Thoughts on Art and Life Part 2

Just as iron which is not used grows rusty, and water putrefies and freezes in the cold, so the mind of which no use is made is spoilt.

[Sidenote: Fruitless Study]

20.

Just as food eaten without appet.i.te is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not a.s.similating what it absorbs.

21.

Truth was the only daughter of time.

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[Sidenote: In Praise of Truth]

22.

So vile a thing is a lie that even if it spoke fairly of G.o.d it would take away somewhat from His divinity; and so excellent a thing is truth that if it praises the humblest things they are exalted. There is no doubt that truth is to falsehood as light is to darkness; and so excellent a thing is truth that even when it touches humble and lowly matters, it still incomparably exceeds the uncertainty and falsehood in which great and elevated discourses are clothed; because even if falsehood be the fifth element of our minds, notwithstanding this, truth is the supreme nourishment of the higher intellects, though not of disorderly minds. But thou who feedest on dreams dost prefer the sophistry and subterfuges in matters of importance and uncertainty to what is certain and natural, though of lesser magnitude.

23.

Obstacles in the way of truth are finally punished.

[Sidenote: Versus Humanists]

24.

I am well aware that not being a literary man the presumptuous will think that they have the right to blame me on the ground that I am not a man of letters. Vainglorious people! Know they not that I could make answer as Marius did to the Roman people, and say: They who make a {11} display with the labours of others will not allow me mine? They will say that being unskilled in letters I cannot find true expression for the matters of which I desire to treat; they do not know that in my subjects experience is a truer guide than the words of others, for experience was the teacher of all great writers, and therefore I take her for guide, and I will cite her in all cases.

25.

Although I may not be able to quote other authors, as they do, I can quote from a greater and more worthy source, namely, experience,--the teacher of their masters. They go about swelled with pride and pomposity, dressed up and bedight, not with their own labour, but with that of others; and they will not concede me mine. And if they despise me, who am a creator, far more are they, who do not create but trumpet abroad and exploit the works of other men, to be blamed.

[Sidenote: Authority]

26.

He who in reasoning cites authority is making use of his memory rather than of his intellect.

[Sidenote: On Commentators]

27.

Men who are creators and interpreters of nature to man, in comparison with boasters and exploiters of the works of others, must be judged {12} and esteemed like the object before the mirror as compared with its image reflected in the mirror.--one being something in itself, and the other nothing. Little to nature do they owe, since it is merely by chance they wear the human form, and but for it I might include them with herds of cattle.

28.

A well lettered man is so because he is well natured, and just as the cause is more admirable than the effect, so is a good disposition, unlettered, more praiseworthy than a well lettered man who is without natural disposition.

29.

Against certain commentators who disparage the inventors of antiquity, the originators of science and grammar, and who attack the creators of antiquity; and because they through laziness and the convenience of books have not been able to create, they attack their masters with false reasoning.

30.

It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.

[Sidenote: Experience]

31.

Wisdom is the daughter of experience.

[Sidenote: Experience never Errs]

32.

Wrongly men complain of experience, which {13} with great railing they accuse of falsehood. Leave experience alone, and turn your lamentation to your ignorance, which leads you, with your vain and foolish desires, to promise yourselves those things which are not in her power to confer, and to accuse her of falsehood. Wrongly men complain of innocent experience, when they accuse her not seldom of false and lying demonstrations.

33.

Experience never errs; it is only your judgements that err, ye who look to her for effects which our experiments cannot produce. Because given a principle, that which ensues from it is necessarily the true consequence of that principle, unless it be impeded. Should there, however, be any obstacle, the effect which should ensue from the aforesaid principle will partic.i.p.ate in the impediment as much or as little as the impediment is operative in regard to the aforesaid principle.

34.

Experience, the interpreter between creative nature and the human race, teaches the action of nature among mortals: how under the constraint of necessity she cannot act otherwise than as reason, who steers her helm, teaches her to act.

35.

All our knowledge is the offspring of our perceptions.