“Are we then condemned forever to be ignorant of ourselves?” says Voltaire. Yes. He could have added: And to study ourselves without ceasing.

May 27.

We are better for being watched. And on this supposition there is always an eye watching us.

May 29.

Let us reject nothing, for we need everything in the search for truth. The science of lines and numbers can greatly help us in it. Let us therefore esteem and honor them as useful, precious, necessary instruments. Those who make these means of advancement the final goal of their studies undoubtedly have a limited mind; but they preserve these kinds of knowledge, retail them, spread them abroad. They are to the true geniuses among philosophers what sellers of microscopes and telescopes are to observers properly so called.

Observe that geometry is founded on a certain way of viewing particular circumstances in isolation (such as their length without breadth, their surface without aspect) that does not naturally present itself to anyone’s eyes or mind.

May 24.

Let us remember this. — What, then? — That it is not the sun in the heavens that we see, but the one at the back of our retina.

On Berkley. To say there are figures without bodies is to claim there are embroideries without fabrics.

May 21.

Since the ancients had words whose quantity was fixed and very distinct, an arrangement of words that brought the meter of one of their lines of verse into prose would have been very noticeable. To produce the same motley and the same discordance in our French prose, and to make it as perceptible as it would have been in Greek or Latin, there would have to be not one but two of our lines of verse rhyming together within one of our sentences. It is rhyme above all that distinguishes our verse and that must be banished from our prose. As for the number of syllables, which together with rhyme forms the line of verse, it enters against our will not only into our writings but also into ordinary speech. The language of our peasants, and especially of our children, is full of it. We can measure nothing in discourse except by one of those combinations of feet (or number of syllables) that constitute our different kinds of verse. We are therefore bound not to avoid it (which is impossible and useless), but to disguise it, which is indispensable to pleasure, to variety.

May 10.

Cadenzas. — Whether one should leave them to the reader in literature, as one leaves them to the singer in music.

May […]2.

Clarity. I cannot content myself with little.

Timidity and erasures. I cannot say something foolish without noticing it.

And then it is not the word that occupies me, but the thought I do not yet possess whole and seek uselessly in the sentence. In general, my mind in good faith scarcely pursues words except to find its thought.

May.

On Berkeley. God, he says, has three persons as a triangle has three sides.

June 1 (Sun. Pentec.)

In our sciences there is artifice, machinery, scaffolding. They serve the arts, our needs; their essence serves happiness.

June 2.

Berkley. This Englishman says very well “that number is a creature of the soul.”