HANDS:
hands
hands title:
§21. Leonardo
hands date:
23 November 2025
hands text:
Men have called me mad;
but the question is not yet settled,
whether madness is or is not
the loftiest intelligence.
but the question is not yet settled,
whether madness is or is not
the loftiest intelligence.
01
In Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks we find a curious entry:
02
"If you wish to make a foul smell: take human dung and urine and stinking goosefoot (or, if you don’t have any, use cabbage and beetroot), put them together in a glass bottle, seal it well and leave it for about a month under manure; then throw it where you want the smell, so that it spreads."
03
Why did he find it interesting?
04
Evolutionarily speaking, genius is the offspring of a mechanical process — unpredictable, blind, irrational; a mind that drifts wherever it pleases, without hesitation or shame.