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July 24.
Of permanent holdings.—Are they of any use? When all goods have possessors who change every day, is it necessary that there be possessions that never change and whose administration may offer a resource to those who have only their skill as a patrimony? Finally, must not the laws, which in accordance with nature must favor the inconstancy and changeability of fortune, also check it, and, while leaving its wheel in motion, regulate its swing?
July 25.
Atoms, particles of matter that were declared uncuttable, indivisible, and constituent elements—to halt the imagination. So greatly does man need a first cause, a fixed point from which he may launch himself in thought, an agreed truth, beyond examination, presupposed and prior to every operation of his mind, so that his mind may operate.
July 26, in the morning.
...Like people who, when their house is set on fire, are occupied in admiring the torch and the arsonist’s fine appearance, and would limit their prudence to that (and enclose their wisdom within this contemplation).
July 27.
Seeking difficulties is their trade. Finding them is their joy, their glory, and their ambition.
July 29 in the evening.
Overture, exordium, prelude.—They help the orator, the poet, the musician dispose their own minds to produce their work better. They help listeners and readers prepare their attention. Some slowness I cannot define must prevail in them, and a character partaking of the silence that precedes and the noise that is to follow. Brilliance, variety, and art must also prevail in them, for the artist must display his resources and give pledges of his capacity. A certain modesty nevertheless becomes them, for this is the natural disposition of a man whose powers are awakening, so to speak, coming into play one after another and not existing all at once.
When the mind has taken its full flight and attention gained all its steadiness, the operation that is to take place begins. Then what one wished to say is said. The speaker enters upon his subject.
The weakness of the dying slanders life.
Minds fit to govern not only cities and great states, but even their own households, were scarcely to be found any longer. No age had seen them so rare.
July 30.
...I feel him existing.
Do not:—Define what is known: chatter. Obscure what is clear: daubing. Call into question what is fact: bad faith, ignorance. Make abstract what is palpable: charlatanism. And offer difficulties that do not present themselves or have only an empty appearance: quibbling.
July 31.
The faculty of thinking has a thousand kinds, like all faculties. It varies in strength, clarity, consistency, and extent. The bird thinks, but not as man does, nor the fish as the bird. So the tree feels, but not as the animal does, nor the mushroom as the tree. Everything that is an individual, that is, exists apart and forms a distinct being with the faculty of growing and reproducing itself, has sensibility. Everything that joins to sensibility the faculty of moving, either upon itself or about itself, by choice and its own determination, has some manner of thought. But man alone has thoughts of which he can form a fabric and a long interweaving.
The concurrence of the perfect action of every nerve is necessary, not for the functions of life to take place, but for them to take place perfectly.
In Italian singing, the high is mingled with the low in every tone. Which depends on the opening of the glottis. Their throat has made their music.
The administrator, the statesman, is a messenger, a carrier to whom time is entrusted, to be delivered, as it is or better, to the time to come.