Monday, October 22.

What is opaque is a film that can blind our mind. — It reduces it to dust, and this dust to cloud, and this cloud to pure air. Its unnoticed diffusion makes all our serenities. Its flashes fill with joy. Happy then those it lights, who feel their being exposed to the brightnesses and warmth of this intelligible sun; and whom their own joy urges (or — whom their very happiness urges) to play in its rays.

(Add. leaves there a diffusion that sustains our serenities.)

And the most terrible, the most horrible of imaginable catastrophes, the conflagration of the universe: what else can it be but the crackling, flash and evaporation of a grain of powder at a candle?

(Note. Stinging. Stinging pains.)

Wisdom is repose in light: in whatever degree it may be. And repose above all in that intermediate light of which, by its nature and by ours, we can have only one half within us.

One knows it through emotion (it produces conviction); it enters feeling. One must go where it guides, stop where it stops, follow its obscurity in everything. But one must also mingle with it the brightnesses of another light that teaches us to discern that one well. It is the sovereign light. That pure and lofty light from which all intelligence comes to us.

There are minds it strikes. Happy the minds that have seen it. Its diffusion makes their serenity, its brilliance their penetration, its appearances their joys. Happy those in whom [this] sun shines and whom their very happiness urges to play in its rays (or — to place their joy and glory in playing in its rays.)

Of the hidden meaning in the words one uses. Meaning that is often very extensive, very important, but with an extent and importance one feels and does not perceive. It is like a gleam in a fog, or like a fire in thermal water, a fire of whose existence one is convinced only by its heat. It is the lamp of a glowworm, a lamp that lights a single point, but lights it surely.

And the glowworm’s lamp — I say quite rightly, for this lamp lights it and it does not see the lamp. It is within it, but far from its eyes.

Notions. Notions are wrapped-up gleams, but ones that one can unwrap. The glowworm: its lamp lets it see everything around it without its seeing the lamp.

“Wisdom is repose in light.” And indeed, however faint or however obscure it may be, this light, one must stop in it, delight in it and try to penetrate it as soon as its gleam or some other sign makes us aware of its presence. Only after noting its place may one pass on.