September 27.

Stock. Or: of those who are worthy of founding a stock and who have a strength of quality that makes them fit to become stocks (or who have qualities capable of being transmitted).

This question comes down to deciding whether there is a natural heredity […] a natural transmission of moral or intellectual qualities.

“Such at least (says Aristotle) is nature’s aim, though she does not always attain it.” (Peripolitikon, lib. I, chap. V, VI.)

See above. In expressing oneself both philosophically and popularly, one must write thus: Of those who are fit to be a stock or principle. Nota. the expression: author of a lineage, or: his authors.

— By a certain power of projection that they have in their moral qualities, etc.

) (At noon.) This is distressing. I find everything I have just thought perfectly well expressed in a passage of Aristotle quoted by Stobaeus and taken from a book on nobility that we no longer have!

Vid. the translation of Plutarch’s moral. by Ricard, vol. XVII.

Adde. Here at least is a point on this subject that neither Aristotle nor anyone has said anything about: Of virtue, etc. through mothers. Or: of women as stock, principle, author of lineage. What qualities they transmit, etc. Nobility of thought or nobility of actions, etc.

Mere channels of transmission, adding nothing, altering nothing, and retaining nothing. They only let what passes through them flow, without taking part in it.

Nobility renewed, or stem upon stem.

And moments of excellence.

Consequently (and this is important), it is not a thing of convention, but of nature, that exists everywhere, willed or not, and that needs neither to be willed nor consented to in order to exist.

September […]8.

Of those who have in their head a mirror in which objects are represented as they are, but embellished, as great painters paint them. And of concave minds, oblong minds, and anachromatic heads, etc.

The ancients distinguished “action” from “exercise” in virtue. Importance of what they called exercise; and how they proved its necessity. (See Plutarch, the treatise On the Genius of Socrates, volume VII of the translation.)

September […]9.

— And indeed the stars are islands, surrounded as they are by air or ether; aerial or ethereal islands.

Plutarch, On Love. Thus, in this truly theological philosophy, each god directed the portion of the soul in which resided the passion over which he is supposed to have presided.

“A woman’s compliance with a man (says Plutarch) was called grace among the ancients..” And perhaps everything that is grace resembles it.

Plutarch’s treatise. He was wrong to consider this affection as a metaphysician, that is, as a man who seeks in the passions only their essence and what is divine in them. He should have considered it not in heaven, but in life, and treated it as a moralist through its effects, its dangers, its excesses, etc. Its nature in this regard is to be slippery (lubric, the ancients said). It is a moist passion.

September 30.

Precepts are made for contemplation. And to what extent they can be its object without giving the soul a pernicious habit.

Plutarch. Moon of philosophy. He shines more than he illuminates. True mirror of Plato. (Julium sidus.)

October 1.

Plutarch says that “one must listen... prepared.”