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Every body is only a membrane (I speak of bodies that move and have a soul within them). Every depth is only a point. Every weight is that of a straw, a wisp of down... less still.
November 25.
He replied: — Yes, she gives light with torches that have consumed good morals. I prefer those other candles.
You have given me prayer.
If, then, he tells a fable, let us listen to it. If he rocks us, let us be rocked. Let him distract us from our ills; and if these eternal tales with which he amuses natures...
Will-o’-the-wisps that lead into quagmires. Helvétius, etc.
J.-J. Rousseau. In his books one learns to be dissatisfied with everything except oneself.
November 27.
That the metaphysician is not clear enough unless he is clearer still and easier to understand than the natural philosopher. For the one can offer the mind only objects that do not enter it but are existent (really stand) before its attention, whereas the other puts within it and makes me conceive what he says, so that the mind embraces it, holds it, possesses it, carries it within itself. Thus it is true to say that it is only through metaphysics that natural philosophers themselves make themselves perfectly understood by their readers. For to bring objects into the mind, one must in a manner attenuate them, make them finer, render their most palpable qualities or shapes subtle. For what is palpable and most evident to the eyes is not what is best known to the mind, unless by some operation one renders it, or the mind renders it to itself, fine and intellectual.
God. It would not be wrong to represent him through fragrances and light, the light in the middle.
This life in which our soul is in the cradle, if I may express myself thus. He wraps the mind in swaddling clothes by covering it with obscurities.
November 8.
1. Do we all have modesty? — 2. Do we always preserve modesty? — 3. What are the fruits of modesty? — 4. What care is owed to modesty? — 5. Give body to these ideas and explain modesty to us in a more palpable way. Can it not be shown as produced by an actual mechanism? — 6,7. Define modesty anew. — 8. Retrace all its advantages and commend it to every heart, at every age.
December 4.
Of good nature. What it is. That it consists in refusing our interest to nothing that occupies our attention, and our attention to nothing innocent. It is a childhood enlarged, preserved, strengthened, and developed. It is a perfection.
Its usefulness. It serves the ordinary man as happiness. It is an abundant source of pleasures, of relaxation, for the busy man, for the great man. The Chinese have made it one of the characteristics of the sage. — That to enjoy and exercise it one needs some health.
“Humanum nihil a me alienum puto” is the saying of a philosopher who has good nature. A man who was only a man would not have known how to say it. A philosopher who was only a philosopher would not have thought it.
Shadow of God, who shine upon us...
Ah! do you think, then, that light is made only to light your steps and delight your eyes. It was also created to direct your actions and to enlighten your mind.
Passions. The ancients called them disturbances; and rightly: why.