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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

TRAVEL

Monday, September 22: day of departure.

At the arch. On the just and unjust. Ah! even horses seem to have some notion of them.

September 26.

Every good objection clarifies the matter in doubt; one that obscures it is bad, it makes us lose sight of the object. — But the one that shows the object while destroying the system is the only good one.

October 2.

Clermont.

September 28.

Sunday evening at Ussel. Beautiful moon during the journey through Auvergne. Without what we call inspiration, no poet; and without what may be called illumination, no philosopher.

Saturday, October 4.

What Bacon says: “O! how sweet is the life that feels itself becoming better each day!” (Nᵃ, The translation is Golefer’s, and the edition Paris. Dugast, 1632.) — Written at St-Ymbert. Charming farm.

Friday, October 3. From Saint-Pourçain to Moulins.

The young Auvergnat. — Pain and pleasure are to these bodies what evil and good are to our souls: the motive, the lever, the rule, the boundary, the measure.

Monday, October 6.

At La Charité: the sick child. — View of the Loire: the Loire makes one think of God; why.

October 13.

The source of all the ills of our literature is that our scholars have little wit and our men of wit are not scholars. — The saying of the ancients: It is difficult to love and be wise at the same time.” (Vid. Bacon, p. 109, quarto.) — The saying: “They walk and know how to walk, but they go astray because they are off the road.” — The mind is a Proteus; it must be chained. (Vid. Bacon.) [...] “We count (says Bacon) history and experience as one and the same thing.” (p. 112.)

October 11. (Charité sur Loire.)

“To unite nature.” What Bacon calls uniting nature, p. 200, quarto, Golefer’s translation.

October 13 (id.)

The young... They give their mind much exercise and give it little nourishment.

Evening. To say and know that the world began in uncertain and infinitely remote times is truth. But to have assigned a fixed and calculable epoch to this beginning of the world is wisdom. The mind of man is at rest. Its curiosity is content — Buffon used to say that genius is only an aptitude for patience. Aptitude for patience, or for long and tireless attention, is indeed the genius of observation; but the genius of invention is an aptitude for lively and prompt and perpetual penetration.

Thursday, October […]. At Newy.

They have tastes, not virtues. Those who have virtues can do without these tastes. — You speak of loving children; ah, speak of loving the old. If you found etc. on tastes that depend on flesh and blood and age etc., you found it on something mobile, fluid, passing, volatile.

Friday, October […]. At Neuvy.

On the thoughts old age takes from us, and those it leaves us.

S1.Source editor’s annotationAnd beside this word Joubert draws an arch, like an upside-down U.

T117.The source editor describes an arch drawn by Joubert beside the word, like an inverted U. The edition does not reproduce the drawing, so none is reconstructed here.

T223.VOYAGE is a source-attested heading, with authorship not established here; it covers the travel notes through p272/e02. The source editor describes an autograph drawing but does not reproduce it.

T118.The native facsimile prints donce, where douce is expected. English sweet adopts that contextual reading; the anomalous French remains unchanged. The translator, place, publisher, year, and Nᵃ abbreviation are retained as the source gives them, without silently correcting the cited edition.

T119.Auvergnat designates someone from Auvergne. These bodies remains the source’s ces corps, distinguished from our souls.

T120.Wit and mind render esprit in its different constructions. The first maxim has a closing quotation mark but no opening one in the source, and the English preserves that form. Vid. means see; the cited pages belong to Joubert’s Bacon reference.

T121.Unite nature translates unir la nature as quoted here, without replacing the phrase with wording from an English Bacon edition.

T122.The contrast between truth and wisdom, the contented curiosity, and the final lively and prompt and perpetual are retained. The formulation attributed to Buffon remains Joubert’s report.

T123.Found etc. retains the source’s incomplete fondez etc.; the later it follows la without supplying the absent feminine object. The moving, fluid, passing, volatile sequence remains.

T227.The printed day is lost at the left edge. Newy is the printed spelling, distinct from later Neuvy. Initial letters in peuvent, parlez, dépendent, and sur are restored from visible word continuations. The uncompleted fondez etc. and unresolved la remain.