August 23.

Beautiful for pleasure (for the body) and not so for the soul. It smiles on them only because it does indeed find in them “qualities useful to the body,” to use Mr. Molé’s expression here.

And what is indecent, non decet, lacks grace, departs from the beautiful, even for the body.

Michaud and [ ? ]. They write as they pronounce.

That is because we always prefer the ills and faults to which we are accustomed.

August 22.

Widowhood makes them young again.

August 26.

Our mind has more thoughts than our memory can retain; it makes more judgments than it can give itself grounds for. A good part of itself would be very usefully employed in seeking the reasons that determined it and establishing for itself the glimpses that struck it and fled from it. For the soul there are a multitude of flashes in which it takes little part and which pass through it and illuminate it so swiftly that it forgets it. It is astonishing how many things it would find it had seen without thinking of them if, going back over all that had happened within it, one observed it, at least from memory and by examining every circumstance in depth. We do not rummage deeply enough and, like children, neglect what we have in our pockets to think only of what is in our hands or before our eyes.

August 19.

I. No, and we love her so little [morality] that everything that announces her, everything that precedes her, everything that merely serves as her introduction and forerunner sets everyone’s attention moving away and disposes it at least to await with indifference what is to come. Thus she cannot appear in person too soon.

II. If our duties are born of our nature, morality must be born naturally, without explicit inference and solely through the clarity of everything that gives us an exact idea of our being. Thus from the idea of the two substances is born that of balance; from the latter there springs, even in conduct, a respect for this quality that turns into practice, and also contempt and aversion for the perpetual excesses of heart and mind that this century has almost elevated not only into virtues but even into talents.

Metaphysics leads to morality through its ideas as morality leads us to virtue through its precepts. I would gladly call it a morality that inclines us to the good without forbidding anything or commanding anything, that regulates conduct without speaking of it etc. There lie its great merit and its great interest.

III. The mind has more thoughts than its attention can count and than our memory can recall to us. It makes more judgments than it could give grounds for. It sees farther than it can reach and knows more truths than it can explain. Quick glimpses often arise within it, producing for the soul the effect of a phenomenon and an illumination, whose impression and circumstances remain with it, but whose causes escape it, — unperceived etc.

It once seemed to me (and formerly) that, to determine the order, rank, and usefulness of the sciences, they must be arranged thus: 1° physics for metaphysics, to which it supplies half of itself and the convenience of explaining the invisible through the visible; 2° metaphysics for morality. “Mechanics (I said then) of which metaphysics is the geometry.” I certainly wrote on my tablets for this month and this day (in 1800) these two words, mechanics and geometry, to serve as a catchword for all the rest etc.

I would like to know whether this way of recounting one’s thoughts by saying that one has had them and at what time, in what place etc. is 1° boring, 2° useless. I have heard people of taste mock a woman of intelligence who is in the habit of quoting herself and often saying: “I was saying at such a time etc... I replied to so-and-so, etc...” In this care to date one’s own remarks and not pass off as newborn what is almost old, I find a sincerity that pleases me and an exactness that would not be without use to me if I were the listener. People mock it, but at bottom does it displease even those who repeat it in ridicule? Even if it did, it would be impossible for me, whenever I speak with heart and mind open, to pass off as recent within me what is old, and as present what is absent from me. Etc.

August […]7.

Nota. That one should say “supreme justice” and “extreme injustice,” thus making of what is virtue something high, and of what is vice something low and infernal. When, through vehemence of speech, we mix up and displace these terms, giving injustice the title of supreme and justice that of extreme, it is a disorder that may be allowed, for it draws attention; it does not divert the meaning (which remains straight), and passion excuses it.

Sometimes “our works are us.”

For some, writing is their occupation, their business, their life; for some others, writing is their amusement, their distraction, their play. In the former it is magistracy, office, duty, inspiration; in the latter it is task, trade, commerce, calculation, free and deliberate purpose. Some write to spread what they judge best for all, others to display what they consider best for themselves. So some wish to do well and others to act at the right moment; setting as their end, some the true and others the useful.

Our sentence constrains us.