Actual Actions

An action must have a specific purpose...

A defective leg or foot prevents it from being done. Whether it especially wishes to perform, and the limbs refuse their service, they cannot do what it seems they want to do eagerly. Furthermore, every action must be chosen and adapted to a certain specific effect so that people or uncertainly judge if this or that is to be done; or that thus felt being some totally different or contradictory actions could be done: Hence, a walker is not a runner, a stander not a jumper, a sitter not a faller, or a busy person not a do-nothing, can prevail. It is told of the Greek painter Demon that he once wanted to try to simultaneously depict various conflicting actions and drives in an image; and how he predominantly aimed, in particular, at the general passions, and sins of the Athenian citizens in that image; thus he wanted to express Boldness, Unsteadiness, Carefreeness, and Injustice with Modesty, Eloquence, Kindness, Defiance with Compassion, Arrogance with Humility, and Timidity all at once: But I think, says a certain one very well, that he might more likely have depicted Doubt as an opposing mixture. For it is the nature of the doubter, that under the dark and uncertain working of the eyebrows and the unstable gaze of the eyes, various thoughts, and actions whirl around each other. Vasari in his "Life of the Famous Artists," tells of Bonarrottus, that in the images of his great and famous judgment, one could see what sins and misdeeds...