Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  Anyone who has despaired of himself, or who for whatever reason loves himself less intensely, is less envious, hates his fellows less, and is hence more susceptible to friendship in this regard, or at any rate is less in contradiction with it. Whoever loves himself more is less able to love. Apply this observation to the nations, to the different degrees of patriotic love always proportional to the different degrees of national hatred, to the need to render a man an egoist of one country in order that he may love his fellows for his own sake, more or less as the theologians say that man should love himself and his fellows in God, and [1724] for the sake of God’s love. (17 Sept. 1821.)

  Man’s hatred toward man is manifested principally and is confirmed by what happens with people in the same profession, etc., among whom, though perfect friendship abstractly considered is impossible and in contradiction with human nature, nonetheless even what is possible in the way of friendship is very difficult, rare, inconstant, etc. Schiller, a man of great feeling, was Goethe’s enemy (for not only is there no friendship, or less friendship among such people, but there is more hatred than among people placed in other circumstances), etc. etc. etc. Women enjoy the misfortune of other women, even when they are their best friends. The young, the misfortune of the young, etc. etc. See Corinne, tome … p.… bk.… ch.… 1 Not only within the same profession, but even at the same age, etc. etc., friendship is less and hatred greater. Except for the exaltation of illusions that the friendship of the young favors greatly, it is certain, especially today, that great and beautiful illusions are nowhere to be found, that friendship is easier between an old or mature man and a youth, than between youth and youth, between [1725] two old people than between two youths. For today, when illusions have disappeared, and virtue is no longer found in the young, the old are more ready to love themselves less, to tire of egoism because they are disenchanted with the world, and hence to love others.

  Therefore, it is true that virtue, as Cicero affirms, De amicitia,1 is the foundation of friendship, nor can there be friendship without virtue, because virtue is but the contrary of egoism, which is the principal obstacle to friendship, etc. etc. etc. (17 Sept. 1821.)

  For p. 1717, beginning. The same goes for quickness of both body and mind, quickness of speech, etc., mobility, and other such human qualities or any that are pleasing for themselves in the nature of things. I say pleasing, not beautiful; indeed, sometimes they are contrary to beauty up to a certain point, and yet they please, etc. What I have said about birds also goes for children in general, because the pleasure they ordinarily cause derives in large part from similar sources. And the same is true of other similarly pleasing objects. (17 Sept. 1821.)

  [1726] The habituation and exercising of the body, independently of the mind, works in the same way either as that of pure mind, or as when it is composite in some way, and partly dependent on the body. It, too, is divided into general and particular. The general exercising of the body makes us capable of, or rather disposed toward particular faculties. The body becomes capable of acting, suffering, etc., by virtue of doing, acting, suffering. Before that it has only the disposition. A new suffering is more or less facilitated according to the body’s general habituation to suffering. So too a new kind of action. Then there are particular habituations to this or that suffering, action, etc., which at the same time as contributing to the general habituation, and facilitating other sufferings and actions, facilitate particularly the one that is their object. In order to acquire similar bodily habituations and faculties, strength, etc., both general and particular, some people need more exercise, others less, according to the different natural or accidental disposition of individuals. Some can get further, others less far, some acquire more, others fewer faculties, and some these faculties, others those, etc. etc. [1727] Someone who has acquired more habituations or faculties, or has acquired this one or that one to a greater degree, someone, in short, who has habituated and exercised his body more or better, acquires other habituations and faculties, including those which initially seemed completely alien or extremely difficult to his nature, etc. etc. etc. (17 Sept. 1821.)

  Teaching is almost the same as habituating. (18 Sept. 1821.)

  However certain someone is of the wickedness of men, he will be reconciled with the human race and think a little better of it if, even just for a moment, he is treated well, no matter on how small a scale. If the wickedest person you know is polite and courteous with you in a way that flatters your self-love, he immediately becomes less bad in your imagination. Still more so a woman with a man or a man (even the ugliest, even one people have the lowest opinion of, even one people really dislike) with a woman. And so it is a maxim, particularly among men, that [1728] whatever the rebuff, idea, opinion, obstacle, custom, you should never despair of winning over a woman. You might as well say in general that man should never despair of winning over anyone. Such is the great power of reason in man! (18 Sept. 1821.)

  As with individuals, so too nations will never achieve anything unless they are full of themselves, full of self-love, ambition, self-regard, self-confidence. (18 Sept. 1821.)

  “Il me semble que nous avons tous besoin les uns des autres; la littérature de chaque pays découvre, à qui sait la connaître, une nouvelle sphère d’idées. C’est Charles-Quint lui-même qui a dit qu’‘un homme qui sait quatre langues vaut quatre hommes.’ Si ce grand génie politique en jugeait ainsi pour les affaires, combien cela n’est-il pas plus vrai pour les lettres? Les étrangers savent tous le français, ainsi leur point de vue est plus étendu que celui des Français qui ne savent pas les langues étrangères. Pourquoi [1729] ne se donnent-ils pas plus souvent la peine de les apprendre? Ils conserveraient ce qui les distingue, et découvriraient ainsi quelquefois ce qui peut leur manquer” [“It seems to me we all need each other. To those who know how to appreciate it, the literature of every country reveals a new sphere of ideas. Charles V himself said that ‘a man who knows four languages is worth four men.’ If that great political genius held this opinion about worldly affairs, how much truer must that not be for literature? Foreigners all know French, so they have a wider point of view than that of the French who do not know foreign languages. Why do they not take the trouble to learn them more often? They would retain their distinguishing characteristics and, in this way, would discover sometimes what they may lack”]. Corinne, bk. 7, ch. 1, final lines.1 (18 Sept. 1821.)

  For p. 1721. The human spirit always makes progress, but slowly and by degrees. When it happens to discover some great truth that demonstrates the falsity of general and consistently held opinions, and that causes a sudden leap in its progress, the majority of men refuse to admit it, calmly proceeding on their way until they arrive at that particular truth which, like all others of such a nature, never becomes generally shared except a long time after it was demonstrated (even incontrovertibly).

  We tend to say that the human mind owes very much, indeed most of all, to the extraordinary geniuses and discoverers who crop up now and again. I believe that it owes them very little, and that the progress of the human spirit is principally the work of average minds. A rare intellect, [1730] having received the lights peculiar to his own age from his contemporaries, presses ahead and takes ten steps forward. The world laughs, persecutes him if need be, and excommunicates him. Nor does it shift from its position, by which I mean, it does not accelerate its march. Meanwhile, the average minds, in part aided by the discoveries of that great man, but above all by the natural course of things, and by virtue of their own reflections, take half a step. Others repeat the truths taught by them, since they are only slightly at odds with ones that are already received and readily admissible. The world, whether for this reason or by dint of the example set by many, follows them. Their successors take another half step with equal success. Thus little by little, until someone comes to complete the tenth step and reach the point which that great spirit had attained so long before. But he is either already forgotten, or the prevailing opinion regarding
him still endures, or finally the world does him no justice, because it finds that it already knows all that he knew, that it has learned it by other means, and does not believe [1731] that it owes him anything. And indeed there is not much that it does owe him. Thus his glory may well be reduced to sterile admiration and to fleeting praise rendered him by some other profound spirit, who reflects upon how he had anticipated the course of the human spirit. Praise and reflection that have little impact, because the world is already his equal, will very soon be his superior, and perhaps is so at present, because time has had every opportunity to further develop and confirm his doctrines. Now, what admiration do we accord to equals or inferiors?

  An age never wishes to find itself in contradiction with the opinions it had in the past, and which were conceived in childhood. It is only capable of progressing gradually, developing its knowledge, and making it possible for future ages to believe the opposite of what it did believe. Thus, the human mind advances without ever believing that it alters its opinions. Only by comparing remote and widely separated periods one with the other does some thinker realize how today the world [1732] believes in a thousand things that are the opposite of what it once believed. But the world got to them without realizing this, and would never have done so if it had. Consequently, it is madness to hope to change the opinions of one’s contemporaries (especially about noncorporeal things), be it even through the most mathematical evidence. One must be content to get it done by degrees.

  It is, however, certain and natural that the swiftness of the progress of the human spirit increases in proportion to that progress itself, like the motion of bodies which, though always gradual, always accelerates proportionately.1 An effect of our being generally habituated into changing our opinions a bit, which very gradually bestows a capacity easily to change them a little more, then a little more, and finally, but still always by proportionate degrees, the world will perhaps also manage to alter its opinions entirely within a single age, and recognize a truth contrary to received opinions without too much effort. (18 Sept. 1821.)

  [1733] The effect of habituation and opinion on the tasting of flavors—a sense that is innate and natural, but one that very often varies even in a single individual, according to differences both of habituation and of opinion concerning good and bad flavors—is evident from the everyday and comparative experience of successive tastes in an individual and of the tastes and judgments of different individuals. (18 Sept. 1821.)

  There is no memory without attention. Suppose two people endowed with the same natural disposition and acquired faculty for remembering, to whom a common accident occurred at one and the same time, but in such a way that one paid particular attention to it and the other did not. Question each of them after a certain period of time (which could be brief). The former will remember it as if it were happening now, the latter as if it had not happened at all. This observation can be made all the time.

  But there are two kinds of attention. One voluntary, and one involuntary; or rather, one spiritual, the other material.1 [1734] You only become capable of the first through the habituation to (and hence the faculty of) paying attention. And consequently, thoughtful men and generally great or applied minds, ordinarily have good memories, and are very distinct from the general run of men by their faculty for remembering even minutiae, because they are in the habit of paying attention. The second kind consists of instances of attention that derive from the strength and intensity of sensations whose impression forces the soul to pay a kind of attention which is in some way material. Consequently, susceptible and imaginative spirits, even if they are not particularly intelligent, or at any rate are not habituated to paying careful attention, as is natural in them, always have very good memories, because everything makes a proportionately greater impression on them than on others. (And this is perhaps usually all that what is considered to be the NATURAL gift of a good and refined memory is. See how it is nothing in itself, and dependent on, indeed, almost [1735] identical to the other mental faculties.) And thus the gift of memory seems to them and others to be natural, and innate precisely, in them, because while they are not in the habit of paying attention, they do so spontaneously because of the strength of impressions that are in some way material. From this derives in large part the durability of memories of things to do with childhood, when all impressions, being extraordinary, are very vivid, and so attention is great although the child does not possess it as a habit. And this durability, like the attention just mentioned, is proportionate to the differing imaginativeness, susceptibility, capacity to be habituated, in short, delicacy and adaptability of the organs of different children. So the memory of the ignorant, or those who are not much accustomed to varied sensations, etc., a memory that is nonexistent where the habit of attention is required (see p. 1717), is normally extremely tenacious when it comes to extraordinary sensations, which for them are frequent, because they do not know much, etc. etc. Wonder operates in them more often, and novelty is not unusual for them, etc., and so we very often find that they have a very quick memory for things which we do not remember at all, etc. And because we see that since they are ignorant they have no practice [1736] either of attention or memory, we think that their memory is a precise faculty that nature has spontaneously endowed them with.

  The monotony of life also assists the memory. It helps us to pay attention, excluding the habit of distraction (as also the excessive number and variety of reciprocally interfering recollections, although these too are facilitated as we become more habituated to them). And it helps us to remember both everyday things and, far more, extraordinary ones, because every small extraordinary thing is rare, and hence makes a notable impression on someone who is accustomed to uniformity.

  Is it not something observed every day that generally speaking we remember what is important to us and forget what does not matter to us? This is because we pay attention to the former but not to the latter.

  None of this has anything at all to do with a special and distinct faculty for remembering that man gets from nature.

  And these observations serve to confirm just how simple the intellectual fabric of man is in nature. That is, it is composed of very few elements which, variously modified and combined, [1737] produce infinite, extremely varied effects. When man looks at these effects superficially, he multiplies the principles, the causes, the forces, the faculties, which are really very few and very simple. And in fact, we have seen that understanding the faculty of memory separately, as is usually the case, and making it out to be one of the three principal powers of the mind, is a dream, and that it is simply a modification or an effect of the intellect and the imagination.

  The kind of attention that I have called material may be applied to all other human habituations that are independent of or only dependent to a limited extent on the mind, and on memory itself. For not just the habituation that we call memory, but all habituations need attention in order to be acquired. Attention, however, may be voluntary or involuntary, noticed or not, in short, spiritual or material, like the kind caused (as I have said) by powerful sensations. (19 Sept. 1821.)

  Where did the invention of the [1738] telescope, which has had such a great influence on navigation, on metaphysical philosophy itself, and so on civilization, come from? From chance. And the invention of gunpowder, which has changed the face of war, and of nations, and done so much to geometricize the spirit of the times and destroy the old illusions, along with individual valor, etc.? Chance. Who knows if aeronautics will not exert a supreme influence over man’s state one day? And what does it derive from? Chance.1 And that infinite number of discoveries, startling in quality, which had to take place for man to reach even that imperfect state in which he is presented in the remotest memory of nations to have come down to us; discoveries that needed centuries upon centuries to be brought to the condition necessary for a society formed in part, and then to be perfected as they are today; discoveries that [1739] the human spirit is at a loss to unde
rstand how they could ever have been conceived, even today, when they were made so long ago, when they have been perfected, when our minds have become so accustomed to them; languages, alphabets, the mining and smelting of metals, the manufacture of bricks, textiles of every sort, seafaring and so trade between peoples, the cultivation of cereals and vines, the making of bread and wine, inventions that the ancients ascribed to the gods, that scripture places after the flood, and were certainly very late indeed, even the cooking of meat, vegetables, etc. etc. etc., all these marvelous and almost frightening inventions, what do we suppose gave rise to them? Chance. Let us consider all those difficult modern discoveries which were made at a time when the human mind had so many and such enormous additional aids to invention. When we see that all of them in one way or another are due to chance, and that none or very few of them derive from the spontaneous and deliberate application of the human mind, or from a calculation of the consequences and the systematic progression of knowledge; that very few again are the result of direct attempts and specially established experiments, but rather of groping in the dark and at random (as were of necessity, you can say, all those experiments, very few in number, that yielded some notable discovery); so much more must we believe the same of all the ancient discoveries that were the most necessary to the existence of formal society. If, therefore, we pay attention to the course of events and the history of mankind, we must agree that all of human civilization is purely the work [1740] of chance. And because chance varies in different remote countries, or is lacking, it has produced different kinds of civilization (that is, perfection) or its complete absence. So must the perfection of the principal living being have been entrusted by nature to chance?1 (19 Sept. 1821.)