From the book
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Joseph Joubert · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Temper and mood
humeur
Humeur concerns temper or disposition, sometimes with older bodily associations.
Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordHumeur concerns temper or disposition, sometimes with older bodily associations.
- In JoubertManners are said to tame humors, a near-rhyme that links acquired conduct to temper.
- In this editionThe English translation moves between humor and mood, with the notes identifying temper as the relevant sense.
- A place to beginAcquired manners can tame temper.
- English renderings
- humor; mood
Meaning
Humeur concerns temper or disposition, sometimes with older bodily associations. It does not normally mean comedy in these witnesses.
Use in the book
Manners are said to tame humors, a near-rhyme that links acquired conduct to temper. The style fragment distinguishes an expression of humor from an expression of soul, resisting the assumption that every personal manner reaches inward depth. A later threefold comparison associates mind with mood, heart with temperaments and soul with God. Restrained books can finally act on the mind as a calm face acts on eyes and moods. External form and company can modulate an inward state.
Places to read
- I, p. 406, entry 6, ¶1Acquired manners can tame temper.
- II, p. 483, entry 9, ¶1A writer’s style may express mood rather than soul.
- II, p. 681, entry 5, ¶1Mind, heart and soul are paired with different sources.
- II, p. 771, entry 9, ¶1Calm appearance and restrained writing affect moods.
Translation in this edition
The English translation moves between humor and mood, with the notes identifying temper as the relevant sense. The damaged residues in the mind/heart/soul sequence remain visible. The source-editor brackets in the calm-book fragment mark supplied words, not a new translator reconstruction.
Source note
Beaunier 1938, I, pp. 406; II, pp. 483, 681, 771.
From the book
Centuries of Meditations
Thomas Traherne · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Humour
humour; avaricious humour; communicative humour
A humour is a disposition or bent of mind.
Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordA humour is a disposition or bent of mind.
- In TraherneII.79 names two apparently contrary inclinations.
- In this editionThe 2026 note supplies the historical gloss and the word’s humoral background.
- A place to beginExplicitly names and reconciles the avaricious and communicative humours through shared enjoyment.
Meaning
A humour is a disposition or bent of mind. Though the word derives from older accounts of bodily temperament, Traherne’s argument here does not expound a four-humour physiology. Neither comedy nor a momentary mood is the intended sense.
Use in the book
II.79 names two apparently contrary inclinations. The avaricious humour wishes to possess everything privately and to be the sole end of its benefits. The communicative humour wishes for companions, for people to whom joy can be told, and for the pleasure of becoming another person’s delight. A merely exclusive model of possession seems to force a choice between them.
Traherne answers through the special character of spiritual enjoyment. A world wholly available to one enjoyer can also be wholly available to others. Their enjoyment need not subtract from his; their presence supplies the very companions whose happiness completes his own. God’s gift of things to other people becomes, in this sense, a further gift to the first recipient.
The meditation therefore transforms acquisitiveness by placing it within a communicative relation. It does not defend every act of hoarding or declare ordinary rival claims to property unreal. The paradox concerns a mode of delight in which fellow enjoyers themselves belong among one’s treasures. The two dispositions become mutually perfective because the fulfilled desire to enjoy all includes the fulfilled desire that others enjoy it too.
Places to read
- II.79Explicitly names and reconciles the avaricious and communicative humours through shared enjoyment.
In this edition
The 2026 note supplies the historical gloss and the word’s humoral background. The primary meditation’s actual psychological distinction is twofold; importing a complete medical system would obscure its argument.
Source note
Primary text: II.79. Supplied 2026 editorial note 142 explains humour as disposition and its inherited physiological vocabulary.