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There is no more or less in the essence or quality; but it exists more or less in the subjects.
October 14.
The Phaedon. It is a beautiful painting, admirably composed; there are very beautiful colors in it, but very few good reasons.
The beautiful is intelligence made sensible. Thus even a sound is beautiful only when it is such that it could have been produced only by intelligence and not by chance. In a word, a thing is perfectly beautiful when it is such that all things of the same kind will have some participation in it. What is truly beautiful is what resembles its idea. So we say every day of a man in beautiful health, of a woman with a beautiful freshness: This is freshness, or this is health, in person. We also say, more colloquially, of a man whose probity is perfect that he is probity in hose and doublet, because they give the idea of freshness, health, probity themselves. The word ideal is well said, as are the other words that, in obscure matters, enter common usage not through authority and allusion, but through the sole effect of I know not what insinuation peculiar to them, dependent on their often hidden and unrecognized usefulness.
(N. B. the expression “that is divine.”)
That is not the image, but a copy of nature.
To teach virtue, of which so much is said in Plato; there is only one way, which is to teach piety.
October 15.
(chap.) On those who do not honor their art.
Let it be among the laws of conversation to introduce at the outset nothing of which it is impossible to be convinced by the force of reasoning or to agree upon through the authority of some testimony.
Our best judgments are those that form within us despite ourselves and without our taking part in them, so to speak, through our own efforts.
October 16.
It is that we think punishments, which do not straighten the hunchback, can straighten the wicked man.
For most people, one can regulate their soul only by regulating their life; and for the best, one can regulate their life only by regulating their soul, their thoughts.
October 17.
Plato. Love, son of Porus, god of abundance, and of [ ], goddess of poverty. This should be understood to mean that he is born of superabundance in the man and of avidity in the woman.
Whether virtue can be taught. It is certain, at least, that it can be communicated. The ambiguity comes from the phrase be taught. Definitions, syllogisms certainly cannot give it, for it cannot be produced by an operation of the mind. So too with politics, which consists wholly in applications. It consists wholly in aptitudes, capacities, which cannot be given.