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288 Germano Maifreda

a host of very solemn sages pottering about and learning by heart, hefty
advisors, holdovers, treatise writers; there they are, admiring the dusty
medallions, the crumbling inscriptions, the [ritual] pateras, the ancient
tripods, some bristly and ill-washed erudites; […]there they consign to the
flames every year, on the appointed day of high solemnity, the works of Bacon,
Galileo, and Newton, a copy of The Spirit of the Laws and another of The
33
Treatise on Sensations [by Condillac] .
Abstraction, sterile obsequy towards the Authorities, vulgar anti-
quarianism, ignorance of scientific method (emblematically symbolized
by the figure of the bonfire) and of the more recent developments of
political thought and sensationalism are the traits of ignorance; their
opposites give rise to the culture the present era requires. Yet with
some limits which the Enlightened Lombards seem well aware of. If it
is applied to society, which may indeed, for convenience’s sake, be
represented in terms of mechanism, still contemporary culture cannot
be abstractly analytic: «In nature everything is done by grades. The
body politic is a machine whose diverse and complicated wheels are
not perceivable to many, nor may many of them be displaced abruptly
34
without creating confusion», he writes in Elementi di commercio .
«Every shock is fatal and the unfortunate effects disclose to the
incautious associations [among elements] of which they had not pre-
viously been aware. To take in hand such intervention requires
someone who knows the whole mechanics [of the situation] perfectly.»
The very technique of classification – one of the constituting
elements of 18th century naturalistic culture – is attentively examined
by Cesare Beccaria, as we can clearly see in his Thoughts on Smells
(‘Frammento sugli odori’), in which he distinguishes between «simple»
and «composite» odors and classifies the latter in three principal
types, «which, however, are not separated in nature if not by minute
differences, like every other thing. The classes are merely points of ref-
erence which aid our minds in sorting through the variety of natural
35
objects, and often, indeed, lead it astray» .
The scientific method proposed by the participants in the Lombard
Enlightenment, some of the more significant pages of their review
seem to suggest, is then intrinsically systemic and never schematically
classificatory. Even – and above all – when it approaches the very
fashionable theme of sensations and their relationship to human edu-
cation. This is an epistemological approach, but at the same time it is

33 FR1, 29.
34 FR1, 30-8, 33.
35 FR1, 39-47, 41.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XV - Agosto 2018 n.43
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)