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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1809

To drive from teaching the person whose conduct teaches children to do wrong.

November 18, evening.

But the substance of the brain? Does it not have a different quality in different individuals, just as a different quantity? Ah! there are in the constitution (admitting it as a cause) infinitely many dispositions that cannot be deduced from any feature, any dimension, any outward sign, but from operation alone. And one will judge the head more surely by style than style by the head.

Everso succurrere sæclo, (Virg.) where the age is falling, one must hold it up.

“Inspire, but do not write.” (Lebrun.) That is what one ought to say to professors. But they want to write and not to resemble the muses.

November 19.

Two operations: to turn a question over and to decide it. To decide it without having turned it over: it is better to turn it over without deciding it.

November 20.

One must follow the rule. But if the rule is badly regulated? Every rule must conform to order and the good, which are the rule, or the essential regulators of the rule.

One may grieve, but one may never laugh at another’s religion. If the prophets have done so, ordinary Christians are not permitted to imitate the prophets in everything.

That in all the countries of the world the highest and most immaterial of all sciences, that of religion, should be the easiest to learn! Even children are capable of it, and more capable than men. So truly is there in man a spiritual part that he has from heaven, which has no need of earth or time, and which time and earth are more apt to impair than to increase!

Do not confuse what is spiritual with what is abstract. And remember that philosophy has a muse and must not be a mere shop for reasonings.

Make the poor person virtuous and polite, so that they may be equally pleasing and commendable in the eyes of men and in the eyes of God.

November 25.

After good verse, what is most difficult to make is good versets. I said after good verse, and I was wrong. Good versets are more difficult to make than good verse.

November […]5.

God enlightens those who often think of him and lift their eyes […]ers him.

T123.The opening remains an infinitive. Teaching renders instruction as the educational work from which the person is to be expelled, and teaches preserves the connection with the effect of that person’s conduct.

T301.The opening infinitive remains without a supplied governing clause; enfans keeps its printed ending.

T124.Substance, quality, quantity, dispositions, and operation remain distinct. Constitution renders organisation in its physical sense; the parenthesis makes its role as cause an admitted premise. All three any phrases remain negative, with operation the sole stated alternative. The last future preserves the direction of inference from style to head. The printed evening cue stays with the date.

T302.The date includes soir. The parenthesis remains, as do the repeated negative determiners and final future jugera. Minor right-edge abrasion touches the last letters of divers and the wrapped dimension without preventing their qualified readings.

T125.The Latin means to come to the aid of an overturned age. Its comma and printed attribution remain, and lowercase where preserves the following où construction. Hold it up keeps the bodily support in appuyer. No surrounding Latin verse is inserted. The phrase is drawn from Virgil’s Georgics I.500, where an intervening iuvenem and the surrounding prayer are absent from Joubert’s excerpt.

T303.The Latin ends with a comma before the parenthetical attribution; the following où remains lowercase. The printed Latin is not corrected from an external source.

T126.The attributed command and the following conditional advice remain distinct. The last sentence keeps the professors’ two wishes without making the muses into writers. Lebrun remains the source’s single-word spelling.

T304.The attribution is printed Lebrun in one word. The conditional faudroit and both infinitives in the final sentence remain.

T127.Turn over preserves the movement in remuër as examination of a question; decide remains distinct. The second infinitive formulation and all repeated operations retain the comparison’s direction.

T305.Both infinitive remuër forms have the printed diaeresis, while remuée has an acute. The second formulation begins with an infinitive rather than a supplied finite clause.

T128.Rule, regulated, and regulators preserve the repeated word family. The if question remains incomplete. Order and the good are said to be the rule, followed by the alternative plural regulators; the sentence is not regularized into a single definition.

T306.The interrogative si fragment and repeated règle forms remain. The plural régulateurs follows singular la règle as printed.

T129.Grief remains permitted and laughter at another’s religion forbidden. The conditional reference to prophets is retained without identifying a particular episode; in everything limits the prohibited imitation rather than forbidding every imitation of prophets.

T130.Sciences retains the broad historical sense of organized knowledge. The opening That... should exclamation and later emphatic So truly preserve the source’s assertion without adding a premise. The relative clauses refer to the spiritual part. French prints [le] before temps; English needs no definite article before abstract time, so that supplied source article has no separate bracketed English word. The intervention remains visible in French and recorded here. Impair and increase preserve the opposed effects of time and earth.

T307.The opening exclamatory Que construction and later Tant formulation remain. Même is singular after enfans. The bracketed [le] is printed and is not a translator insertion.

T131.Spiritual and abstract remain distinct. Muse and shop preserve the contrasting images, and plural reasonings remains rather than being replaced by reason itself. No printed parenthesis is inferred from the stray margin mark.

T308.A short curved vertical mark appears in the outer margin beside the second line; it is not identified as a printed opening parenthesis within the sentence. Raisonnemens retains its printed ending.

T132.The poor person retains the generic singular; their identity is not specified. Virtuous and polite remain distinct, as do pleasing and commendable. Both occurrences of in the eyes of remain with their respective human and divine objects.

T133.Versets retains the technical term for prose or scriptural verse units, distinct from metrical verse. Make recurs for faire. The first judgment is corrected explicitly by I was wrong, and the second after good verse alone carries the source emphasis. No example or named scripture is supplied. The 1798 Académie chiefly associates verset with short scriptural divisions and also records liturgical use.

T134.Enlightens retains the light image alongside lifted eyes. The French […]ers remains a residue, with vers, toward, a possible completion; the damaged day is not filled.