From the book
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Joseph Joubert · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordPneumato-mètre names a proposed instrument that would record breathing and make it perceptible to the eye.
- In JoubertThe long reflection connects music’s rhythm with respiration, humors, blood, and bodily movement.
- In this editionThe English translation renders printed intenter as “invented” and leaves the French anomaly visible.
- A place to beginA proposed breath-recording instrument would, Joubert thinks, verify the bodily effects of music and feeling.
- English renderings
- pneumato-meter
Meaning
Pneumato-mètre names a proposed instrument that would record breathing and make it perceptible to the eye. Its function is specified by Joubert’s hypothetical description.
Use in the book
The long reflection connects music’s rhythm with respiration, humors, blood, and bodily movement. Joubert proposes that an instrument registering breaths would demonstrate changes associated with sights, touches, and thoughts that alter feeling. The proposal remains hypothetical even though his language about the expected result is confident. It is not evidence that the device was built or that the physiological assertions were tested.
Places to read
- I, p. 66–67, entry 3, ¶1A proposed breath-recording instrument would, Joubert thinks, verify the bodily effects of music and feeling.
Translation in this edition
The English translation renders printed intenter as “invented” and leaves the French anomaly visible. It retains the historical vocabulary of diastole, systole, humors, and “animal economy,” the functioning of the body, without substituting a modern theory.
Animal economy
French: économie animale.
In the same paragraph this phrase names the functioning of the whole body, not economic conduct by animals.
Places to read: I, p. 66–67, entry 3, ¶1.
Source note
Beaunier 1938, I, pp. 66, 67.