Generation

Use in the book

The early physiological summary assigns veins a role in generation. The brief image of fire impelling one toward generation likewise concerns bringing life into being, without supplying a complete causal theory. The ethical fragment about the world as inheritance uses each generation as a collective successor charged to leave that world better. These are related through continuity of life, but the second sense must not be read as a claim about reproductive anatomy.

Places to read

1. I, p. 35–36, entry 1, ¶8Generation belongs to the reproductive account in a summary of Platonic physiology.
2. II, p. 577, entry 2, ¶1Fire is the unnamed impulse toward generation.
3. I, p. 55, entry 2, ¶1Each generation inherits and should improve a shared world.
4. I, p. 237, entry 3, ¶5The generation of movement enters an incomplete bodily analogy in a separate exercise book.

Translation in this edition

The English translation retains generation in the first three settings. Beaunier expressly describes the I.35 material as Joubert’s summary of Platonic physiology. The short II.577 fragment is not expanded into a named desire or a developed theory. The fourth witness compares the generation of movement with an unnamed generation; its missing term remains unfilled. Beaunier identifies the passage as material from a separate exercise book, suggests a debt to abbé Nollet without settling its extent, and reports editorial omissions.

Sperma

French: Σπέρμα.

The Greek Σπέρμα is retained in the English translation. Its existing note explains seed, here semen in the generation discussion. The fragment proposes an origin in the surplus of organs rather than food and connects that claim with inherited illnesses or particular strengths. These remain conjectures in the text; the final claim that the soul also has surpluses extends the vocabulary without defining a second bodily process.

Places to read: I, p. 411, entry 6, ¶1.