The theories the Romantics made such a fuss about in our day should have been restricted to proving that there is no absolute beauty, and hence no stable good taste or universal norm of taste valid for all times and all peoples; that it varies with both, and that consequently good taste, and hence poetry, the arts, eloquence, etc., of our times do not have to be the same as those of the ancients, nor those of Germany, nor the same as the French; that rules in an absolute sense do not exist. But they went further, and rejected or misinterpreted [1672] the judgment and model of this part of nature itself,1 the sole norm of the beautiful. Fanaticism and the craze for being original (a quality that one must have but must not seek) plunged them into untold extravagances. They also very often went astray in the principles and in the speculative philosophy not only of the arts but also of the general nature of things, on which all theories of whatsoever kind depend. —The first regular poem to come to light in Europe after the Renaissance, Sismondi says, is the Lusiads (published one year before the Gerusalemme). This is incorrect: by regular one can only understand similar to the poems of Homer and of Virgil. No poem is absolutely regular. The Furioso is as regular as Goffredo. One might be called exclusively epic, the other a romance epic.2 But as poems, both are equally regular, and other poems that are wholly different in form likewise are and would be, provided that they remained within the bounds of nature. The genres can be infinite, and each genre, [1673] since it is a genre, is regular, even if it consisted of but a single individual. An individual cannot be irregular save in respect to its genre and species. Once it forms a genre, there are no irregularities so far as it is concerned. Even within a single genre (such as the epic) there are a thousand species, and a thousand differences of individual form as well. What a difference there is between the Iliad and the Odyssey, between either of them and the Aeneid. Yet they are all called epic poems, and could also not be called that. Indeed, one could say that if the Iliad is an epic poem, the Aeneid is not, and vice versa. It’s all a question of names, and the rules only depend on the mode in which a thing is. They do not exist before the thing, but arise with it, or from it. (11 Sept. 1821.)
Someone who is unfamiliar with the world, such as a young man, etc., overtaken by some misfortune, whether bodily or of some other sort, through no fault of his own, does not even think that for others this should be a cause for laughing at his expense, for shunning him, scorning him, [1674] hating him, despising him. Indeed, if he frames any thought about others, as far as his misfortune is concerned, he expects only compassion, and even solicitude, or at any rate a desire to help him. In short, he thinks of them only as would-be sources of consolation and hope for his benefit, so much so that he sometimes comes in this respect to enjoy his own misfortune in some way. Such are the dictates of nature. How different are the facts! Even the most experienced people, in the first moments of an accident, are liable to fall into this error, and this hope, at least in an indistinct and blurred way. It does not seem possible to a man that an undeserved misfortune should damage him in the eyes of his fellows, in their regard, their affections, etc. He is firmly persuaded of the exact opposite, and if he is inexperienced he does not take care to hide his accident from others (though he would be able to do so), indeed, he will sometimes endeavor to display it. Whereas the chief art of living consists as a rule in never admitting oneself to be [1675] unlucky, or to be in any way disadvantaged with respect to others, etc.
Equally when someone inexperienced (also someone who is experienced, if drunk with joy) is overtaken by some piece of good fortune, and has obtained some benefit, he will firmly believe that everyone, and especially his friends and acquaintances should rejoice with all their hearts, and does not even suspect that they are bound to hate him, that he is about to lose the friendship of one or the other, that even his dearest friends are bound either to try in countless ways to strip him of his new benefit, to discredit him, etc., or at any rate to wish to do so, to try to diminish the idea and merit of his new fortune, etc., in his eyes, in their own, and in the eyes of others. When all of that happens, as happen it inevitably must, it strikes him as extraordinary. (11 Sept. 1821.)
“Scire nostrum est reminisci” [For us to know is to remember], the Platonists say. An error in their reasoning, that is, the idea that the soul does no more than recall [1676] what it knew before uniting itself with the body. But it can apply very well to my system, and Locke’s.1 For, because man (and the animals) knows nothing by nature, etc., he knows only what he remembers, that is, what he has learned through the experience of the senses. It may be said that memory is the sole source of knowledge, that it is connected to, and all but constitutes everything we know and all our mental and material abilities, and that without memory man would know nothing, and would not know how to do anything. And just as I have said [→Z 1383–84, 1453–55, 1523–25, 1631] that memory is simply habituation, that it arises (albeit very swiftly) from it, and is contained in it, so too conversely it may be said that it contains all habituations, and is the foundation of them all, which is to say, all the knowledge and every aptitude that we have. Our material aptitudes also are to a large extent connected to memory. In short, since memory is essentially habituation of the intellect, so too it may be said that all of an animal’s habits are as memories peculiar to the respective organs that become habituated. (11 Sept. 1821.) See p. 1697, beginning.
[1677] The sorrows of natural men are very intense, as may be seen from the deeds and actions that they inspire, and used to inspire in the ancients. Nonetheless, we observe and admire in men who live in the country a great difficulty (not only in holding on to sorrow for a long period, for this is naturally characteristic of the strongest passions) but also in conceiving it, and feeling it intensely, and extracting themselves from their habitual state of insensibility. They prepare the funerals of their wives or children, accompany them to church, take part in their burial, and a moment later are laughing, speaking of them with indifference, rarely shedding a tear, although if sorrow does sometimes catch hold of them, it is such as it must be among people not far distant from nature. And not only men who live in the country, but all those who belong to the needy or laboring, etc., classes display the same effects. This shows the mercy of nature, and demonstrates that if it has given natural men very intense and frequent and simple pleasures, it has nevertheless as a consequence rendered them prone to extraordinary outpourings [1678] of grief, and yet it has not, as it would seem should be the case, frequently subjected them to even a moderate grief, of the kind that civilized men so often feel. In part the roughness of their hearts, and the utter want of development (or rather the analogous modification) of the faculties producing grief, sensibility, etc., in part the intense and continual distraction produced in natural man by needs, toil, etc. etc., the habituation to certain sufferings, etc., keeps them from finding it easy to grieve, habituates them to the misfortunes of life, renders them more disposed to enjoy than to suffer, quick to forget evil, incapable of feeling it very deeply, or only rarely, etc. Even civilized men who are habitually, or exceptionally, very busy are in the same situation. Likewise also men prone to misfortunes, etc. etc. (11 Sept. 1821.)
We know that in ancient times the diphthong ae of the Latins was written and pronounced as the Greek ai (see the grammarians). Now even today Italian retains this ancient pronunciation [1679] and written form in the Latin vae [woe], the Greek οὐαὶ, which it writes and pronounces guai, with the v having changed into gu, as in guado, guastare, from vadum, vastare, etc. In some parts of Italy, our peasants say golpe (see Monti, Proposta, etc., under Golpe, where he needlessly derives it from the French)1 golo, sguelto, guerro for volpe, volo, svelto, verro (uncastrated pig, verres), etc. etc. And conversely, vardare, valchiera for guardare, gualchiera, etc. We say vizzo and guizzo. (Crusca.) Our forefathers said vivore for vigore. (Crusca.) The French déguiser is a corruption of déviser (see the Crusca under Divisato: svisare is indeed the same, in a strictly etymological sense). I won
’t say anything about the pronunciation of the English w, etc. etc. etc. (12 Sept. 1821.)
Italian, French, Spanish, which are spoken (and particularly Italian) only slightly differently from the way in which the Latins spoke, are not for that reason written as the Latins wrote. Which is to say that, of the two Roman languages distinguished by Cicero, rustic Latin has survived cultured Latin, and one lives on in an altered form while the other is completely dead. Such is the tenacity of the people, and such the difficulty of preserving and [1680] perpetuating something that the multitude plays no part in. This also, however, because of the changing times, barbarism, forgetting how to write well, etc. But rustic Latin was not only preserved by the tenacious nature of the people, notwithstanding the vicissitudes of nations, the influence and inundation by foreigners, etc., it also established itself and remains in the place of written Latin. And the Italian language being turned into literature, etc., was a way of giving a literature to rustic Latin, the other literature of cultured Latin having been lost. And despite the attempts made in the 15th and 16th centuries to revive the latter (both in Italy as elsewhere), it has been lost, and the other has spread, and grown, and lives. (12 Sept. 1821.)
Our reason is itself an acquired faculty. An infant when it is born is not reasonable; the savage is less so than is the civilized man, the ignorant man less so than the educated one, that is, he effectively has less faculty of reasoning, finds it more difficult to draw conclusions, and finds it harder and more puzzling to discern the relationship between the parts of even the most obvious syllogism. Which is [1681] to say that not only does a particular ignorance prevent him from seeing or understanding this or that, but that he has a lesser general power of ratiocination, less of a habit and hence less facility and less capacity of reasoning, and hence less reason.1 For not only does he not understand this or that part of a syllogism, but even if he understands all three parts to perfection (or the two premises) separately, he does not discern the relationship, and does not know how the consequence depends on it, even when the syllogism is formally spelled out to him. Something that cannot be taught. Now, this is genuine inferiority and incapacity of reason. See p. 1752, beginning. These are what we call numbskulls and muddleheads, and these causes account for the rarity of what is called common sense. Note that I say faculty and not disposition. Elsewhere [→Z 1661–63] I distinguished one from the other. The human mind has a disposition to reason (though it is unfruitful in itself); it is not reason on its own account, as I have explained in another regard and with examples, and this disposition primordially and in relation to pure intellect is such that, in its regard as well, wholly inexperienced primitive man is scarcely superior to animals, or not at all. His external organs, etc., which produce for him a number of experiences ten times greater than those that other animals can procure for themselves, very soon place him above other living beings. The combined [1682] experiences of a whole lifetime, then those of many men, and then of many historical periods combined, from which arises speech, and hence teaching, etc. etc., have placed mankind over a very long stretch of time, and daily place the child in a very brief stretch of time, far above the other animals, and give him the faculty of reason. Primitive man at the age of seven was not yet reasonable, as the child is today. The stammering child knows more, is better able to reason, is more reasonable, than was the primitive man at the age of twenty, etc. etc. etc. This may be confirmed through the example of savages, whose society is nonetheless extensive and already old. (12 Sept. 1821.)
Even the adaptability and conformability that I have stated [→Z 1452–53] to be peculiar to man is not strictly speaking innate but acquired. It is the fruit of general habituation, which makes man gradually more or less adaptable and capable of being habituated. In man as he originally was, there only exists a disposition toward adaptability, which is not yet adaptability itself. Man finds it very hard at the beginning to become habituated, to assume [1683] this or that form, then by means of his becoming habituated to doing this, he gradually acquires some facility in it. This may be seen in social characteristics. A man who has had few or no dealings with others, or who has had no dealings for a long time, finds it very hard, indeed, simply does not know how to accommodate himself to the different characters, temperaments, tastes, customs of people, places, times, occasions. He is therefore not at all sociable. With a man used to engaging with men it is just the reverse. He adapts at once to the newest character, etc. Habituation comes from habituation. The faculty of habituation, from having become habituated. (12 Sept. 1821.)
Precisely because the French language only admits its own (unique) style, it is admissible (not, however, without damaging the style, if it is done without good judgment), or is certainly more universally and easily admissible in all languages, than is any other. Because it is incapable of making translations, it is more easily translated into all the cultured languages than any other. The opposite happens, for opposite reasons [1684] proportionately to other languages, and to Italian more than any other modern language, because it outdoes them all in its sheer number of styles, and capacity for translations. The other languages contain French style in a certain way, like a genre, a genre which in French itself covers everything. The truth is that in this genre it far outdoes all the other languages ancient and modern. Develop and spell out this thought, and note that, in fact, the most minute beauties of the French language can be easily translated, and how it has easily corrupted almost all the languages of Europe, and insinuated itself into them. Whereas (in the form in which it now appears) it would certainly never have been liable to corruption by any other, nor in any imaginable circumstance. (12 Sept. 1821.)
Liveliness of physiognomy, of gestures, expressions, style, habits, manners, etc. etc., is naturally and universally pleasing (also to the old). What does this mean? It derives in part from the extraordinary, but in the main this pleasure is independent of the beautiful. It comes in the last analysis from an (innate) inclination of nature [1685] to life, and a hatred of death, and hence of boredom, inactivity, and of what expresses it, such as stupidity. An inclination and hatred that manifests itself in a thousand other spheres of human life, indeed, in the whole of man, indeed in the whole of nature. It is true that it, too, varies in its proportions, according to temperaments, circumstances, etc., and a vivacity that is pleasant, and (as they say) beautiful to one person, will be ugly to another, beautiful today, ugly tomorrow, beautiful to one nation, ugly to another, etc. etc. etc. (12 Sept. 1821.)
Christianity in its perfection prizes solitude and keeping distant from the affairs of the world in order to avoid temptation. —That is to say, in order not to do harm to his fellow man. —A fine way of doing no evil, that of doing no good either. What is the use of that? —But it’s not just a matter of avoiding injury to one’s fellow man. The Christian flees the world in order not to sin within himself or against himself, that is, against God. —This is what I say: by substituting another world for this one, [1686] and a third entity, God, for our fellow man and ourselves, Christianity ends up in its perfect state, that is, in its true spirit, by destroying the world, individual life itself (since not even the individual would have himself as his goal), and, above all, society, whose strongest bond and guarantor it seems, at first glance, to be. What does it profit society, and how can it survive, if the perfect individual must do nothing but avoid things in order not to sin? Must spend his life saving himself from life? Not to live would be just as worthwhile. Life ends up being like an evil, like a sin, like a noxious thing that one should use as little as possible, and lament the need to use it, and wish soon to be rid of it. Isn’t this a kind of egoism? Like that of the philosophers (and they are many) who, despairing of doing good for the world, are content to withdraw and practice virtue toward themselves. Since perfection for the Christian is related to himself (and is such in the true, full spirit of Christianity), since being perfect includes the [1687] flight from temptations, that is to say from the world, and sinc
e, as a result, withdrawal is man’s most perfect state, Christianity is destructive of society.1 Indeed, the perfection of a religion that praises celibacy cannot be relevant to the good of society, for this demonstrates that it situates the perfection of man in something that is completely independent of society (even of those dearest to him), and entirely outside it, in an abstract model that has nothing to do with directing the goals of the individual to the common good. Such a religion also necessarily had to praise solitude, and man, according to its lights, was supposed to be (as in fact he is) the closer to perfection the less he took part in human affairs through works and thoughts, since the perfect Christian is perfect only in himself. One can see from this that Christianity has found no means of rectifying life other than by destroying it, regarding it as a nothing, even an evil, and directing the gaze of the perfect man outside it, to a model of perfection independent of it, to things [1688] of a nature entirely different from our own and from man’s. (13 Sept. 1821.)
Because of the animal’s strong inclination toward its fellow creatures, ardent imaginations (as are children’s to a greater or lesser extent), find forms similar to human forms everywhere. But note that although it is much less easy to find an analogy between various material objects and the features of the face than between those objects and the other parts of the body, nonetheless the imagination always finds in such objects a greater analogy with man’s physiognomy than with the other parts; in fact, it doesn’t even consider them. See my discourse on the Romantics.1 So true is it that the principal part of man with regard to man is the face. (13 Sept. 1821.)
People talk all the time about proprieties. And believe that they are fixed, universal, invariable, and that on them is founded all good taste. Now, how many things that are proper, and therefore beautiful, and therefore in good taste in Italy are not so in France, when it comes to customs, demeanor, writing, the theater, eloquence, poetry, etc.? Isn’t Dante a [1689] a monster to the French in his best parts, a God to us? So discuss, and following this example analyze in order everything, all possible proprieties, comparing the ideas that we or other nations have of these things with those which the French have. (13 Sept. 1821.)
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