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me desirable to give the reader this brief account of the leading
facts of the story, as the vague hints of it, which have recently
been made public, may have given to the incident an aspect which it
had not in reality, and which it does not deserve.
The passages here classed under the head "Morals" reveal Leonardo
to us as a man whose life and conduct were unfailingly governed by
lofty principles and aims. He could scarcely have recorded his stern
reprobation and unmeasured contempt for men who do nothing useful
and strive only for riches, if his own life and ambitions had been
such as they have so often been misrepresented.
At a period like that, when superstition still exercised unlimited
dominion over the minds not merely of the illiterate crowd, but of
the cultivated and learned classes, it was very natural that
Leonardo's views as to Alchemy, Ghosts, Magicians, and the like
should be met with stern reprobation whenever and wherever he may
have expressed them; this accounts for the argumentative tone of all
his utterances on such subjects which I have collected in
Subdivision III of this section. To these I have added some passages
which throw light on Leonardo's personal views on the Universe. They
are, without exception, characterised by a broad spirit of
naturalism of which the principles are more strictly applied in his
essays on Astronomy, and still more on Physical Geography.
To avoid repetition, only such notes on Philosophy, Morals and
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