Giuseppe Tartini - Lettere e documenti / Pisma in dokumenti / Letters and Documents - Volume / Knjiga / Volume II

326 that is somehow separable and, with regard to the way men (albeit cultivated men) think, of such importance that, when it is presented to the public, it will make such a noise in the scholarly world that surely a bigger one has never been heard. For me this is not the case, because I am certain that it can be shown, through physical and demonstrative testing, that there is an even more important part in this marvellous science. In any case this part, which I propose as separable, is more than sufficient to indicate the weight and infinite value of the whole science, which is worthy of being placed without hesitation in the hands of this monarch. Hitherto I have spoken: Now it is your turn to talk and say: Dear Tartini, your head has surely overheated. You who are a simple and mechanical violin player, you who are ignorant of philosophy and mathematics, are you imagining and presuming in these enlightened times to have made new discoveries in the physical and mathematical sciences? What reasonable person should believe this? Or worse, what did the ancient philosophers know compared to the philosophers of our own day? Let us assume (just to humour you) that the physical harmonic science was known to them and that it has now been discovered by you. Quid inde? Will we therefore perhaps learn something new to the present-day philosophers, who have seen everything and know everything? And aren’t the ancients ridiculed today as visionaries and ignoramuses? And worse still, do you dare to involve in this supposed discovery a sovereign of such worth and to exploit the Most Serene Doge and myself, perhaps even recklessly taking advantage of our love for you on account of your violin playing, which is your only profession? You have mentioned these things on other occasions, but since I paid no attention then, all the more will I pay no attention now, because I love you (wishing to preserve for you the reputation you have acquired with the violin and that you would recklessly lose in this absurd enterprise of yours); and because I am prudent enough not to involve such people in an affair that so patently betrays the presumption of its proposer. All very true, and at first sight you, like any judicious man, must think and reply in that manner. But given that in the present case all I wish to do is send you this separable part so that it may be privately, secretly and rigorously examined there and presented to the sovereign if what I claim to demonstrate should be true, it is clear that in this case there is no risk either for the sovereign or for the Most Serene Doge or for yourself or myself. The proposition consists of about four pages, so the examination would not take too long, though it requires close attention. If the proposition is false, it will be torn up. If it is true, it is most infallibly worthy of this monarch, and you will be the first to judge it to be so. But, my Most Revered Count, if this is true, then the whole science is true; and if the whole science is true, in spite of the presumptions of today’s philosophy, and in spite of the prejudices against the author of the discovery (that violin player, ignoramus, etc., etc.), one must necessarily conclude, with the force of physical and demonstrative evidence, that not enough was known and that much more will be known thanks to this science; together with the most justified hope that, on the strength