The Nots of Leonardo Da Vinci | Page 2

which he employs in arguing out his investigations and
dissertations. The vast structure of his scientific theories is
consequently built up of numerous separate researches, and it is much
to be lamented that he should never have collated and arranged them.
His love for detailed research--as it seems to me--was the reason that in
almost all the Manuscripts, the different paragraphs appear to us to be
in utter confusion; on one and the same page, observations on the most
dissimilar subjects follow each other without any connection. A page,
for instance, will begin with some principles of astronomy, or the
motion of the earth; then come the laws of sound, and finally some
precepts as to colour. Another page will begin with his investigations
on the structure of the intestines, and end with philosophical remarks as
to the relations of poetry to painting; and so forth.
Leonardo himself lamented this confusion, and for that reason I do not
think that the publication of the texts in the order in which they occur in
the originals would at all fulfil his intentions. No reader could find his
way through such a labyrinth; Leonardo himself could not have done it.
Added to this, more than half of the five thousand manuscript pages
which now remain to us, are written on loose leaves, and at present
arranged in a manner which has no justification beyond the fancy of the
collector who first brought them together to make volumes of more or
less extent. Nay, even in the volumes, the pages of which were
numbered by Leonardo himself, their order, so far as the connection of
the texts was concerned, was obviously a matter of indifference to him.
The only point he seems to have kept in view, when first writing down

his notes, was that each observation should be complete to the end on
the page on which it was begun. The exceptions to this rule are
extremely few, and it is certainly noteworthy that we find in such cases,
in bound volumes with his numbered pages, the written observations:
"turn over", "This is the continuation of the previous page", and the like.
Is not this sufficient to prove that it was only in quite exceptional cases
that the writer intended the consecutive pages to remain connected,
when he should, at last, carry out the often planned arrangement of his
writings?
What this final arrangement was to be, Leonardo has in most cases
indicated with considerable completeness. In other cases this
authoritative clue is wanting, but the difficulties arising from this are
not insuperable; for, as the subject of the separate paragraphs is always
distinct and well defined in itself, it is quite possible to construct a
well-planned whole, out of the scattered materials of his scientific
system, and I may venture to state that I have devoted especial care and
thought to the due execution of this responsible task.
The beginning of Leonardo's literary labours dates from about his
thirty-seventh year, and he seems to have carried them on without any
serious interruption till his death. Thus the Manuscripts that remain
represent a period of about thirty years. Within this space of time his
handwriting altered so little that it is impossible to judge from it of the
date of any particular text. The exact dates, indeed, can only be
assigned to certain note-books in which the year is incidentally
indicated, and in which the order of the leaves has not been altered
since Leonardo used them. The assistance these afford for a
chronological arrangement of the Manuscripts is generally self evident.
By this clue I have assigned to the original Manuscripts now scattered
through England, Italy and France, the order of their production, as in
many matters of detail it is highly important to be able to verify the
time and place at which certain observations were made and registered.
For this purpose the Bibliography of the Manuscripts given at the end
of Vol. II, may be regarded as an Index, not far short of complete, of all
Leonardo s literary works now extant. The consecutive numbers (from
1 to 1566) at the head of each passage in this work, indicate their

logical sequence with reference to the subjects; while the letters and
figures to the left of each paragraph refer to the original Manuscript and
number of the page, on which that particular passage is to be found.
Thus the reader, by referring to the List of Manuscripts at the beginning
of Volume I, and to the Bibliography at the end of Volume II, can, in
every instance, easily ascertain, not merely the period to which the
passage belongs, but also exactly where it stood in the original
document. Thus, too, by following the sequence of the numbers in the
Bibliographical index,