The Mind

Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) visits with me this morning.  How grateful I am for the written word that brings such visitors into my little cubicle and into my life each morning.  Joubert was a French essayist, who published nothing during his lifetime, even though he spent his life writing essays and letters.  After his death, his widow gave his writings to a friend and that friend published Joubert’s Pensees (Thoughts) in 1838. I’m grateful for the friend!

Here is a small part of what Joseph shared with me this morning and which I want to share with you:

“Our mind has more thoughts than our memory can store; it delivers many judgements of which it could not give the reasons; it sees further than it can reach, it knows more truths than it can explain.  A large part of itself could be very usefully employed in searching out the arguments which have determined it, in defining the perceptions which have touched and then escaped it. There is for the soul many a lightning-flash with which she has little to do; they pass over and illuminate her so rapidly that she loses the recollection of them.  We should be astonished at the number of things she would be found to have seen if, in returning upon all that has passed within her, record could be made of it, if only from memory, and by a careful searching out of all the circumstances.  We do not hunt enough in ourselves; and like children we neglect what we have in our pockets, and think only of what is in our hands, or before our eyes.” (Joseph Joubert, Pensees)

Do we hunt enough in ourselves? Do we neglect what we already have in our pockets and pay attention only to that which is at hand, or before our eyes? 

The Iris bloom...