Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  In any case, returning to our first topic, just as imagination and particular mysteriousness, etc., have a very great influence on and modify, etc., even the most corporeal love toward particular individuals of the other sex (or even of the same sex, following the usage of the Greeks), so the imagination and general mysteriousness which derives from the use of clothes had an influence in the way mentioned in the thought to which this one refers, and always and continuously has a general influence on the love and the feelings (even the most material in origin, purpose, etc.) of one sex toward the other, considered as a whole. And just as thinking about the spirit, which is a hidden thing, influences the way we think about the body, and turns feelings and ideas which naturally and primarily start from there and properly refer to the body (though now more now less openly and immediately and primarily) into feelings and ideas that are mysterious and vague; so thinking about the body, which has itself, for the most part, become hidden and subject more to the imagination of others than to the senses, makes feelings and ideas mysterious, etc., and spiritualizes them in the most natural way, etc. And from a cause that is entirely and supremely material there is born [3915] an effect which has about it that which is most completely spiritual, purely spiritual, more spiritual than any other, etc.

  In order now to discuss the extent to which imagination, opinion, preconception, and a hundred causes that by their nature and origins are completely alien and extrinsic to the subjects themselves, have influence and power over the love and feelings of one sex toward another in particular cases, a single example among an infinite number will suffice. Suppose a brother and a sister, both very young, very beautiful, very sensitive, and in every way very inclined to, and also very experienced in, love toward individuals of the other sex. Let us suppose that after a long absence, they see each other again, and let us assume that this happens in times or circumstances in which their hearts, their sensitivity, their capacity for passion have not been in any way blasées [blunted], usées [worn away], stupefied, weakened, etc., either by dealings with the world or anything else. It is certain that they will have feelings toward each other which are very intense, very tender, very loving, they will weep with affection, etc. But although in the passion, momentary or lasting, that they feel toward each other, there will certainly be much that is corporeal, for I have supposed them to be very beautiful and very young, as well as very sensitive, there will be nothing that is sensual in any way at all, and the corporeal will take the form of the most spiritual thing in the world. And yet, just as that passion will be different from sensual love of any sort, so it will be of a very perceptibly different kind and nature from any of those loves toward another sex that are called sentimental, beginning [3916] from the most imperfect, right up to the most pure, spiritual, Platonic, and apparently most chaste and angelic, in short the most truly and purely sentimental that one could find or think of.1 And they themselves, expressly or implicitly, will be aware of this difference, so that not even for a moment will they be able to confuse the passion they are experiencing now with any other, which of course they will be very capable of experiencing, as I have supposed, and therefore to imagine well, and moreover they will in effect have experienced them, as I have also supposed. In fact I wish also to suppose that both find themselves at the present moment in one of these other passions, and that they are on the one hand extremely intense in nature, and on the other the most pure and sentimental possible. And the one passion will not harm the other, nor will they cease to feel, in a way which is beyond doubt, a marked and complete difference of kind between the two. It is certainly the case that all these suppositions are not fanciful, and that speaking generally, there have been and effectively there are in civilized nations passions of love which are very intense and tender and pure and constant between brother and sister, both young and beautiful; of a father toward a very beautiful daughter, of a mother, etc., and so on; and that these passions can be and were and are very distinct from any other of those which are experienced and can be experienced toward individuals of the other sex. In short it is certain that there exists a fraternal love, a paternal love, etc., more or less intense, but also very intense and very tender [3917] between persons of different sex, which is very perceptibly and totally distinct from any of those loves, as more properly described, that are experienced toward individuals of another sex toward whom they are not barred by certain laws claimed as natural, that is by opinion, etc. There exists, I say, the love mentioned among civilized, or semicivilized persons, etc., that is among those men in whom laws and therefore relative opinions hold sway. And it lasts to a greater or lesser extent, more frequently but less long-lastingly (in such an intense and tender state, and one so different from that of other loves). But it is enough for our argument that it is both possible and often (even if only once) real, even if only for a single instant. (In any case, this does not prevent there existing and having existed other more frequent sensual or sentimental loves, but of a different kind, between brothers and sisters, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, etc., even the most civilized.)

  Now, from these observations one can deduce (1) how, speaking generally about love between one sex and the other, it depends on and is modified by imagination and opinion, without any influence of its own nature. For if the person seen by the brother had not been his sister, or indeed if he had simply not known that she was, he would certainly have felt a quite different kind of love, or at least felt himself driven by or capable of quite different kinds of feelings toward her. Just by knowing and thinking that this is his sister makes him feel an entirely different and distinct kind of feelings and love. For the idea that this difference, experiencing one set of feelings and not another, is not an effect of opinion and prejudice but rather of a secret natural instinct, [3918] as they say, which works in such a way that the brother, even without knowing that she is his sister, can only feel affection (albeit minimal), and that of a brotherly nature, and no other kind of affection, and so with a father toward an unknown daughter, or toward a child of the same sex, and similar things, is all nonsense, and shown to be totally false, apart from by reason, by a thousand experiences.1

  (2) These observations serve as another example confirming my first proposition, that is how many passions, feelings, etc., even very tender ones, etc., which appear absolutely natural, in fact how many kinds of passion absolutely and in origin and principle are the pure effect of circumstances, opinions, etc., and of accidents which in nature would not take place. In fact this fraternal or paternal love, etc., toward individuals of the other sex, so intense on the one hand, and on the other so distinct from other, even the purest, loves toward the different sex, appears to be the most natural thing in the world, and yet it is the mere effect of circumstances, opinions, laws. And they are the true mothers of this sort of love, which looks as though it can only be the work and daughter of nature, and that nature put this into men’s minds with its own hand, whereas without opinions, customs, and laws that sort of love would not have existed, at least to that degree, etc., and the human race would be completely inexperienced in it, and would not know what it was. As indeed does happen among savages, etc., who have no relevant laws or customs, etc., and who will never see an obstacle to having relations with their sisters. And if they love them intensely that can only [3919] be carnally (since neither are they capable of the other sentimental loves), otherwise they will not love them, or only slightly and without rapture, and as companions accustomed from birth to live together, as happens also with other animals toward their habitual companions, without this having anything to do with their being of the same blood or this in turn having any part in the production of that affection, except insofar as it can be the cause of a similarity, etc., which gives rise to friendship, and with the exception of other extrinsic circumstances, different in short from proper and simple consanguinity in itself, although these are also its effects. And this sort of temperate friendship will take place, as among animals, als
o among savages (and also among us), more between companions accustomed to living together than between brothers and sisters, or between fathers and children, assuming that the latter have not been so accustomed, and others and outsiders have been. For the friendship that exists between them does so as between habitual companions (an accident, and something whose effects belong to habituation) not because they are consanguineous, or inasmuch as they are similar in nature, character, inclinations, age, etc., not because they are consanguineous, etc. etc. In any case what I have said about fraternal or paternal love, etc., between individuals of different sexes should be extended also to that between brother and brother, father and son, etc., because that too in very great part is the work and absolute creation, either of laws, customs, opinions, etc., or of habituation, living together, similarity, things in short that are different from consanguinity in itself. Especially a love which is intense, sentimental, tender, fervid, etc. Which equally does not usually [3920] occur except in civilized people, etc. Among savages, as among animals, love, or at least intense love between parents and children, rather of parents toward children, does not last except insofar as it is necessary for the preservation of the latter, etc. At that time it is truly natural and instinctive, etc. But savages out of barbarity sometimes do not refrain from the custom of abandoning children as soon as they are born, or shortly after, etc., from exposing them, etc. etc., as many ancient civilizations also practiced, and unfortunately is practiced among us in a thousand cases, etc. etc., and Rousseau exposed all or not a few of the children he had by his Teresa Levasseur,1 etc., things which are unknown in any other species of animals, and against nature if anything ever is, and of which only man gathered in society, that is corrupt, is capable, and things by their nature pernicious to the species, etc. etc.a2 See Aristotle, Politics, Florence 1576, bk. 7, pp. 638–40,3 where exposure of children is offered as a suitable and necessary law for republics, and not only imperfect ones, as in Sparta, but also those born after a certain age, etc., and moreover where exposure is not permitted by law, that same philosopher advises and prescribes artificial and voluntary ἄμβλωσις [abortion],4 etc. And see also Vettori’s commentaries on the passages mentioned. (26 Nov. 1823.)

  Italian orthography erring through Latinism. Machiavelli in one of the editions of the Testina5 (which are the originals, and where the orthography has not been modernized, as later on, by other hands) writes a thousand words in deformed fashion because of Latinism, although certainly in his day they were not pronounced like that, but as they are today, etc., for example Pontifice [Pontiff] (part 2, p. 73, beginning and in the whole of the history, etc.) and similar. (26 Nov. 1823.)

  [3921] I say elsewhere in various places [→Z 1382, 2410–14, 2736–39, 3291ff., 3835–36, 3906] that because men and living beings which are stronger either by age or constitution or climate or whatever other reason, habitually or at any given moment or whenever, have more life, etc., they also have more self-love, etc., and therefore they are more unhappy. That is true up to a point. But they are also so much more capable both of lively external action and of strong and intense pleasures. Therefore so much more capable of lively distraction and occupation, so much more able to direct the inner operation of self-love and the desire for happiness powerfully on to themselves and their being. Once converted to act this potential is one of the most important means, perhaps rather the most important means to happiness or to less unhappiness allowed to living creatures. (I consider the things called pleasures to be useful and leading to happiness, only insofar as they are strong distractions, and lively diversions of self-love—because they are of no use in any other way—and distractions which are all the stronger, the more intense and strong are the pleasures, so called, and the greater their essence of pleasure, and the more intense their sensation. The weak are incapable of strong pleasures, or only rarely and very infrequent, and always less strong than those experienced by the vigorous, because their nature does not have the faculty either to feel more than a little intensely, or to feel pleasurably when the sensations are more than slightly intense.) If the strong man is in any way deprived, for whatever reason, of pleasures, or of sufficiently strong pleasures, and of intense sensations, and of the power to put into practice his faculty of action, or to put it into action more than the weak person can, he is in truth more unhappy than the weak person, and suffers [3922] more. And so, among other things, in the present state of nations and where the nature of that state is concerned, young people are generally more unhappy than the old, and it is more fit and proper for old age than for youth. The strong man is less unhappy than the weak in equal afflictions and sorrows, more unhappy if he is deprived of pleasures, or of pleasures which are more intense and frequent than those of the weak. He is more apt to suffer, and less apt not to enjoy, or we might say less unsuited for the one, and more unsuited for the other.

  But besides all this, we must distinguish carefully between the strength of the spirit and the strength of the body. Self-love dwells in the spirit. Man is generally more unhappy, the more that part which is called spirit is stronger and more alive in him. Whether that part described as corporeal is stronger, does not in itself mean that he will be less unhappy, nor does it increase his self-love, except insofar as the greater or lesser vigor of the body is in certain parts and respects, and in certain ways, bound to and corresponding to and proportionate to that of the part called spirit. But overall and in most respects, the greater strength of the body is so far from being the cause of greater self-love and unhappiness, that on the contrary the latter and the former are naturally in inverse ratio to the strength which is properly corporeal, whether habitual or transitory. Self-love and therefore unhappiness are in direct proportion to the feeling of life. Now it happens, speaking generally and naturally, that in those who are the strongest in body their life is indeed greater, but the feeling of life is less, and as much less as the total of life and strength is greater. Vice versa in the weaker in body. Or if we can express ourselves in a different way, and perhaps more clearly, in those who are stronger [3923] in body their external life is greater, their internal less; and the opposite in those weaker in body. It fact it has been well observed that generally, naturally, and other circumstances being equal, nations and individuals weaker in body are more inclined to and less hindered from thinking, reflecting, reasoning, imagining, than are the stronger; and an individual as well is more so when in a state and time of corporeal weakness or less strength, rather than in a state of corporeal strength, or of greater strength. Men of feeling, heart, imagination, those in short whose spirit is changeable, susceptible, and in a word more alive than the others, are delicate and weak in constitution, and this is something so common that the contrary, that is great and extraordinary sensitivity, etc., in a strong body, would be a phenomenon. See p. 3945. Life is the feeling of existence. This is entirely in that part of man which we call spiritual. Therefore greater or lesser life, and therefore self-love and unhappiness, must be measured by the greater strength not of the body but of the spirit. And the greater strength of the spirit consists in greater delicacy, refinement, etc., of the organs which serve the spiritual functions. Delicacy of organs is unlikely to be found in a constitution which is not delicate; and vice versa, etc. The delicacy of the internal physique matches naturally and is accompanied by that of the external. In addition strength of body makes man more material, and therefore properly speaking, less alive, because life, that is the feeling of existence, is in the spirit and of the spirit. So too passions and actions, material sensations and pleasures, etc., all the more the stronger they are (with respect to the capacity and the physical and moral habits, etc., of the individual); the present ones at the present moment, the habitual ones habitually. Material sensations in a strong body, or in an individual who through exercise or for some other [3924] reason has acquired greater corporeal strength than he had naturally, or in a weak body which finds itself in a transitory state of extraordinary strength, are s
tronger, but not thereby more alive, on the contrary less so because they still retain more of the material, and matter (that is that part of things and of man which we more particularly call matter) is not alive, and the material cannot be alive, and has nothing to do with life, but only with existence, which considered without life, is not capable either of self-love or of unhappiness.1 Thus the material is not capable of life, and the more a thing, an action, a sensation, etc., is material, the less it is alive. In short each species of living creature with respect to the others, each individual with respect to its fellows, each nation with respect to the others, each state of the individual, whether it is natural, or habitual, or of the moment and transitory, with respect to its other states, the more of the material it has, and the less of the spiritual, the more it is, properly speaking, less alive, the less it partakes of life both in quantity and in intensity and degree, so much less is the amount and strength of its self-love, and so much less is it unhappy. Therefore among living creatures, the least organized species, since they have a more material existence, and less of life properly called, are less unhappy.2 Among human nations the northern ones, stronger in body, less alive in spirit, are less unhappy than southern nations. Among human individuals the stronger in body, less delicate in spirit, are less unhappy. Among the various states of the individual, that for instance of drunkenness—because, although it is more alive in relation to the body, it is less alive in relation [3925] to the spirit (which at that time is obruto [overwhelmed] by matter, and its spiritual sensations by the material, and the very actions of the spirit, although stronger, etc., are at that time more material than normally), and therefore since at that time life is more material, and therefore properly is less life (as at times of sleep or lethargy, although this is inert, and drunkenness more awake and more active sometimes than the sober state)—is less unhappy.