Rest

Use in the book

The report about Aristotle defines nature through motion and rest. The Hermetic discussion of the Bears describes circular movement held within bounds by stillness, so a stable reference and a moving circuit coexist. The Hermetic passage on sleep calls for bodily rest, while the next explains sleep’s activity. The relevant contrast must therefore be identified before rest is equated with complete inactivity.

Places to read

1. I.11.4.1Rest enters the conceptual definition of nature.
2. I.19.2.3Circular motion is held in place by stillness.
3. I.41.8.4Bodies require periods of repose.

Translation in this edition

“Rest” and “stillness” preserve different emphases. Neither necessarily means that every power of the resting being has ceased to operate.

Use in the book

The reported Cartesian account makes solidity depend on the relative rest of a body’s parts. Love, however, can be the will both at rest and in action, through possession and pleasure respectively. Contrasts are said to temper and lead to repose by establishing equilibrium. Finally, the Euler quotation questions whether rest and motion name appearance rather than truth. Read together, these witnesses invite precision about what is at rest and in relation to what, without making the quotation Joubert’s final physical theory.

Places to read

1. I, p. 244, entry 2, ¶1Rest is relative among the parts of a solid body.
2. I, p. 468, entry 4, ¶1Rest and action coexist within the account of love.
3. II, p. 697, entry 6, ¶2Balanced contrasts lead to repose.
4. II, p. 927, entry 5, ¶1A quotation questions the truth-value of the terms rest and motion.

Translation in this edition

The translation varies “rest” and “repose” without creating a new French distinction. The Euler statement remains attributed, conjectural, and part of an undated appendix item.

Use in the book

Traherne promises to guide his friend by ease and repose rather than the violence associated with worldly advancement. This is a claim about the character of divine generosity and teaching, not permission for an inactive soul. Repose becomes possible when the objects of desire are rightly understood and enjoyed.

The term also retains its ordinary bodily setting: night makes the sweetness of rest possible, which an unvarying noon would destroy. At another level, the discovery that created things stand well in their places seats the mind in rest and redirects its effort toward its own amendment. Repose therefore coexists with disciplined thought, charity, and praise. It is freedom from restless misvaluation rather than cessation of every act.

Places to read

1. I.4The promised instruction follows gentle paths of ease and repose.
2. II.9Night and day permit the sweetness of bodily rest.
3. III.60Right apprehension of the world produces repose while requiring self-amendment.
4. V.9Divine omnipresence is figured as a castle of repose.

In this edition

Rest should not automatically be rendered as sleep: the central contemplative uses describe lucid enjoyment. The Latin saying in III.60 is presented with Traherne’s attribution to Plato, not independently authenticated here.

Use in the book

Aristotle at A38 cautiously says that Empedocles would seem to hold that Love and Strife prevail and move by necessity in turns and rest during the intervening time. The qualification is central: this is Aristotle’s reconstruction of what the theory would require, not a citation from the poem. The passage supplies evidence for pauses but leaves their exact place and length unclear.

A32 calls the One spherical, eternal and unmoved in an opening clause supplied from Stobaeus. That could be compared with the rest problem, but the textual and conceptual contexts differ. The supplemented static characterization cannot simply be inserted as a precise episode between every motion in A38. A52’s ever-recurring succession adds a further scale on which the whole process is everlasting even if particular states are not changing.

The dossier therefore supports distinguishing the motionlessness of a condition, the possible rest of the movers, and the recurrence of the entire process. It does not provide an uncontested schedule that coordinates all three.

Places to read

1. A 38 (polemical)Aristotle, Physics Θ 1, 252a7. Offers intervening rest as what Empedocles would seem compelled to say.
2. A 32 (testimony)Aëtius I 7,28 (D. 303), opening supplied from Stobaeus. Describes the One as unmoved in text restored by the editor.

Translation in this edition

Keep Aristotle’s hedge and A32’s supplement visible. Neither passage licenses an exact duration or a confident assertion that every phase boundary contains an identical rest.