the mountain shone far lighter than in the plains below, because a
lesser quantity of atmosphere lay between the summit of the mountain
and the sun.

{55}

[Sidenote: Prophecies]

128.

Men will communicate with each other from the most distant countries,
and reply.

Many will abandon their own habitations and take with them their own
goods, and go and inhabit other countries.

Men will pursue the thing which they most greatly fear; that is to say,
they will be miserable in order to avoid falling into misery.

Men standing in separate hemispheres will converse with each other,
embrace each other, and understand each other's language.

129.

We should not desire the impossible.

{59}

II

THOUGHTS ON ART

* *
*

[Sidenote: Painting declines when aloof from Nature]

The painter's work will be of little merit if he takes the painting of
others as his standard, but if he studies from nature he will produce
good fruits; as is seen in the case of the painters of the age after
the Romans, who continued to imitate one another and whose art
consequently declined from age to age. After these came Giotto the
Florentine, who was born in the lonely mountains, inhabited only by
goats and similar animals; and he, being drawn to his art by nature,
began to draw on the rocks the doings of the goats of which he was the
keeper; and thus he likewise began to draw all the animals which he met
with in the country: so that after long study he surpassed not only all
the masters of his age, but all those of many past centuries. After
him art relapsed once more, because all artists imitated the painted
pictures, and thus from century to century it went on declining, until
Tomaso the Florentine, called Masaccio, proved by his perfect work that
they who set up for themselves a standard other than nature, the
mistress of all masters, labour in vain.

{60}

Thus I wish to say, in regard to these mathematical matters, that they
who merely study the masters and not the works of nature are the
grandchildren, and not the children, of nature, the mistress of good
masters. I abhor the supreme folly of those who blame the disciples of
nature in defiance of those masters who were themselves her pupils.

[Sidenote: Its Origin]

2.

The first picture was a single line, drawn round the shadow of a man
cast by the sun on the wall.

3.

Vastness of the field of painting: All that is visible is include