United States or Honduras ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
For he, rejecting all that has been the subject-matter of painting in the past, all the human values and the complexes of association which have invested the visible world with beauty for men, proves to us in his tortured diagrams that he has found nothing to take their place, He gives us a Chimæra bombinans in vacuo, that vacuum which the universe is to the human spirit when it denies itself.
But Père Hardouin observed that he had not got up at four o'clock every morning for forty years to think as all the world thought. So I am loth to admit that I have been at so much pains to fight a mere chimaera bombinans. No, I cannot think that my labours have been all in vain, nor that victory is to be won in theology as cheaply as the scoffers would have us believe.
"A scientist," says Monsignor Benson, "is hampered and biased by knowing the earth goes round the sun." The fact of the matter is that the man of science is not a solitary figure, a chimæra bombinans in vacuo. In whatever direction he looks he is faced by the figures of other workers and he is limited and "hampered" by their work.
In another year was judged the action: Utrum chimera bombinans in vacuo possit comedere secundas intentiones, and was decided in the affirmative. In consequence, everyone thought themselves far superior to Archimedes, Euclid, Cicero, Pliny, and strutted proudly about the University quarter.
"Quæstio subtilissima, utrum Chimæra in vacuo bombinans possit comedere secundas intentiones; et fuit debatuta per decem hebdomadas in Consilio Constantiensi," and "Quid consecrasset Petrus, si consecrasset eo tempore, quo corpus Christi pendebet in cruce?" are samples which will be generally familiar, but the very absurdity of these exercitations serves to prove how strenuous must have been the temper of the times which preferred to exhaust itself over such banalities as are typified by the extracts above written, rather than remain inactive.
Whistler, when he said that art happens, ignored this fact, ignored the whole social relation of mankind and the whole history of the arts; while Tolstoy ignored no less the mind of the artist, and the minds of all those who do actually experience art. To Whistler the artist is a Chimæra bombinans in vacuo; to Tolstoy he is a philanthropist.
Roskoff’s book, on the other hand, has never appeared in translation. It is not easy to grasp the scholastic subtleties of mediaeval schoolmen. Dr. Ethel Brewster suggests the following interpretations: An chimoera bombinans in vacuo devorat secundas intentiones. Whether a demon buzzing in the air devours our good intentions.
So he weighed such queries as the old scholastic brocard, An chimoera bombinans in vacuo devorat secundas intentiones? and that beautiful moot point wherewith Sir Thomas More silenced the challenging schoolmen of Bruges, An averia carrucae capta in vetito nomio sint irreplegibilia?
Word Of The Day