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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1811

January 31.

(At Nice.) That sententious and indoctrinating tone which pride teaches even better than Art.

February 1.

(At Nice.) In no other age and among no other nation in the world have young men been so trained and destined to become, inevitably, painters, singers, and dancers.

(Nota. The inspection of stud farms.)

February 4.

They forbade themselves those lively strokes which say everything and which would make a prolonged eloquence impossible. — That style hostile to amplitude.

February 8.

They exercised their memory too much, and we our judgment too much.

And besides, this perpetual occupation of judging everything is opposed to the action of the inward sense, which takes place only in the repose and tranquility of the soul.

Reasons and motives. Many things are motives and are not reasons. I mean that many things determine the will and impress their movement upon it, which do not determine the intelligence and bring no clarity into it. The orator must employ both motives and reasons, for he aims more to determine than to instruct or enlighten. But the goal he proposes to reach and to bring others to must (as far as possible) appear evidently the wisest and the most just to his own reason or his own intelligence. His sole determining motive must be the equity or legitimacy of his cause, previously demonstrated to his inferior conscience.

February 9.

A profession of disinterestedness, not absolute, but noble.

Goodwill readily feeds on hopes.

To see to it that nothing among them, with too much rigor... and nothing among us with too little care.

February 13.

Part of goodness perhaps consists in esteeming and loving people more than they deserve. But then part of prudence is to believe that people are not always worth what one values them at. On these suppositions, one must speak to them with one’s goodness and employ them with prudence.

They are children (the poets) with much greatness of soul, and with a celestial intelligence.

Tuesday, February 19.

(At Nice.) Voltaire takes the side of those old philosophies; he defends occult qualities, the law of definition per genus proprium et differentiam proximam, Gassendi’s atoms, etc.

(At Nice, where I am horribly bored for the first time in my life.) Thus, to enter into the sense of the Peripatetics and to speak their language while expressing ourselves better than they do, we would say: “Light is a transparent, τὸ διαφανές, without which one can see nothing.” But since this definition can apply to the eye, it is better to say, to observe the law of genus and difference: “Light is a transparent outside the eye, without which it can see nothing.”

Without memory and without foresight, there is neither past nor sequel, and time (a true being of reason born of the mind) can no longer measure movement.

The philosophy of the ancients. I prefer their clouds to our pebbles. If one had condensed and placed the air, would it be better to breathe? The mind needs vapors, subtleties, fluids.

T14.The relative formulation remains a fragment. Sententious retains the maxim-delivering range of sentencieux; indoctrinating keeps the active didactic pressure of endoctrinant. Teaches reads apprend in its teaching sense, with the learner implicit; the comparison with Art remains, including its capital.

T166.The nominal relative formulation is not supplied with a main predicate. Endoctrinant and the capital A in Art remain as printed.

T15.The two opening negatives, young men, paired trained and destined, and inevitable outcome remain. No particular institution or historical program is named.

T167.Two physical paragraphs remain under the same date; the second is a parenthetic nominal observation. Nota. alone is italic, with its surrounding parenthesis roman. The date’s er is raised.

T16.Nota. is retained as the source’s Latin note cue and alone carries its italics. The parenthesis forms a separate main paragraph under the same date; the relation of the stud farms to the preceding assertion is not explained away.

T17.Strokes retains the figurative traits without naming a specific rhetorical device. The past prohibition, present saying and conditional consequence remain distinct. The final fragment keeps the adverse relation to amplitude, the breadth or fullness of expression.

T168.The imperfect, present and conditional verbs remain distinct. The final formulation after the dash remains nominal.

T18.The shared verb remains unstated in the second clause. Both too much judgments survive; no named group is supplied for they or we.

T169.Two physical paragraphs remain. The shared first-paragraph predicate is not repeated. The day 8 is abraded on the left but its surviving lobed shape supports the qualified reading; no preceding digit is established.

T19.Inward sense renders sens intime without assigning a particular philosophical school. The activity’s restriction to repose and tranquility remains, together with the opening connection to the preceding paragraph.

T20.Determine retains the repeated déterminer across will, intelligence, and oratory; its range here concerns deciding or moving, distinguished from instructing or enlightening. The movement impressed on the will and the clarity absent from intelligence remain separate images. Evidently preserves the claim to evident judgment, qualified by the parenthesis. The final qualified French reading is inférieure, inferior, not an unmarked restoration to intérieure, inward. The English retains inferior conscience; no hierarchy of faculties or doctrine is inferred from that uncertain reading. Previously demonstrated is read here as qualifying the equity or legitimacy of the cause; the feminine cause is also a possible grammatical antecedent. No additional proof is supplied by the editor.

T21.The opening is a nominal profession or avowal. Disinterestedness concerns freedom from self-interest, not lack of interest; the distinction between absolute and noble remains. The printed spelling des-interressement is unchanged.

T171.Three physical paragraphs remain. Des-interressement retains its hyphen, doubled r and unaccented e forms as printed. The first paragraph is nominal; the third retains the infinitive and the incomplete construction after à ce que, without supplying a predicate.

T22.Goodwill remains the subject that feeds, and hopes remain plural. Readily renders facilement without implying that those hopes are fulfilled.

T23.The infinitive and the construction after that remain without a supplied finite predicate. Among them and among us preserve the two unspecified groups, too much rigor and too little care their different dangers, and the ellipsis the printed interruption.

T24.Perhaps limits the first proposition; not always limits the second. One’s goodness retains the printed sa rather than attributing goodness to the people addressed. Employ remains broad, without a newly specified occupation or relationship.

T172.Peut être remains unhyphenated. The comparative ne and the later negative ne...pas toujours remain distinct. The printed possessive sa is not replaced by leur.

T25.The explanatory poets stays parenthetical after children. Both with phrases, greatness of soul and celestial intelligence remain; no change from intelligence to mere cleverness is made.

T26.The French prints la loi deffinition without a separate de. Of in the English makes the relation of law and definition explicit; it is a grammatical interpretation, not a French transcription correction. The Latin remains in its printed order, literally through the proper genus and the nearest difference. Voltaire’s Dernières remarques sur les Pensées de Pascal, remark XX, offers a closely relevant discussion and the same adjective order, with an additional per. The bounded electronic witness has OCR defects; no original printed page or Joubert copy was collated. No familiar alternative formula is substituted, and the other claims here remain Joubert’s.

T27.A transparent preserves Joubert’s unusual substantive un transparent. The Greek means the transparent or what is transparent. Aristotle, De anima II.7, distinguishes the transparent from light, its activity or actuality; Joubert explicitly proposes his own reformulation. That background does not turn either sentence into a verbatim Aristotelian quotation. The first one renders on; the second it retains il and its available eye antecedent. The restriction outside the eye occurs only in the revised definition. The personal boredom remains in the same paragraph, and the Greek accent qualification remains separate source metadata.

T175.The place and personal circumstance remain inside the opening parenthesis. The two quoted definitions stay in the same physical paragraph. The first has on and the second il; they are not regularized to one pronoun. The Greek base letters support τὸ διαφανές; the article’s raised accent is reduced to a small solid mark and the final accent is compressed, so their exact directions remain qualified. The Greek is not given an additional italic style.

T28.Sequel retains suite as what follows, distinct from the past. Being of reason keeps the conceptual expression être de raison and its birth from the mind; no named philosophical system is supplied. Can no longer preserves the temporal negation.

T29.The source contrasts clouds and pebbles before asking its hypothetical question. Placed follows the qualified reading placé; glacé, frozen, is a contextual alternative that is not silently substituted. No position for the placed air is supplied. Vapors, subtleties and fluids preserve the final material and intellectual images together.

T177.The enlarged facsimile’s word after et begins with a p-shaped descender and reads placé; this qualified literal reading is retained rather than silently substituting glacé from context. The opening nominal formulation, hypothetical question and three repeated de phrases remain.