Repentance

Use in the book

Among the immortals, repentance purifies while admiration perfects. The speculation on time then sets repentance after fault beside forgetting after a benefit, leaving their relation to imperishable moral nature unfinished. Finally good people are said to trust the repentance or conversion of adversaries because they passionately love the good. Their hope can expose them to deception; the passage does not say all reported repentance is false.

Places to read

1. I, p. 165, entry 7, ¶1Repentance purifies in a fragment on immortals.
2. I, p. 369, entry 2, ¶1Repentance follows fault within an unfinished account of time.
3. II, p. 889, entry 5, ¶1Hope for an adversary’s repentance can make good people credulous.

Translation in this edition

The English translation preserves the distinction between purification and further perfection, and leaves the time fragment incomplete. The bracketed pronoun in “as [one] says” follows Beaunier’s supply; conversion remains a parenthetic formulation rather than a certified transformation.

Penance and confession

French: pénitence; confession; expiation.

Pénitence, confession and expiation are differentiated through public and secret wrongdoing. Avowal is called an instrument of expiation, while the later shame is secret but piercing. The analogy with correcting error makes confession to faults what retraction is to errors. The English translation preserves the Voltaire verse as a quotation before Joubert’s extension and does not assign the undated penitential unit the preceding date.

Places to read: I, p. 221, entry 5, ¶1; II, p. 810, entry 5, ¶1; II, p. 750, entry 10, ¶3.

Conversion

French: conversion.

Conversion appears with change and repentance as a hoped-for alteration in adversaries. The passage makes good people vulnerable to deception precisely through their love of the good. It neither certifies a particular conversion nor restricts the word to changing denominations. The bracketed on is Beaunier’s printed supplement.

Places to read: II, p. 889, entry 5, ¶1.

Use in the book

The recovery of felicity includes penitence rather than dispensing with it. To remember original dignity is to discover both what has been lost and how grievously love has been offended. Repentance is thus sharpened by the knowledge of goodness; it is not generated only by terror.

In the reading of the Psalms, a contrite heart becomes a sacrifice more precious than material offerings. Its groan expresses a returning friend’s grief, and prepares the person for praise. The sequence gives sorrow a relational purpose: the heart turns back toward the one it has injured. Elsewhere the fruits of repentance belong among the virtues that the world provides opportunities to practise, so inward sorrow must issue in a changed life.

Places to read

1. II.5The command to remember and repent is applied to humanity’s lost inheritance.
2. III.43Faith and repentance are named as conditions of the covenant of grace.
3. III.83Contrition is interpreted as a returning lover’s sacrifice.
4. IV.39The world offers occasions for the fruits of repentance.

In this edition

Penitent, contrite, and repentant overlap without being identical. Preserve the passage’s emphasis on sorrow, return, or resulting conduct instead of treating all three as a single emotional state.