Tap the page, move to the top or bottom edge, swipe down, or press Tab to reveal reading controls. Use the arrow keys or swipe sideways to turn pages.
December 28.
In our writings, thought seems to proceed with the movement of a man walking straight ahead. In the writings of the ancients, on the contrary, it seems to proceed with the movement of a bird that glides and advances by circling.
December 29.
Condillac. “I use this hypothesis (he says) because it is convenient for making my thought understood.” Besides, if it does not conform exactly to truth, it does not depart far from it. “For (he adds) there can be only movement in the brain.” If there is movement, there can also be disposition. If there is disposition, one can suppose figure there, hence seal, imprint, etc. Do you not yourself admit some impression etc...? They are ceaselessly obliged to have recourse to the metaphors they proscribe.
“One will always prefer (he says) Malebranche to Locke”...
It is clear in that case (according to you) that mankind is not made for philosophy. Let us therefore make philosophy for mankind by making ourselves, for our part, intelligible to all sound minds.
O metaphysical fiddle-faddle! —
Condillac. — Thought. We see only our own thought. Add: we are touched only by our own feelings.
Conversation. We content ourselves in it with indicating, with labeling things by their names, without giving ourselves time to have an idea of them.
Poetic talent is born in souls from the inability to reason.
Whatever they may say: their origin of ideas is a real dead end and does not reach the soul. Make of it a broad road open on every side.
November […]8.
To analyze is to perform on a question the operation one performs on a fabric when one unravels it. It is to unweave it or unwarp it, thread by thread.
December […]2.
Everything is stripped bare to eyes that have never seen anything without veils. Nothing can please them long.
December 30.
Condillac says somewhere: “The Romans believed in inspiration; thus they made the sciences advance not at all.” O fury of systems! O preconceptions!
Leibnitz. His system seems to me the perfection of the abstract mode.
Spinosa. Showed how far the abuse and insufficiency of the geometers’ method, so praised by Paschal, could go.
Malebranche. Condillac mentions, but does not make known, his system of order, which one glimpses but which is not easy to disentangle in his works. That was the one that should have been brought into full [daylight] and examined.
“To counterfeit the geometers,” Condillac says very well. But one can also counterfeit analysis.