107

Lustravit lampade terras.[63]—­The weather and my mood have little connection.  I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter.  I sometimes struggle against luck, the glory of mastering it makes me master it gaily; whereas I am sometimes surfeited in the midst of good fortune.

108

Although people may have no interest in what they are saying, we must not absolutely conclude from this that they are not lying; for there are some people who lie for the mere sake of lying.

109

When we are well we wonder what we would do if we were ill, but when we are ill we take medicine cheerfully; the illness persuades us to do so.  We have no longer the passions and desires for amusements and promenades which health gave to us, but which are incompatible with the necessities of illness.  Nature gives us, then, passions and desires suitable to our present state.[64] We are only troubled by the fears which we, and not nature, give ourselves, for they add to the state in which we are the passions of the state in which we are not.

As nature makes us always unhappy in every state, our desires picture to us a happy state; because they add to the state in which we are the pleasures of the state in which we are not.  And if we attained to these pleasures, we should not be happy after all; because we should have other desires natural to this new state.

We must particularise this general proposition....

110

The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.

111

Inconstancy.—­We think we are playing on ordinary organs when playing upon man.  Men are organs, it is true, but, odd, changeable, variable [with pipes not arranged in proper order.  Those who only know how to play on ordinary organs] will not produce harmonies on these.  We must know where [the keys] are.

112

Inconstancy.—­Things have different qualities, and the soul different inclinations; for nothing is simple which is presented to the soul, and the soul never presents itself simply to any object.  Hence it comes that we weep and laugh at the same thing.

113

Inconstancy and oddity.—­To live only by work, and to rule over the most powerful State in the world, are very opposite things.  They are united in the person of the great Sultan of the Turks.

114

Variety is as abundant as all tones of the voice, all ways of walking, coughing, blowing the nose, sneezing.  We distinguish vines by their fruit, and call them the Condrien, the Desargues, and such and such a stock.  Is this all?  Has a vine ever produced two bunches exactly the same, and has a bunch two grapes alike? etc.

I can never judge of the same thing exactly in the same way.  I cannot judge of my work, while doing it.  I must do as the artists, stand at a distance, but not too far.  How far, then?  Guess.