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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1811

November […]2.

(At Villeneuve.) Religion is the poetry of the heart.

November […]3.

— through hardness of mind or through revolt. Hardness of mind is sometimes no less harmful and no less odious than hardness of heart.

November […]0.

God. We always speak of him in his presence.

Barren places are wholesome. Especially on high ground, amid fertile [plains].

November […]4.

... at least, the luxury of the lowly ruins a state.

November […]5.

A natural mind. Its charm. Never to take from children the naturalness of their mind.

The Genevans have no natural mind. Too much instruction among them stifles this quality.

November 26.

“The parenthyrse,” in Longinus. “To carry the thyrsus” etc. When one is mad outside the thyrsus or without carrying the thyrsus, one deserves only the madhouse.

Their analysis is only a chemical dissolution. Their products are caput mortuum. To draw from a thought everything it contains, doubtless; but identity is a discouraging expression. Count de Milli’s four inches of calcareous earth—that is what he reduced the human body and the whole man to.

It will perish through its own contempt: all its allure lies in its novelty.

They mistake for the happiness of evident truth the pleasure that the mind’s illusions always give it when put in order.

The period has entered philosophical reasoning. A great abuse, for it expresses our affections better, but our apprehensions much less well, disguising them.

November 27.

Locke reasoned with a sort of rigor more adroit than sincere and ingenuous. He abused the simplicity and good faith of the scholastics. He is a sly philosopher. Leibnitz is more frank, more sincere, more enlightened.

It is not God’s intelligence that we must concern ourselves with, but his will. It matters little to us to think of his foreknowledge, but it matters much to us to think of his justice, his goodness, his power, his decrees.

November 29.

Each follows their reason or their religion; for there are those for whom religion (to which everyone is receptive) takes the place of the reason they do not have and cannot have.

That is very true. Everyone is receptive to religion, but not everyone is capable of reason.

T119.The place remains in the paragraph, and the poetry-of-the-heart image is not explained into a doctrine.

T249.Only the final day digit 2 is secure; the preceding date component is not completed. Poësie retains its diaeresis. The place remains in the body.

T120.The initial dependent alternatives remain. Both comparative limits, sometimes and the repeated hardness preserve the relation between mind and heart.

T250.Only final day digit 3 is secure. The thin broken opening dash remains qualified. Quelquefois has partly abraded initial strokes but supports the complete qualified reading; the repeated moins and the negative comparative are retained.

T121.God stays nominal and the following present claim retains always, of him and in his presence.

T122.The second sentence remains a qualifying fragment. Barren and fertile keep their opposition and the elevation remains literal; no particular landscape is named. The bracketed plains reads damaged […]laines contextually as plaines; the missing French initial remains unsupplied.

T252.The first letter before laines loses its stem at the left edge; the remaining right-hand bowl does not securely certify p. Plaines is a contextual possibility, not supplied in the text. The detached Surtout formulation remains.

T123.The opening ellipsis and at least remain. The lowly reads les petits in a social-station sense, without supplying a named class, country or example.

T253.Only final day digit 4 is secure; the preceding damaged component is not completed. The opening ellipsis and lower-case état remain; petits is not expanded to an identified group.

T124.The two initial fragments and the following negative infinitive remain. Natural and naturalness keep the repeated root without turning the term into an asserted natural-science category.

T254.Only final day digit 5 is secure; the preceding fragments do not establish a complete 2. The two paragraphs, nominal openings, infinitive and categorical judgment remain. The initial é of étouffe is abraded but its surviving forms support a qualified complete reading.

T125.The source’s group and absolute no remain, followed by the causal image of stifling. Instruction is not silently replaced by knowledge, and this quality refers to the naturalness under discussion.

T126.The quoted parenthyrse is retained as Joubert’s term. Boileau’s relevant Longinus discussion supports misplaced or excessive passion but does not reproduce this exact word in the checked passage. The concrete thyrsus and both outside/without relations remain. The madhouse renders the historical petites maisons idiom supported by the complete 1798 Maison entry; it is not a literal translation as small houses. No particular source copy or surrounding unprinted argument is supplied.

T127.The Latin stays in its printed singular form under the French plural construction. Literally dead head, caput mortuum names a residue after chemical heating or distillation; Venel’s complete article explicitly rejects the claim that such residue must be inert or devoid of active components. The metaphor belongs to this argument, without an added modern chemical explanation. The infinitive fragment and the term identity remain. The count’s name, four inches and reduction are not independently identified or converted to a modern unit. Inches renders the printed pouces, not a weight unit; no cubic measure is supplied.

T128.The feminine source pronoun and possessive remain broad in English it and its. Their precise antecedent and the direction of the contempt are not supplied; future perish and present lies stay distinct.

T129.Mistake for preserves the direction of prennent pour: the pleasure is taken for the happiness of évidence. Evident truth is a contextual rendering rather than an attribution to a named philosophical system. The illusions belong to the mind, and their being put in order remains the source of pleasure.

T130.Period retains the rhetorical sentence-form sense, not a span of historical time. Apprehensions renders appréhensions as mental graspings in this contrast with affections. The Académie dictionary of 1798 distinguishes fear from the logical sense of conceiving a thing before judging it; the latter supports this contextual reading. No named philosophical theory is assigned. The final feminine plural them refers to the apprehensions.

T257.The nominal Grand abus and the differing comparative degrees remain. Appréhensions retains its printed spelling and is not replaced with a modern interpretive synonym in French.

T131.Adroit, sincere and ingenuous retain the contrasted qualities; ingenuous means candid or free from dissimulation here. The transition from Locke’s past acts to the present characterizations remains, as do the three separate more comparisons. The judgment remains Joubert’s.

T132.The contrast concerns what we must attend to, rather than denying a divine attribute. Little and much retain their repeated relation to us, and all four final objects remain distinct.

T133.The alternative reason or religion and the restricted group in the explanation remain. Receptive renders susceptible in its capacity-to-receive sense; the parenthesis does not claim that everyone already practices a religion. The two negative predicates, absence and inability, remain distinct.

T259.The two paragraphs remain separate. The repeated negatives and distinction between susceptibility and capacity are retained.

T134.The separate paragraph preserves the emphatic confirmation and repeats the distinction. The final negative is partial, not a denial of everyone’s capacity for reason.