disturbed by the first din about it. The noise of
a cannon is not necessary to hinder its thoughts; it needs only the
creaking of a weathercock or a 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 judgment. 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,[149] 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,[150] 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; that is true order, which will
always indicate my object by its very disorder. I should do too much
honour to my subject, if I treated it with order, since I want to show
that it is incapable of it.

374

What astonishes me most is to see that all the world is not astonished
at its own weakness. Men act seriously, and each follows his own mode of
life, not because it is in fact good