The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (80 page)

1215.

air would be dismembered or rent and broken up with the rending of
the air into which it was incorporated.

It is impossible that the spirit infused into a certain quantity of
air, should move this air; and this is proved by the above passage
where it is said: the spirit rarefies that portion of the air in
which it incorporates itself; therefore this air will rise high
above the other air and there will be a motion of the air caused by
its lightness and not by a voluntary movement of the spirit, and if
this air is encountered by the wind, according to the 3rd of this,
the air will be moved by the wind and not by the spirit incorporated
in it.

In order to prove whether the spirit can speak or not, it is
necessary in the first place to define what a voice is and how it is
generated; and we will say that the voice is, as it were, the
movement of air in friction against a dense body, or a dense body in
friction against the air,—which is the same thing. And this
friction of the dense and the rare condenses the rare and causes
resistance; again, the rare, when in swift motion, and the rare in
slow motion condense each other when they come in contact and make a
noise and very great uproar; and the sound or murmur made by the
rare moving through the rare with only moderate swiftness, like a
great flame generating noises in the air; and the tremendous uproar
made by the rare mingling with the rare, and when that air which is
both swift and rare rushes into that which is itself rare and in
motion, it is like the flame of fire which issues from a big gun and
striking against the air; and again when a flame issues from the
cloud, there is a concussion in the air as the bolt is generated.
Therefore we may say that the spirit cannot produce a voice without
movement of the air, and air in it there is none, nor can it emit
what it has not; and if desires to move that air in which it is
incorporated, it is necessary that the spirit should multiply
itself, and that cannot multiply which has no quantity. And in the
4th place it is said that no rare body can move, if it has not a
stable spot, whence it may take its motion; much more is it so when
an element has to move within its own element, which does not move
of itself, excepting by uniform evaporation at the centre of the
thing evaporated; as occurs in a sponge squeezed in the hand held
under water; the water escapes in every direction with equal
movement through the openings between the fingers of the hand in
which it is squeezed.

As to whether the spirit has an articulate voice, and whether the
spirit can be heard, and what hearing is, and seeing; the wave of
the voice passes through the air as the images of objects pass to
the eye.

Nonentity.

1216.

Every quantity is intellectually conceivable as infinitely
divisible.

[Amid the vastness of the things among which we live, the existence
of nothingness holds the first place; its function extends over all
things that have no existence, and its essence, as regards time,
lies precisely between the past and the future, and has nothing in
the present. This nothingness has the part equal to the whole, and
the whole to the part, the divisible to the indivisible; and the
product of the sum is the same whether we divide or multiply, and in
addition as in subtraction; as is proved by arithmeticians by their
tenth figure which represents zero; and its power has not extension
among the things of Nature.]

[What is called Nothingness is to be found only in time and in
speech. In time it stands between the past and future and has no
existence in the present; and thus in speech it is one of the things
of which we say: They are not, or they are impossible.]

With regard to time, nothingness lies between the past and the
future, and has nothing to do with the present, and as to its nature
it is to be classed among things impossible: hence, from what has
been said, it has no existence; because where there is nothing there
would necessarily be a vacuum.

[Footnote: Compare No. 916.]

Reflections on Nature (1217-1219).

1217.

[O mighty and once living instrument of formative nature. Incapable
of availing thyself of thy vast strength thou hast to abandon a life
of stillness and to obey the law which God and time gave to
procreative nature.]

Ah! how many a time the shoals of terrified dolphins and the huge
tunny-fish were seen to flee before thy cruel fury, to escape;
whilst thy fulminations raised in the sea a sudden tempest with
buffeting and submersion of ships in the great waves; and filling
the uncovered shores with the terrified and desperate fishes which
fled from thee, and left by the sea, remained in spots where they
became the abundant prey of the people in the neighbourhood.

O time, swift robber of all created things, how many kings, how many
nations hast thou undone, and how many changes of states and of
various events have happened since the wondrous forms of this fish
perished here in this cavernous and winding recess. Now destroyed by
time thou liest patiently in this confined space with bones stripped
and bare; serving as a support and prop for the superimposed
mountain.

[Footnote: The character of the handwriting points to an early
period of Leonardo's life. It has become very indistinct, and is at
present exceedingly difficult to decipher. Some passages remain
doubtful.]

[Footnote: Compare No. 1339, written on the same sheet.]

1218.

The watery element was left enclosed between the raised banks of the
rivers, and the sea was seen between the uplifted earth and the
surrounding air which has to envelope and enclose the complicated
machine of the earth, and whose mass, standing between the water and
the element of fire, remained much restricted and deprived of its
indispensable moisture; the rivers will be deprived of their waters,
the fruitful earth will put forth no more her light verdure; the
fields will no more be decked with waving corn; all the animals,
finding no fresh grass for pasture, will die and food will then be
lacking to the lions and wolves and other beasts of prey, and to men
who after many efforts will be compelled to abandon their life, and
the human race will die out. In this way the fertile and fruitful
earth will remain deserted, arid and sterile from the water being
shut up in its interior, and from the activity of nature it will
continue a little time to increase until the cold and subtle air
being gone, it will be forced to end with the element of fire; and
then its surface will be left burnt up to cinder and this will be
the end of all terrestrial nature. [Footnote: Compare No. 1339,
written on the same sheet.]

1219.

Why did nature not ordain that one animal should not live by the
death of another? Nature, being inconstant and taking pleasure in
creating and making constantly new lives and forms, because she
knows that her terrestrial materials become thereby augmented, is
more ready and more swift in her creating, than time in his
destruction; and so she has ordained that many animals shall be food
for others. Nay, this not satisfying her desire, to the same end she
frequently sends forth certain poisonous and pestilential vapours
upon the vast increase and congregation of animals; and most of all
upon men, who increase vastly because other animals do not feed upon
them; and, the causes being removed, the effects would not follow.
This earth therefore seeks to lose its life, desiring only continual
reproduction; and as, by the argument you bring forward and
demonstrate, like effects always follow like causes, animals are the
image of the world.

Humorous Writings.

Just as Michaelangelo's occasional poems reflect his private life
as well as the general disposition of his mind, we may find in the
writings collected in this section, the transcript of Leonardo's
fanciful nature, and we should probably not be far wrong in
assuming, that he himself had recited these fables in the company of
his friends or at the court festivals of princes and patrons.
Era
tanto piacevole nella conversazione—
so relates Vasari
—che
tirava a se gli animi delle genti.
And Paulus Jovius says in his
short biography of the artist:
Fuit ingenio valde comi, nitido,
liberali, vultu autem longe venustissimo, et cum elegantiae omnis
deliciarumque maxime theatralium mirificus inventor ac arbiter
esset, ad lyramque scito caneret, cunctis per omnem aetatem
principibus mire placuit.
There can be no doubt that the fables are
the original offspring of Leonardo's brain, and not borrowed from
any foreign source; indeed the schemes and plans for the composition
of fables collected in division V seem to afford an external proof
of this, if the fables themselves did not render it self-evident.
Several of them— for instance No.
l279—
are so strikingly
characteristic of Leonardo's views of natural science that we cannot
do them justice till we are acquainted with his theories on such
subjects; and this is equally true of the 'Prophecies'
.

I have prefixed to these quaint writings the 'Studies on the life
and habits of animals' which are singular from their peculiar
aphoristic style, and I have transcribed them in exactly the order
in which they are written in MS. H. This is one of the very rare
instances in which one subject is treated in a consecutive series of
notes, all in one MS., and Leonardo has also departed from his
ordinary habits, by occasionally not completing the text on the page
it is begun. These brief notes of a somewhat mysterious bearing have
been placed here, simply because they may possibly have been
intended to serve as hints for fables or allegories. They can
scarcely be regarded as preparatory for a natural history, rather
they would seem to be extracts. On the one hand the names of some of
the animals seem to prove that Leonardo could not here be recording
observations of his own; on the other hand the notes on their habits
and life appear to me to dwell precisely on what must have
interested him most—so far as it is possible to form any complete
estimate of his nature and tastes.

In No.
1293
lines
1-10,
we have a sketch of a scheme for
grouping the Prophecies. I have not however availed myself of it as
a clue to their arrangement here because, in the first place, the
texts are not so numerous as to render the suggested classification
useful to the reader, and, also, because in reading the long series,
as they occur in the original, we may follow the author's mind; and
here and there it is not difficult to see how one theme suggested
another. I have however regarded Leonardo's scheme for the
classification of the Prophecies as available for that of the Fables
and Jests, and have adhered to it as far as possible.

Among the humourous writings I might perhaps have included the
'Rebusses',
of which there are several in the collection of
Leonardo's drawings at Windsor; it seems to me not likely that many
or all of them could be solved at the present day and the MSS. throw
no light on them. Nor should I be justified if I intended to include
in the literary works the well-known caricatures of human faces
attributed to Leonardo— of which, however, it may be incidentally
observed, the greater number are in my opinion undoubtedly spurious.
Two only have necessarily been given owing to their presence in
text, which it was desired to reproduce: Vol. I page
326, _and Pl.
CXXII. It can scarcely be doubted that some satirical intention is
conveyed by the drawing on Pl. LXIV (text No.
688
).

My reason for not presenting Leonardo to the reader as a poet is the
fact that the maxims and morals in verse which have been ascribed to
him, are not to be found in the manuscripts, and Prof. Uzielli has
already proved that they cannot be by him. Hence it would seem that
only a few short verses can be attributed to him with any
certainty._

1220.

The gold-finch is a bird of which it is related that, when it is
carried into the presence of a sick person, if the sick man is going
to die, the bird turns away its head and never looks at him; but if
the sick man is to be saved the bird never loses sight of him but is
the cause of curing him of all his sickness.

Like unto this is the love of virtue. It never looks at any vile or
base thing, but rather clings always to pure and virtuous things and
takes up its abode in a noble heart; as the birds do in green woods
on flowery branches. And this Love shows itself more in adversity
than in prosperity; as light does, which shines most where the place
is darkest.

1221.

We read of the kite that, when it sees its young ones growing too
big in the nest, out of envy it pecks their sides, and keeps them
without food.

Cheerfulness is proper to the cock, which rejoices over every little
thing, and crows with varied and lively movements.

Sadness resembles the raven, which, when it sees its young ones born
white, departs in great grief, and abandons them with doleful
lamentations, and does not feed them until it sees in them some few
black feathers.

1222.

We read of the beaver that when it is pursued, knowing that it is
for the virtue [contained] in its medicinal testicles and not being
able to escape, it stops; and to be at peace with its pursuers, it
bites off its testicles with its sharp teeth, and leaves them to its
enemies.