Il natural desiderio di sapere - Pontifical Academy of Sciences

ON THE NATURAL DESIRE FOR KNOWLEDGE 117ner that, not only for teaching others, they don’t even know for themselves,unless we want knowledge to be understood as one of those lovelyterms that are so often intoned in the schools.How much further damage is done and how far we are kept behind bythe neglect of, as well as the inability to use, the very beautiful and goodamenities 45 which are available to us for study, particularly in this centuryof ours. The field of knowledge is truly very great, great for the abundanceof contemplations and great for the abundance of lessons; 46 norshould anyone think that without help and amenities he can make greatprofit by gathering in his mind a vast machine of undigested materials oreven by reading and ruminating every thing, to then avail himself of it forhis own purposes. There are the most copious indexes and repertories,dictionaries, glossaries for all of the professions, the best writers aredigested 47 in common places. There are collections of flowers, of judgments,of actions, and theaters and polyantheas and gardens and variouslaboratories; 48 there are libraries that give us all books already read andjudged, whether we want them in order by author or by subject; there isthe method and art of synoptics which, with its types, represents for usboth entire fields of knowledge and all their dependencies, conjunctions,divisions and unions and conditions, 49 as particularly in our The Mirror ofReason 50 we have sought to place everything before the eyes of the contemplator,so that at the same time both the most vivid memory and themost acute, awakened, and masterly intelligence can move ahead freely in45 Means, opportunities.46 Contemplations and lessons in the sense, respectively, of speculations and writtenworks.47 Collected.48 All of these are variations of the anthological form, especially important in thisera. A polyanthea was in fact a florilegium.49 This is another very important theme of the culture of the time, which appearsnumerous times in Cesi’s works, as he himself here observes. The mnemotechnical terminologyused here indicates in a very detailed way the various internal bonds and separationswithin human knowledge and in nature itself, comprehended and assimilated,therefore, thanks to this technique that reflects and reveals the order reigning in it. Thetheme has been thoroughly examined: see at least the classic work of P. Rossi, Clavis universalis,Milano-Napoli 1960.50 The Speculum rationis, on which cf. G. Gabrieli, L’orizzonte intellettuale e moraledi Federico Cesi illustrato da un suo zibaldone inedito, in Contributi alla storiadell’Accademia dei Lincei, Roma 1989, pp. 29-77, at pp. 30-35.