The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci Part 98

Instrumental or mechanical science is of all the n.o.blest and the most useful, seeing that by means of this all animated bodies that have movement perform all their actions; and these movements are based on the centre of gravity which is placed in the middle dividing unequal weights, and it has dearth and wealth of muscles and also lever and counterlever.

1155.

OF MECHANICS.

Mechanics are the Paradise of mathematical science, because here we come to the fruits of mathematics. [Footnote: Compare No. 660, 11. 19-22 (Vol. I., p. 332). 1156.

Every instrument requires to be made by experience.

1157.

The man who blames the supreme certainty of mathematics feeds on confusion, and can never silence the contradictions of sophistical sciences which lead to an eternal quackery.

1158.

There is no certainty in sciences where one of the mathematical sciences cannot be applied, or which are not in relation with these mathematics.

1159.

Any one who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory. Good culture is born of a good disposition; and since the cause is more to be praised than the effect, I will rather praise a good disposition without culture, than good culture without the disposition.

1160.

Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.

1161.

OF THE ERRORS OF THOSE WHO DEPEND ON PRACTICE WITHOUT SCIENCE.

Those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who enters a ship without a helm or a compa.s.s, and who never can be certain whither he is going.

II.

MORALS.

What is life? (1162. 1163).

1162.

Now you see that the hope and the desire of returning home and to one's former state is like the moth to the light, and that the man who with constant longing awaits with joy each new spring time, each new summer, each new month and new year-deeming that the things he longs for are ever too late in coming-does not perceive that he is longing for his own destruction. But this desire is the very quintessence, the spirit of the elements, which finding itself imprisoned with the soul is ever longing to return from the human body to its giver. And you must know that this same longing is that quintessence, inseparable from nature, and that man is the image of the world.

1163.

O Time! consumer of all things; O envious age! thou dost destroy all things and devour all things with the relentless teeth of years, little by little in a slow death. Helen, when she looked in her mirror, seeing the withered wrinkles made in her face by old age, wept and wondered why she had twice been carried away.

O Time! consumer of all things, and O envious age! by which all things are all devoured.

Death.

1164.

Every evil leaves behind a grief in our memory, except the supreme evil, that is death, which destroys this memory together with life.

How to spend life (1165-1170).

1165.

0 sleepers! what a thing is slumber! Sleep resembles death. Ah, why then dost thou not work in such wise as that after death thou mayst retain a resemblance to perfect life, when, during life, thou art in sleep so like to the hapless dead? [Footnote: Compare No. 676, Vol. I. p. 353.]

1166.

One pushes down the other.

By these square-blocks are meant the life and the studies of men.

1167.

The knowledge of past times and of the places on the earth is both an ornament and nutriment to the human mind.

1168.

To lie is so vile, that even if it were in speaking well of G.o.dly things it would take off something from G.o.d's grace; and Truth is so excellent, that if it praises but small things they become n.o.ble.

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness; and this truth is in itself so excellent that, even when it dwells on humble and lowly matters, it is still infinitely above uncertainty and lies, disguised in high and lofty discourses; because in our minds, even if lying should be their fifth element, this does not prevent that the truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects, though not of wandering wits.

But you who live in dreams are better pleased by the sophistical reasons and frauds of wits in great and uncertain things, than by those reasons which are certain and natural and not so far above us.

1169.

Avoid studies of which the result dies with the worker.

1170.

Men are in error when they lament the flight of time, accusing it of being too swift, and not perceiving that it is sufficient as it pa.s.ses; but good memory, with which nature has endowed us, causes things long past to seem present.

1171.

Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.

1172.

The acquisition of any knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good.

For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.

1173.

As a day well spent procures a happy sleep, so a life well employed procures a happy death.