Diotimos Reading Desk

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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[Malebranche.]

Young people. And: some destine themselves for pleasures, and others for good works.

The anecdote told today by D’Arnaud. “Where have you come from, young ladies? — Mama, we have just watched a guillotining; oh my God, what trouble that poor executioner had.” This horrible displacement of pity paints a century in which everything is overturned.

August 2.

It is with metaphysics as with religions. No one (or each person) loves anything but his own.

August 4.

It is to be feared that, if the multitude will not think like the wise, the wise will end by thinking like the multitude. (A. B. ad vivum.)

August 5.

Just as there are people who make themselves an artificial memory that is useful to the natural one, perhaps one also makes, for the convenience of one’s mind, an artificial logic, metaphysics, painting, and poetry, which serves the true ones, etc., but must never appear alongside this one. One must use it and hide it.

August […].

This word that would end a chapter very well begins it badly. That is because, by its nature, it is the last expression of thought, not the first. In its place, it is beautiful. Out of its place, it has studied refinement and affectation. This, to say it in passing, is what makes expressions appear ridiculous in quotations by isolating and displacing them, when they were very beautiful in the place where their author had put them. A capital, an ornament must end a building, not begin it.

The nature of man. It is simple and adjusts to everything. It must be taken into account in the laws or declarations of public morality. But in the constitution of governments, one must have [regard] for the circumstances of past and present. Let us take it as certain that no government can be a simple matter of choice. It is almost always a matter of necessity.

There are more favorable governments and climates, but one cannot procure them at will. It is good to know them, for ingenuity and art can, by skillful supplements, introduce everywhere into (some details) the course of human life the gentle influences of both.

With stoves one tempers the harshness of Siberian winters. One can soften and make wholly propitious the rigors of despotism by giving the despot a paternal disposition and the entrails of a king. The hearth in this case lends its warmth to the climate; the prince’s disposition, the benignity of customs, etc., lend their oil to the springs of authority.

There is no government (among those that have a name and a character) truly incompatible with the Christian religion. Through it, democracy is less free, autocracy has regularity, etc.

In political innovations, everything is done and must be done through a kind of compromise.

These institutions must be suited to the situation of peoples. In founding them, one need not look above oneself, but all around.

Metaphysics is good for those who lose their way in the higher regions. Those who do not leave the earth have no need of it. Morality takes its place for them.

In civil life, only good and evil, vice and virtue, are serious. Everything else in it should be a game.

Government, war and peace, public abundance and [the] general tranquility are your affair. You are established to relieve private men of these great cares. The sheltering tree is your emblem. In this regard, in a well-administered state, only those who govern should be, and are, anxious.

In truth, to relieve private individuals of these cares, it matters exceedingly to have a government capable of it, that is to say, one whose parts correspond so well with one another that their functions are easy for them and their duration assured.

T171.The anecdote is attributed to D’Arnaud as told today, not presented as independently verified history. No execution victim is named in the source. Peine denotes the executioner’s trouble or difficulty within the reported dialogue; Joubert then condemns this displacement of pity.

T172.The source juxtaposes Personne and the parenthetical alternative ou chacun within n’aime que. The translation preserves both formulations and the restrictive anything but, instead of deleting one of Joubert’s alternative subjects.

T173.The Latin ad vivum means from life or to the life. It remains in the text, with its source italics. A. B. is left unexpanded. The feared result is that the wise do eventually think like the multitude; the French ne after the expression of fear does not negate that result.

T174.The source moves from a list of logic, metaphysics, painting, and poetry to singular artificielle, sert, celle-ci, and la, while véritables is plural. The English preserves that movement and the unresolved this one, without recasting every pronoun in the plural or assigning a single antecedent as certain.

S1.Source editor’s annotationTwo separate leaves: the first dated, and dating the other.

T175.Mot may denote a word or a compact saying; the English retains word. Recherche is studied refinement or elaboration, not research. Chapiteau is the architectural capital: the image concerns the top or finishing element of a building, not a chapter heading.

T176.Constitution here concerns the forming or arrangement of governments, without necessarily naming a written constitutional document. The source-supplied [égard] remains [regard]. Simple nature and the necessity of political circumstances remain distinct parts of the argument.

T177.Industrie denotes ingenuity or resourceful activity here, rather than an industrial sector. The parenthesis remains in its unusual source position between into and the course, with some details inside it. Both refers to governments and climates, despite the source’s feminine unes et autres after the masculine nouns.

T178.Poëles means stoves, not poets. The entrails of a king retains the bodily image for inward feeling or compassion; the source’s damaged roi is contextually restored in the transcription. The hearth’s warmth and oil supplied to the springs of authority remain separate mechanical and domestic images.

T179.Transaction is read as an accommodation or compromise in political arrangements, rather than a commercial exchange. The statement retains both what is done and what ought to be done.

T180.The contrast between looking above oneself and all around remains spatial. The source does not name a particular transcendent authority in this sentence; the following paragraph turns explicitly to metaphysics.

T181.Government is directly addressed. The source-supplied article [la] is retained as [the], although English would ordinarily omit it before general tranquility. The double claim should be, and are preserves the source’s distinction between what is required and what obtains in a well-administered state.

T182.The parts of government are the antecedent of their functions and their duration. The English retains the structural correspondence and the claim that their operation becomes easy, without substituting a modern administrative system.