proving them bring forward the propositions already proved. And this
is the proper order; since if you wished to show the usefulness of
any plan you would be obliged again to devise new machines to prove
its utility and thus would confuse the order of the forty Books and
also the order of the diagrams; that is to say you would have to mix
up practice with theory, which would produce a confused and
incoherent work.

6.

I am not to blame for putting forward, in the course of my work on
science, any general rule derived from a previous conclusion.

7.

The Book of the science of Mechanics must precede the Book of useful
inventions.--Have your books on anatomy bound! [Footnote: 4. The
numerous notes on anatomy written on loose leaves and now in the
Royal collection at Windsor can best be classified in four Books,
corresponding to the different character and size of the paper. When
Leonardo speaks of '_li tua libri di notomia_', he probably means
the MSS. which still exist; if this hypothesis is correct the
present condition of these leaves might seem to prove that he only
carried out his purpose with one of the Books on anatomy. A borrowed
book on Anatomy is mentioned in F.O.]

8.

The order of your book must proceed on this plan: first simple
beams, then (those) supported from below, then suspended in part,
then wholly [suspended]. Then beams as supporting other weights
[Footnote: 4. Leonardo's notes on Mechanics are extraordinarily
numerous; but, for the reasons assigned in my introduction, they
have not been included in the present work.].

General introductions to the book on Painting (9-13).

9.

INTRODUCTION.

Seeing that I can find no subject specially useful or
pleasing--since the men who have come before me have taken for their
own every useful or necessary theme--I must do like one who, being
poor, comes last to the fair, and can find no other way of providing
himself than by taking all the things already seen by other buyers,
and not taken but refused by reason of their lesser value. I, then,
will load my humble pack with this despised and rejected
merchandise, the refuse of so many buyers; and will go about to
distribute it, not indeed in great cities, but in the poorer towns,
taking such a price as the wares I offer may be worth. [Footnote: It
need hardly be pointed out that there is in this 'Proemio' a covert
irony. In the second and third prefaces, Leonardo characterises his
rivals and opponents more closely. His protest is directed against
Neo-latinism as professed by most of the humanists of his time; its
futility is now no longer questioned.]

10.

INTRODUCTION.

I know that many will call this useless work [Footnote: 3. questa
essere opera inutile. By opera we must here understand libro di
pittura and particularly the treatise on Perspective.]; and they
will be those of whom Demetrius [Footnote: 4. Demetrio. "With regard
to the passage attributed to Demetrius", Dr. H. MULLER STRUBING
writes, "I know not what to make of it. It is certainly not
Demetrius Phalereus that is meant and it can hardly be Demetrius
Poliorcetes. Who then can it be--for the name is a very common one?
It may be a clerical error for Demades and the maxim is quite in the
spirit of his writings I have not however been able to find any
corresponding passage either in the 'Fragments' (C. MULLER, _Orat.
Att._, II. 441) nor in the Supplements collected by DIETZ (_Rhein.
Mus._, vol. 29, p. 108)."

The same passage occurs as a simple Memorandum in the MS. Tr. 57,
apparently as a note for this '_Proemio_' thus affording some data
as to the time where these introductions were written.] declared
that he took no more account of the wind that came out their mouth
in words, than of that they expelled from their lower parts: men who
desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that
of wisdom, which is the food and the only true riches of the mind.
For so much more worthy as the soul is than the body, so much more
noble are the possessions of the soul than those of the body. And
often, when I see one of these men take this work in his hand, I
wonder that he does not put it to his nose, like a monkey, or ask me
if it is something good to eat.

[Footnote: In the original, the Proemio di prospettiva cioe
dell'uffitio dell'occhio (see No. 21) stands between this and the
preceding one, No. 9.]

INTRODUCTION.

I am fully concious that, not being a literary man, certain
presumptuous persons will think that they may reasonably blame me;
alleging that I am not a man of letters. Foolish folks! do they not
know that I might retort as Marius did to the Roman Patricians
[Footnote 21: _Come Mario disse ai patriti Romani_. "I am unable to
find the words here attributed by Leonardo to Marius, either in


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