But may one not take offense at the results of an investigation which concede to the accidents of the parental constellation so decisive an influence on the fate of a person, which, for example, subordinates Leonardo's fate to his illegitimate birth and to the sterility of his first step-mother Donna Albiera? I believe that one has no right to feel so; if one considers accident as unworthy of determining our fate, it is only a relapse to the pious aspect of life, the overcoming of which Leonardo himself prepared when he put down in writing that the sun does not move. We are naturally grieved over the fact that a just God and a kindly providence do not guard us better against such influences in our most defenseless age. We thereby gladly forget that as a matter of fact everything in our life is accident from our very origin through the meeting of spermatozoa and ovum, accident, which nevertheless participates in the lawfulness and fatalities of nature, and lacks only the connection to our wishes and illusions. The division of life's determinants into the "fatalities" of our constitution and the "accidents" of our childhood may still be indefinite in individual cases, but taken altogether one can no longer entertain any doubt about the importance of precisely our first years of childhood. We all still show too little respect for nature, which in Leonardo's deep words recalling Hamlet's speech _"is full of infinite reasons which never appeared in experience."_[78] Every one of us human beings corresponds to one of the infinite experiments in which these "reasons of nature" force themselves into experience. THE END FOOTNOTES: [1] In the words of J. Burckhard, cited by Alexandra Konstantinowa, Die Entwicklung des Madonnentypus by Leonardo da Vinci, Strassburg, 1907. [2] Vite, etc. LXXXIII. 1550-1584. [3] Traktat von der Malerei, new edition and introduction by Marie Herzfeld, E. Diederichs, Jena, 1909. [4] Solmi. La resurrezione dell' opera di Leonardo in the collected work; Leonardo da Vinci. Conferenze Florentine, Milan, 1910. [5] Scognamiglio Ricerche e Documenti sulla giovinezza di Leonardo da Vinci. Napoli, 1900. [6] W. v. Seidlitz. Leonardo da Vinci, der Wendepunkt der Renaissance, 1909, Bd. I, p. 203. [7] W. v. Seidlitz, l. c. Bd. II, p. 48 [8] W. Pater. The Renaissance, p. 107, The Macmillan Co., 1910. "But it is certain that at one period of his life he had almost ceased to be an artist." [9] Cf. v. Seidlitz, Bd. I die Geschichte der Restaurations--und Rettungsversuche. [10] Müntz. Léonard de Vinci, Paris, 1899, p. 18. (A letter of a contemporary from India to a Medici alludes to this peculiarity of Leonardo. Given by Richter: The literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci.) [11] F. Botazzi. Leonardo biologo e anatomico. Conferenze Florentine, p. 186, 1910. [12] E. Solmi: Leonardo da Vinci. German Translation by Emmi Hirschberg. Berlin, 1908.