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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

According to Plato

Consult the ancients, listen to the old. The man who is wise only through his own wisdom is not wise.

Error that speaks in maxims utters deceptive oracles. A bold assertion deceives us with authority.

November 27.

That broad daylight which dazzles (the eyes), that night which lights the sky, etc. (in Mr. de Fontanes’s ode.) A beautiful image and a more beautiful idea!

“To be drunk before having drunk” or to cry out from the exordium.

November 30.

Let them be (men and peoples) active in their occupations and duties, but idle in everything else.

We all seek, in various ways on earth, order, truth and happiness; we shall find them in heaven.

To give God what pleases us, what is dear to us, what we love: that is religious sacrifice.

They judged books by their taste, by their conscience and their reason. We judge them by the emotions they cause us.

They judged by taste whether a book had the required charms, by reason whether it conformed to models, to rules, and by conscience whether it was praiseworthy or blameworthy...

Taste, which is a kind of literary conscience.

Can this book harm or serve; is it suited to perfect or corrupt minds; will it do good or [harm]? Great questions our predecessors asked themselves. We ask: will this book give pleasure?

Good judgment (in literature above all) is a very slow faculty and always reaches completion late. I mean that it reaches the final point of its growth late.

— It is as if they took the drops of boiling water for round animalcules with tails. Movement is not life, and fermentation is not movement.

December 3.

Who taught Mr. T. or Mr. A-g- that “enthusiasm, and above all religious enthusiasm, operates in the opposite direction from nature”? Enthusiasm, indeed, and above all religious enthusiasm, is a second nature, wholly spiritual, which sometimes loves torments as the other loves pleasures.

December 4.

Travels of Anacharsis. Geoffroy was the first with the wisdom and courage to reproach this book (in the day’s newspaper) for “effeminate erudition.” “It is (he adds) neither instructive nor agreeable, because erudition is drowned in frivolous charms.” That is not very well said, but it is true.

T361.The two imperatives distinguish ancients from living old people. Wise/wisdom/wise and the restrictive only remain.

T703.Both singular imperatives, the repeated sagesse/sage family, restrictive first negative and full final negative remain distinct.

T362.The personification, oracle image and repeated deception remain. Maxims renders sentence in its aphoristic sense, not a legal judgment or a merely grammatical sentence. French authorité retains its h.

T704.The two finite judgments and repeated deception relation remain. Authorité retains h, as in the first entry. Sentence is not changed to an identified quotation or aphorist.

T363.The demonstratives, parenthetic eyes, etc. and comparative praise remain. The paradoxical night lighting the sky is left intact. The exact ode and external wording are unlocated. Mr. uses ordinary English typography for the source’s M with raised r.

T705.The day 27 is intact. The two parenthetical spans remain, with the period before the second closing parenthesis. There is no printed opening quotation before Ce. M has a raised r; the name is not expanded or attached to a supplied ode title. The image/idea distinction and comparative plus belle remain.

T364.The quotation ends before or. The repeated drunk/drunk and rhetorical exordium remain; no particular speaker or speech is supplied.

T706.The initial E of Etre is unaccented. The quotation ends after bu, while plain ou and the second infinitive remain outside it. No additional saying or attribution is supplied.

T365.The parenthetic subject, two spheres of activity and everything else remain. Let retains the optative force rather than asserting present conduct.

T366.All, various ways, the three objects and the future certainty remain. The promise is not changed into a wish.

T367.The initial infinitive and three parallel objects remain, retaining the difference between pleasure, dearness and love.

T709.The infinitive and all three relative formulations remain, with the shift from ce qui to ce que preserved. No object or doctrine is added.

T368.The unnamed they and contrasting we remain. Taste, conscience, reason and emotions are not collapsed into one faculty.

T710.All four paragraphs remain separate. The first two imperfect judgments contrast with present Nous en jugeons. The second paragraph ends with three printed dots. The third is a nominal-relative fragment. In the fourth, peut il and est il are unhyphenated while both fera-t-il forms have hyphens; source-supplied [mal] is not a reproduction loss. The semicolon-separated questions and lower-case ce after the final colon remain.

T369.The three faculties retain their different criteria, with models/rules repeated as separate objects. The final ellipsis remains open.

T370.The relative fragment remains without a new governing verb; kind of qualifies the identification.

T371.All three questions, their paired alternatives and the later pleasure question remain. [Harm] renders the printed source-editor supplement [mal], distinct from reproduction loss.

T372.The parenthetic scope, always, two late formulations and explicit self-explanation remain. Growth is not replaced with a supplied age or stage of life.

T373.The opening dash and conditional comparison remain. Animalcules retains the historical term and the round/tailed image. Both negative distinctions remain as printed, without substitution of a modern physical theory. French queuë retains its qualified diaeresis reading, whose raised components join narrowly in the reproduction.

T374.The coded names, question, repeated enthusiasm and above all remain. Sometimes limits the love of torments; the other refers contextually to the first nature. The quoted claim is not assigned an external author. Mr. renders the two source honorifics with raised r in ordinary English typography.

T375.The introductory title fragment, first, wisdom/courage, two quotations and limited praise remain. Effeminate retains the source’s evaluative vocabulary; the book and newspaper are not assigned a verified edition or date. Drowned preserves the physical image. The French retains plural Voyages and the literal ajoute t’il punctuation; both title and quoted spans remain roman.

T714.The day 4 is intact. Voyages remains plural and roman, and Geoffroy retains its double f. The two quoted spans are separate. Native ajoute t’il has a space before t and an apostrophe after it; it is not normalized to ajoute-t-il. The source past eut, paired ni negatives, drowning image and qualified final criticism remain. The work or newspaper issue is not expanded from the cue.