THE NOTEBOOKS OF SIMONE WEIL TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY ARTHUR WILLS Volume Two G. P, PUTNAM’S SONS NEW YORKLibrary of Congress Catalog Card ion the French edition LES CAHIERS DE SIMONE WELL (3 vols.) Copyri Li published 1956 in two volumes Printed in Great Britain by T.& A. Constable Lid, Edinburgh THE NOTEBOOKS ') ss die when because For this purpose he has need of them. He cam any other way. He cannot love the visible world of thinking beings, except through has reached the state of perfection, Tnearnation, im of a creature that Plato, on the subject of drawn by tation of x noting ns later, it at there is a thought which I have to remember. I ¢ remotest idea is, or even what it is about. So 1 atte his thing about which I know simply y 333‘effort of attention, en ‘Then (if all goes wel certainty, that scome a ch of reality, ever That For example, pos “The past—this is unverifiable re ‘A method is necessary for the undo ete, One should not terpret them, why one should be wary of improperly , as when, for example, one says to oneself that no real battle cakes place in the Gita. It is preferable to cun the sisk of taking them too literal insufficiently so. They should first of all be taken in a pure! fashion, and contemy s, for a considerable time, Then they should be taken in a soon, by degrees. fashion of contemplating harvey be, spi smplation. (The sprin "The doove ia methed forthe interpretation off Ina general way: a method for exercising the consists of beholding. Shall Lever be able to apply it to {Is it knowledge of the third kind?] "The application of this method for g between what is real and what is illusory. In the case of sensible perception, if one is not sure about what one sees, one shifts one’s position while going on looking (for example, one goes round the object) and the teal appears. In the life of the spirit, time takes the place of space. and if throughout chese modifica co ins we keep our gaze directed on to a certa , finally what is illusory is dissipated and what is real appears; always provided that our attention consist of a contemplative look and not one of attachment. Attachment manufictures illusions, and anyone who wants t0 behold the real must be detached. ‘The past—it forms part of the reality of this world, but a reality 334 absolutely beyond our reach, towards which we are unable to make single step, towards which all we are able to do is to tur ourselves so that an emanation from it may come to us. For this reason it i i spernatural r 1 we find joy and beanty in re- collection as such? ‘The past and the notion of poss ete. ...’ To be further examined. ‘Joy in God. There is really perfect and infinite joy in God. My participation can add nothin; away from, the reality of of what importance is share in it? Ie is of no importance at al. ‘The sacraments (and things of that nature) are like souvenirs— its—of loved ones that a book, any sort of fete... .; in which case, we same way, for the Greeks who loved God, God was present in the statues that adorned the temples, as He is to-day in the Eucharist Plato looks upon the beau [Beauty and sacraments . sa ‘souvenir’ of the beyond. Beauty is a sensual attraction that maintains one at a certain distance and iy ing the most intimate forin of renunci ‘wants to devour whats there taking place. It is som: sensible form of beauty, for rituals and. are sensible things. It is beautiful after the style of a work of 35‘The Trinity. Were we to conceive God simply as One, we should conceive him either in the form of being or else in that of act directed towards the outside. We manage to conceive him in the form of act that is not directed towards the outside by representing him to ourselves as being two, and at the same time one through union, that is to say three. To say that he is three and one is like saying that he is two, and one deriving from the unity brought about by union, and yet again one deriving ftom a deeper unity. This union is a Person, that is to say it differs from the union between subject and object with which we are familiar, and which is an abstract relationship. Here, the subject is subject, and the object is again subject, and the union is alo subject. God regarded a5 subject says “I, God regarded as object says ‘T’, and God regarded as wisdom or love says ‘I’. In whichever quality we may consider him, he always says ‘I’. The Son is this very word, namely, ‘Y. Vision has less reality than has the subject which sees or the object which is seen. With God it is almost the reverse. The intelligence can never penctrate the mystery, but it can— and it al ‘of water and of the spirit.” The soul has not only got to becomne matter, that i to say incr, bat Furthermore mater not having any form of its own, completely docile, fluid. [CE. Hegel on habit as representing the body's fluidity. The soul, too, in its tum...] It means the death of the ‘’. The soul has got to become some: which cannot possibly say ‘I’. Then the spirit comes, What follows indicates that that is the idea. The spirie bloweth where it listeth, and no one knoweth whence it cometh or whither it goeth, It is therefore nota question of a sacrament. Subject, object, and desire which unites them. This desire is energy. It_ is yoy} And aveipa® also is energy. The higher energy. CE the Stoics. That is why mvetya is fire Remembrance in St. John of the Cross. Is it not the same as what Plato refers to? We possess nothing in this world—for mice may deprive us of everything—except the power to say It is that which has to soul 2 The spit, 336 n of, be offered up to God, that is to say, destroyed. The desteu the T's the onc and only free act that lies open to us. Aéyos is the divi yy analogical transpositio toward the lower all species of relation. [Ivedua is the spiritual, Supernatural energy, and by analogical transposition toward che Tower all species of encrgy. The Stoic conception of the world was based on energy. Zeds, Myos and medpa wore the thrce Stoic divinities. the power to say ‘’, because fortune can deprive us of everything else in the world—even our character, our intelligence, our loves and our hates; but not of the power to say ‘T' unless it be as the result of extreme affliction. There is nothing worse than extreme affliction which destroys the ‘I’ from without, for then one is longer able to destroy it oneself, (Only one evil is greater still, that of having committed the sin against the Holy Spirit.) What happet to those whose ‘I’ has been destroyed from without by aflictio One can only imagine in their case a total destruction in the style of the atheistic or materialistic conception. ‘The fact that they should have lost their ‘I’ does not mean to say that they have cast aside all egoism. On the contrary. Certainly this happens sometimes, when a dog-like devotion is developed. But at other times the inner being is instead reduced to a state of naked, vegetative egoism—an egoism minus the . However short a time one may have begun the process of de- stroying the ‘it is enough to enable one to prevent any affliction at all fom doing one harm. For the Twill not allow iself to be destroyed by external pressure without a severe struggle. If one refuses to countenance such a struggle out of love for God, then the destruction of the ‘I’ does not take place from without, bue from within, (The significance of the word ‘offering’. We have nothing else to offer except the ‘I’, and everything we call an ‘offering’ ly a label attached to a reassertion of itself on the part of The anguish fle in extreme affiction is produced by the external destruction of the ‘I’, as in the ease of Amolphe, Phédre, Lycaon. One has every reason then to fall on one’s knees and make grovelling supplication, when the violent death which is about to 337overtake one is bound to ki itself has been destroyed. (OFor those in whom om without before even life dead, there 3b the least trace of condesce f contempt shown