Two Systems
Table of Contents
Yesterday took us into so many and such great digressions twisting away from the main thread of our principal argument that I do not know whether I shall be able to go ahead without your assistance in putting me back on the track.
SAGR. I am not surprised that you should find yourself in some confusion, for your mind is as much filled and encumbered with what remains to be said as with what has been said. But I am simply a listener and have in my mind only the things I have heard, so perhaps I can put your discourse back on its path by briefly outlining these for you.
As I recall it, yesterday’s discourse may be summarized as a preliminary examination of the two following opinions as to which is the more probable and reasonable. The first holds the substance of the heavenly bodies to be ingenerable, incorruptible, inalterable, invariant, and in a word free from all mutations except those of situation, and accordingly to be a quintessence (note: Literally, a fifth essence, distinct from the four elements of earth, water, air, and fire which were to be found within the lunar sphere.) most different from our generable, corruptible, alterable bodies.
The other opinion, removing this disparity from the world’s parts, considers the earth to enjoy the same perfection as other integral bodies of the universe; in short, to be a movable and a moving body no less than the moon, Jupiter, Venus, or any other planet. Later many detailed parallels were drawn between the earth and the moon. More comparisons were made with the moon than with other planets, perhaps from our having more and better sensible evidence about the former by reason of its lesser distance.
Having finally concluded this second opinion to have more likelihood than the other, it seems to me that our next step should be to examine whether the earth must be considered immovable, as most people have believed up to the present, or mobile, as many ancient philosophers believed and as others of more recent times consider it; and, if movable, what its motion may be.
Now I know and recognize the signposts along our road. But before starting in again and going ahead, I ought to tell you that I question this last thing you have said, about our having concluded in favor of the opinion that the earth is endowed with the same properties as the heavenly bodies. For I did not conclude this, just as I am not deciding upon any other controversial proposition. My intention was only to adduce those arguments and replies, as much on one side as on the other-those questions and solutions which others have thought of up to the present time (together with a few which have occurred to me after long thought) -and then to leave the decision to the judgment of others.
SAGR. I allowed myself to be carried away by my own sentiments, and believing that what I felt in my heart ought to be felt by others too, I made that conclusion universal which should have been kept particular. This really was an error on my part, especially as I do not know the views of Simplicio, here present.
I confess that all last night I was meditating on yesterday’s material, and truly I find it to contain many beautiful considerations which are novel and forceful. Still, I am much more impressed by the authority of so many great authors, and in particular … You shake your head, Sagredo, and smile, as if uttered some absurdity.
SAGR. I merely smile, but believe me, I am hardly able to keep from laughing, because I am reminded of a situation that I witnessed not many years ago together with some friends of mine, whom I could name to you for that matter.
Perhaps you had better tell us about it so that Simplicio will not go on thinking your mirth was directed at him.
SAGR. I’ll be glad to. One day I was at the home of a very famous doctor in Venice, where many persons came on account of their studies, and others occasionally came out of curiosity to see some anatomical dissection performed by a man who was truly no less learned than he was a careful and expert anatomist. It happened on this day that he was investigating the source and origin of the nerves, about which there exists a notorious controversy between the Galenist and Peripatetic doctors.
The anatomist showed that the great trunk of nerves, leaving the brain and passing through the nape, extended on down the spine and then branched out through the whole body, and that only a single strand as fine as a thread arrived at the heart. Turning to a gentleman whom he knew to be a Peripatetic philosopher, and on whose account he had been exhibiting and demonstrating everything with unusual care, he asked this man whether he was at last satisfied and convinced that the nerves originated in the brain and not in the heart.
The philosopher, after considering for awhile, answered: “You have made me see this matter so plainly and palpably that if Aristotle’s text were not contrary to it, stating clearly that the nerves originate in the heart, I should be forced to admit it to be true.”
Sir, I want you to know that this dispute as to the source of the nerves is by no means as settled and decided as perhaps some people like to think.
SAGR. Doubtless it never will be, in the minds of such opponents. But what you say does not in the least diminish the absurdity of this Peripatetic’s reply; who, as a counter to sensible experience, adduced no experiment or argument of Aristotle’s, but just the authority of his bare ipse dixit.
Aristotle acquired his great authority only because of the strength of his proofs and the profundity of his arguments. Yet one must understand him; and not merely understand him, but have such thorough familiarity with his books that the most complete idea of them may be formed, in such a manner that every saying of his is always before the mind. He did not write for the common people, nor was he obliged to thread his syllogisms together by the trivial ordinary method; rather, making use of the permuted method, he has sometimes put the proof of a proposition among texts that seem to deal with other things.
Therefore one must have a grasp of the whole grand scheme, and be able to combine this passage with that, collecting together one text here and another very distant from it. There is no doubt that whoever has this skill will be able to draw from his books demonstrations of all that can be known; for every single thing is in them.
SAGR. My dear Simplicio, since having things scattered all over the place does not disgust you, and since you believe by the collection and combination of the various pieces you can draw the juice out of them, then what you and the other brave philosophers will do with Aristotle’s texts, I shall do with the verses of Virgil and Ovid, making centos of them and explaining by means of these all the affairs of men and the secrets of nature. But why do I speak of Virgil, or any other poet" I have a little book, much briefer than Aristotle or Ovid, in which is contained the whole of science, and with very little study one may form from it the most complete ideas.
It is the alphabet, and no doubt anyone who can properly Join and order this or that vowel and these or those consonants with one another can dig out of it the truest answers to every question, and draw from it instruction in all the arts and sciences. Just so does a painter, from the various simple colors placed separately upon his palette, by gathering a little of this with a bit of that and a trifle of the other, depict men, plants, buildings, birds, fishes, and in a word represent every visible object, without any eyes or feathers or scales or leaves or stones being on his palette. Indeed, it is necessary that none of the things imitated nor parts of them should actually be among the colors, if you want to be able to represent everything; if there were feathers, for instance, these would not do to depict anything but birds or feather dusters.
Certain gentlemen still living and active were present when a doctor lecturing in a famous Academy, upon bearing the telescope described but not yet having seen it, said that the invention was taken from Aristotle. Having a text fetched, he found a certain place where the reason i’s given why stars in the sky can be seen during daytime from the bottom of a very deep well.
At this point the doctor said: “Here you have the well, which represents the tube; here the gross vapors, from whence the invention of glass lenses is taken; and finally here is the strengthening of the sight by the rays passing through a diaphanous medium which is denser and darker.”
SAGR. This manner of “containing” everything that can be known is similar to the sense in which a block of marble contains a beautiful statue, or rather thousands of them; but the whole point lies in being able to reveal them. Even better we might say that it is like the prophecies of Joachim or the answers of the heathen oracles, which are understood only after the events they forecast have occurred.
Why do you leave out the prophecies of the astrologers, which are so clearly seen in horoscopes (or should we say in the configurations of the heavens) after their fulfillment?
SAGR. It is in this way that the alchemists, led on by their madness, find that the greatest geniuses of the world never really wrote about anything except how to make gold; but in order to tell this without revealing it to the vulgar, this fellow in one manner and that one in another have whimsically concealed it under various disguises.
And a very amusing thing it is to hear their comments upon the ancient poets, revealing the important mysteries hidden behind their stories–what the loves of the moon mean, and her descent to the earth for Endymion; her displeasure with Acteon; the significance of Jupiter’s turning himself into a rain of gold, or into a fiery flame; what great secrets of the art there are in Mercury the interpreter, in Pluto’s kidnapings, and in golden boughs.
The world does not lack certain giddy brains, but their folly should not redound to the discredit of Aristotle, of whom it seems to me you sometimes speak with too little respect. His antiquity alone, and the mighty name he has acquired among so many men of distinguished mind, should be enough to earn him respect among all the learned.
That is not quite how matters stand, Simplicio. Some of his followers are so excessively timid that they give us occasion (or more correctly would give us occasion if we credited their triflings) to think less of him.
Tell me, are you so credulous as not to understand that if Aristotle had been present and heard this doctor who wanted to make him inventor of the telescope, he would have been much angrier with him than with those who laughed at this doctor and his interpretations?
Is it possible for you to doubt that if Anistotle should see the new discoveries in the sky he would change his opinions and correct his books and embrace the most sensible doctrines, casting away from himself those people so weak-minded as to be induced to go on abjectly maintaining everything he had ever said?
Why, if Aristotle had been such a man as they imagine, he would have been a man of intractable mind, of obstinate spirit, and barbarous soul; a man of tyrannical will who, regarding all others as silly sheep, wished to have his decrees preferred over the senses, experience, and nature itself It is the followers of Aristotle who have crowned him with authority, not he who has usurped or appropriated it to himself And since it is handier to conceal oneself under the cloak of another than to show one’s face in open court, they dare not in their timidity get a single step away from him, and rather than put any alterations into the heavens of Aristotle, they want to deny out of hand those that they see in nature’s heaven.
SAGR. Such people remind me of that sculptor who, having transformed a huge block of marble into the image of a Hercules or a thundering Jove, I forget which, and having with consummate art made it so lifelike and fierce that it moved everyone with terror who beheld it, he himself began to be afraid, though all its vivacity and power were the work of his own hands; and his terror was such that he no longer dared affront it with his mallet and chisel.
I often wonder how it can be that these strict supporters of Aristotle’s every word fail to perceive how great a hindrance to his credit and reputation they are, and how the more they desire to increase his authority, the more they actually detract from it, For when I see them being obstinate about sustaining propositions which I personally know to be obviously false, and wanting to persuade me that what they are doing is truly philosophical and would be done by Aristotle himself, it much weakens my opinion that he philosophized correctly about other matters more recondite to me. If I saw them give in and change their opinions about obvious truths, I should believe that they might have sound proofs for those in which they persisted and which I did not understand or had not heard.
SAGR. Or truly, if it seemed to them that they staked too much of their own reputation and of Aristotle’s in confessing that they did not know this or that conclusion discovered by someone else, would it not be a lesser evil for them to seek it among his texts by the collection of various of these according to the practice recommended by Simplicio? For if all things that can be known are in these texts, then it must follow that they can be discovered there.