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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1805

He says it well: wisdom is to govern oneself by what is immaterial, free of disturbance and variations, — in accordance with what always makes us “like ourselves.”

March 7.

And yet in that century neither spirit nor perhaps (an astonishing thing) matter was known. — And indeed, if the opposite is necessary to the idea of everything in order to conceive its sides, it was not possible...

Certain parts are born too finished in me for me to excuse myself from finishing in the same way everything that must accompany them.

March 8.

The ballista, the sling, the balls... I am from the Balearic Islands.

Not with the heart, that part of ourselves which acts without our knowledge and without our cooperation; but with intelligence, that part which needs to be directed and corrected at every moment.

In the writings of J.-J. Rousseau, for example, the soul is always mingled with the body and never separates from it.

Intoxication does not take away the sense of what is just. The notion remains pure even in madness, if the madman remains capable of reasoning. A drunken man will easily take an innocent man for a guilty one, but not a good maxim for a bad one. The notion survives in him in his memory. But political intoxication (the intoxication of the nerves) has worse effects than the intoxication of wine.

The miser knows very well and often cites the maxims of equity. They are deeds that preserve his rights.

— The intoxication of wine; and the intoxication of the nerves, which enters through the mind: its dangers. Intoxication from liquors does not take away piety.

March […].

Claudian’s “and acquitted the gods” is not natural, because it is not natural to charge the gods with a crime for the prosperity of a wicked man. This is not ingenuous, but forced. Besides, once this perversity is assumed, its expression is very natural in “and acquitted the gods.” The same is true of Lucan’s inflated idea: “the victorious cause pleased the gods, but the defeated one Cato.” And perhaps it is not so much the idea that is bombastic here (for it is frank) as the mind from which it comes.

Rule. The expression of an unnatural feeling, or even one contrary to nature, can be very natural and give some pleasure for that very reason. The ideas or feelings that belong to an unnatural mind and resemble it can also sometimes please for the very reason that they resemble it.

To treat serious things playfully and merry things seriously is a kind of eloquence that can suit the sublime, if a high reason that knows how to employ it fittingly makes use of it.

Love. He has wings. A dreadful fly. Destrum. a gadfly. He makes the wisest go where they would not wish to. His sting is violent.

March 10.

Wine does not take a man’s conscience away from him. On the contrary, it often makes it more vivid for him (and exaggerates it). It brings back a certain course of memory in which the notion of what is just resides. The man drunk on wine senses God. Only those drunk on mind are impious.

March 11.

If it did not exist... That is why it is divine. The belief in it is no less marvelous than the fact.

T239.The construction shifts from by to in accordance with after the dash, following the French par … à. The quoted like ourselves retains resemblance rather than substituting a claim of absolute immutability. No speaker’s identity is added.

T439.The change from par ce qui to à ce qui is retained without a supplied governing verb.

T240.Neither spirit nor matter is said to have been known, with perhaps and the parenthetical astonishment qualifying matter. The opposite remains necessary to conceiving a thing’s sides. The final possibility remains unfinished.

T241.Parts are born already finished, obliging comparable finish in what accompanies them. The birth image and the repeated finishing remain; no particular work is identified.

T242.The series keeps the sound associations among baliste, balles, and Baléares. Balls are projectiles in the company of the ballista and sling. The final geographical claim is left in the first person; it is not converted into biographical fact about Joubert.

T243.The heart acts without our knowledge or cooperation, whereas intelligence needs direction and correction. The opening Not with remains without a supplied action or subject.

T244.Wine’s intoxication and political intoxication are distinguished in Joubert’s argument. The discussion concerns retained reasoning, moral notions, and piety. The miser’s maxims are deeds preserving rights: titres carries the sense of documents establishing a claim. The three paragraphs stay one source block.

T245.The quotation is from In Rufinum I.21. In its original context, Rufinus’s punishment removes the poet’s doubts about providence and acquits the gods. Joubert quotes only the concluding verb and object, with que printed separately after Absolvit in both occurrences. The translation leaves the omitted subject unstated and preserves the repeated quotation.

T246.The second quotation is from Civil War I.128. Joubert prints diis where the Latin witness consulted reads deis; both mean “to the gods.” The second clause leaves “pleased” understood. Joubert distinguishes the frank expression of an idea from the inflated mind that produces it.

T247.The repeated “natural” and “resemble” preserve the distinction between the feeling’s relation to nature and the expression’s fidelity to the mind that has it. “Feelings” renders sentimens here; these can also be judgments or convictions.

T248.“A high reason” retains Joubert’s unusual designation of the governing faculty. The repeated employment and use remain in the sentence rather than being collapsed into a general reference to skill.

T249.The facsimile appears to print Destrum, with a D-shaped initial. This anomalous form is retained, as is the lowercase a corresponding to un after the period. A connection with Latin oestrum, a gadfly or incitement, is possible but not secure enough to emend the text. Love is personified as masculine; the abrupt transition from wings to a dreadful fly is Joubert’s.

T250.Conscience means moral conscience here, as the reference to what is just makes clear. The final contrast is between intoxication by wine and intoxication of the mind; esprit does not mean distilled spirits. The unusual “drunk on mind” preserves the parallel rather than specifying an unprinted doctrine or passion.

T251.The subject of il n’a pas existé is not named. “It” is used provisionally; “he” remains grammatically possible. The belief and the fact are left without an identified object. The ellipsis after the opening clause and the paradox linking nonexistence with divinity are retained.