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YEAR 1783
Hesiod
— Diseases make their rounds by night and by day; afflictions come in silence. For Jupiter made them mute; admirable foresight!
Ibid.
At the time of the cicada’s song... then women are frolicsome, men weary and soft... the wine is good and the goats are fat.
Ibid.
... you who are a man, beware of washing your body in baths intended for women. For this is a misdeed whose punishment is grievous...
Ibid.
... do not take it into your head to foul with your excrement the water of springs or the water of rivers that carry their waters to the sea; and take care.
Ibid.
... and I shall give you nothing more, nor lend you any more. Foolish Perses, work.
Ibid.
... or trade, as my father did, who was yours, foolish Perses.. who left Cyme in Aeolia... fleeing poverty, so hateful... and came to a wretched village at the foot of Helicon. Ascra, you are baleful in winter, inconvenient in summer, and, to say it plainly, you are good in no season...
Ibid.
And yet I have not crossed the broad sea... except once to go from Euboea to Aulis... where I pride myself on having won for my verses a gilded tripod, which I dedicated to the Muses who dwell on Helicon.
in the spring of 1783.
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(On the back of this leaf:)
The Fates’ distaff was the image of time. The threads wound around the spindle represented the past; the one they spun between their fingers was the symbol of the present; and the tow, still shapeless and confused, fastened to the distaff was the figure of the future.
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— Who will explain to me (says Mercier) why all those devoted especially to healing wounds, tending illnesses, and living among suffering beings have a much keener inclination toward the pleasures of the senses than the one that animates other men?
[June 1783. — Descartes.]
But whose boldness I love...
He speaks of dreams as a wise man and says that opium brings delicious ones. He remarks very aptly that the sad impressions we experience in dreams are sadder than those we experience while awake, just as the pleasant impressions are more pleasant. He skillfully points to their cause in the nature of the imagination, hampered in its operations by the presence of objects; the farther away the objects are, the freer it is. Its productions then have no bounds but its own strength and natural vigor.
N. B. Descartes congratulates himself in one of his letters on having no ideas at night more distressing than those he has by day...
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N. B. What makes men wicked in their primitive passions (says Jean-Jacques) is when they concern themselves more with removing the obstacles than with reaching the goal.
To furnish one’s head with charming ideas, and one’s heart with delicious feelings... (Jean-Jacques justified by Rousseau.)
In 1783, June.
A pleasant impression, when it is brief, is pleasure; when it is long, delight; when it is permanent, happiness. Happiness caused by gentle, flattering impressions that nothing interrupts or disturbs is felicity.
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“There is no sovereign good (adds La Mettrie) so exquisite as the great pleasure of love.”
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The causes of happiness lie in education, in philosophy, in bodily constitution. The happiness that comes from this last cause is the most constant (says this author) and the hardest to shake; it needs nourishment; it is nature’s most beautiful gift.
Note. He sought a kind of happiness that would be equally easy and equally suitable for the rich, the poor, fools, people of wit, honest people, and even the wicked. A mad search.
A great multitude gives some a need for eloquence and puts others under the necessity of being eloquent.
[July 1783.]
The customary posture of Asians may inspire softness in their ways. But our posture must necessarily inspire stiffness and dryness in ours; and I do not know which of these two faults is worse.
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They say it takes ten thousand hands to make a pin. So it is with all the objects of our luxury. A pompon employs almost as many men as the highest pyramid in Egypt employed. I know no reflection so apt to make everything that serves to adorn our houses or ourselves seem ridiculous and paltry in the eyes of a sensible man.
Oh! how far we are from being sensual, since the pleasures of our senses are so difficult and so costly!
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Your fountains cool the air; very well! But why, then, do you place them far from your trees and groves? Do you think that in your gardens people will go looking for coolness in the sun?
It is because the places most exposed to the sun have greater need of being enlivened by moist vapors. Grass grows at the foot of trees, but it dies away from the shade. Fountains were made for plants and not for men.
Very well, once again! But in pursuit of this praiseworthy design, it might be better to wet their feet than their stems. Perhaps it would be better to establish streams than cascades and to prefer water that flows to water that leaps.
[In July 1783.]