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[LOCKE]
January 4.
Locke says that we know only our ideas. What does that matter, provided our ideas resemble what they represent to us? In the same way, we see only the images painted in the retina of our eye; but if the image resembles the object, what does that matter? And we are assured that the image resembles the object when...
Presumption in favor of resemblances: our very participation in divine intelligence.
“The mind (says Locke) does not know things immediately, but only through the ideas it has of them.” What does that matter? One might as well say that a soldier does not kill his enemy immediately, but only through the intervention of the action by which he strikes.
Vehicles. Words are vehicles, instruments. Why should I not call them vehicles or carts, sleds, carriages.
All these so-called metaphysicians teach nothing but to believe nothing in metaphysics, and all their own knowledge was confined to that.
There are two existences that a man shut within himself could know, his own and God’s: I think, I am, therefore God is. But sensation alone can teach him the existence of bodies.
Clear ideas—yes;—but if our mind is not lucid, if it is unsound, liable to be dazzled..., faith in that case is worth as much as conviction. And even if it had no advantage for science and instruction, it would have an immense one for universal morality, by maintaining inferior minds in the feelings of docility and subordination that are in them a virtue, a duty, an advantage, a means of repose for their lives, and an indispensable condition of their happiness and of the kind of merit in which they can take pride.
The surest use of the syllogism is to be a kind of fencing that makes supple the minds [of] those trained in it. Gymnastics.
Yes, but they say that everything has existed from all eternity. — Yes, but intelligence? From where? and, if from somewhere, then...
Only intelligence can clearly demonstrate intelligence.
One could conceive of a triangle having been produced without intelligence taking part in it. A blind movement (or fortuitous fermentation) can go so far as to bring every kind of figure into existence by chance. The Iliad could emerge from a chance scattering of letters, but the understanding of the Iliad could not. (January 7.)
Who is the father of the mind; and like these fathers and these mothers of our bodies...
He produced matter necessarily and through his existence; and the world voluntarily and through his goodness.
What will you think of pleasures when you no longer love them?
January 14.
Newton invented only the “how muchs.”
The nightingale. He speaks like a kinglet.
January 17.
Things one believes are difficult to conceive because it is difficult to speak of them.
Well-being is the law of bodies (animate or living), but order is the law of minds.
There is a mobility in the human mind that does not allow it to be entirely exercised by these immutable doctrines.
... I do not know whether it is necessary for salvation, but I know that it is for happiness.
Philosophers who avoided pleasing, for fear of seeming insufficiently grave and being reputed frivolous. (C-t-s--ns).
Monday, January 18.
Indeed everything (according to Descartes) everything happens through figure and movement. This is the fixed point from which his mind proceeded to all its operations, the result of all his explanations. This is his doctrine summed up in a few words. Farewell, Descartes!
The school of F[ontane]s. There is in all their thoughts an elegant and noble, and rich uselessness.
January 21.
The white patches of snow scattered here and there over the greenery during thaws.