“The investigations of any science would quickly dry up if posterity had accepted each field’s principles with such simplicity that it thought nothing therein worth inquiring after but what the original thinkers either could or would make known. Indeed, our sciences have grown mature by successive and continual gradations; and, by the force of new and daily considerations, many things have been discovered which not only could escape, but in fact did escape the notice of the first thinkers.”
Nimis etenim arida foret cuiuslibet artis speculatio si que ex arte dicta sunt adeo simpliciter posteritas recepisset quod nichil in eis duceret speculandum nisi quod inventores ipsi potuerint vel voluerint declarare. Adoleverunt equidem artes successivis et continuis incrementis, et novis in dies considerationibus multa sunt deprehensa que priscos illos nedum latere potuerunt sed sine dubio latuerunt.
“The investigations of any science would quickly dry up if posterity had accepted each field’s principles with such simplicity that it thought nothing therein worth inquiring after but what the original thinkers either could or would make known. Indeed, our sciences have grown mature by successive and continual gradations; and, by the force of new and daily considerations, many things have been discovered which not only could escape, but in fact did escape the notice of the first thinkers.”
Nimis etenim arida foret cuiuslibet artis speculatio si que ex arte dicta sunt adeo simpliciter posteritas recepisset quod nichil in eis duceret speculandum nisi quod inventores ipsi potuerint vel voluerint declarare. Adoleverunt equidem artes successivis et continuis incrementis, et novis in dies considerationibus multa sunt deprehensa que priscos illos nedum latere potuerunt sed sine dubio latuerunt.
(3.) It is a shame to see those men in their disputes, as they fabricate and propose a silly question in unintelligible and totally contrived terms. They cut up many things in a joking way, as though they meant to take them back up, and exercise themselves by responding to them in turn; they sprinkle around some propositions, they toss in some corollaries, and they heap up the conclusions.
(4.) And you can see them confirm their proofs of all of these things with various added (or perhaps I should say that they are winged, and flying) calculations. Aye indeed, it is a true shame to hear them in their disputes, when you perceive that because they lack any substance, they rely on their terms alone and seek nothing more than to bark as loud as the rest. But why should I talk about them as debaters? When they are in the mood to say nothing, or at any rate very little, about the question at hand, they instead contrive to capture their opponent in the snare of some idle sophistry.
(3.) Pudor est ipsos disputantes aspicere cum texentes quandam quodam modo cantilenam questionem verbis inintelligibilibus formatisque proponunt. Multa cavillosis sectionibus, in quarum alternatione respondendo versentur, quasi resumenda premittunt, propositiones spargunt, corollaria adiciunt, conclusiones accumulant.
(4.) Et horum omnium probationes allatis, ne dicam alatis et evolantibus, rationibus eos videas confirmare. Et vere pudor est ipsos disputantes audire, cum rebus inanes cernas solum inniti terminis et nichil magis appetere quam in equivoco delatrare. Quid de arguentibus loquar? Qui cum de questione nichil aut paucissima dicturi sint, alicuius sophysmatis laqueo nituntur capere disputantem.
(1.) I do not think that it will be irrelevant, since all of our education is wrapped up with those things which the poets have sung about the deeds of Hercules, to preface by saying a bit about poesy. For I see that not only the vulgar mob, but even those who in our time boast that they are philosophers, will sometimes consider poetry of little value, and sometimes even condemn it entirely. Nor does the authority of their own teacher (since they consider themselves Aristotelians), whom they read – or, to speak more truly, whom they are capable of reading – move them to make use of the various poets not on fleeting occasions but at all times in the most refined studies.
(2.) But indeed, I do not wonder at them; rather, I am indgnant, and I grieve. For, although they typically brag that they fly about through the loftiest summits of logic (or, loyce, as they call it in their own corrupt way) and philosophy, and they are prepared to discourse on all subjects with disputatious loquacity, they neither understand the texts of Aristotle, nor do they even read them, but instead they seek out I know not what tracts from the “British, divided from the whole world[1]”, as if our own country were not sufficiently stocked with erudition. They seize upon these works during long lamp-lit nights and learn, without books and without the assistance of textual witnesses, dialectic, physics, and whatever else transcendental speculation can disclose; or perhaps I should say that they boast that they have learned something, now that the traditions of their master have been abandoned.
[1] Vergil, Eclouges 1.66: At nos hinc alii sitientis ibimus Afros,
pars Scythiam et rapidum cretae veniemus Oaxen 65
et penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos.
(1.) Non ab re futurum arbitror, cum omnis institutio nostra versetur circa ea que poete de rebus Herculis cecinerunt, aliquid de poetica prelibare. Hanc enim video non solum profanum vulgus sed etiam qui se philosophos nostro tempore gloriantur tum parvi pendere, tum damnare. Nec movet istos etiam sui magistri (cum se Aristotelicos profiteantur) autoritas, quem legunt, sive, ut verius loquar, legere possunt, non semel sed ubique varios poetas etiam in rebus subtilissimis allegare.
(2.) Verum ipsos non admiror, potius autem indignor et doleo. Nam cum per logices, imo (ut corrupto vocabulo dicunt) loyce, et philosophie cacumina volitare se iactent et de cunctis disputatione garrula discutere sint parati (proh pudor!), textus Aristotelicos nec intelligunt nec legunt sed nescio quos tractatus apud <<toto divisos orbe Britannos>>, quasi noster eruditioni non sufficiat situs, querunt. Quos totis lucubrationibus amplectentes sine libris et sine testium adminiculis et dialeticam et physicam et quicquid transcendens speculatio rimatur ediscunt, sive potius edidicisse relicitis sui magistri traditionibus gloriantur.
(3.) It is a shame to see those men in their disputes, as they fabricate and propose a silly question in unintelligible and totally contrived terms. They cut up many things in a joking way, as though they meant to take them back up, and exercise themselves by responding to them in turn; they sprinkle around some propositions, they toss in some corollaries, and they heap up the conclusions.
(4.) And you can see them confirm their proofs of all of these things with various added (or perhaps I should say that they are winged, and flying) calculations. Aye indeed, it is a true shame to hear them in their disputes, when you perceive that because they lack any substance, they rely on their terms alone and seek nothing more than to bark as loud as the rest. But why should I talk about them as debaters? When they are in the mood to say nothing, or at any rate very little, about the question at hand, they instead contrive to capture their opponent in the snare of some idle sophistry.
(3.) Pudor est ipsos disputantes aspicere cum texentes quandam quodam modo cantilenam questionem verbis inintelligibilibus formatisque proponunt. Multa cavillosis sectionibus, in quarum alternatione respondendo versentur, quasi resumenda premittunt, propositiones spargunt, corollaria adiciunt, conclusiones accumulant.
(4.) Et horum omnium probationes allatis, ne dicam alatis et evolantibus, rationibus eos videas confirmare. Et vere pudor est ipsos disputantes audire, cum rebus inanes cernas solum inniti terminis et nichil magis appetere quam in equivoco delatrare. Quid de arguentibus loquar? Qui cum de questione nichil aut paucissima dicturi sint, alicuius sophysmatis laqueo nituntur capere disputantem.
(1.) I do not think that it will be irrelevant, since all of our education is wrapped up with those things which the poets have sung about the deeds of Hercules, to preface by saying a bit about poesy. For I see that not only the vulgar mob, but even those who in our time boast that they are philosophers, will sometimes consider poetry of little value, and sometimes even condemn it entirely. Nor does the authority of their own teacher (since they consider themselves Aristotelians), whom they read – or, to speak more truly, whom they are capable of reading – move them to make use of the various poets not on fleeting occasions but at all times in the most refined studies.
(2.) But indeed, I do not wonder at them; rather, I am indgnant, and I grieve. For, although they typically brag that they fly about through the loftiest summits of logic (or, loyce, as they call it in their own corrupt way) and philosophy, and they are prepared to discourse on all subjects with disputatious loquacity, they neither understand the texts of Aristotle, nor do they even read them, but instead they seek out I know not what tracts from the “British, divided from the whole world[1]”, as if our own country were not sufficiently stocked with erudition. They seize upon these works during long lamp-lit nights and learn, without books and without the assistance of textual witnesses, dialectic, physics, and whatever else transcendental speculation can disclose; or perhaps I should say that they boast that they have learned something, now that the traditions of their master have been abandoned.
[1] Vergil, Eclouges 1.66: At nos hinc alii sitientis ibimus Afros,
pars Scythiam et rapidum cretae veniemus Oaxen 65
et penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos.
(1.) Non ab re futurum arbitror, cum omnis institutio nostra versetur circa ea que poete de rebus Herculis cecinerunt, aliquid de poetica prelibare. Hanc enim video non solum profanum vulgus sed etiam qui se philosophos nostro tempore gloriantur tum parvi pendere, tum damnare. Nec movet istos etiam sui magistri (cum se Aristotelicos profiteantur) autoritas, quem legunt, sive, ut verius loquar, legere possunt, non semel sed ubique varios poetas etiam in rebus subtilissimis allegare.
(2.) Verum ipsos non admiror, potius autem indignor et doleo. Nam cum per logices, imo (ut corrupto vocabulo dicunt) loyce, et philosophie cacumina volitare se iactent et de cunctis disputatione garrula discutere sint parati (proh pudor!), textus Aristotelicos nec intelligunt nec legunt sed nescio quos tractatus apud <<toto divisos orbe Britannos>>, quasi noster eruditioni non sufficiat situs, querunt. Quos totis lucubrationibus amplectentes sine libris et sine testium adminiculis et dialeticam et physicam et quicquid transcendens speculatio rimatur ediscunt, sive potius edidicisse relicitis sui magistri traditionibus gloriantur.
“The investigations of any science would quickly dry up if posterity had accepted each field’s principles with such simplicity that it thought nothing therein worth inquiring after but what the original thinkers either could or would make known. Indeed, our sciences have grown mature by successive and continual gradations; and, by the force of new and daily considerations, many things have been discovered which not only could escape, but in fact did escape the notice of the first thinkers.”
Nimis etenim arida foret cuiuslibet artis speculatio si que ex arte dicta sunt adeo simpliciter posteritas recepisset quod nichil in eis duceret speculandum nisi quod inventores ipsi potuerint vel voluerint declarare. Adoleverunt equidem artes successivis et continuis incrementis, et novis in dies considerationibus multa sunt deprehensa que priscos illos nedum latere potuerunt sed sine dubio latuerunt.
NOTE: Salutati was the Chancellor of Florence during the late 14th century, in addition to being a rather active man of letters in the early Renaissance by publishing his own works, corresponding with notable figures like Petrarch, and encouraging other scholars who later became central to the revival of learning. As is true of most authors of his time, much of his work bears a deep stamp of Classical learning, and you can therefore expect to see more of this sort of thing on the site!
