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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1808

Holy Scripture, easy to translate into all languages, because to do so one needs only common, popular, necessary words, which consequently are found everywhere.

“Feeling (says Geoffroy) makes everything other than itself insipid, and that is its drawback.” He is right. That is also the great drawback of pleasure. It gives one a distaste for reason.

If the eye were not easy to dazzle and seduce (that is to say to separate from the other senses in the operations proper to it), the pleasures given by the art of painting could not exist for us. We could take what is flat neither for projecting nor for recessed. Even Raphael’s drawing would offer us only hatching and meaningless scribbling. So it is with the art of writing: If the reader does not have an imagination with the character of the eye, Virgil no longer has beauty.

Balzac. One of our greatest writers and the first among the good if one consults the order of time. Useful to read, to meditate on, and excellent to admire, equally fit to instruct and form through his faults and through his qualities.

— Here I am outside civil things, and in the pure region of Art.

March 23.

(In the morning.) Fontanes at Saint Cloud.

March 24.

When, instead of substituting images for ideas, one substitutes ideas for images (of realities everyone has had or can have before their eyes), one confuses one’s subject, obscures one’s matter, and makes other minds and one’s own less clear-sighted.

March 25.

Positions! It is better to be above them than in them.

March 26.

A system is a doctrine absolutely personal to the one who invents it. If this doctrine contradicts all the others, the system is bad. If it illuminates them all, the system is good and excellent, at least as a system.

If what is rigorously true as an inference is not, in isolation and in itself, a truth that contents the mind, it is not true enough and of a useful truth. For a proposition to possess a good truth, that proposition must (as the schools would have said) be true as an inference and as a consequent. Or rather the consequent must be true in the inference. Reasoning being a machine by means of which one wishes to bring into the mind an opinion for which it is not sufficiently prepared. To silence one’s adversaries is not to convince them, but merely to embarrass them, an ignoble advantage.

Read Balzac. Beautiful words have at least a form, a sound, a color, and a transparency that makes them the fitting place in which beautiful thoughts must be set to make them visible to men. Thus their existence is a great good. They are a great wealth. Their multitude is a treasure. Now Balzac is full of them. And so, to end as I began, I shall say to you: Read Balzac.

In the French language, suspension must be produced by the brilliance or the charm of words that halt or slow the mind’s headlong advance against its will.

T172.The opening remains a nominal construction without an added is. Popular means in ordinary use among people, not merely fashionable. Common, popular, and necessary remain three adjectives. The universal claim remains Joubert’s.

T551.Ecriture retains its unaccented capital E. The opening nominal construction has no supplied est. The terminal e of parce meets edge wear; its reading is qualified from the visible trace and following qu’on.

T173.Feeling and pleasure remain distinct antecedents across the quotation and response. Insipid and distaste retain the sensory language applied to reason. The quoted assertion stays attributed to Geoffroy without an independently specified text.

T174.Seduce retains séduire beside Joubert’s own explanatory separation from other senses. Flat, projecting, and recessed remain distinct. Hatching renders hachures without specifying crossed lines. The conditional account of painting leads to the separate condition on the reader’s imagination, with Virgil as its example.

T175.First is explicitly governed by chronological order in the source. The nominal descriptions remain without added finite verbs. Faults and qualities both serve instruction and formation; no particular works are identified.

T554.The nominal descriptions remain without supplied finite verbs.

T176.Art keeps its capital. Civil things retains choses civiles in the stated contrast; no particular political event or legal question is supplied.

T177.In the morning remains roman text inside the paragraph, with its period inside the parenthesis. Fontanes at Saint Cloud remains nominal; no meeting, journey, or speech is invented.

T555.The parenthetical circumstance is roman main text, followed by a nominal entry. Saint Cloud remains unhyphenated.

T178.The reversal of substituting images for ideas and ideas for images remains in that order. The parenthesis qualifies the images through realities that can be before the eyes. Subject and matter remain different terms, and clear-sighted keeps the visual faculty applied to minds.

T179.Positions renders places in the period sense of offices, posts, or dignities. The Académie’s 1798 Place entry records this figurative sense beside physical places. Above and in preserve the spatial contrast; no particular appointment or refusal is identified.

T180.System remains repeated four times. Good and excellent are both retained; at least as a system limits the concluding approval. Illumination, rather than mere agreement, is the positive alternative to contradiction.

T181.Inference and consequent keep conséquence and conséquent distinct in the stated scholastic comparison: the inferential relation and what follows in it are not treated as interchangeable. The awkward coordination not true enough and of a useful truth remains, as does the sentence beginning Reasoning being without a finite main verb. The French prints singular adversaire after plural ses; English adversaries follows the plural possessive and subsequent pronouns. The Encyclopédie’s period logical entries define conséquence as the inferential connection to premises and conséquent as the proposition inferred, distinguishing the validity of a connection from the truth of its premises.

T558.The coordination n’est pas assés vrai et d’une vérité utile remains unchanged, and the sentence beginning Le raisonnement étant has no supplied finite main verb. An enlarged facsimile confirms singular adversaire after ses.

T182.The four properties of beautiful words and the repeated beautiful remain. English makes retains the source’s singular rend; the series can be read collectively. Great good, great wealth, and treasure remain three distinct formulations. The repeated imperative encloses the paragraph.

T183.Suspension retains the rhetorical term for holding the mind’s onward movement. Brilliance and charm are alternative means, and halt and slow remain distinct actions. Against its will refers to the mind, corresponding to the masculine lui beside esprit in the French.