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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1808

May 3.

How it happens that only useless knowledge inspires vanity. For example, no one is proud of distinguishing lime from sand, and yet that is useful knowledge. But to distinguish quartz from schist, to know zinc, etc.

May 4.

— objects, where imagination is often more to be feared than the eyes.

Experience varies, and can equally produce confidence or distrust. Hippocrates called it deceptive. One must therefore join one’s experience to that of others to judge well.

The difference between a pillar and a column is great. The column is the pillar in its beauty, in its lightness, the perfect pillar, reduced to having nothing in excess.

A talent, like an aptitude for a trade. Let us therefore cultivate in ourselves that other part which is divine. And we can all do so, since it depends little on the body.

... In heaven no one will be a poet, for we will be able to imagine nothing beyond what we see. We will be only intelligent. Let us therefore cultivate intelligence, that eternal faculty which will always be exercised and will suffice for happiness.

Boredom (that boredom they talk so much about), duty drives it away.

May […]5.

Poets. — and the images of objects serve them better than the objects’ presence.

Parenthesis, excluding certain words from the construction by isolating those it encloses, makes it possible to give sentences greater variety and style a greater number of inflections.

We have said it: poets are more inspired by images than by the very presence of objects. — Thus, the idea of perfection is more necessary to men than models are. And when I say that the idea of perfection is more necessary than models, I do not mean only in the arts, but in conduct.

May 6.

To decide these questions well, one must leave logic and enter metaphysics or moral philosophy; it is there that one will find the truth.

“Strong mind” was not badly put. When the mind and the aptitude for reasoning have more strength and excellence, or merely more practice than the soul’s other faculties, they lead astray, they deceive.

If the mind is only strong and is not gentle, or if it exercises only its strength without giving itself over to its gentleness, if it grows accustomed to always advancing, like a sword, without heeding what it wounds...

T248.The opening How construction remains without a main assertion, as do the closing infinitives. Schist renders the printed xiste without changing the French spelling or specifying a modern geological subtype. Lime, sand, quartz, and zinc remain the named examples; the judgment of usefulness remains Joubert’s. The period category included stones that split into layers or sheets, like slate; no modern geological subtype is intended.

T614.The initial Comment clause and closing infinitive examples remain uncompleted. Xiste retains its initial x.

T249.The opening nominal fragment and its comma remain. The comparison concerns what is to be feared; no missing class of objects or moral occasion is supplied.

T250.Confidence and distrust remain equally possible products of experience. Hippocrates is the conventional English name for the source’s Hipocrate. The paragraph continues onto page 657; deceptive qualifies experience, and one’s own experience is joined to that of others. No particular ancient text is identified here.

T251.Pillar and column remain distinct architectural terms. The successive beauty, lightness, perfection, and removal of excess preserve the description rather than turning it into a general rule about ornament.

T252.The opening comparison remains a nominal fragment. That other part is not renamed as soul or intelligence. The first-person exhortation, the ability shared by all, and the limited dependence on the body remain.

T617.The opening nominal comparison remains without a finite predicate. The left-edge beginning of nous and wrapped qu’elle are partly damaged and qualified from their surviving forms.

T253.Intelligent and intelligence refer here to the faculty of understanding, set against imagining beyond what is seen. The English retains the adjective rather than changing persons into intelligence itself. The opening marks are read as an ellipsis, with their appearance qualified in the French source record.

T618.The damaged initial marks before Dans are provisionally read as an ellipsis; their exact dots are not fully recoverable. Poëte retains its diaeresis. The left openings of imaginer, the wrapped gens and toujours are partly lost and qualified from surviving continuations.

T254.Boredom renders ennui here. Its initial detached position and the repetition within the parenthesis are retained; duty is the force that drives it away. They remains unidentified.

T255.Poets remains inline text, followed by the dash and lowercase and. Them refers to the poets; English repeats objects to make the antecedent of French leur présence explicit. No definite numerical day is reconstructed from the damaged date.

T619.Only the terminal day glyph is provisionally legible as 5; its upper and left portions are damaged and no preceding digit is supplied. Les poëtes is inline main text, not a centered heading. The pronoun les before servent remains, and the opening of présence is partly damaged and qualified from its visible ending.

T256.Construction remains a grammatical term. Isolating the enclosed words is the means of excluding them from the construction, not an unrelated second action. Variety of sentences and inflections of style remain separate effects.

T257.The repeated comparison between the idea of perfection and models is retained. Conduct renders mœurs in the concluding extension beyond the arts; it does not restrict the claim to manners of social address. No particular models or ethical system are supplied.

T258.These questions are not identified beyond the source. Moral philosophy renders la morale in parallel with metaphysics, distinguishing the field of inquiry from the preceding discussion of conduct. The future finding of truth remains an assertion in Joubert’s text.

T259.Strong mind translates the quoted words literally so that strength can recur in the argument. The period expression esprit fort could name someone who prided himself on religious disbelief, while avoir l’esprit fort also described intellectual vigor and penetration. Joubert’s argument brings the literal strength of the mind into view. More practice renders the plural exercices collectively. The feminine elles follows a mixed-gender coordinated subject in the French; the English they preserves the reference without inventing a new subject.

T260.The sequence of conditional clauses remains unfinished. Strength and gentleness recur as properties of the mind; the sword image and its heedlessness of what it wounds remain without a supplied moral conclusion.