Diotimos Reading Desk

Tap the page, move to the top or bottom edge, swipe down, or press Tab to reveal reading controls. Use the arrow keys or swipe sideways to turn pages.

← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1808

June 26.

To examine the principle through its consequences, is permitted by serene logic and commanded by sound reason.

June 28.

Liberty. The liberty to do good. No others are needed.

Truths. The truths that teach us to act well and live well. No others are needed either.

A dark brain, a heavy mind, a frozen imagination, and a heated reason: these are deformities.

Yes, “conform yourself to nature.” She wants you to be mediocre, be mediocre, yield to the wiser, adopt their opinions. Do not trouble the world, since you would not know how to govern it.

June 29.

One cannot reason without using some abstraction; every principle is one.

We always infer from an essence to a fact, so that truth can be found only in the major premise, and the true in the conclusion.

The conclusion contains only an accidental and momentary truth...

There are good sciences whose existence is necessary and whose cultivation is useless. Such is mathematics.

Abuse of words, foundation of ideology.

July 1.

The prie-dieu. A piece of furniture indispensable to good order. Where it is absent there are no household gods, no respect, etc.

July 3.

(At Vaugirard.) These altars raised to modesty (the Virgin), to patience in suffering (the Martyrs), to austerity (the Cenobites), to compassion, etc. finally to God’s love for men (the Crucifix)...

Plants have joy. — takes away the plants’ chastity. — Everything is confused, flowers are given an appetite that is animal.

July 4.

The punishment of those who have loved women too much is to love them always.

July 5.

D’Aguesseau has too much evenness in the advance of his reason.

T343.The comma between infinitive subject and finite verb is retained. Serene logic and sound reason remain distinct personified authorities; permitted and commanded preserve the different modalities.

T680.An enlarged facsimile confirms the date 26. Sereine has no printed accent, and the comma between the infinitival subject and est is retained.

T344.The singular Liberty and the plural others are retained. Others refers to liberties without supplying a list or silently making the source’s plural singular.

T345.The second paragraph remains within the same entry. Act well and live well retain the repeated adverb, and either carries non plus forward from the preceding claim about liberty.

T346.Brain, mind, imagination, and reason remain four named terms. Dark, heavy, frozen, and heated preserve the physical images; deformities retains the force of difformités.

T347.Nature remains personified as she. Mediocre repeats rather than being changed into a claim of excellence through modesty. The singular address and commands remain. The quotation’s period is placed inside the English closing quotation mark under American house style; the French punctuation is unchanged.

T682.In the French source, the period after the first quoted imperative remains outside the closing guillemet. Scaurois has no cedilla.

T348.Every principle is explicitly an abstraction. The first paragraph remains distinct from the subsequent account of inference.

T683.Three physical paragraphs remain. The right-edge line breaks affect principe, conclusion and momentanée; their readings are qualified from visible beginnings and following-line endings. The distinction between vérité and vrai remains.

T349.Major premise supplies the conventional English logical term for majeure. Truth and the true keep vérité and vrai distinct rather than using truth for both. Essence and fact remain the two ends of the inference.

T350.Accidental retains the philosophical possibility of contingent or nonessential truth, not merely a truth arrived at by mistake. Momentary and the closing ellipsis remain.

T351.Sciences retains the source’s category of organized branches of knowledge. The contrast between necessary existence and useless cultivation remains unreconciled; the example of mathematics is not removed because it is surprising.

T352.Ideology retains idéologie, with its period association with the study of ideas rather than an automatically supplied modern party doctrine. The nominal phrase remains a judgment without a named target.

T685.The nominal formulation remains without a finite predicate.

T353.Prie-dieu is the English loanword for a piece of furniture used for kneeling in prayer; the source’s pri-Dieu spelling is unchanged in French. Household gods renders pénates, keeping the domestic and sacred association rather than reducing it to possessions.

T686.Pri-Dieu retains the printed spelling without e after pri. The date has raised er. The margin after pas is clipped; no unverified punctuation is inserted at that line break.

T354.The place remains an inline parenthetical circumstance. Cenobites denotes members of a religious community; the source’s capitals for Virgin, Martyrs, Cenobites, and Crucifix are retained. The sequence remains nominal and unfinished, and finally follows etc. without a supplied conclusion.

T687.The circumstance remains roman and starts with unaccented A. Vierge, Martyrs, Cénobites and Crucifix keep their printed capitals. The right-edge endings of la, Cénobites and hommes are qualified from the surviving beginnings and continuation. The nominal list remains unfinished, with lowercase enfin after etc.

T355.The middle clause has no expressed subject. Takes away reads ôte as a finite third-person verb; an imperative reading is also grammatically possible and remains an editorial alternative. No name or preceding proposition is inserted as its subject. Chastity, joy, and animal appetite retain the disputed attribution of human or animal qualities to plants.

T356.Too much and always retain the distinction between excess and duration. Those who remains unrestricted beyond the source’s statement.

T357.Evenness renders égalité as uniformity of movement, not political equality. Advance continues the walking or progression image in marche.