Page:Freud - Leonardo da Vinci, a psychosexual study of an infantile reminiscence.djvu/121

Rh he disputed the possibility of a universal flood, and in geology he was as unscrupulous in calculating with hundred thousands of years as modern investigators.

Among his “prophecies” one finds some things that would perforce offend the sensitive feelings of a religious Christian, e.g. Praying to the images of Saints, reads as follows:

“People talk to people who perceive nothing, who have open eyes and see nothing; they shall talk to them and receive no answer; they shall adore those who have ears and hear nothing; they shall burn lamps for those who do not see.”

Or: Concerning mourning on Good Friday (p. 297):

“In all parts of Europe great peoples will bewail the death of one man who died in the Orient.”

It was asserted of Leonardo's art that he took away the last remnant of religious attachment from the holy figures and put them into human form in order to depict in them great