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[On Locke]
August 1.
Locke says: [...]
that “maxims do not enlighten.” — No, but they guide, they direct, they save blindly. They are the thread in the labyrinth, the compass during the night.
August 2.
“To use words in their proper usage, another remedy,” he says. I add: and to use them in their primitive sense, well explained — another utility and a great means of discovery!
... also says that “most ideas are clear on one side and obscure on the other.” There is the foundation of all the usefulness philosophy can have for the world: in illuminating the obscure face.
He plays on the word: “I would lack understanding in writing on the understanding...” The grave Locke also amuses himself in his preface with the “hunting” of thoughts.
[...] All this is badly said, through the fault of both translator and author. But in those days one did not pride oneself on precision when one had to express only thoughts of little importance. Yet it is in this case that extreme precision would be necessary, so that the mind might see all at once and quickly what scarcely deserves to detain it long.
[...] In combating what they [his contradictors] understood by innate notions, he [Locke] constricts the word’s sense too much and seems to act and decide more through reasoning than through conviction. On this question he seems to have consulted the rules of logic more than his own feeling, his inner sense.
[...] He would have “everyone take care to use no term before seeing in his mind the precise and determinate idea” (or shade) “of which he wishes (this term) to be the sign.” A great rule for writing, and for writing well! “There is hardly anyone (he adds) who binds himself to this great exactness.” Hence so many books, and such long books, and such bad books! Ah! my friends, why write, if you do not etc. Speaking is a necessity. Let us therefore speak as we can. But writing, but printing! There it is only a question of honor: do not write, then, unless you excel; and to excel, write little. For man’s life is too short, and he has too little time left to give to composition, to be able to use (in many books) no term before seeing in his mind the precise and determinate idea of which he wishes this term to be the sign. I speak here of philosophical works. But, they will say, utility! Utility is in perfection.
August […]7.
The freedom of mind and imagination peculiar to the Greeks. In comparison, we look in our writings like convicts fastened to the chain (Slaves at their task, idiots in ecstasy, etc.)
August 2.
That the poet should not cross an interval at a walk when he can clear it in a leap.
The dairy introduced cleanliness.
[Locke.] There is fidgeting in his sentence. Just so, lively men, when obliged to sit for a long time, always have involuntary movements in some part of themselves.
One of the principal causes of the corruption and degeneration of poetry is that lines of verse ceased to be made for singing.
Rubens. Concave eye, microscope.
August 6.
Let us boldly affirm that often only figurative expressions are fit to represent and make us conceive exactly the state of the soul and what takes place in it, that is, truth. Hobbes may wish them banished from argumentation in vain. We must either deny ourselves many explanations or admit them there. Not only the nature of our understanding but also the nature of things requires it.
August 9.
Locke. His book is imperfect. Its subject is not wholly there; nor did he have it in mind beforehand. He throws himself on particles that he divides and subdivides. He leaves the trunk for the branches, and his work is too branchy.
It is a bundle of often thorny questions.
He clarifies the questions people were occupied with, but proposes no new, better ones. (He cleared the bank, but has thrown no bridge across.) Yet he disposes the mind to enlighten itself. He determines and induces it to do so more than he etc.
Do we walk better by learning how equilibrium works in general? But the man who tells us how it works in us helps us maintain it. And the man who perfects our limbs, our strength, our health, our constitution, gives it to us.
Plato does not nourish the mind, but disposes it to nourish itself. He makes us see nothing, but enlightens. He puts light in our eyes and places in us a clarity by which all objects afterward become illuminated. He teaches nothing, but he teaches. He trains us, he shapes us, he makes us fit to know everything. Reading him (we do not know how) increases our susceptibility to distinguish and admit all the beautiful truths that may present themselves.