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.
March 23.
Production (of man)—and all those things that take place without our thinking of them. Thinking of them is therefore at least a waste of time, a turning of the mind away from its true business.
Perfection of bodies. But their imperfection (illness, languor, deterioration, destruction) is also a means of God’s, a means necessary to the improvement of minds. And Pascal, who said: “the natural state etc.,” therefore found illness a state in which one perfects oneself. Elsewhere he says it harms the mind, yes, but also saying that health harms it.
All laughter comes from a disappointed expectation, that is, from the assurance of the person who promises and from his confidence belied by the outcome, especially when that confidence is shown by his bearing even more than by his words.
March 25.
The revolution drove my mind out of the real world by making it too horrible for me.
Those ideas that dispose the mind to produce truth.
In morals (a science of practice and circumstance), the individual is made for society. But in metaphysics (and even in religion), the science of real essences, society is made for individuals.
Force of determination (in opinions). What its influence is on the operations of the mind. It is too often confused with the strength of mind that consists in conceiving, because it seems to have the same effects.
D. G. for having made my mind a light thing fitted to rise on high.
“If J.-J. had become a Carthusian (he says), Europe would not have been turned upside down.” One may say, on the contrary, that if M. N. had been only a philosopher, fewer and far fewer errors and great errors would have prevailed.
March 26.
... and in a sense open a vein for vanity, for fear that a man might keep it too whole within himself and become overburdened by it. It needs, so to speak, daily outflows. (Concentrated vanity.)
March 22.
Perfectibility.—Let M. de B[onald] himself beware this word, so apt to lead astray. Not every development is an improvement. Most often it is merely the unfolding of a perfection that remains equal but makes itself more outward at one time than at another. It would be ridiculous, for example, to think that the Christianity of the apostles was less perfect than that of the saints.
March 18.
(Reading the Théorie du Pouvoir, volume 2.)
One could say: “I do not know whether that is true for God, but it is evident to us.”
There is wanting (that is, more than tendency) in animals; but wanting is perhaps less than will.
... One ought indeed to make people admire the effects of a machine first and awaken a lively curiosity before setting the mechanism of its gears before their attention.
... And on this subject let us observe that writers with systems usually (and wrongly) present their opinions to their readers in an order opposite to the one in which they themselves received them.
And let us also observe that the way each mind works in secret (its method) is analogous to its particular character, to its habits. Therefore etc. Therefore, I mean, it would be better, in the manner (or method) of setting forth one’s opinions, to consider the common character and habits of other minds rather than what is peculiar to oneself; or at least one should suit what is original in oneself to what is original in others.
... He is wrong to make Locke the head of the sensualist philosophers. If Locke concerned himself with the senses, it was not from taste but from the needs of his system. Whereas his successors have concerned themselves with thought only to admire the properties of the senses.