November 7.

They call the progress of industry “the progress of enlightenment.” The progress of industry in some is the annihilation of industry in all the others. “With so many machines (as Mr. de Bonnald very well says), man himself will soon be nothing but a machine,” a turner of cranks.

All light comes from above. Hammers, anvils, rulers, compasses, receivers and retorts are not candles, and still less are they lights.

One may be instructed, and very instructed, that is to say, trained, and very trained, in some art, in some industry, and not be enlightened.

The blind man’s very staff instructs him, supports him, guides him, but does not enlighten him.

Lights illuminate the soul, and nothing that does not illuminate the soul is light. Now the soul can be enlightened only about what is spiritual like itself, about its relations, about its duties, about spirits, about its nature and about its destinations.

Of “what is involuntary in the nature of man”; and Of Cuvier: that — there is never anything in him that is involuntary or invariable.

False lighting, false brightnesses, false gleams, objects falsified. O how tiring all this is! And all this through false mediums.

They take the progress of I know not what industry for a progress of enlightenment.

November 8.

False mediums. (Lafontaine made a plural of medium): placing false mediums between the thing and himself. This great poet very aptly assigned as the cause of most of our errors the false medium that we place almost everywhere and that deceives us almost always, when he said after the quoted line: and measuring by himself what he sees in others. And indeed we see everything through ourselves; we are a medium always interposed between ourselves and other things.

Nicole. It is not his mind, but what he thinks, that is sublime.

Commonplaces truly are places, for everything must be placed there.

November 9.

Of what contracts and Of what dilates the brain — and — Of the systoles and diastoles of the mind and of attention.

What is abstract and even what is abstruse sometimes rests frivolous minds by stopping their movement.

November […]0.

If you wish to think well, speak well, write well and act well, first [make] yourself “places,” “true places.” For lack of true [places], one puts one’s thoughts outside the true light and one’s conduct outside order.

Nicole. It is not what he says, but what he thinks, that is sublime. He is so, not through the natural elevation of his mind, but through that of his doctrines.

Firm only against firmness; and severe only against virtues out of fashion. He is frightened by blame of what is new and esteem for what is old. Deeply afflicted when one speaks well of Louis XIV and ill of Cambacérès.