,
slightly
adapted by Bruno, who has, 'Natura non puo` far cosa perfetta, / poi che natura femina vien detta.
Bruno-Cause-Principle-and-Unity
?
?
?
.
Rest assured that, except for one of them, they are all very peaceable, honest subjects.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . So that from what you say we will still have to pick some thorns out of these dialogues?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . No doubt. But you will be scratched where it itches, instead of pricked where it hurts.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Whatelse?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Here you will meet, as first speaker, that erudite, honest, affable, polite and faithful friend Alexander Dicsono, who proposes the subject of the debate, and whom the Nolan loves as his own eyes. He is introduced as the one who furnishes Teofilo with his subject. Then Teofilo (who is myself) comes second, profiting by the occasion to make
13 See Virgil, Aeneid, ? ? ? -? . ? ?
? First dialogue
? distinctions, give definitions and carry out demonstrations concerning the theme proposed. Thirdly, you have Gervasio, not a philosopher by pro- fession, but who likes to pass the time by attending our discussions; a per- son of indifferent odour who finds everything Poliinnio does comic, and from time to time gives him full rein to express his folly. The latter sacrile- gious pedant is the fourth speaker; being one of those stern censors of philosophers, he claims to be a Momus, passionately attached to his flock of students, reputed to be a follower of Socratic love, an eternal enemy of the female sex. He considers himself, therefore, in order not to seem involved with physics, an Orpheus, a Musaeus, a Tityros, an Amphion. He is one of those who, when they have put together a beautiful conceit, com- posed an elegant little epistle or made off with a nice phrase from the Ciceronian kitchen, are at once Demosthenes come back to life, Tullius rejuvenated, Sallust who lives again, or an Argus who makes out every letter, every syllable and every word. He is Rhadamanthus who umbras vocat ille silentum [calls the shadows of the silent], or the Cretan king Minos who urnam movet [shakes the drawing-urn]. 14 He is one of those men who puts every word to the test, and who mounts a debate around every phrase, saying that these are poetic, these sound comic, these are oratic; this is sweet, that is sublime, this other one is humile dicendi genus15 [humble oratory genre]; this harangue is harsh, it would be lighter if composed like this, such and such a writer is not eloquent, he is little read in the ancients, non redolet Arpinatum, desipit Latium16 [he does not smack of Arpinum, he lacks knowledge of Latin]. This word is not Tuscan, neither Boccaccio, nor Petrarch, nor other approved authors use it. One should write 'omo' and not 'homo', not 'honour' but 'onour', 'Poliinnio' instead of 'Polihimnio'. This kind of thing fills him with triumph, self-satisfaction and utmost pleasure with whatever he does. He feels himself a Jove who, from his high perch, gazes down on and contemplates the lives of other men, subject to so many errors, calamities, miseries and vain strivings. He alone is happy, only he lives a heavenly life, when he contem- plates his divinity in the mirror of a Spicilegium,17 a Dictionarium, a
14 See Virgil, Aeneid, ? ? , ? ? ? -? : 'quaesitor Minos urnam movet; ille silentium/consiliumque vocat . . . ' ('Minos reigned as the presiding judge, moving the drawing-urn, and called a jury of the silent ones . . . ').
15 Humile dicendi genus is the first of the three genera dicendi which Cicero distinguishes in his tripertita varietas of styles of oration.
16 Cicero, born in Arpinium, sixty miles south-east of Rome. See the anti-Ciceronian satire of Erasmus, the Ciceronianus (? ? ? ? ).
17 Title of a work by L. G. Scoppa, the Spicilegium, which dates from ? ? ? ? .
? ? ?
Cause, principle and unity
? Calepino,18 a lexicon, a Cornucopiae,19 a Nizzolio. 20 Endowed with such self- sufficiency, he alone is everything, while each of us is but one. If he happens to laugh, he calls himself Democritus; if he by chance cries, he calls himself Heraclitus; if he argues, he baptises himself Chrysippus; if he rea- sons, his name is Aristotle; if he forges chimeras, he becomes Plato; if he bellows out some paltry speech, he is Demosthenes; if he expounds Virgil, he is Maro. So he corrects Achilles, approves Aeneas, reprehends Hector, exclaims against Pyrrhus, laments Priam, accuses Turnus, excuses Dido, praises Achates, and finally, while verbum verbo reddit [he translates word for word], chaining together his barbarous synonyms, nihil divinum a se alienum putat [he maintains that nothing divine is alien to him]. He then descends haughtily from his chair, as if he had put the heavens in order, reformed worlds, organized senates and tamed armies. He is sure that, if it were not for the injustice of the times, he would convert into action what he has accomplished in thought. O tempora, o mores! 21 [O age, o manners! ] How rare are they who understand the nature of participles, adverbs and conjunctions! How much time has flowed by without discovering the reason, the true cause, that makes the adjective agree with the noun, the relative join together with the antecedent, and the rule which places it at the beginning or end of a sentence, and the frequency and order in which one must slip in those interjections dolentis and gaudentis [of pain and joy], 'heu', 'oh', 'ahi', 'ah', 'hem', 'ohe', 'hui' and other seasonings, without which the whole discourse is totally bland!
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Youcansaywhateveryoulike,andthinkasyouwish,but I hold that in order to be happy in this life, it is better to imagine oneself Croesus, and be poor, than to imagine onself poor, and be Croesus. Is it not more conducive to beatitude to have a slattern you think beautiful and who satisfies you, rather than a Leda or a Helen who bores you and whom you end up abandoning? What does it matter, then, to those people, whether they are ignorant and ignobly occupied, when their happiness is in direct proportion to their own self-esteem? The ass likes fresh grass and the horse barley, just the same as you who like white bread and partridge; the hog is
18 Name of the lexographer Ambrogio Calepino, whose Dictionarium (which appeared before ? ? ? ? ) was so often reprinted during the 16th century that 'calepino' became synonymous with 'dictionary'.
19 Literally, 'horn of plenty', an allusion to Nicolo` Perotti, Cornucopiae sive commentaria linguae lati-
nae (Venice, ? ? ? ? ) and often reprinted during the ? ? th and ? ? th centuries.
20 Nizzolio, a synonym during the 16th century for 'Ciceronian lexicon'; See Mario Nizzoli,
Observationum in M. T. Ciceronem Prima [Secunda] pars, (? ? ? ? ), reprinted several times.
21 Cicero, Catilinam, ? , ? .
? ? ?
First dialogue
? as happy with his acorns and slops as Jupiter with nectar and ambrosia. Do you want, by chance, to disabuse them of their agreeable folly when, in return for the cure, they come and break your head? I will leave aside the question of which is folly: the illusion, or its cure. A Pyrrhonist once said, 'Who knows whether our state is not death, and that of the alleged dead, life? ' Who knows if true happiness and true beatitude do not consist of the due linking and taking apart the parts of a phrase?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . The world is such that we play Democritus at the expense of the pedants and grammarians, and diligent courtiers play at being Democritus at ours, while unthinking monks and priests democratize at everybody's expense. The pedants mock us, give-and-take, we sneer at the courtiers, and everybody at the monks. The outcome is that, since one is a fool in the eyes of the other, we are all fools, differing by species, but concordant in genere et numero et casu [in their genus, number and case].
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Just so censure differs in manner, kind and degree. Yet we must bend our knees and bow our heads before that most harsh, severe, horrendous and frightening censure of our arch-pedagogues. It is towards them we must turn our gaze and lift our hands, sighing, calling out, weep- ing and begging for mercy. Thus, it is to you that I turn, to you, who hold in your hand the caduceus of Mercury in order to resolve controversies; to you, who settle the differences that arise between men and gods. You, Menippos, who, from your seats on the moon's globe, look down on us with narrowed eyes from on high, noting our actions with repugnance and scorn. You, shield-bearers of Pallas, standard-bearers of Minerva, Mercury's stewards; you, Jupiter's custodians, Apollo's milk brothers, Epimetheus' co-thieves, Bacchus' bottlers, Euhan-criers' horse-grooms; you, who scourge the Edonides, spur on the Thyiades, excite the Maenads, seduce the Bassarids; you, the riders of the Mimallonides, copulators of the Egerian nymph, moderators of enthusiasm, demagogues of wandering peoples, decipherers of the Demogorgon, Dioscures of fluctuating disci- plines, treasurers of the Pantamorpheus and bullock-emissaries of the highpriest Aron: to you we recommend our prose, submit our Muses, our premises, subsumptions, digressions, parentheses, applications, clauses, periods, constructions, adjectives and epithets. O you, sugarwater vendors, who ravish our spirits with your sweet little refinements, binding fast our hearts, fascinating our minds, and delivering our prostituted souls to the lupanar; you, who submit our barbarisms to your wise judgement, stick our solecisms with your arrows, staunch our malodorous chasms, castrate our
? ?
Cause, principle and unity
? Silenes, clap our Noahs into breeches, emasculate our macrological dis- courses, patch up our ellipses, curb our tautologies, temper our acyrolo- gies, excuse our escrologies, pardon our perissologies, forgive our cacoph- onies. I, again, conjure you all, all of you in general and you in particular, Poliinnio: halt that slanderous rage and that criminal hatred you feel towards the most noble female sex; do not ruin all that the world possesses of beauty, all that which heaven contemplates with countless eyes. Pull, pull yourselves together and recover your wits, by which you might see that your animosity is nothing but a professed madness and frenetic passion. Is there anyone more senseless and stupid than a man who doesn't see the light? Can there be a madness more miserable than becoming, on account of sex, the enemy of nature herself, like that barbarous king of Sarza, who, having learned from your kind, declared:
Nature can make nothing perfect, since she is herself a woman. 22
Consider somewhat the truth, lift your eyes to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and note the contradiction and opposition that exists between the one and the other; see what men are and what women are. You hold, on one hand, the body, masculine, to be your friend, and the soul, feminine, your enemy. On one hand, you have chaos, masculine, and on the other, organization, feminine. Here, sleep, masculine; there, wakefulness, feminine. On one side, forgetfulness, and on the other, memory. Here, hate, there, friendship; on this side, fear, on the other, serenity; on one hand, rigour and on the other, kindness; here, anger, there, calm. On one side, error, on the other, truth; here, imperfection, there, perfection; here, hell, there, happiness; on this side, the Poliinnio the pedant, on the other side, Poliinnia the Muse. In short, all the vices, imperfections and crimes are masculine, and all the virtues, merits and goodnesses are feminine. Hence, prudence, justice, strength, temperance, beauty, majesty and dignity, both in grammatical gender and in our imagination, as well as in our descrip- tions and paintings, are all feminine. But to leave aside these theoretical rea- sonings concerning grammar and nomenclature so appropriate to your argument, and to come to what is natural, real and practical, one example alone should serve to bridle your tongue and shut your mouth, yours and those of your many cohorts: imagine if someone should ask where you will
22 Ariosto, Orlando furioso, ? ? ? ? ? , ? ? ?
, slightly adapted by Bruno, who has, 'Natura non puo` far cosa perfetta, / poi che natura femina vien detta. ' Ariosto writes, 'veggo che (natura) non puo` far cosa perfetta, / poi che Natura femina vien detta. '
? ? ?
? Second dialogue
? find a man who surpasses, or is even equal to, this celestial Elizabeth, England's ruler. She is so highly endowed, elevated, favoured, protected and supported by the heavens that physical or verbal efforts to overthrow her are both vain. There is no one in the kingdom so worthy and so heroic among the nobility, nor anyone so gifted among those who wear the gown, or so wise among the counsellors. For corporal beauty, knowledge of vernacular and learned tongues, grasp of the arts and sciences, vision in governing, grandeur of such great and long-lasting authority and other natural and civic virtues, the Sophonisbas, Faustinas, Semiramises, Didos, Cleopatras and all the earlier queens that Italy, Greece, Egypt and other parts of Europe and Asia can boast are trivial compared to her. Her results and her successes, which the present age cherishes with honest wonder- ment, bear witness to this. While across Europe's back flow the wrathful Tiber, the threatening Po, the violent Rhine, the bloody Seine, the turbid Garonne, the frenzied Ebro, the furious Tagus, the tumultuous Meuse and the unquiet Danube, she, with her splendid vision, has been able, for more than five lustres, to calm the great Ocean, which, in its constant ebb and flow, calmly and gladly gathers the beloved Thames to its bosom, flowing on unchecked and fearless, gaily and confidently twisting between its verdant banks. So then, to start over again . . .
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Quiet there, Filoteo, quiet. Do not strain yourself adding water to our ocean and light to our sun. Quit showing yourself so abstract (not to mention worse) in your polemic against those absent Poliinnios. Instead, give us some examples from the dialogues you have here, so we do not idle away our hours today.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Takethemandread.
End of first dialogue
Second dialogue
Speakers: Dicsono Arelio, Teofilo, Gervasio, Poliinnio
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Please, master Poliinnio, and you, Gervasio, do not keep inter- rupting our discussions.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Fiat[Agreed].
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . SurelyIcannotstayquietifhe,themagister[master],speaks. ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . You say then, Teofilo, that everything which is not a first
principle and a first cause, has a principle and a cause?
? ?
Cause, principle and unity
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Without the slightest doubt or dispute.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Doyoubelieve,then,thatwhoeverknowsthethingscaused and principled, may know the cause and principle?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Itisnoteasyconcerningtheproximatecauseandprinciple; and it is extremely arduous, even by way of traces, when dealing with the first cause and first principle.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . So how do you conceive that things which have both a first and proximate cause and principle can be truly known if, as far as the efficient cause is concerned (which is one of the causes that contribute to the authentic knowledge of things), they remain hidden?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . I confess that it is an easy thing to set out a demonstrative doctrine, but the demonstration itself is hard. It is very easy to organize the causes, modes and methods of doctrines, but our method-makers and analysts then apply their instruments, the principles of their methods and art of arts poorly.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Like men who know how to forge fine swords, but not to wield them.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Ferme[Certainly].
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Would that one could firmly shut your eyes and keep you from ever opening them again! 1
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . ThatiswhyIsaythatthenaturalphilosopherisnotrequired to produce all causes and all principles, but merely the physical ones, and among them, only those that are principal or pertinent. Therefore, although their dependence on the first cause and first principle attributes them to that cause or that principle, there is not such a necessary relation that, from the knowledge of one, we can infer a knowledge of the other, and that is why we do not require that they be discussed within a single system.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Howisthat?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Because from the knowledge of all dependent things, we cannot infer any cognition of the first principle or of the first cause, other than by the less effectual method of vestiges; seeing that everything derives from its will or goodness, which is the principle of its operation, whence proceeds the universal effect. The same can be said of artistic products, insofar as whoever sees the statue does not behold the sculptor, and the man who sees the portrait of Helen does not see Apelles, but only the result of an operation deriving from the excellence of Apelles' talent. The representation is wholly the effect of accidents and circumstances of the 1 The latin ferme is taken jokingly by Gervasio as a term related to the Italian fermare, 'to shut'.
? ? ?
Second dialogue
? substance of that man who, in terms of his absolute essence, is totally unknown.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Sothattoknowtheuniverseistoknownothingofthebeing or of the substance of the first principle, because it is like knowing the accidents of the accidents.
?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . So that from what you say we will still have to pick some thorns out of these dialogues?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . No doubt. But you will be scratched where it itches, instead of pricked where it hurts.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Whatelse?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Here you will meet, as first speaker, that erudite, honest, affable, polite and faithful friend Alexander Dicsono, who proposes the subject of the debate, and whom the Nolan loves as his own eyes. He is introduced as the one who furnishes Teofilo with his subject. Then Teofilo (who is myself) comes second, profiting by the occasion to make
13 See Virgil, Aeneid, ? ? ? -? . ? ?
? First dialogue
? distinctions, give definitions and carry out demonstrations concerning the theme proposed. Thirdly, you have Gervasio, not a philosopher by pro- fession, but who likes to pass the time by attending our discussions; a per- son of indifferent odour who finds everything Poliinnio does comic, and from time to time gives him full rein to express his folly. The latter sacrile- gious pedant is the fourth speaker; being one of those stern censors of philosophers, he claims to be a Momus, passionately attached to his flock of students, reputed to be a follower of Socratic love, an eternal enemy of the female sex. He considers himself, therefore, in order not to seem involved with physics, an Orpheus, a Musaeus, a Tityros, an Amphion. He is one of those who, when they have put together a beautiful conceit, com- posed an elegant little epistle or made off with a nice phrase from the Ciceronian kitchen, are at once Demosthenes come back to life, Tullius rejuvenated, Sallust who lives again, or an Argus who makes out every letter, every syllable and every word. He is Rhadamanthus who umbras vocat ille silentum [calls the shadows of the silent], or the Cretan king Minos who urnam movet [shakes the drawing-urn]. 14 He is one of those men who puts every word to the test, and who mounts a debate around every phrase, saying that these are poetic, these sound comic, these are oratic; this is sweet, that is sublime, this other one is humile dicendi genus15 [humble oratory genre]; this harangue is harsh, it would be lighter if composed like this, such and such a writer is not eloquent, he is little read in the ancients, non redolet Arpinatum, desipit Latium16 [he does not smack of Arpinum, he lacks knowledge of Latin]. This word is not Tuscan, neither Boccaccio, nor Petrarch, nor other approved authors use it. One should write 'omo' and not 'homo', not 'honour' but 'onour', 'Poliinnio' instead of 'Polihimnio'. This kind of thing fills him with triumph, self-satisfaction and utmost pleasure with whatever he does. He feels himself a Jove who, from his high perch, gazes down on and contemplates the lives of other men, subject to so many errors, calamities, miseries and vain strivings. He alone is happy, only he lives a heavenly life, when he contem- plates his divinity in the mirror of a Spicilegium,17 a Dictionarium, a
14 See Virgil, Aeneid, ? ? , ? ? ? -? : 'quaesitor Minos urnam movet; ille silentium/consiliumque vocat . . . ' ('Minos reigned as the presiding judge, moving the drawing-urn, and called a jury of the silent ones . . . ').
15 Humile dicendi genus is the first of the three genera dicendi which Cicero distinguishes in his tripertita varietas of styles of oration.
16 Cicero, born in Arpinium, sixty miles south-east of Rome. See the anti-Ciceronian satire of Erasmus, the Ciceronianus (? ? ? ? ).
17 Title of a work by L. G. Scoppa, the Spicilegium, which dates from ? ? ? ? .
? ? ?
Cause, principle and unity
? Calepino,18 a lexicon, a Cornucopiae,19 a Nizzolio. 20 Endowed with such self- sufficiency, he alone is everything, while each of us is but one. If he happens to laugh, he calls himself Democritus; if he by chance cries, he calls himself Heraclitus; if he argues, he baptises himself Chrysippus; if he rea- sons, his name is Aristotle; if he forges chimeras, he becomes Plato; if he bellows out some paltry speech, he is Demosthenes; if he expounds Virgil, he is Maro. So he corrects Achilles, approves Aeneas, reprehends Hector, exclaims against Pyrrhus, laments Priam, accuses Turnus, excuses Dido, praises Achates, and finally, while verbum verbo reddit [he translates word for word], chaining together his barbarous synonyms, nihil divinum a se alienum putat [he maintains that nothing divine is alien to him]. He then descends haughtily from his chair, as if he had put the heavens in order, reformed worlds, organized senates and tamed armies. He is sure that, if it were not for the injustice of the times, he would convert into action what he has accomplished in thought. O tempora, o mores! 21 [O age, o manners! ] How rare are they who understand the nature of participles, adverbs and conjunctions! How much time has flowed by without discovering the reason, the true cause, that makes the adjective agree with the noun, the relative join together with the antecedent, and the rule which places it at the beginning or end of a sentence, and the frequency and order in which one must slip in those interjections dolentis and gaudentis [of pain and joy], 'heu', 'oh', 'ahi', 'ah', 'hem', 'ohe', 'hui' and other seasonings, without which the whole discourse is totally bland!
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Youcansaywhateveryoulike,andthinkasyouwish,but I hold that in order to be happy in this life, it is better to imagine oneself Croesus, and be poor, than to imagine onself poor, and be Croesus. Is it not more conducive to beatitude to have a slattern you think beautiful and who satisfies you, rather than a Leda or a Helen who bores you and whom you end up abandoning? What does it matter, then, to those people, whether they are ignorant and ignobly occupied, when their happiness is in direct proportion to their own self-esteem? The ass likes fresh grass and the horse barley, just the same as you who like white bread and partridge; the hog is
18 Name of the lexographer Ambrogio Calepino, whose Dictionarium (which appeared before ? ? ? ? ) was so often reprinted during the 16th century that 'calepino' became synonymous with 'dictionary'.
19 Literally, 'horn of plenty', an allusion to Nicolo` Perotti, Cornucopiae sive commentaria linguae lati-
nae (Venice, ? ? ? ? ) and often reprinted during the ? ? th and ? ? th centuries.
20 Nizzolio, a synonym during the 16th century for 'Ciceronian lexicon'; See Mario Nizzoli,
Observationum in M. T. Ciceronem Prima [Secunda] pars, (? ? ? ? ), reprinted several times.
21 Cicero, Catilinam, ? , ? .
? ? ?
First dialogue
? as happy with his acorns and slops as Jupiter with nectar and ambrosia. Do you want, by chance, to disabuse them of their agreeable folly when, in return for the cure, they come and break your head? I will leave aside the question of which is folly: the illusion, or its cure. A Pyrrhonist once said, 'Who knows whether our state is not death, and that of the alleged dead, life? ' Who knows if true happiness and true beatitude do not consist of the due linking and taking apart the parts of a phrase?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . The world is such that we play Democritus at the expense of the pedants and grammarians, and diligent courtiers play at being Democritus at ours, while unthinking monks and priests democratize at everybody's expense. The pedants mock us, give-and-take, we sneer at the courtiers, and everybody at the monks. The outcome is that, since one is a fool in the eyes of the other, we are all fools, differing by species, but concordant in genere et numero et casu [in their genus, number and case].
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Just so censure differs in manner, kind and degree. Yet we must bend our knees and bow our heads before that most harsh, severe, horrendous and frightening censure of our arch-pedagogues. It is towards them we must turn our gaze and lift our hands, sighing, calling out, weep- ing and begging for mercy. Thus, it is to you that I turn, to you, who hold in your hand the caduceus of Mercury in order to resolve controversies; to you, who settle the differences that arise between men and gods. You, Menippos, who, from your seats on the moon's globe, look down on us with narrowed eyes from on high, noting our actions with repugnance and scorn. You, shield-bearers of Pallas, standard-bearers of Minerva, Mercury's stewards; you, Jupiter's custodians, Apollo's milk brothers, Epimetheus' co-thieves, Bacchus' bottlers, Euhan-criers' horse-grooms; you, who scourge the Edonides, spur on the Thyiades, excite the Maenads, seduce the Bassarids; you, the riders of the Mimallonides, copulators of the Egerian nymph, moderators of enthusiasm, demagogues of wandering peoples, decipherers of the Demogorgon, Dioscures of fluctuating disci- plines, treasurers of the Pantamorpheus and bullock-emissaries of the highpriest Aron: to you we recommend our prose, submit our Muses, our premises, subsumptions, digressions, parentheses, applications, clauses, periods, constructions, adjectives and epithets. O you, sugarwater vendors, who ravish our spirits with your sweet little refinements, binding fast our hearts, fascinating our minds, and delivering our prostituted souls to the lupanar; you, who submit our barbarisms to your wise judgement, stick our solecisms with your arrows, staunch our malodorous chasms, castrate our
? ?
Cause, principle and unity
? Silenes, clap our Noahs into breeches, emasculate our macrological dis- courses, patch up our ellipses, curb our tautologies, temper our acyrolo- gies, excuse our escrologies, pardon our perissologies, forgive our cacoph- onies. I, again, conjure you all, all of you in general and you in particular, Poliinnio: halt that slanderous rage and that criminal hatred you feel towards the most noble female sex; do not ruin all that the world possesses of beauty, all that which heaven contemplates with countless eyes. Pull, pull yourselves together and recover your wits, by which you might see that your animosity is nothing but a professed madness and frenetic passion. Is there anyone more senseless and stupid than a man who doesn't see the light? Can there be a madness more miserable than becoming, on account of sex, the enemy of nature herself, like that barbarous king of Sarza, who, having learned from your kind, declared:
Nature can make nothing perfect, since she is herself a woman. 22
Consider somewhat the truth, lift your eyes to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and note the contradiction and opposition that exists between the one and the other; see what men are and what women are. You hold, on one hand, the body, masculine, to be your friend, and the soul, feminine, your enemy. On one hand, you have chaos, masculine, and on the other, organization, feminine. Here, sleep, masculine; there, wakefulness, feminine. On one side, forgetfulness, and on the other, memory. Here, hate, there, friendship; on this side, fear, on the other, serenity; on one hand, rigour and on the other, kindness; here, anger, there, calm. On one side, error, on the other, truth; here, imperfection, there, perfection; here, hell, there, happiness; on this side, the Poliinnio the pedant, on the other side, Poliinnia the Muse. In short, all the vices, imperfections and crimes are masculine, and all the virtues, merits and goodnesses are feminine. Hence, prudence, justice, strength, temperance, beauty, majesty and dignity, both in grammatical gender and in our imagination, as well as in our descrip- tions and paintings, are all feminine. But to leave aside these theoretical rea- sonings concerning grammar and nomenclature so appropriate to your argument, and to come to what is natural, real and practical, one example alone should serve to bridle your tongue and shut your mouth, yours and those of your many cohorts: imagine if someone should ask where you will
22 Ariosto, Orlando furioso, ? ? ? ? ? , ? ? ?
, slightly adapted by Bruno, who has, 'Natura non puo` far cosa perfetta, / poi che natura femina vien detta. ' Ariosto writes, 'veggo che (natura) non puo` far cosa perfetta, / poi che Natura femina vien detta. '
? ? ?
? Second dialogue
? find a man who surpasses, or is even equal to, this celestial Elizabeth, England's ruler. She is so highly endowed, elevated, favoured, protected and supported by the heavens that physical or verbal efforts to overthrow her are both vain. There is no one in the kingdom so worthy and so heroic among the nobility, nor anyone so gifted among those who wear the gown, or so wise among the counsellors. For corporal beauty, knowledge of vernacular and learned tongues, grasp of the arts and sciences, vision in governing, grandeur of such great and long-lasting authority and other natural and civic virtues, the Sophonisbas, Faustinas, Semiramises, Didos, Cleopatras and all the earlier queens that Italy, Greece, Egypt and other parts of Europe and Asia can boast are trivial compared to her. Her results and her successes, which the present age cherishes with honest wonder- ment, bear witness to this. While across Europe's back flow the wrathful Tiber, the threatening Po, the violent Rhine, the bloody Seine, the turbid Garonne, the frenzied Ebro, the furious Tagus, the tumultuous Meuse and the unquiet Danube, she, with her splendid vision, has been able, for more than five lustres, to calm the great Ocean, which, in its constant ebb and flow, calmly and gladly gathers the beloved Thames to its bosom, flowing on unchecked and fearless, gaily and confidently twisting between its verdant banks. So then, to start over again . . .
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Quiet there, Filoteo, quiet. Do not strain yourself adding water to our ocean and light to our sun. Quit showing yourself so abstract (not to mention worse) in your polemic against those absent Poliinnios. Instead, give us some examples from the dialogues you have here, so we do not idle away our hours today.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Takethemandread.
End of first dialogue
Second dialogue
Speakers: Dicsono Arelio, Teofilo, Gervasio, Poliinnio
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Please, master Poliinnio, and you, Gervasio, do not keep inter- rupting our discussions.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Fiat[Agreed].
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . SurelyIcannotstayquietifhe,themagister[master],speaks. ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . You say then, Teofilo, that everything which is not a first
principle and a first cause, has a principle and a cause?
? ?
Cause, principle and unity
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Without the slightest doubt or dispute.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Doyoubelieve,then,thatwhoeverknowsthethingscaused and principled, may know the cause and principle?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Itisnoteasyconcerningtheproximatecauseandprinciple; and it is extremely arduous, even by way of traces, when dealing with the first cause and first principle.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . So how do you conceive that things which have both a first and proximate cause and principle can be truly known if, as far as the efficient cause is concerned (which is one of the causes that contribute to the authentic knowledge of things), they remain hidden?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . I confess that it is an easy thing to set out a demonstrative doctrine, but the demonstration itself is hard. It is very easy to organize the causes, modes and methods of doctrines, but our method-makers and analysts then apply their instruments, the principles of their methods and art of arts poorly.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Like men who know how to forge fine swords, but not to wield them.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Ferme[Certainly].
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Would that one could firmly shut your eyes and keep you from ever opening them again! 1
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . ThatiswhyIsaythatthenaturalphilosopherisnotrequired to produce all causes and all principles, but merely the physical ones, and among them, only those that are principal or pertinent. Therefore, although their dependence on the first cause and first principle attributes them to that cause or that principle, there is not such a necessary relation that, from the knowledge of one, we can infer a knowledge of the other, and that is why we do not require that they be discussed within a single system.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Howisthat?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Because from the knowledge of all dependent things, we cannot infer any cognition of the first principle or of the first cause, other than by the less effectual method of vestiges; seeing that everything derives from its will or goodness, which is the principle of its operation, whence proceeds the universal effect. The same can be said of artistic products, insofar as whoever sees the statue does not behold the sculptor, and the man who sees the portrait of Helen does not see Apelles, but only the result of an operation deriving from the excellence of Apelles' talent. The representation is wholly the effect of accidents and circumstances of the 1 The latin ferme is taken jokingly by Gervasio as a term related to the Italian fermare, 'to shut'.
? ? ?
Second dialogue
? substance of that man who, in terms of his absolute essence, is totally unknown.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Sothattoknowtheuniverseistoknownothingofthebeing or of the substance of the first principle, because it is like knowing the accidents of the accidents.
?
