Tuesday, November 24, 2015

 

The Threefold Way

At the beginning of Thoreau's Cape Cod he quotes, but doesn't translate, the following three Latin sentences:
"Principium erit mirari omnia, etiam tritissima.
Medium est calamo committere visa et utilia.
Finis erit naturam adcuratius delineare, quam alius"
[si possumus.]

                       LINNAEUS DE PEREGRINATIONE.
In English:
The beginning will be to wonder at all things, even the most commonplace ones.
The middle is to commit to writing things seen and useful things.
The end will be to depict nature more carefully than another does
[if we can.]

                      LINNAEUS ON TRAVEL.
The source is Linnaeus' Philosophia Botanica (Stockholm: Godofr. Kiesewetter, 1751), p. 297:


# posted by Michael Gilleland @ 2:07 PM


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