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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1814

July 12.

What can one bring into a mind that is full? (full of itself.)

Slowness in justice increased its dignity — and was part of the punishment of the litigant in bad faith, who lived in prolonged fears.

Not a hand, not a pebble, not an obstacle stood in the way of this fall or delayed its moment or broke its violence.

July 14.

Let us seek our lights in our feelings. There is a warmth there that contains much brightness.

July 15.

That: it is a long way from the city of Plato to the city of J.-C., which the Christian Plato calls the city of God.

July 18.

They began by harming us; and they end, thank heaven, by boring us. That is what will ruin them.

Whether a body is worth more than an assembly. — Yes. — and why? — Because it is in less haste to act, to establish its existence, and when it goes astray or errs it has time to recover its bearings and amend itself.

July 19.

To give soul to physics, body to metaphysics, if one wants the one to be true and the other plausible. For in the physical world everything is done by agents so subtle and in the metaphysical world everything that happens must be so like what we see that etc...

Let us remember that God has given us the power to imagine what, by our nature, he could not give us the possibility of seeing.

There are fine qualities that can only be innate and other fine qualities that can only be acquired. Those we cannot have, however good we may have been born, unless the education that comes from people or the education that comes from things works to give them to us.

July 20.

A logic of style, a rightness in words that can sometimes be too tight. In such a case one must consult one’s taste more than one’s ideas or one’s reason. Taste is the soul’s literary conscience. Our reason often acts through arbitrary maxims or habitual calculations. We all have some manner of reasoning that is only a manner. One is mistaken and even goes astray when one is more faithful to one’s accustomed method than to the liveliness of one’s instinct.

Dry precision. Taste has not intervened in the sentences where it occurs.

— So that, in giving them the only praise they deserve and the only one they seem to aspire to, one will be able to say of them that they spent their lives contemplating the falsity (of the errors of their time), but not contemplating truth.

T223.The question, repeated full and parenthetic qualification remain. The lowercase opening and period inside the parenthesis follow the collated source punctuation.

T224.The two past predicates, dash and prolonged plural fears remain. Litigant in bad faith renders plaideur de mauvaise foi without turning this retrospective assertion into a current legal recommendation. The English comma before who articulates the relative clause; French has no comma at that point.

T525.The two imperfect predicates, en relation, dash and continuing relative clause remain. Partie and longues retain identifiable initials; separate left-margin marks do not establish extra words before them. No event or litigant is identified.

T225.All three repeated negatives govern the three actions. Pebble retains the small obstruction in gravier; fall remains unidentified, with its moment and violence kept distinct. English or distributes the shared negative without creating an affirmative second or third action.

T226.The collective invitation and the light within warmth image remain. Lights retains the plural lumières; much brightness renders beaucoup de clartés with an English mass noun rather than assigning separate propositions or discoveries.

T527.The complete day and first-person plural imperative remain. The detached blocks beside the date and ordinary line openings do not certify an extra numeral, word or note call. Both possessors, sentimens and the heat/clarity relation remain.

T227.The dependent That opening, distance and repeated city remain. J.-C. stays unexpanded in the text; the designation Christian Plato is not replaced by an inferred personal name. The exact attributed locus is unverified. English adds a comma before which to articulate the relative clause; French has none before que.

T528.The complete date, initial Que : and source abbreviation J.-C. remain. The repeated Platon and cité relations are not expanded to an identity or allusion absent from the body. Chrétien has its acute; adjoining detached margin blocks are not additional text.

T228.The past/present/future progression, first-person object and parenthetic gratitude remain. The pronoun They remains unidentified; the prediction is not assigned a historical event.

T529.The complete day and passé-composé/present/future sequence remain. All three plural person relations are retained, with no identification of ils. The semicolon, parenthetic grâce au ciel and repeated par nous remain.

T229.The initial Whether formulation and inline dialogue remain one paragraph. Body carries the collective or institutional sense of corps here, without a supplied institution. Recover its bearings reads se reconnaître as emerging from error or disorientation; both wandering/erring and recovery/amendment remain distinct. English adds a comma after existence before and when, while retaining no added comma between errs and it has; the French punctuation remains unchanged.

T230.The opening infinitive, one/other distinction and true/plausible distinction remain. The second sentence preserves both so constructions and the unfinished that etc...; no missing comparison or conclusion is supplied. The terminology remains physics and metaphysics.

T231.The separate paragraph retains the exhortation, given power and denied possibility. By our nature remains Joubert’s compressed explanation, without adding a doctrine or changing could not to would not. English sets off by our nature with commas for readability; French keeps the phrase without surrounding commas.

T232.The two groups of fine qualities, both only restrictions and the two sources of education remain. Those leaves the demonstrative Celles-là open: its form ordinarily points back to the more distant group, whereas the ensuing education argument can suggest acquired qualities. No explicit latter replaces it. Works preserves education’s active role. The French spelling quelque bons is retained without adding an agreement ending.

T532.Both restrictive ne…que formulations, repeated belles qualités and both éducation phrases remain. The literal quelque bons has no added plural s. Celles-là is retained without repairing or replacing its contextual reference. The conditional negative and all pronouns remain, with no doctrinal completion.

T233.The nominal opening and tightness image remain. Taste, ideas, reason, conscience and instinct are distinct; both comparisons and the repeated manner survive. Rightness renders justesse in the choice of words without replacing it with moral justice.

T533.The nominal opening remains a fragment. The intact wrapped components of quelquefois and instinct are joined without a reproduction gap; ordinary line-end hyphens are not lexical punctuation. The two comparisons, repeated manière and restrictive n’est qu’une remain, as do même and the distinct goût, idées and raison terms.

T234.The nominal opening and completed negative action remain. It refers to precision. Sentences gives phrazes its ordinary syntactic sense, without normalizing the French z or supplying an author.

T534.Phrazes has a clear z. The short upper mark over u in où has a stepped grave-like contour; the accent remains qualified because reproduction artifacts affect its shape. The opening nominal fragment, negative perfect and feminine elle remain without expansion.

T235.The initial dependent connection and unnamed they remain. Both only qualifications, seem, future ability and repeated contemplating are preserved. The parenthetic of the errors of their time qualifies falsity through the French des; the parenthesis is Joubert’s. Their time is not changed to their own time.