May 14.

V[oltaire]. Sparge marite nuces. He had not thrown away his nuts.

Voltaire says: “Men must be led by the bridles they have today, not by those they had in the past.” One may also say that men must be led by the bridles they have today, not by those they will have one day.

That governments are a thing that establishes itself. They make themselves; we do not make them. We make them firm. We give them consistency, but not being. Nothing is made from nothing.

God. He governs the sea as a pilot governs a ship. He has kneaded the world as a potter kneads clay. But can the potter knead a golden vessel from coarse clay?

Without him there would be neither morality nor virtue.

Everything that is goodness and intelligence comes from him. It is his work or his influence.

And the free, the voluntary, are so much of the essence of the moral world that he can act effectively upon it only by insinuation.

May 15.

The mind can represent nothing to itself without some figure or figuration. No figure without sides.

There are vague figurations that must remain so. Precision in them would harm truth and, so to speak, justice.

Life cannot exist in any animal without some intelligence. Intelligence is an indispensable principle of preservation.

May 18.

On the idea or impression. In innate ones the impression is made through the whole body, the eyes closed, the hearing asleep, and all the flesh insensible.

Let us therefore distinguish two kinds of ideas, some of which are made by image and painting: such are those that enter us through the eyes and the open senses (indeed, we conceive them better by imagining them thus). The others are made by imprint, by engraving and printing. They do not enter by way of the senses, but pass through them, as the characters of a plate pass through one sheet of paper to trace themselves on another.

By considering ideas above all in this last form (that of an imprint), we conceive them as something as real as the figures in a print.

And do not the figures in a painting also have some reality independent of the canvas? Do we not communicate and multiply them by tracing? But what am I saying? Do we not actually separate them from the canvas by mordants? Do we not every day transfer paintings whole and, so to speak, in person, from canvas to canvas and from wood to wood? An idea therefore has the reality that every figuration has.

The notion of the just and the unjust, of the misshapen and the beautiful, will come from the imprint of God placed in us, which makes us in some way participants in his thoughts and (if I may express myself thus) in his distastes and his taste.

May 22.

Movement imparted to a thought by the mind that emitted it. — Measure of that which it communicates to the mind in its path. — Laws of the communication of the movements of thought. — So peaceful, so slow, so rapid, so strong, so constant, so deep or on the surface, so lasting or transitory, etc. etc. produce the effect of fire, flame, lightning, coal, and the candle, etc.

May 23.

Governments. — Chance supplies their materials. This is why the better a government is, the less it is a matter of choice and the more a matter of necessity.

Yes, metaphysics is even more within the reach of all minds and all conditions of life than the study of physics. I was right to think so.

One enters the  [infinite] on leaving matter, as, when traveling this world, one enters the sea on leaving the land. And picture our geographical maps. Just as the solid areas are cut into by the voids left by seas and lakes, so the finite, if I dare express myself thus, is cut into by the infinite, movement by rest.

May 24.

O God! When I do evil, do not allow me to be pleased with myself!

The question: Would you be a Christian without remorse?