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October […], Montargis.
Sunday, October […]. At Montargis.
Loccenius, de jure maritimo. In the evening, at Villeneuve.
October […].
The abuse of putting philosophical beings into action, on stage, so to speak (doubt awaits the mind of man...) bad style. — To persist in the distinction between beings of reason (or logical beings) and metaphysical beings. — On philosophical verbiage. Until now we had known only the verbiage of orators: the one consists in piling up too much, the other in going into too much detail. To make its uselessness felt and show its absurdity by recounting in this manner the action of a man who strikes and wounds another. (As a reminder.) — In style, one may raise beings of reason (such as thought, etc.) to the dignity of an instrument, but not of a person. One may endow them with movements, but not with life, action, and the faculty of deliberating and choosing, so to speak. Otherwise, instead of engaging the mind through a kind of illusion and spectacle, one repels it with absurd masquerades that weary so many readers in most of our modern philosophical books, without their knowing why: thus they dare not complain. “The thing in itself is ridiculous enough, but it lacks people to laugh at it,” as Fontenelle said of another fault.
October […]3.
That all children could have been born of a father other than their own, but none of a mother other than their own, for...
Thursday, October 23. At Villeneuve.
In Bacon: “to bring objects closer.” A great means of perfectibility (if there is perfectibility). A real means of advancement in their sciences that these gentlemen have not yet thought of. They think only of the organ and their lights. — Of certain paintings it is said that “the brilliance takes away their effect.”
Thursday, October 16. At Neuvy.
Bacon says that the elements are great assemblies or congregations.
October 24, Villeneuve.
“The stars (says Bacon) incline, but do not determine.”
Tuesday, October 1. The waterfall of Mont dor.
October […]2. Ferry.
October 9.
“Nemesis,” which Bacon makes one of the divisions of history.
October 11. Charité sur Loire.
That style, those thoughts, of which Bacon says that “they unite nature wonderfully well.” And what he says of wisdom or first philosophy. (Vid. p. 200, lib. III, quarto).
August 8.
L-ch-v-l+. Tedious describer! It is not what is before your eyes, but what is in your soul that we are curious to know. Paint us objects tinged with you and coming out of you, not raw and pasted into the description. Otherwise you will be no more a painter than an herbalist who has pasted flowers into his herbarium.