The Manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci, Vol. 2

FOREWORD.

to which the publication of Manuscript A led—which, as I have said, was intended to appear before the other manuscripts of the Institute—to clearly demonstrate the true nature of the various manifestations of their author's genius throughout the course of his other writings¹.

Manuscript B, like the preceding one, treats a variety of subjects, among which one will notice passages relating to spirits, Morals, the Arts of drawing, Music, bizarre inventions, Water, and many others, which denote the profound study that Leonardo made—even though he was a "disciple of Experience" original: "disciple de l'Expérience." Leonardo famously called himself "ostantado di lettere" (a man without letters) but a "discepolo della sperienza" (disciple of experience), prioritizing observation over book-learning.—of Antiquity, Geometry, and Mechanics; finally, it is with remarkable consistency that he discusses Architecture, Building, Roadworks, and engineering works (various constructions, Churches, Palaces, Public ways, Sluice gates, Kitchens, Chimneys, etc.). This includes not only construction from the artistic point of view—the buildings and roads of Milan—but also the careful arrangement of their smallest details. He also covers warfare on land and water (weapons, soldiers, combat, fortifications), not only studying what it had been in all times and among all peoples, but through a deep search for means that could serve to perfect its practice. It was likely in this latter order of studies, and not, as has been believed, through a petty whim, that Leonardo da Vinci applied himself with great perseverance to combining a mechanism that could allow man to fly by the flapping of wings—a mechanism of which the final pages of Manuscript B contain a most curious overview².

Leonardo da Vinci's research on flight occupied him in the most serious manner for a very long time; considerable portions of several of his manuscripts are filled with the notes he took in this regard. The great inventor attached, it seems to me, only secondary importance to the difference in physical constitution between man and birds, and did not consider the difficulty of finding a point of support—given the physiological organization of man—to be insurmountable³. Man can swim and navigate; why could he not fly? he perhaps asked himself.

He who had imagined a process (which has been used in our own day) for walking on water (Codex Atlanticus, folio 7 recto; Gerli, Drawings of L. d. V. plate XXXII, z) saw things from a high vantage point; considering at the same time—with that habit of generalizing everything on which I have had occasion to insist several times—all those diverse animals that fly under the most varied conditions, from the eagle to the bat, the dragonfly, and the gnat, and whose limbs are but modifications of those which for others serve to swim or walk, he probably believed that the solution to the problem was more likely to be found in determining certain relationships between weight, body volume, wingspan original: "envergure", strength, the movement of wings or membranes, and air resistance. Was Leonardo pursuing only a chimera here? I believe that could not be proven. Since the era in which he lived, man has momentarily flown several times⁵; why then, if serious accidents have delayed further experiments, should there not come an hour when science definitively takes possession of the air, as it has taken possession of land and sea? And who knows if the disclosure of Leonardo's writings might not

1. See the Journal of Scholars (Journal des savants) of July 1882, the Political and Literary Review (Revue politique et littéraire) of May 14, 1881, and the Writings of Leonardo da Vinci.
2. See: Leonardo as Scientist and Man of Letters (Essay on the works of L. da V.) [Leonardo scienz. e letter. (Saggio del. op. di L. da V.)]
3. "I think of flying, if not by imitating birds, then by the beating and rowing of wings," original Italian: "Penso a volare se non imitando gli uccelli, col battere e remigar delle ale" says Amoretti (Historical Memoirs p. 153). See Gerli, Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, p. 5.
4. The Writings of Leonardo da Vinci, p. 12-13.
5. See the Universal Magazine (Magasin universel), vol. I (1833-1834), p. 75.