” This
suggests, but not too sadly, that great summary of existence by St.
suggests, but not too sadly, that great summary of existence by St.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v14 - Ibn to Juv
But granting that
the Roman officers are beyond endurance severe, still, all the
Romans do not wrong you, nor does Cæsar; and yet it is against
these you levy war. It is not by command that any one comes
among you, from them, to be wicked; neither do they see from
west to east; nor is it easy to obtain in that quarter early intel-
ligence from hence.
« But it is absurd to wage war with many on account of
one, and for trivial reasons, with so great a people; and that too
when they know not what we complain of. And yet the evils
with which we charge them may be speedily corrected, for the
same procurator will not remain forever; and his successors, it is
probable, will come in a spirit of greater moderation. War, how-
ever, once moved, it is neither easy to lay aside without calamity,
nor yet to bear the burthen of it. But your present desire of
freedom is unseasonable, seeing you should have struggled earlier
not to lose it. For the experience of servitude is bitter, and the
exertion to avert its first approaches is just; but he who, once
subdued, afterwards revolts, is a refractory slave, not a lover of
liberty. For then was the time for doing your utmost to prevent
the Romans from gaining a footing, when Pompey made his first
inroad upon your country.
“You alone disdain servitude to those to whom the universe
has submitted. On what troops, on what weapons, do you rely?
Where is your feet to occupy the Roman seas? where the
treasures sufficing for the enterprise ? Do you suppose that it is
with the Egyptians and Arabians that war is to be waged ? Will
you not reflect on the empire of the Romans? Will you not
measure your own weakness? Have not your forces been fre-
quently defeated by nations on your borders ? and yet, through
the world their strength has stood unconquered; nay rather, they
have stretched their views farther even than this. For the entire
Euphrates has not sufficed them on the east; nor the Danube on
the north; nor on the south Libya, penetrated even to uninhab-
ited climes; nor Gadeira on the west. But beyond the ocean they
have sought another world, and have carried their arms far as
the Britons, unknown before to history.
## p. 8376 (#588) ###########################################
8376
JOSEPHUS
1
"Reflect, likewise, that even were you contending with no
formidable foe, the uncompromising character of your worship
would create a difficulty, since those very laws by which you
mainly hope to secure the Divine assistance will, if you are com-
pelled to transgress them, render God your enemy; since, should
you observe the usages of the Sabbath, and put your hand to no
work, you will fall an easy prey, as did your forefathers to Pom-
pey, who pressed his operations with the greatest vigor on those
days upon which the besieged rested.
"Unless indeed it be supposed that you will wage war by
compact; and that the Romans, when triumphant, will act toward
you with moderation, and not, as an example to other nations,
burn the Holy City to the ground, and root you out as a people
from the earth. For those of you who may survive will not
find a spot to flee to, since all have acknowledged the supremacy
of the Romans, or fear that they soon must do so. The danger,
however, threatens not us alone, but those also who reside in the
other cities. For there is not a nation in the world where some
of you are not to be found; all of whom, should you go to war,
will be sacrificed in retaliation by your adversaries. .
"Look with pity, then, if not on your children and wives, yet
on this your metropolis, and the sacred boundaries. Spare the
Temple, and preserve for yourselves this sanctuary with its holy
things. "
Having spoken thus, he wept, as did his sister; and their
emotion restrained in a great degree the violence of the people,
who cried out that they had not taken up arms against the
Romans, but to avenge their sufferings on Florus.
Traill's Translation.
JOSEPHUS'S SURRENDER TO THE ROMANS
From the Jewish Wars)
WLI
.
HILE Josephus was hesitating as to Nicanor's persuasions,
his nightly dreams, wherein God had foreshown
to him the approaching calamities of the Jews, and what
would befall the Roman sovereigns, occurred to him. As an in-
terpreter of dreams he had the art of collecting the meaning of
things delivered ambiguously by the Deity; nor was he unac-
quainted with the prophecies of the Sacred Books, being himself
## p. 8377 (#589) ###########################################
JOSEPHUS
8377
a priest, and a descendant of priests. Being at that moment
under a divine influence, and suddenly recalling the fearful im-
ages of his recent dreams, he addressed to God a secret prayer,
and said: “Since it seems good to thee, who didst found the
Jewish nation, now to level it with the dust, and transfer all its
fortune to the Romans, and since thou hast chosen my spirit to
foretell future events, I surrender willingly to the Romans, and
live: appealing to thee that I go over to them not as a traitor,
but as thy minister. ”
But when the Jews who had there taken refuge along with
him understood that he was yielding,
they
cried
out:- Deeply may our paternal laws groan! And well
may
God, who planted in the Jewish breast a soul that despises death,
hide his face in indignation! Is life so dear to thee, Josephus,
that thou canst endure to see the light in slavery? How soon
hast thou forgotten thyself! How many hast thou persuaded
to die for liberty! False then indeed has been thy reputation
for manliness, as well as for intelligence, if thou canst hope for
safety from those whom thou hast so strenuously opposed, or con-
sent to accept deliverance at their hands, even were it certain !
But though the fortune of the Romans has poured over thee
some strange forgetfulness of thyself, we must take care of our
country's glory. We will provide thee with right hand and
sword. If thou diest voluntarily, thou shalt die as general of the
Jews. ”
9
Josephus, fearing an outbreak,
proceeded to reason
with them philosophically respecting the emergency:
«Why, my comrades, should we so thirst for our own blood ?
or why do we set at variance such fond companions as soul and
body? Who says that I am changed ? But the Romans know
whether this is true. It is honorable, I admit, to die in war;
but only by the law of war,—that is, by the act of the victors.
Did I then shun the Roman blades, worthy indeed should I be
of my own sword and my own hand. But if pity for an enemy
enter their breasts, how much more justly should pity for our-
selves enter ours! For it is the extreme of folly to do that to
ourselves, to avoid which we quarrel with others.
But
some one will urge the dread of servitude. We are now, forsooth,
perfectly free! Another will say that it is noble to destroy one-
self. Far from it - but most ignoble! just as I would deem that
pilot most dastardly, who dreading a tempest, voluntarily sinks his
.
## p. 8378 (#590) ###########################################
8378
JOSEPHUS
are
ship ere the storm sets in. But further: suicide is alien to the
common nature of all animals, and an impiety against God who
created us. Nor indeed is there any living creature that dies
premeditatedly, or by its own act; for nature's law is strong in
all — the wish to live. For this reason also, those who attempt
overtly to deprive us of life we account enemies; and those who
attempt it clandestinely, we punish.
“Do you not think that God is indignant when man treats his
gift with contempt ? From him we have received our existence;
and the period when we no longer to exist, we refer to
his will. Our bodies indeed are mortal to all, and composed of
corruptible materials; but the soul, always immortal, and a por-
tion of the Deity, dwells in those bodies. Now, should any one
destroy or misapply what is deposited with him by man, he is
esteemed wicked and faithless; and should any one cast out from
his body what has been there deposited by God, do we suppose
that he will elude Him whom he has wronged ?
"I pray however that this may prove a faithless stratagem of
the Romans; for if, after an assurance of protection, I perish by
their hands, I shall die cheerfully, carrying with me their perfidy
and falsehood - a consolation greater than victory. ”
Josephus, having thus escaped in the war with the Romans,
as in that with his friends, was conducted to Vespasian by Nica-
nor.
Josephus intimated that he wished to speak in private to him;
and Vespasian having removed all except his son Titus and two
of his friends, Josephus addressed him in these words:-"You
think, Vespasian, that you have possessed yourself merely of a
captive in Josephus; but I come to you as a messenger of greater
things. Had I not received a commission from God, I knew the
law of the Jews, and how it becomes a general to die. Do you
send me to Nero? Wherefore? Are there any remaining to suc-
ceed Nero, previous to your own accession ? You, Vespasian, are
Cæsar and emperor you, and this your son. Bind me then the
more securely, and keep me for yourself. For you, Cæsar, are
master not only of me, but of sea and land, and of the whole
human race. And I deserve the punishment of stricter ward if
I talk lightly, especially in a matter pertaining to God. ”
Traill's Translation.
## p. 8379 (#591) ###########################################
JOSEPHUS
8379
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE AT JERUSALEM
From the Jewish Wars)
With
»
a
HILE the sanctuary [in Jerusalem] was in flames, everything
that fell in their way became a prey to rapine, and pro-
digious was the slaughter of those found there. To no
age was pity shown, to no rank respect; but children and old
men, secular persons and priests, were overwhelmed in one com-
mon ruin.
All ranks were inclosed in the embrace of war, and
hunted down; as well those who sued for mercy, as those who
made defense.
Their destruction was caused by a false prophet, who had on
that day proclaimed to those remaining in the city, that “God
commanded them to go up to the Temple, there to receive the
signs of their deliverance. ”
Thus it was that the im-
postors and pretended messengers of heaven at that time beguiled
the wretched people, while the manifest portents that foreshowed
the approaching desolation they neither heeded nor credited; but
as if confounded and bereft alike of eyes and mind, they dis-
regarded the immediate warnings of God. Thus it was when a
star resembling a sword stood over the city, and a comet which
continued for a year. Thus also it was when, prior to the revolt
and the first movements of the war, at the time when the people
were assembling for the feast of unleavened bread, on the eighth
of the month Xanthicus, at the ninth hour of the night, so vivid
a light shone round the altar and the sanctuary that it seemed to
be bright day; and this lasted half an hour. By the inexperi-
enced this was deemed favorable; but by the sacred scribes it was
at once pronounced a prelude of that which afterwards happened.
At the same festival also, a cow having been led by some one
to the sacrifice, brought forth a lamb in the midst of the court
of the Temple.
Moreover, the eastern gate of the inner court — which was of
brass and extremely massive, and when closed towards evening
could scarcely be moved by twenty men, and which was fastened
with bars shod with iron, and secured by bolts sunk to a great
depth in a threshold which consisted of one stone throughout-
was observed, about the sixth hour of the night, to have opened
of its own accord. The guards of the Temple ran and informed
the captain, who having repaired to the spot could scarcely
## p. 8380 (#592) ###########################################
8380
JOSEPHUS
(
succeed in shutting it. This again to the unlearned seemed a
most auspicious omen; for God, they thought, had unfolded to
them the gate of blessings: but the learned considered that the
security of the Temple was dissolving of its own accord, and the
gate opened for the advantage of the enemy; and explained it
among themselves as a sign of impending desolation.
Not many days after the festival, on the twenty-first of the
month Artemisius, there appeared a phenomenon so marvelous as
to exceed credibility. What I am about to relate would, I con-
ceive, be deemed a mere fable, had it not been related by eye-
witnesses, and attended by calamities commensurate with such
portents. Before sunset, were seen around the whole country
chariots poised in the air, and armed battalions speeding through
the clouds and investing the cities. And at the feast which is
called Pentecost, the priests having entered the inner court of
the Temple by night, as was their custom, for discharge of their
ministrations, their attention was drawn at first, they said, by a
movement and a clanging noise, and after this by a voice as of
a multitude, “We are departing hence. ”
But a story more fearful still remains. Four years prior to
the war, while the city was enjoying the utmost peace and pros-
perity, there came to the feast in which it is the custom for all
to erect tabernacles to God, one Jesus, son of Ananus, a rustic
of humble parentage, who, standing in the temple, suddenly began
to call aloud, "A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a
voice from the four winds; a voice against Jerusalem and the
sanctuary, a voice against bridegrooms and brides, a voice against
all the people! ” Day and night he traversed all the streets with
Some citizens, incensed at so ominous a voice, appre-
hended the man, and severely scourged him. But without utter-
ing a word in his own behalf, nor anything privately to those
who beat him, he continued his cry as before. At length the
rulers — supposing, and justly so, that the man was under some
supernatural impulse - conducted him to the presence of the
Roman procurator, where, though lacerated with scourges to the
very bone, he neither sued for mercy nor shed a tear; but modu-
lating his voice to a tone the most mournful that was possible,
repeated at every stroke, “Woe! woe! unto Jerusalem. ” Albinus
the procurator, demanding who he was, and whence, and why he
uttered these words, he made no manner of reply; desisting not
from his lamentation over the city, until Albinus, concluding that
this cry.
(
## p. 8381 (#593) ###########################################
JOSEPHUS
8381
he was a maniac, set him at liberty. Up to the breaking out
of the war, he neither associated with any of the citizens, nor
was he seen to speak to any one; but as if it were a prayer
that he had been meditating upon, daily uttered his lament,
Woe! woe! unto Jerusalem. ” He neither cursed those that beat
him from day to day, nor gave his blessing to such as supplied
him with food: to all, the melancholy presage was his one reply.
His voice was loudest at the festivals; and though for seven
years and five months he continued his wail, neither did his
voice become feeble nor did he grow weary, until during the
siege, after beholding his presages verified, he ceased. For as
he was going his round on the wall, crying with a piercing
voice,"Woe! woe! once more, to the city, to the people, and to
the Temple;” when at the last he had added, “Woe! woe! to
myself also,” he was struck by a stone shot from the ballista
and killed upon the spot, still uttering with his dying lips the
same portentous words.
If we reflect on these events, we shall find that God exercises
over men, in every way foreshowing to their race the
means of safety; but that they perish through their own folly
and self-incurred evils. Thus the Jews, after the demolition of
the Antonia, reduced their Temple to a square, though they had
it recorded in their oracles that “the city and the sanctuary
would be taken when the Temple should become square. ” But
what chiefly incited them to the war was an ambiguous prophecy,
likewise found in their sacred writings, that "about this period
some one from their country should obtain the empire of the
world. ” This they received as applying to themselves, and many
eminent for wisdom were deceived in the interpretation of it.
The oracle, however, in reality indicated the elevation of Ves-
pasian — he having been proclaimed emperor in Judæa. But it is
not possible for men to avoid their fate, even though they foresee
it. Some of these portents they interpreted according to their
pleasure, others they treated with contempt, until their folly was
exposed by the conquest of their country and their own destruc-
tion.
Traill's Translation.
care
## p. 8382 (#594) ###########################################
8382
JOSEPHUS
THE HEBREW FAITH, WORSHIP, AND LAWS
From the Treatise Against Apion)
W**
N"
HAT form of government then can be more holy than this?
What more worthy kind of worship can be paid to God
than we pay, where the entire body of the people are
prepared for religion; where an extraordinary degree of care is
required in the priests, and where the whole polity is so ordered
as if it were a certain religious solemnity ?
a
For what things
foreigners, when they solemnize such festivals, are not able to
observe for a few days' time, and call them mysterious and sacred
ceremonies, we observe with great pleasure and an unshaken
resolution during our whole lives. What are the things then
that we are commanded or forbidden? They are simple, and
easily known. The first command is concerning God, and affirms
that God contains all things, and is a being every way perfect
and happy, self-sufficient, and supplying all other beings; the
beginning, the middle, and the end of all things. He is manifest
in his works and benefits, and more conspicuous than any other
being whatsoever; but as to his form and magnitude he is most
obscure. All materials, let them be ever so costly, are unworthy
to compose an image for him; and all arts are unartful to ex-
press the notion we ought to have of him. We can neither see
nor think of anything like him, nor is it agreeable to piety to
form a resemblance of him. We see his works: the light, the
heavens, the earth, the sun and the moon, the waters, the gen-
eration of animals, the production of fruits. These things hath
God made, not with hands, not with labor, not as wanting the
assistance of any to co-operate with him; but as his will resolved
they should be made and be good also, they were made and
became good immediately. All men ought to follow this being,
and to worship him in the exercise of virtue; for this way of
worship of God is the most holy of all others.
There ought also to be but One Temple for One God: for
likeness is the constant foundation of agreement. This temple
ought to be common to all men, because he is the common
God of all men. His priests are to be continually about his
worship; over whom he that is the first by his birth is to be
their ruler perpetually. His business must be to offer sacrifices
to God, together with those priests that are joined with him;
to see that the laws be observed; to determine controversies, and
## p. 8383 (#595) ###########################################
JOSEPHUS
8383
to punish those that are convicted of injustice: while he that
does not submit to him shall be subject to the same punishment
as if he had been guilty of impiety towards God himself.
But then, what are our laws about marriage ? That law owns
no other mixture of sexes but that which nature hath appointed,
of a man with his wife, and that this be used only for the pro-
creation of children. But it abhors the mixture of a male with
a male; and if any one do that, death is its punishment.
Nay, indeed, the law does not permit us to make festivals at
the births of our children, and thereby afford occasion of drink-
ing to excess; but it ordains that the very beginning of our edu-
cation should be immediately directed to sobriety.
Our law hath also taken care of the decent burial of the
dead; but without any extravagant expenses for the funerals, and
without the erection of any illustrious monuments for them. . .
The law ordains also that parents should be honored imme-
diately after God himself; and delivers that son who does not
requite them for the benefits he hath received from them, but is
deficient on any such occasion, to be stoned. It also says that
the young man should pay due respect to every elder, since God
is the eldest of all beings.
It will be also worth our while to see what equity our legis-
lator would have us exercise in our intercourse with strangers.
Accordingly, our legislator admits all those that have a
mind to observe our laws so to do, and this after a friendly
manner, as esteeming that a true union which not only extends
to our own stock, but to those that would live after the same
manner with us; yet does he not allow those that come to us by
accident only to be admitted into communion with us.
The greatest part of offenses with us are capital.
Now, as for ourselves, I venture to say that no one can tell
of so many, nay, not more than one or two, that have betrayed
our laws; no, not out of fear of death itself.
Now I
think those that have conquered us have put us to such deaths,
not out of their hatred to us when they had subdued us, but
rather out of their desire to see a surprising sight, which is this,
whether there be such men in the world who believe that no
evil is to them so great as to be compelled to do or to speak
anything contrary to their own laws!
Whiston's Translation.
.
## p. 8384 (#596) ###########################################
8384
JOSEPHUS
ORIGIN OF THE ASAMONEAN OR MACCABÆAN REVOLT
From the Antiquities)
W"
HEN the emissaries of the King [Antiochus] came to Modin
to compel the Jews to offer (pagan] sacrifice as
the King commanded, they wished Mattathias (priest,
great-grandson of Asamoneus, and father of Judas Maccabæus
and four other powerful sons] - a person of the highest consider-
ation among them on all grounds, and especially as having so
large and meritorious a family — to begin the sacrifice; because
the populace would follow his example, and the King would be-
stow honors upon him for it. But Mattathias said he would
not do it; and if every other people obeyed Antiochus's orders,
either from fear or self-seeking, he and his sons would not desert
their country's religion. ” But when he had finished speaking,
another Jew came forward and began to sacrifice as Antiochus
had commanded. Mattathias was so incensed that he and his
sons, who had their swords with them, fell on the sacrificer, and
slew both him, Apelles (the King's general who had enforced the
sacrifice), and several of the soldiers. Then he overthrew the
pagan altar, and cried out, “If any one has zeal for the lands of
his country and the worship of God, let him follow me;" and
fied to the desert with his sons, abandoning all his property in
the town. Many others followed him, and dwelt in caves in the
desert with their wives and children. When the King's generals
heard of this, they took the troops in the citadel at Jerusalem
and went in pursuit of the fugitives; and having overtaken them,
tried first to persuade them to take counsel of prudence and not
compel the soldiers to treat them according to the laws of war.
Meeting with a refusal, they assailed them on the Sabbath, and
burnt them unresisting in the caves.
Many of those
who escaped joined Mattathias and appointed him their ruler.
So Mattathias got a great army about him, and over-
threw their idolatrous altars, and slew those that broke their
laws, all he could lay hands on.
## p. 8385 (#597) ###########################################
8385
JOSEPH JOUBERT
(1754-1824)
BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
OSEPH JOUBERT, who has now succeeded to the place long held
by La Rochefoucauld as the best author of aphorisms, was
first introduced to the general world of English-speaking
readers by Matthew Arnold in 1865: but he was known to many, at
least in America, through what Sainte-Beuve had said of him; and
Mr. Stedman thinks that Edgar Poe, whose French reading was very
discursive, had known him even before Sainte-Beuve wrote. Joubert,
who was born in 1754, died May 4th, 1824; and a tribute was paid to
his memory, a day or two after his death, by Châteaubriand, which
might well have arrested the attention of Poe. In 1838 Châteaubriand
edited his works. It is, however, fair to say that as Ruskin vastly
expanded the reputation of Turner, though he did not create it, so
the present renown of Joubert is due largely to the generous tribute
of Arnold.
With the praise due to generosity the recognition of Arnold's serv-
ice must end. It was hardly possible to set readers more distinctly
on the wrong track in respect to an author than to compare, as
Arnold does, Joubert to Coleridge; making this comparison indeed
the keynote of his essay It is difficult. were not Arnold so em-
phatically a man of whims — to find common ground between the
tersest writer of his time and the most diffuse; the most determined
and the most irresolute; the most clear-cut and the most misty.
With all the great merits and services of Coleridge, and the fact that
he had occasionally the power of making an incisive detached remark,
the fact remains undisputed of the wandering and slumberous quality
of his mind, and of the concentration in him of many of the precise
qualities that Joubert spent his life in combating. The best course
to be adopted by any reader of Joubert is therefore to cut adrift
from Arnold, and turn to the original book,- not the volume of
letters, which is less satisfactory, but to the original volume of
Pensées, which contain within four hundred pages more of the con-
densed essence of thought than can be found anywhere else in a
series of volumes.
Joubert was born in 1754 in Montignac, a small town of Périgord,
France; studied and also taught at the College of Toulouse; went in
XIV-525
-
## p. 8386 (#598) ###########################################
8386
JOSEPH JOUBERT
1778 to Paris; knew Diderot, Marmontel, Châteaubriand, D'Alembert:
was chosen during his absence in 1790 chief magistrate of his native
town, served in that capacity two years and was re-elected, but
declined to serve; took up his residence in 1792 at Villeneuve in
Brittany, and spent his later life between that town and Paris; in
1809 was appointed by Napoleon Bonaparte a regent of the Univer-
sity, and died in 1824. He lived through the French Revolution, and
through the period of the Encyclopædists; but he preserved not
merely his life but his faith. He was in the habit, from twenty
years old to seventy, of writing down his detached thoughts, often
previously molded by conversation; his rooms at the top of a tall
house in the Rue St. Honoré being the resort of the brightest minds
in Paris. Fourteen years after his death, both his thoughts and
his correspondence were collected and given to the world; but the
thoughts afford by far the more interesting volume of the two.
As Arnold has misled readers by his comparison with Coleridge,
so his total estimate of Joubert is probably below the truth; because
the crowning quality of Joubert – severe and sublimated concentra.
tion was remote from Arnold's own temperament. The Englishman
was constitutionally discursive and long-winded. Nothing better was
ever said about Homer than he has incidentally said in his essay on
translating him: the trouble is that it takes him nearly a hundred
and fifty pages to say it. It is certain that Joubert never would have
written such a paper; it is very doubtful whether he could even have
read it. Arnold's favorite amusement - perhaps a tradition from his
father's sermons — was to begin an essay with a quotation from some
one, to attach every succeeding point of his essay to this text, to
play with it as a cat plays with a mouse, and then at the close to
take it for granted that he had proved its soundness: this was wholly
foreign to Joubert. It is however in Joubert that we find invariably
the sweetness and light which Arnold preached, but did not always
practice.
It is for this reason perhaps that Arnold dislikes the first or per-
sonal chapter of Joubert's Pensées': “It has,” he says, “some fanci-
fulness and affectation about it; the reader should begin with the
second. ” But if the reader takes this unwise advice he will miss the
whole personal equation of Joubert, and misinterpret him again
and again. He will miss also some of his finest thoughts; as where
he anticipates Emerson in one of the latter's most noted passages by
saying, "I dislike to quit Paris, because it involves separation from
my friends; and to quit the country, because it implies separation
from myself. ” He also anticipates a passage once famous in Miss
Edgeworth’s Helen' when he writes, “I even like better those who
make vice amiable than those who make virtue unattractive. He
## p. 8387 (#599) ###########################################
JOSEPH JOUBERT
8387
((
writes finely of his own experience: “My soul dwells in a region
where all passions have passed; I have known them all. ” With the
experience which years bring to all writers, he thus sums up their
result: “I needed age in order to learn what I desired to know; and
I should need youth in order to utter well what I now know.
” This
suggests, but not too sadly, that great summary of existence by St.
Augustine, -- "Now that I begin to know something, I die. And he
thus sums up the beginning and the end of his method of writing,
the very keystone of the arch of his fame: "If there is a man tor-
mented by the accursed ambition to put a whole book into a page, a
whole page into a phrase, and that phrase into a word, it is I. ”
All these passages are from that first chapter, The author por-
trayed by himself, which Mr. Arnold injudiciously advises readers to
omit. Then follows his chapter on piety, of which he finely says:
«Piety is a sublime wisdom, surpassing all others; a kind of gen-
ius, which gives wings to the mind. No one is wise unless he is
pious. Again, Piety is a species of modesty. It leads us to shield
our thought, as modesty bids us shield our eyes, before all forbid-
den things. ” And again, in one of his fine condensations he says,
«Heaven is for those who think about it. ” (Le ciel est pour ceux
qui y pensent). Then follow chapters covering Man, The Soul, Mod-
esty, The Various Times of Life, Death, The Family, Good Manners,
Truth, Illusion, Philosophy, Light, Governments, Liberty and Law,
Antiquity, Education, The Fine Arts, Style, The Qualities of an
Author; including also many other themes, and finally closing with
Literary Judgments - these covering authors ancient and modern.
The book is admirably edited, and adds to its merits that of an
analytical table at the end, so that it is practically a dictionary of
quotations. The late Mr. George H. Calvert, of Newport, R. I. ,
translates a portion of it — less than half — with a preliminary notice
(Boston, 1867); but the translations are not always felicitous, though
the feeling shown is always sympathetic.
Joubert sometimes suggests Montaigne, but with great differences:
he is never garrulous and never coarse. In him we taste in full the
exquisite felicity, the limpid clearness, the well-defined accuracy of
the French tradition, without the smallest trace of that refined indeli-
cacy in which vice does not lose half its evil by losing all its gross-
In him his native idiom stands out clearly for what it is, –
the lineal successor of the Greek, if the Greek can have a successor.
Then, the national virtues of courtesy, amiability, and bonhomie shine
out supreme: he goes, for instance, the whole round of his contem-
poraries, speaking his mind freely, yet without an unkind word; and
although a devout Catholic, he handles the Jansenists without a trace
of the odium theologicum.
ness.
## p. 8388 (#600) ###########################################
8388
JOSEPH JOUBERT
This refinement is the more remarkable in Joubert, because he
owed much to Rousseau in style, and was the originator of that often
quoted phrase concerning him, that he was the first person who gave
bowels to words,- in the sense used symbolically for that word in the
Bible. But he demands that this power of tender expression should
be always chaste; and in the very last of his maxims says that art
should always keep within the realm of beauty, and should never
forget the ancient religious precept, “Outside the temple and the
sacrifice, make no display of the intestines of the victim. ” And he
indicates the high standard of French courtesy by uniformly resting
it on noble motives. “Politeness,” he says, “is to kindness of heart
[bonté] what words are to thought. It does not merely influence the
manners, but even the mind and heart; it moderates and softens all
feelings, opinions, and words. ” And in another place he says in
yet more condensed form, «Courtesy is the very flower of humanity.
He who is not quite courteous is not quite human. ”
»
Tow Higginoon
.
OF MAN
T"
He body is the tent where our existence is encamped.
The voice is a human sound which nothing lifeless can
perfectly imitate. It has an authority and an impressiveness
which writing wants. It is not merely air, but air modulated by
us, impregnated with our warmth, and as it were enveloped in
the haze of our atmosphere; from which an emanation attends
it, and which gives it a certain form and certain virtues fitted to
act on the mind. Speech is only thought incorporated,
The more I think on it, the more I see that the mind is
something outside of the soul, as the hands are outside of the
body, the eyes outside of the head, the branches outside of the
trunk. It helps to do more, but not to be more.
The mind is a fire of which thought is the flame.
The imagination is the eye of the soul.
## p. 8389 (#601) ###########################################
JOSEPH JOUBERT
8389
OF THE NATURE OF MINDS
M
EN measure minds by their stature: it would be better to
estimate them by their beauty.
Nature has made two kinds of fine intellects: some to
produce thoughts and beautiful actions, others to admire them.
Heaven rarely grants to the same men the power of thinking
well, of speaking well, and of acting well in all things.
One is never mediocre when he has plenty of good sense and
good feeling
Sometimes great minds are nevertheless false minds. They
are well-constructed compasses, but whose needles, affected by
the influence of some neighboring object, always turn away from
the north.
He who has imagination without learning has wings without
feet.
OF VIRTUE AND MORALITY
E
VERYTHING may be learned even virtue.
We should do everything to let good people have their
own way.
Do not cut what you can untie.
To be always occupied with the duties of others, never with
our own — alas!
There are those who have only fragments: they have not
enough of the material to make a coat.
Without duty, life is soft and boneless; it can no longer sus-
tain itself.
Not only is there no virtue where there is no rule and law,
but there is not even pleasure. The plays of children themselves
have laws, and would not exist without them; these laws are
always a form of restraint, and nevertheless, the more strictly
they are obeyed the greater is the amusement.
OF THE FAMILY
W
E SHOULD choose for a wife only such a woman as we should
choose for a friend were she a man.
Nothing does a woman so much honor as her patience,
and nothing so little as the patience of her husband.
## p. 8390 (#602) ###########################################
8390
JOSEPH JOUBERT
We should wear our velvet inside; that is, be most amiable to
those with whom we dwell at home.
The pleasure of pleasing is a legitimate one, and the desire to
rule repulsive.
We should carry with us that indulgence and that habit of
attention which call the thoughts of others into bloom.
We should pique ourselves on being reasonable, not on being
right; on sincerity, not infallibility.
It is better to win than to command.
Before speaking ill of an eminent man, it might be well to
wait till he has done ill.
A small supply of everything, a surfeit of nothing, - this is
the key to moderation, wisdom, and content.
-
OF EDUCATION
C*
HILDREN need models rather than critics.
Education should be tender and strict, and not cold and
relaxing
In rearing a child, think of its old age.
People regard young men as merely students; but I see in
them young men also.
To teach is to learn twice over.
To have shared the mode of education common to all is a
great advantage to gifted minds, because they are thus kept in
touch with others.
OF THE PASSIONS
Wha
HATEVER purifies the passions makes them stronger, more
lasting, and more enjoyable.
We exhaust in the passions the material that was given
us for happiness.
Passions are but nature: it is the not repenting that yields
corruption.
Repentance is a natural effort which drives from the soul the
elements of its corruption.
Into every kind of excess there enters a certain coldness of
soul: it is a thoughtful and deliberate abuse of pleasure.
## p. 8391 (#603) ###########################################
JOSEPH JOUBERT
8391
The blind are cheerful, because their minds are not distracted
from dwelling on the things that make them happy, and because
they have yet more ideas than we have sights. It is a compen-
a
sation granted them by Heaven.
We always lose the friendship of those who have lost our
esteem.
Often our fine qualities are loved and praised only because our
defects temper their brilliancy. It often even happens that we
are loved rather for our defects than for our virtues.
We should make ourselves beloved, for men are only just
towards those whom they love.
The punishment of those who have loved women too much is
to love nothing else.
Tenderness is the calm of passion.
Man is a kind of rash being, who may exist after a fashion
half-way, but whose existence is the more delightful the more
complete it is.
One likes to do good deeds in one's own way.
Ambition is pitiless: every merit that it cannot use is con-
temptible in its eyes.
No one is good, one cannot be useful and deserves not to be
loved, if he has not something heavenly, either in his intellect
through thoughts, or in his will through affections directed on
high.
It is a blessing, a great good fortune, to be born good.
Unless we keep watch on ourselves, we shall find ourselves
condemning the unfortunate.
Be gentle and indulgent to all others; be not so to yourself.
The pleasure of giving is essential to true happiness; but the
poor may possess it.
When you give, give joyfully and in smiling.
Proud natures love those to whom they do a service.
Ornaments were the inventions of modesty.
"God will punish,” say the Orientals, “him who sees and
him who is seen. ” Beautiful and formidable recommendation of
modesty.
A spider's web made of silk and light were not more difficult
to create than to answer this question, What is modesty ?
C
## p. 8392 (#604) ###########################################
8392
JOSEPH JOUBERT
OF SOCIETY
T°
SEE the world is to judge the judges.
The attention of the listener affords a sort of accompa-
niment to the music of the talk.
If one has two names, he should be addressed by that which
is the more beautiful, the sweeter, the more sonorous.
Grace copies modesty as politeness copies kindness of heart.
OF DIFFERENT AGES
N°
TOTHING is so hard to children as reflection. This is because
the final and essential destiny of the soul is to see, to
know, and not to reflect. To reflect is one of the toils of
life; a means of arriving, a route, a passage, and not a centre.
To know and be known,- these are the two points of repose;
such will be the happiness of souls.
Address yourself to young people: they know it all.
There is nothing good in man but his young feelings and his
old thoughts.
Two ages of life should be sexless: the child and the aged
man should be as modest as women.
Old age robs the man of sense only of those qualities that are
useless to wisdom.
It would seem that for certain intellectual product the winter
of the body is the autumn of the soul.
The residuum of human wisdom, refined by age, is perhaps
the best thing we have.
Life's evening brings with it its lamp.
Those who have a long old age are, as it were, purified of
the body.
Old age must have had most honor in times when each man
could not know much more than what he had seen.
It is well to treat our life as we treat our writings: to pro-
vide that the beginning, the middle, and the end are in pro-
portion, in harmony. For this object we need to make many
erasures.
There is a time when the body's forces change place and con-
centrate themselves in the mind.
To be born obscure and die famous are the two boundaries
of human happiness.
## p. 8393 (#605) ###########################################
JOSEPH JOUBERT
8393
The deliberation of old age makes it easier to be patient in
labor.
We are all priests of Vesta, and life is the sacred fire which
we are to prolong until God extinguishes it.
A beautiful old age is for all beholders a delightful promise,
since each can hope the same for him or his.
old men constitute the true majority among the people.
Only robust old men have the dignity of old age, and they
are the only ones who can justly speak of it.
Courtesy softens wrinkles.
One loves an old man as a perishable treasure; a ripe fruit
whose fall one must expect.
In neat and fresh garments old age finds a sort of youth with
which to surround itself.
No one is truly happy in old age except the aged priest and
those of similar type.
It is a good thing to die still lovable; if one only can.
Patience and trial, courage and death, resignation and neces-
sity, arrive usually together. Indifference to life comes when it
is no longer possible to preserve life.
OF POETRY
PoEphers. " In seeking what is beautiful, they find
more truths
have a
,
than philosophers in seeking what is true.
Poets are more inspired by the images of objects than even
by their presence.
The poet should not traverse at a walk an interval which
might be cleared at a bound.
In the poetic style every word resounds like the twang of a
lyre well strung, and leaves after it a number of undulations.
Like the nectar of the bee, which turns to honey the dust of
flowers, or like that liquor which converts lead into gold, the poet
has a breath that fills out words, gives them light and color. He
knows wherein consists their charm, and by what art enchanted
structures may be built with them.
To fill an old word with new meaning, of which usage or
age had emptied it, so to speak,—this is not innovation, it is re-
juvenation. We enrich languages by digging into them. They
## p. 8394 (#606) ###########################################
8394
JOSEPH JOUBERT
should be treated like fields: to make them fertile in old age,
they must be stirred at great depths.
Before employing a beautiful word, make a place for it.
OF STYLE
Wa
ELL-CHOSEN words are abridged sentences.
Literary style consists in giving a body and a shape to
the thought by the phrase.
Attention has a narrow mouth; we must pour into it what we
say very carefully, and as it were drop by drop.
Only the temperate style is classic.
It is a great art, that of knowing how to point one's thought
and pierce the attention.
Each author has his own dictionary.
It needs more clearness of intellect and more delicate tact to
be a great writer than a great thinker.
NE
OF THE QUALITIES OF THE WRITER
TEVER write anything that does not give you enjoyment: emo-
tion passes easily from the writer to the reader.
The fine feelings and ideas that we wish to set forth in
our writings should become familiar to us, in order that the ease
and charm of intimacy be felt in their expression.
All that we say should be suffused with ourselves, with our
soul. This operation is long, but it immortalizes everything.
The mind conceives with pain, but brings forth with delight.
When writing we should recollect that scholars are present;
but it is not to them that we should speak.
An ordinary book needs only a subject; but for a fine work
there is a germ which develops itself in the mind like a plant.
The sole beautiful works are those that have been for a long
while, if not worked over, at least meditated upon.
Many useless phrases come into the head, but the mind grinds
its colors out of them.
In the mind of certain writers nothing is grouped or draped
or modeled; their pages only offer a flat surface on which words
roll.
The end of a work should always suggest the beginning.
## p. 8395 (#607) ###########################################
JOSEPH JOUBERT
8395
There never was a literary age whose dominant taste was not
unhealthy. The success of excellent authors consists in making
wholesome works agreeable to morbid tastes.
Taste is the literary conscience of the soul.
When in any nation an individual is born who is capable of
producing a great thought, another is born capable of compre-
hending it and admiring it.
Beautiful works do not intoxicate, but enchant.
It is not the opinions of authors, and that part of their teach-
ings which we call assertions, that most instruct and nourish the
mind. In great writers there is an invisible and subtle juice,
imbibed in reading them,- an indescribable fluid, a salt, a prin-
ciple more nutritive than all the rest.
Between esteem and contempt, there is in literature a path
which offers success without glory, and is also obtained without
merit.
It is worth a hundred times more to adapt a work to the
nature of the human mind than to what is called the state of
society. In man there is something immutable; thence it is that
in the arts and works of art there are fixed rules,— beauties that
will always please, or else contrivances that will please but for
a short time.
It is not enough to write so as to attract and hold attention:
we must repay it.
Does literary talent need to avail itself of passion ? Yes, of
manifold passion restrained.
The extent of a palace is measured from east to west, or from
north to south; but that of a literary work, from the earth to
heaven: so that there may sometimes be found as much range
and power of mind in a few pages — in an ode, for example -as
in a whole epic poem.
It is better to be exquisite than to be ample. Dealers respect
big books, but readers prefer small ones, — they last longer and
go farther. Virgil and Horace have left but one volume. Homer,
Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Terence not more. Menan-
der, who delights us, is reduced to a few leaves. Without Te.
lemachus, who would know Fénelon? Who would know Bossuet
without his Funeral Orations and his Discourse on Universal
History? Pascal, La Bruyère, Vauvenargues, and La Roche-
foucauld, Boileau, Racine, and La Fontaine, occupy little space,
and are the delight of the cultivated. The best writers write
## p. 8396 (#608) ###########################################
8396
JOSEPH JOUBERT
little, because they need to reduce to beauty their abundance and
wealth.
Remember what St. Francis of Sales said in speaking of the
Imitation of Jesus Christ': "I have sought repose everywhere,
and have only found it in a small corner with a small book. ”
Happy the author who can supply the need.
Force is not energy: some authors have more muscle than
talent.
Where there is no delicacy of touch, there is no literature.
In literary work, fatigue is what gives to the writer warning
of loss of power for the moment.
Indolence as well labor is sometimes needed by the
mind.
If a work shows the file, it is because it is not sufficiently
polished; if it smells of the oil, it is because one has not sat up
late enough over it [qu'on a trop peu veillé ].
What with the fever of the senses, the delirium of the heart,
and the weakness of the mind; with the storms of time and the
great trials of life; with hunger, thirst, dishonor, illness, and
death, - one can construct any number of romances that will
bring tears; but the soul says, “You do me harm! »
It is not needful that love should be introduced into a book;
but there should always be an impression of tenderness.
as
LITERARY JUDGMENTS
T*
WHERE never will be an endurable translation of Homer unless
all the words can be chosen with art, and be full of variety,
of freshness, and of grace.
The diction moreover must be
as antique, as simple, as the manners, the events, and the per-
sonages described. With our modern style everything is distorted
in Homer, and his heroes seem grotesque figures that take grave
and proud attitudes.
the Roman officers are beyond endurance severe, still, all the
Romans do not wrong you, nor does Cæsar; and yet it is against
these you levy war. It is not by command that any one comes
among you, from them, to be wicked; neither do they see from
west to east; nor is it easy to obtain in that quarter early intel-
ligence from hence.
« But it is absurd to wage war with many on account of
one, and for trivial reasons, with so great a people; and that too
when they know not what we complain of. And yet the evils
with which we charge them may be speedily corrected, for the
same procurator will not remain forever; and his successors, it is
probable, will come in a spirit of greater moderation. War, how-
ever, once moved, it is neither easy to lay aside without calamity,
nor yet to bear the burthen of it. But your present desire of
freedom is unseasonable, seeing you should have struggled earlier
not to lose it. For the experience of servitude is bitter, and the
exertion to avert its first approaches is just; but he who, once
subdued, afterwards revolts, is a refractory slave, not a lover of
liberty. For then was the time for doing your utmost to prevent
the Romans from gaining a footing, when Pompey made his first
inroad upon your country.
“You alone disdain servitude to those to whom the universe
has submitted. On what troops, on what weapons, do you rely?
Where is your feet to occupy the Roman seas? where the
treasures sufficing for the enterprise ? Do you suppose that it is
with the Egyptians and Arabians that war is to be waged ? Will
you not reflect on the empire of the Romans? Will you not
measure your own weakness? Have not your forces been fre-
quently defeated by nations on your borders ? and yet, through
the world their strength has stood unconquered; nay rather, they
have stretched their views farther even than this. For the entire
Euphrates has not sufficed them on the east; nor the Danube on
the north; nor on the south Libya, penetrated even to uninhab-
ited climes; nor Gadeira on the west. But beyond the ocean they
have sought another world, and have carried their arms far as
the Britons, unknown before to history.
## p. 8376 (#588) ###########################################
8376
JOSEPHUS
1
"Reflect, likewise, that even were you contending with no
formidable foe, the uncompromising character of your worship
would create a difficulty, since those very laws by which you
mainly hope to secure the Divine assistance will, if you are com-
pelled to transgress them, render God your enemy; since, should
you observe the usages of the Sabbath, and put your hand to no
work, you will fall an easy prey, as did your forefathers to Pom-
pey, who pressed his operations with the greatest vigor on those
days upon which the besieged rested.
"Unless indeed it be supposed that you will wage war by
compact; and that the Romans, when triumphant, will act toward
you with moderation, and not, as an example to other nations,
burn the Holy City to the ground, and root you out as a people
from the earth. For those of you who may survive will not
find a spot to flee to, since all have acknowledged the supremacy
of the Romans, or fear that they soon must do so. The danger,
however, threatens not us alone, but those also who reside in the
other cities. For there is not a nation in the world where some
of you are not to be found; all of whom, should you go to war,
will be sacrificed in retaliation by your adversaries. .
"Look with pity, then, if not on your children and wives, yet
on this your metropolis, and the sacred boundaries. Spare the
Temple, and preserve for yourselves this sanctuary with its holy
things. "
Having spoken thus, he wept, as did his sister; and their
emotion restrained in a great degree the violence of the people,
who cried out that they had not taken up arms against the
Romans, but to avenge their sufferings on Florus.
Traill's Translation.
JOSEPHUS'S SURRENDER TO THE ROMANS
From the Jewish Wars)
WLI
.
HILE Josephus was hesitating as to Nicanor's persuasions,
his nightly dreams, wherein God had foreshown
to him the approaching calamities of the Jews, and what
would befall the Roman sovereigns, occurred to him. As an in-
terpreter of dreams he had the art of collecting the meaning of
things delivered ambiguously by the Deity; nor was he unac-
quainted with the prophecies of the Sacred Books, being himself
## p. 8377 (#589) ###########################################
JOSEPHUS
8377
a priest, and a descendant of priests. Being at that moment
under a divine influence, and suddenly recalling the fearful im-
ages of his recent dreams, he addressed to God a secret prayer,
and said: “Since it seems good to thee, who didst found the
Jewish nation, now to level it with the dust, and transfer all its
fortune to the Romans, and since thou hast chosen my spirit to
foretell future events, I surrender willingly to the Romans, and
live: appealing to thee that I go over to them not as a traitor,
but as thy minister. ”
But when the Jews who had there taken refuge along with
him understood that he was yielding,
they
cried
out:- Deeply may our paternal laws groan! And well
may
God, who planted in the Jewish breast a soul that despises death,
hide his face in indignation! Is life so dear to thee, Josephus,
that thou canst endure to see the light in slavery? How soon
hast thou forgotten thyself! How many hast thou persuaded
to die for liberty! False then indeed has been thy reputation
for manliness, as well as for intelligence, if thou canst hope for
safety from those whom thou hast so strenuously opposed, or con-
sent to accept deliverance at their hands, even were it certain !
But though the fortune of the Romans has poured over thee
some strange forgetfulness of thyself, we must take care of our
country's glory. We will provide thee with right hand and
sword. If thou diest voluntarily, thou shalt die as general of the
Jews. ”
9
Josephus, fearing an outbreak,
proceeded to reason
with them philosophically respecting the emergency:
«Why, my comrades, should we so thirst for our own blood ?
or why do we set at variance such fond companions as soul and
body? Who says that I am changed ? But the Romans know
whether this is true. It is honorable, I admit, to die in war;
but only by the law of war,—that is, by the act of the victors.
Did I then shun the Roman blades, worthy indeed should I be
of my own sword and my own hand. But if pity for an enemy
enter their breasts, how much more justly should pity for our-
selves enter ours! For it is the extreme of folly to do that to
ourselves, to avoid which we quarrel with others.
But
some one will urge the dread of servitude. We are now, forsooth,
perfectly free! Another will say that it is noble to destroy one-
self. Far from it - but most ignoble! just as I would deem that
pilot most dastardly, who dreading a tempest, voluntarily sinks his
.
## p. 8378 (#590) ###########################################
8378
JOSEPHUS
are
ship ere the storm sets in. But further: suicide is alien to the
common nature of all animals, and an impiety against God who
created us. Nor indeed is there any living creature that dies
premeditatedly, or by its own act; for nature's law is strong in
all — the wish to live. For this reason also, those who attempt
overtly to deprive us of life we account enemies; and those who
attempt it clandestinely, we punish.
“Do you not think that God is indignant when man treats his
gift with contempt ? From him we have received our existence;
and the period when we no longer to exist, we refer to
his will. Our bodies indeed are mortal to all, and composed of
corruptible materials; but the soul, always immortal, and a por-
tion of the Deity, dwells in those bodies. Now, should any one
destroy or misapply what is deposited with him by man, he is
esteemed wicked and faithless; and should any one cast out from
his body what has been there deposited by God, do we suppose
that he will elude Him whom he has wronged ?
"I pray however that this may prove a faithless stratagem of
the Romans; for if, after an assurance of protection, I perish by
their hands, I shall die cheerfully, carrying with me their perfidy
and falsehood - a consolation greater than victory. ”
Josephus, having thus escaped in the war with the Romans,
as in that with his friends, was conducted to Vespasian by Nica-
nor.
Josephus intimated that he wished to speak in private to him;
and Vespasian having removed all except his son Titus and two
of his friends, Josephus addressed him in these words:-"You
think, Vespasian, that you have possessed yourself merely of a
captive in Josephus; but I come to you as a messenger of greater
things. Had I not received a commission from God, I knew the
law of the Jews, and how it becomes a general to die. Do you
send me to Nero? Wherefore? Are there any remaining to suc-
ceed Nero, previous to your own accession ? You, Vespasian, are
Cæsar and emperor you, and this your son. Bind me then the
more securely, and keep me for yourself. For you, Cæsar, are
master not only of me, but of sea and land, and of the whole
human race. And I deserve the punishment of stricter ward if
I talk lightly, especially in a matter pertaining to God. ”
Traill's Translation.
## p. 8379 (#591) ###########################################
JOSEPHUS
8379
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE AT JERUSALEM
From the Jewish Wars)
With
»
a
HILE the sanctuary [in Jerusalem] was in flames, everything
that fell in their way became a prey to rapine, and pro-
digious was the slaughter of those found there. To no
age was pity shown, to no rank respect; but children and old
men, secular persons and priests, were overwhelmed in one com-
mon ruin.
All ranks were inclosed in the embrace of war, and
hunted down; as well those who sued for mercy, as those who
made defense.
Their destruction was caused by a false prophet, who had on
that day proclaimed to those remaining in the city, that “God
commanded them to go up to the Temple, there to receive the
signs of their deliverance. ”
Thus it was that the im-
postors and pretended messengers of heaven at that time beguiled
the wretched people, while the manifest portents that foreshowed
the approaching desolation they neither heeded nor credited; but
as if confounded and bereft alike of eyes and mind, they dis-
regarded the immediate warnings of God. Thus it was when a
star resembling a sword stood over the city, and a comet which
continued for a year. Thus also it was when, prior to the revolt
and the first movements of the war, at the time when the people
were assembling for the feast of unleavened bread, on the eighth
of the month Xanthicus, at the ninth hour of the night, so vivid
a light shone round the altar and the sanctuary that it seemed to
be bright day; and this lasted half an hour. By the inexperi-
enced this was deemed favorable; but by the sacred scribes it was
at once pronounced a prelude of that which afterwards happened.
At the same festival also, a cow having been led by some one
to the sacrifice, brought forth a lamb in the midst of the court
of the Temple.
Moreover, the eastern gate of the inner court — which was of
brass and extremely massive, and when closed towards evening
could scarcely be moved by twenty men, and which was fastened
with bars shod with iron, and secured by bolts sunk to a great
depth in a threshold which consisted of one stone throughout-
was observed, about the sixth hour of the night, to have opened
of its own accord. The guards of the Temple ran and informed
the captain, who having repaired to the spot could scarcely
## p. 8380 (#592) ###########################################
8380
JOSEPHUS
(
succeed in shutting it. This again to the unlearned seemed a
most auspicious omen; for God, they thought, had unfolded to
them the gate of blessings: but the learned considered that the
security of the Temple was dissolving of its own accord, and the
gate opened for the advantage of the enemy; and explained it
among themselves as a sign of impending desolation.
Not many days after the festival, on the twenty-first of the
month Artemisius, there appeared a phenomenon so marvelous as
to exceed credibility. What I am about to relate would, I con-
ceive, be deemed a mere fable, had it not been related by eye-
witnesses, and attended by calamities commensurate with such
portents. Before sunset, were seen around the whole country
chariots poised in the air, and armed battalions speeding through
the clouds and investing the cities. And at the feast which is
called Pentecost, the priests having entered the inner court of
the Temple by night, as was their custom, for discharge of their
ministrations, their attention was drawn at first, they said, by a
movement and a clanging noise, and after this by a voice as of
a multitude, “We are departing hence. ”
But a story more fearful still remains. Four years prior to
the war, while the city was enjoying the utmost peace and pros-
perity, there came to the feast in which it is the custom for all
to erect tabernacles to God, one Jesus, son of Ananus, a rustic
of humble parentage, who, standing in the temple, suddenly began
to call aloud, "A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a
voice from the four winds; a voice against Jerusalem and the
sanctuary, a voice against bridegrooms and brides, a voice against
all the people! ” Day and night he traversed all the streets with
Some citizens, incensed at so ominous a voice, appre-
hended the man, and severely scourged him. But without utter-
ing a word in his own behalf, nor anything privately to those
who beat him, he continued his cry as before. At length the
rulers — supposing, and justly so, that the man was under some
supernatural impulse - conducted him to the presence of the
Roman procurator, where, though lacerated with scourges to the
very bone, he neither sued for mercy nor shed a tear; but modu-
lating his voice to a tone the most mournful that was possible,
repeated at every stroke, “Woe! woe! unto Jerusalem. ” Albinus
the procurator, demanding who he was, and whence, and why he
uttered these words, he made no manner of reply; desisting not
from his lamentation over the city, until Albinus, concluding that
this cry.
(
## p. 8381 (#593) ###########################################
JOSEPHUS
8381
he was a maniac, set him at liberty. Up to the breaking out
of the war, he neither associated with any of the citizens, nor
was he seen to speak to any one; but as if it were a prayer
that he had been meditating upon, daily uttered his lament,
Woe! woe! unto Jerusalem. ” He neither cursed those that beat
him from day to day, nor gave his blessing to such as supplied
him with food: to all, the melancholy presage was his one reply.
His voice was loudest at the festivals; and though for seven
years and five months he continued his wail, neither did his
voice become feeble nor did he grow weary, until during the
siege, after beholding his presages verified, he ceased. For as
he was going his round on the wall, crying with a piercing
voice,"Woe! woe! once more, to the city, to the people, and to
the Temple;” when at the last he had added, “Woe! woe! to
myself also,” he was struck by a stone shot from the ballista
and killed upon the spot, still uttering with his dying lips the
same portentous words.
If we reflect on these events, we shall find that God exercises
over men, in every way foreshowing to their race the
means of safety; but that they perish through their own folly
and self-incurred evils. Thus the Jews, after the demolition of
the Antonia, reduced their Temple to a square, though they had
it recorded in their oracles that “the city and the sanctuary
would be taken when the Temple should become square. ” But
what chiefly incited them to the war was an ambiguous prophecy,
likewise found in their sacred writings, that "about this period
some one from their country should obtain the empire of the
world. ” This they received as applying to themselves, and many
eminent for wisdom were deceived in the interpretation of it.
The oracle, however, in reality indicated the elevation of Ves-
pasian — he having been proclaimed emperor in Judæa. But it is
not possible for men to avoid their fate, even though they foresee
it. Some of these portents they interpreted according to their
pleasure, others they treated with contempt, until their folly was
exposed by the conquest of their country and their own destruc-
tion.
Traill's Translation.
care
## p. 8382 (#594) ###########################################
8382
JOSEPHUS
THE HEBREW FAITH, WORSHIP, AND LAWS
From the Treatise Against Apion)
W**
N"
HAT form of government then can be more holy than this?
What more worthy kind of worship can be paid to God
than we pay, where the entire body of the people are
prepared for religion; where an extraordinary degree of care is
required in the priests, and where the whole polity is so ordered
as if it were a certain religious solemnity ?
a
For what things
foreigners, when they solemnize such festivals, are not able to
observe for a few days' time, and call them mysterious and sacred
ceremonies, we observe with great pleasure and an unshaken
resolution during our whole lives. What are the things then
that we are commanded or forbidden? They are simple, and
easily known. The first command is concerning God, and affirms
that God contains all things, and is a being every way perfect
and happy, self-sufficient, and supplying all other beings; the
beginning, the middle, and the end of all things. He is manifest
in his works and benefits, and more conspicuous than any other
being whatsoever; but as to his form and magnitude he is most
obscure. All materials, let them be ever so costly, are unworthy
to compose an image for him; and all arts are unartful to ex-
press the notion we ought to have of him. We can neither see
nor think of anything like him, nor is it agreeable to piety to
form a resemblance of him. We see his works: the light, the
heavens, the earth, the sun and the moon, the waters, the gen-
eration of animals, the production of fruits. These things hath
God made, not with hands, not with labor, not as wanting the
assistance of any to co-operate with him; but as his will resolved
they should be made and be good also, they were made and
became good immediately. All men ought to follow this being,
and to worship him in the exercise of virtue; for this way of
worship of God is the most holy of all others.
There ought also to be but One Temple for One God: for
likeness is the constant foundation of agreement. This temple
ought to be common to all men, because he is the common
God of all men. His priests are to be continually about his
worship; over whom he that is the first by his birth is to be
their ruler perpetually. His business must be to offer sacrifices
to God, together with those priests that are joined with him;
to see that the laws be observed; to determine controversies, and
## p. 8383 (#595) ###########################################
JOSEPHUS
8383
to punish those that are convicted of injustice: while he that
does not submit to him shall be subject to the same punishment
as if he had been guilty of impiety towards God himself.
But then, what are our laws about marriage ? That law owns
no other mixture of sexes but that which nature hath appointed,
of a man with his wife, and that this be used only for the pro-
creation of children. But it abhors the mixture of a male with
a male; and if any one do that, death is its punishment.
Nay, indeed, the law does not permit us to make festivals at
the births of our children, and thereby afford occasion of drink-
ing to excess; but it ordains that the very beginning of our edu-
cation should be immediately directed to sobriety.
Our law hath also taken care of the decent burial of the
dead; but without any extravagant expenses for the funerals, and
without the erection of any illustrious monuments for them. . .
The law ordains also that parents should be honored imme-
diately after God himself; and delivers that son who does not
requite them for the benefits he hath received from them, but is
deficient on any such occasion, to be stoned. It also says that
the young man should pay due respect to every elder, since God
is the eldest of all beings.
It will be also worth our while to see what equity our legis-
lator would have us exercise in our intercourse with strangers.
Accordingly, our legislator admits all those that have a
mind to observe our laws so to do, and this after a friendly
manner, as esteeming that a true union which not only extends
to our own stock, but to those that would live after the same
manner with us; yet does he not allow those that come to us by
accident only to be admitted into communion with us.
The greatest part of offenses with us are capital.
Now, as for ourselves, I venture to say that no one can tell
of so many, nay, not more than one or two, that have betrayed
our laws; no, not out of fear of death itself.
Now I
think those that have conquered us have put us to such deaths,
not out of their hatred to us when they had subdued us, but
rather out of their desire to see a surprising sight, which is this,
whether there be such men in the world who believe that no
evil is to them so great as to be compelled to do or to speak
anything contrary to their own laws!
Whiston's Translation.
.
## p. 8384 (#596) ###########################################
8384
JOSEPHUS
ORIGIN OF THE ASAMONEAN OR MACCABÆAN REVOLT
From the Antiquities)
W"
HEN the emissaries of the King [Antiochus] came to Modin
to compel the Jews to offer (pagan] sacrifice as
the King commanded, they wished Mattathias (priest,
great-grandson of Asamoneus, and father of Judas Maccabæus
and four other powerful sons] - a person of the highest consider-
ation among them on all grounds, and especially as having so
large and meritorious a family — to begin the sacrifice; because
the populace would follow his example, and the King would be-
stow honors upon him for it. But Mattathias said he would
not do it; and if every other people obeyed Antiochus's orders,
either from fear or self-seeking, he and his sons would not desert
their country's religion. ” But when he had finished speaking,
another Jew came forward and began to sacrifice as Antiochus
had commanded. Mattathias was so incensed that he and his
sons, who had their swords with them, fell on the sacrificer, and
slew both him, Apelles (the King's general who had enforced the
sacrifice), and several of the soldiers. Then he overthrew the
pagan altar, and cried out, “If any one has zeal for the lands of
his country and the worship of God, let him follow me;" and
fied to the desert with his sons, abandoning all his property in
the town. Many others followed him, and dwelt in caves in the
desert with their wives and children. When the King's generals
heard of this, they took the troops in the citadel at Jerusalem
and went in pursuit of the fugitives; and having overtaken them,
tried first to persuade them to take counsel of prudence and not
compel the soldiers to treat them according to the laws of war.
Meeting with a refusal, they assailed them on the Sabbath, and
burnt them unresisting in the caves.
Many of those
who escaped joined Mattathias and appointed him their ruler.
So Mattathias got a great army about him, and over-
threw their idolatrous altars, and slew those that broke their
laws, all he could lay hands on.
## p. 8385 (#597) ###########################################
8385
JOSEPH JOUBERT
(1754-1824)
BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
OSEPH JOUBERT, who has now succeeded to the place long held
by La Rochefoucauld as the best author of aphorisms, was
first introduced to the general world of English-speaking
readers by Matthew Arnold in 1865: but he was known to many, at
least in America, through what Sainte-Beuve had said of him; and
Mr. Stedman thinks that Edgar Poe, whose French reading was very
discursive, had known him even before Sainte-Beuve wrote. Joubert,
who was born in 1754, died May 4th, 1824; and a tribute was paid to
his memory, a day or two after his death, by Châteaubriand, which
might well have arrested the attention of Poe. In 1838 Châteaubriand
edited his works. It is, however, fair to say that as Ruskin vastly
expanded the reputation of Turner, though he did not create it, so
the present renown of Joubert is due largely to the generous tribute
of Arnold.
With the praise due to generosity the recognition of Arnold's serv-
ice must end. It was hardly possible to set readers more distinctly
on the wrong track in respect to an author than to compare, as
Arnold does, Joubert to Coleridge; making this comparison indeed
the keynote of his essay It is difficult. were not Arnold so em-
phatically a man of whims — to find common ground between the
tersest writer of his time and the most diffuse; the most determined
and the most irresolute; the most clear-cut and the most misty.
With all the great merits and services of Coleridge, and the fact that
he had occasionally the power of making an incisive detached remark,
the fact remains undisputed of the wandering and slumberous quality
of his mind, and of the concentration in him of many of the precise
qualities that Joubert spent his life in combating. The best course
to be adopted by any reader of Joubert is therefore to cut adrift
from Arnold, and turn to the original book,- not the volume of
letters, which is less satisfactory, but to the original volume of
Pensées, which contain within four hundred pages more of the con-
densed essence of thought than can be found anywhere else in a
series of volumes.
Joubert was born in 1754 in Montignac, a small town of Périgord,
France; studied and also taught at the College of Toulouse; went in
XIV-525
-
## p. 8386 (#598) ###########################################
8386
JOSEPH JOUBERT
1778 to Paris; knew Diderot, Marmontel, Châteaubriand, D'Alembert:
was chosen during his absence in 1790 chief magistrate of his native
town, served in that capacity two years and was re-elected, but
declined to serve; took up his residence in 1792 at Villeneuve in
Brittany, and spent his later life between that town and Paris; in
1809 was appointed by Napoleon Bonaparte a regent of the Univer-
sity, and died in 1824. He lived through the French Revolution, and
through the period of the Encyclopædists; but he preserved not
merely his life but his faith. He was in the habit, from twenty
years old to seventy, of writing down his detached thoughts, often
previously molded by conversation; his rooms at the top of a tall
house in the Rue St. Honoré being the resort of the brightest minds
in Paris. Fourteen years after his death, both his thoughts and
his correspondence were collected and given to the world; but the
thoughts afford by far the more interesting volume of the two.
As Arnold has misled readers by his comparison with Coleridge,
so his total estimate of Joubert is probably below the truth; because
the crowning quality of Joubert – severe and sublimated concentra.
tion was remote from Arnold's own temperament. The Englishman
was constitutionally discursive and long-winded. Nothing better was
ever said about Homer than he has incidentally said in his essay on
translating him: the trouble is that it takes him nearly a hundred
and fifty pages to say it. It is certain that Joubert never would have
written such a paper; it is very doubtful whether he could even have
read it. Arnold's favorite amusement - perhaps a tradition from his
father's sermons — was to begin an essay with a quotation from some
one, to attach every succeeding point of his essay to this text, to
play with it as a cat plays with a mouse, and then at the close to
take it for granted that he had proved its soundness: this was wholly
foreign to Joubert. It is however in Joubert that we find invariably
the sweetness and light which Arnold preached, but did not always
practice.
It is for this reason perhaps that Arnold dislikes the first or per-
sonal chapter of Joubert's Pensées': “It has,” he says, “some fanci-
fulness and affectation about it; the reader should begin with the
second. ” But if the reader takes this unwise advice he will miss the
whole personal equation of Joubert, and misinterpret him again
and again. He will miss also some of his finest thoughts; as where
he anticipates Emerson in one of the latter's most noted passages by
saying, "I dislike to quit Paris, because it involves separation from
my friends; and to quit the country, because it implies separation
from myself. ” He also anticipates a passage once famous in Miss
Edgeworth’s Helen' when he writes, “I even like better those who
make vice amiable than those who make virtue unattractive. He
## p. 8387 (#599) ###########################################
JOSEPH JOUBERT
8387
((
writes finely of his own experience: “My soul dwells in a region
where all passions have passed; I have known them all. ” With the
experience which years bring to all writers, he thus sums up their
result: “I needed age in order to learn what I desired to know; and
I should need youth in order to utter well what I now know.
” This
suggests, but not too sadly, that great summary of existence by St.
Augustine, -- "Now that I begin to know something, I die. And he
thus sums up the beginning and the end of his method of writing,
the very keystone of the arch of his fame: "If there is a man tor-
mented by the accursed ambition to put a whole book into a page, a
whole page into a phrase, and that phrase into a word, it is I. ”
All these passages are from that first chapter, The author por-
trayed by himself, which Mr. Arnold injudiciously advises readers to
omit. Then follows his chapter on piety, of which he finely says:
«Piety is a sublime wisdom, surpassing all others; a kind of gen-
ius, which gives wings to the mind. No one is wise unless he is
pious. Again, Piety is a species of modesty. It leads us to shield
our thought, as modesty bids us shield our eyes, before all forbid-
den things. ” And again, in one of his fine condensations he says,
«Heaven is for those who think about it. ” (Le ciel est pour ceux
qui y pensent). Then follow chapters covering Man, The Soul, Mod-
esty, The Various Times of Life, Death, The Family, Good Manners,
Truth, Illusion, Philosophy, Light, Governments, Liberty and Law,
Antiquity, Education, The Fine Arts, Style, The Qualities of an
Author; including also many other themes, and finally closing with
Literary Judgments - these covering authors ancient and modern.
The book is admirably edited, and adds to its merits that of an
analytical table at the end, so that it is practically a dictionary of
quotations. The late Mr. George H. Calvert, of Newport, R. I. ,
translates a portion of it — less than half — with a preliminary notice
(Boston, 1867); but the translations are not always felicitous, though
the feeling shown is always sympathetic.
Joubert sometimes suggests Montaigne, but with great differences:
he is never garrulous and never coarse. In him we taste in full the
exquisite felicity, the limpid clearness, the well-defined accuracy of
the French tradition, without the smallest trace of that refined indeli-
cacy in which vice does not lose half its evil by losing all its gross-
In him his native idiom stands out clearly for what it is, –
the lineal successor of the Greek, if the Greek can have a successor.
Then, the national virtues of courtesy, amiability, and bonhomie shine
out supreme: he goes, for instance, the whole round of his contem-
poraries, speaking his mind freely, yet without an unkind word; and
although a devout Catholic, he handles the Jansenists without a trace
of the odium theologicum.
ness.
## p. 8388 (#600) ###########################################
8388
JOSEPH JOUBERT
This refinement is the more remarkable in Joubert, because he
owed much to Rousseau in style, and was the originator of that often
quoted phrase concerning him, that he was the first person who gave
bowels to words,- in the sense used symbolically for that word in the
Bible. But he demands that this power of tender expression should
be always chaste; and in the very last of his maxims says that art
should always keep within the realm of beauty, and should never
forget the ancient religious precept, “Outside the temple and the
sacrifice, make no display of the intestines of the victim. ” And he
indicates the high standard of French courtesy by uniformly resting
it on noble motives. “Politeness,” he says, “is to kindness of heart
[bonté] what words are to thought. It does not merely influence the
manners, but even the mind and heart; it moderates and softens all
feelings, opinions, and words. ” And in another place he says in
yet more condensed form, «Courtesy is the very flower of humanity.
He who is not quite courteous is not quite human. ”
»
Tow Higginoon
.
OF MAN
T"
He body is the tent where our existence is encamped.
The voice is a human sound which nothing lifeless can
perfectly imitate. It has an authority and an impressiveness
which writing wants. It is not merely air, but air modulated by
us, impregnated with our warmth, and as it were enveloped in
the haze of our atmosphere; from which an emanation attends
it, and which gives it a certain form and certain virtues fitted to
act on the mind. Speech is only thought incorporated,
The more I think on it, the more I see that the mind is
something outside of the soul, as the hands are outside of the
body, the eyes outside of the head, the branches outside of the
trunk. It helps to do more, but not to be more.
The mind is a fire of which thought is the flame.
The imagination is the eye of the soul.
## p. 8389 (#601) ###########################################
JOSEPH JOUBERT
8389
OF THE NATURE OF MINDS
M
EN measure minds by their stature: it would be better to
estimate them by their beauty.
Nature has made two kinds of fine intellects: some to
produce thoughts and beautiful actions, others to admire them.
Heaven rarely grants to the same men the power of thinking
well, of speaking well, and of acting well in all things.
One is never mediocre when he has plenty of good sense and
good feeling
Sometimes great minds are nevertheless false minds. They
are well-constructed compasses, but whose needles, affected by
the influence of some neighboring object, always turn away from
the north.
He who has imagination without learning has wings without
feet.
OF VIRTUE AND MORALITY
E
VERYTHING may be learned even virtue.
We should do everything to let good people have their
own way.
Do not cut what you can untie.
To be always occupied with the duties of others, never with
our own — alas!
There are those who have only fragments: they have not
enough of the material to make a coat.
Without duty, life is soft and boneless; it can no longer sus-
tain itself.
Not only is there no virtue where there is no rule and law,
but there is not even pleasure. The plays of children themselves
have laws, and would not exist without them; these laws are
always a form of restraint, and nevertheless, the more strictly
they are obeyed the greater is the amusement.
OF THE FAMILY
W
E SHOULD choose for a wife only such a woman as we should
choose for a friend were she a man.
Nothing does a woman so much honor as her patience,
and nothing so little as the patience of her husband.
## p. 8390 (#602) ###########################################
8390
JOSEPH JOUBERT
We should wear our velvet inside; that is, be most amiable to
those with whom we dwell at home.
The pleasure of pleasing is a legitimate one, and the desire to
rule repulsive.
We should carry with us that indulgence and that habit of
attention which call the thoughts of others into bloom.
We should pique ourselves on being reasonable, not on being
right; on sincerity, not infallibility.
It is better to win than to command.
Before speaking ill of an eminent man, it might be well to
wait till he has done ill.
A small supply of everything, a surfeit of nothing, - this is
the key to moderation, wisdom, and content.
-
OF EDUCATION
C*
HILDREN need models rather than critics.
Education should be tender and strict, and not cold and
relaxing
In rearing a child, think of its old age.
People regard young men as merely students; but I see in
them young men also.
To teach is to learn twice over.
To have shared the mode of education common to all is a
great advantage to gifted minds, because they are thus kept in
touch with others.
OF THE PASSIONS
Wha
HATEVER purifies the passions makes them stronger, more
lasting, and more enjoyable.
We exhaust in the passions the material that was given
us for happiness.
Passions are but nature: it is the not repenting that yields
corruption.
Repentance is a natural effort which drives from the soul the
elements of its corruption.
Into every kind of excess there enters a certain coldness of
soul: it is a thoughtful and deliberate abuse of pleasure.
## p. 8391 (#603) ###########################################
JOSEPH JOUBERT
8391
The blind are cheerful, because their minds are not distracted
from dwelling on the things that make them happy, and because
they have yet more ideas than we have sights. It is a compen-
a
sation granted them by Heaven.
We always lose the friendship of those who have lost our
esteem.
Often our fine qualities are loved and praised only because our
defects temper their brilliancy. It often even happens that we
are loved rather for our defects than for our virtues.
We should make ourselves beloved, for men are only just
towards those whom they love.
The punishment of those who have loved women too much is
to love nothing else.
Tenderness is the calm of passion.
Man is a kind of rash being, who may exist after a fashion
half-way, but whose existence is the more delightful the more
complete it is.
One likes to do good deeds in one's own way.
Ambition is pitiless: every merit that it cannot use is con-
temptible in its eyes.
No one is good, one cannot be useful and deserves not to be
loved, if he has not something heavenly, either in his intellect
through thoughts, or in his will through affections directed on
high.
It is a blessing, a great good fortune, to be born good.
Unless we keep watch on ourselves, we shall find ourselves
condemning the unfortunate.
Be gentle and indulgent to all others; be not so to yourself.
The pleasure of giving is essential to true happiness; but the
poor may possess it.
When you give, give joyfully and in smiling.
Proud natures love those to whom they do a service.
Ornaments were the inventions of modesty.
"God will punish,” say the Orientals, “him who sees and
him who is seen. ” Beautiful and formidable recommendation of
modesty.
A spider's web made of silk and light were not more difficult
to create than to answer this question, What is modesty ?
C
## p. 8392 (#604) ###########################################
8392
JOSEPH JOUBERT
OF SOCIETY
T°
SEE the world is to judge the judges.
The attention of the listener affords a sort of accompa-
niment to the music of the talk.
If one has two names, he should be addressed by that which
is the more beautiful, the sweeter, the more sonorous.
Grace copies modesty as politeness copies kindness of heart.
OF DIFFERENT AGES
N°
TOTHING is so hard to children as reflection. This is because
the final and essential destiny of the soul is to see, to
know, and not to reflect. To reflect is one of the toils of
life; a means of arriving, a route, a passage, and not a centre.
To know and be known,- these are the two points of repose;
such will be the happiness of souls.
Address yourself to young people: they know it all.
There is nothing good in man but his young feelings and his
old thoughts.
Two ages of life should be sexless: the child and the aged
man should be as modest as women.
Old age robs the man of sense only of those qualities that are
useless to wisdom.
It would seem that for certain intellectual product the winter
of the body is the autumn of the soul.
The residuum of human wisdom, refined by age, is perhaps
the best thing we have.
Life's evening brings with it its lamp.
Those who have a long old age are, as it were, purified of
the body.
Old age must have had most honor in times when each man
could not know much more than what he had seen.
It is well to treat our life as we treat our writings: to pro-
vide that the beginning, the middle, and the end are in pro-
portion, in harmony. For this object we need to make many
erasures.
There is a time when the body's forces change place and con-
centrate themselves in the mind.
To be born obscure and die famous are the two boundaries
of human happiness.
## p. 8393 (#605) ###########################################
JOSEPH JOUBERT
8393
The deliberation of old age makes it easier to be patient in
labor.
We are all priests of Vesta, and life is the sacred fire which
we are to prolong until God extinguishes it.
A beautiful old age is for all beholders a delightful promise,
since each can hope the same for him or his.
old men constitute the true majority among the people.
Only robust old men have the dignity of old age, and they
are the only ones who can justly speak of it.
Courtesy softens wrinkles.
One loves an old man as a perishable treasure; a ripe fruit
whose fall one must expect.
In neat and fresh garments old age finds a sort of youth with
which to surround itself.
No one is truly happy in old age except the aged priest and
those of similar type.
It is a good thing to die still lovable; if one only can.
Patience and trial, courage and death, resignation and neces-
sity, arrive usually together. Indifference to life comes when it
is no longer possible to preserve life.
OF POETRY
PoEphers. " In seeking what is beautiful, they find
more truths
have a
,
than philosophers in seeking what is true.
Poets are more inspired by the images of objects than even
by their presence.
The poet should not traverse at a walk an interval which
might be cleared at a bound.
In the poetic style every word resounds like the twang of a
lyre well strung, and leaves after it a number of undulations.
Like the nectar of the bee, which turns to honey the dust of
flowers, or like that liquor which converts lead into gold, the poet
has a breath that fills out words, gives them light and color. He
knows wherein consists their charm, and by what art enchanted
structures may be built with them.
To fill an old word with new meaning, of which usage or
age had emptied it, so to speak,—this is not innovation, it is re-
juvenation. We enrich languages by digging into them. They
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JOSEPH JOUBERT
should be treated like fields: to make them fertile in old age,
they must be stirred at great depths.
Before employing a beautiful word, make a place for it.
OF STYLE
Wa
ELL-CHOSEN words are abridged sentences.
Literary style consists in giving a body and a shape to
the thought by the phrase.
Attention has a narrow mouth; we must pour into it what we
say very carefully, and as it were drop by drop.
Only the temperate style is classic.
It is a great art, that of knowing how to point one's thought
and pierce the attention.
Each author has his own dictionary.
It needs more clearness of intellect and more delicate tact to
be a great writer than a great thinker.
NE
OF THE QUALITIES OF THE WRITER
TEVER write anything that does not give you enjoyment: emo-
tion passes easily from the writer to the reader.
The fine feelings and ideas that we wish to set forth in
our writings should become familiar to us, in order that the ease
and charm of intimacy be felt in their expression.
All that we say should be suffused with ourselves, with our
soul. This operation is long, but it immortalizes everything.
The mind conceives with pain, but brings forth with delight.
When writing we should recollect that scholars are present;
but it is not to them that we should speak.
An ordinary book needs only a subject; but for a fine work
there is a germ which develops itself in the mind like a plant.
The sole beautiful works are those that have been for a long
while, if not worked over, at least meditated upon.
Many useless phrases come into the head, but the mind grinds
its colors out of them.
In the mind of certain writers nothing is grouped or draped
or modeled; their pages only offer a flat surface on which words
roll.
The end of a work should always suggest the beginning.
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8395
There never was a literary age whose dominant taste was not
unhealthy. The success of excellent authors consists in making
wholesome works agreeable to morbid tastes.
Taste is the literary conscience of the soul.
When in any nation an individual is born who is capable of
producing a great thought, another is born capable of compre-
hending it and admiring it.
Beautiful works do not intoxicate, but enchant.
It is not the opinions of authors, and that part of their teach-
ings which we call assertions, that most instruct and nourish the
mind. In great writers there is an invisible and subtle juice,
imbibed in reading them,- an indescribable fluid, a salt, a prin-
ciple more nutritive than all the rest.
Between esteem and contempt, there is in literature a path
which offers success without glory, and is also obtained without
merit.
It is worth a hundred times more to adapt a work to the
nature of the human mind than to what is called the state of
society. In man there is something immutable; thence it is that
in the arts and works of art there are fixed rules,— beauties that
will always please, or else contrivances that will please but for
a short time.
It is not enough to write so as to attract and hold attention:
we must repay it.
Does literary talent need to avail itself of passion ? Yes, of
manifold passion restrained.
The extent of a palace is measured from east to west, or from
north to south; but that of a literary work, from the earth to
heaven: so that there may sometimes be found as much range
and power of mind in a few pages — in an ode, for example -as
in a whole epic poem.
It is better to be exquisite than to be ample. Dealers respect
big books, but readers prefer small ones, — they last longer and
go farther. Virgil and Horace have left but one volume. Homer,
Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Terence not more. Menan-
der, who delights us, is reduced to a few leaves. Without Te.
lemachus, who would know Fénelon? Who would know Bossuet
without his Funeral Orations and his Discourse on Universal
History? Pascal, La Bruyère, Vauvenargues, and La Roche-
foucauld, Boileau, Racine, and La Fontaine, occupy little space,
and are the delight of the cultivated. The best writers write
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JOSEPH JOUBERT
little, because they need to reduce to beauty their abundance and
wealth.
Remember what St. Francis of Sales said in speaking of the
Imitation of Jesus Christ': "I have sought repose everywhere,
and have only found it in a small corner with a small book. ”
Happy the author who can supply the need.
Force is not energy: some authors have more muscle than
talent.
Where there is no delicacy of touch, there is no literature.
In literary work, fatigue is what gives to the writer warning
of loss of power for the moment.
Indolence as well labor is sometimes needed by the
mind.
If a work shows the file, it is because it is not sufficiently
polished; if it smells of the oil, it is because one has not sat up
late enough over it [qu'on a trop peu veillé ].
What with the fever of the senses, the delirium of the heart,
and the weakness of the mind; with the storms of time and the
great trials of life; with hunger, thirst, dishonor, illness, and
death, - one can construct any number of romances that will
bring tears; but the soul says, “You do me harm! »
It is not needful that love should be introduced into a book;
but there should always be an impression of tenderness.
as
LITERARY JUDGMENTS
T*
WHERE never will be an endurable translation of Homer unless
all the words can be chosen with art, and be full of variety,
of freshness, and of grace.
The diction moreover must be
as antique, as simple, as the manners, the events, and the per-
sonages described. With our modern style everything is distorted
in Homer, and his heroes seem grotesque figures that take grave
and proud attitudes.
