by the vast elderly choir

The noise
of a cannon is not necessary to hinder its thoughts; it needs only the
creaking of a weather*** or pulley. Do not wonder if at present it does not
reason well; a fly is buzzing in its ears; that is enough to render it
incapable of good judgement. If you wish it to be able to reach the truth,
chase away that animal which holds its reason in check and disturbs that
powerful intellect which rules towns and kingdoms. Here is a comical god! O
ridicolosissimo eroe!

367. The power of flies; they win battles, hinder our soul from acting, eat
our body.

368. When it is said that heat is only the motions of certain molecules, and
light the conatus recedendi which we feel, it astonishes us. What! Is
pleasure only the ballet of our spirits? We have conceived so different an
idea of it! And these sensations seem so removed from those others which we
say are the same as those with which we compare them! The sensation from the
fire, that warmth which affects us in a manner wholly different from touch,
the reception of sound and light, all this appears to us mysterious, and yet
it is material like the blow of a stone. It is true that the smallness of
the spirits which enter into the pores touches other nerves, but there are
always some nerves touched.

369. Memory is necessary for all the operations of reason.

370. Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep
or acquire them.

A thought has escaped me. I wanted to write it down. I write instead that it
has escaped me.

371. When I was small, I hugged my book; and because it sometimes happened
to me to... in believing I hugged it, I doubted....

372. In writing down my thought, it sometimes escapes me; but this makes me
remember my weakness, that I constantly forget. This is as instructive to me
as my forgotten thought; for I strive only to know my nothingness.

373. Scepticism.--I shall here write my thoughts without order, and not
perhaps in unintentional confusion; th


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