Experience is a truer guide than the words of others.

It was the opinion of Leonardo that the temporary nature of music caused its inferiority to painting. Although durability was in itself no absolute test, — else the work of coppersmiths would be the highest art, — yet in any final scale, permanence could not altogether be disregarded. Music perished in the very act of its creation, while painting preserved the beautiful from the hand of time.

Animals will be seen on the earth who will always be fighting against each other with the greatest loss and frequent deaths on each side. And there will be no end to their malignity; by their strong limbs we shall see a great portion of the trees of the vast forests laid low throughout the universe; and, when they are filled with food the satisfaction of their desires will be to deal death and grief and labour and wars and fury to every living thing; and from their immoderate pride they will desire to rise towards heaven, but the too great weight of their limbs will keep them down. Nothing will remain on earth, or under the earth or in the waters which will not be persecuted, disturbed and spoiled, and those of one country removed into another. And their bodies will become the sepulture and means of transit of all they have killed.

O Earth! why dost thou not open and engulf them in the fissures of thy vast abyss and caverns, and no longer display in the sight of heaven such a cruel and horrible monster?