Tap the page, move to the top or bottom edge, swipe down, or press Tab to reveal reading controls. Use the arrow keys or swipe sideways to turn pages.
February […].
That the world is a place, — and not a god, an animal, a machine, etc. That the first idea is simple and the second composite. The world, then, is a place; we shall see nothing else in it by artfully attributing to it a form other than the one it offers our eyes, and by opposing within ourselves the notion we have of its nature.
Between two ideas, one clear and the other obscure, one distinct, the other confused, one simple and the other composite, which do you agree one should choose?
You call ideas learned when they require learning to be intelligible, effort and art to be fabricated? But are those clear or obscure, confused or distinct, simple or composite? They are true (you will tell me). I shall concede it for a moment, but I shall say: they are true with a truth that does not exist (or at least cannot exist for the human race, since by your own admission only scholars can perceive it). So it does not show itself. Thus you display before our eyes lights that are invisible to us. You heap upon us goods we cannot use.
What is ingenious is very close to being true.
February 9.
That little matter has sufficed. That in itself it is little. Hence the ancients’ idea that there was only one world.
Necessity of matter. That without it God could have separated nothing from himself, and there would have been no creation.
That God is being. Meaning of this word, which must be taken literally.
We know many things with the precision that suffices to satisfy the mind; but perhaps none with the exactness of which each thing is capable. Thus in this kind a certain imperfection pleases us, like a certain perfection.
Truth. We can touch it, but not seize it, clasp it, contain it. We can also point it out, but not properly define it, circumscribe it exactly.
God is so great, so vast: to comprehend him, one must divide him.
February 10.
On the microscope, or visual magnifier. It magnifies the voids. Through it, the smallest object occupies a greater place in the mind, but not in the world.
Pure spirits would see matter as a net with large meshes. Does the magnifying glass not show us the most compact bodies riddled with pores? (On the tactual magnifier, etc.)
God is being; the world is a place; matter is an appearance; the body is the mold of the soul; life is a beginning.
It would be difficult to live despised and be virtuous. We need support.
One can apply a definite form to vague notions that already exist. One can model them, circumscribe them, but not make them exist.
Animals make the place more habitable, more cheerful, more nourishing.
February 12.
Children. Need models more than criticisms.
Children. Remember us longer; but we remember the old better. We like, then, to please the former because they will remember us, and the latter because we shall remember them.