Diotimos Reading Desk

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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[LOCKE]

It is that the imagination dwells only on what pleases it (through some agreeable reality), whereas the mind attaches itself to everything that occupies it,—and its own thoughts suffice for it.

April […]ᵉʳ.

Men are willing to learn truths that are not in fashion only when they are spared the pains of attention.

April […].

... And if there is some knowledge in doubting it, there is piety in believing it. Now, which of the two etc...?

Republic. In the State, no more than in the army, if the many are made to be governed.

April 3.

Fanaticism is an exaltation of mind. Atheism is another. Through exaltation of mind one loses sight, etc. Just as on the high seas one no longer sees the shores.

He has the manners and humors of a gazette writer.

Botany. Keeps the mind occupied, the soul absent, and the senses suspended. In the country, with it, walks are lost to pleasure and relaxation. The sight of the fields. “Has turned a diversion into a weariness.” A true old man’s pleasure, if medicine and utility are separated from it.

April 5.

Plato, Aristotle, etc. It is their attention to classifying (by distinguishing, dividing, enumerating etc.) that often makes reading their works unbearable. Forms of indoctrination. One finds very great men in them, but sees professors.

It will be far worse with the moderns. Their method pleases them, but soon will please only them. Working every day to make it useless, they succeed, and the tedium will be felt. At least the ancients I have named have beautiful in their meticulous... But what have produced, what produce, what will produce...?

... has called all men to the virtue from which the ancients had excluded artisans and slaves. Through her, each has been able to become king of herself.

What philosophy would have dared or deigned, as she did, to order the slave to command his own passions?

Aristotle. Peripolitikon. Book III, chapter XII.—O Aristotle! you knew what a king was, but not what a kingdom could be!

April 6.

It seems that Plato has some too much, and that there is some too little in Aristotle. Hence, in the one, abundance carried to superfluity, and in the other, precision or brevity carried to obscurity.

To speak more softly so as to be better listened to by a deaf public.

T430.Native crop clearly preserves the raised er of the date but the numeral is damaged. First-of-month is strongly suggested by the ordinal ending; no missing numeral is supplied in the diplomatic date. The initial m of mode is partly clipped.

T169.The object of doubting and believing is not named in this paragraph. The final comparison remains unfinished after which of the two; no conclusion favoring either knowledge or piety is supplied.

T431.The day is lost at the left edge and is not inferred. Initial letters of croire are clipped and restored from the surviving ending. The unfinished alternative retains its question mark.

T171.The entry is a fragment: its comparison in the State, no more than in the army is followed by a conditional clause without a stated conclusion. None is supplied.

T432.The conditional si appears as printed in a sentence without a completed governing clause; not silently changed.

T172.The source quotation has a fait without a subject; English retains Has turned. The subsequent pleasure is not explicitly assigned to a new subject or reconciled with the preceding complaint.

T173.Endoctrinement is rendered indoctrination; it can carry the broader historical sense of instruction in doctrine as well as the unfavorable force of this context. The distinction between finding great men and seeing professors is retained.

T174.The facsimile prints de beaux dans leurs minutieuses, with masculine and feminine plural adjectives but no nouns completing them. The English beautiful and meticulous deliberately remain incomplete. The final three verbs also have an interrogative object, what, but lack an explicit subject; the changing past, present, and future are preserved.

T175.The opening subject is absent. Elle remains she, without an inserted name. The printed chacune is feminine despite the preceding all men, and the English herself makes that feature visible while preserving king.

T436.The fragment does not name the feminine antecedent elle. Printed chacune is retained although the preceding noun hommes is masculine; no silent grammatical correction is made. Clipped right-edge endings are recovered from surviving letters.

T194.Peripolitikon and Peripolitik are Joubert’s varying forms for Aristotle’s treatise on politics. The forms and his book and chapter references are retained rather than standardized to a new edition.

T176.The source treats trop and trop peu as substantives. The English retains that unusual wording and leaves the final opposition between abundance and brevity as a fragment.