of the former is nature, which does not become perfect (or only up to a certain point) but becomes corrupted, whereas the foundation of the latter is reason, which needs time to grow, and advances with the centuries and with experience. Experience is the teacher of reason, the nurse, the tutor of reason, and the murderer of nature. So it is then with languages. [1357] Those of their attributes which on the one hand assist reason, and on the other hand depend on it, grow and are perfected with time; those that depend on nature go into decline, are corrupted and fade. So languages gain in precision as they draw away from their original state, and they gain in clarity, order, rule, etc. But where efficacy, variety, etc., and everything to do with beauty is concerned, they steadily lose the further they draw away from the state that constitutes their original form. The combination of reason with nature occurs when they are applied to literature. Then art corrects the uncouthness of nature, and nature the aridity of art. Then languages are in a state of relative perfection. But they do not stop there. Reason advances, and as reason advances, nature retreats. There is no longer a counterbalance to art. Precision predominates, beauty succumbs. Language, having lost its original state of nature, and the other, more perfected state of regulated or, we might say, formed nature, lapses [1358] into the geometric state, into the state of aridity and ugliness. (While it was being formed, the French language from the beginning, and because of the circumstances of the time, drew near to this state, because reason prevailed in it, and a balance between art and nature in the French language there never was, or never a perfect one.) Philosophers call this state a state of perfection; men of letters call it a state of corruption.
Neither is mistaken. Those who cherish the beauty of a language are right to be unhappy with its modern state, and wisely recall it to its principles; I mean, to the period when it was first formed, and not beyond, since this is what people foolishly demand, and by wishing to regenerate the language, even as regards beauty, they achieve the opposite, because they plunge from one extreme to the other: and beauty cannot remain at the extremes, but in the middle, and at that point at which it was constituted and perfected. Those who are concerned that language serves to increase the yield of reason recommend precision, promote the richness of terms, shun and discard words and phrases, etc., which are beautiful and elegant, etc., but are detrimental to certainty, [1359] clarity, and ease, etc., of expression. And they hate the ancient form, inadequate and detrimental to the establishment and communication of profound and subtle truths.
How then shall we proceed? The course of human affairs is one thing, that of languages quite another. The philosophical perfection of a language can always increase. Literary perfection, beyond the point I have mentioned, cannot increase (save with respect to details), indeed, it cannot help but spoil and fade. Both parties are right, and to a very great degree. We would do well to reconcile them. The task is difficult, but not impossible. A language, especially one like ours (not so the French language) can retain or recover its ancient properties, and adopt modern ones. If writers are wise, and show good judgment, that is the means of establishing concord.
Men of letters and poets are perpetually divided from philosophers. Contemporary philosophy, which reduces metaphysics, ethics, etc., to an all but mathematical form and condition, is no longer compatible with literature and poetry, whereas the philosophy of the times in which our language, Latin, and Greek were formed was so. (I have already said [→Z 110, 373–75, 1226–27] that French does not have a true literature or true poetry, apart from that epigrammatic and conversational literature which is characteristically theirs, and where they are very successful, and that the rest is philosophy rather than literature.) The philosophy of Socrates could, and will always be able to be [1360] not only in sympathy with, but also of limitless use to literature and poetry, and will also aid men well beyond the present day (see p. 1354), from which I would not deny that it might receive some improvement, almost of a subsidiary nature, or almost a second flowering. But the philosophy of Locke, Leibniz, etc., will never be able to stand alongside literature, nor alongside true poetry. The philosophy of Socrates participates to some degree in nature, but this other philosophy does not participate in it at all, and is reason through and through. Consequently, neither it nor its language is compatible with literature, by contrast with the philosophy of Socrates, and with its language. His philosophy is such that almost all men who have a little wisdom have always participated in it to a greater or a lesser degree in every age and nation, even before Socrate
s. It is a philosophy that is not very distant from the one that nature herself teaches social man. The languages may therefore divide, and our own, which contains so many of them, so diverse even if they are of the same kind, could well contain at one and the same time a beautiful language and a philosophical language. And it will then have a philosophy, and will continue to have the poetry and the literature through which it has always surpassed all the modern languages.
I know full well that the epoch of truth is not the epoch of beauty, and that an age or a land fertile in great intellects will find it hard to be fertile in great imaginations and sensibilities, because men’s minds are modified by circumstances. This being the case, it will always hold that, since this is the epoch of truth, our language must take on the attributes which serve the truth, and which it never had. If, however, Italy, land of the beautiful and the great, should indeed continue [1361] to produce minds suited to literature and to poetry, the only way we can ensure that they too may have or continue to have a language, and one not harmed by the nature of the age, is the one I have said. (20 July 1821.)
All of the above ought to apply not only to languages, but also to literatures, whose perfection likewise consists in the moment that I have identified in relation to languages, etc., and which likewise ought to be separated from modern philosophy, and applied also to men of letters, who ought not to be philosophers in the modern style, not only in their writings but, if possible, not even in their hearts, etc. (21 July 1821.)
Οὐδὲν τοῦ ὅλου, rien du tout [nothing at all], pas (which strictly speaking means nothing) du tout [not at all]. (21 July 1821.)
Anyone wishing to grasp the difference between ancient love of country and modern, and between the ancient and modern condition of the nations, and between the idea one had in times past, and the idea one has at present of one’s own country, etc., should consider the punishment of exile, a supreme and very frequently used punishment among the ancients, and the ultimate punishment for Roman citizens. And yet today it has almost fallen into disuse, and is always the least of punishments, and [1362] often ridiculous. Nor is it helpful to invoke the smallness of states. Among the ancients, being exiled from a single city, even if it were as small, poor, and unhappy as you like, was dreadful, if that was the exiled person’s homeland. Perhaps it is still like this even today in less civilized, or more natural parts, such as Switzerland, etc. etc., whose extraordinary love of country is well known, etc. Today, exile is not usually actually imposed as a punishment, but as a measure of convenience, utility, etc., in order to be rid of a person’s presence, to bar him from that particular place, etc. Not so in ancient times, when the chief purpose of sending someone into exile was the chastizing of the person exiled, etc. etc. (21 July 1821.) The gravity of the punishment of exile consisted in the exiled person being deprived of a citizen’s rights and benefits (since elsewhere he could not be a citizen), which in ancient times amounted to something.1