TWO SCIENTIST REVOLUTIONARIES BARILLI (Giuseppe, 1812-1894, 'Quirico Filopanti')

Autograph Letter Signed 'Filopanti' to Rinaldo ANDREINI, (1818-1890, Italian Surgeon and Patriot), in Italian with translation, thanking him "for your invitation to the Congress of the League for Teaching, but I will only be able to take part with my good wishes", his views "on cosmology and anthropology" will "probably not coincide with yours", referring him to "a general idea in the preface to my work 'The Universe'", (Bologna, 3 vols, 1871-1873), "yours will perhaps be inspired, I fear, by the ultra-materialist trends so common among your medical colleagues, who believe that nothing exists other than what they can cut with their scalpel. And since you never have anything under your eyes except the part that is dead, diseased or monstrous in nature, on the whole you become insensitive to the marvellous harmony and solidarity of all the parts of the infinite Universe". However, for Andreini's next lectures on Anthropology, he can say "that I believe that the Sun and all his planets, including our own, were formed by the flowing together of elements dispersed from previously existing worlds ... There exists, in my view, an infinite variety of plants and animals in infinite space, but there are intrinsic reasons why certain given organic forms are repeated more than others ... Everything that is now on earth has come, in the course of centuries, from the heavens, not omitting the germs of plants and animals", he adopts "Darwin's theory only half way ... in the previous worlds the most advanced species" may have arisen "by continual gradations from inferior species, but ... Darwin'slaw has not been verified on our earth", explaining that "in another world, now destroyed, and the parent or ancestor of this", man may have "descended from monkey, but present man does not derive from present monkey", otherwise "there would have remained ... numerous traces of it", he ends by saying "It consoles me to see the French Republic consolidating, even though at the moment she is in bad hands. With heartfelt greetings", ( 4 sides 8vo.), with, in Andreini's hand, his French translation of the letter, (4 sides 8vo.), followed by his short memoir of Barilli, signed and dated 1879, (3 sides 8vo.), together 11 sides 8vo., Cento (15 miles north of Bologna) and no place, 12th August 1872 - (Translation)
Cento, 12th August 1872
Dear Andreini, Thank you for your invitation to the Congress of the League for Teaching, but I will only be able to take part with my good wishes. I regret too not having the time to sum up for you my particular views on cosmology and anthropology. Probably they will not coincide with yours, for mine are consonant with those of which I have given a general idea in the preface to my work "The Universe"; yours will perhaps be inspired, I fear, by the ultra-materialist trends so common among your medical colleagues, who believe that nothing exists other than what they can cut with their scalpel. And since you never have anything under your eyes except the part that is dead, diseased or monstrous in nature, on the whole you become insensitive to the marvellous harmony and solidarity of all the parts of the infinite Universe.
All the same, if in your next lectures (on Anthropology) you wish to do me the honour of briefly quoting the opinions I have expressed in my addresses [Andreini adds '(in the open air)'] at Milan, Turin, Florence and Venice, and which will be developed more fully in the latest parts of The Universe, you can say that I believe that the Sun and all his planets, including our own, were formed by the flowing together of elements dispersed from previously existing worlds, among the innumerable worlds which compose the eternal and immense Universe. There exists, in my view, an infinite variety of plants and animals in infinite space, but there are intrinsic reasons why certain given organic forms are repeated more than others in the innumerable worlds, and among these last, the fundamental forms of our plants and our animals, including man. Everything that is now on earth has come, in the course of centuries, from the heavens, not omitting the germs of plants and animals. I adopt Darwin's theory only half way:: that is to say, that in the previous worlds the most advanced species arose by continual gradations from inferior species, but I take it as certain that Darwin's law has not been verified on our earth: for example, it can have happened, in my opinion, that in another world, now destroyed, and the parent or ancestor of this, that man has been descended from monkey, but present man does not derive from present monkey: for, if this descent had taken place, there would have remained, with the highest probability, numerous traces of it, and such traces are completely lacking here below.
It consoles me to see the French Republic consolidating, even though at the moment she is in bad hands. With heartfelt greetings, I remain
Your most devoted
Filopanti


Andreini writes:
Barilli, Pietro or Paolo [sic], born into a peasant family of the Commune of Budrio near Bologna, from his youth took the pseudonym Quirico Filopanti = Roman [Citizen] Friend-of-All.
Appointed Professor of Applied Mechanics, he had the idea, about 1840, of preventing floods by means of nets on a rope, or of canvas. It was greatly laughed at at the time, but in 1872 his system was used successfully against a flooding of the Po.
In 1849 he was elected a people's representative to the Constituent Assembly at Rome, and on the night of 9th February, it was he, as Secretary, who drew up the decree which proclaimed the fall of the Pope and the arrival of the Roman Republic.
In 1851 or 1852 he was found almost dead from hunger in an attic in London. After the proclamation of Victor Emmanuel as King of Italy he refused to take the oath and had to leave his chair. He then went round Italy, giving, in the great public squares of Milan, Turin, Bologna, Venice, Florence, Palermo and Rome, popular lectures on Astronomy and Cosmology, which he collected into an encyclopaedic work on philosophy, more complete than the Cosmos of Humboldt, to which he gave the title 'The Universe'.
At present he is a deputy [to the Italian parliament], while continuing to declare that he wishes to preserve his republican beliefs.
Filopanti has a heart as great as his intelligence. In the wars for the independence of Italy, he fought by Garibaldi's side and was wounded. His character appears eccentric ['original'], but it is founded on a heroic honesty.
Up to the present, his 'Universe' has shared the fate of his proposal to control floods with netting - but it is agreed that he is a patriot of the old sort, a mathematician and astronomer among the most distinguished of our time - and above all - a rare thing - a great honest man.
Andreini too was a revolutionary, but had to leave Bologna in 1844 after the failure of the great uprising planned by Fabrizi. Over the next few years he was alternately in French Algiers as a surgeon, or back in Italy writing propaganda or under arms. Like Barilli, he was elected to the Constituent Assembly, and during the defence of Rome, was part of the commission for the wounded and the barricades. After the fall of the Republic, he too fled to London, then to Belgium, France and Switzerland looking for a livelihood, then returned to Algiers. There he wrote about the conspiracies of the '40s. Algiers became his place of exile, except for 1859, when he tried to land with a party at Livorno, and 1860-1861 in Bologna, where he edited the Corriere del Popolo, in support of Victor Emmanuel. In 1870 he collected funds for an ambulance, but the war was over before he could reach the front.
The present letter shows Andreini active in the 'Ligue de l'enseignement' ('League for Teaching'), founded in 1866 by Jean Macé and today as strong as ever. Its first aim was primary education, obligatory, free and lay, with a wide spectrum of subjects.


Item Date:  1879

Stock No:  55971      £750

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