Tradition

Use in the book

The voice is credited with an authority and an insinuating power that writing lacks. Another fragment treats traditional works as having stood memory’s test. The Hercules passage adds a less conservative possibility: transforming an extravagant allegory into proportioned earthly adventures can improve what is transmitted. Change alone therefore does not prove deterioration. The reported Bossuet appeal to written word and tradition supplies a religious context in which inherited authority is placed against further demonstration. These witnesses distinguish the medium, survival and transformation of transmission rather than defining tradition as an unalterable collection of propositions.

Places to read

1. I, p. 100, entry 8, ¶1Voice supplies authority and insinuation unavailable to writing.
2. I, p. 224, entry 7, ¶1An altered myth is judged more proportioned, not necessarily corrupted.
3. I, p. 352, entry 4, ¶1Remembered works have survived a test.
4. II, p. 819, entry 10, ¶1Tradition appears with the written word in a reported appeal to authority.

Translation in this edition

The English translation retains the Hercules passage’s bracketed source ellipsis and translates roman as romance in the narrative sense. The Bossuet formula remains compressed and externally unlocated; no conjunction or doctrine is inserted to complete it.