Superimposed Surfaces, Tender Jottings and Moral Prose
Notes on subquadruple circles and overlaid surfaces, tender jottings, and aphorisms on idleness and seizing fortune.
Between the columns and turned at the margins are tender, fragmentary jottings — 'Tell me... Mind... My most beloved', 'Tell me if ever a thing was done for your sake', 'Oh how many friends, how many kinsmen'. The geometric notes treat subquadruple circles and the proportion of one surface superimposed on another, several sentences surviving only in part where the paper was cut. A separate block (b) gathers moral prose: Aristotle's Ethics on praise and blame lying only in what is in our power, the maxim that the mind rusts like unused iron, and the image of seizing fortune from the front 'because behind she is bald'. The lower fragment also carries untranscribed mechanical drawings — a long screw-like device, a coiled spring and a bell.
On this page
Aristotle, the rusting mind, and bald Fortune
Citing Aristotle's third book of the Ethics, the note holds that man deserves praise or blame only in what is in his power to do or not do. Just as iron rusts and water putrefies or freezes without motion, so the mind decays without exercise. One does ill to praise, and worse to blame, a thing one does not understand — and when fortune comes, seize her from the front, for behind she is bald.
Subquadruple circles and the quarter-circle
Circles that are subquadruple one to another: the quarter of the larger equals the whole of the smaller. If the larger is placed with its semidiameter upon the diameter of the smaller, it cuts the quarter-circle in the middle of its quantity. The figure appears at the head of a right-hand column.
Proportion of surfaces laid one upon another
When one surface is subduple to the larger, what is superimposed must be proportioned with the half of that larger. When one surface is entirely superimposed on another, all the part of the larger not occupied by the smaller is equal to that smaller. Several of these sentences survive only in part, cut off at the edge of the paper.
'My most beloved': tender fragmentary jottings
In the space between the columns are the words 'Tell me. Mind. My most beloved.' Turned at the margins are 'Tell me if ever a thing was done for your sake' and 'Oh how many friends, how many kinsmen...', with 'Tell me' repeated in the lower corner.
Untranscribed screw device, spring and bell
The lower fragment carries mechanical drawings not included in the transcription: a long horizontal screw-like mechanism, a coiled serpentine spring, and a bell. They are drawn without accompanying text on this sheet.