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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

YEAR 1794

The shadow and the image. The image must be finer. The shadow must be thicker.

Reasoning is a kind of intellectual machine by whose aid one concludes, that is, encloses within an opinion already adopted another opinion that often does not enter it naturally.

December 15.

My awakening.

December 16.

All truths are double or doubled, or they all have an underside and a reverse side.

Europe. Where are you from? — From Europe (The provinces of Europe).

Oh, how many shoulders without strength have asked for heavy burdens!

Soul. — It is a kindled vapor that burns without being consumed. Our body is its lantern. Etc. The flame of this vapor is not light alone, but feeling. Etc.

Fainting is a brief death.

And method? An artificial guide line along which one arranges...

The appetites (he said) peg the soul into the body. The appetites are the necessary conditions that attach us to life.

The people’s faith subjects the priest’s mind.

A great misfortune occurred. All died with courage. Their firmness had a hardening effect.

December 23.

S1.Source editor’s annotationVariant indicated by Joubert: “[image] clear... [shadow] indistinct.”

S2.Source editor’s annotationA little higher up: “Linings. Everything through linings.”

T9.The French doubles and doublées play on doubling and lining; the accompanying source note gives doublures, linings. Its unusual envers/revers pairing is retained as underside/reverse side rather than regularized to front/back.

S3.Source editor’s annotation“A third interlocutor resumes and says: It is a thing, etc., a substance.” Then: “a result, like sound.” Then: “This subtle intelligence is so agglomerated and held by such an adhesion that it becomes an individual, like fire in the sun.”

T10.The source leaves unstated what is to be arranged along the guide line. English preserves the causative action and the incomplete ending.

T11.Leur fermeté endurcissoit leaves the object of hardening unstated. Had a hardening effect preserves that omission; no affected person or group is identified.