Note 30 — Chapter I · CONCERNING THE TWO KINDS OF THINKING

Compare the impressive description of Petrarch’s ascent of Mt. Ventoux, by Jacob Burckhardt (“Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien,” 1869, p. 235):

“One now awaits a description of the view, but in vain, not because the poet is indifferent to it, but, on the contrary, because the impression affects him all too strongly. His entire past life, with all its follies, passes before him; he recalls that it is ten years ago to-day that he, as a young man, left Bologna, and he turns a yearning glance toward Italy. He opens a book—‘Confessions of St. Augustine,’ his companion at that time—and his eye falls upon this passage in the tenth chapter: ‘and the people went there and admired the high mountains, the wide wastes of the sea and the mighty downward rushing streams, and the ocean and the courses of the stars, and forgot themselves.’ His brother, to whom he reads these words, cannot comprehend why, at this point, he closes the book and is silent.”