Thoughts on Art and Life Part 4

Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law.

52.

When anything is the cause of any other thing, and brings about by its movement any effect, {20} the movement of the effect necessarily follows the movement of the cause.

[Sidenote: Of Lightning in the Clouds]

53.

O mighty and once living instrument of creative nature, unable to avail thyself of thy great strength thou must needs abandon a life of tranquillity and obey the law which G.o.d and time gave to Nature the mother. Ah! how often the frighted shoals of dolphins and great tunny fish were seen fleeing before thy inhuman wrath; whilst thou, fulminating with swift beating of wings and twisted tail, raised in the sea a sudden storm with buffeting and sinking of ships and tossing of waves, filling the naked sh.o.r.es with terrified and distracted fishes.

[Sidenote: The Human Eye]

54.

Since the eye is the window of the soul, the soul is always fearful of losing it, so much so that if a man is suddenly frightened by the motion or an object before him, he does not with his hands protect his heart, the source of all life; nor his head, where dwells the lord of the senses; nor the organs of hearing, smell and taste. But as soon as he feels fright it does not suffice him to close the lids of his eyes, keeping them shut with all his might, but he instantly turns in the opposite direction; and still not feeling secure he covers his eyes with one hand, stretching out the {21} other to ward off the danger in the direction in which he suspects it to lie. Nature again has ordained that the eye of man shall close of itself, so that remaining during his sleep without protection it shall suffer no hurt.

[Sidenote: Universal Law]

55.

Every object naturally seeks to maintain itself in itself.

56.

The part always tends to reunite with its whole in order to escape from its imperfection; the soul desires to remain with its body, because without the organic instruments of that body it can neither act nor feel.

57.

The lover is moved by the object he loves as the senses are by sensible things; and they unite and become one and the same. The work is the first thing which is born of this union; if the thing loved is base, the lover becomes base. When what is united is in harmony with that which receives it, delight, pleasure and satisfaction ensue. When the lover is united to the beloved he rests there; when the burden is laid down it finds rest there.

58.

A natural action is accomplished in the briefest manner.

{22}

[Sidenote: Nature Variable and Infinite.]

59.

To such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another.

60.

If nature had made one rule for the quality of limbs, the faces of men would resemble each other to such a degree that it would not be possible to distinguish one from the other; but she has varied the five features of the face in such a way that, although she has made an almost universal rule with regard to their size, she has not done so with regard to their quality, so that each one can be clearly distinguished from the other.

61.

It is an easy matter for him who knows man to arrive at universal knowledge, since all terrestrial animals are similar in regard to their structure, that is to say, in regard to the muscles and bones, and they do not vary save in height and thickness; then there are the aquatic animals, and I will not persuade the painter that any rule can be made with regard to these because they are of infinite variety--so are the insects.

{23}

62.

The body of anything which is fed is continually dying and being reborn, since nourishment cannot enter save where the past nourishment is exhausted; and if it is exhausted, it no longer has life, and if you do not furnish it with nourishment equal to that which has been before, you will impair the health of the organism, and if you deprive it of this nourishment, life will be altogether destroyed. But if you supply it with so much as can be consumed in a day, then as much life will be restored as was consumed, like the light of the candle which is furnished to it by the fuel provided by the moisture of the candle, and this light with most speedy succour restores beneath what is consumed above as it dies in dusky smoke; and this death is continuous, likewise the continuity of the smoke is equal to the continuity of the fuel; and in the same moment the light dies and is born again together with the movement of its fuel.

63.

Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.

[Sidenote: Light]

64.

Look on light and consider its beauty. Shut your {24} eyes, and look again: that which you see was not there before, and that which was, no longer is. Who is he who remakes it if the producer is continually dying?

65.

Anaxagoras: Everything proceeds from everything, and everything becomes everything, because that which exists in the elements is composed of those elements.

[Sidenote: Nature]

66.

Nature appears to have been the cruel stepmother rather than the mother of many animals, and in some cases not the stepmother, but the pitying mother.

67.

Why did nature not ordain that one animal should not live by the death of the other? Nature, being inconstant and taking pleasure in continually creating and making lives and forms, because she knows that her earthly materials are thereby augmented, is more willing and swift to create than time is to destroy; and so she has ordained that many animals shall feed on each other. And as even thus her desire is not satisfied, she frequently sends forth certain poisonous and pestilential vapours upon the increasing mult.i.tude and congregation of animals, and especially upon men who increase to a great extent, because other animals do not feed on them; and since there is no cause, {25} there would follow no effect. This earth, therefore, seeks to lose its [animal] life, desiring only continual reproduction, and as, by the logical demonstration you adduce, effects often resemble their causes, animals are the image of the life of the world.