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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

Mr. Hochet and Mme de Sévigné.

In all things, — add!

November 7.

Those books in which there is never anything necessary, but which are full of the superfluous.

Do you know what a thought directed to God is in the world? It is a great, important, eternal thing.

November 8.

So this is what life is! and what history is!

There is only wit in our thoughts. There is no age, no experience, none of that gravity that joins them when they have passed through human affairs.

In everything one writes and everything one says, but above all in books; both body and soul must be beautiful.

A mind tinted by its reading, by the passions of all ages, by all the hazards of affairs, finally by its own colors.

He puts experience into a vessel that corrupts it.

Sunday, November 9.

That kind of fire that impels one to generation.

November 10.

Indeed, nature and mechanics work in the same way. But the instruments nature employs are liquid, and those of mechanics are solid and hard.

November 10.

“All heresiarchs,” says Bacon, “have been learned men.” Yes, but none of them has been a man of wit. Dry or impetuous minds, true “cumin splitters,” eager not to please and embellish, but to dominate and dissect. “Heretics,” dividers, separators, dissectors, etc.

November 11.

Nothings in relief.

T148.The French uses the infinitive ajouter in an exclamatory fragment. English Add reads it as an injunction without supplying what is to be added or a named person who must add it.

T149.Directed to reads à Dieu as the direction of the thought, rather than making it a thought belonging to God. Great, important, and eternal remain three distinct predicates.

T150.Wit reads esprit in contrast with age, experience, and gravity gained in affairs. These qualities belong to thoughts, whose passage through affairs remains a physical metaphor. The English does not add a judgment about a named generation.

T151.The body and soul belong to what is written or said, especially books. Both must be beautiful. The translation preserves the physical and spiritual comparison without assigning body exclusively to typography or soul exclusively to subject matter.

T152.Tinted retains teint and the closing colors. The possessive reading belongs to the mind, and the passions of all ages and the hazards of affairs remain distinct sources of its coloring. The paragraph remains a nominal fragment.

T153.The unnamed he puts experience into a vessel, and the vessel corrupts the experience. No person is identified from the surrounding passages.

T154.Generation preserves the historical term for begetting or bringing life into being. Fire remains the image of what impels this activity. The source gives neither a developed physiological theory nor a named subject.

T155.Nature and mechanics are said to work in the same manner, while their instruments differ. Liquid, solid, and hard remain distinct physical descriptions; this is Joubert’s comparison rather than an added modern scientific account.

S1.Source editor’s annotationA notebook dated Monday, November 10, 1806, contains a series of extracts from Bacon, little commented upon but approved; elsewhere in his notebooks Joubert calls him “the great Bacon” (November 8).

T156.Heresiarchs names founders or leaders of heresies; wit distinguishes esprit from learning. Cumin splitters retains the unusual physical image rather than replacing it with hair-splitters. Heretics renders the printed Greek transliteration Airetikoi in context. The ensuing dividers, separators, and dissectors are Joubert’s characterization, not a translator’s etymological claim. A parallel in Golefer’s 1632 Bacon translation, book I, p. 7, speaks of the most learned men being heresiarchs within an objection Bacon goes on to refute. It does not give Joubert’s exact universal formulation, which remains as printed.

T157.This is Beaunier’s annotation, separate from Joubert’s text. Its Monday, November 10, 1806, dates the described notebook; November 8 belongs to the separate wording the great Bacon. Both dates and the approval of the extracts remain, without dating neighboring undated entries by inference.

S2.Source editor’s annotationNotebook.

T158.Nothings retains the plural riens, and relief retains the image of trivial matter made prominent. The separate source annotation Carnet is translated Notebook and remains attached to the date heading.