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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1808

October 23.

Juvenal was a rigorist. The greatest reverence is owed to a child. And indeed innocence is a kind of holiness. Children should therefore be respected as saints.

Shadows and phantoms. Shadows in history, phantoms in novels.

October 27.

The mathematics of the heart. For beautiful maxims are to it axioms of irresistible self-evidence.

October 28.

Old age takes from the man of intellect only qualities useless to wisdom.

Traçât-à-pas-tar in Boileau’s line Might trace with slow steps a laborious furrow, so true it is that sense makes sound.

November 2.

— singularly fitted to enter into others’ ideas without ever leaving one’s own.

November 3.

People speak of well-formed heads and do not speak of well-formed hearts.

Well-formed hearts are those in which every kind of affection is well housed and has only its proper extent.

In moral constructions, the foundations make themselves all on their own, and whoever does not build on existing foundations builds in the air.

November 27.

— and this subtle unreason...

November 11.

At first sermons were only lessons in theology given to the assembled public. (See Histoire de l’université de Paris.)

November 12.

It is better for them to live surrounded by marvels than by facts. And there must be in the world only the ignorant and the learned. The middle is unbearable, for to know nothing and believe nothing is the worst of positions.

Dead or inanimate facts, facts without life or action.

T397.The Latin sentence is independently translated and remains italic. Greatest renders maxima, owed preserves debetur, and child renders singular puero without narrowing the following French children to boys alone. Rigorist retains the strict moral characterization; no later religious school is assigned to Juvenal. The words open Juvenal, Satire XIV.47, in a passage warning adults against setting children bad examples. Joubert’s following conclusion about holiness is his own.

T398.The two nominal formulations and repeated nouns remain. History and novels are kept distinct, without a supplied theory of how either represents the dead.

T716.Both nominal formulations remain without a finite predicate.

T399.Self-evidence renders évidence as what presents itself as evident, not an externally supplied body of proof. Irresistible and beautiful remain part of Joubert’s account of the maxims. It refers to the heart.

T400.Man of intellect renders homme d’esprit without restricting the phrase to professional scholarship or comic wit. Only preserves the scope of the loss; the source does not list the qualities removed.

T401.The opening Traçât-à-pas-tar remains French because the example concerns its sound; its clipped ending is not completed. The English verse is a fresh semantic translation. Might gives an English modal form to the isolated imperfect subjunctive; Boileau’s governing clause and ox subject are not supplied. It remains a centered line embedded within one paired paragraph, between the introduction and resumed prose. The English wording does not claim to reproduce the French sound effect. The line occurs in Boileau’s Épître III, to Arnauld, in the description of wheat growing without the ox’s labor before Adam’s fall.

T402.The initial adjective phrase remains without a named subject. Entering and leaving preserve the spatial image. One’s own makes the reflexive possession readable without assigning a particular thinker.

T718.The initial adjective phrase remains without an expressed subject or finite governing clause.

T403.The two emphasized phrases remain parallel in English. The qualified French reading faite is not silently corrected in the French, while English formed does not express its gender or number ending.

T719.Two physical paragraphs remain. Both first-paragraph phrases are italic, while the repeated cœurs bien faits in paragraph 2 is roman. The first paragraph’s final adjective glyph is e-like in an enlarged facsimile; faite is retained as a qualified diplomatic reading supported by independent enlarged-facsimile comparison, without imposing expected plural agreement.

T404.The repeated hearts phrase in this second paragraph remains roman. Well housed preserves the spatial force of casées, and proper extent keeps the limit assigned to each affection without identifying a particular classification.

T405.The self-forming foundations and building in the air remain the extended construction metaphor. Whoever renders the freestanding qui without naming an antecedent. Existing foundations remains a stated requirement rather than a specified tradition.

T406.Unreason renders déraison without turning the fragment into a clinical diagnosis. The dash, lowercase and, and final ellipsis remain. The November 27 date is retained before the following November 11 and 12 entries.

T721.The printed November 27 date precedes November 11 and 12 on this page; source order is retained. The nominal fragment and terminal ellipsis remain.

T407.The source reference remains roman within the main text; See translates Vide. The French title means History of the University of Paris, but no author, edition, or page is supplied beyond Joubert’s wording. The historical claim is not independently verified by the reference alone.

T722.The source’s date follows November 27 without reordering. The bibliographical direction remains roman main text.

T408.Them remains unidentified. Marvels and facts, the ignorant and the learned, and knowing nothing and believing nothing retain their separate contrasts. The middle remains Joubert’s description without a supplied group or doctrine.

T723.Scavans and scavoir retain their printed forms without cedillas. The plural eux remains unidentified.

T409.The repeated facts and the alternatives introduced by or remain nominal. Life and action are not combined into a single quality.

T724.The repeated nominal formulation remains without a finite predicate.