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July 9.
The march of the will. From the mere idea to desire, there is one step. And from desire to action, another step.
July 10.
The watch (pocket). The idea a savage has of it. That his error is not complete. Indeed, it was a spirit that animated it: every machine was set in motion by a spirit that withdrew.
July 13.
What is easy to conceive appears not only true but also just. Like the division of lands, equality, etc. The mind’s fault here is to confuse two things in an application that ought not to be the same. Clarity is a sign and an attribute of truth, but neither a sign nor an attribute of justice, in which nothing should be treated by eye alone, but with the eye, the measuring rod, the measure, the compass, calculation, the balance.
Like the workers at the Gobelins manufactory, who work behind their pieces. — I was right: the soul paints itself in our machines.
They seek to make their doctrine square with the language of the schools. I seek, on the contrary, to make mine square with common language, or at least with refined language.
To see in God. Rightness and beauty of this expression, if understood in a certain sense.
If we were not to remember eternally everything we shall have said, done, and thought.
Fault and misfortune, vice and torment, are each a cause of the other.
Music. — That singing requires a different disposition of the throat and a different character in the voice from speech.
To sing is not merely to make oneself heard and fit words to notes, with whatever exactness and precision this may be done. To sing is to make heard a voice and accents that stir the imagination.
Those who sing well have an echo in their throat and I know not what mellowness. Those who sing as one speaks do not sing, but speak in cadence. Singing should be to speaking what verse is to prose.
July 14.
The two philosophies. Both are good, both useful, and both necessary. Matter must be studied with the senses and experiments. Spirit must be studied with inward sight and the experience of oneself. Reasoning, imagination, patience and enthusiasm, reflection and feeling are instruments equally indispensable to our inquiries; the soul needs all its tact, its sagacity, its taste, its memory, its wings and its feet to reach truth.
Nothing that can be proved is self-evident; for what is self-evident shows itself and cannot be proved.
July 3.
Modesty. Betokens a naturally delicate soul, easily moved and readily susceptible to etc. and to impressions.