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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1811

August 8.

The laziness that comes from the heart.

Modern subtleties are in vogue only because ancient subtleties have been forgotten.

“To the shorn ewe, God measures out the wind.” God measures out the wind to the seasons and wisdom to the ages. One might say that he also measures out taste according to the [illegible] and wisdom according to the ages. (Val de Loup, Thursday, August 8, 1811.)

August 14.

The useful must (in the arts) arise from the agreeable, and not the agreeable from the useful. It is the enchantments of the mind, and not good intentions, that produce beautiful works.

September 3.

Children obey their parents only when they see that their parents obey the rule. Order and rule, once established and recognized, are the strongest power.

September 17.

The senses are places or points where the soul has pleasures or pains. Through death, through age and often through illness, these points and these places are destroyed. Through recollection, through prayer and through religious or philosophical austerity, the soul is absent from them.

(September 17. The burial of M-rry, at Villeneuve.)

September 18.

Religion. For one it is their literature and their science; for another it is their delights and their duty.

Cicero, and his erudition, in which he showed more taste and discernment than criticism.

Criticism is a methodical exercise of discernment.

“One must make them insatiable for God.” It is a hunger from which, unfortunately, the passions and affairs will distract them quite enough.

The ancients. Immateriality was for them an idea for which they had not found the expression (the Neckers would say, in their jargon.)

September 25.

Serious philosophy and frivolous philosophy. Voltaire and Rousseau.

T78.The nominal relative formulation remains without an explanation of its cause or an added main predicate.

T216.The short nominal formulation remains.

T79.The repeated subtleties and the restrictive only because remain. No particular school or discovery is supplied.

T80.The proverbial quotation retains the shorn ewe and repeated measuring. No biblical or other external attribution is supplied. One might say preserves the conditional qualification, while the source editor’s printed [illisible] marker is retained in translation and is not reconstructed from the parallel clauses. The closing place and full date stay within the same paragraph.

T217.The bracketed word [illisible] is itself printed in the source; no lost noun is supplied. A in the proverb is unaccented. The closing date and location remain in the main paragraph, without an inferred identification or change of date.

T81.The two directional relations and their negations remain, followed by the distinction between enchantments and intentions. The arts cue stays parenthetical, and the two occurrences of useful and agreeable are retained.

T82.The restrictive only when and the repeated parents and obey remain. The source joins order and rule in its final singular comparison; no new rule or authority is named.

T219.Enfans and parens retain their printed endings. The paired order and rule keep the following singular predicate la plus forte.

T83.Places and points remain alternative spatial images, and both pleasures and pains remain plural. The repeated through retains the two sequences; destruction and the soul’s absence stay different. Recollection renders recueillement as inward collected attention rather than memory. This paragraph crosses onto page 701 and is not divided there.

T220.The first paragraph continues onto page 701. The e of initial et and l of l’austérité there are damaged; their surviving strokes support qualified complete readings. The repeated date and funeral circumstance remain a separate main paragraph. M-rry is retained as an opaque abbreviation without name expansion.

T84.The repeated date and funeral remain a separate parenthetic main paragraph under the same opening date. The source’s feminine article la precedes the opaque M-rry; the English omits that article before the name without supplying an identity. The abbreviation remains unexpanded. This second paragraph begins on source page 701.

T85.Religion remains nominal at the opening; the repeated it is and both pairs remain. Science is kept in its broad historical knowledge setting, and delights remains plural. The people are not identified.

T221.The separate opening noun and the two parallel assignments are retained without identifying their unnamed recipients.

T86.The initial nouns and relative clause remain without a new main predicate. Taste, discernment and criticism retain their separate roles in the comparison.

T222.The initial nominal coordination and following relative clause remain without an added governing assertion.

T87.Methodical preserves the ordering of discernment into an exercise; it does not substitute mere faultfinding for criticism.

T88.The quoted injunction remains separate from the following comment. The people remain unnamed; hunger, future distraction and the regretful quite enough remain without a new religious practice or external speaker.

T89.The opening ancients remain nominal, and the absence concerns an expression for an idea. The Neckers stays plural; the conditional would say does not become an attested quotation or a supplied family identification.

T90.Both nominal pairs remain in the printed order. No verb is added to assign a particular name to either term or resolve the juxtaposition.

T225.The two nominal sentences remain without an explicit assignment of one adjective to either named writer.