This modern physics, so vaunted, yet so inferior to Aristotle’s, which is so little understood, has no merit of its own but a little mechanical ingenuity successfully applied to measuring a few distances and determining a few shapes precisely. Numbers suffice to express all its discoveries, which does not suggest any great beauty in them. When a surveyor has taken his graphometer and can say, “There are two thousand toises, one foot, and one inch from this place to that,” he is proud and looks with pity on the man who says, “It is half an hour’s journey from this place to that.” Yet the former, with his rigorous exactitude, makes himself less understood and is less useful than the other.

Imagination is a kind of memory to which the real or the possible presents itself colored, determinate, etc. It is all mind. But an eye whose action has no need, not only of the presence, but even of the existence of external objects.

May 5.

When one goes downhill, the road pushes: so one grows less tired (Seated on bundles of firewood).

Aristotle. They called him the master. Oh, how well he deserved the name!

May 6.

When acting, one must conform to the rules, and when judging, take account of the exceptions.

Night of Monday, May 6 to Tuesday, May 7.

Dream. The man speaking and attacking.

The wise man, I told him, does not attack universally received opinions before men of whom he is certain that none will dare answer him, for in this way he can put neither his truth nor his doctrine to any test, since it is not exposed to the trial of contradiction, and he can do himself no honor by seeking the shameful triumph of a success that will not be contested.

Nor does the good citizen who seeks to be useful begin by spreading, among the minds of men assembled, doctrines opposed to all those held wise until that moment, for fear of doing irreparable harm if the new doctrine adopted, so to speak, tumultuously is not good, and for fear of doing another kind of harm even if it is good.

For consider with me, I beg you, an important reflection. Doctrines proclaimed long ago have acquired, in passing from one mind to another, their perfection, their fixed form, limits, a determinate meaning. And the minds of those who hear them are, on the other hand, prepared to admit them as they are given, trained, shaped to them. It follows that they can harm only through what is essentially harmful in them.

But the others can harm, though very good, simply because there is something new in them. Minds that hear them, having been unprepared, may understand them badly and corrupt them as poorly seasoned and poorly rinsed vessels corrupt excellent wines. This danger is inevitable when they are first spread by way of the multitude. Do you know, for example, whether in this assembly, where you know no one and where I alone can speak to you, there may not be a multitude of spoiled minds that will spoil what you have said? What everyone has heard said may be said everywhere and to everyone, known or unknown; but what is opposed to everything said before must be said to the wise alone, and published only in concert with them and as they publish, that is, by way of print.

The man who likes to read is able to examine, is capable of attention, can judge what he is told; he alone causes the harm he does himself. But the man spoken to may, like mere animals, have only ears; these open ears cannot avoid the noise; if words capable of harm are poured into them, spread into them aloud, whether because the words have some flaw, or because the opening and the interior into which they enter are tainted or unprepared. The speaker alone is to blame. He does harm he did not intend, but he must answer for it because he could have foreseen it and should have avoided it.

Go, then, if you are wise — write and do not speak.

May 7, on waking, in the evening...

If trophies were rightly sacred, it is cowardly, it is cowardly it is tyrannical to attack, in times or places where no one can defend them, opinions that have reigned and long served as a trophy to the wisdom of ancient times. That is to seek a true lout’s triumph, to fight only when sure of winning.

To do better than others first, and then better than oneself.

May 8.

That our life is painted in God’s memory, that we shall contemplate ourselves there.

God’s memory, that mirror in which everything remains imprinted and from which nothing is ever erased.

Adventurous minds, which expect and receive their ideas from chance alone.

May 14.

On respect. — Without it, merit does not produce the illusion that gives it its charm. To be capable of respect is today almost as rare as to be worthy of it. We feel for those we respect a kind of tender affection whose happiness would be lost to us if we had for them only an esteem measured by the greatness of their merit, however infinite we suppose it. We also have for those who respect us a goodness, an excellence that our heart would lack if we found in the world only men exactly and strictly just toward us.

Between those who respect and those respected there is a mutual illusion, and a reality of growth, contentment, and merit that is mutual too. When we are respected, we are the better for it; when we respect, we live the better for it.

Admiration is a true happiness. For it to exist, there must be merit and respect. Merit alone does not suffice to produce it. With our observing mind, we do in fact observe talents and virtues as one observes the sun through glass blackened with smoke. And so we see everything that shines only stripped of its rays.

Whoever does not know how to be silent gains no ascendancy.