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Theory of the Political World, or On the Science of Government Considered as an Exact Science, by Mr. Charles His.
Page 47. “...Because social laws must be subordinated to the nature of things, I have a means of distinguishing a good law from a bad one.” This means is rarely at our disposal, for we rarely know the nature of things.
Page 117, he says that “the republic is (never) anything but a state of transition, a violent effort society makes to constitute itself.” This is very worthy of notice.
From page 131 to the end he repeats twenty times that “this is not a supposition, it is an abstraction to which I have adapted the facts that served as its basis. It is therefore a demonstration.” But, my friend, do you not see that your basis and your facts are pure thoughts. They are drawn in your mind and not before your eyes. You may be right, but it is not by the strength of your procedure, for here you do nothing but apply an abstraction to other abstractions. Let us say it again: — In geometrical demonstrations, if the axiom is in our head, the figure is before our eyes; and between our eyes and the figure there is the light of the whole sun to illuminate the errors we might commit in applying the principle to the fact. But in these supposed political demonstrations, we see the fact only in our mind (or in our memory, since it is historical) and we see it only by the sole light of our mind, a vague, trembling light. I have said this elsewhere.
Observations. — This method is dangerous or of little use because truth and errors are imperceptible in it. Besides (and this is another disadvantage), to view and present objects in this way, one must remain perfectly insensible and look with indifference on what matters most to the whole human race. In language, one cannot permit oneself any of those beautiful words that make one think of a thousand things at once. The very genre excludes them. Finally, much clearness and a closely sustained chain of reasoning make us read such books with pleasure; but when we have read them, we no longer remember what pleased us in them. Because the terms have merit and precision in them only in relation to the author’s singular way of treating and viewing his subject.
“Institutions are to intelligence what laws are to actions.” This is not exact. It is maxims that are to intelligence what laws are to actions. Institutions are, for the soul, the sources of its habits, an eternal education, causes of facility, etc.
“I would therefore now have to treat institutions... It would remain for me to show that it is to them that one must attribute the division of nations and the diversity of their morals.” It would still remain, and this would be more important, to show the necessity of diversity of morals among diverse nations. The distinctiveness of his customs attaching man to his country, each people needs morals or at least practices that are unlike those of others, just as the armies of two peoples need different uniforms.
A fair number of our poets, having written in prose (Racine in his letters to the author of the Visionnaires, Voltaire, the abbé Delile, Mr. de Fontanes, etc.), have given ordinary style a brilliance and boldnesses it would not have had without them. Perhaps, too, some prose writers born poets (Montesquieu, some other writers have also shown a wholly poetic liveliness in their style) without being born versifiers, — (one could also say that there are writers today who seem born versifiers without being born poets) [...] have helped adorn our language, even in its familiar usages, with those riches and that pomp which had until then [been] the exclusive portion of poetic language. Greece and Rome perhaps also had writers born poets without being born versifiers. But Plato, Tacitus, etc., were poets through ecstasy, and the moderns we have named are so (as we have said) through the liveliness and swiftness of their perceptions. This is not what is most beautiful in poetic genius. A contemplative eye has a more celestial character than a piercing eye.
Terence was an African. And yet he seems to have been nourished by the Athenian graces. Attic honey is on his lips. One could easily believe he was born on Mount Hymettus.
Mme Dacier’s familiar style. “I know what an ell of it is worth” is a draper. “With a flat seam” is a tailor.
April 3.
To subsist in isolation, thoughts must be strong or very witty.
Felès is right: facts and events too well attested have, in a sense, ceased to be malleable.
Everyone finds their own smell good would translate with restraint the far too coarse proverb of the Latins (one’s own dung smells good [to each person?]). Everyone smells good to themselves would be better. This last way of expressing oneself even suggests a moral sense that is absent from the first, and thereby does much to remedy what is most shocking in the substance of the idea. Be that as it may, with a little good taste, it is impossible to hear or utter any of these phrases without some aversion, that is, without promptly turning one’s mind away from this thought; its matter is essentially unpleasant.
— Like manure that has rotted down, etc., and the idea of stables and agriculture, joining itself to this last word (manure), itself destroys and consumes, through pleasing accessories, all that would be repellent in the subject. And, on this subject, Note. On the dominion of accessories — or — On the power of ingredients.
March 14.
And, my dear friend, love has his blindfold. His eyes are not naked, and he sees nothing without enchantment.