Letters from François Guizot to his daughter Henriette

Friday 28 June [1839] - 8 a.m.

My dear Henriette, I'm going to war with you again over punctuation; there is none, or almost none, in your letters. Sentences follow each other without any distinction or separation, like words in the same sentence. When this would have no other disadvantage than to cause a sort of embarrassment and surprise at every moment when reading your letters, it would be reason enough to correct yourself and to punctuate like everyone else. But there is a more important reason, which I am sure you will understand. You have a very quick mind; you understand and you do things quickly. And as soon as you've understood or done something, you don't stop at all; you want to move on to something else right away. That's why you don't punctuate. Any punctuation, comma or other, marks a rest of the mind, a more or less long pause, an idea that is finished, or suspended, and that is separated by a line from the one that follows it. You eliminate these rests, these intervals; you write like water flows, like an arrow flies. This is worthless, because the ideas we express, the things we talk about in a letter, are not all absolutely similar, and not all intimately linked to each other, like drops of water. There are differences between ideas, unequal but real distances; and it is precisely these distances, these differences between ideas that punctuation and the various punctuation marks are intended to mark. You are therefore doing an absurd thing by suppressing them; you are suppressing the difference, the natural distance that exists between ideas or things. This is why the mind is astonished and shocked when reading your letters; the lack of punctuation spreads, over everything you say, a certain lying uniformity, and takes away from the things you talk about, their true physiognomy, their true place, by presenting them all at once and as perfectly identical or contiguous.

But this is even more serious. Promptness of mind is a precious quality, my dear child. There are so many things to learn, to see and to do in life, and we have so little time to devote to them that we are very happy to have received from God the gift of this rapidity, this facility of intelligence which means that we can understand and do a great deal in a short time, and consequently better accomplish the task of life. But every quality has a corresponding flaw, which must be carefully guarded against. If I were talking about character, I would tell you that very energetic people often lack gentleness, and very courageous people lack prudence. This is worthless. Pascal or La Bruyère, I can't quite remember which, said somewhere: «A virtue has all its merit and all its value only when it is accompanied by the opposite virtue. Let firmness be gentle, let gentleness be energetic. Only that which is complete, that which can be considered and admired in all senses, is good and beautiful.

What is true of character and its virtues, my dear child, is also true of the mind and its qualities. A quality must not become the source of a defect. Now, quick thinking can lead to carelessness. When you understand easily, you don't always take the trouble to understand perfectly. When you run very fast, you don't look, and consequently you don't see everything there was to look at or see on the road. Precisely because you have a quick and easy mind, my dear child, you have to force yourself to stop and think about things, to examine them carefully, not to be satisfied with what you see at first glance. If you didn't, you'd miss a lot of what's in things; you'd never know or do anything perfectly. And a natural and great quality would cause you to fall into an unfortunate imperfection.

It's because of this natural quality of your mind that you don't punctuate. You go too fast; you move too quickly from one thing to another, from one idea to another. You don't give yourself time to grasp and mark their difference, their distance. All this happens without your knowledge, without your suspecting it, by your disposition and inclination, without intention or will. But it is precisely this disposition that we need to watch out for, even when it is good, because it can become bad; and a quality is only worth as much to us as it is worth when we have acquired the opposite quality.

That's a long story, my dear Henriette. But you know I love talking to you. And besides, you can't correct a fault until you know where it comes from and how far it could go. Make a decision: never let a letter go without rereading it very carefully, just to punctuate it. Once you have got into the habit, you will no longer need to take the same care, and you will see that one day accuracy of punctuation will become for you strength of attention.

So farewell, my dear entant. I have nothing more pleasant to say to you today. I won't close my letter until I've received yours, because I suppose I'll be getting one from you this morning.