Logic has for its object the operations of the mind, and metaphysics its nature. Metaphysics can no more do without morality than physics can do without mechanics, or poetry without music.

(The fact is that music hastens or slows the course of the blood.)

God and his surplus.

Every house: temple, empire, school.

And observe this: Imagination is so necessary in literature and in life that even those who have none and decry it are obliged to make one for themselves.

December 5.

Every abstract or general idea represents objects to the mind as the eye would see them at a distance that would not allow it to distinguish any part of them.

Vague idea, or of an object seen in the vast or the distant.

That it is the sensation of solidity that (first and alone) teaches the soul that there are other objects outside it. This is an observation Condillac was the first to make; it belongs to him; and this observation deserves the name of discovery, because philosophers had previously concerned themselves with this question and had given up solving it. (See d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, article Corps.) — Clearer than day.

December 7.

Moral freedom. — To deserve to lose it. — The better one uses it, the less one has of the kind that could harm us.

December 13.

It is with his brilliance that the world is resplendent. Here, in truth, we have only its last image, a reflection obscured by much shadow.

December 22.

Ultra-physics, and the ultra-physicists.

December 23.

Condillac speaks much of thought and knows it fairly well. But he has not glimpsed the soul. He is the Saounderson of metaphysics. Degérando may be its Quintilian.

December 24.

Have you not praised Socrates for bringing morality down from heaven into the schools; but they brought it into the houses. They brought God down from heaven and made him like men, but to make men like God.

Precocious aptitudes that arouse wonder: but these are only the fruits of an unusual education.