Télévision au XVIIe siècle : un monde rempli d'horreurs

Vn Professeur en Theologie m'a ecrit que depuis peu un gentilhomme ayant prié un Italien qui est soldat dans la garnison de Sedan de luy faire uoir quelque chose d'extraordinaire, il luy auoit faict uoir dans un miroir une femme qui est a cent lieues dela ecriuant sur sa table, ce qui l'effraya et l'obligea de se retirer. Pour iuger de ceste auanture il faudroit auoir la chose et examiner le lieu ou estoit le miroir, s'il n'y auoit rien derriere. Ie uoudrois encore qu'il y eust plusieurs personnes qui pussent rendre temoignage de ce qu'ils auroyent veu, et il seroit necessaire que ces temoins la ne fussent pas credules ny preoccupez ny timides parce que la peur nous represente les obiects autrement qu'ils ne sont. Ie croy que Dieu ne permet pas que les hommes ayent commerce auec les demons parce que le monde seroit rempli d'horreurs. que ne feroit un Ambitieux et un vindicatif s'ils pouuoient venir a bout de leurs desseins.

 

Henri Justel to G. W. Leibniz, 9 November 1677 

(Allgemeiner und Politischer Briefwechsel 1676-1679, No. 275)

 

A theology professor wrote to me that recently, when a gentleman asked an Italian who is a soldier at the Sedan garrison to show him something out of the ordinary, the Italian caused him to see in a mirror a woman writing at her table a hundred leagues away, which terrified the gentleman, forcing him to leave the room. In order to judge this episode, it would be necessary to have the mirror and to examine where it was, in case there was anything behind it. I would further like to have a number of people able to provide an account of what they saw, and it would be necessary that such witnesses not have been gullible or distracted or fainthearted, since fear represents objects to us differently than they are. I believe that God does not allow mankind to engage in commerce with demons because then the world would be filled with horrors. What would an ambitious and a vindictive man not be capable of if they were able to achieve their designs?

On Obscurity

 

§ 672 Cicero (De finibus, 2,15) goes so far as to allow two unblameworthy modes of discourse whose aim is not to be understood. One is when you are deliberately obscure, as Heraclitus was when he discoursed on nature with the utmost obscurity, the other when it is the obscurity of the subject matter in itself rather than the language that makes the discourse obscure, as is the case in Plato’s Timaeus. Here, then, you have two obscure thinkers who are unblameworthy. If you take ‘deliberately obscure’ to mean intentional obscurity κατ᾽αἴσθησιν [i.e., in how he is perceived] lest in his scientific and esoteric considerations he fall into obscurity κατὰ νόησιν [i.e., in how he is understood], and if you hold him to have discoursed thus in his writings on nature, then Heraclitus is unblameworthy: assuredly, he did not discourse in such a way as not to be understood, but rather in such a way as not to be understood by readers who almost entirely bring to bear an analogue of reason in their reading, while declining to exert the power of actual reason.

 

§ 673 If you construe him to be deliberately obscure when, rather than making sure he accommodates an audience that is not yawning but giving him the requisite attention, he pours forth darkness and peddles smoke with a mind set on doing so, and if at least in places he succumbed to this due to his melancholy and his contempt towards his fellow citizens, then Heraclitus is blameworthy. If you interpret obscurity of subject matter as that weakness on the part of most people whereby their minds are unable to comprehend a given thing that is by its nature remote from their sense perceptions, even though not only are others perfectly able to understand the same thing thanks to a more diligent exercise of their mental acuity but also Plato himself clearly and distinctly grasps the matter to be discussed, and if in the Timaeus you therefore deem him to speak of matters utterly dark, then for these reasons he is actually unblameworthy in his obscurity, since he does not discourse in such a way as not to be understood, but in such a way as not to be understood except by those who likewise take pleasure in the mental stimulation of contemplating, now seriously, now in a more relaxed and pleasant way, matters that are by their very nature remote from the senses.

 

§ 674 If you interpret obscurity of subject matter as either the absolute obscurity proper solely to chimaeras, objective dreams, utopian fictions (*) and interpretations thereof, or that of things which from the contemplation of the human race 'the god coneals in murky night' (†) so that we cannot fathom anything of them even by a probable cause from aesthetics, meaning that nobody who would discuss them will either understand them or ever even mentally perceive them in a lucid way, and if you concede that at least in places in the Timaeus Plato sets out to depict things of this kind, or that by some other path he falls into such avoidable obscurity of subject matter, then for this reason he is not unblameworthy in his obscurity, it being baseless to plead obscurity of subject matter as an excuse. For worst of all are ἀδιανόητα, i.e., words that are plain but have a hidden meaning (Quintilian, Institutiones Oratoriae, 8, 2, 20). 

Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Aesthetics, vol. 2 (1758), 

trans. Alistair Ian Blyth

 

 

§ 672 L. de fin. II. 15. eo usque procedit, ut concedat duobus modis sine reprehensione fieri, si quis ita loquatur, ut non intelligatur. Si aut de industria facias, ut Heraclitus, qui de natura nimis obscure memorauit, aut quum rerum obscuritas, non verborum, facit, ut non intelligatur oratio, qualis est in Timaeo Platonis. Habes duos dogmaticos obscuros sine reprehensione. Si de industria obscurum interpreteris obscurum κατ᾽αἴσθησιν  deliberato consilio, ne per meditationes scientificas et acroamaticas in obscuritatem κατὰ νόησιν incidat: si talem in scriptis suis physicis fuisse Heraclitum statuas: est ille quidem sine reprehensione, verum tunc non ita loquutus est, ut non intelligatur, sed ita, ut non intelligatur a lectoribus solum paene rationis analogon ad lectionem afferentibus, rationis autem nervos intendere recusantibus. 

 

§ 673 Si de industria obscurum interpreteris eum, qui spectatoribus, quales praesertim attendere tenetur, non oscitantibus et merito requisitam attentionem offerentibus, tamen tenebras offundere, fumumque vendere fixum animo habet et propositum: si Heraclitus aliquando saltim, ex atra bile, contemtuque civium, eo lapsus est; non est sine reprehensione. Si rerum obscuritatem interpreteris eam plerorumque hominum infirmitatem, qua datam rem a sensibus suis natura remotiorem ne mente quidem assequuntur, licet eandem tum alii mentis aciem diligentius exercentes pulcre possint intelligere: tum ipse rem eandem tractaturus clare dilucideque perspiciat; si Platonem in Timaeo de rebus hac ratione subobscuris loqui senseris: hanc ob caussam obscurus est ille quidem sine reprehensione, verum nec ita loquutus est, ut non intelligatur, sed ita, ut non intelligatur, nisi ab iis, quibus volupe est aeque mentem acuere, rerum a sensibus per ipsam naturam remotarum contemplatione, nunc severiori, nunc remissa magis atque iucundiore. 

 

§ 674 Si rerum obscuritatem interpreteris vel eam absolutam solis chimaeris, somniis obiectivis, figmentis utopicis ac eorum interpretamentis propriam, vel istarum rerum, quas intuitu generis humani adeo

 

    Caliginosa nocte premit deus,

 

ut earum quicquam ne probabili quidem aestheticis ratione possimus hariolari, ut eas ne tractaturus quidem de iisdem vel intellexerit, vel dilucide saltim animo perceperit unquam: si Platonem in Timaeo, saltim aliquando, res eiusmodi pictum ire concesseris, vel alia via vitabilem rerum obscuritatem incurrere, hanc ob caussam obscurus non est sine reprehensione, nequicquam obscuritate rerum excusatus. Nam pessima sunt ἀδιανόητα, h. e. quae verbis aperta occulto sensu sunt. Quint. VIII. 2.

 

Alexand. Gottlieb Baumgarten, Aestheticorum Pars Altera, 

Frankfurt: Kleyb, 1758

 

 

(*) Baumgarten defines as 'utopian' those primordial mythological fictions that are not grounded in metaphysical truth (veritas metaphysica).

(†) Horace, Carmina, 3, 29, 30.

Une certaine espèce de petits vers

In 1666, Le Journal des Sçavans published a letter from Amsterdam that described ships returning from the East Indies whose hulls were infested with a destructive 'worm', no doubt the Teredo navalis which was to inflict such devastation on the North Sea dykes sixty-five years later:

 

Quoy que vous ayez souvent visité nostre port, je ne sçay si vous avez remarqué le mauvais estat où se trouvent les vaisseaux qui reviennent des Indes. Il y a dans ces mers une certaine espece de petits vers, qui s'attachent aux œuvres vives des vaisseaux, & les percent de sorte qu'ils prennent eau de tous costez, ou s'ils ne les traversent pas entierement, ils affoiblissent tellement le bois, qu'il est presque impossible de les racommoder.

 

Extrait d'une Lettre escrite d'Amsterdam, Le Journal des Sçavans. Du Lundy 15. Fevrier, M.DC.LXVI

 

This Extract is borrowed from the French journal des Scavans of Febr. 15. 1666. and is here inserted, to excite Inventive heads here, to overtake the Proposer in Holland. The letter runs thus:
    Although you have visited our Port (Amsterdam) I know not whether you have noted the ill condition, our ships are in, that return from the Indies. There is in those Seas a kind of small worms, that fasten themselves to the Timber of the ships, and so pierce them, that they take water every where; or if they do not altogether pierce them thorow, they so weaken the wood, that it is almost impossible to repair them.

An Extract Of a Letter, Written from Holland, about Preserving of Ships from being Worm-eaten, Philosophical Transactions, Vol. 1 (1665-1666)