Cause Principle Unity

Cause, principle and unity
Oh! I see that colossal idler, Gervasio, coming to snap the thread of my
sinewy oration. I am afraid he has heard me, but what matter?
GERVASIO. Salve, magister doctorum optime [Good day, O great master
of wise men]!
POLIINNIO. If you do not intend, (tuo more) [as is your custom], to jeer
at me, tu quoque, salve [good day to you as well]!
GERVASIO. I would like to know what you were in the middle of mulling
over alone.
POLIINNIO. As I was in my little interior temple of the Muses, in eum,
qui apud Aristotelem est, locum incidi [I fell upon this passage in Aristotle],
in the first book of the Physics, at the end, where the philosopher, wishing
to elucidate what primary matter is, compares it to the female sex – that
sex, I mean, which is intractable, frail, capricious, cowardly, feeble, vile,
ignoble, base, despicable, slovenly, unworthy, deceitful, harmful, abusive,
cold, misshapen, barren, vain, confused, senseless, treacherous, lazy, fetid,
foul, ungrateful, truncated, mutilated, imperfect, unfinished, deficient, insolent,
amputated, diminished, stale, vermin, tares, plague, sickness, death:
Messo tra noi da la natura e Dio
per una soma e per un grave fio. 9
[By nature and by God among us sent
As a burden and heavy punishment.]
GERVASIO. I know you say this more to exercise yourself in the art of
elocution and to show how ample and eloquent you are, than because you
actually feel what you put into words. You humanists, who dub yourselves
professors of the liberal arts, when you have gorged to the breaking point
on notions, are in the habit of discharging them on poor women; just as
when some other bile weighs on you, you pour it out onto the first student
of yours who makes a mistake. But beware, you Orpheuses, of the furious
wrath of the Thracian women.
POLIINNIO. I am Poliinnio, not Orpheus.
GERVASIO. Then, you do not really condemn women?
POLIINNIO. Minime, minime quidem [Not at all, indeed not at all]: I
speak truly and mean nothing but what I say; for I do not (sophistarum more)
[following the Sophists’ custom], make a profession of demonstrating that
white is black.
9 Ariosto, Orlando furioso, XXVII, 119, quoted from memory. The actual lines run: ‘Credo che t’abbia la
Natura e Dio / prodotto, o scelerato sesso, al mondo / per una soma, per un grave fio’.
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