By what term could one express the opposite of analysis—I mean the operation by which, instead of cutting up a thing and reducing it to its parts, one would detach its mode, its character, its effigy, so to speak, while letting its whole subsist? Abstraire indicates fairly well what one would do then; but one cannot say abstraire un ouvrage, as one would say l’analyser. I seek a word that corresponds to this one in grammatical construction and in wholeness of meaning; I cannot find it. — Chemistry performs more or less the operation I speak of by subliming.

(Evening). One can say abstraire l’empreinte.

It is not so much what is said as the speaker, manifested by his words, that interests us in Fénelon’s writings. His words resembling his thoughts and his thoughts resembling his soul (as I have required elsewhere) are the charm that binds one to his works, which flatter feeling more than attention; and the memory of them is still more agreeable than reading them because it is the impression they make and not the knowledge they give that makes his opinions delightful.

February 28.

The misfortune is that when the proper word arrives (among the words that are created) it always comes accompanied by some other useless word from which one cannot free oneself.

February 29.

“Often indeed (it is Ch[éni]er who said it, and it is unfortunate that it should be he, for it is well said) often oratory consists in avoiding movements.” (The movements of eloquence itself.) He adds: “But art always requires elegance, and regularity of forms, clarity, correctness, and the happy agreement of ideas and expressions.” (See Address to the Emperor, February 26.) In all the rest of the address, I see only Ch[é]n[ie]r and his signature flourish.

Servants often lie from respect and fear alone.

That kind of style which tempers thought.

Indeed, one judges the seal one does not see by the imprint one sees, and judges it well if that imprint is clear. And the imprint is not clear if the wax was not good or was not sufficiently warmed, or if the man’s hand did not press hard enough on the machine or instrument.

March 1.

There is something quarrelsome in the natural character of men and peoples. When this spirit of dispute and contention exercises itself on trifles, why lament? Those are the happy ages. The evil to be feared is that which attacks the vital parts and disturbs what is fundamental in the order of society.

March 2.

Soft construction. In Fénelon it indicates the state of the soul, the gentleness of his affection, etc. If one sees his thoughts less well in it, one sees his feelings better. This half-veiled mind is glimpsed — as one sees or thinks one has seen the moon through clouds — pleases at once through mystery and clarity.

What exasperates is that he has been praised until now without precision and with an exaggeration little in keeping with his habitual tastes, his manner, and the rules of his poetics, his criticism. Ordinarily what he says escapes memory, but does not escape remembrance; I mean that one does not remember his sentences, but the pleasure they gave. That perfection of style which consists in so incorporating words and thoughts together that it is impossible to recall the one without the other is not his, but he has another.

— Indeed, the universe obeys God as the body obeys the soul that fills it.

A singular thing! The ancients took the word infinite in a bad sense. For them it was equivalent to formless. See Plato, everywhere.

— we do not know such works, and even knowledge of them has been denied us, because we cannot make their like.