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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

Mr. Hochet and Mme de Sévigné.

... his heart is not serious.

Beyond the brain, there is something that observes the brain itself.

Enlightened and illuminated. The difference is this. One can be enlightened by one’s own light. But one is illuminated only by a daylight that comes from elsewhere. And — does not have every point of the brain equally illuminated.

Those who write on such subjects find material everywhere. Everything offers them a metal ready to be coined, which, to enter the circulation they establish, needs only a stroke of the screw press, easily given in passing.

Their hope has “changed color.”

July 8.

The art of saying well what one thinks is different from the faculty of thinking. The latter may be very great in depth, height, and extent, and the other may not exist. The talent for expressing well is not that for conceiving. The first makes great writers, the second makes great minds. Add that even those who have these two qualities potentially do not always have them in act, in exercise, and often find that one acts without the other. How many people have a pen and no ink! How many others have a pen, ink, and no paper! That is to say, no material on which their style can exercise itself.

Intelligence belongs to the nature of each soul. The faculty of expression belongs to something more mechanical, perhaps to the organs. For bodily organization can indeed play a part in the operations of our mind, but not the whole part attributed to it.

Whether it is not possible for man to know his own understanding. Like the eye that sees itself, but not whole and in itself.

Let us then call men of genius those who do quickly what we do slowly.

It is a great disadvantage in disputing to be attentive to the weakness of one’s reasons and attentive to the strength of others’ reasons. It is beautiful to perish in this way.

— has impressed upon us all the ideas the senses could not give us: those of the just and the unjust, etc.

“To comprehend well and understand perfectly the nature of understanding, one would assuredly need another understanding,” says Huet. We have it: God’s.

T8.The passage distinguishes éclairé from illuminé through the origin of the light. Daylight renders jour beside lumière, light. The final And — does not have keeps the source’s missing subject; no person or agent has been inserted.

T230.The dash after Et leaves the subject of the final finite verb unexpressed; no name or pronoun is supplied in the French.

T9.The metal, coining, circulation, and stroke form one sustained monetary image. Screw press renders balancier in this context: the Encyclopédie describes the screw-operated machine that strikes coins and uses the phrase coup de balancier. In passing retains the ease with which the stroke is delivered.

T10.The latter first refers to the faculty of thinking, while the first and second subsequently refer to expressing and conceiving. Potentially, in act, and in exercise preserve the difference between possessing the powers and using them. Pen, ink, and paper remain three separate images, with paper then explained as material for the style.

T232.The source prints ceux même with no final s. The distinction between potential possession and actual exercise, and the three writing-material images, are retained.

T11.Bodily organization renders organisation in the immediate context of the organs. The translation retains the partial qualification: bodily organization can play a part in mental operations, but not the whole part attributed to it.

T12.Whether treats the opening Si as an inquiry without a stated governing clause. The period and the following eye comparison remain. The phrase not whole and in itself is not expanded into a new explanation of introspection.

T234.The uncontracted Si il introduces a question or conditional fragment ending with a period; the following comparison also remains without a completed governing construction.

T13.Attentive is repeated for the weakness of one’s own reasons and the strength of others’ reasons. Perish preserves périr rather than replacing the striking image with merely losing the argument.

T14.The finite has impressed lacks an expressed subject, as in the French. The translator does not supply God or another agent. The just and the unjust retain the abstract terms rather than becoming a reference to particular people.

T235.A dash precedes the finite verb a imprimé, whose subject is not expressed. The French does not replace it by a conjectured divine or human agent.

T15.The repeated understanding preserves entendement. The final God’s names the understanding Joubert says we possess. A close French parallel occurs on page 51 of Huet’s 1723 Traité philosophique de la foiblesse de l’esprit humain. That parallel supports the attribution without establishing Joubert’s particular copy or supplying the omitted surrounding argument.