intellect. The one has force and exactness, the other comprehension.
Now the one quality can exist without the other; the intellect can
be strong and narrow, and can also be comprehensive and weak.

    3. Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling do not
understand the process of reasoning, for they would understand at
first sight and are not used to seek for principles. And others, on
the contrary, who are accustomed to reason from principles, do not
at all understand matters of feeling, seeking principles and being
unable to see at a glance.

    4. Mathematics, intuition.- True eloquence makes light of
eloquence, true morality makes light of morality; that is to say,
the morality of the judgement, which has no rules, makes light of
the morality of the intellect.

    For it is to judgement that perception belongs, as science belongs
to intellect. Intuition is the part of judgement, mathematics of
intellect.

    To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

    5. Those who judge of a work by rule are in regard to others as
those who have a watch are in regard to others. One says, "It is two
hours ago"; the other says, "It is only three-quarters of an hour."
I look at my watch, and say to the one, "You are weary," and to the
other, "Time gallops with you"; for it is only an hour and a half ago,
and I laugh at those who tell me that time goes slowly with me and
that I judge by imagination. They do not know that I judge by my
watch.

    6. Just as we harm the understanding, we harm the feelings also.

    The understanding and the feelings are moulded by intercourse; the
understanding and feelings are corrupted by intercourse. Thus good
or bad society improves or corrupts them. It is, then, all-important
to know how to choose in order to improve and not to corrupt them; and
we cannot make this choice, if they be not already improved and not
corrupted. Thus a circle is formed, and those are fortunate who escape
it.

    7. The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds
in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

    8. There are many people who listen to a sermon in the same way as
they listen to vespers.

    9. When we wish to correct with advantage and to show another that
he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on
that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but
reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with
that, for he sees that he was not mistaken and that he only failed
to see all sides. Now, no one is offended at not seeing everything;
but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the
fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he
cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our
senses are always true.

    10. People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which
they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the
mind of others.

    11. All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life;
but among all those which the world has invented there is none more to
be feared than the theatre. It is a representation of the passions
so natural and so delicate that it excites them and gives birth to
them in our hearts, and, above all, to that of love, principally
when it is represented as very chaste and virtuous. For the more
innocent it appears to innocent souls, the more they are likely to
be touched by it. Its violence pleases our self-love, which
immediately forms a desire to produce the same effects which are
seen so well represented; and, at the same time, we make ourselves a
conscience founded on the propriety of the feelings which we see
there, by which the fear of pure souls is removed, since they
imagine that it cannot hurt their purity to love with a love which
seems to them so reasonable.

    So we depart from the theatre with our heart so filled with all
the beauty and tenderness of love, the soul and the mind so
persuaded of its innocence, that we are quite ready to receive its
first impressions, or rather to seek an opportunity of awakening
them in the heart of another, in order that we may receive the same
pleasures and the same sacrifices which we have seen so well
represented in the theatre.

    12. Scaramouch, who only thinks of one thing.

    The doctor, who speaks for a quarter of an hour after he has
said everything, so full is he of the desire of talking.

    13. One likes to see the error, the passion of Cleobuline, because
she is unconscious of it. She would be displeasing, if she were not
deceived.

    14. When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one
feels within oneself the truth of what one reads, which was there
before, although one did not know it. Hence one is inclined to love
him who makes us feel it, for he has not shown us his own riches,
but ours. And thus this benefit renders him pleasing to us, besides
that such community of intellect as we have with him necessarily