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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1809

December 20.

Those who have traveled through your opinions and come out of them, you call deserters. But one must give this insulting title only to those who have abandoned the old and common opinions that have been like a homeland where their mind acquired its habits and its powers. Those, then, who abandoned these opinions without adopting better ones have been the only imprudent ones and the only blameworthy ones. Inconstancy in the others is praiseworthy and fortunate, if it leads back to wisdom through experience.

Only the one who has too lightly left the old and common opinions that are like a homeland where our mind acquired all its habits can be called the deserter.

They entered all the others out of curiosity and as a traveler, and may leave them at will without incurring any legitimate blame; for there they were a stranger.

December 21.

To admit God and prescribe forgetting him, inconsistency. Now religion is only the constant remembrance of this truth, just as piety is the inward feeling of it.

December 22.

Anyone who does all they can exposes themself to the danger of showing their limits by being unable to go farther. One must therefore push neither one’s talent, nor one’s strength, nor one’s spending to the utmost extremes.

December 25 (at midnight.)

This brutal reason that crushes beneath its weight what is holy and what is sacred; this malicious reason that rejoices in errors when it can discover them; this unfeeling and disdainful reason that insults credulity; all these vicious reasons...

These physical truths that teach so many moral errors.

Some grow devout with wine; and why not?

Physical, historical, moral truths. Without connection. On the contrary, there have been physical or historical errors that have been useful to moral truths. [Physical] and historical truths, necessary to few people; moral truths, necessary to all.

When a historical or physical error harms no moral truth, it does no harm to the public.

Intellectual truths, or truths of natures, good for all, though not necessary to all; so not everyone is capable of them.

“All beautiful words (I have said elsewhere) have several meanings.” And I find in Bossuet: “The fecundity of scripture is not exhausted by a single meaning.”

December 26.

Mores consist of two things: customs and habits. Customs make public mores, and habits individual mores. If public mores are good, bad individual mores count for little, because the disrepute that punishes them checks their harmful effects; but when public mores are bad, good private mores, which are their censure and sometimes their corrective, which save principles by a kind of protest against the age, which preserve the sacred fire, which transmit the old mores as a trust; good private mores, I say, acquire extreme importance.

Of what is true only close up and very close up; and Of what is true only from afar or at first glance.

These words that perfectly express the mind of the one who speaks them, and the thought of everyone. Ex.: as in the past and better than in the past. (Melun, etc.)

One recognizes the worth of their eclipsed muse. […]ar, just as there is a muse of philosophy, there is also a muse […]e religion.

T176.Travel, departure, desertion, and homeland retain the governing image. The qualification without adopting better ones limits blame for abandoning the old and common opinions; the conditional approval of inconstancy remains. Habits and powers stay distinct, and no specific doctrine or traveler is identified.

T177.The definite deserter remains. The second formulation adds too lightly and all its habits, with our mind rather than their mind; those changes from the preceding paragraph are retained.

T178.The other opinions are treated as places entered and left. Out of curiosity and as a traveler preserve the two roles. Singular they keeps the unspecified traveler; the surrounding image also casts the mind as a traveler. The past entry and estrangement remain distinct from the present permission to leave at will.

T179.The opening retains its two infinitives and the nominal judgment inconsistency. Forgetting him takes God as the referent of en, and this truth remains the source’s own formulation without an added creed. Remembrance and inward feeling distinguish religion from piety.

T327.The opening infinitives and nominal judgment remain without a supplied finite clause.

T180.The opening generic person is rendered with singular they forms. The inability to go farther is the means by which limits become visible. Talent, strength, and spending retain the three parallel objects of the prohibition.

T181.Holy and sacred remain distinct. The three repeated instances of reason lead to the source’s unusual plural reasons without a supplied main predicate. Rejoicing remains conditional on discovering errors. The midnight circumstance belongs to the printed date, not a new body sentence.

T328.The three repeated nominal descriptions and their summarizing plural remain without a supplied main predicate. The midnight circumstance stays in the printed date, including its parenthesis and period.

T182.The physical and moral categories remain distinct. The nominal relative construction is left without an added predicate or explanation of the paradox.

T329.The nominal relative formulation is not completed.

T183.Grow devout with wine renders the idiomatic avoir le vin dévot: a disposition manifested under wine’s influence. The wine remains explicit, and the approving rhetorical question is not replaced with a diagnosis or a claim about particular drinkers.

T184.The opening categories and Without connection remain separate fragments. The source-supplied bracket around [physiques] is retained around [Physical]. The usefulness of certain errors is Joubert’s proposition; the English adds no particular example or restriction.

T330.Three physical paragraphs remain. Physiques is supplied in square brackets in the source. The nominal descriptions, des natures and final partial negation remain unchanged.

T185.No moral truth preserves the scope of aucune, followed by the categorical does no harm to the public. The physical and historical categories remain in their printed order.

T186.Truths of natures keeps the compressed des natures instead of identifying a particular system of essences or natural science. Good for all and necessary to all remain distinct. The final partial negation means not everyone, not that no one is capable. So preserves the inferential force of aussi.

T187.Joubert’s own quoted formulation remains distinct from the sentence he attributes to Bossuet. Scripture is the contextual reading of écriture, whose lowercase remains in French. Fecundity preserves the reproductive image. No exact Bossuet work or passage is identified here.

T188.Mores renders mœurs throughout to retain its range of conduct, morals, and manners. Customs and habits, public and individual, remain distinct; private renders particulières. Disrepute renders the public reputational penalty of diffamation without adding an assertion that the accusation is false. The long relative chain, sacred fire, deposit or trust, semicolon, and I say resumption remain. The antecedent of their censure and corrective is bad public mores.

T332.The long single paragraph retains its repeated mœurs distinctions, relative-clause chain, semicolon before the repeated subject and dis-je resumption. Inconvéniens retains the printed ending.

T189.Both Of openings remain nominal, including the second capital. Close up and very close up preserve the repetition; afar and first glance remain alternatives.

T333.The two De formulations remain nominal; the second De retains its printed capital.

T190.Mind renders esprit, while thought renders pensée. The opening remains a fragment, and Ex. retains the printed abbreviation. Melun remains an unexpanded parenthetic reference, without a supplied person, place, event, or date.

T334.The nominal opening, Ex. abbreviation and unexpanded parenthetic Melun reference remain. No acute is visible over the e in Melun.

T191.The centered opening verse and the following prose remain one paragraph with an internal line break. Their is not assigned a named antecedent. The French residues […]ar and […]e remain, with car, for, and de, of, possible completions only. Eclipsed retains the image in the historical source spelling éclypsée.