Voltaire quoting Horace

I found several quotes in Latin while working on my second-hand translation of Principia Mathematica.

A note on the provenance of the following quotes.

The following are Latin phrases I came across in the introduction to the du Châtelet French translation of Newton’s Principia (1756) to which Voltaire (1756)¹ contributed a preface. He uses several latin phrases without providing any translation.

Two are quotations which would likely be well known in learnèd circles, as we will see below; the third seems to be a novel phrase, but would likely be easily interpreted by the by his intended audience for ‘la the Langue Latine latin language … eſt is entendue understood de by tous all les ſçavants’² learned persons

‘Nullius in verba’

The first Latin phrase we find in Voltaire’s description of the Marquise’s choice to study Newton. He tells us that, after abandoning the crutch of systems (he gives the example of Leibniz’s monads, which she had previously studied), she chose the Royal Society’s motto — nullius in verba — for her guide (p.vi). It is by taking this motto as direction, Voltaire claims, that she came to appreciate Newton’s work.

The Royal Society describes its motto as ‘an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand the domination of authority and to verfy all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment’³ and translates it simply:

take nobody’s word for it

Newton’s Principia claims to explain describe the mathematical principles of the natural world, and to do so by deriving its equations usingthe least presupposition possible. His tools are geometry — itself composed of lines and circles — and experimentation — in which all his principles are first observed and then proven. The Royal Society’s motto seems to fit well with that stated purpose, and we can see why Voltaire would ascribe the same spirit to the Marquise.

Still, the translation does not seem satisfactory given only a rough word-by-word analysis (I have not the skill for better). It seems like there must be a specific context in order to get the given translation.

The motto is itself taken from one of Horace’s Epistles⁰ (p.9; lines 14–15):

nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri,
quo me cumque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes.

— Epistle 1.—To Mæcenas

Francis (1846) gives the following gloss in his translation of the Epistles (p.9; emphasis mine):

You ask, perhaps, what sect, what chief I own ;
I’m of all sects, but blindly sworn to none ;
For as the tempest drives I shape my way,
Now active plunge into the world’s wide sea;

Voltaire uses nullius in verba to describe someone (the Marquise) who has decided to take nothing for granted. She had translated other philosophers in the past (like Leibniz) and, if Voltaire’s history can be taken at face value, found their reliance on established systems of thought or proposed mechanics to be problemetic. This is why she was so taken with Newton’s work, to the point of translating the entire Principia, providing a commentary, and doing all the calculations found therein. He relied on nothing more than geometry and experimentation.

That sounds like a compelling example of the spirit of nullius in verba; but don’t take my word for it, you can read my translation instead in the Projects section of the site.

‘turpè putaverunt…’

The next phrase was a lot less immediately transparent. It came up in the following paragraph which describes the lengths that France would need to go in order to allow Newton’s sublime truths to find footing. Namely, that of letting the generations that had grown reading ‘the errors of Descartes’(p.viii) and in doing so _ _ _ _ _ _ _.

Il a fallu It was necessary pour établir en France in order to establish in France toutes les ſublimes vérités all the sublime truths que which nous devons à Newton we owe to Newton laiſſer paſſer to let pass la génération de ceux the generation of those qui who ayant vieilli dans having grown in les erreurs de Deſartes, Descartes’ errors, turpè putaverunt parere minoribus, & quæ imberbes didicêre, ſenes perdenda fateri.

So what could they have possibly done as a result of growing old in the errors of teachers who came before?

Let’s first look at where the quote was taken from. Again, this is from Horace’s Epistles; this time from a letter addressed to Augustus⁰. The relevant lines are these (p.404; lines 83–85):

vel quia nil rectum, nisi quod placuit sibi, ducunt,
vel quia turpe putant parere minoribus, et quae
imberbes didicere senes perdenda fateri.

— Epistle 2.1—To Augustus

Francis (1846)’s verse translation — and recall that his is not a literal translation — is as follows.

Should they, with awkward modesty, submit
To younger judges in the cause of wit,
Or own, that it were best, provoking truth!
In age t’ unlearn the learning of their youth.

Unfortunately this does not leave us in a much better place; we have an idea of the building blocks of the sentence, but without a better sense of the grammar little sense can be made of it. So we are only a little closer to understanding the full meaning of the phrase, and — therefore — Voltaire’s intention in writing it.

‘periit arte ſua’

This quotation comes in the context of end of the translator’s life. The preface has just gone through describing how she approached the end of her life — which she believed to be near — working long, late hours in order to complete her translation.

When she did finally pass, she was missed at the court. Voltaire tells us (p.xiii) that:

Il eût été heureux It would have been happ[ier] pour ſes amis for her friends, qu’elle n’eût pas had she not entrepris undertaken cet this ouvrage work dont les ſavants von jouir. which the learned will benefit from On We peut can dire say d’elle, of her en while dépolorant deploring ſa her deſtinée fate,, periit arte ſua. … … …

Consulting the the Latin Lexicon⁸ again, we find the following likely interpretations:

periit verb.3SING.PERF.IND

pereō, perīre; to pass away, to be lost, to perish
perished, was lost

arte noun.FEM.SING.ABL

ars, artis; by art, by a profession, by an œuvre.⁹
by art, work

sua adj.SING.FEM or PLU.NEU

his own, her own, of or belonging to himself, herself
her own

This gives a rendering that runs contrary to my instinctual reading of it. I had assumed that it should be glossed as: she died for her work; but I think a better rendering would be something analagous to the occīsus gladiō example given in Greenough et al. (1903)¹⁰:

‘The Ablative is used to denote the relations expresed by the prepositions from; in, at; wit, by: … occīsus gladiō, slain by the sword.‘(emphasis mine)

The result would then be something along the lines of: she perished by her work. This is a relatively unnatural construction in English, but not impossible.¹¹

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