If An Accident Does Happen, They Call It A Disgrazia, Thus
Confirming The Soundness Of A Philosophy Which I Put Forward In An
Earlier Work.
Every misfortune they hold (and quite rightly) to be
a disgrace to the person who suffers it; "Son disgraziato" is the
Italian for "I have been unfortunate." I was once going to give a
penny to a poor woman by the roadside, when two other women stopped
me.
"Non merita," they said; "She is no deserving object for
charity" - the fact being that she was an idiot. Nevertheless they
were very kind to her.
CHAPTER V - Calonico (continued) and Giornico
Our inventions increase in geometrical ratio. They are like living
beings, each one of which may become parent of a dozen others - some
good and some ne'er-do-weels; but they differ from animals and
vegetables inasmuch as they not only increase in a geometrical
ratio, but the period of their gestation decreases in geometrical
ratio also. Take this matter of Alpine roads for example. For how
many millions of years was there no approach to a road over the St.
Gothard, save the untutored watercourses of the Ticino and the
Reuss, and the track of the bouquetin or the chamois? For how many
more ages after this was there not a mere shepherd's or huntsman's
path by the river side - without so much as a log thrown over so as
to form a rude bridge? No one would probably have ever thought of
making a bridge out of his own unaided imagination, more than any
monkey that we know of has done so.
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