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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

Thoughts of Plato, in the Theaetetus.

“The beauty of his disposition.” The ancients paid great attention to this quality. By these ancients I mean the Greeks, the Athenians; for the Latins spoke little of it.

“Penetration of mind, gentleness, courage.” This was what made a man perfect in the eyes of Plato’s Socrates. The gentleness that makes a man peaceful in the city and agreeable to its citizens, the courage that makes him steadfast in misfortunes, moderate even in pleasures, and formidable to enemies, the penetration of mind that makes him delightful to his friends in conversation and perfect in his own life by always making him perceive and do what is best. This above all was the happiness of private life according to Plato: to converse and to know. He inclined to believe that the virtues are sciences. — Elsewhere he praises vivacity united with docility as the most beautiful of dispositions in a young man. — Vivacity comes from nature. One scarcely acquires it; but docility is learned through the fold that can give suppleness to what has none. Vivacity uses little time and consumes little of it. It leaves it to slowness, which can, if it knows how to use it well, do everything with great stretches of it.

He says: “When one does not know a thing’s nature, does one know what its name means?” The name then shows only its appearance. Names well understood, well penetrated, would contain all the sciences. The science of names! we have scarcely more than the art of them, and even of that art we have little, because we have too little of their science. When one understands a word perfectly, it becomes as though transparent; one sees its color, its form; one feels its weight; one perceives its dimension, and one knows where to place it. — Of understanding words. It would teach the whole art of style. To know their meaning, force, and propriety well, one must often have known their history. The science of words would teach the whole art of style. That is why, when a language has had several ages, as ours has, old books are good to read. One must go back to its sources and contemplate it in its course. To write French well, one must understand the French of old.

Of lines that are powers. — There are some in our hands, like the lever. There are some in the mind as well. There are some in rhetoric and poetics as in mathematics. There are some even in the operations of the mind alone with itself. Often it gives itself a useless idea, permits itself that idea, and handles it to bring forth another. In writings and the arts, there are also colors and phrases that are there only to make others better perceived. These lines, these colors, these phrases are nothing alone, but they become powers through their effect; and their effect comes not from their nature and their own value, but from their place and application. Their neighborhood makes their worth, their isolation their nothingness.

“The oblong number,” he says. I do not understand this word, but it seems beautiful to me.

“The pains of childbirth” (of the mind) and of its joys.

“God (said Socrates) makes it my duty to help others give birth, and at the same time prevents me from producing anything from my own resources. Hence I am so little versed in wisdom and can boast of no learned discovery that is a production of my soul.” He thereby completed his comparison of himself to the midwives who, in Athens, undertook their trade only when they had passed the age and lost the ability to conceive. Only women whom past fertility had instructed were allowed to practice midwifery.

Observe, on the phrase “whether the virtues are sciences,” that Plato is not precisely of this opinion; but he loves this expression, delights in this thought; this union of ideas smiles at him.

“Several (he makes Socrates say), when I took some extravagant opinion from them, grew angry... as first-time mothers do over their children.” These are indeed the angers of a mind that has never produced anything of itself, that does not feel within itself a real fertility full of its own fruit. The phantoms of production that have entered it and emerge from it, the surfaix it brings into broad [daylight], charm it; it believes them its own and takes them for its true children.

“Appearance and sensation are therefore the same thing in relation...” Here again is a union of words that gives pleasure, and an appearance of truth that pleases as general, although one is not sure and does not understand well in the case where it is applied.

T1.This printed heading and the following entries belong to the undated exercise book described in Beaunier’s note on page 530. Its approximate placement at the end of 1805 is the source editor’s inference. No individual entry dates are supplied. References to Plato remain Joubert’s quotations and comments, not a replacement translation of the dialogue.

T17.The printed heading is separate from the two body paragraphs. The first paragraph crosses pages 531–532; no separator precedes Pénétration d’esprit. The description beginning La douceur retains its extended verbless coordination; no governing assertion is supplied.

T2.Disposition renders naturel; docility retains the capacity to learn and be guided, not merely passive obedience. The fold and suppleness preserve the image of habituation. The extended sentence beginning The gentleness remains without a governing main clause, as in the French.

T3.Sciences retains Joubert’s term for branches or forms of knowledge, which is broader than modern experimental science. His later qualification that Plato is not precisely of this opinion remains in its own entry. Great stretches of it makes explicit that the final espaces are stretches of time.

T4.Science and art remain distinct throughout the argument. Propriety means the fitness or exact suitability of a word. The physical properties of a transparent word are retained together without resolving their apparent inconsistency.

T5.Gaulois was used for old French words and ways of speaking; the Académie’s 1762 dictionary explicitly records this use for expressions belonging to the French language. In this passage about old books and a language’s successive ages, the French of old conveys that historical use. It does not substitute the ancient Celtic language of Gaul for the earlier French Joubert recommends reading.

T6.Powers retains puissances across the mechanical, mental, rhetorical, and mathematical analogies. The term need not have precisely the same technical sense in all of them. Permits itself that idea renders the reflexive il se la souffre: the mind tolerates or allows itself the otherwise useless idea. Neighborhood and isolation retain the contrast of placement.

T7.Theaetetus 147e–148b contrasts square numbers with numbers represented by rectangles having unequal sides. Joubert’s confessed lack of understanding remains untouched; the explanatory reference is separate from his text. The term here should not automatically be restricted to the modern sequence of products of consecutive integers.

T8.The fragment adds and of its joys without a governing verb. It remains unfinished. The childbirth comparison occurs in Theaetetus 148e–151b, but the English does not extend the quotation from that parallel.

T21.The detached coordination et de ses joyes remains as printed; no governing verb or fuller quotation is supplied.

T9.The comparison closely follows Theaetetus 149b–150d. The historical account of who could practice midwifery remains Joubert’s report of the dialogue. Past fertility is the subject of had instructed, not its object; the women are those instructed by their previous experience.

T10.Whether reads si as the question whether virtues are sciences. The union of ideas smiles at Plato; the English preserves the personification instead of merely saying that he finds the idea attractive.

T11.The facsimile clearly prints surfaix. Its ordinary dictionary meaning is a surcingle, a strap around a horse’s body, which does not readily fit the surrounding birth metaphor. The French word is therefore retained in the English because its sense here remains unresolved; no unverified substitution such as afterbirth is made. The bracketed daylight corresponds to the source editor’s [jour]. The quoted anger of mothers has a close parallel in Theaetetus 151c, but that parallel does not resolve Joubert’s surfaix.

T12.The quotation breaks off after in relation. Theaetetus 152b–c supplies a parallel concerning sensible qualities, but its continuation is not inserted. The subsequent uncertainty and compressed application to a case remain as printed.