UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 .
 
 AMIEL'S JOUKNAL
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL 
 
 THE JOUKNAL INTIME 
 or 
 
 HENRI-FRfiDfiRIC AMIEL 
 
 TRANSLATED 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 
 BY 
 
 MRS. HUMPHRY WARD 
 
 Author of " The History of David Grieve," etc. 
 WITH A PORTRAIT 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 MACMILLAN AND COMPANY 
 
 AND LONDON 
 1895 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1893, 
 BY MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 First Edition (2 Vols. Globe 8vo) 1885. Second 
 Edition (i Vol. Crown 8vo) 1888. Reprinted 1889; 
 January and October, 1890; March and Septem- 
 ber, 1891, 1892; January and April, 1893; Janu- 
 ary, August, 1894 : August, 1895. 
 
 Norton 06 39rrs : 
 
 J. 8. Gushing & Co. Berwick & Smith. 
 Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 Y, 1 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND 
 EDITION. 
 
 IN this second edition of the English 
 translation of Amiel's Journal Intime, 
 I have inserted a good many new passages, 
 taken from the last French edition (Cin- 
 quieme edition, revue et augmentee') . But 
 I have not translated all the fresh material 
 to be found in that edition, nor have I 
 omitted certain sections of the Journal 
 which in these two recent volumes have 
 been omitted by their French editors. It 
 would be of no interest to give my reasons 
 for these variations at length. They depend 
 upon certain differences between the Eng- 
 lish and the French public, which are more 
 readily felt than explained. Some of the 
 passages which I have left untranslated 
 seemed to me to overweight the introspec- 
 tive side of the Journal, already so full 
 to overweight it, at any rate, for English 
 readers. Others which I have retained, 
 
 210846
 
 vi AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 though they often relate to local names and 
 books, more or less unfamiliar to the gen- 
 eral public, yet seemed to me valuable as 
 supplying some of that surrounding detail, 
 that setting, which helps one to understand 
 a life. Besides, we English are in many 
 ways more akin to Protestant and Puritan 
 Geneva than the French readers to whom 
 the original Journal primarily addresses 
 itself, and some of the entries I have kept 
 have probably, by the nature of things, 
 more savour for us than for them. 
 
 M. A. W.
 
 THE new and enlarged Index affixed to tke 
 present Edition is due to the care and pains of 
 Mr. George Seton of St. Bennet's, Edinburgh, 
 to whom the Translator desires to express her 
 sincere thanks.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 translation of Amiel's Journal In- 
 -L time is primarily addressed to those 
 whose knowledge of French, while it may be 
 sufficient to carry them with more or less 
 complete understanding through a novel or 
 a newspaper, is yet not enough to allow 
 them to understand and appreciate a book 
 containing subtle and complicated forms of 
 expression. I believe there are many such 
 to be found among the reading public, and 
 among those who would naturally take a 
 strong interest in such a life and mind as 
 Amiel's, were it not for the barrier of lan- 
 guage. It is, at any rate, in the hope that 
 a certain number of additional readers may 
 be thereby attracted to the Journal Intimc 
 that this translation of it has been under- 
 taken. 
 
 The difficulties of the translation have 
 
 been sometimes considerable, owing, first of 
 
 all, to those elliptical modes of speech which 
 
 a man naturally employs when he is writ- 
 
 ix
 
 x AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 ing for himself and not for the public, but 
 which a translator at all events is bound in 
 some degree to expand. Every here and 
 there Amiel expresses himself in a kind of 
 shorthand, perfectly intelligible to a French- 
 man, but for which an English equivalent, 
 at once terse and clear, is hard to find. 
 Another difficulty has been his constant use 
 of a technical philosophical language, which, 
 according to his French critics, is not 
 French even philosophical French but 
 German. Very often it has been impossi- 
 ble to give any other than a literal render- 
 ing of such passages, if the thought of the 
 original was to be preserved ; but in those 
 cases where a choice was open to me, I 
 have preferred the more literary to the 
 more technical expression ; and I have been 
 encouraged to do so by the fact that Amiel, 
 when he came to prepare for publication a 
 certain number of Pensees, extracted from 
 the Journal, and printed at the end of a 
 volume of poems published in 1853, fre- 
 quently softened his phrases, so that sen- 
 tences which survive in the Journal in a 
 more technical form are to be found in a 
 more literary form in the Grains de Mil. 
 
 In two or three cases not more, I think 
 I have allowed myself to transpose a
 
 PREFACE. x 
 
 sentence bodily, and in a few instances I 
 have added some explanatory words to the 
 text, which, wherever the addition was of 
 any importance, are indicated by square 
 brackets. 
 
 My warmest thanks are due to my friend 
 and critic, M. Edinond Scherer, from whose 
 valuable and interesting study, prefixed to 
 the French Journal, as well as from certain 
 materials in his possession which he has 
 very kindly allowed me to make use of, I 
 have drawn by far the greater part of the 
 biographical material embodied in the In- 
 troduction. M. Scherer has also given me 
 help and advice through the whole process 
 of translation advice which his scholarly 
 knowledge of English has made especially 
 worth having. 
 
 In the translation of the more technical 
 philosophical passages I have been greatly 
 helped by another friend, Mr. Bernard 
 Bosanquet, Fellow of University College, 
 Oxford, the translator of Lotze, of whose 
 care and pains in the matter I cherish a 
 grateful remembrance. 
 
 But with all the help that has been so 
 freely given me, not only by these friends 
 but by others, I confide the little book to 
 the public with many a misgiving ! May it
 
 xii AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 at least win a few more friends and readers 
 here and there for one who lived alone, and 
 died sadly persuaded that his life had been 
 a barren mistake ; whereas, all the while 
 such is the irony of things he had been 
 in reality working out the mission assigned 
 him in the spiritual economy, and faithfully 
 obeying the secret mandate which had im- 
 pressed itself upon his youthful conscious- 
 ness : ' Let the living live ; and you, gather 
 together your thoughts, leave behind you a 
 legacy of feeling and ideas; you will be 
 most useful so.' 
 
 MARY A. WARD.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IT was in the last days of December 1882 
 that the first volume of Henri Frederic 
 Amiel's Journal Intime was published at 
 Geneva. The book, of which the general 
 literary world knew nothing prior to its 
 appearance, contained a long and remark- 
 able Introduction from the pen of M. Ed- 
 mond Scherer, the well-known French critic, 
 who had been for many years one of Amiel's 
 most valued friends, and it was prefaced 
 also by a little Avertissement, in which the 
 ' Editors ' that is to say, the Genevese 
 friends to whom the care and publication of 
 the Journal had been in the first instance 
 entrusted described in a few reserved and 
 sober words the genesis and objects of the 
 publication. Some thousands of sheets of 
 Journal, covering a period of more than 
 thirty years, had come into the hands of 
 Amiel's literary heirs. ' They were writ- 
 ten,' said the Avertissement, ' with several 
 ends in view. Amiel recorded in them his
 
 Xiv AMIEI/8 JOURNAL. 
 
 various occupations, and the incidents of 
 each day. He preserved in them his psy- 
 chological observations, and the impressions 
 produced on him by books. But his Journal 
 was, above all, the confidant of his most 
 private and intimate thoughts ; a means 
 whereby the thinker became conscious of 
 his own inner life ; a safe shelter wherein 
 his questionings of fate and the future, the 
 voice of grief, of self-examination and con- 
 fession, the soul's cry for inward peace, 
 might make themselves freely heard. . . . 
 In the directions concerning his papers 
 which he left behind him, Amiel expressed 
 the wish that his literary executors should 
 publish those parts of the Journal which 
 might seem to them to possess either in- 
 terest as thought or value as experience. 
 The publication of this volume is the fulfil- 
 ment of this desire. The reader will find 
 in it, not a volume of Memoirs, but the con- 
 fidences of a solitary thinker, the medita- 
 tions of a philosopher for whom the things 
 of the soul were the sovereign realities of 
 existence.' 
 
 Thus modestly announced, the little vol- 
 ume made its quiet debut. It contained 
 nothing, or almost nothing, of ordinary 
 biographical material. M. Scherer's Intro-
 
 INTRODUCTION. XV 
 
 duction supplied such facts as were abso- 
 lutely necessary to the understanding of 
 Amiel's intellectual history, but nothing 
 more. Everything of a local or private 
 character that could be excluded was ex- 
 cluded. The object of the Editors in their 
 choice of passages for publication was de- 
 clared to be simply ' the reproduction of the 
 moral and intellectual physiognomy of their 
 friend,' while M. Scherer expressly dis- 
 claimed any biographical intentions, and 
 limited his Introduction as far as possible 
 to ' a study of the character and thought of 
 Amiel.' The contents of the volume, then, 
 were purely literary and philosophical ; its 
 prevailing tone was a tone of introspection, 
 and the public which can admit the claims 
 and overlook the inherent defects of intro- 
 spective literature has always been a small 
 one. The writer of the Journal had been 
 during his lifetime wholly unknown to the 
 general European public. In Geneva itself 
 he had been commonly regarded as a man 
 who had signally disappointed the hopes 
 and expectations of his friends, whose re- 
 serve and indecision of character had in 
 many respects spoilt his life, and alienated 
 the society around him ; while his profes- 
 sorial lectures were generally pronounced
 
 xvi AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 dry and unattractive, and the few volumes 
 of poems which represented almost his only 
 contributions to literature had nowhere 
 met with any real cordiality of reception. 
 Those concerned, therefore, in the publica- 
 tion of the first volume of the Journal can 
 hardly have had much expectation of a wide 
 success. Geneva is not a favourable start- 
 ing-point for a French book, and it may 
 well have seemed that not even the support 
 of M. Scherer's name would be likely to 
 carry the volume beyond a small local 
 circle. 
 
 But 'wisdom is justified of her children ! ' 
 It is now nearly three years since the first 
 volume of the Journal Intime appeared ; 
 the impression made by it was deepened 
 and extended by the publication of the 
 second volume in 1884 ; and it is now not 
 too much to say that this remarkable record 
 of a life has made its way to what promises 
 to be a permanent place in literature. 
 Among those who think and read it is be- 
 ginning to be generally recognised that an- 
 other book has been added to the books 
 which live not to those, perhaps, which 
 live in the public view, much discussed, 
 much praised, the objects of feeling and of 
 struggle, but to those in which a germ of
 
 INTRODUCTION. XV11 
 
 permanent life has been deposited silently, 
 almost secretly, which compel no homage 
 and excite no rivalry, and which owe the 
 place that the world half-unconsciously 
 yields to them to nothing but that inde- 
 structible sympathy of man with man, that 
 eternal answering of feeling to feeling, 
 which is one of the great principles, per- 
 haps the greatest principle, at the root of 
 literature. M. Scherer naturally was the 
 first among the recognised guides of opinion 
 to attempt the placing of his friend's Jour- 
 nal. ' The man who, during his lifetime, 
 was incapable of giving us any deliberate 
 or conscious work worthy of his powers, 
 has now left us, after his death, a book 
 which will not die. For the secret of 
 Amiel's malady is sublime, and the expres- 
 sion of it wonderful.' So ran one of the 
 last paragraphs of the Introduction, and 
 one may see in the sentences another in- 
 stance of that courage, that reasoned rash- 
 ness, which distinguishes the good from 
 the mediocre critic. For it is as true now 
 as it was in the days when La Bruyere 
 rated the critics of his time for their in- 
 capacity to praise, and praise at once, that 
 ' the surest test of a man's critical power is 
 his judgment of contemporaries.' M. Ke-
 
 xviii AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 nan, I think, with that exquisite literary 
 sense of his, was the next among the 
 authorities to mention Amiel's name with 
 the emphasis it deserved. He quoted a 
 passage from the Journal in his Preface to 
 the Souvenirs (TEnfance et de Jeunesse, 
 describing it as the saying 'd'wn pcnsenr 
 distingue, M. Amiel de Geneve." 1 Since 
 then M. Renan has devoted two curious 
 articles to the completed Journal in the 
 Journal des Debats. The first object of 
 these reviews, no doubt, was not so much 
 the critical appreciation of Amiel as the 
 development of certain paradoxes which 
 have been haunting various corners of M. 
 Kenan's mind for several years past, and 
 to which it is to be hoped he has now given 
 expression with sufficient emphasis and 
 brusquerie to satisfy even his passion for 
 intellectual adventure. Still, the rank of 
 the book was fully recognised, and the first 
 article especially contained some remark- 
 able criticisms, to which we shall find occa- 
 sion to recur. ' In these two volumes of 
 pensees," 1 said M. Renan, ' without any sac- 
 rifice of truth to artistic effect, we have both 
 the perfect mirror of a modern mind of the 
 best type, matured by the best modern cult- 
 ure, and also a striking picture of the suf-
 
 INTRODUCTION. XIX 
 
 ferings which beset the sterility of genius. 
 These two volumes may certainly be reck- 
 oned among the most interesting philo- 
 sophical writings which have appeared of 
 late years.' 
 
 M. Caro's article on the first volume of 
 the Journal, in the Revue des Deux Mondes 
 for February 1883, may perhaps count as 
 the first introduction of the book to the 
 general cultivated public. He gave a care- 
 ful analysis of the first half of the Journal, 
 resumed eighteen months later in the 
 same periodical on the appearance of the 
 second volume, and, while protesting 
 against what he conceived to be the general 
 tendency and effect of Amiel's mental story, 
 he showed himself fully conscious of the 
 rare and delicate qualities of the new writer. 
 'La reverie a reussi a notre auteur," 1 he 
 says, a little reluctantly for M. Caro has 
 his doubts as to the legitimacy of reverie ; 
 H7 en a fait une ceuvre qui restera.' The 
 same final judgment, accompanied by a 
 very different series of comments, was pro- 
 nounced on the Journal a year later by M. 
 Paul Bourget, a young and rising writer, 
 whose article is perhaps chiefly interesting 
 as showing the kind of effect produced by 
 Amiel's thought on minds of a type essen-
 
 xx AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 tially alien from his own. There is a leaven 
 of something positive and austere, of some- 
 thing which, for want of a better name, 
 one calls Puritanism, in Amiel, which es- 
 capes the author of Une Cruelle Enigme. 
 But whether he has understood Amiel or 
 no, M. Bourget is fully alive to the mark 
 which the Journal is likely to make among 
 modern records of mental history. He, 
 too, insists that the book is already famous 
 and will remain so ; in the first place, be- 
 cause of its inexorable realism and sincer- 
 ity ; in the second, because it is the most 
 perfect example available of a certain vari- 
 ety of the modern mind. 
 
 Amongst ourselves, although the Journal 
 has attracted the attention of all who keep 
 a vigilant eye on the progress of foreign 
 literature, and although one or two appre- 
 ciative articles have appeared on it in the 
 magazines, the book has still to become 
 generally known. One remarkable English 
 testimony to it, however, must be quoted. 
 Six months after the publication of the first 
 volume, the late Mark Pattison, who since 
 then has himself bequeathed to literature a 
 strange and memorable fragment of auto- 
 biography, addressed a letter to M. Scherer 
 as the editor of the Journal Intime, which
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXI 
 
 M. Scherer has since published, nearly a 
 year after the death of the writer. The 
 words have a strong and melancholy inter- 
 est for all who knew Mark Pattison ; and 
 they certainly deserve a place in any 
 attempt to estimate the impression already 
 made on contemporary thought by the 
 Journal Intime. 
 
 ' I wish to convey to you, sir,' writes the 
 Rector of Lincoln, ' the thanks of one at 
 least of the public for giving the light to 
 this precious record of a unique experience. 
 I say unique, but I can vouch that there is 
 in existence at least one other soul which 
 has lived through the same struggles, men- 
 tal and moral, as Amiel. In your pathetic 
 description of the volonte qui voudrait vou- 
 loir, metis impuissante a se fournir a elle- 
 meme des motifs, of the repugnance for all 
 action the soul petrified by the sentiment 
 of the infinite, in all this I recognise myself. 
 Celui qui a dechiffre le secret de la vie finie, 
 qui en a lu le mot, est sorti du monde des 
 vivants, il est mort de fait. I can feel for- 
 cibly the truth of this, as it applies to my- 
 self ! 
 
 ' It is not, however, with the view of 
 thrusting my egotism upon you that I have 
 ventured upon addressing you. As I can-
 
 xxii AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 not suppose that so peculiar a psychological 
 revelation will enjoy a wide popularity, I 
 think it a duty to the editor to assure him 
 that there are persons in the world whose 
 souls respond, in the depths of their inmost 
 nature, to the cry of anguish which makes 
 itself heard in the pages of these remarkable 
 confessions.' 
 
 So much for the place which the Journal 
 the fruit of so many years of painful 
 thought and disappointed effort seems to 
 be at last securing for its author among 
 those contemporaries who in his lifetime 
 knew nothing of him. It is a natural con- 
 sequence of the success of the book that 
 the more it penetrates, the greater desire 
 there is to know something more than its 
 original editors and M. Scherer have yet 
 told us about the personal history of the 
 man who wrote it about his education, 
 his habits, and his friends. Perhaps some 
 day this wish may find its satisfaction. It 
 is an innocent one, and the public may 
 even be said to have a kind of right to 
 know as much as can be told it of the 
 personalities which move and stir it. At 
 present the biographical material available 
 is extremely scanty, and if it were not for 
 the kindness of M. Scherer, who has allowed
 
 INTRODUCTION. XX111 
 
 the present writer access to certain manu- 
 script material in his possession, even the 
 sketch which follows, vague and imperfect 
 as it necessarily is, would have been im- 
 possible.* 
 
 Henri Frederic Amiel was born at Geneva 
 in September 1821. He belonged to one of 
 the emigrant families, of which a more or 
 less steady supply had enriched the little 
 Republic during the three centuries follow- 
 ing the Reformation. AmiePs ancestors, 
 like those of Sismondi. left Languedoc for 
 Geneva after the revocation of the Edict of 
 Nantes. His father must have 'been a youth 
 at the time when Geneva passed into the 
 power of the French Republic, and would 
 seem to have married and settled in the 
 halcyon days following the restoration of 
 Genevese independence in 1814. Amiel was 
 born when the prosperity of Geneva was at 
 its height, when the little State was ad- 
 ministered by men of European reputation, 
 and Genevese society had power to attract 
 
 * Four or five articles on the subject of Amiel's 
 life have been contributed to the Rkvut. Internati- 
 onale by Mdlle. Berthe Vadier during the passage 
 of the present book through the press. My knowl- 
 edge of them, however, came too late to enable me 
 to make use of them for the purposes of the present 
 introduction.
 
 xxiv AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 distinguished visitors and admirers from all 
 parts. The veteran Bonstetten, who had 
 been the friend of Gray and the associate 
 of Voltaire, was still talking and enjoying 
 life in his appartement overlooking the 
 woods of La Batie. Rossi and Sismondi 
 were busy lecturing to the Genevese youth, 
 or taking part in Genevese legislation ; an 
 active scientific group, headed by the 
 Pictets, De la Rive, and the botanist 
 Auguste-Pyrame de Candolle, kept the 
 country abreast of European thought and 
 speculation, while the mixed nationality of 
 the place the blending in it of French 
 keenness with Protestant enthusiasms and 
 Protestant solidity was beginning to find 
 inimitable and characteristic expression in 
 the stories of Topffer. The country was 
 governed by an aristocracy, which was not 
 so much an aristocracy of birth as one of 
 merit and intellect, and the moderate con- 
 stitutional ideas which represented the 
 Liberalism of the post- Waterloo period 
 were nowhere more warmly embraced or 
 more intelligently carried out than in 
 Geneva. 
 
 During the years, however, which im- 
 mediately followed AmiePs birth, some 
 signs of decadence began to be visible in
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXV 
 
 this brilliant Genevese society. The gener- 
 ation which had waited for, prepared, and 
 controlled, the Restoration of 1814, was 
 falling into the background, and the younger 
 generation, with all its respectability, wanted 
 energy, above all, wanted leaders. The 
 revolutionary forces in the State, which had 
 made themselves violently felt during the 
 civil turmoils of the period preceding the 
 assembly of the French States General, and 
 had afterwards produced the miniature 
 Terror which forced Sismondi into exile, 
 had been for a while laid to sleep by the 
 events of 1814. But the slumber was a 
 short one at Geneva as elsewhere, and when 
 Rossi quitted the Republic for France in 
 1833, he did so with a mind full of misgiv- 
 ings as to the political future of the little 
 State which had given him an exile and 
 a Catholic so generous a welcome in 1819. 
 The ideas of 1830 were shaking the fabric 
 and disturbing the equilibrium of the Swiss 
 Confederation as a whole, and of many of 
 the cantons composing it. Geneva was still 
 apparently tranquil while her neighbours 
 were disturbed, but no one looking back on 
 the history of the Republic, and able to 
 measure the strength of the Radical force 
 in Europe after the fall of Charles X., could
 
 xxvi AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 have felt much doubt but that a few more 
 years would bring Geneva also into the 
 whirlpool of political change. 
 
 In the same year 1833 that M. Ilossi 
 had left Geneva, Henri Frederic Amiel, at 
 twelve years old, was left orphaned of both 
 his parents. They had died comparatively 
 young, his mother was only just over 
 thirty, and his father cannot have been 
 much older. On the death of the mother 
 the little family was broken up, the boy 
 passing into the care of one relative, his 
 two sisters into that of another. Certain 
 notes in M. Scherer's possession throw a 
 little light here and there upon a childhood 
 and youth which must necessarily have 
 been a little bare and forlorn. They show 
 us a sensitive impressionable boy, of health 
 rather delicate than robust, already disposed 
 to a more or less melancholy and dreamy 
 view of life, and showing a deep interest in 
 those religious problems and ideas in which 
 the air of Geneva has been steeped since 
 the days of Calvin. The religious teaching 
 which a Genevese lad undergoes prior to 
 his admission to full Church membership, 
 made a deep impression on him, and certain 
 mystical elements of character, which re- 
 mained strong in him to the end, showed
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXV11 
 
 themselves very early. At the College or 
 Public School of Geneva, and at the Aca- 
 demie, he would seem to have done only 
 moderately as far as prizes and honours 
 were concerned. We are told, however, 
 that he read enormously, and that he was, 
 generally speaking, inclined rather to make 
 friends with men older than himself than 
 with his contemporaries. He fell specially 
 under the influence of Adolphe Pictet, a 
 brilliant philologist and man of letters be- 
 longing to a well-known Genevese family, 
 and in later life he was able, while review- 
 ing one of M. Pictet's books, to give grate- 
 ful expression to his sense of obligation. 
 
 Writing in 1856 he describes the effect 
 produced in Geneva by M. Pictet's Lectures 
 on Esthetics in 1840 the first ever deliv- 
 ered in a town in which the Beautiful had 
 been for centuries regarded as the rival and 
 enemy of the True. ' He who is now writ- 
 ing,' says Amiel, 'was then among M. Pic- 
 tet's youngest hearers. Since then twenty 
 experiences of the same kind have followed 
 each other in his intellectual experience, 
 yet none has effaced the deep impression 
 made upon him by these lectures. Coming 
 as they did at a favourable moment, and 
 answering many a positive question and
 
 XXV111 AMIELS JOURNAL. 
 
 many a vague aspiration of youth, they ex- 
 ercised a decisive influence over his thought ; 
 they were to him an important step in that 
 continuous initiation which we call life, they 
 filled him with fresh intuitions, they brought 
 near to him the horizons of his dreams. 
 And, as always happens with a first-rate 
 man, what struck him even more than the 
 teaching was the teacher. So that this 
 memory of 1840 is still dear and precious 
 to him, and for this double service, which 
 is not of the kind one forgets, the student 
 of those days delights in expressing to the 
 professor of 1840 his sincere and filial grat- 
 itude. ' 
 
 Amiel's first literary production, or prac- 
 tically his first, seems to have been the 
 result partly of these lectures, and partly 
 of a visit to Italy which began in November 
 1841. In 1842, a year which was spent 
 entirely in Italy and Sicily, he contributed 
 three articles on M. Rio's book, V Art 
 Chretien, to the Bibliotheque Unirfrm'Hi' 
 de Geneve. We see in them the young 
 student conscientiously writing his first 
 review writing it at inordinate length, a-; 
 young reviewers are apt to do, and treat- 
 ing the subject ab ovo in a grave, pontifical 
 way, which is a little naive and inexperi-
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXIX 
 
 enced indeed, but still promising, as all 
 seriousness of work and purpose is promis- 
 ing. All that is individual in it is first of 
 all the strong Christian feeling which much 
 of it shows, and secondly, the tone of mel- 
 ancholy which already makes itself felt 
 here and there, especially in one rather re- 
 markable passage. As to the Christian 
 feeling, we find M. Rio described as belong- 
 ing to ' that noble school of men who are 
 striving to rekindle the dead beliefs of 
 France, to rescue Frenchmen from the camp 
 of materialistic or pantheistic ideas, and rally 
 them round that Christian banner which is 
 the banner of true progress and true civilisa- 
 tion.' The Renaissance is treated as a dis- 
 astrous but inevitable crisis, in which the 
 idealism of the Middle Ages was dethroned 
 by the naturalism of modern times, ' The 
 Renaissance perhaps robbed us of more than 
 it gave us,' and so on. The tone of criti- 
 cism is instructive enough to the student of 
 Amiel's mind, but the product itself has no 
 particular savour of its own. The occa- 
 sional note of depression and discourage- 
 ment, however, is a different thing ; here, for 
 those who know the Journal Intime, there 
 is already something characteristic, some- 
 thing which foretells the future. For in-
 
 xxx AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 stance, after dwelling with evident zest on 
 the nature of the metaphysical problems 
 lying at the root of art in general, and 
 Christian art in particular, the writer goes 
 on to set the difficulty of M. Rio's task 
 against its attractiveness, to insist ou the 
 intricacy of the investigations involved, and 
 on the impossibility of making the two 
 instruments on which their success depends 
 the imaginative and the analytical fac- 
 ulty work harmoniously and effectively 
 together. And supposing the goal achieved, 
 supposing a man by insight and patience 
 has succeeded in forcing his way farther 
 than any previous explorer into the recesses 
 of the Beautiful or the True, there still re- 
 mains the enormous, the insuperable diffi- 
 culty of expression, of fit and adequate 
 communication from mind to mind ; there 
 still remains the question whether, after all, 
 'he who discovers a new world in the 
 depths of the invisible would not do wisely 
 to plant on it a flag known to himself alone, 
 and, like Achilles, "devour his heart in 
 secret ; " whether the greatest problems 
 which have ever been guessed on earth had 
 not better have remained buried in the 
 brain which had found the key to them, 
 and whether the deepest thinkers those
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXXI 
 
 whose hand has been boldest in drawing 
 aside the veil, and their eye keenest in 
 fathoming the mysteries beyond it had 
 not better, like the prophetess of Ilion, have 
 kept for heaven, and heaven only, secrets 
 and mysteries which human tongue cannot 
 truly express, nor human intelligence con- 
 ceive.' 
 
 Curious words for a beginner of twenty- 
 one ! There is a touch, no doubt, of youth 
 and fatuity in the passage ; one feels how 
 much the vague sonorous phrases have 
 pleased the writer's immature literary 
 sense ; but there is something else too 
 there is a breath of that same speculative 
 passion which burns in the Journal, and 
 one hears, as it were, the first accents of a 
 melancholy, the first expression of a mood 
 of mind, which became in after years the 
 fixed characteristic of the writer. ' At 
 twenty he was already proud, timid, and 
 melancholy,' writes an old friend ; and a 
 little farther on, ' Discouragement took 
 possession of him very early.' 
 
 However, in spite of this inbred tendency, 
 which was probably hereditary and inevi- 
 table, the years which followed these arti- 
 cles, from 1842 to Christmas 1848, were 
 years of happiness and steady intellectual
 
 xxxii AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 expansiou. They were Amiel's Wander- 
 jahre, spent in a free, wandering student 
 life, which left deep marks on his intellec- 
 tual development. During four years, from 
 1844 to 1848, his headquarters were at Ber- 
 lin ; but every vacation saw him exploring 
 some new country or fresh intellectual 
 centre Scandinavia in 1845, Holland in 
 1846, Vienna, Munich, and Tiibingen in 
 1848, while Paris had already attracted him 
 in 1841, and he was to make acquaintance 
 with London ten years later, in 1851. No 
 circumstances could have been more fa- 
 vourable, one would have thought, to the 
 development of such a nature. With his 
 extraordinary power of 'throwing himself 
 into the object ' of effacing himself and 
 his own personality in the presence of the 
 thing to be understood and absorbed he 
 must have passed these years of travel and 
 acquisition in a state of continuous intellec- 
 tual energy and excitement. It is in no 
 spirit of conceit that he says in 1857. com- 
 paring himself with Maine de Biran, ' This 
 nature is, as it were, only one of the men 
 which exist in me. My horizon is vaster ; 
 I have seen much more of men, things, 
 countries, peoples, books ; I have a greater 
 mass of experiences.' This fact, indeed,
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXX111 
 
 of a wide and varied personal experience, 
 must never be forgotten in any critical esti- 
 mate of Amiel as a man or writer. We 
 may so easily conceive him as a sedentary 
 professor, with the ordinary professorial 
 knowledge, or rather ignorance, of men and 
 the world, falling into introspection under 
 the pressure of circumstance, and for want, 
 as it were, of something else to think about. 
 Not at all. The man who has left us these 
 microscopic analyses of his own moods and 
 feelings, had penetrated more or less into 
 the social and intellectual life of half a 
 dozen European countries, and was famil- 
 iar not only with the books, but, to a large 
 extent also, with the men of his generation. 
 The meditative and introspective gift was 
 in him, not the product, but the mistress 
 of circumstance. It took from the outer 
 world what that world had to give, and 
 then made the stuff so gained subservient 
 to its own ends. 
 
 Of these years of travel, however, the 
 four years spent at Berlin were by far the 
 most important. ' It was at Heidelberg and 
 Berlin,' says M. Scherer, ' that the world 
 of science and speculation first opened on 
 the dazzled eyes of the young man. He 
 was accustomed to speak of his four years
 
 xxxiv AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 at Berlin as "his intellectual phase," and 
 one felt that he inclined to regard them as 
 the happiest period of his life. The spell 
 which Berlin laid upon him lasted long.' 
 Probably his happiness in Germany was 
 partly owing to a sense of reaction against 
 Geneva. There are signs that he had felt 
 himself somewhat isolated at school and 
 college, and that in the German world his 
 special individuality, with its dreaminess 
 and its melancholy, found congenial sur- 
 roundings far more readily than had been 
 the case in the drier and harsher atmos- 
 phere of the Protestant Rome. However 
 this may be, it is certain that German 
 thought took possession of him, that he be- 
 came steeped not only in German methods 
 of speculation, but in German modes of 
 expression, in German forms of sentiment, 
 which clung to him through life, and vitally 
 affected both his opinions and his style. 
 M. Kenan and M. Bourget shake their 
 heads over the Germanisms, which, accord- 
 ing to the latter, give a certain ' barbarous ' 
 air to many passages of the Journal. But 
 both admit that Amiel's individuality owes 
 a great part of its penetrating force to that 
 intermingling of German with French ele- 
 ments, of which there are such abundant
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXXV 
 
 traces in the Journal Intime. Amiel, in 
 fact, is one more typical product of a move- 
 ment which is certainly of enormous im- 
 portance in the history of modern thought, 
 even though we may not be prepared to 
 assent to all the sweeping terms in which a 
 writer like M. Taine describes it. ' From 
 1780 to 1830,' says M. Taine, 'Germany 
 produced all the ideas of our historical age, 
 and during another half-century, perhaps 
 another century, notre grande affaire sera 
 de les repenser.' 1 He is inclined to compare 
 the influence of German ideas on the mod- 
 ern world to the ferment of the Renais- 
 sance. No spiritual force 'more original, 
 more universal, more fruitful in conse- 
 quences of every sort and bearing, more 
 capable of transforming and remaking 
 everything presented to it, has arisen dur- 
 ing the last three hundred years. Like the 
 spirit of the Renaissance and of the clas- 
 sical age, it attracts into its orbit all the 
 great works of contemporary- intelligence.' 
 Quinet, pursuing a somewhat different line 
 of thought, regards the worship of German 
 ideas inaugurated in France by Madame de 
 StaC-1 as the natural result of reaction from 
 the eighteenth century and all its ways. 
 ' German systems, German hypotheses, be-
 
 xxxvi AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 liefs, and poetry, all were eagerly welcomed 
 as a cure for hearts crushed by the mock- 
 ery of Candide and the materialism of the 
 Revolution. . . . Under the Restoration 
 France continued to study German philoso- 
 phy and poetry with profound veneration 
 and submission. We imitated, translated, 
 compiled, and then again we compiled, 
 translated, imitated.' The importance of 
 the part played by German influence in 
 French Romanticism has indeed been much 
 disputed, but the debt of French metaphys- 
 ics, French philology, and French histori- 
 cal study, to German methods and German 
 research during the last half-century is be- 
 yond dispute. And the movement to-day 
 is as strong as ever. A modern critic like 
 M. Darmstetter regards it as a misfortune 
 that the artificial stimulus given by the war 
 to the study of German has, to some extent, 
 checked the study of English in France. 
 He thinks that the French have more to 
 gain from our literature taking literature 
 in its general and popular sense than 
 from German literature. But he raises no 
 question as to the inevitable subjection of 
 the French to the German mind in matters 
 of exact thought and knowledge. ' To 
 study philology, mythology, history, with-
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXXVli 
 
 out reading German,' he is as ready to con- 
 fess as any one else ' is to condemn oneself 
 to remain in every department twenty 
 years behind the progress of science.' 
 
 Of this great movement, already so pro- 
 ductive, Amiel is then a fresh and re- 
 markable instance. Having caught from 
 the Germans not only their love of exact 
 knowledge but also their love of vast hori- 
 zons, their insatiable curiosity as to the 
 whence and whither of all things, their 
 sense of mystery and immensity in the 
 universe, he then brings those elements in 
 him which belong to his French inheritance 
 and something individual besides, which 
 is not French but Genevese to bear on 
 his new acquisitions, and the result is of 
 the highest literary interest and value. 
 Not that he succeeds altogether in the task 
 of fusion. For one who was to write and 
 think in French, he was perhaps too long 
 in Germany ; he had drunk too deeply of 
 German thought ; he had been too much 
 dazzled by the spectacle of Berlin and its 
 imposing intellectual activities. ' As to his 
 literary talent,' says M. Scherer, after 
 dwelling on the rapid growth of his intel- 
 lectual powers under German influence, 
 ' the profit which Amiel derived from his
 
 xxxviii AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 stay at Berlin is more doubtful. Too long 
 contact with the German mind had led to 
 the development in him of certain strange- 
 nesses of style which he had afterwards to 
 get rid of, and even perhaps of some habits 
 of thought which he afterwards felt the 
 need of checking and correcting.' This is 
 very true. Amiel is no doubt often guilty, 
 as M. Caro puts it, of attempts 'to write 
 German in French,' and there are in his 
 thought itself veins of mysticism, elements 
 of Schwdrmerei, here and there, of which 
 a good deal must be laid to the account of 
 his German training. 
 
 M. Renan regrets that after Geneva and 
 after Berlin he never came to Paris. Paris, 
 he thinks, would have counteracted the He- 
 gelian influences brought to bear upon him 
 at Berlin,* would have taught him cheerful- 
 ness, and taught him also the art of writ- 
 ing, not beautiful fragments, but a book. 
 Possibly but how much we should have 
 lost ! Instead of the Amiel we know, we 
 should have had one accomplished French 
 critic the more. Instead of the spiritual 
 drama of the Journal Intime, some further 
 
 * See a note, however, on the subject of Amiel'a 
 philosophical relationships, printed as an Appendix 
 to the present volume.
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXXIX 
 
 additions to French belles lettres ; instead 
 of something to love, something to ad- 
 mire ! No, there is no wishing the Ger- 
 man element in Amiel away. Its invading, 
 troubling effect upon his thought and tem- 
 perament goes far to explain the interest 
 and suggestiveness of his mental history. 
 The language he speaks is the language of 
 that French criticism which we have 
 Sainte-Beuve's authority for it is best 
 described by the motto of Montaigne, ' Un 
 pen de chaque chose et rien de V 'ensemble , 
 a lafranqaise,' and the thought he tries to 
 express in it is thought torn and strained 
 by the constant effort to reach the All, the 
 totality of things : ' What I desire is the 
 sum of all desires, and what I seek to 
 know is the sum of all different kinds of 
 knowledge. Always the complete, the ab- 
 solute, the teres atque rotundumS And it 
 was this antagonism, or rather this fusion 
 of traditions in him, which went far to 
 make him original, which opened to him, 
 that is to say, so many new lights on old 
 paths, and stirred in him such capacities of 
 fresh and individual expression. 
 
 We have been earned forward, however, 
 a little too far by this general discussion of 
 Amiel' s debts to Germany. Let us take
 
 xl AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 up the biographical thread again. In 1848 
 his Berlin apprenticeship came to an end, 
 and he returned to Geneva. ' How many 
 places, how many impressions, observa- 
 tions, thoughts, how many forms of men 
 and things, have passed before me and in 
 me since April 1843,' he writes in the Jour- 
 nal, two or three months after his return. 
 ' The last seven years have been the most 
 important of my life ; they have been the 
 ,f novitiate of my intelligence, the initiation 
 of my being into being.' The first literary 
 evidence of his matured powers is to be 
 found in two extremely interesting papers 
 on Berlin, which he contributed to the Bib- 
 liotheque Universelle in 1848, apparently 
 just before he left Germany. Here for the 
 first time we have the Ainiel of the Journal 
 Intime. The young man who five years 
 before had written his painstaking review 
 of M. Rio is now in his turn a master. He 
 speaks with dignity and authority, he has 
 a graphic, vigorous prose at command, the 
 form of expression is condensed and epi- 
 grammatic, and there is a mixture of enthu- 
 siasm and criticism in his description of the 
 powerful intellectual machine then working 
 in the Prussian capital which represents a 
 permanent note of character, a lasting atti-
 
 INTRODUCTION. xli 
 
 tude of mind. A great deal, of course, in 
 the two papers is technical and statistic, 
 but what there is of general comment and 
 criticism is so good that one is tempted to 
 make some melancholy comparisons be- 
 tween them and another article in the Bib- 
 liotheque, that on Adolphe Pictet, written in 
 1856, and from which we have already 
 quoted. In 1848 Amiel was for a while . 
 master of his powers and his knowledge ; 
 no fatal divorce had yet taken place in him 
 between the accumulating and producing 
 faculties ; he writes readily even for the 
 public, without labour, without affectations. 
 Eight years later the reflective faculty has 
 outgrown his control ; composition, which 
 represents the practical side of the intel- 
 lectual life, has become difficult and painful 
 to him, and he has developed what he 
 himself calls ' a wavering manner, born of 
 doubt and scruple.' 
 
 How few could have foreseen the failure 
 in public and practical life which lay before 
 him at the moment of his reappearance at 
 Geneva in 1848 ! ' My first meeting with 
 him in 1849 is still vividly present to me,' 
 says M. Scherer. ' He was twenty-eight, 
 and he had just come from Germany laden 
 with science, but he wore his knowledge
 
 xlii AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 lightly, his looks were attractive, his con- 
 versation animated, and no affectation 
 spoilt the favourable impression he made 
 on the bystander, the whole effect, in- 
 deed, was of something brilliant and strik- 
 ing. In his young alertness Amiel seemed 
 to be entering upon life as a conqueror ; 
 one would have said the future was all his 
 own.' 
 
 His return, moreover, was marked by a 
 success which seemed to secure him at 
 once an important position in his native 
 town. After a public competition he was 
 appointed, in 1849, Professor of Esthetics 
 and French Literature at the Academy of 
 Geneva, a post which he held for four years, 
 exchanging it for the Professorship of Moral 
 Philosophy in 1854. Thus at twenty-eight, 
 without any struggle to succeed, he had 
 gained, it would have seemed, that safe foot- 
 hold in life which should be all the philoso- 
 pher or the critic wants to secure the full 
 and fruitful development of his gifts. Un- 
 fortunately the appointment, instead of the 
 foundation and support, was to be the stum- 
 blingblock of his career. Geneva at the 
 time was in a state of social and politi- 
 cal ferment. After a long struggle, begin- 
 ning with the revolutionary outbreak of
 
 INTRODUCTION. xliii 
 
 November 1841, the Radical party, led by 
 James Fazy, had succeeded in ousting the 
 Conservatives that is to say, the govern- 
 ing class, which had ruled the Republic 
 since the Restoration from power. And 
 with the advent of the democratic constitu- 
 tion of 1846, and the exclusion of the old 
 Genevese families from the administration 
 they had so long monopolised, a number of 
 subsidiary changes were effected, not less im- 
 portant to the ultimate success of Radicalism 
 than the change in political machinery in- 
 troduced by the new constitution. Among 
 them was the disappearance of almost the 
 whole existing staff of the Academy, then 
 and now the centre of Genevese education, 
 and up to 1847 the stronghold of the mod- 
 erate ideas of 1814, followed by the ap- 
 pointment of new men less likely to hamper 
 the Radical order of things. 
 
 Of these new men Amiel was one. He 
 had been absent from Geneva during the 
 years of conflict which had preceded Fazy's 
 triumph ; he seems to have had no family 
 or party connections with the leaders of the 
 defeated side, and as M. Scherer points out, 
 he could accept a non-political post at the 
 hands of the new government, two years 
 after the violent measures which had
 
 xliv AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 marked its accession, without breaking any 
 pledges or sacrificing any convictions. But 
 none the less the step was a fatal one. 
 M. llenan is so far in the right. If any 
 timely friend had at that moment suc- 
 ceeded in tempting Amiel to Paris, as Gui- 
 zot, tempted llossi in 1833, there can be little 
 question that the young professor's after 
 life would have been happier and saner. 
 As it was, Amiel threw himself into the 
 competition for the chair, was appointed 
 professor, and then found himself in a 
 hopelessly false position, placed on the 
 threshold of life, in relations and sur- 
 roundings for which he was radically un- 
 fitted, and cut off by no fault of his own 
 from the milieu to which he rightly be- 
 longed, and in which his sensitive individ- 
 uality might have expanded normally and 
 freely. For the defeated upper class very 
 naturally shut their doors on the nominees 
 of the new regime, and as this class repre- 
 sented at that moment almost everything 
 that was intellectually distinguished in 
 Geneva, as it was the guardian, broadly 
 speaking, of the scientific and literary tra- 
 ditions of the little State, we can easily 
 imagine how galling such a social ostracism 
 must have been to the young professor,
 
 INTRODUCTION. xlv 
 
 accustomed to the stimulating atmosphere, 
 the common intellectual interests of Berlin, 
 and tormented with perhaps more than the 
 ordinary craving of youth for sympathy 
 and for affection. In a great city, contain- 
 ing within it a number of different circles 
 of life, Amiel would easily have found his 
 own circle, nor could political discords have 
 affected his social comfort to anything like 
 the same extent. But in a town not much 
 larger than Oxford, and in which the cul- 
 tured class had hitherto formed a more or 
 less homogeneous and united whole, it was 
 almost impossible for Amiel to escape from 
 his grievance and establish a sufficient bar- 
 rier of friendly interests between himself 
 and the society which ignored him. There 
 can be no doubt that he suffered, both in 
 mind and character, from the struggle the 
 position involved. He had no natural sym- 
 pathy with Radicalism. His taste, which 
 was extremely fastidious, his judgment, 
 his passionate respect for truth, were all 
 offended by the noise, the narrowness, the 
 dogmatism of the triumphant democracy. 
 So that there was no making up on the one 
 side for what he had lost on the other, and 
 he proudly resigned himself to an isolation 
 and a reserve which, reinforcing, as they
 
 xlvi AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 did, certain native weaknesses of character, 
 had the most unfortunate effect upon his 
 Ufe. 
 
 In a passage of the Journal written 
 nearly thirty years after his election he 
 allows himself a few pathetic words, haif 
 of accusation, half of self-reproach, which 
 make us realise how deeply this untoward- 
 ness of social circumstance had affected 
 him. He is discussing one of Madame de 
 StaeTs favourite words, the word considera- 
 tion. 'What is consideration?' he asks. 
 ' How does a man obtain it ? how does it 
 differ from fame, esteem, admiration ? ' 
 And then he turns upon himself. ' It is 
 curious, but the idea of consideration has 
 been to me so little of a motive that I have 
 not even been conscious of such an idea. But 
 ought I not to have been conscious of it ? ' 
 he asks himself anxiously, ' ought I not 
 to have been more careful to win the good 
 opinion of others, more determined to con- 
 quer their hostility or indifference ? It 
 would have been a joy to me to be smiled 
 upon, loved, encouraged, welcomed, and to 
 obtain what I was so ready to give, kindness 
 and goodwill. But to hunt down considera- 
 tion and reputation to force the esteem 
 of others seemed to me an effort un-
 
 INTRODUCTION. xlvii 
 
 worthy of myself, almost a degradation. 
 A struggle with unfavourable opinion has 
 seemed to me beneath me, for all the while 
 my heart has been full of sadness and dis- 
 appointment, and I have known and felt 
 that I have been systematically and deliber- 
 ately isolated. Untimely despair and the 
 deepest discouragement have been my con- 
 stant portion. Incapable of taking any 
 interest in iny talents for their own sake, I 
 let everything slip as soon as the hope of 
 being loved for them and by them had for- 
 saken me. A hermit against my will, I 
 have not even found peace in solitude, 
 because my inmost conscience has not been 
 any better satisfied than my heart.' 
 
 Still one may no doubt easily exaggerate 
 this loneliness of Amiel's. His social diffi- 
 culties represent rather a dull discomfort 
 in his life, which in course of time, and in 
 combination with a good many other causes, 
 produced certain unfavourable results on his 
 temperament and on his public career, than 
 anything very tragic and acute. They 
 were real, and he, being what he was, was 
 specially unfitted to cope with and conquer 
 them. But he had his friends, his pleas- 
 ures, and even to some extent his successes, 
 like other men. ' He had an elasticity of
 
 xlviii AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 mind,' says M. Scherer, speaking of him as 
 he knew him in youth, ' which reacted 
 against vexations from without, and his 
 cheerfulness was readily restored by con- 
 versation and the society of a few kindred 
 spirits. We were accustomed, two or three 
 friends and I, to walk every Thursday to 
 the Saleve, Lamartine's Saleve aux Jlancs 
 azures we dined there, and did not return 
 till nightfall.' They were days devoted to 
 debauches platoniciennes, to ' the free ex- 
 change of ideas, the free play of fancy and 
 of gaiety. Amiel was not one of the origi- 
 nal members of these Thursday parties ; 
 but whenever he joined us we regarded it 
 as a fete-day. In serious discussion he was 
 a master of the unexpected, and his energy, 
 his entrain, affected us all. If his gram- 
 matical questions, his discussions of rhymes 
 and synonyms, astonished us at times, how 
 often, on the other hand, did he not give us 
 cause to admire the variety of his knowl- 
 edge, the precision of his ideas, the charm 
 of his quick intelligence ! We found him 
 always, besides, kindly and amiable, a 
 nature one might trust and lean upon with 
 perfect security. He awakened in us but 
 one regret ; we could not understand how it 
 was a man so richly gifted produced noth- 
 ing, or only trivialities.''
 
 INTRODUCTION. xlix 
 
 In these last words of M. Scherer's we 
 have come across the determining fact of 
 Amiel's life in its relation to the outer 
 world that 'sterility of genius,' of which 
 he was the victim. For social ostracism 
 and political anxiety would have mattered 
 to him comparatively little if he could but 
 have lost himself in the fruitful activities of 
 thought, in the struggles and the victories 
 of composition and creation. A German 
 professor of Amiel's knowledge would have 
 wanted nothing beyond his Fach, and nine 
 men out of ten in his circumstances would 
 have made themselves the slave of a magnum 
 opus, and forgotten the vexations of every- 
 day life in the ' douces joies de la science. 1 
 But there were certain characteristics in ( 
 Amiel which made it impossible which 
 neutralised his powers, his knowledge, his 
 intelligence, and condemned him, so far as 
 his public performance was concerned, to 
 barrenness and failure. What were these 
 characteristics, this element of unsoundness 
 and disease, which M. Caro calls ' la mala- 
 die de Z' ideal ' ? 
 
 Before we can answer the question we 
 must go back a little and try to realise the 
 intellectual and moral equipment of the 
 young man of twenty-eight, who seemed to
 
 1 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 M. Scherer to have the world at his feet. 
 What were the chief qualities of mind and 
 heart which Amiel brought back with him 
 from Berlin ? In the first place, an omniv- 
 orous desire to know : ' Amiel,' says M. 
 Scherer, ' read everything.' In the second, 
 an extraordinary power of sustained and 
 concentrated thought, and a passionate, 
 almost a religious, delight in the exercise 
 of his power. Knowledge, science, stirred 
 in him no mere sense of curiosity or cold 
 critical instinct, ' he came to his desk as 
 to an altar. ' ' A friend who knew him 
 well,' says M. Scherer, ' remembers having 
 heard him speak with deep emotion of that 
 lofty serenity of mood which he had expe- 
 rienced during his years in Germany when- 
 ever, in the early morning before dawn, 
 with his reading-lamp beside him, he had 
 found himself penetrating once more into 
 the region of pure thought, "conversing 
 with ideas, enjoying the inmost life of 
 things."' 'Thought,' he says somewhere 
 in the Journal, ' is like opium. It can in- 
 toxicate us and yet leave us broad awake.' 
 To this intoxication of thought he seems to 
 have been always specially liable, and his 
 German experience unbalanced, as such 
 an experience generally is with a young
 
 INTRODUCTION. H 
 
 man, by family life, or by any healthy 
 commonplace interests and pleasures de- 
 veloped the intellectual passion in him to 
 an abnormal degree. For four years he 
 had devoted himself to the alternate excite- 
 ment and satisfaction of this passion. He 
 had read enormously, thought enormously, 
 and in the absence of any imperative claim 
 on the practical side of him, the accumula- 
 tive, reflective faculties had grown out of 
 all proportion to the rest of the personality. 
 Nor had any special subject the power to 
 fix him. Had he been in France, what 
 Sainte-Beuve calls the French ' imagination 
 de detail ' would probably have attracted 
 his pliant, responsive nature, and he would 
 have found happy occupation in some one 
 of the innumerable departments of research 
 on which the French have been patiently 
 spending their analytical gift since that 
 general widening of horizons which accom- 
 panied and gave value to the Komantic 
 movement. But instead he was at Berlin, 
 in the centre of that speculative ferment 
 which followed the death of Hegel and the 
 break-up of the Hegelian idea into a num- 
 ber of different and conflicting sections of 
 philosophical opinion. He was under the 
 spell of German synthesis, of that tradi-
 
 lii AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 tional, involuntary effort which the Orman 
 mind makes, generation after generation, 
 to find the unity of experience, to range its 
 accumulations from life and thought under 
 a more and more perfect, a more and more 
 exhaustive, formula. Not this study or that 
 study, not this detail or that, but the whole 
 
 of things, the sum of Knowledge, the Infi- 
 nite, the Absolute, alone had value or real- 
 ity. In his own words : ' There is no repose 
 / for the mind except in the absolute ; for 
 
 V feeling except in the infinite ; for the s< ml 
 except in the divine. Nothing finite is true, 
 is interesting, is worthy to fix my attention. 
 All that is particular is exclusive, and all 
 that is exclusive repels me. There is noth- 
 
 N ing non-exclusive but the All ; my end is 
 communion with Being through the whole 
 of Being.' 
 
 It was not, indeed, that he neglected the 
 study of detail ; he had a strong natural 
 aptitude for it, and his knowledge was wide 
 and real ; but detail was ultimately valuable 
 to him, not in itself, but as food for a spec- 
 ulative hunger, for which, after all, there is 
 no real satisfaction. All the pleasant paths 
 which traverse the kingdom of Knowledge, 
 in which so many of us find shelter and 
 life-long means of happiness, led Amiel
 
 INTRODUCTION. Kii 
 
 straight into the wilderness of abstract 
 speculation. And the longer he lingered in 
 the wilderness, unchecked by any sense of 
 intellectual responsibility, and far from the 
 sounds of human life, the stranger and the 
 weirder grew the hallucinations of thought. 
 The Journal gives marvellous expression to 
 them : ' I can find no words for what I feel. 
 My consciousness is withdrawn into itself ; 
 I hear my heart beating, and my life pass- 
 ing. It seems to me that I have become a 
 statue on the banks of the river of time, 
 that I am the spectator of some mystery, 
 and shall issue from it old, or no longer 
 capable of age.' Or again : ' I am a specta- 
 tor, so to speak, of the molecular whirl- 
 wind which men call individual life ; I am 
 conscious of an incessant metamorphosis, 
 an irresistible movement of existence, which 
 is going on within me and this phenom- / 
 enology of myself serves as a window / 
 opened upon the mystery of the world. I 
 ain, or rather my sensible consciousness is, 
 concentrated upon this ideal standing-point, 
 this invisible threshold, as it were, whence 
 one hears the impetuous passage of time, 
 rushing and foaming as it flows out into the 
 changeless ocean of eternity. After all the 
 bewildering distractions of life after hav-
 
 liv AMIEI.'S JOURNAL. 
 
 ing drowned myself in a multiplicity of 
 trifles and in the caprices of this fugitive 
 existence, yet without ever attaining to 
 self-intoxication or self-delusion, I come 
 again upon the fathomless abyss, the silent 
 and melancholy cavern, where dwell " Die 
 Mutter," where sleeps that which neither 
 lives nor dies, which has neither movement 
 nor change, nor extension, nor form, and 
 which lasts when all else passes away.' 
 
 Wonderful sentences ! ' Prodiges de la 
 pensee speculative, decrits dans tine langue 
 non mains prodigieuseS as M. Scherer says 
 of the innumerable passages which describe 
 either this intoxication of the infinite, or the 
 various forms and consequences of that 
 deadening of personality which the abstract 
 processes of thought tend to produce. But 
 it is easy to understand that a man in whom 
 experiences of this kind become habitual is 
 likely to lose his hold upon the normal in- 
 terests of life. What are politics or litera- 
 ture to such a mind but fragments without 
 real importance dwarfed reflections of 
 ideal truths for which neither language nor 
 institutions provide any adequate expres- 
 sion ! How is it possible to take seriously 
 what is so manifestly relative and tempo- 
 rary as the various existing forms of human
 
 INTRODUCTION. Iv 
 
 activity ? Above all, how is it possible 
 to take oneself seriously, to spend one's 
 thought on the petty interests of a petty 
 individuality, when the beatific vision of 
 universal knowledge, of absolute being, has 
 once dawned on the dazzled beholder ? 
 The charm and the savour of everything ^\ 
 relative and phenomenal is gone. A man 
 may go on talking, teaching, writing but 
 the spring of personal action is broken ; his 
 actions are like the actions of a somnambu- 
 list. 
 
 No doubt to some extent this mood is 
 familiar to all minds endowed with the true 
 speculative genius. The philosopher has 
 always tended to become unfit for practical 
 life ; his unfitness, indeed, is one of the 
 comic motives, so to speak, of literature. 
 But a mood which, in the great majority of 
 thinkers, is intermittent, and is easily kept 
 within bounds by the practical needs, the 
 mere physical instincts of life, was in Amiel 
 almost constant, and the natural impulse of 
 the human animal towards healthy move- 
 ment and a normal play of function, never 
 very strong in him, was gradually weakened 
 and destroyed by an untoward combination 
 of circumstance. The low health from 
 which he suffered more or less from his
 
 Ivi . AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 boyhood, and then the depressing influences 
 of the social difficulties we have described, 
 made it more and more difficult for the rest 
 of the organism to react against the tyranny 
 of the brain. And as the normal human 
 motives lost their force, what he calls ' the 
 Buddhist tendency in me ' gathered strength 
 year by year, until, like some strange niis- 
 growth, it had absorbed the whole energies 
 and drained the innermost life-blood of the 
 personality which had developed it. And 
 the result is another soul's tragedy, another 
 story of conflict and failure, which throws 
 fresh light on the mysterious capacities of 
 human nature, and warns us, as the letters 
 of Obermann in their day warned the gen- 
 eration of George Sand, that with the rise 
 of new intellectual perceptions new spiritual 
 dangers come into being, and that across 
 the path of continuous evolution which the 
 modern mind is traversing there lies many 
 a selva oscura, many a lonely and desolate 
 tract, in which loss and pain await it. The 
 story of the Journal Intime is a story to 
 make us think, to make us anxious ; but at 
 the same time, in the case of a nature like 
 Amiel's, there is so much high poetry 
 thrown off from the long process of conflict, 
 the power of vision and of reproduction
 
 INTRODUCTION. Ivii 
 
 which the intellect gains at the expense of 
 the rest of the personality is in many re- 
 spects so real and so splendid, and produces 
 results so stirring often to the heart and 
 imagination of the listener, that in the end 
 we put down the record not so much with a 
 throb of pity as with an impulse of grati- 
 tude. The individual error and suffering is 
 almost forgotten ; all that we can realise is 
 the enrichment of human feeling, the quick- 
 ened sense of spiritual reality bequeathed 
 to us by the baffled and solitary thinker 
 whose via dolorosa is before us. 
 
 The manner in which this intellectual 
 idiosyncrasy we have been describing gradu- 
 ally affected Amiel's life supplies abundant 
 proof of its actuality and sincerity. It is a 
 pitiful story. Amiel might have been saved 
 from despair by love and marriage, by pa- 
 ternity, by strenuous and successful literary 
 production ; and this mental habit of his, 
 this tyranny of ideal conceptions, helped by 
 the natural accompaniment of such a tyr- / 
 anny, a critical sense of abnormal acute- ' 
 ness, stood between him and everything 
 healing and restoring. ' I am afraid of an 
 imperfect, a faulty synthesis, and I linger V 
 in the provisional, from timidity and from 
 loyalty.' ' As soon as a thing attracts me
 
 iviii AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 I turn away from it ; or rather, I cannot 
 either be content with the second-best, or 
 "discover anything which satisfies my aspi- 
 ration. The real disgusts me, and I cannot 
 find the ideal.' And so one thing after an- 
 other is put away. Family life attracted 
 him perpetually. ' I cannot escape,' he 
 writes, 'from the ideal of it. A companion 
 of my life, of my work, of my thoughts, of 
 my hopes ; within a common worship 
 towards the world outside kindness and 
 beneficence ; education to undertake ; the 
 thousand and one moral relations which 
 develop round the first all these ideas 
 intoxicate me sometimes.' But in vain. 
 ' Reality, the present, the irreparable, the 
 necessary, repel and even terrify me. I 
 have too much imagination, conscience, and 
 penetration, and not enough character. 
 The life of thought alone seems to me to 
 have enough elasticity and immensity, to be 
 free enough from the irreparable ; practical 
 life makes me afraid. I am distrustful of 
 myself and of happiness because I know 
 myself. The ideal poisons for me all im- 
 perfect possession. And I abhor useless 
 regrets and repentances.' 
 
 It is the same, at bottom, with his profes- 
 sorial work. He protects the intellectual
 
 INTRODUCTION, x 
 
 freedom, as it were, of his students with 
 the same jealousy as he protects his own. 
 There shall be no oratorical device, no per- 
 suading, no cajoling of the mind this way 
 or that. ' A professor is the priest of his 
 subject, and should do the honours of it 
 gravely and with dignity.' And so the man 
 who in his private Journal is master of an 
 eloquence and a poetry, capable of illumi- 
 nating the most difficult and abstract of sub- 
 jects, becomes in the lecture-room a dry 
 compendium of universal knowledge. ' Led 
 by his passion for the whole,' says M. 
 Scherer, ' Amiel offered his hearers, not so 
 much a series of positive teachings, as an 
 index of subjects, a framework what the 
 Germans call a Schematismus. The skele- 
 ton was admirably put together, and excel- 
 lent of its kind, and lent itself admirably 
 to a certain kind of analysis and demon- 
 stration ; but it was a skeleton flesh, body, 
 and life were wanting.' 
 
 So that as a professor he made no mark. 
 He was conscientiousness itself in what- 
 ever he conceived to be his duty. But with 
 all the critical and philosophical power 
 which, as we know from the Journal, he 
 might have lavished on his teaching, had 
 the conditions been other than they were,
 
 Ix AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 the study of literature, and the study of 
 philosophy as such, owe him nothing. But 
 for the Journal his years of training and 
 his years of teaching would have left equally 
 little record behind them. ' His pupils at 
 Geneva,' writes one who was himself among 
 the number,* ' never learnt to appreciate him 
 at his true worth. We did justice no doubt to 
 a knowledge as varied as it was wide, to his 
 vast stores of reading, to that cosmopolitan- 
 ism of the best kind which he had brought 
 back with him from his travels ; we liked 
 him for his indulgence, his kindly wit. But 
 I look back without any sense of pleasure 
 to his lectures. ' 
 
 Many a student, however, has shrunk 
 from the burden and risks of family life, 
 and has found himself incapable of teach- 
 ing effectively what he knows, and has yet 
 redeemed all other incapacities in the field 
 of literary production. And here indeed 
 we come to the strangest feature in Amiel's 
 career his literary sterility. That he 
 possessed literary power of the highest 
 order is abundantly proved by the Journal 
 Intime. Knowledge, insight, eloquence, 
 
 * M. Alphonse Rivier, now Professor of Inter- 
 national Law at the University of Brussels.
 
 INTRODUCTION. Ixi 
 
 critical power all were his. And the 
 impulse to produce, which is the natural, 
 though by no means the invariable, accom- 
 paniment of the literary gift, must have 
 been fairly strong in him also. For the 
 Journal Intime runs to 17,000 folio pages of 
 MS., and his half-dozen volumes of poems, 
 though the actual quantity is not large, 
 represent an amount of labour which would 
 have more than carried him through some 
 serious piece of critical or philosophical 
 work, and so enabled him to content the 
 just expectations of his world. He began 
 to write early, as is proved by the fact that 
 at twenty he was a contributor to the best 
 literary periodical which Geneva possessed. 
 He was a charming correspondent, and in 
 spite of his passion for abstract thought, 
 his intellectual interest, at any rate, in all 
 the activities of the day politics, religious 
 organisations, literature, art was of the 
 keenest kind. And yet at the time of his 
 death all that this fine critic and profound 
 thinker had given to the world, after a life 
 entirely spent in the pursuit of letters, was, 
 in the first place, a few volumes of poems 
 which had had no effect except on a small 
 number of sympathetic friends ; a few pages 
 of pensees intermingled with the poems, and,
 
 Ixii AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 as we now know, extracted from the Jour- 
 nal ; and four or five scattered essays, the 
 length of magazine articles, on Mme. de 
 Stael, Rousseau, the history of the Academy 
 of Geneva, the literature of French-speak- 
 ing Switzerland, and so on ! And more 
 than this, the production, such as it was, 
 had been a production born of effort and 
 difficulty ; and the labour squandered on 
 poetical forms, on metrical experiments 
 and intricate problems of translation, as 
 well as the occasional affectations of the 
 prose style, might well have convinced the 
 critical bystander that the mind of which 
 these things were the offspring could have 
 no real importance, no profitable message, 
 for the world. 
 
 The whole Journal Intime is in some 
 sense Amiel's explanation of these facts. 
 In it he has made full and bitter confession 
 of his weakness, his failure ; he has en- 
 deavoured, with an acuteness of analysis 
 no other hand can rival, to make the rea- 
 sons of his failure and isolation clear both 
 to himself and others. ' To love, to dream, 
 to feel, to learn, to understand all these 
 are possible to me if only I may be dis- 
 pensed from willing I have a sort of 
 primitive horror of ambition, of struggle, oi
 
 INTRODUCTION. Ixiii 
 
 hatred, of all which dissipates the soul and ^ 
 makes it dependent on external things and ! 
 aims. The joy of becoming once more con- 
 scious of myself, of listening to the passage 
 of time and the flow of the universal life, is 
 sometimes enough to make me forget every 
 desire and to quench in me both the wish 
 to produce and the power to execute.' It 
 is the result of what he himself calls 
 ' V eblouissement de Vinjini.' 1 He no sooner j 
 makes a step towards production, towards 
 action and the realisation of himself, than 
 a vague sense of peril overtakes him. The 
 inner life, with its boundless horizons and 
 its indescribable exaltations, seems endan- 
 gered. Is he not about to place between 
 himself and the forms of speculative truth 
 some barrier of sense and matter to give 
 up the real for the apparent, the substance 
 for the shadow ? One is reminded of 
 Clough's cry under a somewhat similar 
 experience : 
 
 ' If this pure solace should desert my mind, 
 What were all else ? I dare not risk the loss. 
 To the old paths, my soul ! ' 
 
 And in close combination with the specu- 
 lative sense, with the tendency which car- 
 ries a man toward the contemplative study
 
 Ixiv AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 of life and nature as a whole, is the critical 
 sense the tendency which, in the realm of 
 action and concrete performance, carries 
 him, as Ainiel expresses it, ' droit au de- 
 .fautj and makes him conscious at once of 
 the weak point, the germ of failure in a 
 project or an action. It is another aspect 
 of the same idiosyncrasy. ' The point I 
 have reached seems to be explained by a 
 too restless search for perfection, by the 
 abuse of the critical faculty, and by an 
 unreasonable distrust of first impulses, first 
 thoughts, first words. Confidence and 
 spontaneity of life are drifting out of my 
 reach, and this is why I can no longer act.' 
 For abuse of the critical faculty brings with 
 it its natural consequences timidity of 
 soul, paralysis of the will, complete self-dis- 
 trust. ' To know is enough for me ; expres- 
 sion seems to me often a profanity. What 
 I lack is character, will, individuality. 1 - 
 ' By what mystery,' he writes to M. Scherer, 
 ' do others expect much from me ? whereas 
 I feel myself to be incapable of anything 
 serious or important.' Defiance and im- 
 puissance are the words constantly on his 
 lips. ' My friends see what I might have 
 been ; I see what I am.' 
 
 And yet the literary instinct remains,
 
 INTRODUCTION. IxV 
 
 and must in some way be satisfied. And 
 so he takes refuge in what he himself calls 
 scales, exercises, tours de force in verse- 
 translation of the most laborious and diffi- 
 cult kind, in ingenious vers d' occasion, in 
 metrical experiments and other literary 
 trifling, as his friends think it, of the same 
 sort. ' I am afraid of greatness. I am not 
 afraid of ingenuity ; all my published liter- 
 ary essays are little else than studies, games, 
 exercises, for the purpose of testing myself. 
 I play scales, as it were ; I run up and 
 down my instrument. I train my hand and 
 make sure of its capacity and skill. But 
 the work itself remains unachieved. I am 
 always preparing and never accomplishing, 
 and my energy is swallowed up in a kind of 
 barren curiosity.' 
 
 Not that he surrenders himself to the 
 nature which is stronger than he all at once. 
 His sense of duty rebels, his conscience 
 suffers, and he makes resolution after reso- 
 lution to shake himself free from the mental 
 tradition which had taken such hold upon 
 him to write, to produce, to satisfy his 
 friends. In 1861, a year after M. Scherer 
 had left Geneva, Amiel wrote to him, de- 
 scribing his difficulties and his discourage- 
 ments, and asking, as one may ask an old
 
 Ixvi AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 friend of one's youth, for help and counsel. 
 M. Scherer, much touched by the appeal, 
 answered it plainly and frankly described 
 the feeling of those who knew him as they 
 watched his life slipping away unmarked by 
 any of the achievements of which his youth 
 had given promise, and pointed out various 
 literary openings in which, if he were to put 
 out his powers, he could not but succeed. 
 To begin with, he urged him to join the 
 lievue Germanique, then being started by 
 Charles Dollfus, Renan, Littre, and others. 
 Amiel left the letter for three months un- 
 answered, and then wrote a reply which M. 
 Scherer probably received with a sigh of 
 impatience. For, rightly interpreted, it 
 meant that old habits were too strong, and 
 that the momentary impulse had died away. 
 When, a little later, Les Etrangeres, a col- 
 lection of verse-translations, came out, it 
 was dedicated to M. Scherer, who did not, 
 however, pretend to give it any very cordial 
 reception. Amiel took his friend's coolness 
 in very good part, calling him his ' dear 
 Rhadamanthus. ' 'How little I knew!' 
 cries M. Scherer. ' What I regret is to 
 have discovered too late by means of the 
 Journal, the key to a problem which seemed 
 to me hardly serious, and which I now feel
 
 INTRODUCTION. Ixvii 
 
 to have been tragic. A kind of remorse 
 seizes me that I was not able to understand 
 my friend better, and to soothe his suffer- 
 ing by a sympathy which would have been 
 a mixture of pity and admiration.' 
 
 Was it that all the while Amiel felt him- 
 self sure of his revanche? that he knew the 
 value of all those sheets of Journal which 
 were slowly accumulating under his hand ? 
 Did he say to himself sometimes : ' My 
 friends are wrong ; my gifts and my knowl- 
 edge are not lost ; I have given expression 
 to them in the only way possible to me, and 
 when I die it will be found that I too, like 
 other men, have performed the task ap- 
 pointed me, and contributed my quota to 
 the human store ' ? It is clear that very 
 early he began to regard it as possible that v 
 portions of the Journal should be published 
 after his death, and, as we have seen, he 
 left certain ' literary instructions,' dated 
 seven years before his last illness, in which 
 his executors were directed to publish such 
 parts of it as might seem to them to possess 
 any general interest. But it is clear also j, 
 that the Journal was not, in any sense, 
 written for publication. ' These pages,' 
 say the Geneva editors, ' written au courant 
 de la plume sometimes in the morning,
 
 Ixviii AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 but more often at the end of the day, with- 
 out any idea of composition or publicity 
 are marked by the repetition, the lacunce, 
 the carelessness, inherent in this kind of 
 monologue. The thoughts and sentiments 
 expressed have no other aim than sincerity 
 of rendering.' 
 
 And his estimate of the value of the 
 record thus produced was, in general, a low 
 one, especially during the depression and 
 discouragement of his later years. ' This 
 Journal of mine,' he writes in 1876, ' repre- 
 sents the material of a good many volumes ; 
 what prodigious waste of time, of thought, 
 of strength ! It will be useful to nobody, 
 and even for myself it has rather helped 
 me to shirk life than to practise it.' And 
 again: 'Is everything I have produced, 
 taken together my correspondence, these 
 thousands of Journal pages, my lectures, 
 my articles, my poems, my notes of differ- 
 ent kinds anything better than withered 
 leaves ? To whom and to what have I been 
 useful ? Will my name survive me a single 
 day, and will it ever mean anything to 
 anybody ? A life of no account ! When 
 all is added up nothing ! ' In passages 
 like these there is no anticipation of any 
 posthumous triumph over the disapproval
 
 INTRODUCTION. Ixix 
 
 of his friends and the criticism of his 
 fellow-citizens. The Journal was a relief, 
 the means of satisfying a need of expression 
 which otherwise could find no outlet ; ' a 
 grief -cheating device,' but nothing more. 
 It did not still the sense of remorse for 
 wasted gifts and opportunities which fol- 
 lowed poor Amiel through the painful 
 months of his last illness. Like Keats, he 
 passed away, feeling that all was over, and 
 the great game of life lost for ever. 
 
 It still remains for us to gather up a few 
 facts and impressions of a different kind 
 from those which we have been dwelling 
 on, which may serve to complete and cor- 
 rect the picture we have so far drawn of the 
 author of the Journal. For Amiel is full of 
 contradictions and surprises, which are in- 
 deed one great source of his attractiveness. 
 Had he only been the thicker, the critic, 
 the idealist we have been describing, he 
 would never have touched our feeling as he 
 now does ; what makes him so interesting 
 is that there was in him a fond of heredity, 
 a temperament and disposition, which were 
 perpetually reacting against the oppression 
 of the intellect and its accumulations. In 
 his hours of intellectual concentration he
 
 Ixx AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 freed himself from all trammels of country 
 or society, or even, as he insists, from all 
 sense of personality. But at other times 
 he was the dutiful son of a country which 
 he loved, taking a warm interest in every- 
 thing Genevese, especially in everything 
 ythat represented the older life of the town. 
 When it was a question of separating the 
 Genevese State from the Church, which had 
 been the centre of the national life during 
 three centuries of honourable history, Amiel 
 the philosopher, the cosmopolitan, threw 
 himself ardently on to the side of the oppo- 
 nents of separation, and rejoiced in their 
 victory. A large proportion of his poems 
 deal with national subjects. He was one 
 of the first members of ' ISInstitut Gene- 
 vois,' 1 founded in 1853, and he took a warm 
 interest in the movement started by M. 
 Eugene Rambert towards 1870, for the im- 
 provement of secondary education through- 
 out French-speaking Switzerland. One of 
 his friends dwells with emphasis on his 
 ' sens profond des nationalttes, des langues, 
 des villesS on his love for local character- 
 istics, for everything deep-rooted in the 
 past, and helping to sustain the present. 
 He is convinced that no State can live and 
 thrive without a certain number of national
 
 INTRODUCTION. Ixxi 
 
 prejudices, without a priori beliefs and tra- 
 ditions. It pleases him to see that there is 
 a force in the Genevese nationality which 
 resists the levelling influences of a crude 
 radicalism ; it rejoices him that Geneva ' has 
 not yet become a mere copy of anything, 
 and that she is still capable of deciding for 
 herself. Those who say to her, "Do as 
 they do at New York, at Paris, at Rome, at 
 Berlin," are still in the minority. The doc- 
 trinaires who would split her up and de- 
 stroy her unity waste their breath upon her. 
 She divines the snare laid for her, and 
 turns away. I like this proof of vitality.' 
 
 His love of travelling never left him. 
 Paris attracted him, as it attracts all who 
 cling to letters, and he gained at one time 
 or another a certain amount of acquaint 
 ance with French literary men. In 1852 we 
 find him for a time brought into contact 
 with Thierry, Lamennais, Bfiranger, Mignet, 
 etc., as well as with Romantics like Alfred 
 de Vigny and Theophile Gautier. There 
 are poems addressed to De Vigny and Gau- 
 tier in his first published volume of 1854. 
 He revisited Italy and his old haunts and 
 friends in Germany more than once, and in 
 general kept the current of his life fresh! 
 and vigorous by his openness to impressions 
 and additions from without.
 
 Ixxii AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 He was, as we have said, a delightful cor- 
 i respondent, ' taking pains with the smallest 
 
 y note,' and within a small circle of friends 
 much liked. His was not a nature to be 
 
 generally appreciated at its true value ; the 
 motives which governed his life were too 
 remote from the ordinary motives of human 
 conduct, and his characteristics just those 
 which have always excited the distrust, if 
 not the scorn, of the more practical and 
 vigecous order of minds. Probably, too 
 especially in his later years there was a 
 certain amount of self-consciousness and 
 artificiality in his attitude towards the 
 outer world, which was the result partly 
 of the social difficulties we have described, 
 partly of his own sense of difference from 
 his surroundings, and partly again of that 
 timidity of nature, that self-distrust, which 
 is revealed to us in the Journal. So that he 
 was by no means generally popular, and 
 the great success of the Journal is still a 
 mystery to the majority of those who knew 
 him merely as a fellow-citizen and acquaint- 
 ance. But his friends loved him and be- 
 lieved in him, and the reserved student, 
 whose manners were thought affected in 
 general society, could and did make him- 
 self delightful to those who understood him,
 
 INTRODUCTION. Ixxiii 
 
 or those who looked to him for affection. 
 'According to my remembrance of him,' 
 writes M. Scherer, ' he was bright, sociable, 
 a charming companion. Others who knew 
 him better and longer than I say the same. 
 The mobility of his disposition counteracted 
 his tendency to exaggerations of feeling. 
 In spite of his fits of melancholy, his natu- 
 ral turn of mind was cheerful ; up to the 
 end he was young, a child even, amused by 
 mere nothings ; and whoever had heard 
 him laugh his hearty student's laugh would 
 have found it difficult to identify him with 
 the author of so many sombre pages.' M. 
 Rivier, his old pupil, remembers him as 
 ' strong and active, still handsome, delight- 
 ful in conversation, ready to amuse and be 
 amused.' Indeed, if the photographs of 
 him are to be trusted, there must have been 
 something specially attractive in the sensi- 
 tive, expressive face, with its lofty brow, 
 fine eyes, and kindly mouth. It is the face 
 of a poet rather than of a student, and 
 makes one understand certain other little 
 points which his friends lay stress on, for 
 instance, his love for and popularity with 
 children. 
 
 In his poems, or at any rate in the earlier 
 ones, this lighter side finds more expres-
 
 Ixxiv AMIEI/S JOURNAL. 
 
 sion, proportionally, than in the Journal. 
 In the volume called Grains de Mil, pub- 
 lished in 1854, and containing verse written 
 between the ages of eighteen and thirty, 
 there are poems addressed, now to his 
 sister, now to old Genevese friends, and 
 now to famous men of other countries 
 whom he had seen and made friends with 
 in passing, which, read side by side with 
 the Journal Intime, bring a certain gleam 
 and sparkle into an otherwise sombre pic- 
 ture. Amiel was never a master of poetical 
 form; his verse, compared to his prose, -is 
 tame and fettered : it never reaches the 
 glow and splendour of expression which 
 mark the finest passages of the Journal. It 
 has ability, thought beauty even, of a 
 certain kind, but no plastic power, none of 
 the incommunicable magic which a George 
 Eliot seeks for in vain, while it comes un- 
 asked, to deck with imperishable charm the 
 commonplace metaphysic and the simpler 
 emotions of a Tennyson or a Burns. Still, 
 as Amiel's work, his poetry has an interest 
 for those who are interested in him. Sin- 
 cei'ity is written in every line of it. Most 
 of the thoughts and experiences with which 
 one grows familiar in the Journal are re- 
 peated in it ; the same joys, the same as-
 
 INTRODUCTION. Ixxv 
 
 pirations, the same sorrows are visible 
 throughout it, so that in reading it one is 
 more and more impressed with the force 
 and reality of the inner life which has left 
 behind it so definite an image of itself. 
 And every now and then the poems add a 
 detail, a new impression, which seems by 
 contrast to give fresh value to the fine-spun 
 speculations, the lofty despairs, of the 
 Journal. Take these verses, written at 
 twenty-one, to his younger sister 
 
 ' Treize ans ! et sur ton front aucun baiser de 
 
 mere 
 Ne viendra, pauvre enfant, invoquer le bon- 
 
 heur ; 
 Treize ans ! et dans ce jour nul regard de ton 
 
 pere 
 Ne fera d'allegresse epanouir ton cceur. 
 
 ' Orpheline, c'est la le nom dont tu t'appelles, 
 Oiseau ne dans un nid que la foudre a brise ; 
 De la couvee, helas ! seuls, trois petits, sans 
 
 ailes 
 Furent lances au vent, loin du reste ecrase. 
 
 ' Et, semes par 1'eclair sur les monts, dans les 
 
 plaines, 
 
 Un meme toit encor n'a pu les abriter, 
 Et du foyer natal, malgre leurs plaintes 
 
 vaines 
 Dieu, peut-etre longtemps, voudra les ecarter.
 
 Ixxvi AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 ' Pourtant console-toi ! pense, dans tea 
 alarmes, 
 
 Qu'un double bien te reste, espoir et souve- 
 nir; 
 
 Une main dans le ciel pour essuyer tes 
 larmes; 
 
 Une main ici-bas, enfant, pour te benir.' 
 
 The last stanza is especially poor, and in 
 none of them is there much poetical prom- 
 ise. But the pathetic image of a forlorn 
 and orphaned childhood, ' un nid que la 
 fondre a brise^ which it calls up, and the 
 tone of brotherly affection, linger in one's 
 memory. And through much of the volume 
 of 1863, in the verses to ' My Godson,' or 
 in the charming poem to Loulou, the little 
 girl who at five years old, daisy in hand, 
 had sworn him eternal friendship over 
 Gretchen's game of ' Er liebt mich liebt 
 mich nicht^ one hears the same tender 
 note. 
 
 ' Merci, prophetique fleurette, 
 Corolle a 1'oracle vainqueur, 
 Car voila trois ans, paquerette, 
 Que tu m'ouvris un petit coeur. 
 
 ' Et depuis trois hivers, ma belle, 
 L'enfant aux grands yeux de velours 
 Maintient son petit coeur fidele, 
 Fidele comme aux premiers jours.'
 
 INTRODUCTION. Ixxvii 
 
 His last poetical volume, Jour a Jour, 
 published in 1880, is far more uniformly 
 melancholy and didactic in tone than the 
 two earlier collections from which we have 
 been quoting. But though the dominant 
 note is one of pain and austerity, of philos- 
 ophy touched with emotion, and the gen- 
 eral tone more purely introspective, there 
 are many traces in it of the younger Amiel, 
 dear, for very ordinary human reasons, to 
 his sisters and his friends. And, in gen- 
 eral, the pathetic interest of the book for 
 all whose sympathy answers to what George 
 Sand calls ' les tragedies que la pensee aper- 
 $oit et que Votil ne voit point, ,' is very great. 
 Amiel published it a year before his death, 
 and the struggle with failing power which 
 the Journal reveals to us in its saddest and 
 most intimate reality, is here expressed in 
 more reserved and measured form. Faith, 
 doubt, submission, tenderness of feeling, 
 infinite aspiration, moral passion, that 
 straining hope of something beyond, which 
 is the life of the religious soul they are 
 all here, and the Dernier Mot with which 
 the sad little volume ends is poor Amiel's 
 epitaph on himself, his conscious farewell 
 to that more public aspect of his life in 
 which he had suffered much and achieved 
 comparatively so little.
 
 bcxvrii AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 'Nous avons a plaisir complique le bonheur, 
 Et par un ideal frivole et suborneur 
 
 Attache nos creurs a la terre ; 
 Dupes des faux dehors tenus pour 1'important, 
 Mille choses pour nous ont du prix . . . et 
 pourtant 
 
 Une seule etait necessaire. 
 
 ' Sans fin nous prodiguons calculs, efforts, tra- 
 
 vaux; 
 Cependant, au milieu des succes, des bravos 
 
 En nous quelque chose soupire; 
 Multipliant nos pas et nos soins de fourmis, 
 Nous voudrions nous faire une foule d'amis . . . 
 
 Pourtant un seul pouvait suffire. 
 
 ' Victime des desirs, esclave des regrets, 
 L'homme s'agite, et s'use, et vieillit sans 
 progres 
 
 Sur sa toile de Penelope ; 
 Comme en sage mourant, puissions-nous dire 
 
 en paix 
 "J'ai trop longtemps erre, cherche; je me 
 
 trompais ; 
 Tout est bien, mon Dieu m'enveloppe." ' 
 
 Upon the small remains of Amiel's prose 
 outside the Journal there is no occasion to 
 dwell. The two essays on Madame de Stael 
 and Rousseau contain much fine critical 
 remark, and might find a place perhaps as 
 an appendix to some future edition of the
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Journal ; and some of the Pensees, pub- 
 lished in the latter half of the volume con- 
 taining the Grains de Mil, are worthy of 
 preservation. But in general, whatever he 
 himself published was inferior to what 
 might justly have been expected of him, 
 and no one was more conscious of the fact 
 than himself. 
 
 The story of his fatal illness, of the 
 weary struggle for health which filled the 
 last seven years of his life, is abundantly 
 told in the Journal we must not repeat it 
 here. He had never been a strong man, 
 and at fifty-three he received, at his doc- 
 tor's hands, his arret de mort. We are told 
 that what killed him was ' heart disease, 
 complicated by disease of the larynx,' and 
 that he suffered ' much and long. ' He was 
 buried in the cemetery of Clarens, not far 
 from his great contemporary Alexandre 
 Vinet ; and the affection of a sculptor 
 friend provided the monument which now 
 marks his resting-place. 
 
 We have thus exhausted all the biograph- 
 ical material which is at present available 
 for the description of Amiel's life and rela- 
 tions towards the outside world. It is to 
 be hoped that the friends to whom the
 
 Ixxx AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 charge of his memory has been specially 
 committed may see their way in the future, 
 if not to a formal biography, which is very 
 likely better left unattempted, at least to a 
 volume of Letters, which would complete 
 the Journal Intime, as Joubert's Corre- 
 spondance completes the Pensees. There 
 must be ample material for it ; and Amiel's 
 letters would probably supply us with more 
 of that literary and critical reflection which 
 his mind produced so freely and so well, as 
 long as there was no question of publica- 
 tion, but which is at present somewhat 
 overweighted in the Journal Intime. 
 
 But whether biography or correspondence 
 is ever forthcoming or not, the Journal 
 remains and the Journal is the important 
 matter. We shall read the Letters if they 
 appear, as we now read the Poems, for the 
 Journal's sake. The man himself, as poet, 
 teacher, and litterateur, produced no appre- 
 ciable effect on his generation ; but the 
 posthumous record of his inner life has 
 stirred the hearts of readers all over Eu- 
 rope, and won him a niche in the House of 
 Fame. What are the reasons for this 
 striking transformation of a man's position 
 a transformation which, as M. Scherer 
 says, will rank among the curiosities of
 
 INTRODUCTION. IxXXl 
 
 literary history ? In othei words, what has 
 given the Journal Intime its sudden and 
 unexpected success ? 
 
 In the first place, no doubt, its poetical 
 quality, its beauty of manner that fine 
 literary expression in which Amiel has 
 been able to clothe the subtler processes of 
 thought, no less than the secrets of relig- 
 ious feeling, or the aspects of natural scen- 
 ery. Style is what gives value and currency 
 to thought, and Amiel, in spite of all his 
 Germanisms, has style of the best kind. 
 He possesses in prose that indispensable 
 magic which he lacks in poetry. His style, 
 indeed, is by no means always in harmony 
 with the central French tradition. Proba- 
 bly a Frenchman will be inclined to apply 
 Sainte-Beuve's remarks on Amiel's elder 
 countryman, Kodolphe Topffer, to Amiel 
 himself : 'C"es ainsi qu'on ecrit dans les 
 litteratures qui n'ont point de capitale, de 
 quartier general classique, ou d" 1 Academic ; 
 c'est ainsi qu'un Allemand, qu'un Ameri- 
 cain, ou meme un Anglais, use a son gre de 
 sa langue. En France au contraire, oil il 
 y a une Academie Fran^aise . . . on 
 doit trouoer qu'un tel style est une tres- 
 grande nouveaute et le succes qu'il a obtenu 
 un eienement: il a fallu bien des circon-
 
 Ixxxii AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 stances pour y preparer.' No doubt the 
 preparatory circumstance in Amiel's case 
 has been just that Gennanisation of the 
 French mind on which M. Taine and M. 
 Bourget dwell with so much emphasis. 
 But, be this as it may, there is no mistaking 
 the enthusiasm with which some of the best 
 living writers of French have hailed these 
 pages instinct, as one declares, 'with a 
 strange and marvellous poetry ; ' full of 
 phrases ' d 1 une intense suggestion de beaute,' 
 according to another. Not that the whole 
 of the Journal flows with the same ease, 
 the same felicity. There are a certain 
 number of passages where Amiel ceases to be 
 the writer, and becomes the technical philos- 
 opher ; there are others, though not many, 
 into which a certain German heaviness and 
 diffuseness lias crept, dulling the edge of 
 the sentences, and retarding the develop- 
 ment of the thought. When all deductions 
 have been made, however, Amiel's claim is 
 still first and foremost, the claim of the 
 poet and the artist ; of the man whose 
 thought uses at will the harmonies and 
 resources of speech, and who has attained, 
 in words of his own, ' to the full and mas- 
 terly expression of himself.' 
 Then to the poetical beauty of manner
 
 INTRODUCTION. Ixxxiii 
 
 which first helped the book to penetrate, 
 faire sa trouee, as the French say, we must 
 add its extraordinary psychological interest. 
 Both as poet and a", psychologist, Amiel 
 makes another link in a special tradition ; 
 he adds another name to the list of those 
 who have won a hearing from their fellows 
 as interpreters of the inner life, as the 
 revealers of man to himself. He is the 
 successor of St. Augustine and Dante ; he 
 is the brother of Obermann and Maurice 
 de Guerin. What others have done for the 
 spiritual life of other generations he has 
 done for the spiritual life of this, and the 
 wealth of poetical, scientific, and psycho- 
 logical faculty which he has brought to the 
 analysis of human feeling and human per- 
 ceptions places him so far as the present 
 century is concerned at the head of the 
 small and delicately-gifted class to which 
 he belongs. For beside his spiritual experi- 
 ence Obermann's is superficial, and Maurice 
 de Gu6rin's a passing trouble, a mere quick 
 outburst of passionate feeling. Amiel in- 
 deed has neither the continuous romantic 
 beauty nor the rich descriptive wealth of 
 Senancour. The Dent de Midi, with its 
 untrodden solitude, its primeval silences 
 and its hovering eagles, the Swiss landscape
 
 Ixxxiv AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 described in the ' Fragment on the Ranz 
 de Vaches,' the summer moonlight on the 
 Lake of Neufchatel, these various pictures 
 are the work of one of the most finished 
 artists in words that literature has pro- 
 duced. But how true George Sand's criti- 
 cism is ! ' Chez Obermann la scnsibilite 
 est active, V intelligence est paresseuse ou 
 insuffisanteS He has a certain antique 
 power of making the truisms of life splen- 
 did and impressive. No one can write 
 more poetical exercises than he on the old 
 text of pulvis et umbra sumus, but beyond 
 this his philosophical power fails him. As 
 soon as he leaves the region of romantic 
 description how wearisome the pages are 
 apt to grow ! Instead of a poet, ' nn ergo- 
 teur Voltairien ; ' instead of the explorer 
 of fresh secrets of the heart, a Parisian 
 talking a cheap cynicism ! Intellectually, 
 the ground gives way ; there is no solidity 
 of knowledge, no range of thought. Above 
 all, the scientific idea in our sense is almost 
 absent; so that while Amiel represents the 
 modern mind at its keenest and best, deal- 
 ing at will with the vast additions to knowl- 
 edge which the last fifty years have brought 
 forth, Senancour is still in the eighteenth- 
 century stage, talking like Rousseau of a
 
 INTRODUCTION. IxXXV 
 
 return to primitive manners, and discussing 
 Christianity in the tone of the Encyclopedic. 
 
 Maurice de Guerin, again, is the inventor 
 of new terms in the language of feeling, a 
 poet as Ainiel and Senancour are. His love 
 of nature, the earth-passion which breathes 
 in his letters and journal, has a strange 
 savour, a force and flame which is all his 
 own. Beside his actual sense of community 
 with the visible world, Amiel's love of land- 
 scape has a tame, didactic air. The Swiss 
 thinker is too ready to make nature a mere 
 vehicle of moral or philosophical thought : 
 Maurice de Guerin loves her for herself 
 alone, and has found words to describe her 
 influence over him of extraordinary individ- 
 uality and power. But for the rest the story 
 of his inner life has but small value in the 
 history of thought. His difficulties do not 
 go deep enough; his straggle is intellectu- 
 ally not serious enough we see in it only 
 a common incident of modern experience 
 poetically told ; it throws no light on the 
 genesis and progress of the great forces 
 which are moulding and renovating the 
 thought of the present it tells us nothing 
 for the future. 
 
 No, there is much more in the Journal 
 Intime than the imagination or the poetical
 
 Ixxxvi AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 glow which /Amiel shares with his immedi- 
 ate predecessors in the art of confession- 
 writing. His book is representative of 
 human experience in its more intimate and 
 personal forms to an extent hardly equalled 
 since Rousseau. For his study of himself 
 is only a means to an end. ' What inter- 
 ests me in myself,' he declares, ' is that I 
 find in my own case a genuine example of 
 human nature, and therefore a specimen of 
 general value.' It is the human conscious- 
 ness of to-day, of the modern world, in its 
 twofold relation its relation towards the 
 infinite and the unknowable, and its rela- 
 tion towards the visible universe which con- 
 ditions it which is the real subject of the 
 Journal Intime. There are few elements 
 of our present life which, in a greater or 
 less degree, are not made vocal in these 
 pages. Amiel's intellectual interest is un- 
 tiring. Philosophy, science, letters, art, 
 he has penetrated the spirit of them all ; 
 there is nothing, or almost nothing, within 
 the wide range of modern activities which 
 he has not at one time or other felt the 
 attraction of, and learnt in some sense to 
 understand. ' Amiel,' says M. Kenan, ' has 
 his defects, but he was certainly one of the 
 strongest speculative heads who, during the
 
 INTRODUCTION. Ixxxvii 
 
 period from 1845 to 1880, have reflected on 
 the nature of things.' And, although a 
 certain fatal spiritual weakness debarred 
 him to a great extent from the world of 
 practical life, his sympathy with action, 
 whether it was the action of the politician 
 or the social reformer, or merely that 
 steady half-conscious performance of its 
 daily duty which keeps humanity sweet 
 and living, was unfailing. His horizon was 
 not bounded by his own ' prison-cell,' or by 
 that dream-world which he has described 
 with so much subtle beauty ; rather the 
 energies which should have found their 
 natural expression in literary or family life, 
 pent up within the mind itself, excited in it 
 a perpetual eagerness for intellectual . dis- 
 covery, and new powers of sympathy with 
 whatever crossed its field of vision. ( 
 
 So that the thinker, the historian, the 
 critic, will find himself at home with Amiel. 
 The power of organising his thought, the 
 art of writing a book, monumentum aere 
 perennius, was indeed denied him he la- 
 ments it bitterly ; but, on the other hand, 
 he is receptivity itself, responsive to all the 
 great forces which move the time, catching 
 and reflecting on the mobile mirror of his 
 mind whatever winds are blowing from the 
 hills of thought.
 
 Ixxxviii AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 And if the thinker is at home with him, 
 so too are the religious minds, the natures 
 for whom God and duty are the foundation 
 of existence. Here, indeed, we come to 
 the innermost secret of Amiel's charm, the 
 fact which probably goes farther than any 
 other to explain his fascination for a large 
 and growing class of readers. For, while 
 he represents all the intellectual complexi- 
 ties of a time bewildered by the range 
 and number of its own acquisitions, the 
 religious instinct in him is as strong and 
 tenacious as in any of the representative 
 exponents of the life of faith. /The intel- 
 lect is clear and unwavering ; but the heart 
 clings to old traditions, and steadies itself 
 on the rock of duty. His Calvinistic train- 
 ing lingers long in him ; and what detaches 
 him from the Hegelian school, with which he 
 has much in common, is his own stronger 
 sense of personal need, his preoccupation 
 with the idea of 'sin.' 'He speaks,' says 
 M. Renan contemptuously, ' of sin, of sal- 
 vation, of redemption, and conversion, as 
 if these things were realities. He asks me 
 " What does M. Renan make of sin ? " 
 Eh bien, je crois que je le stippmne.' 1 But 
 it is just because Amiel is profoundly sen- 
 sitive to the problems of evil and responsi
 
 INTRODUCTION. Ixxxix 
 
 bility, and M. Renan dismisses them with 
 this half-tolerant, half-sceptical smile, that 
 M. Kenan's Souvenirs inform and entertain 
 us, while the Journal Intime makes a deep 
 impression on that moral sense which is at 
 the root of individual and national life. 
 
 The Journal is full, indeed, of this note 
 of personal religion. Religion, Amiel de- 
 clares again and again, cannot be replaced 
 by philosophy. The redemption of the in- 
 telligence is not the redemption of the 
 heart. The philosopher and critic may 
 succeed in demonstrating that the various 
 definite forms into which the religious 
 thought of man has thrown itself through- 
 out history are not absolute truth, but only 
 the temporary creations of a need which 
 gradually and surely outgrows them all. 
 4 The Trinity, the life to come, paradise 
 and hell, may cease to be dogmas and spir- 
 itual realities, the form and the letter may 
 vanish away the question of human- 
 ity remains : What is it which saves ? ' 
 Amiel's answer to the question will recall 
 to a wide English circle the method and 
 spirit of an English teacher, whose dear 
 memory lives to-day in many a heart, and 
 is guiding many an effort in the cause of 
 good, the method and spirit of the late
 
 xc AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 Professor Green of Balliol. In many re- 
 spects there was a gulf of difference between 
 the two men. The one had all the will and 
 force of personality which the other lacked. 
 But the ultimate creed of both, the way in 
 which both interpret the facts of nature 
 and consciousness, is practically the same. 
 In Amiel's case, we have to gather it 
 through all the variations and inevitable 
 contradictions of a Journal which is the 
 reflection of a life, not the systematic ex- 
 pression of a series of ideas, but the main 
 results are clear enough. Man is saved by 
 love and duty, and by the hope which 
 springs from duty, or rather from the moral 
 facts of consciousness, as a flower springs 
 from the soil. Conscience and the moral 
 progress of the race, these are his points 
 of departure. Faith in the reality of the 
 moral law is what he clings to when his 
 inherited creed has yielded to the pressure 
 of the intellect, and after all the storms of 
 pessimism and necessitarianism have passed 
 over him. The reconciliation of the two 
 certitudes, the two methods, the scientific 
 and the religious, ' is to be sought for in 
 that moral law which is also a fact, and 
 every step of which requires for its ex- 
 planation another cosmos than the cosmos
 
 INTRODUCTION. XC1 
 
 of necessity.' ' Nature is the virtuality of 
 mind, the soul the fruit of life, and liberty 
 the flower of necessity.' Consciousness is 
 the one fixed point in this boundless and 
 bottomless gulf of things, and the soul's 
 inward law, as it has been painfully elabo- . 
 rated by human history, the only revelation ) 
 of God. 
 
 The only but the sufficient revelation ! 
 For this first article of a reasonable creed 
 is the key to all else the clue which leads 
 the mind safely through the labyrinth of 
 doubt into the presence of the Eternal. 
 f Without attempting to define the indefin- 
 able, the soul rises from the belief in the 
 reality of love and duty to the belief in ' a 
 holy will at the root of nature and destiny ' 
 for 'if man is capable of conceiving 
 goodness, the general principle of things, 
 which cannot be inferior to man, must be 
 good.' And then the religious conscious- 
 ness seizes on this intellectual deduction, 
 and clothes it in language of the heart, in 
 the tender and beautiful language of faith. 
 ' There is but one thing needful to possess 
 God. All our senses, all our powers of 
 mind and soul, are so many ways of ap- 
 proaching the Divine, so many modes of 
 tasting and adoring God. Religion is not
 
 
 xcii AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 a method: it is a life a higher and 
 supernatural life, mystical in its root and 
 practical in its fruits ; a communion with 
 God, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love 
 which radiates, a force which 'acts, a happi- 
 ness which overflows.' And the faith of 
 his youth and his maturity bears the shock 
 of suffering, and supports him through his 
 last hours. He writes a few months before 
 the end : ' The animal expires ; man sur- 
 renders his soul to the author of the 
 soul.' . . . 'We dream alone, we suffer 
 alone, we die alone, we inhabit the last 
 resting-place alone. But there is nothing 
 to prevent us from opening our solitude to 
 God. And so what was an austere mono- 
 logue becomes dialogue, reluctance becomes 
 docility, renunciation passes into peace, and 
 the sense of painful defeat is lost in the 
 sense of recovered liberty ' ' Tout est 
 bien, mon Dieu m'enveloppeS 
 
 Nor is this all. It is not only that Amiel's 
 inmost thought and affections are stayed on 
 this conception of ' a holy will at the root 
 of nature and destir.y,' in a certain very 
 real sense he is a Christian. No one is 
 more sensitive than he to the contribution 
 which Christianity has made to the religious 
 wealth of mankind : no one more penetrated
 
 INTRODUCTION. XClll 
 
 than he with the truth of its essential 
 doctrine ' death unto sin and a new birth 
 unto righteousness.' ' The religion of sin, 
 of repentance and reconciliation,' he cries, 
 ' the religion of the new birth and of eternal 
 life, is not a religion to be ashamed of.' 
 The world has found inspiration and guid- 
 ance for eighteen centuries in the religious 
 consciousness of Jesus. 'The Gospel has 
 modified the world and consoled mankind,' 
 and so ' we may hold aloof from the 
 churches and yet bow ourselves before 
 Jesus. We may be suspicious of the clergy 
 and refuse to have anything to do with 
 catechisms, and yet love the Holy and the 
 Just who came to save and not to curse.' 
 And in fact Amiel's whole life and thought 
 are steeped in Christianity. He is the 
 spiritual descendant of one of the intensest 
 and most individual forms of Christian 
 belief, and traces of his religious ancestry 
 are visible in him at every step. Prot- 
 estantism of the sincerer and nobler kind 
 leaves an indelible impression on the naturn 
 which has once surrendered itself to the 
 austere and penetrating influences flowing 
 from the religion of sin and grace ; and so 
 far as feeling and temperament are con- 
 cerned, Amiel retained throughout his life 
 the marks of Calvinism and Geneva. ]
 
 xciv AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 And yet how clear the intellect remains, 
 through all the anxieties of thought, and in 
 the face of the soul's dearest memories and 
 most passionate needs ! Amiel, as soon as 
 his reasoning faculty has once reached its 
 maturity, never deceives himself as to the 
 special claims of the religion which by 
 instinct and inheritance he loves ; he makes 
 
 - no compromise with dogma or with miracle. 
 Beyond the religions of the present he sees 
 always the essential religion, which lasts 
 when all local forms and marvels have 
 passed away ; and as years go on, with 
 more and more clearness of conviction, he 
 learns to regard all special beliefs and 
 systems as 'prejudices, useful in practice, 
 but still narrownesses of the mind ; ' mis- 
 growths of thought, necessary in their time 
 and place, but still of no absolute value, 
 and having no final claim on the thought of 
 
 L-jnan. 
 
 And it is just here in this mixture of 
 the faith which clings and aspires, -.vith the 
 intellectual pliancy which allows the mind 
 to sway freely under the pressure of life 
 and experience, and the deep respect for 
 truth, which will allow nothing to interfere 
 between thought and its appointed tasks 
 that Amiel's special claim upon us lies.
 
 INTRODUCTION. XCV 
 
 It is this balance of forces in him which 
 makes him so widely representative of the 
 modern mind of its doubts, its convic- ' 
 tions, its hopes. He speaks for the life of 
 to-day as no other single voice has yet 
 spoken for it ; in his contradictions, his 
 fears, his despairs, and yet in the constant 
 straining towards the unseen and the ideal 
 which givei a fundamental unity to his 
 inner life, He is the type of a generation 
 universally touched with doubt, and yet as 
 sensitive to the need of faith as any that 
 have gone before it ; more widely conscious 
 than its predecessors of the limitations of 
 the human mind, and of the iron pressure 
 of man's physical environment ; but at the 
 same time paradox as it may seem 
 more conscious of man's greatness, more 
 deeply thrilled by the spectacle of the 
 nobility and beauty interwoven with the 
 universe. 
 
 And he plays this part of his so modestly, 
 with so much hesitation, so much doubt 
 of his thought and of himself ! He is no 
 preacher, like Emerson and Carlyle, with - 
 whom, as poet and idealist, he has so much 
 in common ; there is little resemblance be- 
 tween him and the men who speak, as it 
 were, from a height to the crowd beneath,
 
 xcvi AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 sure always of themselves and what they 
 have to say. And here again he represents 
 the present and foreshadows the future. 
 For the age of the preachers is passing ; 
 those who speak with authority on the rid- 
 dles of life and nature as the priests of this 
 or that all-explaining dogma, are becoming 
 less important as knowledge spreads, and 
 the complexity of experience is made evi- 
 dent to a wider range of minds. The force 
 of things is against the certain people. 
 "'Again and again truth escapes from the 
 prisons made for her by mortal hands, and 
 as humanity carries on the endless pursuit 
 she will pay more and more respectful heed 
 to voices like this voice of the lonely Gene- 
 vese thinker with its pathetic alternations 
 of hope and fear, and the moral steadfast- 
 ness which is the inmost note of it to 
 these meditative lives, which, through all 
 the ebb and flow of thought, and in the dim 
 ways of doubt and suffering, rich in knowl- 
 edge, and yet rich in faith, grasp in new 
 forms, and proclaim to us in new words, 
 
 ' The mighty hopes which make us men.'
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 [Where no other name is mentioned, Geneva is to 
 be understood as the author's place of residence.] 
 
 "OERLIN, 16th July 1848. There is but 
 _D one thing needful to possess God. All 
 our senses, all our powers of mind and soul, 
 all our external resources, are so many ways 
 of approaching the Divinity, so many modes 
 of tasting and of adoring God. We must 
 learn to detach ourselves from all that is 
 capable of being lost, to bind ourselves ab- 
 solutely only to what is absolute and eternal, 
 and to enjoy the rest as a loan, a usufruct. 
 ... To adore, to understand, to receive, 
 to feel, to give, to act : there is my law, my 
 duty, my happiness, my heaven. Let come 
 what come will even death. Only be at 
 peace with self, live in the presence of God, 
 in communion with Him, and leave the 
 guidance of existence to those universal 
 powers against whom thou canst do noth- 
 I
 
 2 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 ing ! If death gives me time, so much th<? 
 better. If its summons is near, so much 
 the better still ; if a half-death overtake 
 me, still so much the better, for so the path 
 of success is closed to me only that I may 
 find opening before me the path of heroism, 
 of moral greatness and resignation. Every 
 ] life has its potentiality of greatness, and as 
 it is impossible to be outside God, the best 
 is consciously to dwell in Him. 
 
 BERLIN, 20th July 1848. It gives liberty 
 and breadth to thought, to learn to judge our 
 own epoch from the point of view of univer- 
 sal history, history from the point of view 
 of geological periods, geology from the 
 point of view of astronomy. When the 
 duration of a man's life or of a people's life 
 appears to us as microscopic as that of a 
 fly, and inversely, the life of a gnat as infi- 
 nite as that of a celestial body, with all its 
 dust of nations, we feel ourselves at once 
 i very small and very great, and we are able, 
 as it were, to survey from the height of the 
 spheres our own existence, and the little 
 whirlwinds which agitate our little Europe. 
 At bottom there is but one subject of 
 study : the forms and metamorphoses of 
 mind. All other subjects may be reduced
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 3 
 
 to that ; all other studies bring us back to 
 this study. 
 
 GENEVA, 20th April 1849. It is six 
 years 1 to-day since I last left Geneva. 
 How many journeys, how many impres- 
 sions, observations, thoughts, how many 
 forms of men and things, have since then 
 passed before me and in me ! The last 
 seven years have been the most important 
 of my life : they have been the novitiate of 
 my intelligence, the initiation of my being 
 into being. 
 
 Three snowstorms this afternoon. Poor 
 blossoming plum-trees and peach-trees ! 
 What a difference from six years ago, when 
 the cherry-trees, adorned in their green 
 spring dress and laden with their bridal 
 flowers, smiled at my departure along the 
 Vaudois fields, and the lilacs of Burgundy 
 threw great gusts of perfume into my 
 face ! . . . 
 
 3d May 1849. I have never felt any in- 
 ward assurance of genius, or any presenti- 
 ment of glory or of happiness. I have never 
 seen myself in imagination great or famous, 
 or even a husband, a father, an influential 
 citizen. This indifference to the future,
 
 4 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 this absolute self -distrust, are, no doubt, to 
 be taken as signs. What dreams I have 
 are all vague and indefinite ; I ought not to 
 live, for I am now scarcely capable of living. 
 Recognise your place ; let the living live ; 
 and you, gather together your thoughts, 
 leave behind you a legacy of feeling and 
 ideas ; you will be most useful so. Re- 
 nounce yourself, accept the cup given you, 
 with its honey and its gall, as it comes. 
 Bring God down into your heart. Embalm 
 your soul in Him now, make within you a 
 temple for the Holy Spirit ; be diligent in 
 good works, make others happier and better. 
 Put personal ambition away from you, 
 and then you will find consolation in living 
 or in dying, whatever may happen to you. 
 
 f 27th May 1849. To be misunderstood 
 even by those whom one loves is the cross 
 and bitterness of life. It is the secret of 
 that sad and melancholy smile on the lips 
 of great men which so few understand ; it 
 is the cruellest trial reserved for self-devo- 
 tion ; it is what must have oftenest wrung 
 the heart of the Son of man ; and if God 
 could suffer, it would be the wound we 
 should be for ever inflicting upon Him. He 
 also He above all is the great misun-
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 5 
 
 derstood, the least comprehended. Alas ! 
 alas ! Never to tire, never to grow cold ; to 
 be patient, sympathetic, tender ; to look 
 for the budding flower and the opening 
 heart ; to hope always, like God ; to love 
 always, this is duty. 
 
 3d June 1849. Fresh and delicious 
 weather. A long morning walk. Surprised 
 the hawthorn and wild rose-trees in flower. 
 From the fields vague and health-giving 
 scents. The Voirons fringed with dazzling 
 mists, and tints of exquisite softness over 
 the Saleve. Work in the fields, two de- 
 lightful donkeys, one pulling greedily at 
 a hedge of barberry. Then three little 
 children. I felt a boundless desire to caress 
 and play with them. To be able to enjoy 
 such leisure, these peaceful fields, fine 
 weather, contentment ; to have my two 
 sisters with me ; to rest my eyes on balmy 
 meadows and blossoming orchards ; to listen 
 to the life singing in the grass and on the 
 trees ; to be so calmly happy is it not too 
 much ? is it deserved ? O let me enjoy it 
 without reproaching heaven for its kind- 
 ness ; let me enjoy it with gratitude. The 
 days of trouble come soon enough and are 
 many enough. I have no presentiment of
 
 6 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 happiness. All the more let me profit by 
 the present. Come, kind Nature, smile and 
 enchant me ! Veil from me awhile my own 
 griefs and those of others ; let me see only 
 the folds of thy queenly mantle, and hide 
 all miserable and ignoble things from me 
 under thy bounties and splendours ! 
 
 1st October 1849. Yesterday, Sunday, I 
 read through and made extracts from the 
 Gospel of St. John. It confirmed me in my 
 belief that about Jesus we must believe no 
 one but himself, and that what we have* to 
 do is to discover the true image of the 
 founder behind all the prismatic refractions 
 through which it comes to us, and which 
 alter it more or less. A ray of heavenly 
 light traversing human life, the message of 
 Christ has been broken into a thousand 
 rainbow colours, and carried in a thou- 
 sand directions. It is the historical task 
 of Christianity to assume with every suc- 
 ceeding age a fresh metamorphosis, and to 
 be for ever spiritualising more and more 
 her understanding of the Christ and of sal- 
 vation. 
 
 I am astounded at the incredible amount 
 of Judaism and formalism which still exists 
 nineteen centuries after the Redeemer's
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 7 
 
 proclamation ' it is the letter which killeth ' 
 after his protest against a dead symbol- 
 ism. The new religion is so profound that 
 it is not understood even now, and would 
 seem a blasphemy to the greater number of 
 Christians. The person of Christ is the 
 centre of it. Redemption, eternal life, 
 divinity, humanity, propitiation, incarna- 
 tion, judgment, Satan, heaven and hell, 
 all these beliefs have been so materialised 
 and coarsened, that with a strange irony 
 they present to us the spectacle of things 
 having a profound meaning and yet carnally 
 interpreted. Christian boldness and Chris- 
 tian liberty must be reconquered ; it is the 
 Church which is heretical, the Church 
 whose sight is troubled and her heart timid. 
 Whether we will or no, there is an esoteric 
 doctrine, there is a relative revelation; 
 each man enters into God so much as God 
 enters into him, or as Angelus, 2 I think, 
 said, 'the eye by which I see God is the 
 same eye by which He sees me. ' 
 
 Christianity, if it is to triumph over pan- 
 theism, must absorb it. To our pusillani- 
 mous eyes Jesus would have borne the 
 marks of a hateful pantheism, for he con- 
 firmed the Biblical phrase 'ye are gods,' 
 and so would St. Paul, who tells us that we 
 are of 'the race of God.'
 
 8 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 Our century wants a new theology that 
 is to say, a more profound explanation of 
 the nature of Christ and of the light which 
 it flashes upon heaven and upon humanity. 
 
 Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the 
 soul over the flesh that is to say, over 
 fear: fear of poverty, of suffering, of cal- 
 umny, of sickness, of isolation, and of 
 death. There is no serious piety without 
 heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and glo- 
 rious concentration of courage. 
 
 Duty has the virtue of making us feel the 
 reality of a positive world while at the same 
 time detaching us from it. 
 
 30th December 1850. The relation of 
 thought to action filled my mind on waking, 
 and I found myself carried towards a bizarre 
 formula, which seems to have something of 
 the night still clinging about it : Action is 
 but coarsened thought thought become 
 concrete, obscure, and unconscious. It 
 seemed to me that our most trifling actions, 
 of eating, walking, and sleeping, were the 
 condensation of a multitude of truths and 
 thoughts, and that the wealth of ideas 
 involved was in direct proportion to the
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 9 
 
 commonness of the action (as our dreams are 
 the more active, the deeper our sleep). We 
 are hemmed round with mystery, and the 
 greatest mysteries are contained in what 
 we see and do every day. In all spontaneity 
 the work of creation is reproduced in anal- 
 ogy. When the spontaneity is unconscious, 
 you have simple action ; when it is con- 
 scious intelligent and moral action. At \ 
 bottom this is nothing more than the propo- 
 sition of Hegel : [' What is rational is real ; 
 and what is real is rational '] ; but it had 
 never seemed to me more evident, more 
 palpable. Everything which is, is thought, 
 but not conscious and individual thought. 
 The human intelligence is but the conscious- 
 ness of being. It is what I have formu- / 
 lated before : Everything is a symbol of a 
 symbol, and a symbol of what ? of mind. 
 
 ... I have just been looking through the 
 complete works of Montesquieu, and can- 
 not yet make plain to myself the impression 
 left on me by this singular style, with its 
 mixture of gravity and affectation, of care- 
 lessness and precision, of strength and 
 delicacy ; so full of sly intention for all its 
 coldness, expressing at once inquisitiveness 
 and indifference, abrupt, piecemeal, like
 
 io AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 notes thrown together haphazard, and yet 
 deliberate. I seem to see an intelligence 
 naturally grave and austere donning a dress 
 of wit for convention's sake. The author 
 desires to entertain as much as to teach, the 
 thinker is also a bel-esprit, the jurisconsult 
 has a touch of the coxcomb, and a per- 
 fumed breath from the temple of Venus has 
 penetrated the tribunal of Minos. Here we 
 have austerity, as the century understood 
 it, in philosophy or religion. In Montes- 
 quieu, the art, if there is any, lies not in 
 the words but in the matter. The words 
 run freely and lightly, but the thought is 
 self-conscious. 
 
 Each bud flowers but once and each 
 flower has but its minute of perfect beauty ; 
 so, in the garden of the soul each feeling 
 has, as it were, its flowering instant, its one 
 and only moment of expansive grace and 
 radiant kingship. Each star passes but once 
 in the night through the meridian over our 
 heads and shines there but an instant ; so, 
 in the heaven of the mind each thought 
 touches its zenith but once, and in that 
 moment all its brilliancy and all its great- 
 ness culminate. Artist, poet, or thinker 
 if you want to fix and immortalise your
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. n 
 
 ideas or your feelings, seize them at this 
 precise and fleeting moment, for it is their 
 highest point. Before it, you have but 
 vague outlines or dim presentiments of 
 them. After it, you will have only weak- 
 ened reminiscence or powerless regret ; that 
 moment is the moment of your ideal. 
 
 Spite is anger which is afraid 'to show 
 itself, it is an impotent fury conscious of 
 its impotence. 
 
 Nothing resembles pride so much as dis- 
 couragement. 
 
 To repel one's cross is to make it heavier. 
 
 In the conduct of life, habits count for 
 more than maxims, because habit is a 
 living maxim, become flesh and instinct. 
 To reform one's maxims is nothing : it is 
 but to change the title of the book. To 
 learn new habits is eveiything, for it is to 
 reach the substance of life. Life is but a 
 tissue of habits. 
 
 17th February 1851. I have been read- 
 ing, for six or seven hours without stopping, 
 the Pensees of Joubert. I felt at first a
 
 12 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 very strong attraction towards the book, 
 and a deep interest in it, but I have already 
 a good deal cooled down. These scattered 
 and fragmentary thoughts, falling upon one 
 without a pause, like drops of light, tire, 
 not my head, but my reasoning power. 
 The merits of Joubert consist in the grace of 
 the style, the vivacity or finesse of the criti- 
 cisms, the charm of the metaphors ; but he 
 starts many more problems than he solves, 
 he notices and records more than he explains. 
 His philosophy is merely literary and popu- 
 lar ; his originality is only in detail and in 
 execution. Altogether, he is a writer of 
 reflections rather than a philosopher, a 
 critic of remarkable gifts, endowed with 
 exquisite sensibility, but, as an intelligence, 
 destitute of the capacity for co-ordination. 
 He wants concentration and continuity. It 
 is not that he has no claims to be con- 
 sidered a philosopher or an artist, but 
 rather that he is both imperfectly, for he 
 thinks and writes marvellously, on a small 
 scale. He is an entomologist, a lapidary, a 
 jeweller ; a coiner of sentences, of adages, 
 of criticisms, of aphorisms, counsels, prob- 
 lems ; and his book, extracted from the 
 accumulations of his journal during fifty 
 years of his life, is a collection of precious
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 13 
 
 stones, of butterflies, coins, and engraved 
 gems. The whole, however, is more subtle 
 than strong, more poetical than profound, 
 and leaves upon the reader rather the im- 
 pression of a great wealth of small curiosi- 
 ties of value, than of a great intellectual 
 existence and a new point of view. The 
 place of Joubert seems to me then, below 
 and very far from the philosophers and the 
 true poets, but honourable among the mor- 
 alists and the critics. He is one of those 
 men who are superior to their works, and 
 who have themselves the unity which these 
 lack. This first judgment is, besides, in- 
 discriminate and severe. I shall have to 
 modify it later. 
 
 20th February. I have almost finished 
 these two volumes of Pensees and the 
 greater part of the Correspondance. This 
 last has especially charmed me ; it is re- 
 markable for grace, delicacy, atticism, and 
 precision. The chapters on metaphysics 
 and philosophy are the most insignificant. 
 All that has to do with large views, with 
 the whole of things, is very little at Jou- 
 bert's command ; he has no philosophy of 
 history, no speculative intuition. He is the 
 thinker of detail, and his proper field is
 
 14 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 psychology and matters of taste. In this 
 sphere of the subtleties and delicacies of 
 imagination and feeling, within the circle 
 of personal affections and preoccupations, 
 of social and educational interests, he 
 abounds in ingenuity and sagacity, in fine 
 criticisms, in exquisite touches. It is like 
 a bee going from flower to flower, a teasing, 
 plundering, wayward zephyr, an ^olian 
 harp, a ray of furtive light stealing through 
 the leaves. Taken as a whole, there is 
 something impalpable and immaterial about 
 him, which I will not venture to call effem- 
 inate, but which is scarcely manly. He 
 wants bone and body: timid, dreamy, and 
 clairvoyant, he hovers far above reality. 
 He is rather a soul, a breath, than a man. 
 It is the mind of a woman in the character 
 of a child, so that we feel for him less ad- 
 miration than tenderness and gratitude. 
 
 27th February 1851. Read over the first 
 book of Emile. I was revolted, contrary 
 to all expectation, for I opened the book 
 with a sort of hunger for style and beauty. 
 I was conscious instead of an impression of 
 heaviness and harshness, of laboured, ham- 
 mering emphasis, of something violent, 
 passionate and obstinate, without serenity,
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 15 
 
 greatness, nobility. Both the qualities and 
 the defects of the book produced in me a 
 sense of lack of good manners, a blaze of 
 talent but no grace, no distinction, the ac- 
 cent of good company wanting. I under- 
 stood how it is that Rousseau rouses a 
 particular kind of repugnance, the repug- 
 nance of good taste, and I felt the danger 
 to style involved in such a model, as well 
 as the danger to thought arising from a 
 truth so alloyed and sophisticated. What 
 there is of true and strong in Rousseau did 
 not escape me, and I still admired him, but 
 his bad sides appeared to me with a clear- 
 ness relatively new. 
 
 (Same day.) The pensee-writer is to 
 the philosopher what the dilettante is to 
 the artist. He plays with thought, and 
 makes it produce a crowd of pretty things 
 of detail, but he is more anxious about 
 truths than truth, and what is essential in 
 thought its sequence, its unity escapes 
 him. He handles his instrument agreeably, 
 but he does not possess it, still less does he 
 create it. He is a gardener and not a geol- 
 ogist ; he cultivates the earth only so much 
 as is necessary to make it produce for him 
 flowers and fruits ; he does not dig deep
 
 i6 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 enough into it to understand it. In a word, 
 the |>esee-writer deals with what is super- 
 ficial and fragmentary. He is the literary, 
 the oratorical, the talking or writing philos- 
 opher ; whereas the philosopher is the sci- 
 entific ^ensee-writer. The poisee-writers 
 serve to stimulate or to popularise the phi- 
 losophers. They have thus a double use, 
 besides their charm. They are the pioneers 
 of the army of readers, the doctors of the 
 crowd, the money-changers of thought, 
 which they convert into current coin. The 
 writer of pensees is a man of letters, though 
 of a serious type, and therefore he is popu- 
 lar. The philosopher is a specialist, as far 
 as the form of his science goes, though not 
 in subsftince, and therefore he can never 
 become popular. In France, for one phi- 
 losopher (Descartes) there have been thirty 
 writers of pensees; in Germany, for ten 
 such writers there have been twenty philos- 
 ophers. 
 
 25th March 1851. How many illustrious 
 men whom I have known have been already 
 reaped by death, Steff ens, Marheineke, 
 Neander, Mendelssohn, Thorwaldsen, Oelen- 
 schlager, Geijer, Tegner, Oersted, Stuhr, 
 Lachmann ; and with us, Sismoncli, Topffer,
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 17 
 
 de Candolle, savants, artists, poets, musi- 
 cians, historians. 8 The old generation is 
 going. What will the new bring us ? What 
 shall we ourselves contribute ? A few great 
 old men Schelling, Alexander von Hum- 
 boldt, Schlosser still link us with the glo- 
 rious past. Who is preparing to bear the 
 weight of the future ? A shiver seizes us 
 when the ranks grow thin around us, when 
 age is stealing upon us, when we approach 
 the zenith, and when Destiny says to us : 
 ' Show what is in thee ! Now is the mo- 
 ment, now is the hour, else fall back into 
 nothingness ! It is thy turn ! Give the 
 world thy measure, say thy word, reveal 
 thy nullity or thy capacity. Come forth 
 from the shade ! It is no longer a question 
 of promising thou must perform. The 
 time of apprenticeship is over. Servant, 
 show us what thou hast done with thy 
 talent. Speak now, or be silent for ever.' 
 This appeal of the conscience is a solemn 
 summons in the life of every man, solemn 
 and awful as the trumpet of the last judg- 
 ment. It cries, ' Art thou ready ? Give 
 an account. Give an account of thy years, 
 thy leisure, thy strength, thy studies, thy 
 talent, and thy works. Now and here is 
 the hour of great hearts, the hour of hero- 
 ism and of genius.'
 
 i8 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 6th April 1851. Was there ever any 
 one so vulnerable as I ? If I were a father 
 how many griefs and vexations a child 
 might cause me. As a husband, I should 
 have a thousand ways of suffering, because 
 my happiness demands a thousand 1 condi- 
 tions. I have a heart too easily reached, a 
 too restless imagination ; despair is easy to 
 me, and every sensation reverberates again 
 and again within me. What might be, 
 spoils for me what is. What ought to be 
 consumes me with sadness. So that reality, 
 the present, the irreparable, the necessary, 
 repel and even terrify me. I have too 
 much imagination, conscience, and pene- 
 tration, and not enough character. The 
 life of thought alone seems to me to have 
 enough elasticity and immensity, to be free 
 enough from the irreparable ; practical life 
 makes me afraid. 
 
 And yet, at the same time, it attracts 
 me ; I have need of it. Family life, espe- 
 cially, in all its delightfulness, in all its 
 moral depth, appeals to me almost like a 
 duty. Sometimes I cannot escape from the 
 ideal of it. A companion of my life, of my 
 work, of my thoughts, of my hopes ; within, 
 a common worship, towards the world out- 
 side, kindness and beneficence ; educations
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 19 
 
 to undertake, the thousand and one moral 
 relations which develop round the first 
 all these ideas intoxicate me sometimes. 
 But I put them aside, because every hope 
 is, as it were, an egg whence a serpent may 
 issue instead of a dove, because every joy 
 missed is a stab ; because every seed con- 
 fided to destiny contains an ear of grief 
 which the future may develop. 
 
 I am distrustful of myself and of happi- 
 ness because I know myself. The ideal 
 poisons for me all imperfect possession. 
 Everything which compromises the future 
 or destroys my inner liberty, which enslaves 
 me to things or obliges me to be other than 
 I could and ought to be, all which injures 
 my idea of the perfect man, hurts me mor- 
 tally, degrades and wounds me in mind, 
 even beforehand. I abhor useless regrets 
 and repentances. The fatality of the con- 
 sequences which follow upon every human 
 act, the leading idea of dramatic art and 
 the most tragic element of life, arrests 
 me more certainly than the arm of the 
 Commandeur. I only act with regret, and 
 almost by force. 
 
 To be dependent is to me terrible ; but to 
 depend upon what is irreparable, arbitrary, 
 and unforeseen, and above all to be so de-
 
 tO AMIEL S JOURNAL. 
 
 pendent by my own fault and through my 
 own error to give up liberty and hope, to 
 slay sleep and happiness this would be 
 hell! 
 
 All that is necessary, providential in 
 short, unimputable I could bear, I think, 
 with some strength of mind. But responsi- 
 bility mortally envenoms grief ; and as an 
 act is essentially voluntary, therefore I act 
 as little as possible. 
 
 Last outbreak of a rebellious and deceit- 
 ful self-will, craving for repose, for satis- 
 faction, for independence ! is there not 
 some relic of selfishness in such a disinter- 
 estedness, such a fear, such idle suscepti- 
 bility ? 
 
 I wish to fulfil my duty but where is it, 
 what is it ? Here inclination comes in 
 again and interprets the oracle. And the 
 ultimate question is this : Does duty con- 
 sist in obeying one's nature, even the best 
 and most spiritual ? or in conquering it ? 
 
 Life, is it essentially the education of the 
 mind and intelligence, or that of the will ? 
 And does will show itself in strength or in 
 resignation ? If the aim of life is to teach us 
 renunciation, then welcome sickness, hin- 
 drances, sufferings of every kind ! But if 
 its aim is to produce the perfect man, then
 
 AMIELS JOURNAL. 21 
 
 one must watch over one's integrity of mind 
 and .body. To court trial is to tempt God. 
 At bottom, the God of justice veils from 
 me the God of love. I tremble instead of 
 trusting. 
 
 Whenever conscience speaks with a di- 
 vided, uncertain, and disputed voice, it is 
 not yet the voice of God. Descend still 
 deeper into yourself, until you hear nothing 
 but a clear and undivided voice, a voice 
 which does away with doubt and brings 
 with it persuasion, light, and serenity. 
 Happy, says the Apostle, are they who are 
 at peace with themselves, and whose heart 
 condemneth them not in the part they take. 
 This inner identity, this unity of convic- 
 tion, is all the more difficult the more the 
 mind analyses, discriminates, and foresees. 
 It is difficult, indeed, for liberty to return 
 to the frank unity of instinct. 
 
 Alas ! we must then re-climb a thousand 
 times the peaks already scaled, and recon- 
 quer the points of view already won, we 
 must fight the fight ! The human heart, 
 like kings, signs mere truces under a pre- 
 tence of perpetual peace. The eternal life 
 is eternally to be re-won. Alas, yes ! peace 
 itself is a struggle, or rather it is struggle 
 and activity which are the law. We only
 
 22 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 find rest in effort, as the flame only finds 
 existence in combustion. Heraclitus ! the 
 symbol of happiness is after all the same 
 as that of grief ; anxiety and hope, hell and 
 heaven, are equally restless. The altar of 
 Vesta and the sacrifice of Beelzebub burn 
 with the same fire. Ah, yes, there you 
 have life life double-faced and double- 
 edged. The fire which enlightens is also 
 the fire which consumes ; the element of 
 the gods may become that of the accursed. 
 
 1th April 1851. Read a part of Ruge's* 
 volume Die Academic (1848) where the 
 humanism of the Neo- Hegelians in politics, 
 religion, and literature is represented by 
 correspondence or articles (Kuno Fischer, 
 Kollach, etc. ) . They recall the philosophist 
 party of the last century, able to dissolve 
 anything by reason and reasoning, but un- 
 able to construct anything ; for construc- 
 tion rests upon feeling, instinct, and will. 
 One finds them mistaking philosophic con- 
 sciousness for realising power, the redemp- 
 tion of the intelligence for the redemption 
 of the heart that is to say, the part for 
 the whole. These papers make me under- 
 stand the radical difference between morals 
 and intellectualism. The writers of them
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 23 
 
 wish to supplant religion by philosophy. 
 Man is the principle of their religion, and 
 intellect is the climax of man. Their relig- 
 ion, then, is the religion of intellect. There 
 you have the two worlds : Christianity 
 brings and preaches salvation by the con- 
 version of the will, humanism by the 
 emancipation of the mind. One attacks 
 the heart, the other the brain. Both wish 
 to enable man to reach his ideal. But the 
 ideal differs, if not by its content, at least 
 by the disposition of its content, by the 
 predominance and sovereignty given to this 
 or that inner power. For one, the mind is 
 the organ of the soul ; for the other, the 
 soul is an inferior state of the mind ; the 
 one wishes to enlighten by making better, 
 the other to make better by enlightening. 
 It is the difference between Socrates and 
 Jesus. 
 
 The cardinal question is that of sin. The 
 question of immanence or of dualism is 
 secondary. The Trinity, the life to come, 
 paradise and hell, may cease to be dogmas 
 and spiritual realities, the form and the 
 letter may vanish away, the question of 
 humanity remains: What is it which 
 saves ? How can man be led to be truly 
 man ? Is the ultimate root of his being
 
 24 AMIEI/S JOURNAL. 
 
 responsibility, yes or no? And is doing 
 or knowing the right, acting or thinking, 
 his ultimate end ? If science does not pro- 
 duce love it is insufficient. Now, all that 
 science gives is the amor intellectualis of 
 Spinoza, light without warmth, a resigna- 
 tion which is contemplative and grandiose, 
 but inhuman, because it is scarcely trans- 
 missible and remains a privilege, one of the 
 rarest of all. Moral love places the centre 
 of the individual in the centre of being. It 
 has at least salvation in principle, the germ 
 of eternal life. To love is virtually to know ; 
 to knoio is not virtually to love ; there you 
 have the relation of these two modes of 
 man. The redemption wrought by science 
 or by intellectual love is then inferior to 
 the redemption wrought by will or by moral 
 love. The first may free a man from him- 
 self, it may enfranchise him from egotism. 
 The second drives the ego out of itself, 
 makes it active and fruitful. The one is 
 critical, purifying, negative ; the other is 
 vivifying, fertilising, positive. Science, 
 however spiritual and substantial it may be 
 in itself, is still formal relatively to love. 
 Moral force is then the vital point. 
 
 And this force is only produced by moral 
 force. Like alone acts upon like. There-
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 25 
 
 fore do not amend by reasoning, but by ex- 
 ample ; approach feeling by feeling ; do not 
 hope to excite love except by love. Be what / 
 you wish others to become. Let your self / 
 and not your words preach for you. 
 
 Philosophy, then, to return to the subject, 
 can never replace religion ; revolutionaries 
 are not apostles, although the apostles may 
 have been revolutionaries. To save from 
 the outside to the inside and by the out- 
 side I understand also the intelligence 
 relatively to the will is an error and a 
 danger. The negative part of the human- 
 ist's work is good ; it will strip Christianity 
 of an outer shell, which has become super- 
 fluous ; but Huge and Feuerbach cannot 
 save humanity. She must have her saints 
 and her heroes to complete the work of her 
 philosophers. Science is the power of man, 
 and love his strength ; man becomes man 
 only by the intelligence, but he is man only 
 by the heart. Knowledge, love, power, / 
 there is the complete life. 
 
 16th June 1851. This evening I walked 
 up and down on the Pont des Bergues, 
 under a clear moonless heaven, delighting 
 in the freshness of the water, streaked with 
 light from the two quays, and glimmering
 
 26 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 under the twinkling stars. Meeting all 
 these different groups of young people, 
 families, couples, and children, who were 
 returning to their homes, to their garrets 
 or their drawing-rooms, singing or talking 
 as they went, I felt a movement of sym- 
 pathy for all these passers-by ; my eyes and 
 ears became those of a poet or a painter ; 
 while even one's mere kindly curiosity 
 seems to bring with it a joy in living and 
 in seeing others live. 
 
 15th August 1851. To know how to be 
 ready, a great thing a precious gift, 
 and one that implies calculation, grasp and 
 decision. To be always ready, a man must 
 be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot 
 be untied ; he must know how to disengage 
 what is essential from the detail in which it 
 is enwrapped, for everything cannot be 
 equally considered ; in a word, he must be 
 able to simplify his duties, his business, and 
 his life. To know how to be ready, is to 
 know how to start. 
 
 It is astonishing how all of us are gen- 
 erally cumbered up with the thousand and 
 one hindrances and duties which are not 
 such, but which nevertheless wind us about 
 with their spider threads and fetter the
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 27 
 
 movement of our wings. It is the lack of 
 order which makes us slaves ; the confusion 
 of to-day discounts the freedom of to- 
 morrow. 
 
 Confusion is the enemy of all comfort, 
 and confusion is born of procrastination. 
 To know how to be ready we must be able 
 to finish. Nothing is done but what is fin- 
 ished. The things which we leave drag- 
 ging behind us will start up again later on 
 before us and harass our path. Let each 
 day take thought for what concerns it, 
 liquidate its own affairs and respect the day 
 which is to follow, and then we shall be 
 always ready. To know how to be ready, 
 is at bottom to know how to die. 
 
 2d September 1851. Read the work of 
 Tocqueville (Z>e la Democratie en Ame- 
 rique). My impression is as yet a mixed 
 one. A fine book, but I feel in it a little 
 too much imitation of Montesquieu. This 
 abstract, piquant, sententious style, too, is 
 a little dry, over-refined and monotonous. 
 It has too much cleverness and not enough 
 imagination. It makes one think, more 
 than it charms, and though really serious, 
 it seems flippant. His method of splitting 
 up a thought, of illuminating a subject by
 
 28 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 successive facets, has serious inconven- 
 iences. We see the details too clearly, to 
 the detriment of the whole. A multitude of 
 sparks gives but a poor light. Neverthe- 
 less, the author is evidently a ripe and 
 penetrating intelligence, who takes a com- 
 prehensive view of his subject, while at 
 the same time possessing a power of acute 
 and exhaustive analysis. 
 
 6th September. Tocqueville's book has 
 on the whole a calming effect upon the 
 mind, but it leaves a certain sense of dis- 
 gust behind. It makes one realise the 
 necessity of what is happening around us 
 and the inevitableness of the goal prepared 
 for us ; but it also makes it plain that the 
 era of mediocrity in everything is beginning, 
 and mediocrity freezes all desire. Equality 
 engenders uniformity, and it is by sacrific- 
 ing what is excellent, remarkable, and ex- 
 traordinary that we get rid of what is bad. 
 The whole becomes less barbarous, and at 
 the same time more vulgar. 
 
 The age of great men is going ; the epoch 
 of the ant-hill, of life in multiplicity, is be- 
 ginning. The century of individualism, if 
 abstract equality triumphs, runs a great risk 
 of seeing no more true individuals. By
 
 AMIEI/S JOURNAL. 29 
 
 continual levelling and division of labour, 
 society will become everything and man 
 nothing. 
 
 As the floor of valleys is raised by the 
 denudation and washing down of the 
 mountains, what is average will rise at 
 the expense of what is great. The excep- 
 tional will disappear. A plateau with 
 fewer and fewer undulations, without con- 
 trasts and without oppositions, such will 
 be the aspect of human society. The statis- 
 tician will register a growing progress, and 
 the moralist a gradual decline : on the one 
 hand, a progress of things ; on the other, a 
 decline of souls. The useful will take the 
 place of the beautiful, industry of art, po- 
 litical economy of religion, and arithmetic 
 of poetry. The spleen will become the 
 malady of a levelling age. 
 
 Is this indeed the fate reserved for the 
 democratic era ? May not the general well- 
 being be purchased too dearly at such a 
 price ? The creative force which in the 
 beginning we see for ever tending to pro- 
 duce and multiply differences, will it after- 
 wards retrace its steps and obliterate them 
 one by one ? And equality, which in the 
 dawn of existence is mere inertia, torpor, 
 and death, is it to become at last the natu-
 
 30 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 ral form of life ? Or rather, above the 
 economic and political equality to which 
 the socialist and non-socialist democracy 
 aspires, taking it too often for the term of 
 its efforts, will there not arise a new king- 
 dom of mind, a church of refuge, a republic 
 of souls, in which, far beyond the region of 
 mere right and sordid utility, beauty, devo- 
 tion, holiness, heroism, enthusiasm, the 
 extraordinary, the infinite, shall have a 
 worship and an abiding city ? Utilitarian 
 materialism, barren wellbeing, the idolatry 
 of the flesh and of the 'I,' of the temporal 
 and of mammon, are they to be the goal of 
 our efforts, the final recompense promised 
 to the labours of our race ? I do not be- 
 lieve it. The ideal of humanity is some- 
 thing different and higher. But the animal 
 in us must be satisfied first, and we must 
 first banish from among us all suffcriii.u; 
 which is superfluous and has its origin in 
 social arrangements, before we can return 
 to spiritual goods. 
 
 I 1th September 1851 (Aix). It is ten 
 o'clock at night. A strange and mystic 
 moonlight, with a fresh breeze and a sky 
 crossed by a few wandering clouds, makes 
 our terrace delightful. These pale and
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 31 
 
 gentle rays shed from the zenith a subdued 
 and penetrating peace ; it is like the calm 
 joy or the pensive smile of experience, com- 
 bined with a certain stoic strength. The 
 stars shine, the leaves tremble in the silver 
 light. Not a sound in all the landscape ; 
 great gulfs of shadow under the green alleys 
 and at the corners of the steps. Every- 
 thing is secret, solemn, mysterious. 
 
 O night hours, hours of silence and soli- 
 tude ! with you are grace and melan- 
 choly ; you sadden and you console. You 
 speak to us of all that has passed away, and 
 of all that must still die, but you say to us, 
 ' Courage ! ' and you promise us rest. 
 
 9th November 1851 (Sunday). At the 
 Church of St. Gervais, a second sermon 
 from Adolphe Monod, less grandiose per- 
 haps, but almost more original, and to me 
 more edifying, than that of last Sunday. The 
 subject was St. Paul or the active life, his 
 former one having been St. John or the inner 
 life, of the Christian. I felt the golden spell 
 of eloquence : I found myself hanging on 
 the lips of the orator, fascinated by his 
 boldness, his grace, his energy, and his art, 
 his sincerity and his talent ; and it was 
 borne in upon me that for some men diffi-
 
 32 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 culties are a source of inspiration, so that 
 what would make others stumble is for 
 them the occasion of their highest triumphs. 
 He made St. Paul cry during an hour and a 
 half ; he made an old nurse of him, he 
 hunted up his old cloak, his prescriptions of 
 water and wine to Timothy, the canvas that 
 he mended, his friend Tychicus, in short, 
 all that could raise a smile ; and from it he 
 drew the most unfailing pathos, the most 
 austere and penetrating lessons. He made 
 the whole St. Paul, martyr, apostle, and 
 man, his grief, his charities, his tender- 
 ness, live again before us, and this with a 
 grandeur, an unction, a warmth of reality, 
 such as I had never seen equalled. 
 
 How stirring is such an apotheosis of pain 
 in our century of comfort, when shepherds 
 and sheep alike sink benumbed in Capuan 
 languors, such an apotheosis of ardent 
 charity in a time of coldness and indiffer- 
 ence towards souls, such an apotheosis 
 of a hiiman, natural, inbred Christianity, 
 in an age, when some put it, so to speak, 
 above man, and others below man ! Finally, 
 as a peroration, he dwelt upon the neces- 
 sity for a new people, for a stronger gener- 
 ation, if the world is to be saved from the 
 tempests which threaten it. ' People of
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 33 
 
 God, awake ! Sow in tears, that ye may 
 reap in triumph ! ' What a study is such a 
 sermon ! I felt all the extraordinary liter- 
 ary skill of it, while my eyes were still dim 
 with tears. Diction, composition, similes, 
 all is instructive and precious to re- 
 member. I was astonished, shaken, taken 
 hold of. 
 
 18th November 1851. The energetic 
 subjectivity, which has faith in itself, which 
 does not fear to be something particular 
 and definite without any consciousness or 
 shame of its subjective illusion, is unknown 
 to me. I am, so far as the intellectual 
 order is concerned, essentially objective, 
 and my distinctive speciality is to be able 
 to place myself in all points of view, to see 
 through all eyes, to emancipate myself, 
 that is to say, from the individual prison. 
 Hence aptitude for theory and irresolution 
 in practice ; hence critical talent and a dif- 
 ficulty in spontaneous production. Hence, 
 also, a continuous uncertainty of convic- 
 tion and opinion, so long as my aptitude 
 remained mere instinct ; but now that it is 
 conscious and possesses itself, it is able to 
 conclude and affirm in its turn, so that, 
 after having brought disquiet, it now brings
 
 34 AMIEL'8 JOURNAL. 
 
 peace. It says : ' There is no repose fo* 1 
 the mind except in the absolute ; for feel- 
 ing, except in the infinite ; for the soul, ex- 
 cept in the divine.' Nothing finite is true, 
 is interesting, or worthy to fix my atten- 
 tion. All that is particular is exclusive, 
 and all that is exclusive repels mo. There 
 is nothing non-exclusive but the All ; my 
 end is communion with Being through the 
 whole of Being. Then, in the light of the 
 absolute, every idea becomes worth study- 
 ing ; in that of the infinite, every existence 
 worth respecting ; in that of the divine, 
 every creature worth loving. 
 
 2d December 1851. Let mystery have 
 its place in you ; do not be always turning 
 up your whole soil with the ploughshare of 
 self-examination, but leave a little fallow 
 corner in your heart ready for any seed the 
 winds may bring, and reserve a nook of 
 shadow for the passing bird ; keep a place 
 in your heart for the unexpected guest, an 
 altar for the unknown God. Then if a bird 
 sing among your branches, do not be too 
 eager to tame it. If you arc conscious 
 of something new thought or feeling 
 wakening in the depths of your being, do 
 not be in a hurry to let in light upon it, to
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 35 
 
 look at it ; let the springing germ have the 
 protection of being forgotten, hedge it 
 round with quiet, and do not break in upon 
 its darkness ; let it take shape and grow, 
 and not a word of your happiness to any 
 one ! Sacred work of nature as it is, all 
 conception should be enwrapped by the 
 triple veil of modesty, silence, and night. 
 
 Kindness is the principle of tact, and re- 
 spect for others the first condition of savoir- 
 
 He who is silent is forgotten ; he who 
 abstains is taken at his word ; he who does 
 not advance, falls back ; he who stops is 
 overwhelmed, distanced, crushed ; he who 
 ceases to grow greater becomes smaller ; he 
 who leaves off, gives up ; the stationary 
 condition is the beginning of the end it 
 is the terrible symptom which precedes 
 death. To live, is to achieve a perpetual 
 triumph ; it is to assert one's self against 
 destruction, against sickness, against the 
 annulling and dispersion of one's physical 
 and moral being. It is to will without 
 ceasing, or rather to refresh one's will day 
 by day.
 
 36 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 It is not history which teaches conscience 
 to be honest ; it is the conscience which 
 educates history. Fact is corrupting, it 
 is we who correct it by the persistence of 
 our ideal. The soul moralises the past in 
 order not to be demoralised by it. Like 
 the alchemists of the middle age, she finds 
 in the crucible of experience only the gold 
 that she herself has poured into it. 
 
 1st February 1852 (Sunday). Passed 
 the afternoon in reading the Monologues of 
 Schleiermacher. This little book made an 
 impression on me almost as deep as it did 
 twelve years ago, when I read it for the first 
 time. It replunged me into the inner world, 
 to which I return with joy whenever I may 
 have forsaken it. I was able, besides, to 
 measure my progress since then by the 
 transparency of all the thoughts to me, and 
 by the freedom with which I entered into 
 and judged the point of view. 
 
 It is great, powerful, profound, but there 
 is still pride in it, and even selfishness. For 
 the centre of the universe is still the Self, 
 the great Ich of Fichte. The tameless 
 liberty, the divine dignity of the individual 
 spirit, expanding till it admits neither any 
 limit nor anything foreign to itself, and
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 37 
 
 conscious of a strength instinct with creative 
 force, such is the point of view of the 
 Monologues. 
 
 The inner life in its enfranchisement from 
 time, in its double end, the realisation of 
 the species and of the individuality, in its 
 proud dominion over all hostile circum- 
 stance, in its prophetic certainty of the 
 future, in its immortal youth such is their 
 theme. Through them we are enabled to 
 enter into a life of monumental interest, 
 wholly original and beyond the influence of 
 anything exterior an astonishing example 
 of the autonomy of the ego, an imposing 
 type of character Zeno and Fichte in one. 
 But still the motive power of this life is not 
 religious ; it is rather moral and philosophic. 
 I see in it not so much a magnificent model 
 to imitate as a precious subject of study. 
 This ideal of a liberty, absolute, indefeasi- 
 ble, inviolable, respecting itself above all, 
 disdaining the visible and the universe, and 
 developing itself after its own laws alone, is 
 also the ideal of Emerson, the Stoic of a 
 young America. According to it, man finds 
 his joy in himself, and, safe in the inacces- 
 sible sanctuary of his personal conscious- 
 ness, becomes almost a god. 5 He is himself 
 principle, motive, and end of his own des- 
 
 210846
 
 38 AMIEI/S JOURNAL. 
 
 tiny ; he is himself, and that is enough for 
 him. This superb triumph of life is not far 
 from being a sort of impiety, or at least a 
 displacement of adoration. By the mere 
 fact that it does away with humility, such 
 a superhuman point of view becomes dan- 
 gerous ; it is the very temptation to which 
 the first man succumbed, that of becoming 
 his own master by becoming like unto the 
 Elohim. Here then the heroism of the 
 philosopher approaches temerity, and the 
 Monologues are therefore open to three 
 reproaches : 
 
 Ontologically, the position of man in the 
 spiritual universe is wrongly indicated ; the 
 individual soul, not being unique and not 
 springing from itself, can it be conceived 
 without God ? Psychologically, the force 
 of spontaneity in the ego is allowed a do- 
 minion too exclusive of any other. As a 
 fact, it is not everything in man. Morally, 
 evil is scarcely named, and conflict, the con- 
 dition of true peace, is left out of count. 
 So that the peace described in the Mono- 
 logues is neither a conquest by man nor a 
 grace from heaven ; it is rather a stroke of 
 good fortune. 
 
 2d February. Still the Monologues.
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 39 
 
 Critically I defended myself enough against 
 them yesterday ; I may abandon myself 
 now, without scruple and without danger, 
 to the admiration and the sympathy with 
 which they inspire me. This life so proudly 
 independent, this sovereign conception of 
 human dignity, this actual possession of 
 the universe and the infinite, this perfect 
 emancipation from all which passes, this 
 calm sense of strength and superiority, this 
 invincible energy of will, this infallible 
 clearness of self-vision, this autocracy of 
 the consciousness which is its own master, 
 all these decisive marks of a royal per- 
 sonality, of a nature Olympian, profound, 
 complete, harmonious, penetrate the mind 
 with joy and the heart with gratitude. 
 What a life ! what a man ! These glimpses 
 into the inner regions of a great soul do one 
 good. Contact of this kind strengthens, 
 restores, refreshes. Courage returns as we 
 gaze ; when we see what has been, we doubt 
 no more that it can be again. At the sight 
 of a man we too say to ourselves, Let us 
 also be men. 
 
 3d March 1852. Opinion has its value 
 and even its power : to have it against us 
 is painful when we are among friends, and
 
 40 AMI EL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 harmful in the case of the outer world. We 
 should neither flatter opinion nor court it ; 
 but it is better, if we can help it, not to 
 throw it on to a false scent. The first error 
 is a meanness ; the second an imprudence. 
 We should be ashamed of the one ; we may 
 regret the other. Look to yourself ; you 
 are much given to this last fault, and it has 
 already done you great harm. Be ready to 
 bend your pride ; abase yourself even so far 
 as to show yourself ready and clever like 
 others. This world of skilful egotisms and 
 active ambitions, this world of men, in 
 which one must deceive by smiles, conduct, 
 and silence as much as by actual words, 
 a world revolting to the proud and upright 
 soul, it is our business to learn to live in it ! 
 Success is required in it succeed. Only 
 force is recognised there : be strong. Opin- 
 ion seeks to impose her law upon all, 
 instead of setting her at defiance, it would 
 be better to struggle with her and conquer. 
 ... I understand the indignation of con- 
 tempt, and the wish to crush, roused irre- 
 sistibly by all that creeps, all that is 
 tortuous, oblique, ignoble. . . . But I can- 
 not maintain such a mood which is a 
 mood of vengeance for long. This world 
 is a world of men, and these men are our
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 41 
 
 brothers. We must not banish from us the 
 divine breath, we must love. Evil must, 
 be conquered by good ; and before all things 
 one must keep a pure conscience. Prudence 
 may be preached from this point of view 
 too. ' Be ye simple as the dove and pru- 
 dent as the serpent,' are words of Jesus. 
 Be careful of your reputation, not through 
 vanity, but that you may not harm your 
 life's work, and out of love for truth. 
 There is still something of self-seeking in 
 the refined disinterestedness which will not 
 justify itself, that it may feel itself superior 
 to opinion. It requires ability, to make 
 what we seem agree with what we are, 
 and humility, to feel that we are no great 
 things. 
 
 There, thanks to this Journal, my excite- 
 ment has passed away. I have just read 
 the last book of it through again, and the 
 morning has passed by. On the way I 
 have been conscious of a certain amount 
 of monotony. It does not signify ! These 
 pages are not written to be read ; they are 
 written for my own consolation and warn- 
 ing. They are landmarks in my past ; and 
 some of the landmarks are funeral crosses, 
 stone pyramids, withered stalks grown 
 green again, white pebbles, coins, all of
 
 42 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 j them helpful towards finding one's way 
 again through the Elysian fields of the soul. 
 
 ' The pilgrim has marked his stages in it ; 
 he is able to trace by it his thoughts, his 
 tears, his joys. This is my travelling 
 diary : if some passages from it may be use- 
 ful to others, and if sometimes even I have 
 communicated such passages to the public, 
 these thousand pages as a whole are only 
 of value to me and to those who, after me, 
 may take some interest in the itinerary of 
 an obscurely-conditioned soul, far from the 
 world's noise and fame. These sheets will 
 be monotonous when my life is so ; they 
 will repeat themselves when feelings repeat 
 themselves ; truth at any rate will be al- 
 ways there, and truth is their only muse, 
 their only pretext, their only duty. 
 
 / 2d April 1852. What a lovely walk ! 
 Sky clear, sun rising, all the tints bright, 
 all the outlines sharp, save for the soft and 
 misty infinite of the lake. A pinch of 
 white frost powdered the fields, lending a 
 metallic relief to the hedges of green box, 
 and to the whole landscape still without 
 leaves an air of health and vigour, of 
 youth and freshness. ' Bathe, O disciple, 
 thy '..hirsty soul in the dew of the dawn!'
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 43 
 
 8U5S Faust to us, and he is right. The 
 morning air breathes a new and laughing 
 energy into veins and marrow. If every 
 day is a repetition of life, every dawn signs 
 as it were a new contract with existence. 
 At dawn everything is fresh, light, simple, 
 as it is for children. At dawn spiritual 
 truth, like the atmosphere, is more trans- 
 parent, and our organs, like the young 
 leaves, drink in the light more eagerly, 
 breathe in more ether, and less of things 
 earthly. If night and the starry sky speak 
 to the meditative soul of God, of eternity 
 and the infinite, the dawn is the time for 
 projects, for resolutions, for the birth of 
 action. While the silence and the 'sad 
 serenity of the azure vault ' incline the soul 
 to self-recollection, the vigour and gaiety of 
 nature spread into the heart and make it 
 eager for life and living. Spring is upon 
 us. Primroses and violets have already 
 hailed her coming. Rash blooms are show- 
 ing on the peach trees ; the swollen buds of 
 the pear trees and the lilacs point to the 
 blossoming that is to be ; the honeysuckles 
 are already green. 
 
 26th April 1852. This evening a feeling 
 of emptiness took possession of me ; and
 
 44 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 the solemn ideas of duty, the future, soli- 
 tude, pressed themselves upon me. I gave 
 myself to meditation a very necessary 
 defence against the dispersion and distrac- 
 tion brought about by the day's work and 
 its detail. Read a part of Krause's book, 
 Urbild der Menschheit, 6 which answered 
 marvellously to my thought and my need. 
 This philosopher has always a beneficent 
 effect upon me ; his sweet religious serenity 
 gains upon me and invades me. He in- 
 spires me with a sense of peace and infinity. 
 Still, I miss something common wor- 
 ship, a positive religion, shared with other 
 people. Ah ! when will the Church to 
 which I belong in heart rise into being ? I 
 cannot, like Scherer, content myself with 
 being in the right all alone. I must have 
 a less solitary Christianity. My religious 
 needs are not satisfied any more than my 
 social needs, or my needs of affection. 
 Generally I am able to forget them and lull 
 them to sleep. But at times they wake up 
 with a sort of painful bitterness. ... I 
 waver between languor and ennui, between 
 frittering myself away on the infinitely lit- 
 tle, and longing after what is unknown and 
 distant. It is like the situation which 
 French novelists are so fond of, the story
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 45 
 
 of a vie de province ; only the province is 
 all that is not the country of the soul, every 
 place where the heart feels itself strange, 
 dissatisfied, restless, and thirsty. Alas ! 
 well understood, this place is the earth, 
 this country of one's dreams is heaven, and 
 this suffering is the eternal home-sickness, 
 the thirst for happiness. 
 
 1 In der Beschrankung zeigt sich erst der 
 Meister,' 1 says Goethe. Male resignation, 
 this also is the motto of those who are 
 masters of the art of life ; ' manly ' that 
 is to say, courageous, active, resolute, per- 
 severing, ' resignation,' that is to say, 
 self-sacrifice, renunciation, limitation. En- 
 ergy in resignation there lies the wisdom 
 of the sons of earth, the only serenity pos- 
 sible in this life of struggle and of combat. 
 In it is the peace of martyrdom, in it too 
 the promise of triumph. 
 
 28th April 1852 (iancj/). 7 Once more 
 I feel the spring languor creeping over me, 
 the spring air about me. This morning the 
 poetry of the scene, the song of the birds, 
 the tranquil sunlight, the breeze blowing 
 over the fresh green fields all rose into 
 and filled my heart. Now all is silent. O 
 silence, thou art terrible ! terrible as that
 
 46 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 calm of the ocean which lets the eye pene- 
 trate the fathomless abysses below. Thou 
 showest us in ourselves depths which make 
 us giddy, inextinguishable needs, treasures 
 of suffering. Welcome tempests ! at least 
 they blur and trouble the surface of these 
 waters with their terrible secrets. Wel- 
 come the passion blasts which stir the 
 waves of the soul, and so veil from us its 
 bottomless gulfs ! In all of us, children of 
 dust, sons of time, eternity inspires an 
 involuntary anguish, and the infinite, a 
 mysterious terror. We seem to be entering 
 a kingdom of the dead. Poor heart, thy 
 craving is for life, for love, for illusions ! 
 And thou art right after all, for life is sacred. 
 In these moments of tete-a-tete with the 
 infinite, how different life looks ! How all 
 that usually occupies and excites us becomes 
 suddenly puerile, frivolous, and vain. We 
 seem to ourselves mere puppets, mario- 
 nettes, strutting seriously through a fantas- 
 tic show, and mistaking gewgaws for things 
 of great price. At such moments, how every- 
 thing becomes transformed, how everything 
 changes ! Berkeley and Fichte seem right 
 Emerson too ; the world is but an alle- 
 gory ; the idea is more real than the fact ; 
 fairy tales, legends, are as true as natural
 
 AMIEL S JOURNAL. 47 
 
 history, and even more true, for they are 
 emblems of greater transparency. The 
 only substance properly so called is the 
 soul. What is all the rest ? Mere shadow, 
 pretext, figure, symbol, or dream. Con- 
 sciousness alone is immortal, positive, per- 
 fectly real. The world is but a firework, 
 a sublime phantasmagoria, destined to cheer 
 and form the soul. Consciousness is a 
 universe, and its sun is love. . . . 
 
 Already I am falling back into the objec- 
 tive light of thought. It delivers me from 
 shall I say ? no, it deprives me of the 
 intimate life of feeling. Reflection dis- 
 solves reverie and burns her delicate wings. 
 This is why science does not make men, 
 but merely entities and abstractions. Ah, 
 let us feel and live and beware of too much 
 analysis ! Let us put spontaneity, naivete 
 before reflection, experience before study ; 
 let us make life itself our study. Shall I 
 then never have the heart of a woman to 
 rest upon ? a son in whom to live again, 
 a little world where I may see flowering 
 and blooming all that is stifled in me ? I 
 shrink and draw back, for fear of breaking 
 my dream. I have staked so much on this 
 card that I dare not play it. Let me dream 
 again. . . .
 
 48 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 Do no violence to yourself, respect in 
 yourself the oscillations of feeling. They 
 are your life and your nature ; One wiser 
 than you ordained them. Do not abandon 
 yourself altogether either to instinct or to 
 will. Instinct is a siren, will a despot. Be 
 neither the slave of your impulses and sen- 
 sations of the moment, nor of an abstract 
 and general plan ; be open to what life 
 brings from within and without, and wel- 
 come the unforeseen ; but give to your life 
 unity, and bring the unforeseen within the 
 lines of your plan. Let what is natural in 
 you raise itself to the level of the spiritual, 
 and let the spiritual become once more 
 natural. Thus will your development be 
 harmonious, and the peace of heaven will 
 shine upon your brow ; always on condi- 
 tion that your peace is made, and that you 
 have climbed your Calvary. 
 
 Afternoon. Shall I ever enjoy again 
 those marvellous reveries of past days, 
 as, for instance, once, when I was still 
 quite a youth, in the early dawn, sitting 
 amongst the ruins of the castle of Fau- 
 cigny ; another time in the mountains 
 above Lavey, under the midday sun, lying 
 under a tree and visited by three butter- 
 flies ; and again another night on the
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 49 
 
 sandy shore of the North Sea, stretched 
 full length upon the beach, my eyes wan- 
 dering over the Milky Way? Will they 
 ever return to me, those grandiose, immor- 
 tal, cosmogonic dreams, in which one seems 
 to carry the world in one's breast, to touch 
 the stars, to possess the infinite ? Divine 
 moments, hours of ecstasy, when thought 
 flies from world to world, penetrates the 
 great enigma, breathes with a respiration 
 large, tranquil, and profound like that of 
 the ocean, and hovers serene and boundless 
 like the blue heaven ! Visits from the 
 muse Urania, who traces around the fore- 
 heads of those she loves the phosphores- 
 cent nimbus of contemplative power, and 
 who pours into their hearts the tranquil 
 intoxication, if not the authority of genius, 
 moments of irresistible intuition in which 
 a man feels himself great like the universe 
 and calm like a god ! From the celestial 
 spheres down to the shell or the moss, the 
 whole of creation is then submitted to our 
 gaze, lives in our breast, and accomplishes 
 in us its eternal work with the regularity of 
 destiny and the passionate ardour of love. 
 What hours, what memories! The traces / 
 which remain to us of them are enough to fill 
 us with respect and enthusiasm, as though 
 they had been visits of the Holy Spirit.
 
 So AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 And then, to fall back again from these 
 heights with their boundless horizons into 
 the rnuddy nits of triviality ! what a 
 fall ! Poor Moses ! Thou too sawest un- 
 dulating in the distance the ravishing hills 
 of the Promised Land, and it was thy fate 
 nevertheless to lay thy weary bones in a 
 grave dug in the desert ! Which of us 
 has not his promised land, his day of 
 ecstasy and his death in exile ? What a 
 pale counterfeit is real life of the life we see 
 in glimpses, and how these flaming light- 
 nings of our prophetic youth make the 
 twilight of our dull monotonous manhood 
 more dark and dreary ! 
 
 April (Lancy). This morning the 
 air was calm, the sky slightly veiled. I 
 went out into the garden to see what prog- 
 ress the spring was making. I strolled 
 from the irises to the lilacs, round the 
 flower-beds, and in the shrubberies. De- 
 lightful surprise ! at the corner of the 
 walk, half hidden under a thick clump of 
 shrubs, a small-leaved chorchoritu had flow- 
 ered during the night. Gay and fresh as a 
 bunch of bridal flowers, the little shrub 
 glittered before me, in all the attraction of 
 its opening beauty. What spring-like inno-
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 51 
 
 cence, what soft and modest loveliness there 
 was in these white corollas, opening gently 
 to the sun, like thoughts which smile upon 
 us at waking, and perched upon their 
 young leaves of virginal green like bees 
 upon the wing ! Mother of marvels, mys- 
 terious and tender Nature, why do we not 
 live more in thee ? The poetical flaneurs 
 of Topffer, his Charles and Jules, the 
 friends and passionate lovers of thy secret 
 graces, the dazzled and ravished beholders 
 of thy beauties, rose up in my memory, at 
 once a reproach and a lesson. A modest 
 garden and a country rectory, the narrow 
 horizon of a garret, contain for those who 
 know how to look and to wait, more in- 
 struction than a library, even than that of 
 Mon oncle. % Yes, we are too busy, too 
 encumbered, too much occupied, too active ! 
 We read too much ! The one thing needful 
 is to throw off all one's load of cares, of 
 preoccupations, of pedantry, and to become 
 again young, simple, child-like, living hap- 
 pily and gratefully in the present hour. 
 We must know how to put occupation aside, 
 which does not mean that we must be idle. 
 In an inaction which is meditative and 
 attentive, the wrinkles of the soul are 
 smoothed away, and the soul itself spreads,
 
 52 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 unfolds, and springs afresh, and, like the 
 trodden grass of the roadside or the bruised 
 leaf of a plant, repairs its injuries, becomes 
 new, spontaneous, true, and original. Kev- 
 erie, like the rain of night, restores colour 
 and force to thoughts which have been 
 blanched and wearied by the heat of the 
 day. With gentle fertilising power it 
 awakens within us a thousand sleeping 
 germs, and, as though in play, gathers 
 round us materials for the future, and 
 images for the use of talent. Sevcric is the 
 Sunday of thought ; and who knows which 
 is the more important and fruitful for man, 
 the laborious tension of the week, or the 
 life-giving repose of the Sabbath ? The 
 flanerie so exquisitely glorified and sung by 
 Topffer is not only delicious, but useful. 
 It is like a bath which gives vigour and 
 suppleness to the whole being, to the mind 
 as to the body ; it is the sign and festival 
 of liberty, a joyous and wholesome ban- 
 quet, the banquet of the butterfly wander- 
 ing from flower to flower over the hills and 
 in the fields. And remember, the soul too 
 is a butterfly. 
 
 2d May 1852 (Sunday), Lancy. This 
 morning read the Epistle of St. James, the
 
 AMIKL 8 JOURNAL. 53 
 
 exegetical volume of Cellfirier 9 on this 
 Epistle, and a great deal of Pascal, after 
 having first of all passed more than an hour 
 in the garden with the children. I made 
 them closely examine the flowers, the 
 shrubs, the grasshoppers, the snails, in 
 order to practise them in observation, in 
 wonder, in kindness. 
 
 How enormously important are these 
 first conversations of childhood ! I felt it 
 this morning with a sort of religious terror. 
 Innocence and childhood are sacred. The 
 sower who casts in the seed, the father or 
 mother casting in the fruitful word, are 
 accomplishing a pontifical act and ought to 
 perform it with religious awe, with prayer 
 and gravity, for they are labouring at the 
 kingdom of God. All seed-sowing is a 
 mysterious thing, whether the seed fall into 
 the earth or into souls. Man is a husband- 
 man ; his whole work rightly understood is 
 to develop life, to sow it everywhere. Such 
 is the mission of humanity, and of this 
 divine mission the great instrument is 
 speech. We forget too often that language 
 is both a seed-sowing and a revelation. 
 The influence of a word in season, is it not 
 incalculable ? What a mystery is speech ! 
 But we are blind to it, because we are
 
 54 AMIEL'S JOURNAL 
 
 carnal and earthy. We see the stones and 
 the trees by the road, the furniture of our 
 houses, all that is palpable and material. 
 We have no eyes for the invisible phalanxes 
 of ideas which people the air and hover 
 incessantly around each one of us. 
 
 Every life is a profession of faith, and 
 exercises an inevitable and silent propa- 
 ganda. As far as lies in its power, it tends 
 to transform the universe and humanity 
 into its own image. Thus we have all a 
 cure of souls. Every man is a centre of 
 perpetual radiation like a luminous body ; 
 he is, as it were, a beacon which entices a 
 ship upon the rocks if it does not guide it 
 into port. Every man is a priest, even in- 
 voluntarily ; his conduct is an unspoken 
 sermon, which is for ever preaching to 
 others ; but there are priests of Baal, of 
 Moloch, and of all the false gods. Such is 
 the high importance of example. Thence 
 comes the terrible responsibility which 
 weighs upon us all. An evil example is a 
 spiritual poison : it is the proclamation of a 
 sacrilegious faith, of an impure God. Sin 
 would be only an evil for him who commits 
 it, were it not a crime towards the weak 
 brethren, whom it corrupts. Therefore it 
 has been said : ' It were better for a man
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 55 
 
 not to have been born than to offend one of 
 these little ones.' 
 
 6th May 1852. It is women who, like 
 mountain flowers, mark with most charac- 
 teristic precision the gradation of social 
 zones. The hierarchy of classes is plainly 
 visible amongst them ; it is blurred in the 
 other sex. With women this hierarchy has 
 the average regularity of nature ; among men 
 we see it broken by the incalculable varieties 
 of human freedom. The reason is that 
 the man, on the whole, makes himself by 
 his own activity, and that the woman is, 
 on the whole, made by her situation ; that 
 the one modifies and shapes circumstance 
 by his own energy, while the gentleness of 
 the other is dominated by and reflects cir- 
 cumstance ; so that woman, so to speak, 
 inclines to be species, and man to be 
 individual. 
 
 Thus which is curious women are 
 at once the sex which is most constant and 
 most variable. Most constant from the 
 moral point of view, most variable from the 
 social. A confraternity in the first case, 
 a hierarchy in the second. All degrees of 
 culture and all conditions of society are 
 clearly marked in their outward appear-
 
 56 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 ance, their manners, and their tastes ; but 
 the inward fraternity is traceable in their 
 feelings, their instincts, and their desires. 
 The feminine sex represents at the same 
 time natural and historical inequality ; it 
 maintains the unity of the species and 
 marks off the categories of society, it brings 
 together and divides, it gathers and sepa- 
 rates, it makes castes and breaks through 
 them, according as it interprets its twofold 
 role in the one sense or the other. At 
 bottom, woman's mission is essentially 
 conservative, but she is a conservative with- 
 out discrimination. On the one side, she 
 maintains God's work in man all that is 
 lasting, noble, and truly human in the race, 
 poetry, religion, virtue, tenderness. On 
 the other, she maintains the results of cir- 
 cumstance all that is passing, local, and 
 artificial in society ; that is to say, cus- 
 toms, absurdities, prejudices, littlenesses. 
 She surrounds with the same respectful 
 and tenacious faith the serious and the 
 frivolous, the good and the bad. Well 
 what then ? Isolate if you can the 
 fire from its smoke. It is a divine law that 
 you are tracing, and therefore good. The 
 woman preserves ; she is tradition as the 
 man is progress. And if there is no family
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 57 
 
 and no humanity without the two sexes, 
 without these two forces there is no 
 history. 
 
 Uth May 1852 (La ncy). Yesterday I 
 was full of the philosophy of joy, of youth, 
 of the spring which smiles and the roses 
 which intoxicate ; I preached the doctrine 
 of strength, and I forgot that, tried and 
 afflicted like the two friends with whom 
 I was walking, I should probably have 
 reasoned and felt as they did. 
 
 Our systems, it has been said, are the 
 expression of our character, or the theory 
 of our situation, that is to say, we like 
 to think of what has been given as hav- 
 ing been acquired, we take our nature 
 for our own work, and our lot in life for 
 our own conquest an illusion born of 
 vanity and also of the craving for liberty. 
 We are unwilling to be the product of cir- 
 cumstances, or the mere expansion of an 
 inner germ. And yet we have received 
 everything, and the part which is really 
 ours is small indeed, for it is mostly made 
 up of negation, resistance, faults. We 
 receive everything, both life and happi- 
 ness ; but the manner in which we receive, 
 this is what is still ours. Let us, then,
 
 58 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 receive trustfully without shame or anx- 
 iety. Let us humbly accept from God 
 even our own nature, and treat it char- 
 itably, firmly, intelligently. Not that we 
 are called upon to accept the evil and the 
 disease in us, but let us accept ourselves in 
 spite of the evil and the disease. And let 
 us never be afraid of innocent joy ; God is 
 good, and what He does is well done ; 
 resign yourself to everything, even to happi- 
 ness ; ask for the spirit of sacrifice, of de- 
 tachment, of renunciation, and, above all, 
 for the spirit of joy and gratitude that 
 genuine and religious optimism which sees 
 in God a father, and asks no pardon for 
 His benefits. We must dare to be happy, 
 and dare to confess it, regarding ourselves 
 always as the depositaries, not as the 
 authors of our own joy. 
 
 . . . This evening I saw the first glow- 
 worm of the season in the turf beside the 
 little winding road which descends from 
 Lancy towards the town. It was crawling 
 furtively under the grass, like a timid 
 thought or a dawning talent. 
 
 \lth June 1852. Every despotism has a 
 specially keen and hostile instinct for what-
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 59 
 
 ever keeps up human dignity and inde- 
 pendence. And it is curious to see scien- 
 tific and realist teaching used everywhere as 
 a means of stifling all freedom of investiga- 
 tion as addressed to moral questions, under 
 a dead weight of facts. Materialism is the 
 auxiliary doctrine of every tyranny, whether 
 of the one or of the masses. To crush what 
 is spiritual, moral, human so to speak 
 in man, by specialising him ; to form mere 
 wheels of the great social machine, instead 
 of perfect individuals ; to make society and 
 not conscience the centre of life, to enslave 
 the soul to things, to de-personalise man, 
 this is the dominant drift of our epoch. 
 Everywhere you may see a tendency to 
 substitute the laws of dead matter (number, 
 mass) for the laws of the moral nature 
 (persuasion, adhesion, faith) ; equality, the 
 principle of mediocrity, becoming a dogma ; 
 unity aimed at through uniformity ; num- 
 bers doing duty for argument ; negative 
 liberty, which has no law in itself, and 
 recognises no limit except in force, every- 
 where taking the place of positive liberty, 
 which means action guided by an inner law 
 and curbed "by a moral authority. Socialism 
 versus individualism : this is how Vinet put 
 the dilemma. I should say rather that it is
 
 60 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 only the eternal antagonism between letter 
 and spirit, between form and matter, be- 
 tween the outward and the inward, appear- 
 ance and reality, which is always present 
 in every conception and in all ideas. 
 
 Materialism coarsens and petrifies every- 
 thing ; makes everything vulgar and every 
 truth false. And there is a religious and 
 political materialism which spoils all that 
 it touches liberty, equality, individuality. 
 So that there are two ways of understand- 
 ing democracy. . . . 
 
 What is threatened to-day is moral liberty, 
 conscience, respect for the soul, the very 
 nobility of man. To defend the soul, its 
 interests, its rights, its dignity, is the most 
 pressing duty for whoever sees the danger. 
 What the writer, the teacher, the pastor, 
 the philosopher, has to do, is to defend 
 humanity in man. Man ! the true man, 
 the ideal man ! Such should be their motto, 
 their rallying cry. War to all that debases, 
 diminishes, hinders, and degrades him ; 
 protection for all that fortifies, ennobles, 
 and raises him. The test of every religious, 
 political, or educational system, is the man 
 which it forms. If a system injures the 
 intelligence it is bad. If it injures the 
 character it is vicious. If it injures 
 the conscience it is criminal.
 
 AMIKL'S JOURNAL. 61 
 
 12th August 1852 (Lancy). Each sphere 
 of being tends towards a higher sphere, arid 
 has already revelations and presentiments 
 of it. The ideal under all its forms is the 
 anticipation and the prophetic vision of 
 that existence, higher than his own, toward 
 which every being perpetually aspires. And 
 this higher and more dignified existence is 
 more inward in character that is to say, 
 more spiritual. Just as volcanoes reveal to 
 us the secrets of the interior of the globe, 
 so enthusiasm and ecstasy are the passing 
 explosions of this inner world of the soul ; 
 and human life is but the preparation and 
 the means of approach to this spiritual life. 
 The degrees of initiation are innumerable. 
 Watch, then, disciple of life, watch and 
 labour towards the development of the 
 angel within thee ! For the divine Odyssey 
 is but a series of more and more ethereal 
 metamorphoses, in which each form, the 
 result of what goes before, is the condition 
 of those which follow. The divine life is 
 a series of successive deaths, in which the 
 mind throws off its imperfections and its 
 symbols, and yields to the growing attrac- 
 tion of the ineffable centre of gravitation, 
 the sun of intelligence and love. Created 
 spirits, in the accomplishment of their
 
 62 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 destinies, tend, so to speak, to form con- 
 stellations and milky ways within the 
 empyrean of the divinity ; in becoming 
 gods, they surround the throne of the 
 sovereign with a sparkling court. In their 
 greatness lies their homage. The divinity 
 with which they are invested is the noblest 
 glory of God. God is the father of spirits, 
 and the constitution of the eternal kingdom 
 rests on the vassalship of love. 
 
 2Tth September 1852 (Lancy). To-day 
 I complete my thirty-first year. . . . 
 
 The most beautiful poem there is, is life 
 life which discerns its own story in the 
 making, in which inspiration and self -con- 
 sciousness go together and help each other, 
 life which knows itself to be the world in 
 little, a repetition in miniature of the divine 
 universal poem. Yes, be man ; that is to 
 say, be nature, be spirit, be the image of 
 God, be what is greatest, most beautiful, 
 most lofty in all the spheres of being, be 
 infinite will and idea, a reproduction of the 
 great whole. And be everything while 
 being nothing, effacing thyself, letting God 
 enter into thee as the air enters an empty 
 space, reducing the ego to the mere vessel 
 which contains the divine essence. Be
 
 AMI EL'S JOUKXAL. 63 
 
 humble, devout, silent, that so thou inayest 
 hear in the depths of thyself the subtle and 
 profound voice ; be spiritual and pure, that 
 so thou inayest have communion with the 
 pure spirit. Withdraw thyself often into 
 the sanctuary of thy inmost consciousness ; 
 become once more point and atom, that so 
 thou inayest free thyself from space, time, 
 matter, temptation, dispersion, that thou 
 inayest escape thy very organs themselves 
 and thine own life. That is to say, die 
 often, and examine thyself in the presence 
 of this death, as a preparation for the last 
 death. He who can without shuddering 
 confront blindness, deafness, paralysis, 
 disease, betrayal, poverty ; he who can 
 without terror appear before the sovereign 
 justice, he alone can call himself prepared 
 for partial or total death. How far am I 
 from anything of the sort, how far is my 
 heart from any such stoicism ! But at 
 least we can try to detach ourselves from 
 all that can be taken away from us, to ac- 
 cept everything as a loan and a gift, and to 
 cling only to the imperishable, this at any 
 rate we can attempt. To believe in a good 
 and fatherly God, who educates us, who 
 tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, who 
 punishes only when he must, and takes
 
 64 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 away only with regret ; this thought, or 
 rather this conviction, gives courage and 
 security. Oh, what need we have of love, 
 of tenderness, of affection, of kindness, and 
 how vulnerable we are, we, the sons of God, 
 we, immortal and sovereign beings ! Strong 
 as the universe or feeble as the worm, ac- 
 cording as we represent God or only our- 
 selves, as we lean upon infinite being, or as 
 we stand alone. 
 
 The point of view of religion, of a religion 
 at once active and moral, spiritual and pro- 
 found, alone gives to life all the dignity 
 and all the energy of which it is capable. 
 Religion makes invulnerable and invincible. 
 Earth can only be conquered in the name 
 of heaven. All good things are given over 
 and above to him who desires but righteous- 
 ness. To be disinterested is to be strong, 
 and the world is at the feet of him whom it 
 cannot tempt. Why ? Because spirit is 
 lord of matter, and the world belongs to 
 God. ' Be of good cheer,' saith a heavenly 
 voice, 'I have overcome the world.' 
 
 Lord, lend thy strength to those who are 
 weak in the flesh but willing in the spirit ! 
 
 31st October 1852 (Lancy). Walked for 
 half an hour in the garden. A fine rain
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 65 
 
 was falling, and the landscape was that of 
 autumn. The sky was hung with various 
 shades of gray, and mists hovered about the 
 distant mountains, a melancholy nature. 
 The leaves were falling on all sides like the 
 last illusions of youth under the tears of 
 irremediable grief. A brood of chattering 
 birds were chasing each other through the 
 shrubberies, and playing games among the 
 branches, like a knot of hiding schoolboys. 
 The ground strewn with leaves, brown, yel- 
 low, and reddish ; the trees half-stripped, 
 some more, some less, and decked in ragged 
 splendours of dark -red, scarlet, and yellow ; 
 the reddening shrubs and plantations ; a 
 few flowers still lingering behind roses, 
 nasturtiums, dahlias, shedding their petals 
 round them ; the* bare fields, the thinned 
 hedges ; and the fir, the only green thing 
 left, vigorous and stoical, like eternal youth 
 braving decay ; all these innumerable and 
 marvellous symbols which forms, colours, 
 plants, and living beings, the earth and the 
 sky, yield at all times to the eye which has 
 learnt to look for them, charmed and en- 
 thralled me. I wielded a poetic wand, and 
 had but to touch a phenomenon to make 
 it render up to me its moral significance. 
 Every landscape is, as it were, a state of
 
 66 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 the soul, and whoever penetrates into both 
 is astonished to find how much likeness 
 there is in each detail. True poetry is 
 truer than science, because it is synthetic, 
 and seizes at once what the combination of 
 all the sciences is able at most to attain as 
 a final result. The soul of nature is di- 
 vined by the poet ; the man of science only 
 serves to accumulate materials for its dem- 
 onstration. 
 
 6th November 1852. I am capable of all 
 the passions, for I bear them all within me. 
 Like a tamer of wild beasts, I keep -them 
 caged and lassoed, but I sometimes hear 
 them growling. I have stifled more than 
 one nascent love. Why ? Because with 
 that prophetic certainty which belongs to 
 moral intuition, I felt it lacking in true life, 
 and less durable than myself. I choked it 
 down in the name of the supreme affection 
 to come. The loves of sense, of imagina- 
 tion, of sentiment, I have seen through 
 and rejected them all; I sought the love 
 which springs from the central profundities 
 of being. And I still believe in it. I will 
 have none of those passions of straw which 
 dazzle, burn up, and wither ; I invoke, I 
 await, and I hope for the love which is
 
 AMIEL'S JOUISNAL. 67 
 
 great, pure, and earnest, which lives and 
 works in all the fibres and through all the 
 powers of the soul. And even if I go lonely 
 to the end, I would rather my hope and my 
 dream died with me, than that my soul 
 should content itself with any meaner 
 union. 
 
 8th November 1852. Responsibility is 
 my invisible nightmare. To suffer through 
 one's own fault is a torment worthy of the 
 lost, for so grief is envenomed by ridicule, 
 and the worst ridicule of all, that which 
 springs from shame of oneself. I have only 
 force and energy wherewith to meet evils 
 coming from outside ; but an irreparable 
 evil brought about by myself, a renuncia- 
 tion for life of my liberty, my peace of 
 mind, the very thought of it is madden- 
 ing, I expiate my privilege indeed. My 
 privilege is to be the spectator of my own 
 life-drama, to be fully conscious of the 
 tragi-comedy of my own destiny, and, more 
 than that, to be in the secret of the tragi- 
 comic itself that is to say, to be unable 
 to take my illusions seriously, to see my- 
 self, so to speak, from the theatre on the 
 stage, or to be like a man looking from be- 
 yond the tomb into existence. I feel my-
 
 68 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 self forced to feign a particular interest in 
 my individual part, while all the time I am 
 living in the confidence of the poet who is 
 playing with all these agents which seem so 
 important, and knows all that they are 
 ignorant of. It is a strange position, and 
 one which becomes painful as soon as grief 
 obliges me to betake myself once more to 
 my own little role, binding me closely to it, 
 and warning me that I am going too far in 
 imagining myself, because of my conversa- 
 tions with the poet, dispensed from taking 
 up again my modest part of valet in the 
 piece. Shakespeare must have experi- 
 enced this feeling often, and Hamlet, I 
 think, must express it sqmewhere. It is a 
 Doppelganyerei, quite German in character, 
 and which explains the disgust with reality, 
 and the repugnance to public life, so com- 
 mon among the thinkers of Germany. 
 There is, as it were, a degradation, a 
 Gnostic fall, in thus folding one's wings 
 and going back again into the vulgar shell 
 of one's own individuality. Without grief, 
 which is the string of this venturesome kite, 
 man would soar too quickly and too high, 
 and the chosen souls would be lost, for the 
 race, like balloons which, save for gravita- 
 tion, would never return from the empy- 
 rean.
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 69 
 
 How, then, is one to recover courage 
 enough for action ? By striving to restore 
 in oneself something of that unconscious- 
 ness, spontaneity, instinct, which reconciles 
 us to earth and makes man useful and rela- 
 tively happy. 
 
 By believing more practically in the 
 Providence which pardons and allows of 
 reparation. 
 
 By accepting our human condition in a 
 more simple and child-like spirit, fearing 
 trouble less, calculating less, hoping more. 
 For we decrease our responsibility if we 
 decrease our clearness of vision, and fear 
 lessens with the lessening of responsibility. 
 
 By extracting a richer experience out of 
 our losses and lessons. 
 
 9th November 1852. A few pages of the 
 Chrestomathie Fran^aise and Vinet's re- 
 markable letter at the head of the volume, 
 have given me one or two delightful hours. 
 As a thinker, as a Christian, and as a man, 
 Vinet occupies a typical place. His phi- 
 losophy, his theology, his aesthetics in 
 short, his work, will be or has been already 
 surpassed at all points. His was a great 
 soul and a fine talent. But neither were 
 well enough served by circumstances. We
 
 70 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 see in him a personality worthy of all ven- 
 eration, a man of singular goodness and a 
 writer of distinction, but not quite a great 
 man, nor yet a great writer. Profundity 
 and purity these are what he possesses in 
 a high degree, but not greatness, properly 
 speaking. For that, he is a little too subtle 
 and analytical, too ingenious and fine-spun ; 
 his thought is overladen with detail, and 
 has not enough flow, eloquence, imagina- 
 tion, warmth, and largeness. Essentially 
 and constantly meditative, he has not 
 strength enough left to deal with what is 
 outside him. The casuistries of conscience 
 and of language, eternal self -suspicion, and 
 self-examination his talent lies in these 
 things, and is limited by them. Vim-l 
 wants passion, abundance, entrainement, 
 and therefore popularity. The individual- 
 ism which is his title to glory is also the 
 cause of his weakness. We find in him 
 always the solitary and the ascetic. His 
 thought is, as it were, perpetually at 
 church ; it is perpetually devising trials 
 and penances for itself. Hence the air of 
 scruple and anxiety which characterises it 
 even in its bolder flights. Moral energy, 
 balanced by a disquieting delicacy of fibre ; 
 a fine organisation marred, so to speak,
 
 AMIEI/8 JOURNAL. Jl 
 
 by low health such is the impression it 
 makes upon us. Is it reproach or praise to 
 say of Vinet's mind that it seems to one a 
 force perpetually reacting upon itself ? A 
 warmer and more self-forgetful manner ; 
 more muscles, as it were, around the nerves ; 
 more circles of intellectual and historical 
 life around the individual circle these are 
 what Vinet, of all writers perhaps the one 
 who makes us think most, is still lacking 
 in. Less reflexivity and more plasticity 
 the eye more on the object would raise 
 the style of Vinet, so rich in substance, so 
 nervous, so full of ideas and variety, into 
 a grand style. Vinet, to sum up, is con- 
 science personified, as man and as writer. 
 Happy the literature and the society which 
 is able to count at one time two or three 
 like him, if not equal to him ! 
 
 November 1852. How much have 
 we not to learn from the Greeks, those im- 
 mortal ancestors of ours ! And how much 
 better they solved their problem than we 
 have solved ours. Their ideal man is not 
 ours, but they understood infinitely better 
 than we, how to reverence, cultivate, and 
 ennoble the man whom they knew. In a 
 thousand respects we are still barbarians
 
 72 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 beside them, as Beranger said to me with a 
 sigh in 1843 : barbarians in education, in 
 eloquence, in public life, in poetry, in mat- 
 ters of art, etc. We must have millions of 
 men in order to produce a few elect spir- 
 its : a thousand was enough in Greece. If 
 the measure of a civilisation is to be the 
 number of perfected men that it produces, 
 we are still far from this model people. 
 The slaves are no longer below us, but they 
 are among us. Barbarism is no longer at 
 our frontiers ; it lives side by side with us. 
 We carry within us much greater things 
 than they, but we ourselves are smaller. 
 It is a strange result. Objective civilisation 
 produced great men while making no con- 
 scious effort towards such a result ; sub- 
 jective civilisation produces a miserable and 
 imperfect race, contrary to its mission and 
 its earnest desire. The world grows more 
 majestic but man diminishes. Why is this ? 
 We have too much barbarian blood in our 
 veins, and we lack measure, harmony, and 
 grace. Christianity, in breaking man up 
 into outer and inner, the world into earth 
 and heaven, hell and paradise, has decom- 
 posed the human unity, in order, it is true, 
 to reconstruct it more profoundly and more 
 truly. But Christianity has not yet di-
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 73 
 
 gested this powerful leaven. She has not 
 yet conquered the true humanity ; she is 
 still living under the antinomy of sin and 
 grace, of here below and there above. She 
 has not penetrated into the whole heart of 
 Jesus. She is still in the narthex of peni- 
 tence ; she is not reconciled, and even the 
 churches still wear the livery of service, and 
 have none of the joy of the daughters of 
 God, baptized of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 Then, again, there is our excessive divi- 
 sion of labour ; our bad and foolish educa- 
 tion which does not develop the whole man ; 
 and the problem of poverty. We have abol- 
 ished slavery, but without having solved 
 the question of labour. In law there are 
 no more slaves in fact, there are many. 
 And while the majority of men are not free, 
 the free man, in the true sense of the term, 
 can neither be conceived nor realised. Here 
 are enough causes for our inferiority. 
 
 12th November 1852. St. Martin's sum- 
 mer is still lingering, and the days all begin 
 in mist. I ran for a quarter of an hour 
 round the garden to get some warmth and 
 suppleness. Nothing could be lovelier than 
 the last rosebuds, or than the delicate gau- 
 fred edges of the strawberry leaves em-
 
 74 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 broidered with hoar-frost, while above 
 them Arachne's delicate webs hung sway- 
 ing in the green branches of the pines, 
 little ball-rooms for the fairies, carpeted 
 with powdered pearls, and kept in place by 
 a thousand dewy strands, hanging from 
 above like the chains of a lamp, and sup- 
 porting them from below like the anchors 
 of a vessel. These little airy edifices had 
 all the fantastic lightness of the elf-world, 
 and all the vaporous freshness of dawn. 
 They recalled to me the poetry of the north, 
 wafting to me a breath from Caledonia or 
 Iceland or Sweden, Frithiof and the Edda, 
 Ossian and the Hebrides. All that world 
 of cold and mist, of genius and of reverie, 
 where warmth comes not from the sun but 
 from the heart, where man is more notice- 
 able than nature, that chaste and vigor- 
 ous world, in which will plays a greater 
 part than sensation, and thought has more 
 power than instinct, in short, the whole 
 romantic cycle of German and northern 
 poetry, awoke little by little in my memory 
 and laid claim upon my sympathy. It is a 
 poetry of bracing quality, and acts upon 
 one like a moral tonic. Strange charm of 
 imagination ! A twig of pine wood and a 
 few spider-webs are enough to make coun-
 
 AMIKL'S JOURNAL. 75 
 
 tries, epochs, and nations live again before 
 her. 
 
 December 1852 (Sunday"). If I 
 reject many portions of our theology and of 
 our Church system, it is that I may the 
 better reach the Christ himself. My phi- 
 losophy allows me this. It does not state 
 the dilemma as one of .religion or philoso- 
 phy, but as one of religion accepted or ex- 
 perienced, understood or not understood. 
 For me philosophy is a manner of appre- 
 hending things, a mode of perception of 
 reality. It does not create nature, man or 
 God, but it finds them and seeks to und6r- 
 stand them. Philosophy is consciousness 
 taking account of itself with all that it con- 
 tains. Now consciousness may contain a 
 new life the facts of regeneration and of 
 salvation, that is to say, Christian experi- 
 ence. The understanding of the Christian 
 consciousness is an integral part of philoso- 
 phy, as the Christian consciousness is a 
 leading form of religious consciousness, and 
 religious consciousness an essential form of 
 consciousness. 
 
 An error is the more dangerous in pro- 
 portion to the degree of truth which it con- 
 tains.
 
 76 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 Look twice, if what you want is a just 
 conception ; look once, if what you want is 
 a sense of beauty. 
 
 A man only understands what is akin to 
 something already existing in himself. 
 
 Common sense is the measure of the pos- 
 sible ; it is composed of experience and 
 prevision ; it is calculation applied to life. 
 
 The wealth of each mind is proportional 
 to the number and to the precision of its 
 categories and its points of view. 
 
 To feel himself freer than his neighbour 
 is the reward of the critic. 
 
 Modesty (pudeur) is always the sign and 
 safeguard of a mystery. It is explained 
 by its contrary profanation. Shyness or 
 modesty is, in truth, the half-conscious 
 sense of a secret of nature or of the soul too 
 intimately individual to be given or surren- 
 dered. It is exchanged. To surrender what 
 is most profound and mysterious in one's 
 being and personality at any price less than 
 that of absolute reciprocity is profanation.
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 77 
 
 6th January 1853. Self-government with 
 tenderness, here you have the' condition 
 of all authority over children. The child 
 must discover in us no passion, no weak- 
 ness of which he can make use ; he must 
 feel himself powerless to deceive or to 
 trouble us ; then he will recognise in us his 
 natural superiors, and he will attach a spe- 
 cial value to our kindness, because he will 
 respect it. The child who can rouse in us 
 anger, or impatience, or excitement, feels 
 himself stronger than we, and a child only 
 respects strength. The mother should con- 
 sider herself as her child's sun, a change- 
 less and ever radiant world, whither the 
 small restless creature, quick at tears and 
 laughter, light, fickle, passionate, full of 
 storms, may come for fresh stores of light, 
 warmth, and electricity, of calm and of 
 courage. The mother represents goodness, 
 providence, law ; that is to say, the divin- 
 ity, under that form of it which is accessible 
 to childhood. If she is herself passionate 
 she will inculcate on her child a capricious 
 and despotic God, or even several discord- 
 ant gods. The religion of a child depends 
 on what its mother and its father are, and 
 not on what they say. The inner and un- 
 conscious ideal which guides their life is
 
 78 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 precisely what touches the child ; their 
 words, their remonstrances, their punish- 
 ments, their bursts of feeling even, are for 
 him merely thunder and comedy ; what 
 they worship this it is which his instinct 
 divines and reflects. 
 
 The child sees what we are, behind what 
 we wish to be. Hence his reputation as a 
 physiognomist. He extends his power as 
 far as he can with each of us ; he is the 
 most subtle of diplomatists. Unconsciously 
 he passes under the influence of each per- 
 son about him, and reflects it while trans- 
 forming it after his own nature. He is a 
 magnifying mirror. This is why the first 
 principle of education is : train yourself ; 
 and the first rule to follow if you wish to 
 possess yourself of a child's will is : master 
 your own. 
 
 6th February 1853 (seven o'clock in the 
 morning). I am always astonished at the 
 difference between one's inward mood of 
 the evening and that of the morning. The 
 passions which are dominant in the even- 
 ing, in the morning leave the field free for 
 the contemplative part of the soul. Our 
 whole being, irritated and overstrung by 
 the nervous excitement of the day, arrives
 
 AMIEL S JOURNAL. 79 
 
 in the evening at the culminating point of 
 its human vitality ; the same being, tran- 
 quillised by the calm of sleep, is in the 
 morning nearer heaven. We should weigh 
 a resolution in the two balances, and exam- 
 hie an idea under the two lights, if we wish 
 to minimise the chances of error by taking 
 the average of our daily oscillations. Our 
 inner life describes regular curves, baro- 
 metrical curves, as it were, independent of 
 the accidental disturbances which the storms 
 of sentiment and passion may raise in us. 
 Every soul has its climate, or rather, is a 
 climate ; it has, so to speak, its own meteo- 
 rology in the general meteorology of the 
 soul. Psychology, therefore, cannot be 
 complete so long as the physiology of our 
 planet is itself incomplete that science to 
 which we give nowadays the insufficient 
 name of physics of the globe. 
 
 I became conscious this morning that 
 what appears to us impossible is often an 
 impossibility altogether subjective. Our 
 mind, under the action of the passions, 
 produces by a strange mirage gigantic ob- 
 stacles, mountains or abysses, which stop 
 us short. Breathe upon the passion and 
 the phantasmagoria will vanish. This power 
 of mirage, by which we are able to delude
 
 8o AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 and fascinate ourselves, is a moral phenom- 
 enon worthy of attentive study. We make 
 for ourselves, in truth, our own spiritual 
 world, our own monsters, chimeras, angels, 
 we make objective what ferments in us. 
 All is marvellous for the poet ; all is divine 
 for the saint ; all is great for the hero ; all 
 is wretched, miserable, ugly, and bad for 
 the base and sordid soul. The bad man 
 creates around him a pandemonium, the 
 artist an Olympus, the elect soul a paradise, 
 which each of them sees for himself alone. 
 We are all visionaries, and what we see is 
 our soul in things. We reward ourselves 
 and punish ourselves without knowing it, 
 so that all appears to change when we 
 change. 
 
 The soul is essentially active, and the 
 activity of which we are conscious is but a 
 part of our activity, and voluntary activity 
 is but a part of our conscious activity. 
 Here we have the basis of a whole psychol- 
 ogy and system of morals. Man reproduc- 
 ing the world, surrounding himself with a 
 nature which is the objective rendering of 
 his spiritual nature, rewarding and punish- 
 ing himself ; the universe identical with the 
 divine nature, and the nature of the perfect 
 spirit only becoming understood according
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 81 
 
 to the measure of our perfection ; intuition 
 the recompense of inward purity ; science 
 as the result of goodness in short, a new 
 phenomenology, more complete and more 
 moral, in which the total soul of things 
 becomes spirit. This shall perhaps be my 
 subject for my summer lectures. How 
 much is contained in it ! the whole do- 
 main of inner education, all that is myste- 
 rious in our life, the relation of nature to 
 spirit, of God and all other beings to man, 
 the repetition in miniature of the cosmog- 
 ony, mythology, theology, and history of 
 the universe, the evolution of mind in 
 a word, the problem of problems into which 
 I have often plunged, but from which finite 
 things, details, minutia?, have turned me 
 back a thousand times. I return to the 
 brink of the great abyss with the clear per- 
 ception that here lies the problem of sci- 
 ence, that to sound it is a duty, that God 
 hides Himself only in light and love, that 
 He calls upon us to become spirits, to pos- 
 sess ourselves and to possess Him in the 
 measure of our strength, and that it is our 
 incredulity, our spiritual cowardice, which 
 is our infirmity and weakness. 
 
 Dante, gazing into the three worlds with 
 their divers heavens, saw under the form
 
 82 AMIEI/8 JOURNAL. 
 
 of an image what I would fain seize under 
 a purer form. But he was a poet, and I 
 shall only be a philosopher. The poet 
 makes himself understood by human gen- 
 erations and by the crowd ; the philosopher 
 addresses himself only to a few rare minds. 
 The day has broken. It brings with it 
 dispersion of thought in action. I feel my- 
 self demagnetised, pure clairvoyance gives 
 place to study, and the ethereal depth of 
 the heaven of contemplation vanishes before 
 the glitter of finite things. Is it to be re- 
 gretted ? No. But it proves that the hours 
 most apt for philosophical thought are those 
 which precede the dawn. 
 
 10th February 1853. This afternoon I 
 made an excursion to the Saleve with my 
 particular friends, Charles Heim, Edmond 
 Scherer, Elie Lecoultre, and Ernest Naville. 
 The conversation was of the most interest- 
 ing kind, and prevented us from noticing 
 the deep mud which hindered our walking. 
 It was especially Scherer, Naville, and I 
 who kept it alive. Liberty in God, the 
 essence of Christianity, new publications in 
 philosophy these were our three subjects 
 of conversation. The principal result for 
 me was an excellent exercise in dialectic
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 83 
 
 and in argumentation with solid champions. 
 If I learnt nothing, many of my ideas 
 gained new confirmation, and I was able to 
 penetrate more deeply into the minds of 
 my friends. I am much nearer to Scherer 
 than to Naville, but from him also I am in 
 some degree separated. 
 
 It is a striking fact, not unlike the chang- 
 ing of swords in Hamlet, that the abstract 
 minds, those which move from ideas to 
 facts, are always fighting on behalf of con- 
 crete reality ; while the concrete minds, 
 which move from facts to ideas, are gen- 
 erally the champions of abstract notions. 
 Each pretends to that over which he has 
 least power ; each aims instinctively at 
 what he himself lacks. It is an uncon- 
 scious protest against the incompleteness of 
 each separate nature. We all tend towards 
 that which we possess least of, and our 
 point of arrival is essentially different from 
 our point of departure. The Promised 
 Land is the land where one is not. The 
 most intellectual of natures adopts an ethical 
 theory of mind ; the most moral of natures 
 has an intellectual theory of morals. This 
 reflection was brought home to me in the 
 course of our three or four hours' discus- 
 sion. Nothing is more hidden from us than
 
 84 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 the illusion which lives with us day by day, 
 and our greatest illusion is to believe that 
 we are what we think ourselves to be. 
 
 The mathematical intelligence and the 
 historical intelligence (the two classes of 
 intelligences) can never understand each 
 other. When they succeed in doing so as 
 to words, they differ as to the things which 
 the words mean. At the bottom of every 
 discussion of detail between them reappears 
 the problem of the origin of ideas. If the 
 problem is not present to them, there is 
 confusion ; if it is present to them, there 
 is separation. They only agree as to the 
 goal Truth ; but never as to the road, the 
 method, and the criterion. 
 
 Heim represented the impartiality of con- 
 sciousness, Naville the morality of conscious- 
 ness, Lecoultre the religion of consciousness, 
 Scherer the intelligence of consciousness, 
 and I the consciousness of consciousness. A 
 common ground, but differing individual- 
 ities. Discrimen ingeniorum. 
 
 What charmed me most in this long dis- 
 cussion was the sense of mental freedom 
 which it awakened in me. To be able to 
 set in motion the greatest subjects of thought 
 without any sense of fatigue, to be greater 
 than the world, to play with one's strength
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 85 
 
 this is what makes the wellbeing of intel- 
 ligence, the Olympic festival of thought. 
 Habere, non haberi. There is an equal 
 happiness in the sense of reciprocal confi- 
 dence, of friendship, and esteem in the 
 midst of conflict ; like athletes, we embrace 
 each other before and after the combat, 
 and the combat is but a deploying of the 
 forces of free and equal men. 
 
 20th March 1853. I sat up alone ; two 
 or three times I paid a visit to the chil- 
 dren's room. It seemed to me, young 
 mothers, that I understood you ! Sleep is 
 the mystery of life ; there is a profound 
 charm in this darkness broken by the tran- 
 quil light of the night-lamp, and in this 
 silence measured by the rhythmic breath- 
 ings of two young sleeping creatures. It was 
 brought home to me that I was looking on 
 at a marvellous operation of nature, and 
 I watched it in no profane spirit. I sat 
 silently listening, a moved and hushed spec- 
 tator of this poetry of the cradle, this ancient 
 and ever new benediction of the family, 
 this symbol of creation sleeping under the 
 wing of God, of our consciousness with- 
 drawing into the shade that it may rest 
 from the burden of thought, and of the tomb,
 
 86 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 that divine bed, where the soul in its turn 
 rests from life. To sleep is to strain and 
 purify our emotions, to deposit the mud of 
 life, to calm the fever of the soul, to return 
 into the bosom of maternal nature, thence 
 to re-issue, healed and strong. Sleep is a 
 sort of innocence and purification. Blessed 
 be He who gave it to the poor sons of men 
 as the sure and faithful companion of life, 
 our daily healer and consoler. 
 
 21th April 1853. This evening I read 
 the treatise by Nicole so much admired by 
 Mme. de Sevigne : ' Des moyens de. conser- 
 ver la paix avec les hommes.' 1 Wisdom so 
 gentle and so insinuating, so shrewd, pierc- 
 ing, and yet humble, which divines so well 
 the hidden thoughts and secrets of the 
 heart, and brings them all into the sacred 
 bondage of love to God and man, how 
 good and delightful a thing it is ! Every- 
 thing in it is smooth, even, well put to- 
 gether, well thought out, but no display, 
 no tinsel, no worldly ornaments of style. 
 The moralist forgets himself, and in us 
 appeals only to the conscience. He be- 
 comes a confessor, a friend, a counsellor. 
 
 llth May 1853. Psychology, poetry,
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 87 
 
 philosophy, history, and science, I have 
 swept rapidly to-day on the wings of the 
 invisible hippogriff through all these spheres 
 of thought. But the general impression 
 has been one of tumult and anguish, temp- 
 tation and disquiet. 
 
 I love to plunge deep into the ocean of 
 life ; but it is not without losing sometimes 
 all sense of the axis and the pole, without 
 losing myself, and feeling the conscious- 
 ness of my own nature and vocation grow- 
 ing faint and wavering. The whirlwind of 
 the Wandering Jew carries me away, tears 
 me from my little familiar enclosure, and 
 makes me behold all the empires of men. 
 In my voluntary abandonment to the gen- 
 erality, the universal, the infinite, my par- 
 ticular ego evaporates like a drop of water 
 in a furnace ; it only condenses itself anew 
 at the return of cold, after enthusiasm has 
 died out and the sense of reality has re- 
 turned. Alternate expansion and conden- 
 sation, abandonment and recovery of self, 
 the conquest of the world to be pursued 
 on the one side, the deepening of con- 
 sciousness on the other such is the play 
 of the inner life, the march of the micro- 
 cosmic mind, the marriage of the individ- 
 ual soul with the universal soul, the finite
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 with the infinite, whence springs the intel- 
 lectual progress of man. Other betrothals 
 unite the soul to God, the religious con- 
 sciousness with the divine ; these belong to 
 the history of the will. And what pre- 
 cedes will is feeling, preceded itself by in- 
 stinct. Man is only what he becomes 
 profound truth ; but he becomes only what 
 he is truth still more profound. What 
 am I ? Terrible question ! Problem of 
 predestination, of birth, of liberty there 
 lies the abyss. And yet one must plunge 
 into it, and I have done so. The prelude 
 of Bach I heard this evening predisposed 
 me to it ; it paints the soul tormented and 
 appealing, and finally seizing upon God, 
 and possessing itself of peace and the in- 
 finite with an all- prevail ing fervour aud 
 passion. 
 
 I4th May 1853. Third quartet concert. 
 It was short. Variations for piano and 
 violin by Beethoven, and two quartets, not 
 more. The quartets were perfectly clear 
 and easy to understand. One was by 
 Mozart and the other by Beethoven, so 
 that I could compare the two masters. 
 Their individuality seemed to become 
 plain to me: Mozart grace, liberty, cer-
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 89 
 
 tainty, freedom, and precision of style, 
 an exquisite and aristocratic beauty, 
 serenity of soul, the health and talent of 
 the master, both on a level with his genius ; 
 Beethoven more pathetic, more passion- 
 ate, more torn with feeling, more intricate, 
 more profound, less perfect, more the 
 slave of his genius, more carried away by 
 his fancy or his passion, more moving and 
 more sublime than Mozart. Mozart re- 
 freshes you, like the Dialogues of Plato ; 
 he respects you, reveals to you your 
 strength, gives you freedom and balance. 
 Beethoven seizes upon you; he is more 
 tragic and oratorical, while Mozart is 
 more disinterested and poetical. Mozart is 
 more Greek, and Beethoven more Christian. 
 One is serene, the other serious. The first 
 is stronger than destiny, because he takes 
 life less profoundly ; the second is less 
 strong, because he has dared to measure 
 himself against deeper sorrows. His talent 
 is not always equal to his genius, and 
 pathos is his dominant feature, as perfec- 
 tion is that of Mozart. In Mozart the 
 balance of the whole is perfect, and art 
 triumphs ; in Beethoven feeling governs 
 everything, and emotion troubles his art in 
 proportion as it deepens it.
 
 90 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 26th July 1853. Why do I find it easier 
 and more satisfactory, as a writer of verse, 
 to compose in the short metres than in the 
 long and serious ones ? Why, in general, 
 am I better fitted for what is difficult than 
 for what is easy ? Always for the same 
 reason. I cannot bring myself to move 
 freely, to show myself without a veil, to 
 act on my own account and act seriously, 
 to believe in and assert myself, whereas a 
 piece of badinage which diverts attention 
 from myself to the thing in hand, from the 
 feeling to the skill of the writer, puts me 
 at my ease. It is timidity which is at the 
 bottom of it. There is another reason, too, 
 I am afraid of greatness, I am not afraid 
 of ingenuity, and distrustful as I am both 
 of my gift and my instrument, I like to re- 
 assure myself by an elaborate practice of ex- 
 ecution. All my published literary essays, 
 therefore, are little else than studies, games, 
 exercises, for the purpose of testing myself. 
 I play scales, as it were ; I run up and down 
 my instrument, I train my hand, and make 
 sure of its capacity and skill. But the 
 work itself remains unachieved. My effort 
 expires, and, satisfied with the power to 
 act, I never arrive at the will to act. I am 
 always preparing and never accomplishing,
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 91 
 
 and my energy is swallowed up in a kind 
 of barren curiosity. Timidity, then, and 
 curiosity these are the two obstacles 
 which bar against me a literary career. 
 Nor must procrastination be forgotten. I 
 am always reserving for the future what is 
 great, serious, and important, and mean- 
 while I am eager to exhaust what is pretty 
 and trifling. Sure of my devotion to things 
 that are vast and profound, I am always 
 lingering in their contraries lest I should 
 neglect them. Serious at bottom, I am 
 frivolous in appearance. A lover of thought, 
 I seem to care above all for expression ; I 
 keep the substance for myself, and reserve 
 the form for others. So that the net re- 
 sult of my timidity is that I never treat the 
 public seriously, and that I only show 
 myself to it in what is amusing, enigmati- 
 cal, or capricious ; the result of my curi- 
 osity is that everything tempts me, the 
 shell as well as the mountain, and that I 
 lose myself in endless research ; while the 
 habit of procrastination keeps me for ever 
 at preliminaries and antecedents, and pro- 
 duction itself is never even begun. 
 
 But if that is the fact, the fact might be 
 different. I understand myself, but I do 
 not approve myself.
 
 92 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 1st August 1853. I have just finished 
 Pelletan's book, Profession de foi du dix- 
 neuvieme Siecle. It is a fine book. Only 
 one thing is wanting to it the idea of evil. 
 It is a kind of supplement to the theory of 
 Condorcet indefinite perfectibility, man 
 essentially good, life, which is a physiologi- 
 cal notion, dominating virtue, duty, and 
 holiness, in short, a non-ethical concep- 
 tion of history, liberty identified with na- 
 ture, the natural man taken for the whole 
 man. The aspirations which such a book 
 represents are generous and poetical, but in 
 the first place dangerous, since they lead to 
 an absolute confidence in instinct ; and in 
 the second credulous and unpractical, for 
 they set up before us a mere dream-man, 
 and throw a veil over both present and past 
 reality. The book is at once the plea justifi- 
 catory of progress, conceived as fatal and 
 irresistible, and an enthusiastic hymn to 
 the triumph of humanity. It is earnest, 
 but morally superficial ; poetical, but fanci- 
 ful and untrue. It confounds the progress 
 of the race with the progress of the indi- 
 vidual, the progress of civilisation with the 
 advance of the inner life. Why ? Because 
 its criterion is quantitative that is to sa> , 
 purely exterior (having regard to the wealth
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 93 
 
 of life) and not qualitative (the goodness 
 of life) . Always the same tendency to take 
 the appearance for the thing, the form for 
 the substance, the law for the essence, 
 always the same absence of moral person- 
 ality, the same obtuseness of conscience, 
 which has never recognised sin present in 
 the will, which places evil outside of man, 
 moralises from outside, and transforms to 
 its own liking the whole lesson of history ! 
 What is at fault is the philosophic super- 
 ficiality of France, which she owes to her 
 fatal notion of religion, itself due to a life 
 fashioned by Catholicism and by absolute 
 monarchy. 
 
 Catholic thought cannot conceive of per- 
 sonality as supreme and conscious of itself. 
 Its boldness and its weakness come from 
 one and the same cause from an absence 
 of the sense of responsibility, from that 
 vassal state of conscience which knows only 
 slavery or anarchy, which proclaims but 
 does not obey the law, because the law is 
 outside it, not within it. Another illusion 
 is that of Quinet and Michelet, who imagine 
 it possible to come out of Catholicism with- 
 out entering into any other positive form of 
 religion, and whose idea is to fight Catholi- 
 cism by philosophy a philosophy which
 
 94 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 is, after all, Catholic at bottom, since it 
 springs from anti-Catholic reaction. The 
 mind and 'the conscience, which have been 
 formed by Catholicism, are powerless to 
 rise to any other form of religion. From 
 Catholicism, as from Epicureanism, there is 
 no return. 
 
 Uth October 1853. My third day at 
 Turin is now over. I have been able to 
 penetrate farther than ever before into the 
 special genius of this town and people. I 
 have felt it live, have realised it little by 
 little, as my intuition became more distinct. 
 That is what I care for most : to seize the 
 soul of things, the soul of a nation ; to live 
 the objective life, the life outside self ; to 
 find my way into a new moral country. I 
 long to assume the citizenship of this un- 
 known world, to enrich myself with this 
 fresh form of existence, to feei it from 
 within, to link myself to it, and to repro- 
 duce it sympathetically, this is the end 
 and the reward of my efforts. To-day the 
 problem grew clear to me as I stood on the 
 terrace of the military hospital, in full view 
 of the Alps, the weather fresh and clear in 
 spite of a stormy sky. Such an intuition 
 after all is nothing but a synthesis wrought
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 95 
 
 by instinct a synthesis to which every- 
 thing, streets, houses, landscape, accent, 
 dialect, physiognomies, history, and habits 
 contribute their share. I might call it the 
 ideal integration of a people, or its reduc- 
 tion to the generating point, or an entering 
 into its consciousness. This generating 
 point explains everything else, art, relig- 
 ion, history, politics, manners ; and without 
 it nothing can be explained. The ancients 
 realised their consciousness in the national 
 God. Modern nationalities, more compli- 
 cated and less artistic, are more difficult to 
 decipher. What one seeks for in them is 
 the daemon, the fatum, the inner genius, 
 the mission, the primitive disposition 
 both what there is desire for and what 
 there is power for the force in them and 
 its limitations. 
 
 A pure and life-giving freshness of thought 
 and of the spiritual life seemed to play about 
 me, borne on the breeze descending from 
 the Alps. I breathed an atmosphere of 
 spiritual freedom, and I hailed with emo- 
 tion and rapture the mountains whence was 
 wafted to me this feeling of strength and 
 purity. A thousand sensations, thoughts, 
 and analogies crowded upon me. History, 
 too the history of the sub- Alpine coun-
 
 96 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 tries, from the Ligurians to Hannibal, from 
 Hannibal to Charlemagne, from Charle- 
 magne to Napoleon, passed through my 
 mind. All the possible points of view were, 
 so to speak, piled upon each other, and 
 one caught glimpses of some concentrically 
 across others. I was enjoying, and I was 
 learning. Sight passed into vision without 
 a trace of hallucination, and the landscape 
 was my guide, my Virgil. 
 
 All this made me very sensible of the 
 difference between me and the majority of 
 travellers, all of whom have a special object, 
 and content themselves with one thing or 
 with several, while I desire all or nothing, 
 and am for ever straining towards the total, 
 whether of all possible objects, or of all the 
 elements present in the reality. In other 
 words, what I desire is the sum of all de- 
 sires, and what I seek to know is the sum 
 of all different kinds of knowledge. Always 
 the complete, the absolute ; the teres atque 
 rotundum sphericity non-resignation. 
 
 "2.1th October 1853. I thank Thee, my 
 God, for the hour that I have just passed 
 in Thy presence. Thy will was clear to 
 me; I measured my faults, counted my 
 griefs, and felt Thy goodness towards me.
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 97 
 
 J realised my own nothingness Thou 
 gavest me Thy peace. In bitterness there is 
 sweetness ; in affliction, joy ; in submission, 
 strength; in the God who punishes, the 
 God who loves. To lose one's life that one 
 may gain it, to offer it that one may receive 
 it, to possess nothing that one may conquer 
 all, to renounce self that God may give 
 Himself to us, how impossible a problem, 
 and how sublime a reality ! No one truly 
 knows happiness who has not suffered, and 
 the redeemed are happier than the elect. 
 
 {Same day.) The divine miracle par 
 excellence consists surely in the apotheosis 
 of grief, the transfiguration of evil by good. 
 The work of creation finds its consumma- 
 tion, and the eternal will of the Infinite 
 Mercy finds its fulfilment only in the resto- 
 ration of the free creature to God and of 
 an evil world to goodness, through love. 
 Every soul in which conversion has taken 
 place, is a symbol of the history of the 
 world. To be happy, to possess eternal 
 life, to be in God, to be saved, all these 
 are the same. All alike mean the solution 
 of the problem, the aim of existence. And 
 happiness is cumulative, as misery may be. 
 An eternal growth is an unchangeable peace,
 
 98 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 an ever profounder depth of apprehension, 
 a possession constantly more intense and 
 more spiritual of the joy of heaven this is 
 happiness. Happiness has no limits, because 
 God has neither bottom nor bounds, and 
 because happiness is nothing but the con- 
 quest of God through love. 
 
 The centre of life is neither in thought 
 nor in feeling, nor in will, nor even in con- 
 sciousness, so far as it thinks, feels, or 
 wishes. For moral truth may have been 
 penetrated and possessed in all these ways, 
 and escape us still. Deeper even than con- 
 sciousness there is our being itself, our very 
 substance, our nature. Only those truths 
 which have entered into this last region, 
 which have become ourselves, become spon- 
 taneous and involuntary, instinctive and 
 unconscious, are really our life that is to 
 say, something more than our property. So 
 long as we are able to distinguish any space 
 whatever between the truth and us we re- 
 main outside it. The thought, the feeling, 
 the desire, the consciousness of life, are not 
 yet quite life. But peace and repose can 
 nowhere be found except in life and in eter- 
 nal life, and the eternal life is the divine 
 life, is God. To become divine is then the 
 aim of life : then only can truth be said to
 
 AMIKI/8 JOURNAL. 99 
 
 be ours beyond the possibility of loss, be- 
 cause it is no longer outside us, nor even 
 in us, but we are it, and it is we ; we our- 
 selves are a truth, a will, a work of God. 
 Liberty has become nature ; the creature is 
 one with its creator one through love. 
 It is what it ought to be ; its education is 
 finished, and its final happiness begins. 
 The sun of time declines and the light of 
 eternal blessedness arises. 
 
 Our fleshly hearts may call this mysti- 
 cism. It is the mysticism of Jesus : ' I am 
 one with my Father ; ye shall be one with 
 me. We will be one with you.' 
 
 Do not despise your situation ; in it you 
 must act, suffer, and conquer. From every 
 point on earth we are equally near to 
 heaven and to the infinite. 
 
 There are two states or conditions of 
 pride. The first is one of self-approval, the 
 second one of self-contempt. Pride is seen 
 probably at its purest in the last. 
 
 It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, 
 by relating that we observe, by affirming 
 that we examine, bv showing that we look.
 
 loo AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 by writing that we think, by pumping that 
 we draw water into the well. 
 
 1st February 1854. A walk. The at- 
 mosphere incredibly pure a warm, caress- 
 ing gentleness in the sunshine joy in 
 one's whole being. Seated motionless upon 
 a bench on the Tranchees, beside the slopes 
 clothed with moss and tapestried with 
 green, I passed some intense delicious mo- 
 ments, allowing great elastic waves of music, 
 wafted to me from a military band on the 
 Terrace of St. Antoiue, to surge and bound 
 through me. Every way I was happy 
 as idler, as painter, as poet. Forgotten 
 impressions of childhood and youth came 
 back to me all those indescribable effects 
 wrought by colour, shadow, sunlight, green 
 hedges, and songs of birds, upon the soul 
 just opening to poetry. I became again 
 young, wondering, and simple, as candour 
 and ignorance are simple. I abandoned 
 myself to life and to nature, and they 
 cradled me with an infinite gentleness. To 
 open one's heart in purity to this ever pure 
 nature, to allow this immortal life of things 
 to penetrate into one's soul, is at the same 
 time to listen to the voice of God. Sensa- 
 tion may be a prayer, and self-abandon- 
 ment an act of devotion.
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 101 
 
 18th February 1854. Everything tends 
 to become fixed, solidified, and crystallised 
 in this French tongue of ours, which seeks 
 form and not substance, the result and not 
 its formation, what is seen rather than 
 what is thought, the outside rather than 
 the inside. We like the accomplished end 
 and not the pursuit of the end, the goal and 
 not the road, in short, ideas ready-made 
 and bread ready -baked, the reverse of 
 Lessing's principle. What we look for 
 above all are conclusions. This clearness 
 of the ' ready-made ' is a superficial clear- 
 ness a physical, outward, solar clearness, 
 so to speak, buf in the absence of a sense 
 for origin and genesis, it is the clearness 
 of the incomprehensible, the clearness of 
 opacity, the clearness of the obscure. We 
 are always trifling on the surface. Our 
 temper is formal- that is to say, frivolous 
 and material, or rather artistic and not 
 philosophical. For what it seeks is the fig- 
 ure, the fashion and manner of things, not 
 their deepest life, their soul, their secret. 
 
 16th .Metrc7il854 (From Vevay to Geneva). 
 What message had this lake for me, with 
 its sad serenity, its soft and even tran- 
 quillity, in which was mirrored the cold
 
 io2 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 monotonous pallor of mountains and 
 clouds ? That disenchanted, disillusioned 
 life may still be traversed by duty, lit by 
 a memory of heaven. I was visited by a 
 clear and profound intuition of the flight 
 of things, of the fatality of all life, of the 
 melancholy which is below the surface of 
 all existence, but also of that deepest depth 
 which subsists for ever beneath the fleeting 
 wave. 
 
 17th December 1854. When we are 
 doing nothing in particular, it is then that 
 we are living through all our being, and 
 when we cease to add to our growth it is 
 only that we may ripen and possess our- 
 selves. Will is suspended, but nature and 
 time are always active, and if our life is no 
 longer our work, the work goes on none 
 the less. With us, without us, or in spite 
 of us, our existence travels through its ap- 
 pointed phases, our invisible Psyche weaves 
 the silk of its chrysalis, our destiny fulfils 
 itself, and all the hours of life work together 
 towards that flowering-time which we call 
 death. This activity, then, is inevitable 
 and fatal ; sleep and idleness do not inter- 
 rupt it, but it may become free and moral, 
 a joy instead of a terror.
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 103 
 
 Nothing is more characteristic of a man 
 than the manner in which he behaves to- 
 wards fools. 
 
 It costs us a great deal of trouble not to 
 be of the same opinion as our self-love, and 
 not to be too ready to believe in the good 
 taste of those who believe in our merits. 
 
 Does not true humility consist in accept- 
 ing one's infirmity as a trial, and one's evil 
 disposition as a cross, in sacrificing all one's 
 pretensions and ambitions, even those of 
 conscience ? True humility is contentment. 
 
 A man only understands that of which 
 he has already the beginnings in himself. 
 
 Let us be true : this is the highest maxim 
 of art and of life, the secret of eloquence 
 and of virtue, and of all moral authority. 
 
 28th March 1855. Not a blade of grass 
 but has a story to tell, not a heart but has 
 its romance, not a life which does not hide 
 a secret which is either its thorn or its spur. 
 Everywhere grief, hope, comedy, tragedy; 
 even under the petrifaction of old age, as
 
 104 AMIEL'B JOURNAL. 
 
 in the twisted forms of fossils, we may dis- 
 cover the agitations and tortures of youth. 
 This thought is the magic wand of poets 
 and of preachers : it strips the scales from 
 our fleshly eyes, and gives us a clear view 
 into human life ; it opens to the ear a 
 world of unknown melodies, and makes us 
 understand the thousand languages of nat- 
 ure. Thwarted love makes a man poly- 
 glot, and grief transforms him into a diviner 
 and a sorcerer. 
 
 Wth April 1855. I realised this morn- 
 ing the prodigious effect of climate on one's 
 state of mind. I was Italian or Spanish. 
 In this blue and limpid air, and under this 
 southern sun, the very walls smile at you. 
 All the chestnut trees were en fete ; with 
 their glistening buds shining like little 
 flames at the curved ends of the branches, 
 they were the candelabra of the spring 
 decking the festival of eternal nature. How 
 young everything was, how kindly, how 
 gracious ! the moist freshness of the 
 grass, the transparent shadows in the court- 
 yards, the strength of the old cathedral 
 towers, the white edges of the roads. I felt 
 myself a child ; the sap of life mounted 
 again into my veins as it does in plants.
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 105 
 
 How sweet a thing is a little simple enjoy- 
 ment ! And now, a brass band which has 
 stopped in the street makes my heart leap 
 as it did at eighteen. Thanks be to God ; 
 there have been so many weeks and months 
 when I thought myself an old man. Come 
 poetry, nature, youth, and love, knead my 
 life again with your fairy hands ; weave 
 round me once more your immortal spells ; 
 sing your siren melodies, make me drink 
 of the cup of immortality, lead me back 
 to the Olympus of the soul. Or rather, no 
 Paganism ! God of joy and of grief, do 
 with me what Thou wilt ; grief is good, and 
 joy is good also. Thou art leading me now 
 through joy. I take it from Thy hands, 
 and I give Thee thanks for it. 
 
 nth April 1855. The weather is still 
 incredibly brilliant, warm, and clear. The 
 day is full of the singing of birds, the night 
 is full of stars Nature has become all 
 kindness; and it is a kindness clothed upon 
 with splendour. 
 
 For nearly two hours have I been lost in 
 the contemplation of this magnificent spec- 
 tacle. I felt myself in the temple of the in- 
 finite, in the presence of the worlds, God's 
 guest in this vast nature. The stars wan-
 
 io6 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 dering in the pale ether drew me far away 
 from earth. What peace beyond the power 
 of words, what dews of life eternal, they 
 shed on the adoring soul ! I felt the earth 
 floating like a boat in this blue ocean. Such 
 deep and tranquil delight nourishes the 
 whole man it purifies and ennobles. I 
 surrendered myself, I was all gratitude 
 and docility. 
 
 2lst April 1855. I have been reading a 
 great deal : ethnography, comparative anat- 
 omy, cosmical systems. I have traversed 
 the universe from the deepest depths of the 
 empyrean to the peristaltic movements of 
 the atoms in the elementary cell. I have 
 felt myself expanding in the infinite, and 
 enfranchised in spirit from the bounds of 
 time and space, able to trace back the 
 whole boundless creation to a point with- 
 out dimensions, and seeing the vast multi- 
 tude of suns, of milky-ways, of stars, and 
 nebulae, all existent in the point. 
 
 And on all sides stretched mysteries, 
 marvels, and prodigies, without limit, with- 
 out number, and without end. I felt the 
 unfathomable thought of which the Uni- 
 verse is the symbol live and bum within 
 me ; I touched, proved, tasted, embraced
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 107 
 
 my nothingness and my immensity ; I 
 kissed the hem of the garments of God, 
 and gave Him thanks for being Spirit and 
 for being Life. Such moments are glimpses 
 of the divine. They make one conscious 
 of one's immortality ; they bring home to 
 one that an Eternity is not too much for 
 the study of the thoughts and works of the 
 Eternal ; they awaken in us an adoring 
 ecstasy and the ardent humility of love. 
 
 23d May 1855. Every hurtful passion 
 draws us to it, as an abyss does, by a kind 
 of vertigo. Feebleness of will brings about 
 weakness of head, and the abyss, in spite of 
 its horror, comes to fascinate us, as though 
 it were a place of refuge. Terrible danger ! 
 For this abyss is within us ; this gulf, open 
 like the vast jaws of an infernal serpent 
 bent on devouring us, is in the depth of our 
 own being, and our liberty floats over this 
 void, which is always seeking to swallow it 
 up. Our only talisman lies in that concen- 
 tration of moral force which we call con- 
 science, that small inextinguishable flame 
 of which the light is duty and the warmth 
 love. This little flame should be the star 
 of our life ; it alone can guide our trembling 
 ark across the tumult of the great waters ;
 
 io8 AMFEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 it alone can enable us to escape the temp- 
 tations of the sea, the storms and the mon- 
 sters which are the offspring of night and 
 the deluge. Faith in God, in a holy, mer- 
 ciful, fatherly God, is the divine ray which 
 kindles this flame. 
 
 How deeply I feel the profound and ter- 
 rible poetry of all these primitive terrors 
 from which have issued the various the- 
 ogonies of the world, and how it all grows 
 clear to me, and becomes a symbol of the 
 one great unchanging thought the thought 
 of God about the universe ! How present 
 and sensible to my inner sense is the unity 
 of everything ! It seems to me that I am 
 able to pierce to the sublime motive which, 
 in all the infinite spheres of existence, and 
 through all the modes of space and time, 
 every created form reproduces and sings 
 within the bond of an eternal harmony. 
 From the infernal shades I feel myself 
 mounting towards the regions of light ; my 
 flight across chaos finds its rest in paradise. 
 Heaven, hell, the world are within us. 
 Man is the great abyss. 
 
 27th July 1855. ... So life passes 
 away, tossed like a boat by the waves, up 
 and down, hither and thither, drenched by
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 109 
 
 the spray, stained by the foam, now thrown 
 upon the bank, now drawn back again ac- 
 cording to the endless caprice of the water. 
 Such, at least, is the life of the heart and 
 the passions, the life which Spinoza and 
 the Stoics reprove, and which is the exact 
 opposite of that serene and contemplative 
 life, always equable like the starlight, in 
 which man lives at peace, and sees every- 
 thing under its eternal aspect ; the opposite 
 also of the life of conscience, in which God 
 alone speaks, and all self-will surrenders 
 itself to His will made manifest. 
 
 I pass from one to another of these three 
 existences, which are equally known to me ; 
 but this very mobility deprives me of the 
 advantages of each. For my heart is worn 
 with scruples, the soul in me cannot crush 
 the needs of the heart, and the conscience 
 is troubled and no longer knows how to 
 distinguish, in the chaos of contradictory 
 inclinations, the voice of duty or the will of 
 God. The want of simple faith, the inde- 
 cision which springs from distrust of self, 
 tend to make all my personal life a matter 
 of doubt and uncertainty. I am afraid of 
 the subjective life, and recoil from every 
 enterprise, demand, or promise which may 
 oblige me to realise myself ; I feel a terror
 
 IIO AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 of action, and am only at ease in the imper- 
 sonal, disinterested, and objective life of 
 thought. The reason seems to be timidity, 
 and the timidity springs from the excessive 
 development of the reflective power which 
 has almost destroyed in me all spontaneity, 
 impulse, and instinct and therefore all 
 boldness and confidence. Whenever I am 
 forced to act, I see cause for error and re- 
 pentance everywhere, everywhere hidden 
 threats and masked vexations. From a 
 child I have been liable to the disease of 
 irony, and that it may not be altogether 
 crushed by destiny, my nature seems to 
 have armed itself with a caution strong 
 enough to prevail against any of life's blan- 
 dishments. It is just this strength which 
 is my weakness. I have a horror of being 
 duped above all, duped by myself and 
 I would rather cut myself off from all life's 
 joys than deceive or be deceived. Humili- 
 ation, then, is the sorrow which I fear the 
 most, and therefore it would seem as if 
 pride were the deepest rooted of my faults. 
 This may be logical, but it is not the 
 truth : it seems to me that it is really dis- 
 trust, incurable doubt of the future, a sense 
 of the justice but not of the goodness of 
 God in short, unbelief, which is my mis-
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. Ill 
 
 fortune and my sin. Every act is a hostage 
 delivered over to avenging destiny there 
 is the instinctive belief which chills and 
 freezes ; every act is a pledge confided to a 
 fatherly providence there is the belief 
 which calms. 
 
 Pain seems to me a punishment and not 
 a mercy, this is why I have a secret horror 
 of it. And as I feel myself vulnerable at all 
 points, and everywhere accessible to pain, 
 I prefer to remain motionless, like a timid 
 child, who, left alone in his father's labora- 
 tory, dares not touch anything for fear of 
 springs, explosions, and catastrophes, which 
 may burst from every corner at the least 
 movement of his inexperienced hands. I 
 have trust in God directly and as revealed 
 in Nature, but I have a deep distrust of all 
 free and evil agents. I feel or foresee evil, 
 moral and physical, as the consequence of 
 every error, fault, or sin, and I am ashamed 
 of pain. 
 
 At bottom is it not a mere boundless self- 
 love, the purism of perfection, an incapacity 
 to accept our human condition, a tacit pro- 
 test against the order of the world, which 
 lies at the root of my inertia ? It means 
 all or nothing, a vast ambition made inac- 
 tive by disgust, a yearning that cannot be
 
 112 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 uttered for the ideal, joined with an of- 
 fended dignity and a wounded pride which 
 will have nothing to say to what they con- 
 sider beneath them. It springs from the 
 ironical temper which refuses to take either 
 self or reality seriously, because it is for 
 ever comparing both with the dimly-seen 
 infinite of its dreams. It is a state of men- 
 tal reservation in which one lends oneself 
 to circumstances for form's sake, but re- 
 fuses to recognise them in one's heart be- 
 cause one cannot see the necessity or the 
 divine order in them. I am disinterested 
 because I am indifferent ; I have nothing 
 to say against what is, and yet I am never 
 satisfied. I am too weak to conquer, and 
 yet I will not be conquered, it is the 
 isolation of the disenchanted soul, which 
 has put even hope away from it. 
 
 But even this is a trial laid upon one. 
 Its providential purpose is no doubt to lead 
 one to that true renunciation of which 
 charity is the sign and symbol. It is when 
 one expects 1 nothing more for oneself that 
 one is able to love. To do good to men 
 because we love them, to use every talent 
 we have so as to please the Father from 
 whom we hold it for His service, there is 
 no other way of reaching and curing this
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 113 
 
 deep discontent with life, which hides itself 
 under an appearance of indifference. 
 
 4th September 1855. In the government 
 of the soul the parliamentary form succeeds 
 the monarchical. Good sense, conscience, 
 desire, reason, the present and the past, the 
 old man and the new, prudence and gen- 
 erosity, take up their parable in turn ; the 
 reign of argument begins ; chaos replaces 
 order, and darkness light. Simple will rep- 
 resents the autocratic regime, interminable 
 discussion the deliberative regime of the 
 soul. The one is preferable from the 
 theoretical point of view, the other from 
 the practical. Knowledge and action are 
 their two respective advantages. 
 
 But the best of all would be to be able to 
 realise three powers in the soul. Besides 
 the man of counsel we want the man of 
 action and the man of judgment. In me, 
 reflection comes to no useful end, because 
 it is for ever returning upon itself, disput- 
 ing and debating, I am wanting in both 
 the general who commands and the judge 
 who decides. 
 
 Analysis is dangerous if it overrules the 
 synthetic faculty ; reflection is to be feared 
 if it destroys our power of intuition, and
 
 114 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 inquiry is fatal if it supplants faith. De- 
 composition becomes deadly when it sur- 
 passes in strength the combining and 
 constructive energies of life, and the 
 separate action of the powers of the soul 
 tends to mere disintegration and destruction 
 .as soon as it becomes impossible to bring 
 them to bear as one undivided force. When 
 the sovereign abdicates anarchy begins. 
 
 It is just here that my danger lies. Unity 
 of life, of force, of action, of expression, is 
 becoming impossible to me ; I am legion, 
 division, analysis, and reflection ; the pas- 
 sion for dialectic, for fine distinctions, 
 absorbs and weakens me. The point which 
 I have reached seems to be explained by a 
 too restless search for perfection, by the 
 abuse of the critical faculty, and by an 
 unreasonable distrust of first impulses, first 
 thoughts, first words. Unity and simplicity 
 of being, confidence and spontaneity of life, 
 are drifting out of my reach, and this is 
 why I can no longer act. 
 
 Give up, then, this trying to know all, to 
 embrace all. Learn to limit yourself, to 
 content yourself with some definite tiling, 
 and some definite work ; dare to be what 
 you are, and learn to resign with a good 
 grace all that you are not, and to believe in
 
 AMIEL S JOURNAL. 115 
 
 your own individuality. Self-distrust is 
 destroying you : trust, surrender, abandon 
 yourself ; ' believe and thou shalt be healed.' 
 Unbelief is death, and depression and self- 
 satire are alike unbelief. 
 
 From the point of view of happiness, the 
 problem of life is insoluble, for it is our 
 highest aspirations which prevent us from 
 being happy. From the point of view of 
 duty, there is the same difficulty, for the 
 fulfilment of duty brings peace, not happi- 
 ness. It is divine love, the love of the 
 holiest, the possession of God by faith, 
 which solves the difficulty ; for if sacrifice 
 has itself become a joy a lasting, growing, 
 and imperishable joy the soul is then 
 secure of an all-sufficient and unfailing 
 nourishment. 
 
 21s January 1856. Yesterday seems to 
 me as far off as though it were last year. 
 My memory holds nothing more of the past 
 than its general plan, just as my eye per- 
 ceives nothing more in the starry heaven. 
 It is no more possible for me to recover 
 one of my days from the depths of memory 
 than if it were a glass of water poured into 
 a lake ; it is not so much a lost thing as a
 
 n6 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 thing melted and fused ; the individual has 
 returned into the whole. The divisions of 
 time are categories which have no power 
 to mould my life, and leave no more lasting 
 impression than lines traced by a stick in 
 water. My life, my individuality, are fluid, 
 there is nothing for it but to resign 
 oneself. 
 
 9th April 1856. How true it is that our 
 destinies are decided by nothings, and that 
 a small imprudence helped by some insig- 
 nificant accident, as an acorn is fertilised by 
 a drop of rain, may raise the tree on which 
 perhaps we and others shall be crucified. 
 What happens is quite different from that 
 we planned ; we planned a blessing, and 
 there springs from it a curse. How many 
 times the serpent of fatality, or rather the 
 law of life, the force of things, intertwining 
 itself with some very simple facts, cannot 
 be cut away by any effort, and the logic of 
 situations and characters leads inevitably 
 to a dreaded denouement. It is the fatal 
 spell of destiny, which obliges us to feed 
 our grief from our own hand, to prolong the 
 existence of our vulture, to throw into the 
 furnace of our punishment, and expiation, 
 our powers, our qualities, our very virtues,
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 117 
 
 one by one, and so forces us to recognise 
 our nothingness, our dependence, and the 
 implacable majesty of law. Faith in a 
 providence softens punishment, but does 
 not do away with it. The wheels of the 
 divine chariot crush us first of all, that 
 justice may be satisfied, and an example 
 given to men ; and then a hand is stretched 
 out to us to raise us up, or at least to 
 reconcile us with the love hidden under the 
 justice. Pardon cannot precede repentance, 
 and repentance only begins with humility. 
 And so long as any fault whatever appears 
 trifling to us, so long as we see, not so 
 much the culpability of as the excuses for 
 imprudence or negligence, so long, in 
 short, as Job murmurs and as providence 
 is thought to be too severe, so long as 
 there is any inner protestation against fate, 
 or doubt as to the perfect justice of God, 
 there is not yet entire humility or true 
 repentance. It is when we accept the ex- 
 piation that it can be spared us ; it is when 
 we submit sincerely that grace can be 
 granted to us. Only when grief finds its 
 work done can God dispense us from it. 
 Trial then only stops when it is useless: 
 that is why it scarcely ever stops. Faitn 
 in the justice and love of the Father is the
 
 u8 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 best and indeed the only support under the 
 sufferings of this life. The foundation of 
 all our pain is unbelief ; we doubt whether 
 what happens to us ought to happen to us ; 
 we think ourselves wiser than providence, 
 because, to avoid fatalism, we believe in 
 accident. Liberty in submission what 
 a problem ! And yet that is what we must 
 always come back to. 
 
 7th May 1856. I have been reading 
 Rosenkrantz's History of Poetry 10 all 
 day : it touches upon all the great names 
 of Spain, Portugal, and France, as far as 
 Louis XV. It is a good thing to take these 
 rapid surveys ; the shifting point of view 
 gives a perpetual freshness to the subject 
 and to the ideas presented, a literary ex- 
 perience which is always pleasant and brac- 
 ing. For one of my temperament, this 
 philosophic and morphological mode of 
 embracing and expounding literary history 
 has a strong attraction. But it is the an- 
 tipodes of the French method of proceed- 
 ing, which takes, as it were, only the peaks 
 of the subject, links them together by theo- 
 retical figures and triangulations, and then 
 assumes these lines to represent the genu- 
 ine face of the country. The real process
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 119 
 
 ol formation of a general opinion, of a 
 public taste, of an established genre, can- 
 not be laid bare by an abstract method, 
 which suppresses the period of growth in 
 favour of the final fruit, which prefers 
 clearness of outline to fulness of state- 
 ment, and sacrifices the preparation to the 
 result, the multitude to the chosen type. 
 This French method, however, is eminently 
 characteristic, and it is linked by invisible 
 ties to their respect for custom and fash- 
 ion, to the Catholic and dualist instinct 
 which admits two truths, two contradictory 
 worlds, and accepts quite naturally what is 
 magical, incomprehensible, and arbitrary 
 in God, the king, or language. It is the 
 philosophy of accident become habit, in- 
 stinct, nature, and belief, it is the religion 
 of caprice. 
 
 By one of those eternal contrasts which 
 redress the balance of things, the Eomance 
 peoples, who excel in the practical matters 
 of life, care nothing for the philosophy of 
 it ; while the Germans, who know very 
 little about the practice of life, are masters 
 of its theory. Every living being seeks 
 instinctively to complete itself ; this is the 
 secret law according to which that nation 
 whose sense of life is fullest and keenest,
 
 I2O AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 drifts most readily towards a mathematical 
 rigidity of theory. Matter and form are 
 the eternal oppositions, and the mathemati- 
 cal intellects are often attracted by the 
 facts of life, just as the sensuous minds are 
 often drawn towards the study of abstract 
 law. Thus, strangely enough, what we 
 think we are is just what we are not : what 
 we desire to be is what suits us least ; our 
 theories condemn us, and our practice gives 
 the lie to our theories. And the contradic- 
 tion is an advantage, for it is the source of 
 conflict, of movement, and therefore a con- 
 dition of progress. Every life is an inward 
 struggle, every struggle supposes two con- 
 trary forces ; nothing real is simple, and 
 whatever thinks itself simple is in reality 
 the' farthest from simplicity. Therefore, it 
 would seem that every state is a moment in 
 a series ; every being a compromise be- 
 tween contraries. In concrete dialectic we 
 have the key which opens to us the under- 
 standing of beings in the series of beings, 
 of states in the series of moments ; and it 
 is in dynamics that we have the explana- 
 tion of equilibrium. Every situation is 
 an equilibrium of forces ; every life is a 
 struggle between opposing forces working 
 within the limits of a certain equilibrium.
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 121 
 
 These two principles have been often 
 clear to me, but I have never applied them 
 widely or rigorously enough. 
 
 1st July 1856. A man, and still more a 
 woman, always betrays something of his or 
 her nationality. The women of Russia, 
 for instance, like the lakes and rivers of 
 their native country, seem to be subject to 
 sudden and prolonged fits of torpor. In 
 their movement, undulating and caressing 
 like that of water, there is always a threat 
 of unforeseen frost. The high latitude, the 
 difficulty of life, the inflexibility of their 
 autocratic regime, the heavy and mournful 
 sky, the inexorable climate, all these 
 harsh fatalities have left their mark upon 
 the Muscovite race. A certain sombre 
 obstinacy, a kind of primitive ferocity, 
 a foundation of savage harshness which, 
 under the influence of circumstances, might 
 become implacable and pitiless ; a cold 
 strength, an indomitable power of resolu- 
 tion which would rather wreck the whole 
 world than yield, the indestructible in- 
 stinct of the barbarian tribe, perceptible 
 in the half-civilised nation, all these traits 
 are visible to an attentive eye, even in the 
 harmless extravagances and caprices of a
 
 122 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 young woman of this powerful race. Even 
 in their badinage they betray something of 
 that fierce and rigid nationality which burns 
 its own towns and [as Napoleon said] 
 keeps battalions of dead soldiers on their 
 feet. 
 
 What terrible rulers the Russians would 
 be if ever they should spread the night of 
 their rule over the countries of the south ! 
 They would bring us a Polar despotism, 
 tyranny such as the world has never 
 known, silent as darkness, rigid as ice, 
 insensible as bronze, decked with an outer 
 amiability and glittering with the cold bril- 
 liancy of snow, a slavery without com- 
 pensation or relief. Probably, however, 
 they will gradually lose both the virtues 
 and the defects of their semi-barbarism. 
 The centuries as they pass will ripen these 
 sons of the north, and they will enter into 
 the concert of peoples in some other capac- 
 ity than as a menace or a dissonance. 
 They have only to transform their hard- 
 ness into strength, their cunning into grace, 
 their Muscovitism into humanity, to win 
 love instead of inspiring aversion or fear. 
 
 3d July 1856. The German admires 
 form, but he has no genius for it. He is
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 123 
 
 the opposite of the Greek ; he has critical 
 instinct, aspiration, and desire, but no 
 serene command of beauty. The south, 
 more artistic, more self-satisfied, more ca- 
 pable of execution, rests idly in the sense 
 of its own power to achieve. On one side 
 you have ideas, on the other side talent. 
 The realm of Germany is beyond the 
 clouds ; that of the southern peoples is on 
 this earth. The Germanic race thinks and 
 feels ; the Southerners feel and express ; 
 the Anglo-Saxons will and do. To know, 
 to feel, to act, there you have the trio 
 of Germany, Italy, England. France 
 formulates, speaks, decides, and laughs. 
 Thought, talent, will, speech ; or, in other 
 words, science, art, action, proselytism. So 
 the parts of the quartet are assigned. 
 
 21st July 1856. Mit Sack und Pack 
 here I am back again in my town rooms. 
 I have said good-bye to my friends and my 
 country joys, to verdure, flowers, and hap- 
 piness. Why did I leave them after all ? 
 The reason I gave myself was that I was 
 anxious about my poor uncle, who is ill 
 But at bottom are there not other reasons ? 
 Yes, several. There is the fear of making 
 myself a burden upon the two or three
 
 124 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 families of friends who show rue incessant 
 kindness, for which I can make no return. 
 There are my books, which call me back. 
 There is the wish to keep faith with myself. 
 But all that would be nothing, I think, with- 
 out another instinct the instinct of the 
 wandering Jew, which snatches from me 
 the cup I have but just raised to my lips, 
 which forbids me any prolonged enjoyment, 
 and cries, ' Go forward ! Let there be no 
 falling asleep, no stopping, no attaching 
 yourself to this or that ! ' This restless 
 feeling is not the need of change. It is 
 rather the fear of what I love, the mistrust 
 of what charms me, the unrest of happi- 
 ness. What a bizarre tendency, and what 
 a strange nature ! not to be able to enjoy 
 anything simply, naively, without scruple, 
 to feel a force upon one impelling one to 
 leave the table, for fear the meal should 
 come to an end. Contradiction and mys- 
 tery ! not to use, for fear of abusing ; to 
 think oneself obliged to go, not because one 
 has had enough, but because one has stayed 
 a while. I am indeed always the same : 
 the being who wanders when he need not, 
 the voluntary exile, the eternal traveller, 
 the man incapable of repose, who, driven 
 on by an inward voice, builds nowhere,
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 125 
 
 buys and labours nowhere, but passes, 
 looks, camps, and goes. And is there 
 not another reason for all this restless- 
 ness, in a certain sense of void of in- 
 cessant pursuit of some thing wanting ? 
 of longing for a truer peace and a more 
 entire satisfaction ? Neighbours, friends, 
 relations, I love them all ; and so long as 
 these affections are active, they leave in me 
 no room for a sense of want. But yet they 
 do not fill my heart ; and that is why they 
 have no power to fix it. I am always wait- 
 ing for the woman and the work which shall 
 be capable of taking entire possession of 
 my soul, and of becoming my end and aim. 
 
 ' Promenant par tout sejour 
 
 Le deuil que tu celes, 
 Psyche-papilloii, un jour 
 Puisses-tu trouver 1'amour 
 Et perdre tes ailes ! ' 
 
 I have not given away my heart : hence 
 this restlessness of spirit. I will not let it 
 be taken captive by that which cannot fill 
 and satisfy it ; hence this instinct of pitiless 
 detachment from all that charms me with- 
 out permanently binding me ; so that it 
 seems as if my love of movement, which 
 looks so like inconstancy, was at bottom
 
 126 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 only a perpetual search, a hope, a desire, 
 and a care, the malady of the ideal. 
 
 . . . Life indeed must always be a com- 
 promise between common sense and the 
 ideal, the one abating nothing of its de- 
 mands, the other accommodating itself to 
 what is practicable and real. But marriage 
 by common sense ! arrived at by a bar- 
 gain ! Can it be anything but a profana- 
 tion ? On the other hand, is that not a 
 vicious ideal which hinders life from com- 
 pleting itself, and destroys the family in 
 germ ? Is there not too much of pride in 
 my ideal, pride which will not accept the 
 common destiny ? . . . 
 
 Noon. I have been dreaming my 
 head in my hands. About what ? About 
 happiness. I have, as it were, been asleep 
 on the fatherly breast of God. His will be 
 done ! 
 
 3d August 1856. A delightful Sunday 
 afternoon at Pressy. Returned late, under 
 a great sky magnificently starred, with sum- 
 mer lightning playing from a point behind 
 the Jura. Drunk with poetry, and over- 
 whelmed by sensation after sensation, I 
 came back slowly, blessing the God of life,
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 127 
 
 and plunged in the joy of the infinite. One 
 thing only I lacked, a soul with whom to 
 share it all for emotion and enthusiasm 
 overflowed, like water from a full cup. The 
 milky way, the great black poplars, the 
 ripple of the waves, the shooting stars, dis- 
 tant songs, the lamp-lit town, all spoke to 
 me in the language of poetry. I lelt myself 
 almost a poet. The wrinkles of science dis- 
 appeared under the magic breath of admira- 
 tion ; the old elasticity of soul, trustful, 
 free, and living, was mine once more. I 
 was once more young, capable of self-aban- 
 donment and of love. All my barrenness 
 had disappeared ; the heavenly dew had 
 fertilised the dead and gnarled stick ; it 
 began to be green and flower again. My 
 God, how wretched should we be without 
 beauty ! But with it, everything is born 
 afresh in us ; the senses, the heart, imagina- 
 tion, reason, will, come together like the 
 dead bones of the prophet, and become one 
 single and self-same energy. What is hap- 
 piness if it is not this plenitude of existence, 
 this close union with the universal and 
 divine life ? I have been happy a whole 
 half day, and I have been brooding over my 
 joy, steeping myself in it to the very depths 
 of consciousness.
 
 128 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 22d October 1856. We must learn to 
 look upon life as an apprenticeship to a 
 progressive renunciation, a perpetual dim- 
 inution in our pretensions, our hopes, our 
 powers, and our liberty. The circle grows 
 narrower and narrower ; we began with 
 being eager to learn everything, to see 
 everything, to tame and conquer every- 
 thing, and in all directions we reach our 
 limit non plus ultra. Fortune, glory, 
 love, power, health, happiness, long life, 
 all these blessings which have been pos- 
 sessed by other men seem at first promised 
 and accessible to us, and then we have to 
 put the dream away from us, to withdraw 
 one personal claim after another, to make 
 ourselves small and humble, to submit to 
 feel ourselves limited, feeble, dependent, 
 ignorant, and poor, and to throw ourselves 
 upon God for all, recognising our own 
 worthlessness, and that we have no right to 
 anything. It is in this nothingness that 
 we recover something of life, the divine 
 spark is there at the bottom of it. Resig- 
 nation comes to us, and, in believing love, 
 we reconquer the true greatness. 
 
 27th October 1856. In all the chief mat- 
 ters of life we are alone, and our true his-
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 129 
 
 tory is scarcely ever deciphered by others. 
 The chief part of the drama is a monologue, 
 or rather an intimate debate between God, 
 our conscience, and ourselves. Tears, 
 griefs, depressions, disappointments, irrita- 
 tions, good and evil thoughts, decisions, 
 uncertainties, deliberations, all these be- 
 long to our secret, and are almost all incom- 
 municable and intransmissible, even when 
 we try to speak of them, and even when we 
 write them down. What is most precious 
 in us never shows itself, never finds an 
 issue even in the closest intimacy. Only a 
 part of it reaches our consciousness ; it 
 scarcely enters into action except in prayer, 
 and is perhaps only perceived by God, for 
 our past rapidly becomes strange to us. 
 Our monad may be influenced by other 
 monads, but none the less does it remain 
 impenetrable to them in its essence ; and 
 we ourselves, when all is said, remain out- 
 side our own mystery. The centre of our 
 consciousness is unconscious, as the kernel 
 of the sun is dark. All that we are, desire, 
 do, and know, is more or less superficial, 
 and below the rays and lightnings of our 
 periphery there remains the darkness of 
 unfathomable substance. 
 I was then well-advised when, in my
 
 130 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 theory of the inner man, I placed at the 
 foundation of the Self, after the seven 
 spheres which the Self contains had been 
 successively disengaged, a lowest depth of 
 darkness, the abyss of the Unrevealed, the 
 Virtual, pledge of an infinite future the 
 obscure self, the pure subjectivity which is 
 incapable of realising itself in mind, con- 
 science, or reason, in the soul, the heart, 
 the imagination, or the life of the senses, 
 and which makes for itself attributes and 
 conditions out of all these forms of its own 
 life. 
 
 But the obscure only exists that it may 
 cease to exist. In it lies the opportunity 
 of all victory and all progress. Whether it 
 call itself fatality, death, night, or matter, 
 it is the pedestal of life, of light, of liberty 
 and the spirit. For it represents resiuf'im-i' 
 that is to say, the fulcrum of all activity, 
 the occasion for its development and its 
 triumph. 
 
 llth December 1856. This evening was 
 the second quartet concert. It stirred me 
 much more than the first ; the music chosen 
 was loftier and stronger. It was the quar- 
 tet in D Minor of Mozart, and the quartet 
 in C Major of Beethoven, separated by a
 
 AM1EL S JOURNAL. 13! 
 
 Spohr concerto. This last, vivid and brill- 
 iant as a whole, has fire in the allegro, 
 feeling in the adagio, and elegance in the 
 finale, but it is the product of one fine gift 
 in a mediocre personality. With the two 
 others you are at once in contact with 
 genius ; you are admitted to the secrets of 
 two great souls. Mozart stands for inward 
 liberty, Beethoven for the power of enthu- 
 siasm. The one sets us free, the other 
 ravishes us out of ourselves. I do not 
 think I ever felt more distinctly than to- 
 day, or with more intensity, the difference 
 between these two masters. Their two 
 personalities became transparent to me, and 
 I seemed to read them to their depths. 
 
 The work of Mozart, penetrated as it is 
 with mind and thought, represents a solved 
 problem, a balance struck between aspira- 
 tion and executive capacity, the sovereignty 
 of a grace which is always mistress of itself, 
 marvellous harmony and perfect unity. 
 His quartet describes a day in one of those 
 Attic souls who prefigure on earth the 
 serenity of Elysium. The first scene is a 
 pleasant conversation, like that of Socrates 
 on the banks of the Ilissus ; its chief mark 
 is an exquisite urbanity. The second scene 
 is deeply pathetic. A cloud has risen in
 
 132 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 the blue of this Greek heaven. A storm, 
 such as life inevitably brings with it, even 
 in the case of great souls who love and 
 esteem each other, has come to trouble the 
 original harmony. What is the cause of it 
 a misunderstanding, a piece of neglect ? 
 Impossible to say, but it breaks out not- 
 withstanding. The andante is a scene of 
 reproach and complaint, but as between 
 immortals. What loftiness in complaint, 
 what dignity, what feeling, what noble 
 sweetness in reproach ! The voice trembles 
 and grows graver, but remains affectionate 
 and dignified. Then, the storm has 
 passed, the sun has come back, the ex- 
 planation has taken place, peace is re- 
 established. The third scene paints the 
 brightness of reconciliation. Love, in its 
 restored confidence, and as though in sly 
 self-testing, permits itself even gentle mock- 
 ing and friendly badinage. And the finale 
 brings us back to that tempered gaiety 
 and happy serenity, that supreme freedom, 
 flower of the inner life, which is the leading 
 motive of the whole composition. 
 
 In Beethoven's, on the other hand, a 
 spirit of tragic irony paints for you the mad 
 tumult of existence as it dances for ever 
 above the threatening abyss of the infinite.
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 133 
 
 No more unity, no more satisfaction, no 
 more serenity ! We are spectators of the 
 eternal duel between the two great forces, 
 that of the abyss which absorbs all finite 
 things, and that of life which defends and 
 asserts itself, expands, and enjoys. The 
 first bars break the seals and open the 
 caverns of the great deep. The struggle 
 begins. It is long. Life is born, and dis- 
 ports itself, gay and careless as the butterfly 
 which nutters above a precipice. Then it 
 expands the realm of its conquests, and 
 chants its successes. It founds a kingdom, 
 it constructs a system of Nature. But the 
 typhon rises from the yawning gulf, and 
 the Titans beat upon the gates of the new 
 empire. A battle of giants begins. You 
 hear the tumultuous efforts of the powers 
 of chaos. Life triumphs at last, but the 
 victory is not final, and through all the 
 intoxication of it there is a certain note of 
 terror and bewilderment. The soul of 
 Beethoven was a tormented soul. The 
 passion and the awe of the infinite seemed 
 to toss it to and fro from heaven to hell. 
 Hence its vastness. Which is the greater, 
 Mozart or Beethoven ? Idle question ! The 
 one is more perfect, the other more colossal. 
 The first gives you the peace of perfect art,
 
 134 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 beauty at first sight. The second gives you 
 sublimity, terror, pity, a beauty of second 
 impression. The one gives that for which 
 the other rouses a desire. Mozart has the 
 classic purity of light and the blue ocean ; 
 Beethoven the romantic grandeur which 
 belongs to the storms of air and sea, 
 and while the soul of Mozart seems to 
 dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, 
 that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the 
 storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be 
 they both ! Each represents a moment of 
 the ideal life, each does us good. Our love 
 is due to both. 
 
 To judge is to see clearly, to care for 
 what is just and therefore to be impartial, 
 more exactly, to be disinterested, more 
 exactly still, to be impersonal. 
 
 To do easily what is difficult for others is 
 the mark of talent. To do what is impos- 
 sible for talent is the mark of genius. 
 
 Our duty is to be useful, not according to 
 our desires but according to our powers. 
 
 If nationality is consent, the state is com- 
 pulsion .
 
 AMIEL'S JOUKXAL. 135 
 
 Self-interest is but the survival of the 
 animal in us. Humanity only begins for 
 man with self-surrender. 
 
 The man who insists upon seeing with 
 perfect clearness before he decides, never 
 decides. Accept life, and you must accept 
 regret. 
 
 Without passion man is a mere latent 
 force and possibility, like the flint which 
 awaits the shock of the iron before it can 
 give forth its spark. 
 
 3d February 1857. The phantasmagoria 
 of the soul cradles and soothes me as though 
 I were f.n Indian Yoghi, and everything, 
 even my own life, becomes to me smoke, 
 shadow, vapour, and illusion. I hold so 
 lightly to all phenomena that they end by 
 passing orer ine like gleams over a land- 
 scape, anl are gone without leaving any 
 impression. Thought is a kind of opium ; 
 it can intoxicate us, while still broad 
 awake ; it can make transparent the moun- 
 tains and everything that exists. It is by 
 love only that one keeps hold upon reality, 
 that one recovers one's proper self, that 
 one becomes again will, force, and individ-
 
 136 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 uality. Love could do everything with 
 me ; by myself and for myself I prefer to 
 be nothing. . . . 
 
 I have the imagination of regret and not 
 that of hope. My clear-sightedness is ret- 
 rospective, and the result with me of disin- 
 terestedness and prudence is that I attach 
 myself to what I have no chance of obtain- 
 ing. . . . 
 
 27th May 1857 ( Vandos,uvres n ) . We 
 are going down to Geneva to heir the 
 Tannhauser of Richard Wagner performed 
 at the theatre by the German trorpe now 
 passing through. Wagner's is a powerful 
 mind endowed with strong poetical sensi- 
 tiveness. His work is even more poetical 
 than musical. The suppression of the lyri- 
 cal element, and therefore of melody, is 
 with him a systematic parti pris. No more 
 duos or trios ; monologue and tlia aria are 
 alike done away with. There reiiains only 
 declamation, the recitative, and the cho- 
 ruses. In order to avoid the conventional 
 in singing, Wagner falls into another con- 
 vention that of not singing at all. He 
 subordinates the voice to articulate speech, 
 and for fear lest the muse should take flight 
 he clips her wings. So that his works are
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 137 
 
 rather symphonic dramas than operas. The 
 voice is brought down to the rank of an in- 
 strument, put on a level with the violins, 
 the hautboys, and the drums, and treated 
 instrumentally. Man is deposed from his 
 superior position, and the centre of gravity 
 of the work passes into the baton of the 
 conductor. It is music depersonalised 
 neo-Hegelian music music multiple in- 
 stead of individual. If this is so, it is in- 
 deed the music of the future, the music of 
 the socialist democracy replacing the art 
 which is aristocratic, heroic, or subjective. 
 
 The overture pleased me even less than 
 at the first hearing : it is like Nature before 
 Man appeared. Everything in it is enor- 
 mous, savage, elementary, like the murmur 
 of forests and the roar of animals. It is 
 forbidding and obscure, because Man 
 that is to say, mind, the key of the enigma, 
 personality, the spectator is wanting to it. 
 
 The idea of the piece is grand. It is 
 nothing less than the struggle of passion 
 and pure love, of flesh and spirit, of the 
 animal and the angel in man. The music is 
 always expressive, the choruses very beau- 
 tiful, the orchestration skilful, but the 
 whole is fatiguing and excessive, too full, 
 too laborious. When all is said, it lacks
 
 138 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 gaiety, ease, naturalness, and vivacity it 
 has no smile, no wings. Poetically one is 
 fascinated, but one's musical enjoyment is 
 hesitating, often doubtful, and one recalls 
 nothing but the general impression Wag- 
 ner's music represents the abdication of 
 the Self, and the emancipation of all the 
 forces once under its rule. It is a falling 
 back into Spinozisin the triumph of fatal- 
 ity. This music has its root and its ful- 
 crum in two tendencies of the epoch 
 materialism and socialism each of them 
 ignoring the true value of the human per- 
 sonality, and drowning it in the totality of 
 Nature or of society. 
 
 ITth June 1857 ( Vandoeuvres) . I have 
 just followed Maine de Biran from his 
 twenty-eighth to his forty-eighth year by 
 means of his journal, and a crowd of 
 thoughts have besieged me. Let me disen- 
 gage those which concern myself. In this 
 eternal self -chronicler and observer I seem 
 to see myself reflected with all my faults, 
 indecision, discouragement, over-depend- 
 ence on sympathy, difficulty of finishing, 
 with my habit of watching myself feel and 
 live, with my growing incapacity for practi- 
 cal action, with my aptitude for psychologi-
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 139 
 
 cal study. But I have also discovered 
 some differences which cheer and console 
 me. This nature is, as it were, only one 
 of the men which exist in me. It is one of 
 my departments. It is not the whole of 
 my territory, the whole of my inner king- 
 dom. Intellectually, I am more objective 
 and more constructive ; my horizon is 
 vaster; I have seen much more of men, 
 things, countries, peoples, and books ; I 
 have a greater mass of experiences in a 
 word, I feel that I have more culture, 
 greater wealth, range, and freedom of 
 mind, in spite of my wants, my limits, and 
 my weaknesses. Why does Maine de Biran 
 make Will the whole of man ? Perhaps 
 because he had too little will. A man es- 
 teems most highly what he himself lacks, 
 and exaggerates what he longs to possess. 
 Another, incapable of thought and medita- 
 tion, would have made self-consciousness 
 the supreme thing. Only the totality of 
 things has an objective value. As soon as 
 one isolates a part from the whole, as soon 
 as one chooses, the choice is involuntarily 
 and instinctively dictated by subjective in- 
 clinations which obey one or other of the 
 two opposing laws, the attraction of simi- 
 lars or the affinity of contraries.
 
 140 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 Five o 1 'clock. The morning has passed 
 like a dream. I went on with the journal 
 of Maine de Biran down to the end of 1817. 
 After dinner I passed my time with the 
 birds in the open air, wandering in the 
 shady walks which wind along under 
 Pressy. The sun was brilliant and the air 
 clear. The mid-day orchestra of Nature 
 was at its best. Against the humming 
 background made by a thousand invisible 
 insects there rose the delicate caprices and 
 improvisations of the nightingale singing 
 from the ash-trees, or of the hedge-sparrows 
 and the chaffinches in their nests. The 
 hedges are hung with wild roses, the scent 
 of the acacia still perfumes the paths ; the 
 light down of the poplar seeds floated in the 
 air like a kind of warm, fair-weather snow. 
 I felt myself as gay as a butterfly. On 
 coming in I read the three first books of 
 that poem Corinne, which I have not seen 
 since I was a youth. Now as I read it 
 again, I look at it across interposing mem- 
 ories ; the romantic interest of it seems to 
 me to have vanished, but not the poetical, 
 pathetic, or moral interest. 
 
 18th June. I have just been spending 
 three hours in the orchard under the shade
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 141 
 
 of the hedge, combining the spectacle of a 
 beautiful morning with reading and taking 
 a turn between each chapter. Now the sky 
 is again covered with its white veil of cloud, 
 and I have come up here with Biran, whose 
 Pensees I have just finished, and Corinne, 
 whom I have followed with Oswald in their 
 excursions among the monuments of the 
 eternal city. Nothing is so melancholy 
 and wearisome as this journal of Maine de 
 Biran. This unchanging monotony of per- 
 petual reflection has an enervating and 
 depressing effect upon one. Here, then, is 
 the life of a distinguished man seen in its 
 most intimate aspects ! It is one long repe- 
 tition, in which the only change is an almost 
 imperceptible displacement of centre in 
 the writer's manner of viewing himself. 
 This thinker takes thirty years to move 
 from the Epicurean quietude to the quiet- 
 ism of F6n61on, and this only speculatively, 
 for his practical life remains the same, and 
 all his anthropological discovery consists in 
 returning to the theory of the three lives, 
 lower, human, and higher, which is in Pas- 
 cal and in Aristotle. And this is what they 
 call a philosopher in France ! Beside the 
 great philosophers, how poor and narrow 
 seems such an intellectual life ! It is the
 
 142 AMIEI/S JOURNAL. 
 
 journey of an ant, bounded by the limits of 
 a field ; of a mole, who spends his days in 
 the construction of a mole-hill. How nar- 
 row and stifling the swallow who flies across 
 the whole Old World, and whose sphere of 
 life embraces Africa and Europe, would 
 find the circle with which the mole and the 
 ant are content ! This volume of Biran 
 produces in me a sort of asphyxia ; as I 
 assimilate it, it seems to paralyse me ; I am 
 chained to it by some spell of secret sym- 
 pathy. I pity, and I am afraid of my pity, 
 for I feel how near I am to the same evils 
 and the same faults. . . . 
 
 Ernest Naville's introductory essay is full 
 of interest, written in a serious and noble 
 style ; but it is almost as sad as it is ripe 
 and mature. What displeases me in it a 
 little is its exaggeration of the merits of 
 Biran. For the rest, the small critical 
 impatience which the volume has stirred 
 in me will be gone by to-morrow. Maine 
 de Biran is an important link in the French 
 literary tradition. It is from him that our 
 Swiss critics descend, Naville father and 
 son, Secretan. He is the source of our 
 best contemporary psychology, for Stapfer, 
 Royer-Collard, and Cousin, called him their 
 master, and Ampere, his junior by nine 
 years, was his friend.
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 143 
 
 2bth Jidy 1857 ( Vandonuvres) . At ten 
 o'clock this evening, under a starlit sky, 
 a group of rustics under the windows of the 
 salon employed themselves in shouting dis- 
 agreeable songs. Why is it that this tune- 
 less shrieking of false notes and scoffing 
 words delights these people ? Why is it 
 that this ostentatious parade of ugliness, 
 this jarring vulgarity and grimacing is their 
 way of finding expression and expansion in 
 the great solitary and tranquil night ? 
 
 Why ? Because of a sad and secret in- 
 stinct. Because of the need they have of 
 realising themselves as individuals, of as- 
 serting themselves exclusively, egotistically, 
 idolatrously opposing the self in them to 
 everything else, placing it in harsh contrast 
 with the nature which enwraps us, with the 
 poetry which raises us above ourselves, with 
 the harmony which binds us to others, with 
 the adoration which carries us towards God. 
 No, no, no ! Myself only, and that is 
 enough ! Myself by negation, by ugliness, 
 by grimace and irony ! Myself, in my 
 caprice, in my independence, in my irre- 
 sponsible sovereignty ; myself, set free by 
 laughter, free as the demons are, and exult- 
 ing in my freedom ; I, master of myself, 
 invincible and self-sufficient, living for this
 
 144 AMIEI/S JOURNAL. 
 
 one time yet by and for myself ! This is 
 what seems to me at the bottom of this 
 merry-making. One hears in it an echo of 
 Satan, the temptation to make self the 
 centre of all things, to be like an Elohim, 
 the worst and last revolt of man. It means 
 also, perhaps, some rapid perception of 
 what is absolute in personality, some rough 
 exaltation of the subject, the individual, 
 who thus claims, by abusing them, the 
 rights of subjective existence. If so, it is 
 the caricature of our most precious privilege, 
 the parody of our apotheosis, a vulgarising 
 of our highest greatness. Shout away, then, 
 drunkards ! Your ignoble concert, with all 
 its repulsive vulgarity, still reveals to us, 
 without knowing it, something of the maj- 
 esty of life and the sovereign power of the 
 soul. 
 
 15th Sept ember 1857. I have just fin- 
 ished Sismondi's journal and correspond- 
 ence. Sismondi is essentially the honest 
 man, conscientious, upright, respectable, the 
 friend of the public good and the devoted 
 upholder of a great cause, the ameliora- 
 tion of the common lot of men. Character 
 and heart are the dominant elements in his 
 individuality, and cordiality is the salient
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 145 
 
 feature of his nature. Sismondi's is a most 
 encouraging example. With average facul- 
 ties, very little imagination, not much taste, 
 not much talent, without subtlety of feel- 
 ing, without great elevation or width or 
 profundity of mind, he yet succeeded in 
 achieving a career which was almost illus- 
 trious, and he has left behind him some 
 sixty volumes, well known and well spoken 
 of. How was this ? His love for men on 
 the one side, and his passion for work on 
 the other, are the two factors in his fame. 
 In political economy, in literary or political 
 history, in personal action, Sismondi showed 
 no genius scarcely talent ; but in all he 
 did there was solidity, loyalty, good sense, 
 and integrity. The poetical, artistic, and 
 philosophic sense is deficient in him, but 
 he attracts and interests us by his moral 
 sense. We see in him the sincere writer, 
 a man of excellent heart, a good citizen and 
 warm friend, worthy and honest in the 
 widest sense of the terms, not brilliant, but 
 inspiring trust and confidence by his char- 
 acter, his principles, and his virtues. More 
 than this, he is the best type of good Gene- 
 vese Liberalism, republican but not dem- 
 ocratic, Protestant but not Calvinist, human 
 but not socialist, progressive but without
 
 146 AMIKL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 any sympathy with violence. He was a 
 Conservative without either egotism or hy- 
 pocrisy, a patriot without narrowness. In 
 his theories he was governed by experience 
 and observation, and in his practice by gen- 
 eral ideas. A laborious philanthropist, the 
 past and the present were to him but fields 
 of study, from which useful lessons might 
 be gleaned. Positive and reasonable in 
 temper, his mind was set upon a high aver- 
 age wellbeing for human society, and his 
 efforts were directed towards founding such 
 a social science as might most readily pro- 
 mote it. 
 
 24th September 1857. In the course of 
 much thought yesterday about Atalu and 
 Rene, Chateaubriand became clear to me. 
 I saw in him a great artist, but not a great 
 man, immense talent but a still vaster pride, 
 a nature at once devoured with ambition 
 and unable to find anything to love or ad- 
 mire in the world except itself, indefati- 
 gable in labour and capable of everything 
 except of true devotion, self-sacrifice, and 
 faith. Jealous of all success, he was always 
 on the opposition side, that he might be the 
 better able to disavow all services received, 
 and to hold aloof from any other glory but
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 147 
 
 his own. Legitimist under the empire, a 
 parliamentarian under the legitimist regime, 
 republican under the constitutional mon- 
 archy, defending Christianity when France 
 was philosophical, and taking a distaste for 
 religion as soon as it became once more a 
 serious power, the secret of these endless 
 contradictions in him was simply the desire 
 to reign alone like the sun, a devouring 
 thirst for applause, an incurable and insa- 
 tiable vanity, which, with the true, fierce 
 instinct of tyranny, would endure no brother 
 near the throne. A man of magnificent 
 imagination but of poor character, of in- 
 disputable power, but cursed with a cold 
 egotism and an incurable barrenness of feel- 
 ing, which made it impossible for him to 
 tolerate about him anybody but slaves or 
 adorers ! A tormented soul and miserable 
 life, when all is said, under its aureole of 
 glory and its crown of laurels ! 
 
 Essentially jealous and choleric, Chateau- 
 briand from the beginning was inspired by 
 mistrust, by the passion for contradicting, 
 for crushing and conquering. This motive 
 may always be traced in him. Rousseau 
 seems to me his point of departure, the 
 man who suggested to him by contrast and 
 opposition all his replies and attacks.
 
 148 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 Rousseau is revolutionary : Chateaubriand 
 therefore writes his Essay on Revolutions. 
 Rousseau is republican and Protestant ; 
 Chateaubriand will be royalist and Catho- 
 lic. Rousseau is bourgeois; Chateaubriand 
 will glorify nothing but noble birth, honour, 
 chivalry, and deeds of arms. Rousseau 
 conquered Nature for French letters, above 
 all the Nature of the mountains and of the 
 Swiss and Savoy, and lakes. He pleaded 
 for her against civilisation. Chateaubriand 
 will take possession of a new and colossal 
 Nature, of the ocean, of America; but he 
 will make his savages speak the language 
 of Louis XIV., he will bow Atala before a 
 Catholic missionary, and sanctify passions 
 born on the banks of the Mississippi by 
 the solemnities of Catholic ceremonial. 
 Rousseau was the apologist of reverie ; 
 Chateaubriand will build the monument 
 of it in order to break it in Rene. Rous- 
 seau preaches Deism with all his eloquence 
 in the Vicaire Savoyard; Chateaubriand 
 surrounds the Roman creed with all the 
 garlands of his poetry in the Genie du 
 Christianisme. Rousseau appeals to natu- 
 ral law and pleads for the future of nations ; 
 Chateaubriand will only sing the glories of 
 the past, the ashes of history, and the noble
 
 AMIEI/S JOURNAL. 149 
 
 ruins of empires. Always a role to be filled, 
 cleverness to be displayed, a parti-pris to 
 be upheld and fame to be won, his theme, 
 one of imagination, his faith one to order, 
 but sincerity, loyalty, candour, seldom 
 or never ! Always a real indifference simu- 
 lating a passion for truth ; always an impe- 
 rious thirst for glory instead of devotion 
 to the good ; always the ambitious artist, 
 never the citizen, the believer, the man. 
 Chateaubriand posed all his life as the 
 wearied Colossus, smiling pitifully upon a 
 pigmy world, and contemptuously affecting 
 to desire nothing from it, though at the 
 same time wishing it to be believed that he 
 could if he pleased possess himself of every- 
 thing by mere force of genius. He is the 
 type of an untoward race, and the father 
 of a disagreeable lineage. 
 
 But to return to the two episodes. Rene 
 seems to me very superior to Atala. Both 
 the stories show a talent of the first rank, 
 but of the two the beauty of Atala is of 
 the more transitory kind. The attempt to 
 render in the style of Versailles the loves 
 of a Natchez and a Seminole, and to de- 
 scribe the manners of the adorers of the 
 Manitous in the tone of Catholic sentiment, 
 was an attempt too violent to succeed. But
 
 150 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 the work id a tour de force of style, and it 
 was only by the polished classicism of the 
 form, that the romantic matter of the senti- 
 ments and the descriptions could have been 
 imported into the colourless literature of 
 the empire. Atala is already old-fash- 
 ioned and theatrical in all the parts which 
 are not descriptive or European that is 
 to say, throughout all the sentimental sav- 
 agery. 
 
 Rene is infinitely more durable. Its 
 theme, which is the malady of a whole gen- 
 eration, distaste for life brought about by 
 idle reverie and the ravages of a vague and 
 unmeasured ambition, is true to reality. 
 Without knowing or wishing it, Chateau- 
 briand has been sincere, for Rene' is himself. 
 This little sketch is in every respect a 
 masterpiece. It is not, like Atala, spoilt 
 artistically by intentions alien to the sub- 
 ject, by being made the means of expression 
 of a particular tendency. Instead of tak- 
 ing a passion for Rene, indeed, future gen- 
 erations will scorn and wonder at him ; 
 instead of a hero they will see in him a 
 pathological case ; but the work itself, like 
 the Sphinx, will endure. A work of art 
 will bear all kinds of interpretations ; each 
 in turn finds a basis in it, while the work
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 151 
 
 itself, because it represents an idea, and 
 therefore partakes of the richness and com- 
 plexity which belong to ideas, suffices for 
 all and survives all. A portrait proves 
 whatever one asks of it. Even in its forms 
 of style, in the disdainful generality of the 
 terms in which the story is told, in the 
 terseness of the sentences, in the sequence 
 of the images and of the pictures, traced 
 with classic purity and marvellous vigour, 
 Rene maintains its monumental character. 
 Carved, as it were, in material of the pres- 
 ent century, with the tools of classical art, 
 Rene is the immortal cameo of Chateau- 
 briand. 
 
 We are never more discontented with 
 others than when we are discontented with 
 ourselves. The consciousness of wrong- 
 doing makes us irritable, and our heart in 
 its cunning quarrels with what is outside 
 it, in order that it may deafen the clamour 
 within. 
 
 The faculty of intellectual metamorpho- 
 sis is the first and indispensable faculty of 
 the critic ; without it he is not apt at under- 
 standing other minds, and ought, therefore, 
 if he love truth, to hold his peace. The
 
 152 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 conscientious critic must first criticise him- 
 self ; what we do not understand we have 
 not the right to judge. 
 
 14th June 1858. Sadness and anxiety 
 seem to be increasing upon me. Like cat- 
 tle in a burning stable, I cling to what con- 
 sumes me, to the solitary life which does 
 me so much harm. I let myself be de- 
 voured by inward suffering. . . . 
 
 Yesterday, however, I struggled against 
 this fatal tendency. I went out into the 
 country, and the children's caresses re- 
 stored to me something of serenity and 
 calm. After we had dined out of doors all 
 three sang some songs and school hymns, 
 which were delightful to listen to. The 
 spring fairy had been scattering flowers 
 over the fields with lavish hands ; it was 
 a little glimpse of Paradise. It is true, 
 indeed, that the serpent too was not far 
 off. Yesterday there was a robbery close 
 by the house, and death had visited another 
 neighbour. Sin and death lurk around 
 every Eden, and sometimes within it. 
 Hence the tragic beauty, the melancholy 
 poetry of human destiny. Flowers, shade, 
 a fine view, a sunset sky, joy, grace, feel- 
 ing, abundance, and serenity, tenderness,
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 153 
 
 and song, here you have the element of 
 beauty : the dangers of the present and the 
 treacheries of the future, here is the ele- 
 ment of pathos. The fashion of this world 
 passeth away. Unless we have laid hold 
 upon eternity, unless we take the religious 
 view of life, these bright fleeting days can 
 only be a subject for terror. Happiness 
 should be a prayer, and grief also. Faith 
 in the moral order, in the protecting father- 
 hood of God, appeared to me in all its 
 serious sweetness. 
 
 ' Pense, aime, agis et souffre en Dieu, 
 C'est la grande science.' 
 
 18th July 1858. To-day I have been 
 deeply moved by the nostalgia of happiness 
 and by the appeals of memory. My old 
 self, the dreams which used to haunt me in 
 Germany, passionate impulses, high aspira- 
 tions, all revived in me at once with unex- 
 pected force. The dread lest I should have 
 missed my destiny and stifled my true nat- 
 ure, lest I should have buried myself alive, 
 passed through me like a shudder. Thirst 
 for the unknown, passionate love of life, 
 the yearning for the blue vaults of the in- 
 finite and the strange worlds of the ineffa- 
 ble, and that sad ecstasy which the ideal
 
 154 AMIKL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 wakens in its beholders, all these carried 
 me away in a whirlwind of feeling that I 
 cannot describe. Was it a warning, a pun- 
 ishment, a temptation ? Was it a secret 
 protest, or a violent act of rebellion on the 
 part of a nature which is unsatisfied ? the 
 last agony of happiness and of a hope that 
 will not die ? 
 
 What raised all this storm ? Nothing 
 but a book the first number of the Re- 
 vue Germanique. The article? of Dollfus, 
 Kenan, Littre, Montegut r Taillandier, by 
 recalling to me some old and favourite sub- 
 jects, made me forget ten wasted years, and 
 carried me back to my university life. I 
 was tempted to throw off my Genevese garb 
 and to set off, stick in hand, for any country 
 that might offer, stripped and poor, but 
 still young, enthusiastic, and alive, full of 
 ardour and of faith. 
 
 ... I have been dreaming alone since 
 ten o'clock at the window, while the stars 
 twinkled among the clouds, and the lights 
 of the neighbours disappeared one by one 
 in the houses round. Dreaming of what ? 
 Of the meaning of this tragic-comedy which 
 we call life. Alas ! alas ! I was as melan- 
 choly as the Preacher. A hundred years 
 seemed to me a dream, life a breath, and
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 155 
 
 everything a nothing. What tortures of 
 mind and soul, and all that we "may die in 
 a few minutes ! What should interest us, 
 and why ? 
 
 ' Le temps n'est rien pour 1'ame, enfant, ta vie 
 
 est pleiiie, 
 
 Et ce jour vaut cent ans, s'il te fait trouver 
 Dieu.' 
 
 To make an object for myself, to hope, 
 to struggle, seems to me more and more 
 impossible and amazing. At twenty I was 
 the embodiment of curiosity, elasticity, and 
 spiritual ubiquity ; at thirty-seven I have 
 not a will, a desire, or a talent left ; the fire- 
 works of my youth have left nothing but a 
 handful of ashes behind them. 
 
 13 th December 1858. Consider yourself 
 a refractory pupil for whom you are re- 
 sponsible as mentor and tutor. To sanctify 
 sinful nature, by bringing it gradually under 
 the control of the angel within us, by the 
 help of a holy God, is really the whole of 
 Christian pedagogy and of religious morals. 
 Our work my work consists in taming, 
 subduing, evangelising, and angelising the 
 evil self ; and in restoring harmony with 
 the good self. Salvation lies in abandon-
 
 156 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 ing the evil self in principle, and in taking 
 refuge with the other, the divine self, in 
 accepting with courage and prayer the task 
 of living with one's own demon, and mak- 
 ing it into a less and less rebellious instru- 
 ment of good. The Abel in us must labour 
 for the salvation of the Cain. To under- 
 take it is to be converted, and this conver- 
 sion must be repeated day by day. Abel 
 only redeems and touches Cain by exercis- 
 ing him constantly in good works. To do 
 right is in one sense an act of violence : it 
 is suffering, expiation, a cross, for it means 
 the conquest and enslavement of self. In 
 another sense it is the apprenticeship to 
 heavenly things, sweet and secret joy, con- 
 tentment and peace. Sanctification implies 
 perpetual martyrdom, but it is a martyrdom 
 which glorifies. A crown of thorns is the 
 sad eternal symbol of the life of the saints. 
 The best measure of the profundity of any 
 religious doctrine is given by its conception 
 of sin and the cure of sin. 
 
 A duty is no sooner divined than from 
 that very moment it becomes binding upon 
 us. 
 
 Latent genius is but a presumption.
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 157 
 
 Everything that can be, is bound to come 
 'into being, and what never comes into 
 being is nothing. 
 
 14th July 1859. I have just read Faust 
 again. Alas, every year I am fascinated 
 afresh by this sombre figure, this restless 
 life. It is the type of suffering towards 
 which I myself gravitate, and I am always 
 finding in the poem words which strike 
 straight to my heart. Immortal, malign, 
 accursed type ! Spectre of my own con- 
 science, ghost of my own torment, image 
 of the ceaseless struggle of the soul which 
 has not yet found its true aliment, its peace, 
 its faith, art thou not the typical example 
 of a life which feeds upon itself, because it 
 has not found its God, and which, in its 
 wandering flight across the worlds, carries 
 within it, like a comet, an inextinguishable 
 flame of desire, and an agony of incurable 
 disillusion ? I also am reduced to nothing- 
 ness, and I shiver on the brink of the great 
 empty abysses of my inner being, stifled by 
 longing for the unknown, consumed with 
 the thirst for the infinite, prostrate before 
 the ineffable. I also am torn sometimes 
 by this blind passion for life, these des- 
 perate struggles for happiness, though more
 
 158 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 often I am a prey to complete exhaustion 
 and taciturn despair. What is the reason' 
 of it all? Doubt doubt of oneself, of 
 thought, of men, and of life doubt which 
 enervates the will and weakens all our 
 powers, which makes us forget God and 
 neglect prayer and duty that restless and 
 corrosive doubt which makes existence im- 
 possible and meets all hope with satire. 
 
 ITth July 1859. Always and everywhere 
 salvation is torture, deliverance means 
 death, and peace lies in sacrifice. If we 
 would win our pardon, we must kiss the 
 fiery crucifix. Life is a series of agonies, a 
 Calvary, which we can only climb on bruised 
 and aching knees. We seek distractions ; 
 we wander away ; we deafen and stupefy 
 ourselves that we may escape the test ; we 
 turn away our eyes, from the via dolorosa ; 
 and yet there is no help for it we must 
 come back to it in the end. What we have 
 to recognise is that each of us carries within 
 himself his own executioner, his demon, his 
 hell, in his sin ; that his sin is his idol, and 
 that this idol, which seduces the desire of 
 his heart, is his curse. 
 
 Die unto sin! This great saying of 
 Christianity remains still the highest theo-
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 159 
 
 retical solution of the inner life. Only in 
 it is there any peace of conscience ; and 
 without this peace there is no peace. . . . 
 
 I have just read seven chapters of the 
 Gospel. Nothing calms me so much. To 
 do one's duty in love and obedience, to do 
 what is right these are the ideas which 
 remain with one. To live in God and to do 
 His work this is religion, salvation, life 
 eternal ; this is both the effect and the sign 
 of love and of the Holy Spirit ; this is the 
 new man announced by Jesus, and the new 
 life into which we enter by the second 
 birth. To be born again is to renounce 
 the old life, sin, and the natural man, and 
 to take to oneself another principle of life. 
 It is to exist for God with another self, an- 
 other will, another love. 
 
 9th August 1859. .Nature is forgetful : 
 the world is almost more so. However 
 little the individual may lend himself to it, 
 oblivion soon covers him like a shroud. 
 This rapid and inexorable expansion of the 
 universal life, which covers, overflows, and 
 swallows up all individual being, which 
 effaces our existence, and annuls all mem- 
 ory of us, fills me with unbearable melan- 
 choly. To be born, to struggle, to disappear
 
 160 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 there is the whole ephemeral drama of 
 human life. Except in a few hearts, and 
 not even always in one, our memory passes 
 like a ripple on the water, or a breeze in 
 the air. If nothing in us is immortal, what 
 a small thing is life ! Like a dream which 
 trembles and dies at the first glimmer of 
 dawn, all my past, all my present, dissolve 
 in me, and fall away from my consciousness 
 at the moment when it returns upon itself. 
 I feel myself then stripped and empty, like 
 a convalescent who remembers nothing. 
 My travels, my reading, my studies, my 
 projects, my hopes, have faded from my 
 mind. It is a singular state. All my fac- 
 ulties drop away from me like a cloak that 
 one takes off, like the chrysalis case of a 
 larva. I feel myself returning into a more 
 elementary form. I behold my own un- 
 clothing ; I forget, still more than I am 
 forgotten ; I pass gently into the grave 
 while still living, and I feel, as it were, the 
 indescribable peace of annihilation, and the 
 dim quiet of the Nirvana. I am conscious 
 of the river of time passing before aad in 
 me, of the impalpable shadows of life gliding 
 past me, but nothing breaks the cataleptic 
 tranquillity which enwraps me. 
 
 I come to understand the Buddhist trance
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. l6l 
 
 of the Soufis, the kief of the Turk, the 
 "ecstasy" of the Orientals, and yet I 
 am conscious all the time that the pleasure 
 of it is deadly, that, like the use of opium 
 or of haschish, it is a kind of slow suicide, 
 inferior in all respects to the joys of action, 
 to the sweetness of love, to the beauty of 
 enthusiasm, to the sacred savour of accom- 
 plished duty. 
 
 28th November 1859. This evening I 
 heard the first lecture of Ernest Naville 12 
 on The Eternal Life. It was admirably 
 sure in touch, true, clear, and noble 
 throughout. He proved that, whether we 
 would or no, we were bound to face the 
 question of another life. Beauty of char- 
 acter, force of expression, depth of thought, 
 were all equally visible in this extemporised 
 address, which was as closely reasoned as 
 a book, and can scarcely be disentangled 
 from the quotations of which it was full. 
 The great room of the Casino was full to 
 the doors, and one saw a fairly large num- 
 ber of white heads. 
 
 13th December 1859. Fifth lecture on 
 The Eternal Life ("The Proof of the Gos- 
 pel by the Supernatural"). The same
 
 1 62 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 talent and great eloquence ; but the orator 
 does not understand that the supernatural 
 must either be historically proved, or, sup- 
 posing it cannot be proved, that it must 
 renounce all pretensions to overstep the 
 domain of faith and to encroach upon that 
 of history and science. He quotes Strauss, 
 Renan, Scherer, but he touches only the 
 letter of them, not the spirit. Everywhere 
 one sees the Cartesian dualism and a strik- 
 ing want of the genetic, historical, and 
 critical sense. The idea of a living evolu- 
 tion has not penetrated into the conscious- 
 ness of the orator. With every intention 
 of dealing with things as they are, he re- 
 mains, in spite of himself, subjective and 
 oratorical. There is the inconvenience of 
 handling a matter polemically instead of in 
 the spirit of the student. Naville's moral 
 sense is too strong for his discernment, and 
 prevents him from seeing what he does not 
 wish to see. In his metaphysic, will is 
 placed above intelligence, and in his per- 
 sonality the character is superior to the 
 understanding, as one might logically ex- 
 pect. And the consequence is, that he 
 may prop up what is tottering, but he 
 makes no conquests ; he may help to pre- 
 serve existing truths and beliefs, but he is
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 163 
 
 destitute of initiative or vivifying power. 
 He is a moralising but not a suggestive 
 or stimulating influence. A popularise?, 
 apologist, and orator of the greatest merit, 
 he is a Schoolman at bottom ; his argu- 
 ments are of the same type as those of the 
 twelfth century, and he defends Protes- 
 tantism in the same way in which Catholi- 
 cism has been commonly defended. The 
 best way of demonstrating the insufficiency 
 of this point of view is to show by history 
 how completely it has been superseded. 
 The chimera of a simple and absolute 
 truth is wholly Catholic and anti-historic. 
 The mind of Naville is mathematical and 
 his objects moral. His strength lies in 
 mathematicising morals. As soon as it 
 becomes a question of development, meta- 
 morphosis, organisation, as soon as he is 
 brought into contact with the mobile world 
 of actual life, especially of the spiritual 
 life, he has no longer anything serviceable 
 to say. Language is for him a system of 
 fixed signs ; a man, a people, a book, are 
 so many geometrical figures of which we 
 have only to discover the properties. 
 
 15th December. Naville's sixth lecture, 
 an admirable one, because it did nothing
 
 164 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 more than expound the Christian doctrine 
 of Eternal Life. As an extempore per- 
 formance, marvellously exact, finished, 
 clear, and noble, marked by a strong and 
 disciplined eloquence. There was not a 
 single reservation to make in the name of 
 criticism, history, or philosophy. It was 
 all beautiful, noble, true, and pure. It 
 seems to me that Naville has improved in 
 the art of speech during these latter years. 
 He has always had a kind of dignified and 
 didactic beauty, but he has now added to 
 it the contagious cordiality and warmth 
 of feeling which complete the orator ; he 
 moves the whole man, beginning with 
 the intellect, but finishing with the heart. 
 He is now very near to the true virile elo- 
 quence, and possesses one species of it in- 
 deed very nearly in perfection. He has 
 arrived at the complete command of the 
 resources of his own nature, at an ade- 
 quate and masterly expression of himself. 
 Such expression is the joy and glory of the 
 oratorical artist as of every other. Naville 
 is rapidly becoming a model in the art of 
 premeditated and self-controlled eloquence. 
 There is another kind of eloquence, 
 that which seems inspired, which finds, dis- 
 covers, and illuminates by bounds and
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 165 
 
 flashes, which is boru in the sight of the 
 audience and transports it. Such is not 
 Naville's kind. Is it better worth having ? 
 I do not know. 
 
 Every real need is stilled, and every vice 
 is stimulated by satisfaction. 
 
 Obstinacy is will asserting itself without 
 being able to justify itself. It is persist- 
 ence without a plausible motive. It is the 
 tenacity of self-love substituted for the 
 tenacity of reason or conscience. 
 
 It is not what he has, nor even what he 
 does, which directly expresses the worth of 
 a man, but what he is. 
 
 What comfort, what strength, what econ- 
 omy there is in order material order, in- 
 tellectual order, moral order. To know 
 where one is going and what one wishes 
 this is order ; to keep one's word and one's 
 engagements again order ; to have every- 
 thing ready under one's hand, to be able to 
 dispose of all one's forces, and to have all 
 one's means of whatever kind under com- 
 mand still order ; to discipline one's 
 habits, one's efforts, one's wishes ; to or-
 
 1 66 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 ganise one's life, to .distribute one's time, 
 to take the measure of one's duties and 
 make one's rights respected; to employ 
 one's capital and resources, one's talent 
 and one's chances profitably ; all this be- 
 longs to and is included in the word order. 
 Order means light and peace, inward liberty 
 and free command over oneself ; order is 
 power. ^Esthetic and moral beauty con- 
 sist, the first in a true perception of order, 
 and the second in submission to it, and in 
 the realisation of it, by, in, and around 
 oneself. Order is man's greatest need and 
 his true wellbeing. ^ 
 
 j^M 
 lifted : 
 
 17th April 1860. The cloud has 
 I ain better. I have been able to take my 
 usual walk on the Treille ; all the buds 
 were opening and the young shoots were 
 green on all the branches. The rippling of 
 clear water, the merriment of birds, the 
 young freshness of plants, and the noisy 
 play of children, produce a strange effect 
 upon an invalid. Or rather it was strange 
 to me to be looking at such things with the 
 eyes of a sick and dying man ; it was my 
 first introduction to a new phase of experi- 
 ence. There is a deep sadness in it. One 
 feels oneself cut off from nature, outside
 
 AMIEL'8 JOURNAL. 167 
 
 Ler communion as it were. She is strength 
 and joy and eternal health. ' Room for 
 the living,' she cries to us; 'do not come 
 to darken my blue sky with your miser- 
 ies ; each has his turn : begone ! ' But to 
 strengthen our own courage, we must say 
 to ourselves, No ; it is good for the world 
 to see suffering and weakness ; the sight 
 adds zest to the joy of the happy and the 
 careless, and is rich in warning for all who 
 think. Life has been lent to us, and we 
 owe it to our travelling companions to let 
 them see what use we make of it to the 
 end. We must show our brethren both 
 how to live and how to die. These first 
 summonses of illness have besides a divine 
 value ; they give us glimpses behind the 
 scenes of life ; they teach us something of 
 its awful reality and its inevitable end. 
 They teach us sympathy. They warn us 
 to redeem the time while it is yet day. 
 They awaken in us gratitude for the bless- 
 ings which are still ours, and humility for 
 the gifts which are in us. So that, evils 
 though they seem, they are really an appeal 
 to us from on high, a touch of God's fatherly 
 scourge. 
 
 How frail a thing is health, and what a 
 thin envelope protects our life against be-
 
 1 68 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 ing swallowed up from without or disor- 
 ganised from within ! A breath, and the 
 boat springs a leak or founders ; a nothing, 
 and all is endangered ; a passing cloud, and 
 all is darkness ! Life is indeed a flower 
 which a morning withers and the beat of a 
 passing wing breaks down ; it is the widow's 
 lamp, which the slightest blast of air extin- 
 guishes. In order to realise the poetry 
 which clings to morning roses, one needs 
 to have just escaped from the claws of that 
 vulture which we call illness. The founda- 
 tion and the heightening of all things is 
 the graveyard. The only certainty in this 
 world of vain agitations and endless anxie- 
 ties, is the certainty of death, and that 
 which is the foretaste and small change of 
 death pain. 
 
 As long as we turn our eyes away from 
 this implacable reality, the tragedy of life 
 remains hidden from us. As soon as we 
 look at it face to face, the true proportions 
 of everything reappear, and existence be- 
 comes solemn again. It is made clear to 
 us that we have been frivolous and petu- 
 lant, intractable and forgetful, and that 
 we have been wrong. 
 
 We must die and give an account of our 
 life : here in all its simplicity is the teach-
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 169 
 
 ing of sickness! 'Do with all diligence 
 what you have to do ; reconcile yourself 
 with the law of the universe ; think of 
 your duty ; prepare yourself for depart- 
 ure : ' such is the cry of conscience and of 
 reason. 
 
 3d May 1860. Edgar Quinet has at- 
 tempted everything : he has aimed at noth- 
 ing but the greatest things ; he is rich in 
 ideas, a master of splendid imagery, seri- 
 ous, enthusiastic, courageous, a noble 
 writer. How is it then that he has not 
 more reputation ? Because he is too pure ; 
 because he is too uniformly ecstatic, fan- 
 tastic, inspired, a mood which soon palls 
 on Frenchmen. ' Because he is too single- 
 minded, candid, theoretical, and specula- 
 tive, too ready to believe in the power of 
 words and of ideas, too expansive and con- 
 fiding ; while at the same time he is lacking 
 in the qualities which amuse clever people 
 in sarcasm, irony, cunning, and finesse. 
 He is an idealist revelling in colour : a 
 Platonist brandishing the thyrsus of the 
 Menads. At bottom his is a mind of no 
 particular country. It is in vain that he 
 satirises Germany and abuses England ; 
 he does not make himself any more of a
 
 I7O AM I EL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 Frenchman by doing so. It is a northern 
 intellect wedded to a southern imagination, 
 but the marriage has not been a happy one. 
 He has the disease of chronic magnilo- 
 quence, of inveterate sublimity ; abstrac- 
 tions for him become personified and 
 colossal beings, which act or speak in co- 
 lossal fashion ; he is intoxicated with the 
 Infinite. But one feels all the time that 
 his creations are only individual mono- 
 logues ; he cannot escape from the bounds 
 of a subjective lyrism. Ideas, passions, 
 anger, hopes, complaints he himself is 
 present in them all. We never have the 
 delight of escaping from his magic circle, 
 of seeing truth as it is, of entering into 
 relation with the phenomena and the beings 
 of whom he speaks, with the reality of 
 things. This imprisonment of the author 
 within his personality looks like conceit. 
 But on the contrary, it is because the heart 
 is generous that the mind is egotistical. 
 It is because Quinet thinks himself so 
 much of a Frenchman that he is it so little. 
 These ironical compensations of destiny are 
 very familiar to me : I have often observed 
 them. Man is nothing but contradiction : 
 the less he knows it the more dupe he is. 
 In consequence of his small capacity for
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 171 
 
 seeing things as they are, Quinet has neither 
 much accuracy nor much balance of mind. 
 He recalls Victor Hugo, with much less 
 artistic power but more historical sense. 
 His principal gift is a great command of 
 imagery and symbolism. He seems to me 
 a Gorres 13 transplanted to Franche Comte, 
 a sort of supernumerary 'prophet, with 
 whom his nation hardly knows what to do, 
 seeing that she loves neither enigmas nor 
 ecstasy nor inflation of language, and that 
 the intoxication of the tripod bores her. 
 
 The real excellence of Quinet seems to 
 me to lie in his historical works (Marnix, 
 L^Italie, Les Roumains), and especially in 
 his studies of nationalities. He was born 
 to understand these souls, at once more 
 vast and more sublime than individual 
 souls. 
 
 (Later.} I have been translating into 
 verse that page of Goethe's Faust in which 
 is contained his pantheistic confession of 
 faith. The translation is not bad, I think. 
 But what a difference between the two 
 languages in the matter of precision ! It is 
 like the difference between stump and grav- 
 ing-tool the one showing the effort, the 
 other noting the result of the act ; the one
 
 172 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 making you feel all that is merely dreamt 
 or vague, formless or vacant, the other 
 determining, fixing, giving shape even to 
 the indefinite ; the one representing the 
 cause, the force, the limbo whence things 
 issue, the other the things themselves. Ger- 
 man has the obscure depth of the infinite, 
 French the clear brightness of the finite. 
 
 5th May 1860. To grow old is more 
 difficult than to die, because to renounce a 
 good once and for all, costs less than to 
 renew the sacrifice day by day and in de- 
 tail. To bear with one's own decay, to 
 accept one's own lessening capacity, is a 
 harder and rarer virtue than to face death. 
 There is a halo round tragic and premature 
 death ; there is but a long sadness in de- 
 clining strength. But look closer : so studied, 
 a resigned and religious old age will often 
 move us more than the heroic ardour of 
 young years. The maturity of the soul is 
 worth more than the first brilliance of its 
 faculties, or the plenitude of its strength, 
 and the eternal in us can but profit from all 
 the ravages made by time. There is com- 
 fort in this thought. 
 
 22d May 1860. There is in me a secret
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 173 
 
 incapacity for expressing my true feeling, 
 for saying what pleases others, for bearing 
 witness to the present, a reserve which I 
 have often noticed in myself with vexation. 
 My heart never dares to speak seriously, 
 either because it is ashamed of being thought 
 to flatter, or afraid lest it should not find 
 exactly the right expression. I am always 
 trifling with the present moment. Feeling 
 in me is retrospective. My refractory nat- 
 ure is slow to recognise the solemnity of the 
 hour in which I actually stand. An ironi- 
 cal instinct, born of timidity, makes me 
 pass lightly over what I have on pretence 
 of waiting for some other thing at some 
 other time. Fear of being carried away, 
 and distrust of myself pursue me even in 
 moments of emotion ; by a sort of invinci- 
 ble pride, I can never persuade myself to 
 say to any particular instant, ' Stay ! decide 
 for me ; be a supreme moment ! stand out 
 from the monotonous depths of eternity and 
 mark a unique experience in my life ! ' I 
 trifle, even with happiness, out of distrust 
 of the future. 
 
 27th May 1860 (Sunday). I heard this 
 morning a sermon on the Holy Spirit 
 good but insufficient. Why was I not edi-
 
 174 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 fied ? Because there was no unction. Why 
 was there no unction ? Because Christian- 
 ity from this rationalistic point of view is a 
 Christianity of dignity, not of humility. 
 Penitence, the struggles of weakness, aus- 
 terity, find no place in it. The Law is ef- 
 faced, holiness and mysticism evaporate ; 
 the specifically Christian accent is wanting. 
 My impression is always the same, faith 
 is made a dull poor thing by these attempts 
 to reduce it to simple moral psychology. I 
 am oppressed by a feeling of inappropriate- 
 ness and malaise at the sight of philosophy 
 in the pulpit. ' They have taken away my 
 Saviour, and I know not where they have 
 laid Him ; ' so the simple folk have a right 
 to say, and I repeat it with them. Thus, 
 while some shock me by their sacerdotal 
 dogmatism, others repel me by their ration- 
 alising laicism. It seems to me that good 
 preaching ought to combine, as Schleier- 
 macher did, perfect moral humility with 
 energetic independence of thought, a pro- 
 found sense of sin with respect for criticism 
 and a passion for truth. 
 
 The free being who abandons the conduct 
 of himself, yields himself to Satan ; in the 
 moral world there is no ground without a
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 175 
 
 master, and the waste lands belong to the 
 Evil One. 
 
 The poetry of childhood consists in simu- 
 lating and forestalling the future, just as 
 the poetry of mature life consists often in 
 going backwards to some golden age. Poe- 
 try is always in the distance. The whole 
 art of moral government lies in gaining a 
 directing and shaping hold over the poetical 
 ideals of an age. 
 
 9th January 1861. I have just come 
 from the inaugural lecture of Victor Cher- 
 buliez in a state of bewildered admiration. 
 As a lecture it was exquisite : if it was a 
 recitation of prepared matter, it was admi- 
 rable ; if an extempore performance, it was 
 amazing. In the face of superiority and 
 perfection, says Schiller, we have but one 
 resource to love them, which is what I 
 have done. I had the pleasure, mingled 
 with a little surprise, of feeling in myself 
 no/ sort of jealousy towards this young con- 
 queror. 
 
 15th March. The last lecture in Victor 
 Cherbuliez's Course on Chivalry, which is 
 just over, showed the same magical power
 
 176 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 over his subject as that with which he began 
 the series two months ago. It was a tri- 
 umph and a harvest of laurels. Cervantes, 
 Ignatius Loyola, and the heritage of chiv- 
 alry, that is to say, individualism, honour, 
 the poetry of the present and the poetry of 
 contrasts, modern liberty and progress, 
 have been the subjects of this lecture. 
 
 The general impression left upon me all 
 along has been one of admiration for the 
 union in him of extraordinary skill in exe- 
 cution with admirable cultivation of mind. 
 With what freedom of spirit he uses and 
 wields his vast erudition, and what capacity 
 for close attention he must have to be able 
 to carry the weight of a whole improvised 
 speech with the same ease as though it 
 were a single sentence ! I do not know if 
 I am partial, but I find no occasion for 
 anything but praise in this young wizard 
 and his lectures. The fact is, that in my 
 opinion we have now one more first-rate 
 mind, one more master of language among 
 us. This course, with the C 'miseries Atheni- 
 ennes, seems to me to establish Victor 
 Cherbuliez's position at Geneva. 
 
 17 th March 1861. This afternoon a 
 homicidal languor seized hold upon me
 
 AMIEI/S JOURNAL. 177 
 
 disgust, weariness of life, mortal sadness. 
 I wandered out into the churchyard, hoping 
 to find quiet and peace there, and so to 
 reconcile myself with duty. Vain dream ! 
 The place of rest itself had become inhospi- 
 table. Workmen were stripping and carry- 
 ing away the turf, the trees were dry, the 
 wind cold, the sky gray something arid, 
 irreverent, and prosaic dishonoured the 
 resting-place of the dead. I was struck 
 with something wanting in our national 
 feeling, respect for the dead, the poetry 
 of the tomb, the piety of memory. Our 
 churches are too little open ; our church- 
 yards too much. The result in both cases 
 is the same. The tortured and trembling 
 heart which seeks, outside the scene of its 
 daily miseries, to find some place where it 
 may pray in peace, or pour out its grief 
 before God, or meditate in the presence of 
 eternal things, with us has nowhere to go. 
 Our Church ignores these wants of the soul 
 instead of divining and meeting them. She 
 shows very little compassionate care for 
 her children, very little wise consideration 
 for the more delicate griefs, and no intui- 
 tion of the deeper mysteries of tenderness, 
 no religious suavity. Under a pretext of 
 spirituality we are always checking legiti-
 
 178 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 mate aspirations. We have lost the mysti- 
 cal sense ; and what is religion without 
 mysticism ? A rose without perfume. 
 
 The words repentance and sanctification 
 are always on our lips. But adoration and 
 consolation are also two essential elements 
 in religion, and we ought perhaps to make 
 more room for them than we do. 
 
 28th April 1861. In the same way as a 
 dream transforms, according to its nature, 
 the incidents of sleep, so the soul converts 
 into psychical phenomena the ill-defined 
 impressions of the organism. An uncom- 
 fortable attitude becomes nightmare ; an 
 atmosphere charged with storm becomes 
 moral torment. Not mechanically and by 
 direct causality ; but imagination and con- 
 science engender, according to their own 
 nature, analogous effects ; they translate 
 into their own language, and cast in then: 
 own mould, whatever reaches them from 
 outside. Thus dreams may be helpful to 
 medicine and to divination, and states of 
 weather may stir up and set free within 
 the soul vague and hidden evils. The 
 suggestions and solicitations which act 
 upon life come from outside, but life pro- 
 duces nothing but itself after all. Original-
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 179 
 
 ity consists in rapid and clear reaction 
 against these outside influences, in giving 
 to them our individual stamp. To think is 
 to withdraw, as it were, into one's impres- 
 sion to make it clear to oneself, and then 
 to put it forth in the shape of a personal 
 judgment. In this also consists self-deliver- 
 ance, self-enfranchisement, self-conquest. 
 All that conies from outside is a question to 
 which we owe an answer a pressure to be 
 met by counter-pressure, if we are to re- 
 main free and living agents. The develop- 
 ment of our unconscious nature follows the 
 astronomical laws of Ptolemy ; everything 
 in it is change cycle, epi-cycle, and meta- 
 morphosis. 
 
 Every man then possesses in himself the 
 analogies and rudiments of all things, of all 
 beings, and of all forms of life. He who 
 knows how to divine the small beginnings, 
 the germs and symptoms of things, can 
 retrace in himself the universal mechanism, 
 and divine by intuition the series which he 
 himself will not finish, such as vegetable 
 and animal existences, human passions and 
 crises, the diseases of the soul and those of 
 the body. The mind which is subtle and 
 powerful may penetrate all these potentiali- 
 ties, and make every point flash out the
 
 l8o AMIEI/8 JOURNAL. 
 
 world which it contains. This is to be con- 
 scious of and to possess the general life, this 
 is to enter into the divine sanctuary of con- 
 templation. 
 
 12th September 1861. In me an intel- 
 lect which would fain forget itself in things, 
 is contradicted by a heart which yearns to 
 live in human beings. The uniting link of the 
 two contradictions is the tendency towards 
 self-abandonment, towards ceasing to will 
 and exist for oneself, towards laying down 
 one's own personality, and losing dissolv- 
 ing oneself in love and contemplation. 
 What I lack above all things is character, 
 will, individuality. But, as always hap- 
 pens, the appearance is exactly the con- 
 trary of the reality, and my outward life the 
 reverse of my true and deepest aspiration. 
 I whose whole being heart and intellect 
 thirsts to absorb itself in reality, in its 
 neighbour man, in Nature and in God, I, 
 whom solitude devours and destroys, I 
 shut myself up in solitude and seem to 
 delight only in myself and to be sufficient 
 for myself. Pride and delicacy of soul, 
 timidity of heart, have made me thus do 
 violence to all my instincts and invert the 
 natural order of my life. It is not astonish
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 181 
 
 ing that I should be unintelligible to others. 
 In fact I have always avoided what at- 
 tracted me, and turned my back upon the 
 point where secretly I desired to be. 
 
 ' Deux instincts sont en moi : vertige et de- 
 
 raison ; 
 J'ai 1'effroi du bonheur et la soif du poison.' 
 
 It is the Nemesis which dogs the steps of 
 life, the secret instinct and power of death 
 in us, which labours continually for the 
 destruction of all that seeks to be, to take 
 form, to exist ; it is the passion for destruc- 
 tion, the tendency towards suicide, identi- 
 fying itself with the instinct of self-preser- 
 vation. This antipathy towards all that 
 does one good, all that nourishes and heals, 
 is it not a mere variation of the antip- 
 athy to moral light and regenerative 
 truth? Does not sin also create a thirst 
 for death, a growing passion for what does 
 harm ? Discouragement has been my sin. 
 Discouragement is an act of unbelief. 
 Growing weakness has been the conse- 
 quence of it ; the principle of death in me 
 and the influence of the Prince of Darkness 
 have waxed stronger together. My will in 
 abdicating has yielded up the sceptre to 
 instinct ; and as the corruption of the best
 
 1 82 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 results in what is worst, love of the ideal, 
 tenderness, unworldliness, have led me to 
 a state in which I shrink from hope and 
 crave for annihilation. Action is my 
 cross. 
 
 llth October 1861 (Heidelberg'). After 
 eleven days' journey, here I am under the 
 roof of my friends, in their hospitable house 
 on the banks of the Neckar, with its garden 
 climbing up the side of the Heiligenberg. 
 . . . Blazing sun ; my room is flooded 
 with light and warmth. Sitting opposite 
 the Geisberg, I write to the murmur of the 
 Neckar, which rolls its green waves, flecked 
 with silver, exactly beneath the balcony on 
 which my room opens. A great barge com- 
 ing from Heilbronn passes silently under 
 my eyes, while the wheels of a cart which 
 I cannot see are dimly heard on the road 
 which skirts the river. Distant voices of 
 children, of cocks, of chirping sparrows, 
 the clock of the Church of the Holy Spirit, 
 which chimes the hour, serve to gauge, 
 without troubling, the general tranquillity 
 of the scene. One feels the hours gently 
 slipping by, and time, instead of flying, 
 seems to hover. A peace beyond words 
 steals into my heart, an impression of
 
 AMIEI/8 JOURNAL. 183 
 
 morning grace, of fresh country poetry 
 which brings back the sense of youth, and 
 has the true German savour. . . . Two 
 decked barges carrying red flags, each with 
 a train of flat boats filled with coal, are 
 going up the river and making their way 
 under the arch of the great stone bridge. 
 I stand at the window and see a whole per- 
 spective of boats sailing in both directions ; 
 the Neckar is as animated as the street of 
 some great capital ; and already on the 
 slope of the wooded mountain, streaked 
 by the smoke-wreaths of the town, the 
 castle throws its shadow like a vast drapery, 
 and traces the outlines of its battlements 
 and turrets. Higher up, in front of me, 
 rises the dark profile of the Molkenkur ; 
 higher still, in relief against the dazzling 
 east, I can distinguish the misty forms of 
 the two towers of the Kaiserstuhl and 
 the Trutzheinrich. 
 
 But enough of landscape. My host, 
 Dr. George Weber, tells me that his manual 
 of history is translated into Polish, Dutch, 
 Spanish, Italian, and French, and that of 
 his great Universal History three volumes 
 are already published. What astonishing 
 power of work, what prodigious tenacity, 
 what solidity ! deutscher Fleiss !
 
 184 AMIEI/8 JOURNAL. 
 
 25th November 1861. To understand a 
 drama requires the same mental operation 
 as to understand an existence, a biography, 
 a man. It is a putting back of the bird into 
 the egg, of the plant into its seed, a recon- 
 stitution of the whole genesis of the being 
 in question. Art is simply the bringing 
 into relief of the obscure thought of nature ; 
 a simplification of the lines, a falling into 
 place of groups otherwise invisible. The 
 fire of inspiration brings out, as it were, 
 designs traced beforehand in sympathetic 
 ink. The mysterious grows clear, the con- 
 fused plain ; what is complicated becomes 
 simple what is accidental, necessary. In 
 short, art reveals nature by interpreting 
 its intentions and formulating its desires. 
 Every ideal is the key of a long enigma. 
 The great artist is th siinplifier. 
 
 Every man is a tamer of wild beasts, and 
 these wild beasts are his passions. To draw 
 their teeth and claws, to muzzle and tame 
 them, to turn them into servants and 
 domestic animals, fuming, perhaps, but 
 submissive in this consists personal edu- 
 cation. 
 
 3d February 1862. Self-criticism is the
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 185 
 
 corrosive of all oratorical or literary spon- 
 taneity. The thirst to know turned upon 
 the self is punished, like the cmiosity of 
 Psyche, by the flight of the thing desired. 
 Force should remain a mystery to itself ; 
 as soon as it tries to penetrate its own 
 secret it vanishes away. The hen with the 
 golden eggs becomes unfruitful as soon as 
 she tries to find out why her eggs are 
 golden. The consciousness of conscious- 
 ness is the term and end of analysis. True, 
 but analysis pushed to extremity devours 
 itself, like the Egyptian serpent. We must 
 give it some external matter to crush and 
 disserve if we wish to prevent its destruc- 
 tion by its action upon itself. ' We are, 
 and ought to be, obscure to ourselves,' said 
 Goethe, 'turned outwards, and working 
 upon the world which surrounds us.' Out- 
 ward radiation constitutes health ; a too 
 continuous concentration upon what is 
 within brings us back to vacuity and blank. 
 It is better that life should dilate and ex- 
 tend itself in ever-widening circles, than 
 that it should be perpetually diminished 
 and compressed by solitary contraction. 
 Warmth tends to make a globe out of an 
 atom ; cold, to reduce a globe to the dimen- 
 sions of an atom. Analysis has been to me 
 self -annulling, self-destroying.
 
 1 86 ARIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 23d April 1862 (Mornex snr Saleve). 
 I was awakened by the twittering of the 
 birds at a quarter to five, and saw, as I 
 threw open my windows, the yellowing 
 crescent of the moon looking in upon me, 
 while the east was just faintly whitening. 
 An hour later it was delicious out of doors. 
 The anemones were still closed, the apple- 
 trees in full flower : 
 
 ' Ces beaux pommiers, converts de leurs fleurs 
 
 e'toilees, 
 Neige odorante du printemps.' 
 
 The view was exquisite, and Nature, in full 
 festival, spread freshness and joy around 
 her. I breakfasted, read the paper, and 
 here I am. The ladies of the pension are 
 still under the horizon. I pity them for 
 the loss of two or three delightful hours. 
 
 Eleven o'clock. Preludes, scales, piano- 
 exercises going on under my feet. In the 
 garden children's voices. I have just fin- 
 ished Rosenkranz on Hegel's Logic, and 
 have run through a few articles in the Re- 
 views. . . . The limitation of the French 
 mind consists in the insufficiency of its 
 spiritual alphabet, which does not allow it 
 to translate the Greek, German, or Spanish
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 187 
 
 mind without changing the accent. The 
 hospitality of French manners is not com- 
 pleted by a real hospitality of thought. . . . 
 My nature is just the opposite. I am indi- 
 vidual in the presence of men, objective in 
 the presence of things. I attach myself to 
 the object, and absorb myself in it ; I detach 
 myself from subjects [i.e. persons], and 
 hold myself on my guard against them. I 
 feel myself different from the mass of men, 
 and akin to the great whole of Nature. My 
 way of asserting myself is in cherishing 
 this sense of sympathetic unity with life, 
 which I yearn to understand, and in repu- 
 diating the tyranny of commonplace. All 
 that is imitative and artificial inspires me 
 with a secret repulsion, while the smallest 
 true and spontaneous existence (plant, 
 animal, child) draws and attracts me. I 
 feel myself in community of spirit with the 
 Goethes, the Hegels, the Schleiermachers, 
 the Leibnitzes, opposed as they are among 
 themselves ; while the French mathemati- 
 cians, philosophers, or rhetoricians, in spite 
 of their high qualities, leave me cold, be- 
 cause there is in them no sense of the whole, 
 the sum of things, 14 because they have 
 no grasp of reality in its fulness, and there- 
 fore either cramp and limit me or awaken
 
 i88 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 my distrust. The French lack that intui, 
 tive faculty to which the living unity of 
 things is revealed, they have very little 
 sense of what is sacred, very little penetra- 
 tion into the mysteries of being. What 
 they excel in is the construction of special 
 sciences ; the art of writing a book, style, 
 courtesy, grace, literary models, perfection 
 and urbanity ; the spirit of order, the art 
 of teaching, discipline, elegance, truth of 
 detail, power of arrangement ; the desire 
 and the gift for proselytism, the vigour 
 necessary for practical conclusions. But if 
 you wish to travel in the Inferno or the 
 Paradiso you must take other guides. 
 Their home is on the earth, in the region 
 of the finite, the changing, the historical, and 
 the diverse. Their logic never goes beyond 
 the category of mechanism nor their meta- 
 physic beyond dualism. When they under- 
 take anything else they are doing violence 
 to themselves. 
 
 24th April (JVoora). All around me pro- 
 found peace, the silence of the mountains 
 in spite of a full house and a neighbouring 
 village. No sound is to be heard but the 
 murmur of the flies. There is something 
 very striking in this calm. The middle of
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 189 
 
 the day is like the middle of the night. 
 Life seems suspended just when it is most 
 intense. These are the moments in which 
 one hears the infinite and perceives the in- 
 effable. Victor Hugo, in his Contempla- 
 tions, has been carrying me from world to 
 world, and since then his contradictions 
 have reminded me of the convinced Chris- 
 tian with whom I was talking yesterday in 
 a house near by. . . . The same sunlight 
 floods both the book and nature, the doubt- 
 ing poet and the believing preacher, as well 
 as the mobile dreamer, who, in the midst 
 of all these various existences, allows him- 
 self to be swayed by every passing breath, 
 and delights, stretched along the car of his 
 balloon, in floating aimlessly through all 
 the sounds and shallows of the sether, and 
 in realising within himself all the harmo- 
 nies and dissonances of the soul, of feeling, 
 and of thought. Idleness and contempla- 
 tion ! Slumber of the will, lapses of the 
 vital force, indolence of the whole being, 
 how well I know you ! To love, to dream, 
 to feel, to learn, to understand, all these 
 are possible to me if only I may be relieved 
 from willing. It is my tendency, my in- 
 stinct, my fault, my sin. I have a sort of 
 primitive horror of ambition, of struggle, of
 
 i go AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 hatred, of all which dissipates the soul and 
 makes it dependent upon external things 
 and aims. The joy of becoming once more 
 conscious of myself, of listening to the pas- 
 sage of time and the flow of the universal 
 life, is sometimes enough to make me for- 
 get every desire, and to quench in me both 
 the wish to produce and the power to exe- 
 cute. Intellectual Epicureanism is always 
 threatening to overpower me. I can only 
 combat it by the idea of duty ; it is as the 
 poet has said : 
 
 ' Ceux qui vivent, ce sont ceux qui luttent ; ce 
 
 sont 
 Ceux dont un dessein ferme emplit 1'ame et 
 
 le front, 
 Ceux qui d'un haut destin gravissent 1'apre 
 
 cime, 
 Ceux qui marchent pensifs, epris d'un but 
 
 sublime, 
 Ayant devant les yenx sans cesse, nuit et 
 
 jour, 
 Ou quelque saint labeur ou quelque grand 
 
 amour ! ' * 
 
 Five o'clock. In the afternoon our little 
 society met in general talk upon the ter- 
 race. Some amount of familiarity and 
 
 * Victor Hugo, Les Chdtiments.
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 191 
 
 friendliness begins to show itself in our 
 relations to each other. I read over again 
 with emotion some passages of Jocelyn. 
 How admirable it is ! 
 
 ' II se fit de sa vie une plus male idee : 
 Sa douleur d'un seul trait ne 1'avait pas 
 
 videe ; 
 
 Mais, adorant de Dieu le severe dessein, 
 II sut la porter pleine et pure dans son sein, 
 Et ne se hatant pas de la repaudre toute, 
 Sa resignation 1'epancha goutte a goutte, 
 Selon la circonstance et le besoin d'autrui, 
 Pour tout vivifier sur terre autour de lui.' * 
 
 The true poetry is that which raises you, 
 as this does, towards heaven, and fills you 
 with divine emotion ; which sings of love 
 and death, of hope and sacrifice, and awak- 
 ens the sense of the infinite. Jocelyn al- 
 ways stirs in me impulses of tenderness 
 which it would be hateful to me to see pro- 
 faned by satire. As a tragedy of feeling, it 
 has no parallel in French, for purity, except 
 Paul et Virginie, and I think that I prefer 
 Jocelyn. To be just, one ought to read 
 them side by side. 
 
 Six o'clock. One more day is drawing 
 to its close. With the exception of Mont 
 
 * Epilogue of Jocelyn.
 
 192 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 Blanc, all the mountains have already lost 
 their colour. The evening chill succeeds 
 the heat of the afternoon. The sense of 
 the implacable flight of things, of the resist- 
 less passage of the hours, seizes upon me 
 afresh and oppresses me. 
 
 ' Nature au front serein, comme vous oubliez ! ' 
 
 In vain we cry with the poet, ' O time, 
 suspend thy flight ! ' . . . And what days, 
 after all, would we keep and hold ? Not 
 only the happy days, but the lost days ! 
 The first have left at least a memory behind 
 them, the others nothing but a regret which 
 is almost a remorse. . . . 
 
 Eleven o'clock. A gust of wind. A few 
 clouds in the sky. The nightingale is silent. 
 On the other hand, the cricket and the river 
 are still singing. 
 
 9th August 1862. Life, which seeks its 
 own continuance, tends to repair itself with- 
 out our help. It mends its spiders' webs 
 when they have been torn ; it re-establishes 
 in us the conditions of health, and itself 
 heals the injuries inflicted upon it ; it binds 
 the bandage again upon our eyes, brings 
 back hope into our hearts, breathes health
 
 AMIEL 8 JOURNAL. 193 
 
 once moie into our organs, and regilds the 
 dream of our imagination. But for this, 
 experience would have hopelessly withered 
 and faded us long before the time, and the 
 youth would be older than the centenarian. 
 The wise part of us, then, is that which is 
 unconscious of itself ; and what is most 
 reasonable in man are those elements in 
 him which do not reason. Instinct, nature, 
 a divine and impersonal activity, heal in us 
 the wounds made by our own follies ; the 
 invisible genius of our life is never tired 
 of providing material for the prodigalities of 
 the self. The essential, maternal basis of 
 our conscious life, is therefore that uncon- 
 scious life which we perceive no more than 
 the outer hemisphere of the moon perceives 
 the earth, while all the time indissolubly 
 and eternally bound to it. It is our avri- 
 X0w, to speak with Pythagoras. 
 
 1th November 1862. How malign, infec- 
 tious, and unwholesome is the eternal smile 
 of that indifferent criticism, that attitude of 
 ironical contemplation, which corrodes and 
 demolishes everything, that mocking piti- 
 less temper, which holds itself aloof from 
 every personal duty and every vulnerable 
 affection, and cares only to understand
 
 194 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 without committing itself to action ! Criti- 
 cism become a habit, a fashion, and a sys- 
 tem, means the destruction of moral energy, 
 of faith, and of all spiritual force. One of 
 my tendencies leads me in this direction, 
 but I recoil before its results when I come 
 across more emphatic types of it than my- 
 self. And at least I cannot reproach myself 
 with having ever attempted to destroy the 
 moral force of others ; my reverence for life 
 forbade it, and my self-distrust has taken 
 from me even the temptation to it. 
 
 This kind of temper is very dangerous 
 among us, for it flatters all the worst in- 
 stincts of men, indiscipline, irreverence, 
 selfish individualism, and it ends in social 
 atomism. Minds inclined to mere negation 
 are only harmless in great political organ- 
 isms, which go without them and in spite of 
 them. The multiplication of them amongst 
 ourselves will bring about the ruin of our 
 little countries, for small states only live by 
 faith and will. Woe to the society where 
 negation rules, for life is an affirmation ; 
 and a society, a country, a nation, is a 
 living whole capable of death. No nation- 
 ality is possible without prejudices, for 
 public spirit and national tradition are but 
 webs woven out of innumerable beliefs
 
 AMIEI/S JOURNAL. 195 
 
 which have been acquired, admitted, and 
 continued without formal proof and without 
 discussion. To act, we must believe; to 
 believe, we must make up our minds, affirm, 
 decide, and in reality prejudge the question. 
 He who will only act upon a full scientific 
 certitude is unfit for practical life. But we 
 are made for action, and we cannot escape 
 from duty. Let us not, then, condemn 
 prejudice so long as we have nothing but 
 doubt to put hi its place, or laugh at those 
 whom we should be incapable of consoling ! 
 This, at least, is my point of view. 
 
 Beyond the element which is common to 
 all men there is an element which separates 
 them. This element may be religion, coun- 
 try, language, education. But all these 
 being supposed common, there still remains 
 something which serves as a line of demar- 
 cation namely, the ideal. To have an 
 ideal or to have none, to have this ideal or 
 that, this is what digs gulfs between men, 
 even between those who live in the same 
 family circle, under the same roof or in the 
 same room. You must love with the same 
 love, think with the same thought as some 
 one else, if you are to escape solitude.
 
 196 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 Mutual respect implies discretion and 
 reserve even in love itself ; it means pre- 
 serving as much liberty as possible to those 
 whose life we share. We must distrust our 
 instinct of intervention, for the desire to 
 make one's own will prevail is often dis- 
 guised under the mask of solicitude. 
 
 How many times we become hypocrites 
 simply by remaining the same outwardly 
 and towards others, when we know that 
 inwardly and to ourselves we are different. 
 It is not hypocrisy in the strict sense, for 
 we borrow no other personality than our 
 own ; still, it is a kind of deception. The 
 deception humiliates us, and the humilia- 
 tion is a chastisement which the mask in- 
 flicts upon the face, which our past inflicts 
 upon our present. Such humiliation is 
 good for us ; for it produces shame, and 
 shame gives birth to repentance. Thus in 
 an upright soul good springs out of evil, 
 and it falls only to rise again. 
 
 8th January 1863. This evening I read 
 through the Cid and Rodogune. My im- 
 pression is still a mixed and confused one. 
 There is much disenchantment in my admi- 
 ration, and a good deal of reserve in my
 
 AMIKL'S JOURNAL. 197 
 
 enthusiasm. What displeases me in this 
 dramatic art, is the mechanical abstraction 
 of the characters, and the scolding, shrew- 
 ish tone of the interlocutors. I had a vague 
 impression of listening to gigantic marion- 
 ettes, perorating through a trumpet, with 
 the emphasis of Spaniards. There is power 
 in it, but we have before us heroic idols 
 rather than human beings. The element 
 of artificiality, of strained pomposity and 
 affectation, which is the plague of classical 
 tragedy, is everywhere apparent, and one 
 hears, as it were, the cords and pulleys of 
 these majestic colossi creaking and groan- 
 ing. I much prefer Racine and Shake- 
 speare ; the one from the point of view of 
 aesthetic sensation, the other from that of 
 psychological sensation. The southern 
 theatre can never free itself from masks. 
 Comic masks are bearable, but in the case 
 of tragic heroes, the abstract type, the 
 mask, make one impatient. I can laugh 
 with personages of tin and pasteboard: I 
 can only weep with the living, or what 
 resembles them. Abstraction turns easily to 
 caricature ; it is apt to engender mere shad- 
 ows on the wall, mere ghosts and puppets. 
 It is psychology of the first degree ele- 
 mentary psychology just as the coloured
 
 198 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 pictures of Germany are elementary paint- 
 ing. And yet with all this, you have a 
 double-distilled and often sophistical refine- 
 ment: just as savages are by no means 
 simple. The fine side of it all is the manly 
 vigour, the bold frankness of ideas, words, 
 and sentiments. Why is it that we find 
 so large an element of factitious grandeur, 
 mingled with true grandeur, in this drama 
 of 1640, from which the whole dramatic 
 development of monarchical France was to 
 spring ? Genius is there, but it is hemmed 
 round by a conventional civilisation, and, 
 strive as he may, no man wears a wig with 
 impunity. 
 
 13th January 1863. To-day it has been 
 the turn of Polyeucte and La Mort de Pom- 
 pee. Whatever one's objections may be, 
 there is something grandiose in the style of 
 Corneille which reconciles you at last even 
 to his stiff, emphatic manner, and his over- 
 ingenious rhetoric. But it is the dramatic 
 genre which is false. His heroes are roles 
 rather than men. They pose as magnanim- 
 ity, virtue, glory, instead of realising them 
 before us. They are always en scene, 
 studied by others, or by thoniai-lves. With 
 them glory, that is to say, the life of cere- 
 mony and of affairs, and the opinion of the
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 199 
 
 public, replaces nature becomes nature. 
 They never speak except ore rotundo, in 
 cothurnus, or sometimes on stilts. And 
 what consummate advocates they all are ! 
 The French drama is an oratorical tourna- 
 ment, a long suit between opposing parties, 
 on a day which is to end with the death of 
 somebody, and where all the personages 
 represented are in haste to speak before the 
 hour of silence strikes. Elsewhere, speech 
 serves to make action intelligible ; in French 
 tragedy action is but a decent motive for 
 speech. It is the procedure calculated to 
 extract the finest possible speeches from the 
 persons who are engaged in the action, and 
 who represent different perceptions of it at 
 different moments and from different points 
 of view. Love and nature, duty and desire, 
 and a dozen other moral antitheses, are the 
 limbs moved by the wire of the dramatist, 
 who makes them fall into all the tragic 
 attitudes. What is really curious and 
 amusing is that the people of all others the 
 most vivacious, gay, and intelligent, should 
 have always understood the grand style in 
 this pompous, pedantic fashion. But it was 
 inevitable. 
 
 8th April 1863. I have been turning 
 over the 3500 pages of -Les Miserables, try-
 
 2oo AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 ing to understand the guiding idea of this 
 vast composition. The fundamental idea 
 of Les Miserables seems to be this. Society 
 engenders certain frightful evils, prostitu- 
 tion, vagabondage, rogues, thieves, convicts, 
 war, revolutionary clubs and barricades. 
 She ought to impress this fact on her mind, 
 and not treat all those who come in contact 
 with her law as mere monsters. The task 
 before us is to humanise law and opinion, 
 to raise the fallen as well as the van- 
 quished, to create a social redemption. 
 How is this to be done ? By enlightening 
 vice and lawlessness, and so diminishing 
 the sum of them, and by bringing to bear 
 upon the guilty the healing influence of 
 pardon. At bottom is it not a Christian- 
 isation of society, this extension of charity 
 from the sinner to the condemned criminal, 
 this application to our present life of what 
 the Church applies more readily to the 
 other ? Struggle to restore a human soul 
 to order and to righteousness by patience 
 and by love, instead of crushing it by your 
 inflexible vindictiveness, your savage jus- 
 tice ! Such is the cry of the book. It is 
 great and noble, but it is a little optimistic 
 and Rousseau-like. According to it the indi- 
 vidual is always innocent and society always
 
 AMIEI/S JOURNAL. 2OI 
 
 responsible, and the ideal before us for the 
 twentieth century is a sort of democratic 
 age of gold, a universal republic from which 
 war, capital punishment, and pauperism 
 will have disappeared. It is the Religion 
 and the City of Progress ; in a word, the 
 Utopia of the eighteenth century revived on 
 a great scale. There is a great deal of gen- 
 erosity in it, mixed with not a little fanciful 
 extravagance. The fancifulness consists 
 chiefly in a superficial notion of evil. The 
 author ignores or pretends to forget the 
 instinct of perversity, the love of evil for 
 evil's sake, which is contained in the human 
 heart. 
 
 The great and salutary idea of the book, 
 is that honesty before the law is a cruel 
 hypocrisy, in so far as it arrogates to itself 
 the right of dividing society according to 
 its own standard into elect and reprobates, 
 and thus confounds the relative with the 
 absolute. The leading passage is that in 
 which Javert, thrown off the rails, upsets 
 the whole moral system of the strict Javert, 
 half spy half priest, of the irreproachable 
 police-officer. In this chapter the writer 
 shows us social charity illuminating and 
 transforming a harsh and unrighteous jus- 
 tice. Suppression of the social hell, that is
 
 202 AMIKL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 to say, of all irreparable stains, of all social 
 outlawries for which there is neither end 
 nor hope : it is an essentially religious 
 idea. 
 
 The erudition, the talent, the brilliancy 
 of execution, shown in the book are aston- 
 ishing, bewildering almost. Its faults are 
 to be found in the enormous length allowed 
 to digressions and episodical dissertations, 
 in the exaggeration of all the combinations 
 and all the theses, and, finally, in something 
 strained, spasmodic, and violent in the style, 
 which is very different from the style of 
 natural eloquence or of essential truth. 
 Effect is the misfortune of Victor Hugo, 
 because he makes it the centre of his aes- 
 thetic system ; and hence exaggeration, 
 monotony of emphasis, theatricality of 
 manner, a tendency to force and over-drive. 
 A powerful artist, but one with whom you 
 never forget the artist ; and a dangerous 
 model, for the master himself is already 
 grazing the rock of burlesque, and passes 
 from the sublime to the repulsive, from lack 
 of power to produce one harmonious im- 
 pression of beauty. It is natural enough 
 that he should detest Racine. 
 
 But what astonishing philological and 
 literary power has Victor Hugo ! He is
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 203 
 
 master of all the dialects contained in our 
 language, dialects of the courts of law, of 
 the stock-exchange, of war, and of the sea, 
 of philosophy and the convict-gang, the dia- 
 lects of trade and of archaeology, of the an- 
 tiquarian and the scavenger. All the bric- 
 a-brac of history and of manners, so to 
 speak, all the curiosities of soil, and sub- 
 soil, are known and familiar to him. He 
 seems to have turned his Paris over and 
 over, and to know it body and soul as one 
 knows the contents of one's pocket. What 
 a prodigious memory and what a lurid im- 
 agination ! He is at once a visionary and 
 yet master of his dreams ; he summons up 
 and handles at will the hallucinations of 
 opium or of haschish, without ever becom- 
 ing their dupe ; he makes of madness one 
 of his tame animals, and bestrides, with 
 equal coolness, Pegasus or Nightmare, the 
 Hippogriff or the Chimera. As a physcho- 
 logical phenomenon he is of the deepest 
 interest. Victor Hugo draws in sulphuric 
 acid, he lights his pictures with electric 
 light. He deafens, blinds, and bewilders 
 his reader rather than he charms or per- 
 suades him. Strength carried to such a 
 point as this is a fascination ; without seem- 
 ing to take you captive, it makes you its
 
 204 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 prisoner ; it does not enchant you, but it 
 holds you spellbound. His ideal is the ex- 
 traordinary, the gigantic, the overwhelming, 
 the incommensurable. His most character- 
 istic words are immense, colossal, enormous, 
 huge, monstrous. He finds a way of making 
 even child-nature extravagant and bizarre. 
 The only thing which seems impossible to 
 him is to be natural. In short, his passion 
 is grandeur, his fault is excess : his distin- 
 guishing mark is a kind of Titanic power 
 with strange dissonances of puerility in its 
 magnificence. Where he is weakest is, in 
 measure, taste, and sense of humour : he 
 fails in esprit, in the subtlest sense of the 
 word. Victor Hugo is a gallicLsed Span- 
 iard, or rather he unites all the extremes of 
 south and north, the Scandinavian and the 
 African. Gaul has less part in him than 
 any other country. And yet, by a caprice 
 of destiny, he is one of the literary geniuses 
 of France in the nineteenth century ! His 
 resources are inexhaustible, and age seems 
 to have no power over him. What an in- 
 finite store of words, forms, and ideas he 
 carries about with him, and what a pile of 
 works he has left behind him to mark his 
 passage ! His eruptions are like those of a 
 volcano ; and, fabulous workman that he
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 205 
 
 is, he goes on for ever raising, destroying, 
 crushing, and rebuilding a world of his own 
 creation, and a world rather Hindoo than 
 Hellenic. 
 
 He amazes me : and yet I prefer those 
 men of genius who awaken in me the sense 
 of truth, and who increase the sum of one's 
 inner liberty. In Hugo one feels the effort 
 of the labouring Cyclops ; give me rather 
 the sonorous bow of Apollo, and the tran- 
 quil brow of the Olympian Jove. His type 
 is that of the Satyr in the Legends des 
 Siecles, who crushes Olympus, a type mid- 
 way between the ugliness of the Faun and 
 the overpowering sublimity of the great 
 Pan. 
 
 23d May 1863. Dull, cloudy, misty 
 weather ; it rained in the night and yet the 
 air is heavy. This sombre reverie of earth 
 and sky has a sacredness of its own, but it 
 fills the spectator with a vague and stupefy- 
 ing ennui. Light brings life : darkness 
 may bring thought, but a dull daylight, the 
 uncertain glimmer of a leaden sky, merely 
 makes one restless and weary. These in- 
 decisive and chaotic states of Nature are 
 ugly, like all amorphous things, like smeared 
 colours, or bats, or the viscous polyps of the
 
 206 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 sea. The source of all attractiveness is to 
 be found in character, in sharpness of out- 
 line, in individualisation. All that is con- 
 fused and indistinct, without form, or sex, 
 or accent, is antagonistic to beauty; for the 
 mind's first need is light ; light means or- 
 der, and order means, in the first place, the 
 distinction of the parts, in the second, their 
 regular action. Beauty is based on reason. 
 
 1th August 1863. A walk after supper, 
 a sky sparkling with stars, the milky way 
 magnificent. Alas ! all the same my heart 
 is heavy. 
 
 At bottom I am always brought up 
 against an incurable distrust of myself and 
 of life, which towards my neighbour has 
 become indulgence, but for myself has led 
 to a regime of absolute abstention. All or 
 nothing ! This is my inborn disposition, my 
 primitive stuff, my ' old man.' And yet if 
 some one will but give me a little love, will 
 but penetrate a little into my inner feeling, 
 I am happy and ask for scarcely anything 
 else. A child's caresses, a friend's talk, 
 are enough to make me gay and expansive. 
 So then I aspire to the infinite, and yet a 
 very little contents me ; everything disturbs 
 me and the least thing calms me. I have
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 207 
 
 often surprised in myself the wish for death, 
 and yet my ambitions for happiness scarcely 
 go beyond those of the bird : wings ! sun ! 
 a nest ! I persist in solitude because of a 
 taste for it, so people think. No, it is from 
 distaste, disgust, from shame at my own 
 need of others, shame at confessing it, a 
 fear of passing into bondage if I do con- 
 fess it. 
 
 2d September 1863. How shall I find a 
 name for that subtle feeling which seized 
 hold upon me this morning in the twilight 
 of waking ? It was a reminiscence, charm- 
 ing indeed, but nameless, vague, and 
 featureless, like the figure of a woman seen 
 for an instant by a sick man in the un- 
 certainty of delirium, and across the shadows 
 of his darkened room. I had a distinct sense 
 of a form which I had seen somewhere, and 
 which had moved and charmed me once, 
 and then had fallen back with time into 
 the catacombs of oblivion. But all the 
 rest was confused : place, occasion, and the 
 figure itself, for I saw neither the face nor 
 its expression. The whole was like a flut- 
 tering veil under which the enigma, the 
 secret, of happiness, might have been 
 hidden. And I was awake enough to be 
 sure that it was not a dream.
 
 208 AMIEI/S JOURNAL. 
 
 In impressions like these we recognise 
 the last trace of things which are sinking 
 out of sight and call within us, of memories 
 which are perishing. It is like a shimmer- 
 ing marsh-light falling upon some vague 
 outline of which one scarcely knows whether 
 it represents a pain or a pleasure, a gleam 
 upon a grave. How strange ! One might 
 almost call such things the ghosts of the 
 soul, reflections of past happiness, the manes 
 of our dead emotions. If, as the Talmud, 
 I think, says, every feeling of love gives 
 birth involuntarily to an invisible genius or 
 spirit which yearns to complete its existence, 
 and these glimmering phantoms, which have 
 never taken to themselves form and reality, 
 are still wandering in the limbo of the soul, 
 what is there to astonish us in the strange 
 apparitions which sometimes come to visit 
 our pillow ? At any rate, the fact remains 
 that I was not able to force the phantom 
 to tell me its name, nor to give any shape 
 or distinctness to my reminiscence. 
 
 What a melancholy aspect life may wear 
 to us when we are floating down the current 
 of such dreamy thoughts as these ! It seems 
 like some vast nocturnal shipwreck in which 
 a hundred loving voices are clamouring for 
 help, while the pitiless mounting wave is
 
 AMIEL S JOUHNAL. 2OQ 
 
 silencing all the cries one by one, before we 
 have been able, in this darkness of death, 
 to press a hand or give the farewell kiss. 
 From such a point of view destiny looks 
 harsh, savage, and cruel, and the tragedy 
 of life rises like a rock in the midst of the 
 dull waters of daily triviality. It is im- 
 possible not to be serious under the weight 
 of indefinable anxiety produced in us by 
 such a spectacle. The surface of things 
 may be smiling or commonplace, but the 
 depths below are austere and terrible. As 
 soon as we touch upon eternal things, upon 
 the destiny of the soul, upon truth or duty, 
 upon the secrets of life and death, we be- 
 come grave whether we will or no. 
 
 Love at its highest point, love sublime, 
 unique, invincible, leads us straight to 
 the brink of the great abyss, for it speaks 
 to us directly of the infinite and of eternity. 
 It is eminently religious : it may even be- 
 come religion. When all around a man is 
 wavering and changing, when everything 
 is growing dark and featureless to him in 
 the far distance of an unknown future, 
 when the world seems but a fiction or a 
 fairy tale, and the universe a chimera, 
 when the whole edifice of ideas vanishes in 
 smoke, and all realities are penetrated with
 
 2io AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 doubt, what is the fixed point which may 
 still be his? The faithful heart of a 
 woman ! There he may rest his head ; 
 there he will find strength to live, strength 
 to believe, and, if need be, strength to die 
 in peace with a benediction on his lips. 
 Who knows if love and its beatitude, clear 
 manifestation as it is of the universal 
 harmony of things, is not the best demon- 
 stration of a fatherly and understanding 
 God, just as it is the shortest road by which 
 to reach Him ? Love is a faith, and one 
 faith leads to another. And this faith is 
 happiness, light, and force. Only by it 
 does a man enter into the series of the 
 living, the awakened, the happy, the re- 
 deemed, of those true men who know 
 the value of existence and who labour for 
 the glory of God and of the Truth. Till 
 then we are but babblers and chatterers, 
 spendthrifts of our time, our faculties and 
 our gifts, without aim, without real joy, 
 weak, infirm, and useless beings, of no 
 account in the scheme of things. Perhaps 
 it is through love that I shall find my way 
 back to faith, to religion, to energy, to con- 
 centration. It seems to me, at least, that 
 if I could but find my work-fellow and my 
 destined companion, all the rest would be
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 211 
 
 added unto me, as though to confound my 
 unbelief and make me blush for my despair. 
 Believe, then, in a fatherly Providence, 
 and dare to love ! 
 
 2bth November 1863. Prayer is the 
 essential weapon of all religions. He who 
 can no longer pray because he doubts 
 whether there is a being to whom prayer 
 ascends and from whom blessing descends, 
 he indeed is cruelly solitary and prodig- 
 iously impoverished. And you, what do 
 you believe about it ? At this moment I 
 should find it very difficult to say. All my 
 positive beliefs are in the crucible ready for 
 any kind of metamorphosis. Truth above 
 all, even when it upsets and overwhelms us ! 
 But what I believe is that the highest idea 
 we can conceive of the principle of things 
 will be the truest, and that the truest truth 
 is that which makes man the most wholly 
 good, wisest, greatest, and happiest. 
 
 My creed is in transition. Yet I still be- 
 lieve in God, and the immortality of the 
 soul. I believe in holiness, truth, beauty ; 
 I believe in the redemption of the soul by 
 faith in forgiveness. I believe in love, 
 devotion, honour. I believe in duty and 
 the moral conscience. I believe even in
 
 212 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 prayer. I believe in the fundamental in- 
 tuitions of the human race, and in the 
 great affirmations of the inspired of all 
 ages. I believe that our higher nature is 
 our true nature. 
 
 Can one get a theology and a theodicy 
 out of this ? Probably, but just now I do 
 not see it distinctly. It is so long since I 
 have ceased to think about my own meta- 
 physic, and since I have lived in the thoughts 
 of others, that 1 am ready even to ask my- 
 self whether the crystallisation of my be- 
 liefs is necessary. Yes, for preaching and 
 acting ; less for studying, contemplating, 
 and learning. 
 
 kth December 1863. The whole secret 
 of remaining young in spite of years, and 
 even of gray hairs, is to cherish enthusiasm 
 in oneself, by poetry, by contemplation, by 
 charity, that is, in fewer words, by the 
 maintenance of harmony in the soul. When 
 everything is in its right place within us, 
 we ourselves are in equilibrium with the 
 whole work of God. Deep and grave en- 
 thusiasm for the eternal beauty and the 
 eternal order, reason touched with emotion 
 and a serene tenderness of heart these 
 surely are the foundations of wisdom.
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 213 
 
 Wisdom ! how inexhaustible a theme ! 
 A sort of peaceful aureole surrounds and il- 
 lumines this thought, in which are summed 
 up all the treasures of moral experience, 
 and which is the ripest fruit of a well- 
 spent life. Wisdom never grows old, for 
 she is the expression of order itself, that 
 is, of the Eternal. Only the wise man 
 draws from life, and from every stage of it, 
 its true savour, because only he feels the 
 beauty, the dignity, and the value of life. 
 The flowers of youth may fade, but the 
 summer, the autumn, and even the winter 
 of human existence, have their majestic 
 grandeur, which the wise man recognises 
 and glorifies. To see all things in God ; 
 to make of one's own life a journey towards 
 the ideal ; to live with gratitude, with devout- 
 ness, with gentleness and courage ; this 
 was the splendid aim of Marcus Aurelius. 
 And if you add to it the humility which 
 kneels, and the charity which gives, you 
 have the whole wisdom of the children of 
 God, the immortal joy which is the heritage 
 of the true Christian. But what a false 
 Christianity is that which slanders wisdom 
 and seeks to do without it ! In such a 
 case I am on the side of wisdom, which is, 
 as it were, justice done to God, even in this
 
 214 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 life. The relegation of life to some distant 
 future, and the separation of the holy man 
 from the virtuous man, are the signs of a 
 false religious conception. This error is, 
 in some degree, that of the whole Middle 
 Age, and belongs, perhaps, to the essence 
 of Catholicism. But the true Christianity 
 must purge itself from so disastrous a mis- 
 take. The eternal life is not the future 
 life ; it is life in harmony with the true 
 order of things, life in God. We must 
 learn to look upon time as a movement of 
 eternity, as an undulation in the ocean of 
 being. To live, so as to keep this con- 
 sciousness of ours in perpetual relation with 
 the eternal, is to be wise ; to live, so as to 
 personify and embody the eternal, is to be 
 religious. 
 
 The modern leveller, after having done 
 away with conventional inequalities, with 
 arbitrary privilege and historical injustice, 
 goes still farther, and rebels against the in- 
 equalities of merit, capacity, and virtue. 
 Beginning with a just principle, he develops 
 it into an unjust one. Inequality may be 
 as true and as just as equality : it depends 
 upon what you mean by it. But this is pre- 
 cisely what nobody cares to find out. All
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 215 
 
 passions dread the light, and the modern 
 zeal for equality is a disguised hatred which 
 tries to pass itself off as love. 
 
 Liberty, equality bad principles ! The 
 only true principle for humanity is justice, 
 and justice towards the feeble becomes nec- 
 essarily protection or kindness. 
 
 2d April 1864. To-day April has been 
 displaying her showery caprices. We have 
 had floods of sunshine followed by deluges 
 of rain, alternate tears and smiles from the 
 petulant sky, gusts of wind and storms. 
 The weather is like a spoilt child whose 
 wishes and expression change twenty times 
 in an hour. It is a blessing for the plants, 
 and means an influx of life through all the 
 veins of the spring. The circle of moun- 
 tains which bounds the valley is covered 
 with white from top to toe, but two hours 
 of sunshine would melt the snow away. 
 The snow itself is but a new caprice, a 
 simple stage decoration ready to disappear 
 at the signal of the scene-shifter. 
 
 How sensible I am to the restless change 
 which rules the world. To appear, and to 
 vanish, there is the biography of all indi- 
 viduals, whatever may be the length of the
 
 21 6 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 cycle of existence which they describe, and 
 the drama of the universe is nothing more. 
 All life is the shadow of a smoke-wreath, 
 a gesture in the empty air, a hieroglyph 
 traced for an instant in the sand, and ef- 
 faced a moment afterwards by a breath of 
 wind, an air-bubble expanding and vanish- 
 ing on the surface of the great river of 
 being an appearance, a vanity, a nothing. 
 But this nothing is, however, the symbol of 
 the universal being, and this passing bubble 
 is the epitome of the history of the world. 
 
 The man who has, however impercepti- 
 bly, helped in the work of the universe, has 
 lived ; the man who has been conscious, in 
 however small a degree, of the cosmical 
 movement, has lived also. The plain man 
 serves the world by his action and as a 
 wheel in the machine ; the thinker serves 
 it by his intellect, and as a light upon its 
 path. The man of meditative soul, who 
 raises and comforts and sustains his travel- 
 ling companions, mortal 'and fugitive like 
 himself, plays a nobler part still, for he 
 unites the other two utilities. Action, 
 thought, speech, are the three modes of 
 human life. The artisan, the savant, and 
 the orator, are all three God's workmen. 
 To do, to discover, to teach, these three
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 217 
 
 things are all labour, all good, all necessary. 
 Will-o'-the-wisps that we are, we may yet 
 leave a trace behind us ; meteors that we 
 are, we may yet prolong our perishable 
 being in the memory of men, or at least in 
 the contexture of after events. Everything 
 disappears, but nothing is lost, and the 
 civilisation or city of man is but an im- 
 mense spiritual pyramid, built up out of 
 the work of all that has ever lived under 
 the forms of moral being, just as our cal- 
 careous mountains are made of the debris 
 of myriads of nameless creatures who have 
 lived under the forms of microscopic animal 
 life. 
 
 5f h April 1864. I have been reading 
 Prince Vitale for the second time, and have 
 been lost in admiration of it. What wealth 
 of colour, facts, ideas, what learning, 
 what fine-edged satire, what esprit, science, 
 and talent, and what an irreproachable 
 finish of style, so limpid, and yet so pro- 
 found ! It is not heartfelt and it is not 
 spontaneous, but all other kinds of merit, 
 culture, and cleverness the author possesses. 
 It would be impossible to be more pene- 
 trating, more subtle, and less fettered in 
 mind, than this wizard of language, with
 
 218 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 his irony and his chameleon-like variety. 
 Victor Cherbuliez, like the sphinx, is 
 able to play all lyres, and takes his profit 
 from them all, with a Goethe-like serenity. 
 It seems as if passion, grief, and error had 
 no hold on this impassive soul. The key of 
 his thought is to be looked for in Hegel's 
 Phenomenology of Mind, remoulded by 
 Greek and French influences. His faith, 
 if he has one, is that of Strauss, Human- 
 ism. But he is perfectly master of himself 
 and of his utterances, and will take good 
 care never to preach anything prematurely. 
 What is there quite at the bottom of this 
 deep spring ? In any case a mind as free 
 as any can possibly be from stupidity and 
 prejudice. One might almost say that 
 Cherbuliez knows all that he wishes to 
 know, without the trouble of learning it. 
 He is a calm Mephistopheles, with perfect 
 manners, grace, variety, and an exquisite 
 urbanity ; and Mephisto is a clever jeweller ; 
 and this jeweller is a subtle musician ; and 
 this fine singer and story-teller, with his 
 amber-like delicacy and brilliancy, is mak- 
 ing mock of us all the while. He takes a 
 malicious pleasure in withdrawing his own 
 personality from scrutiny and divination, 
 while he himself divines everything, and he
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 219 
 
 likes to make us feel that although he holds 
 in his hand the secret of the universe, he 
 will only unfold his prize at his own time, 
 and if it pleases him. Victor Cherbuliez is 
 a little like Proudhon and plays with para- 
 doxes, to shock the bourgeois. Thus he 
 amuses himself with running down Luther 
 and the Reformation in favour of the Re- 
 naissance. Of the troubles of conscience he 
 seems to know nothing. His supreme tri- 
 bunal is reason. At bottom he is Hegelian 
 and intellectualist. But it is a splendid or- 
 ganisation. Only sometimes he must be 
 antipathetic to those men of duty who 
 make renunciation, sacrifice, and humility 
 the measure of individual worth. 
 
 July 1864. Among the Alps I become a 
 child again, with all the follies and naivete 
 of childhood. Shaking off the weight of 
 years, the trappings of office, and all the 
 tiresome and ridiculous caution with which 
 one lives, I plunge into the full tide of 
 pleasure, and amuse myself sans /a?on, 
 as it comes. In this careless light-hearted 
 mood, my ordinary formulas and habits 
 fall away from me so completely that I feel 
 myself no longer either townsman, or pro- 
 fessor, or savant, or bachelor, and I re-
 
 22o AMIEL'S JOUUNAL. 
 
 member no more of my past than if it were 
 a dream. It is like a bath in Lethe. 
 
 It makes me really believe that the small- 
 est illness would destroy my memory, and 
 wipe out all my previous existence, when I 
 see with what ease I become a stranger to 
 myself, and fall back once more into the 
 condition of a blank sheet, a tabula rasa. 
 Life wears such a dream-aspect to me that 
 I can throw myself without any difficulty 
 into the situation of the dying, before whose 
 eyes all this tumult of images and forms 
 fades into nothingness. I have the incon- 
 sistency of a fluid, a vapour, a cloud, and 
 all is easily unmade or transformed in me ; 
 everything passes and is effaced like the 
 waves which follow each other on the sea. 
 When I say all, I mean all that is arbitrary, 
 indifferent, partial, or intellectual in the 
 combinations of one's life. For I feel that 
 the things of the soul, our immortal aspira- 
 tions, our deepest affections, are not drawn 
 into this chaotic whirlwind of impressions. 
 It is the finite things which are mortal and 
 fugitive. Every man feels it on his death- 
 bed. I feel it during the whole of life ; 
 that is the only difference between me and 
 others. Excepting only love, thought, and 
 liberty, almost everything is now a matter
 
 AM1EL S JOURNAL. 221 
 
 of indifference to me, and those objects 
 which excite the desires in most men, rouse 
 in me little more than curiosity. What 
 does it mean ? detachment of soul, disin- 
 terestedness, weakness, or wisdom ? 
 
 IQth September 1864. I have been living 
 for two hours with a noble soul with 
 Eugenic de Guerin, the pious heroine of 
 fraternal love. How many thoughts, feel- 
 ings, griefs, in this journal of six years ! 
 How it makes one dream, think and live ! 
 It produces a certain homesick impression 
 on me, a little like that of certain forgotten 
 melodies whereof the accent touches the 
 heart, one knows not why. It is as though 
 far-off paths came back to me, glimpses of 
 youth, a confused murmur of voices, echoes 
 from my past. Purity, melancholy, piety, 
 a thousand memories of a past existence, 
 forms fantastic and intangible like the fleet- 
 ing shadows of a dream at waking, began 
 to circle round the astonished reader. 
 
 20th September 1864. Read Eugenie de 
 Guerin' s volume again right and left with 
 a growing sense of attraction. Everything 
 is heart, force, impulse, in these pages which 
 have the power of sincerity and a brilliance
 
 222 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 of suffused poetry. A great and strong 
 soul, a clear mind, distinction, elevation, 
 the freedom of unconscious talent, reserve 
 and depth, nothing is wanting for this 
 Sevigne of the fields, who has to hold her- 
 self in with both hands lest she should write 
 verse, so strong in her is the artistic im- 
 pulse. 
 
 16th October 1864. I have just read a 
 part of Eugenie de Gue'rin's journal over 
 again. It charmed me a little less than the 
 first time. The nature seemed to me as 
 beautiful, but the life of Eugenie was too 
 empty, and the circle of ideas which occu- 
 pied her, too narrow. 
 
 It is touching and wonderful to see how 
 little space is enough for thought to spread 
 its wings in, but this perpetual motion 
 within the four walls of a cell ends none 
 the less by becoming wearisome to minds 
 which are accustomed to embrace more ob- 
 jects in their field of vision. Instead of a 
 garden, the world ; instead of a library, the 
 whole of literature ; instead of three or four 
 faces, a whole people and all history, this 
 is what the virile, the philosophic temper 
 demands. Men must have more air, more 
 room, more horizon, more positive knowl-
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 223 
 
 edge, and they end by suffocating in this 
 little cage where Eugenie lives and moves, 
 though the breath of heaven blows into it 
 and the radiance of the stars shines down 
 upon it. 
 
 27th October 1864 (Promenade de la 
 Treille). The air this morning was so 
 perfectly clear and lucid that one might 
 have distinguished a figure on the Vou- 
 ache. 15 This level and brilliant sun had 
 set fire to the whole range of autumn col- 
 ours ; amber, saffron, gold, sulphur, yellow 
 ochre, orange, red, copper-colour, aqua- 
 marine, amaranth, shone resplendent on 
 the leaves which were still hanging from 
 the boughs or had already fallen beneath 
 the trees. It was delicious. The martial 
 step of our two battalions going out to their 
 drilling-ground, the sparkle of the guns, the 
 song of the bugles, the sharp distinctness 
 of the house outlines, still moist with the 
 morning dew, the transparent coolness of all 
 the shadows every detail in the scene was 
 instinct with a keen and wholesome gaiety. 
 There are two forms of autumn : there is 
 the misty and dreamy autumn, there is the 
 vivid and brilliant autumn : almost the dif- 
 ference between the two sexes. The very
 
 224 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 word autumn is both masculine and fem- 
 inine. Has not every season, in some 
 fashion, its two sexes ? Has it not its minor 
 and its major key, its two sides of light and 
 shadow, gentleness and force ? Perhaps. 
 All that is perfect is double ; each face has 
 two profiles, each coin two sides. The 
 scarlet autumn stands for vigorous activity : 
 the gray autumn for meditative feeling. 
 The one is expansive and overflowing ; the 
 other still and withdrawn. Yesterday our 
 thoughts were with the dead. To-day we 
 are celebrating the vintage. 
 
 16th November 1864. Heard of the death 
 
 of . Will and intelligence lasted till 
 
 there was an effusion on the brain which 
 stopped everything. 
 
 A bubble of air in the blood, a drop of 
 water in the brain, and a man is out of 
 gear, his machine falls to pieces, his thought 
 vanishes, the world disappears from him 
 like a dream of morning. On what a spider 
 thread is hung our individual existence ! 
 Fragility, appearance, nothingness. If it 
 were not for our powers of self-detraction 
 and forgetfulness, all the fairy world which 
 surrounds and draws us would seem to us 
 but a broken spectre in the darkness, an
 
 AM I EL'S JOURNAL. 225 
 
 empty appearance, a fleeting hallucina- 
 tion. Appeared disappeared there is 
 the whole history of a man, or of a world, 
 or of an infusoria. 
 
 Time is the supreme illusion. It is but 
 the inner prism by which we decompose 
 being and life, the mode under which we 
 perceive successively what is simultaneous 
 in idea. The eye does not see a sphere all 
 at once although the sphere exists all at 
 once. Either the sphere must turn before 
 the eye which is ^looking at it, or the eye 
 must go round the sphere. In the first case 
 it is the world which unrolls, or seems to 
 unroll in time ; in the second case it is our 
 thought which successively analyses and 
 recomposes. For the supreme intelligence 
 there is no time ; what will be, is. Time 
 and space are fragments of the Infinite for 
 the use of finite creatures. God permits 
 them, that He may not be alone. They 
 are the mode under which creatures are 
 possible and conceivable. Let us add that 
 they are also the Jacob's ladder of innumer- 
 able steps by which the creation reascends 
 to its Creator, participates in being, tastes 
 of life, perceives the absolute, and can 
 adore the fathomless mystery of the infi- 
 nite divinity. That is the other side of the
 
 226 AMIEL'S JOUHNAL. 
 
 question. Our life is nothing, it is true, 
 but our life is divine. A breath of nature an- 
 nihilates us, but we surpass nature in pene- 
 trating far beyond her vast phantasmagoria, 
 to the changeless and the eternal. To es- 
 cape by the ecstasy of inward vision from 
 the whirlwind of time, to see oneself sub 
 specie eterni is the word of command of all 
 the great religions of the higher races ; and 
 this psychological possibility is the founda- 
 tion of all great hopes. The soul may be 
 immortal because she i fitted to rise to- 
 wards that which is neither born nor dies, 
 towards that which exists substantially, 
 necessarily, invariably, that is to say to- 
 wards God. 
 
 To know how to suggest is the great art 
 of teaching. To attain it we must be able 
 to guess what will interest ; we must learn 
 to read the childish soul as we might a piece 
 of music. Then, by simply changing the 
 key, we keep up the attraction and vary 
 the song. 
 
 The germs of all things are in every heart, 
 and the greatest criminals as well as the 
 greatest heroes are but different modes of 
 ourselves. Only evil grows of itself, while 
 for goodness we want effort and courage.
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 227 
 
 Melancholy is at the bottom of every- 
 thing, just as at the end of all rivers is the 
 sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where 
 nothing lasts, where all that we have loved 
 or shall love must die ? Is death, then, the 
 secret of life ? The gloom of an eternal 
 mourning enwraps, more or less closely, 
 every serious and thoughtful soul, as night 
 enwraps the universe. 
 
 A man takes to ' piety ' from a thousand 
 different reasons, from imitation or from 
 eccentricity, from bravado or from rever- 
 ence, from shame of the past or from terror 
 of the future, from weakness and from 
 pride, for pleasure's sake or for punish- 
 ment's sake, in order to be able to judge, 
 or in order to escape being judged, and for 
 a thousand other reasons ; but he only 
 becomes truly religious for religion's sake. 
 
 llth January 1865. It is pleasant to 
 feel nobly that is to say, to live above 
 the lowlands of vulgarity. Manufacturing 
 Americanism and Caesarian democracy tend 
 equally to the multiplying of crowds, gov- 
 erned by appetite, applauding charlatanism, 
 vowed to the worship of mammon and of
 
 228 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 pleasure, and adoring no other God than 
 force. What poor samples of mankind 
 they are who make up this growing major- 
 ity ! Oh, let us remain faithful to the 
 altars of the ideal ! It is possible that the 
 spiritualists may become the Stoics of a 
 new epoch of Csesarian rule. Materialistic 
 naturalism has the wind in its sails, and a 
 general moral deterioration is preparing. 
 No matter, so long as the salt does not lose 
 its savour, and so long as the friends of the 
 higher life maintain the fire of Vesta. The 
 wood itself may choke the flame, but if the 
 flame persists, the fire will only be the more 
 splendid in the end. The great democratic 
 deluge will not after all be able to effect 
 what the invasion of the barbarians was 
 powerless to bring about ; it will not drown 
 altogether the results of the higher culture ; 
 but we must resign ourselves to the fact 
 that it tends in the beginning to deform and 
 vulgarise everything. It is clear that aes- 
 thetic delicacy, elegance, distinction, and 
 nobleness, that atticism, urbanity, what- 
 ever is suave and exquisite, fine and subtle, 
 all that makes the charm of the higher 
 kinds of literature and of aristocratic culti- 
 vation, vanishes simultaneously with the 
 society which corresponds to it. If , as
 
 AMIKI/S JOURNAL. 229 
 
 Pascal, 16 I think, says, the more one devel- 
 ops, the more difference one observes be- 
 tween man and man, then we cannot say 
 that the democratic instinct tends to men- 
 tal development, since it tends to make a 
 man believe that the pretensions have only 
 to be the same to make the merits equal 
 also. 
 
 2Qth March 1865. I have just heard of 
 fresh cases of insubordination among the 
 students. Our youth become less and less 
 docile, and seem to take for their motto, 
 "Our master is our enemy." The boy 
 insists upon having the privileges of the 
 young man, and the young man tries to 
 keep those of the gamin. At bottom all 
 this is the natural consequence of our sys- 
 tem of levelling democracy. As soon as 
 difference of quality is, in politics, officially 
 equal to zero, the authority of age, of 
 knowledge, and of function disappears. 
 
 The only counterpoise of pure equality 
 is military discipline. In military uniform, 
 in the police court, in prison, or on the 
 execution ground, there is no reply possi- 
 ble. But is it not curious that the regime 
 of individual right should lead to nothing 
 but respect for brute strength ? Jacobinism
 
 230 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 brings with it Caesarism ; the rule of the 
 tongue leads to the rule of the sword. 
 Democracy and liberty are not one but 
 two. A republic supposes a high state of 
 morals, but no such state of morals is possi- 
 ble without the habit of respect ; and there 
 is no respect without humility. Now the 
 pretension that every man has the necessary 
 qualities of a citizen, simply because he was 
 born twenty-one years ago, is as much as 
 to say that labour, merit, virtue, character, 
 and experience are to count for nothing ; 
 and we destroy humility when we proclaim 
 that a man becomes the equal of all other 
 men, by the mere mechanical and vegetative 
 process of natural growth. Such a claim 
 annihilates even the respect for age ; for as 
 the elector of twenty -one is worth as much 
 as the elector of fifty, the boy of nineteen 
 has no serious reason to believe himself in 
 any way the inferior of his elder by one or 
 two years. Thus the fiction on which the 
 political order of democracy is based ends 
 in something altogether opposed to that 
 which democracy desires : its aiia was to 
 increase the whole sum of liberty ; but the 
 result is to diminish it for all. 
 
 The modern state is founded on the phi- 
 losophy of atomism. Nationality, public
 
 AMIEI/S JOUUXAL. 23! 
 
 spirit, tradition, national manners, disap- 
 pear like so many hollow and worn-out 
 entities ; nothing remains to create move- 
 ment but the action of molecular force and 
 of dead weight. In such a theory liberty is 
 identified with caprice, and the collective 
 reason and age-long tradition of an old 
 society are nothing more than soap-bubbles 
 which the smallest urchin may shiver with 
 a snap of the fingers. 
 
 Does this mean that I am an opponent of 
 democracy ? Not at all. Fiction for fiction, 
 it is the least harmful. But it is well not 
 to confound its promises with realities. The 
 fiction consists in the postulate of all demo- 
 cratic government, that the great majority 
 of the electors in a state are enlightened, 
 free, honest, and patriotic, whereas such 
 a postulate is a mere chimera. The major- 
 ity in any state is necessarily composed of 
 the most ignorant, the poorest, and the least 
 capable ; the state is therefore at the mercy 
 of accident and passion, and it always ends 
 by succumbing at one time or another to 
 the rash conditions which have been made 
 for its existence. A man who condemns 
 himself to live upon the tight-rope must 
 inevitably fall ; one has no need to be a 
 prophet to foresee such a result.
 
 232 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 ntv vSwp, said Pindar; the best 
 thing in the world is wisdom, and, in de- 
 fault of wisdom, science. States, churches, 
 society itself, may fall to pieces; science 
 alone has nothing to fear, until at least 
 society once more falls a prey to barbarism. 
 Unfortunately this triumph of barbarism is 
 not impossible. The victory of the socialist 
 Utopia, or the horrors of a religious war, 
 reserve for us perhaps even this lamentable 
 experience. 
 
 3d April 1865. What doctor possesses 
 such curative resources as those latent in a 
 spark of happiness or a single ray of hope ? 
 The mainspring of life is in the heart. Joy 
 is the vital air of the soul, and grief is a 
 kind of asthma complicated by atony. Our 
 dependence upon surrounding circumstances 
 increases with our own physical weakness, 
 and on the other hand, in health there is 
 liberty. Health is the first of all liberties, 
 and happiness gives us the energy which 
 is the basis of health. To make any one 
 happy, then, is strictly to augment his store 
 of being, to double the intensity of his life, 
 to reveal him to himself, to ennoble him 
 and transfigure him. Happiness does away 
 with ugliness, and even makes the beauty
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 233 
 
 of beauty. The man who doubts it, can 
 never have watched the first gleams of ten- 
 derness dawning in the clear eyes of one 
 who loves ; sunrise itself is a lesser mar- 
 vel. In Paradise, then, everybody will be 
 beautiful. For, as the righteous soul is 
 naturally beautiful, as the spiritual body is 
 but the visibility of the soul, its impalpable 
 and angelic form, and as happiness beauti- 
 fies all that it penetrates or even touches, 
 ugliness will have no more place in the 
 universe, and will disappear with grief, sin, 
 and death. 
 
 To the materialist philosopher the beauti- 
 ful is a mere accident, and therefore rare. 
 To the spiritualist philosopher the beautiful 
 is the rule, the law, the universal founda- 
 tion of things, to which every form returns 
 as soon as the force of accident is with- 
 drawn. Why are we ugly ? Because we 
 are not in the angelic state, because we are 
 evil, morose, and unhappy. 
 
 Heroism, ecstasy, prayer, love, enthu- 
 siasm, weave a halo round the brow, for 
 they are a setting free of the soul, which 
 through them gains force to make its 
 envelope transparent and shine through 
 upon all around it. Beauty is, then, a 
 phenomenon belonging to the spirituali.sa-
 
 234 AMIELS JOURNAL. 
 
 tion of matter. It is a momentary trans- 
 figuration of the privileged object or being 
 a token fallen from heaven to earth in 
 order to remind us of the ideal world. To 
 study it, is to Platonise almost inevitably. 
 As a powerful electric current can render 
 metals luminous, and reveal their essence 
 by the colour of their flame, so intense life 
 and supreme joy can make the most simple 
 mortal dazzlingly beautiful. Man, there- 
 fore, is never more truly man than in these 
 divine states. 
 
 The ideal, after all, is truer than the 
 real : for the ideal is the eternal element 
 in perishable things : it is their type, their 
 sum, their raison d'etre, their formula in 
 the book of the Creator, and therefore at 
 once the most exact and the most con- 
 densed expression of them. 
 
 llth April 1865. I have been measur- 
 ing and making a trial of the new gray 
 plaid which is to take the place of my old 
 mountain shawl. The old servant which 
 has been my companion for ten years, and 
 which recalls to me so many poetical and 
 delightful memories, pleases me better than 
 its brilliant successor, even though this 
 last has been a present from a friendly
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 235 
 
 hand. But can anything take the place of 
 the past, and have not even the inanimate 
 witnesses of our life voice and language for 
 us ? Glion, Villars, Albisbrunnen, the 
 Righi, the Chamossaire, and a hundred 
 other places, have left something of them- 
 selves behind them in the meshes of this 
 woollen stuff which makes a part of my 
 most intimate history. The shawl, be- 
 sides, is the only chivalrous article of dress 
 which is still left to the modern traveller, 
 the only thing about him which may be 
 useful to others than himself, and by means 
 of which he may still do his devoir to fair 
 women ! How many times mine has served 
 them for a cushion, a cloak, a shelter, on 
 the damp grass of the Alps, on seats of 
 hard rock, or in the sudden cool of the pine- 
 wood, during the walks, the rests, the read- 
 ings, and the chats of mountain life ! How 
 many kindly smiles it has won for me ! 
 Even its blemishes are dear to me, for each 
 darn and tear has its story, each scar is an 
 armorial bearing. This tear was made by 
 a hazel tree under Jaman that by the 
 buckle of a strap on the Frohnalp that, 
 again, by a bramble at Charnex ; and each 
 time fairy needles have repaired the in- 
 jury.
 
 236 AMI EL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 ' Mon vieux manteau, que je vous remercie 
 Car c'est a vous que je dois ces plaisirs ! ' 
 
 And has it not been to me a friend in 
 suffering, a companion in good and evil 
 fortune ? It reminds me of that centaur's 
 tunic which could not be torn off without 
 carrying away the flesh and blood of its 
 wearer. I am unwilling to give it up ; 
 whatever gratitude for the past, and what- 
 ever piety towards my vanished youth is in 
 me, seem to forbid it. The warp of this 
 rag is woven out of Alpine joys, and its 
 woof out of human affections. It also says 
 to me in its own way 
 
 ' Pauvre bouquet, fleurs aujourd'hui fanees ! 
 
 And the appeal is one of those which move 
 the heart, although profane ears neither 
 hear it nor understand it. 
 
 What a stab there is in those words, 
 thou hast been I when the sense of them 
 becomes absolutely clear to us. One feels 
 oneself sinking gradually into one's grave, 
 and the past tense sounds the knell of our 
 illusions as to ourselves. What is past is 
 past : gray hairs will never become black 
 curls again ; the forces, the gifts, the at-
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 237 
 
 tractions of youth, have vanished with our 
 young days. 
 
 1 Plus d'amour ; partant plus de joie.' 
 
 How hard it is to grow old, when we 
 have missed our life, when we have neither 
 the crown of completed manhood nor of 
 fatherhood ! How sad it is to feel the 
 mind declining before it has done its work, 
 and the body growing weaker before it has 
 seen itself renewed in those who might 
 close our eyes and honour our name ! 
 The tragic solemnity of existence strikes us 
 with terrible force, on that morning when 
 we wake to find the mournful word too late 
 ringing in our ears ! ' Too late, the sand 
 is turned, the hour is past ! Thy harvest 
 is unreaped too late ! Thou hast been 
 dreaming, forgetting, sleeping so much 
 the worse ! Every man rewards or pun- 
 ishes himself. To whom or of whom 
 wouldst thou complain ? ' Alas ! 
 
 21st April 1865 (Mornex). A morning 
 of intoxicating beauty, fresh as the feelings 
 of sixteen, and crowned with flowers like 
 a bride. The poetry of youth, of inno- 
 cence, and of love, overflowed my soul. 
 Even to the light mist hovering over the
 
 238 AMIKL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 bosom of the plain image of that tender 
 modesty which veils the features and 
 shrouds in mystery the inmost thoughts of 
 the maiden everything that I saw de- 
 lighted my eyes and spoke to my imagina- 
 tion. It was a sacred, a nuptial day ! and 
 the matin bells ringing in some distant vil- 
 lage harmonised marvellously with the 
 hymn of nature. Tray,' they said, 'and 
 love ! Adore a fatherly and beneficent 
 God.' They recalled to me the accent of 
 Haydn ; there was in them and in the land- 
 scape a childlike joyousness, a nai've grati- 
 tude, a radiant heavenly joy innocent of 
 pain and sin, like the sacred simple-hearted 
 ravishment of Eve on the first day of her 
 awakening in the new world. How good 
 a thing is feeling, admiration ! It is the 
 bread of angels, the eternal food of cheru- 
 bim and seraphim. 
 
 I have not yet felt the air so pure, so life- 
 giving, so ethereal, during the five days 
 that I have been here. To breathe is a 
 beatitude. One understands the delights of 
 a bird's existence that emancipation from 
 all encumbering weight that luminous and 
 empyrean life, floating in blue space, and 
 passing from one horizon to another with a 
 stroke of the wing. One must have a great
 
 AMI EL'S JOURNAL. 239 
 
 deal of air below one before one can be 
 conscious of such inner freedom as this, 
 such lightness of the whole being. Every 
 element has its poetry, but the poetry of 
 air is liberty. Enough ; to your work, 
 dreamer ! 
 
 30th May 1865. All snakes fascinate 
 their prey, and pure wickedness seems to 
 inherit the power of fascination granted to 
 the serpent. It stupefies and bewilders the 
 simple heart, which sees it without under- 
 standing it, which touches it without being 
 able to believe in it, and which sinks en- 
 gulfed in the problem of it, like Empedocles 
 in Etna. Non possum capere te, cape me, 
 says the Aristotelian motto. Every dimin- 
 utive of Beelzebub is an abyss, each demo- 
 niacal act is a gulf of darkness. Natural 
 cruelty, inborn perfidy and falseness, even 
 in animals, cast lurid gleams, as it were, 
 into that fathomless pit of Satanic perver- 
 sity which is a moral reality. 
 
 Nevertheless behind this thought there 
 rises another which tells me that sophistry 
 is at the bottom of human wickedness, that 
 the majority of monsters like to justify 
 themselves in their own eyes, and that the 
 first attribute of the Evil One is to be the
 
 240 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 father of lies. Before crime is committed 
 conscience must be corrupted, and every 
 bad man who succeeds in reaching a high 
 point of wickedness begins with this. It 
 is all very well to say that hatred is mur- 
 der ; the man who hates is determined to see 
 nothing in it but an act of moral hygiene. It 
 is to do himself good that he does evil, just 
 as a mad dog bites to get rid of his thirst. 
 
 To injure others while at the same time 
 knowingly injuring oneself is a step farther ; 
 evil then becomes a frenzy, which, in its 
 turn, sharpens into a cold ferocity. When- 
 ever a man, under the influence of such a dia- 
 bolical passion, surrenders himself to these 
 instincts of the wild or venomous beast he 
 must seem to the angels a madman a luna- 
 tic, who kindles his own Gehenna that he 
 may consume the world in it, or as much of 
 it as his devilish desires can lay hold upon. 
 Wickedness is for ever beginning a new 
 spiral which penetrates deeper still into the 
 abysses of abomination, for the circles of 
 hell have this property that they have 
 no end. It seems as though divine perfec- 
 tion were an infinite of the first degree, but 
 as though diabolical perfection were an 
 infinite of unknown power. But no : for 
 if so, evil would be the true God, and hell
 
 AMIKL'S JOURNAL. 241 
 
 would swallow up creation. According to 
 the Persian and the Christian faiths, good 
 is to conquer evil, and perhaps even Satan 
 himself will be restored to grace, which 
 is as much as to say that the divine order 
 will be everywhere re-established. Love 
 will be more potent than hatred ; God will 
 save His glory, and His glory is in His 
 goodness. But it is very true that all 
 gratuitous wickedness troubles the soul, 
 because it seems to make the great lines of 
 the moral order tremble within us by the 
 sudden withdrawal of the curtain which 
 hides from us the action of those dark 
 corrosive forces which have ranged them- 
 selves in battle against the divine plan. 
 
 26th June 1865. One may guess the 
 why and wherefore of a tear and yet find it 
 too subtle to give any account of. A tear 
 may be the poetical resume of so many si- 
 multaneous impressions, the quintessence of 
 so many opposing thoughts ! It is like a 
 drop of one of those precious elixirs of the 
 East which contain the life of twenty plants 
 fused into a single aroma. Sometimes it is 
 the mere overflow of the soul, the running 
 over of the cup of reverie. All that one 
 cannot or will not say, all that one refuses
 
 242 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 to confess even to oneself, confused de- 
 sires, secret trouble, suppressed grief, 
 smothered conflict, voiceless regret, the 
 emotions we have struggled against, the 
 pain we have sought to hide, our supersti- 
 tious fears, our vague sufferings, our restless 
 presentiments, our unrealised dreams, the 
 wounds inflicted upon our ideal, the dissatis- 
 fied languor, the vain hopes, the multitude 
 of small indiscernible ills which accumulate 
 slowly in a corner of the heart like water 
 dropping noiselessly from the roof of a 
 cavern, all these mysterious movements 
 of the inner life end in an instant of emo- 
 tion, and the emotion concentrates itself in 
 a tear just visible on the edge of the eyelid. 
 For the rest, tears express joy as well as 
 sadness. They are the symbol of the 
 powerlessness of the soul to restrain its 
 emotion and to remain mistress of itself. 
 Speech implies analysis ; when we are over- 
 come by sensation or by feeling analysis 
 ceases, and with it speech and liberty. Our 
 only resource, after silence and stupor, is 
 the language of action pantomime. Any 
 oppressive weight of thought carries us 
 back to a stage anterior to humanity, to a 
 gesture, a cry, a sob, and at last to swoon- 
 ing and collapse ; that is to say, incapable
 
 AMIEI/S JOURNAL. 243 
 
 of bearing the excessive strain of sensation 
 as men, we fall back successively to the 
 stage of mere animate being, and then to 
 that of the vegetable. Dante swoons at 
 every turn in his journey through hell, and 
 nothing paints better the violence of his 
 emotions and the ardour of his piety. 
 
 . . . And intense joy ? It also with- 
 draws into itself and is silent. To speak is 
 to disperse and scattf r. Words isolate and 
 localise life in a single point ; they touch only 
 the circumference of being ; they analyse, 
 they treat one thing at a time. Thus they 
 decentralise emotion, and chill it in doing 
 so. The heart would fain brood over its 
 feeling, cherishing and protecting it. Its 
 happiness is silent and meditative ; it listens 
 to its own beating and feeds religiously 
 upon itself. 
 
 8th August 1865 (Gryon sur Bex). 
 Splendid moonlight without a cloud. The 
 night is solemn and majestic. The regi- 
 ment of giants sleeps while the stars keep 
 sentinel. In the vast shadow of the valley 
 glimmer a few scattered roofs, while the 
 torrent, organ-like, swells its eternal note 
 in the depths of this mountain cathedral 
 which has the heavens for roof.
 
 244 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 A last look at this blue night and bound- 
 less landscape. Jupiter is just setting on 
 the counterscarp of the Dent du Midi. 
 From the starry vault descends an invisible 
 snow-shower of dreams, calling us to a pure 
 sleep. Nothing of voluptuous or enervat- 
 ing in this nature. All is strong, austere 
 and pure. Good night to all the world ! 
 to the unfortunate and to the happy. Best 
 and refreshment, renewal and hope ; a day 
 is dead vive le lendemain! Midnight is 
 striking. Another step -made towards the 
 tomb. 
 
 13th August 1865. I have just read 
 through again the letter of J. J. Rousseau to 
 Archbishop Beaumont with a little less 
 admiration than I felt for it was it ten or 
 twelve years ago ? This emphasis, this 
 precision, which never tires of itself, tires 
 the reader in the long run. The intensity of 
 the style produces on one the impression of 
 a treatise on mathematics. One feels the 
 need of relaxation after it in something easy, 
 natural, and gay. The language of Rous- 
 seau demands an amount of labour which 
 makes one long for recreation and relief. 
 
 But how many writers and how many 
 books descend from our Rousseau ! On
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 245 
 
 my way I noticed the points of departure 
 of Chateaubriand, Lamennais, Proudhon. 
 Proudhon, for instance, modelled the plan 
 of his great work, De la Justice dans 
 VEglise et dans la Revolution, upon the letter 
 of Rousseau to Beaumont ; his three volumes 
 are a string of letters to an archbishop ; 
 eloquence, daring, and elocution are all 
 fused in a kind of persiflage, which is the 
 foundation of the whole. 
 
 How many men we may find in one man, 
 how many styles in a great writer ! Rous- 
 seau, for instance, has created a number of 
 different genres. Imagination transforms 
 him, and he is able to play the most varied 
 parts with credit, among them even that of 
 the pure logician. But as the imagination 
 is his intellectual axis, his niaster faculty, 
 he is, as it were, in all his works only 
 half sincere, only half in earnest. We 
 feel that his talent has laid him the wager 
 of Carneades ; it will lose no cause, how- 
 ever bad, as soon as the point of honour is 
 engaged. It is indeed the temptation of all 
 talent to subordinate things to itself and 
 not itself to things ; to conquer for the 
 sake of conquest, and to put self-love in 
 the place of conscience. Talent is glad 
 enough, no doubt, to triumph in a good
 
 246 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 cause ; but it easily becomes a free lance, 
 content, whatever the cause, so long as 
 victory follows its banner. I do not know 
 even whether success in a weak and bad 
 cause is not the most flattering for talent, 
 which then divides the honours of its tri- 
 umph with nothing and no one. 
 
 Paradox is the delight of clever people 
 and the joy of talent. It is so pleasant to 
 pit oneself against the world, and to over- 
 bear mere commonplace good sense and 
 vulgar platitudes ! Talent and love of 
 truth are then not identical ; their tenden- 
 cies and their paths are different. In order 
 to make talent obey when its instinct is 
 rather to command, a vigilant moral sense 
 and great energy of character are needed. 
 The Greeks those artists of the spoken 
 or written word were artificial by the 
 time of Ulysses, sophists by the time of 
 Pericles, cunning, rhetorical, and versed in 
 all the arts of the courtier down to the end 
 of the lower empire. From the talent of 
 the nation sprang its vices. 
 
 For a man to make his mark, like Rous- 
 seau, by polemics, is to condemn himself to 
 perpetual exaggeration and conflict. Such 
 a man expiates his celebrity by a double 
 bitterness ; he is never altogether true, and
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 247 
 
 he is never able to recover the free disposal 
 of himself. To pick a quarrel with the 
 world is attractive, but dangerous. 
 
 J. J. Rousseau is an ancestor in all things. 
 It was he who founded travelling on foot 
 before Topffer, reverie before Rene, literary 
 botany before George Sand, the worship of 
 nature before Bernardin de S. Pierre, the 
 democratic theory before the Revolution of 
 1789, political discussion and theological 
 discussion before Mirabeau and Renan, the 
 science of teaching before Pestalozzi, and 
 Alpine description before De Saussure. 
 He made music the fashion, and created 
 the taste for confessions to the public. He 
 formed a new French style, the close, 
 chastened, passionate, interwoven style we 
 know so well. Nothing indeed of Rousseau 
 has been lost, and nobody has had more 
 influence than he upon the French Revolu- 
 tion, for he was the demigod of it, and 
 stands between Necker and Napoleon. No- 
 body, again, has had more than he upon 
 the nineteenth century, for Byron, Chateau- 
 briand, Madame de Stael, and George Sand 
 all descend from him. 
 
 And yet, with these extraordinary tal- 
 ents, he was an extremely unhappy man 
 why ? Because he always allowed himself
 
 248 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 to be mastered by his imagination and his 
 sensations ; because he had no judgment in 
 deciding, no self-control in acting. Regret 
 indeed on this score would be hardly reason- 
 able, for a calm, judicious, orderly Rousseau 
 would never have made so great an impres- 
 sion. He came into collision with his time : 
 hence his eloquence and his misfortunes. 
 His naive confidence in life and himself 
 ended in jealous misanthropy and hypo- 
 chondria. 
 
 What a contrast to Goethe or Voltaire, 
 and how differently they understood the 
 practical wisdom of life and the manage- 
 ment of literary gifts ! They were the able 
 men, Rousseau is a visionary. They 
 knew mankind as it is, he always repre- 
 sented it to himself either whiter or blacker 
 than it is ; and having begun by taking life 
 the wrong way, he ended in madness. In 
 the talent of Rousseau there is always 
 something unwholesome, uncertain, stormy, 
 and sophistical, which destroys the confi- 
 dence of the reader ; and the reason is no 
 I. doubt that we feel passion to have been the 
 governing force in him as a writer : passion 
 stirred his imagination, and ruled supreme 
 over his reason.
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 249 
 
 Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more 
 than an unconscious apology for our faults 
 a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to 
 hide from us our favourite sin. 
 
 The unfinished is nothing. 
 
 Great men are the true men, the men in 
 whom Nature has succeeded. They are not 
 extraordinary they are in the true order. 
 It is the other species of men who are not 
 what they ought to be. 
 
 1th January 1866. Our life is but a 
 soap-bubble hanging from a reed ; it is 
 formed, expands to its full size, clothes it- 
 self with the loveliest colours of the prism, 
 and even escapes at moments from the law 
 of gravitation ; but soon the black speck 
 appears in it, and the globe of emerald and 
 gold vanishes into space, leaving behind it 
 nothing but a simple drop of turbid water. 
 All the poets have made this comparison, 
 it is so striking and so true. To appear, to 
 shine, to disappear ; to be born, to suffer, 
 and to die ; is it not the whole sum of life, 
 for a butterfly, for a nation, for a star ? 
 
 Time is but the measure of the difficulty 
 of a conception. Pure thought has scarcely
 
 250 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 any need of time, since it perceives the two 
 ends of an idea almost at the same moment. 
 The thought of a planet can only be worked 
 out by Nature with labour and effort, but 
 supreme intelligence sums up the whole in 
 an instant. Time is then the successive 
 dispersion of being, just as speech is the 
 successive analysis of an intuition or of an 
 act of will. In itself it is relative and neg- 
 ative, and disappears within the absolute 
 being. God is outside time because He 
 thinks all thought at once ; Nature is within 
 time because she is only speech the dis- 
 cursive unfolding of each thought contained 
 within the infinite thought. But Nature 
 exhausts herself in this impossible task, for 
 the analysis of the infinite is a contradic- 
 tion. With limitless duration, boundless 
 space, and number without end, Nature 
 does at least what she can to translate into 
 visible form the wealth of the creative 
 formula. By the vastness of the abysses 
 into which she penetrates, in the effort 
 the unsuccessful effort to house and con- 
 tain the eternal thought, we may measure 
 the greatness of the divine mind. For as 
 soon as this mind goes out of itself and seeks 
 to explain itself, the effort at utterance 
 heaps universe upon universe, during myr-
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 251 
 
 lads of centuries, and still it is not ex- 
 pressed, and the great harangue must go 
 on for ever and ever. 
 
 The East prefers immobility as the form 
 of the Infinite : the West, movement. It 
 is because the West is infected by the pas- 
 sion for details, and sets proud store by in- 
 dividual worth. Like a child upon whom 
 a hundred thousand francs have been be- 
 stowed, she thinks she is multiplying her 
 fortune by counting it out in pieces of 
 twenty sous, or five centimes. Her passion 
 for progress is in great part the product of 
 an infatuation, which consists iu forgetting 
 the goal to be aimed at, and absorbing her- 
 self in the pride and delight of each tiny 
 step, one after the other. Child that she 
 is, she is even capable of confounding 
 change with improvement beginning over 
 again, with growth in perfectness. 
 
 At the bottom of the modern man there 
 is always a great thirst for self-forgetful- 
 ness, self-distraction ; he has a secret horror 
 of all which makes him feel his own little- 
 ness ; the eternal, the infinite, perfection, 
 therefore scare and terrify him. He wishes 
 to approve himself, to admire and congratu- 
 late himself ; and therefore he turns away 
 from all those problems and abysses which
 
 252 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 might recall to him his own nothingness. 
 This is what makes the real pettiness of so 
 many of our great minds, and accounts for 
 the lack of personal dignity among us 
 civilised parrots that we are as compared 
 with the Arab of the desert ; or explains 
 the growing frivolity of our masses, more 
 and more educated, no doubt, but also more 
 and more superficial in all their conceptions 
 of happiness. 
 
 Here, then, is the service which Chris- 
 tianity the Oriental element in our cul- 
 ture renders to us Westerns. It checks 
 and counterbalances our natural tendency 
 towards the passing, the finite, and the 
 changeable, by fixing the mind upon the 
 contemplation of eternal things, and by 
 Platonising our affections, which otherwise 
 would have too little outlook upon the ideal 
 world. Christianity leads us back from 
 dispersion to concentration, from worldli- 
 ness to self-recollection. It restores to our 
 souls, fevered with a thousand sordid desires, 
 nobleness, gravity, and calm. Just as sleep 
 is a bath of refreshing for our actual life, so 
 religion is a bath of refreshing for our im- 
 mortal being. What is sacred has a purify- 
 ing virtue ; religious emotion crowns the 
 brow with an aureole, and thrills the heart 
 with an ineffable joy.
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNA. 253 
 
 I think that the adversaries of religion as 
 such deceive themselves as to the needs of 
 the Western man, and that the modern 
 world will lose its balance as soon as it has 
 passed over altogether to the crude doctrine 
 of progress. We have always need of the 
 infinite, the eternal, the absolute ; and since 
 science contents itself with what is relative, 
 it necessarily leaves a void, which it is good 
 for man to fill with contemplation, worship, 
 and adoration. ' Religion,' said Bacon, ' is 
 the spice which is meant to keep life from 
 corruption,' and this is especially true to- 
 day of religion taken in the Platonist and 
 Oriental sense. A capacity for self-recol- 
 lection for withdrawal from the outward 
 to the inward is in fact the condition of 
 all noble and useful activity. 
 
 This return, indeed, to what is serious, 
 divine, and sacred, is becoming more and 
 more difficult, because of the growth of 
 critical anxiety within the Church itself, 
 the increasing worldliness of religious 
 preaching, and the universal agitation and 
 disquiet of society. But such a return is 
 more and more necessary. Without it there 
 is no inner life, and the inner life is the 
 only means whereby we may oppose a 
 profitable resistance to circumstance. If
 
 254 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 the sailor did not carry with him his own 
 temperature he could not go from the pole 
 to the equator, and remain himself in spite 
 of all. The man who has no refuge in him- 
 self, who lives, so to speak, in his front 
 rooms, in the outer whirlwind of things and 
 opinions, is not properly a personality at 
 all ; lie is not distinct, free, original, a 
 cause, in a word, some one. He is one 
 of a crowd, a taxpayer, an elector, an ano- 
 nymity, but not a man. He helps to make 
 up the mass to fill up the number of 
 human consumers or producers ; but he 
 interests nobody but the economist and the 
 statistician, who take the heap of sand as a 
 whole into consideration, without troubling 
 themselves about the uninteresting uni- 
 formity of the individual grains. The crowd 
 counts only as a massive elementary force 
 why ? because its constituent parts are 
 individually insignificant : they are all like 
 each other, and we add them up like the 
 molecules of water in a river, gauging them 
 by the fathom instead of appreciating them 
 as individuals. Such men are reckoned and 
 weighed merely as so many bodies : they 
 have never been individualised by con- 
 science, after the manner of souls. 
 
 He who floats with the current, who does
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 255 
 
 not guide himself according to higher prin- 
 ciples, who has no ideal, no convictions, 
 such a man is a mere article of the world's 
 furniture a thing moved, instead of a 
 living and moving being an echo, not 
 a voice. The man who has no inner life is 
 the slave of his surroundings, as the ba- 
 rometer is the obedient servant of the air at 
 rest, and the weathercock the humble ser- 
 vant of the air in motion. 
 
 2lst January 1866. This evening after 
 supper I did not know whither to betake 
 my solitary self. I was hungry for conver- 
 sation, society, exchange of ideas. It oc- 
 curred to me to go and see our friends the 
 
 s : they were at supper. Afterwards 
 
 we went into the salon : mother and daugh- 
 ter sat down to the piano and sang a duet 
 by Boi'eldieu. The ivory keys of the old 
 grand piano, which the mother had played 
 on before her marriage, and which has fol- 
 lowed and translated into music the varying 
 fortunes of the family, were a little loose 
 and jingling ; but the poetry of the past 
 sang in this faithful old servant, which had 
 been a friend in trouble, a companion in 
 vigils, and the echo of a lifetime of duty, 
 affection, piety, and virtue. I was more
 
 256 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 moved than I can say. It was like a scene 
 of Dickens, and I felt a rush of sympathy, 
 untouched either by egotism or by melan- 
 choly. 
 
 Twenty-five years ! It seems to me a 
 dream as far as I am concerned, and I can 
 scarcely believe my eyes, or this inanimate 
 witness to so many lustres passed away. 
 How strange a thing to have lived, and to 
 feel myself so far from a past which yet is 
 so present to me ! One does not know 
 whether one is sleeping or waking. Time 
 is but the space between our memories ; as 
 soon as we cease to perceive this space, time 
 has disappeared. The whole life of an old 
 man may appear to him no longer than an 
 hour, or less still ; and as soon as time is 
 but a moment to us, we have entered upon 
 eternity. Life is but the dream of a 
 shadow : I felt it anew this evening with 
 strange intensity. 
 
 29th January 18G6 (Nine o'clock in the 
 morning}. The gray curtain of mist has 
 spread itself again over the town : every- 
 thing is dark and dull. The bells are ring- 
 ing in the distance for some festival ; with 
 this exception everything is calm and silent. 
 Except for the crackling of the fire, no noise
 
 AMIEL S JOURNAL. 257 
 
 disturbs my solitude in this modest home, 
 the shelter of my thoughts and of my work, 
 where the man of middle age carries on the 
 life of his student-youth without the zest of 
 youth, and the sedentary professor repeats 
 day by day the habits which he formed as 
 a traveller. 
 
 What is it which makes the charm of this 
 existence outwardly so barren and empty ? 
 Liberty ! What does the absence of comfort 
 and of all else that is wanting to these 
 rooms matter to me ? These things are 
 indifferent to me. I find under this roof 
 light, quiet, shelter. I am near to a sister 
 and her children, whom I love : my material 
 life is assured that ought to be enough 
 for a bachelor. . . . Am I not, besides, a 
 creature of habit ? more attached to the 
 ennuis I know, than in love with pleasures 
 unknown to me. I am, then, free and not 
 unhappy. Then I am well off here, and I 
 should be ungrateful to complain. Nor do 
 I. It is only the heart which sighs and 
 seeks for something more and better. The 
 heart is an insatiable glutton, as we all 
 know, and for the rest, who is without 
 yearnings ? It is our destiny here below. 
 .Only some go through torments and troubles 
 in order to satisfy themselves, arid all with-
 
 258 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 out success : others foresee the inevitable 
 result, and by a timely resignation save 
 themselves a barren and fruitless effort. 
 Since we cannot be happy, why give our- 
 selves so much trouble ? It is best to limit 
 oneself to what is strictly necessary, to live 
 austerely and by rule, to content oneself 
 with a little, and to attach no value to 
 anything but peace of conscience and a 
 sense of duty done. 
 
 It is true that this itself is no small 
 ambition, and that it only lands us in 
 another impossibility. No, the simplest 
 course is to submit oneself wholly and 
 altogether to God. Everything else, as 
 saith the Preacher, is but vanity and vexa- 
 tion of spirit. 
 
 It is a long while now since this has been 
 plain to me, and since this religious re- 
 nunciation has been sweet and familiar to 
 me. It is the outward distractions of life, 
 the examples of the world, and the irresisti- 
 ble influence exerted upon us by the current 
 of things which make us forget the wisdom 
 we have acquired and the principles we 
 have adopted. That is why life is such 
 weariness ! This eternal beginning over 
 again is tedious, even to repulsion. It 
 would be so good to go to sleep when we
 
 AMIEI/S JOURNAL. 259 
 
 have gathered the fruit of experience, when 
 we are no longer in opposition to the 
 supreme will, when we have broken loose 
 from self, when we are at peace with all 
 men. Instead of this, the old round of 
 temptations, disputes, ennuis, and forget- 
 tings, has to be faced again and again, and 
 we fall back into prose, into commonness, 
 into vulgarity. How melancholy, how hu- 
 miliating ! The poets are wise in with- 
 drawing their heroes more quickly from 
 the strife, and in not dragging them after 
 victory along the common rut of barren 
 days. ' Whom the gods love die young,' 
 said the proverb of antiquity. 
 
 Yes, but it is our secret self-love which is 
 set upon this favour from on high ; such 
 may be our desire, but such is not the will 
 of God. We are to be exercised, humbled, 
 tried, and tormented to the end. It is our 
 patience which is the touchstone of our 
 virtue. To bear with life even when illusion 
 and hope are gone ; to accept this position 
 of perpetual war, while at the same time 
 loving only peace ; to stay patiently in the 
 world, even when it repels us as a place of 
 low company, and seems to us a mere arena 
 of bad passions ; to remain faithful to one's 
 own faith without breaking with the fol-
 
 260 AMIEI/S JOURNAL. 
 
 lowers of the false gods ; to make no 
 attempt to escape from the human hospital, 
 long-suffering and patient as Job upon his 
 dunghill ; this is duty. When life ceases 
 to be a promise it does not cease to be a 
 task ; its true name even is Trial. 
 
 2d April 1866 ( Mornex) . The snow is 
 melting and a damp fog is spread over 
 everything. The asphalte gallery which 
 runs along the salon is a sheet of quivering 
 water starred incessantly by the hurrying 
 drops falling from the sky. It seems as if 
 one could touch the horizon with one's 
 hand, and the miles of country which were 
 yesterday visible are all hidden under a 
 thick gray curtain. 
 
 This imprisonment transports me to 
 Shetland, to Spitzbergen, to Norway, to 
 the Ossianic countries of mist, where man, 
 thrown back upon himself, feels his heart 
 beat more quickly and his thought expand 
 more freely so long, at least, as he is not 
 frozen and congealed by cold. Fog has 
 certainly a poetry of its own a grace, a 
 dreamy charm. It does for the daylight 
 what a lamp does for us at night ; it turns 
 the mind towards meditation ; it throws the 
 soul back on itself. The sun, as it were,
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 261 
 
 sheds us abroad in Nature, scatters and dis- 
 perses us ; mist draws us together and con- 
 centrates us it is cordial, homely, charged 
 with feeling. The poetry of the sun has 
 something of the epic in it ; that of fog and 
 mist is elegiac and religious. Pantheism is 
 the child of light ; mist engenders faith in 
 near protectors. When the great world is 
 shut off from us, the house becomes itself 
 a small universe. Shrouded in perpetual 
 mist, men love each other better; for the 
 only reality then is the family, and, within 
 the family, the heart; and the greatest 
 thoughts come from the heart, so says 
 the moralist. 
 
 6th April 1866. The novel by Miss 
 Mulock, John Halifax, Gentleman, is a 
 bolder book than it seems, for it attacks 
 in the English way the social problem of 
 equality. And the solution reached is that 
 every one may become a gentleman, even 
 though he may be born in the gutter. In 
 its way the story protests against conven- 
 tional superiorities, and shows that true 
 nobility consists in character, in personal 
 merit, in moral distinction, in elevation of 
 feeling and of language, in dignity of life, 
 and in self-respect. This is better than
 
 262 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 Jacobinism, and the opposite of the mere 
 brutal passion for equality. Instead of 
 dragging everybody down, the author sim- 
 ply proclaims the right of every one to rise. 
 A man may be born rich and noble he is 
 not born a gentleman. This word is the 
 Shibboleth of England : it divides her into 
 two halves, and civilised society into two 
 castes. Among gentlemen courtesy, 
 equality, and politeness ; towards those 
 below contempt, disdain, coldness, and 
 indifference. It is the old separation be- 
 tween the ingenui and all others ; between 
 the Aei50e/>oi and the fiAvavo-ot, the continu- 
 ation of the feudal division between the 
 gentry and the roturiers. 
 
 What, then, is a gentleman ? Apparently 
 he is the free man, the man who is stronger 
 than things, and believes in personality as 
 superior to all the accessory attributes of 
 fortune, such as rank and power, and as 
 constituting what is essential, real, and in- 
 trinsically valuable in the individual. Tell 
 me what you are, and I will tell you what 
 you are worth. 'God and my Right'; 
 there is the only motto he believes in. 
 Such an ideal is happily opposed to that 
 vulgar ideal which is equally English, the 
 ideal of wealth, with its formula, 'How
 
 AMIEI/S JOURNAL. 263 
 
 much is he worth?' In a country where 
 poverty is a crime, it is good to be able to 
 say that a nabob need not as such be a 
 gentleman. The mercantile ideal and the 
 chivalrous ideal counterbalance each other ; 
 and if the one produces the ugliness of 
 English society and its brutal side, the 
 other serves as a compensation. 
 
 The gentleman, then, is the man who is 
 master of himself , who respects himself, and 
 makes others respect him. The essence of 
 gentlemanliness is self-rule, the sovereignty 
 of the soul. It means a character which 
 possesses itself, a force which governs itself, 
 a liberty which affirms and regulates itself, 
 according to the type of true dignity. Such 
 an ideal is closely akin to the Roman type 
 of dignitas cum auctoritate. It is more 
 moral than intellectual, and is particularly 
 suited to England, which is pre-eminently 
 the country of will. But from self-respect 
 a thousand other things are derived such 
 as the care of a man's person, of his lan- 
 guage, of his manners ; watchfulness over 
 his body and over his soul ; dominion over 
 his instincts and his passions ; the effort to 
 be self-sufficient ; the pride which will accept 
 no favour ; carefulness not to expose him- 
 self to any humiliation or mortification,
 
 264 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 and to maintain himself independent of any 
 human caprice ; the constant protection of 
 his honour and of his self-respect. Such a 
 condition of sovereignty, insomuch as it is 
 only easy to the man who is well born, well 
 bred, and rich, was naturally long identi- 
 fied with birth, rank, and above all with 
 property. The idea 'gentleman' is, then, 
 derived from feudality ; it is, as it were, a 
 milder version of the seigneur. 
 
 In order to lay himself open to no 
 reproach, a gentleman will keep himself 
 irreproachable ; in order to be treated with 
 consideration, he will always be careful 
 himself to observe distances, to apportion 
 respect, and to observe all the gradations of 
 conventional politeness, according to rank, 
 age, and situation. Hence it follows that 
 he will be imperturbably cautious in the 
 presence of a stranger, whose name and 
 worth are unknown to him, and to whom 
 he might perhaps show too much or too 
 little courtesy. He ignores and avoids him ; 
 if he is approached, he turns away ; if he 
 is addressed, he answers shortly and with 
 hauteur. His politeness is not human and 
 general, but individual and relative to 
 persons. This is why every Englishman 
 contains two different men, one turned
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 265 
 
 towards the world, and another. The first, 
 the outer man, is a citadel, a cold and an- 
 gular wall ; the other, the inner man, is a 
 sensible, affectionate, cordial, and loving 
 creature. Such a type is only formed in a 
 moral climate full of icicles, where, in the 
 face of an indifferent world, the hearth 
 alone is hospitable. 
 
 So that an analysis of the national type 
 of gentleman reveals to us the nature and 
 the history of the nation, as the fruit reveals 
 the tree. 
 
 7th April 1866. If philosophy is the art 
 of understanding, it is evident that it must 
 begin by saturating itself with facts and 
 realities, and that premature abstraction 
 kills it, just as the abuse of fasting destroys 
 the body at the age of growth. Besides, j 
 we only understand that which is already 
 within us. To understand is to possess the : ' 
 thing understood, first by sympathy and 
 then by intelligence. Instead, then, of first 
 dismembering and dissecting the object to 
 be conceived, we should begin by laying 
 hold of it in its ensemble, then in its forma- 
 tion, last of all in its parts. The procedure 
 is the same, whether we study a watch or a 
 plant, a work of art or a character. We
 
 266 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 must study, respect, and question what we 
 want to know, instead of massacring it. 
 We must assimilate ourselves to things and 
 surrender ourselves to them ; we must open 
 our minds with docility to their influence, 
 and steep ourselves in their spirit and their 
 distinctive form, before we offer violence to 
 them by dissecting them. 
 
 \\tli April 1866. Panic, confusion, sauve 
 qui pent on the Bourse at Paris. In our 
 epoch of individualism, and of ' each man 
 for himself and God for all,' the movements 
 of the public funds are all that now repre- 
 sent to us the beat of the common heart. 
 The solidarity of interests which they imply 
 counterbalances the separateness of modem 
 affections, and the obligatory sympathy 
 they impose upon us recalls to one a little 
 the patriotism which bore the forced taxes 
 of old days. We feel ourselves bound up 
 with and compromised in all the world's 
 affairs, and we must interest ourselves 
 whether we will or no in the terrible ma- 
 chine whose wheels may crush us at any 
 moment. Credit produces a restless society, 
 trembling perpetually for the security of its 
 artificial basis. Sometimes Society may 
 forget for a while that it is dancing upon
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 267 
 
 a volcano, but the least rumour of war re- 
 calls the fact to it inexorably. Card-houses 
 are easily ruined. 
 
 All this anxiety is intolerable to those 
 humble little investors who, having no wish 
 to be rich, ask only to be able to go about 
 their work in peace. But no ; tyrant that 
 it is, the world cries to us, 'Peace, peace, 
 there is no peace : whether you will or 
 no you shall suffer and tremble with me ! ' 
 To accept humanity, as one does Nature, 
 and to resign oneself to the will of an indi- 
 vidual, as one does to destiny, is not easy. 
 We bow to the government of God, but we 
 turn against the despot. No man likes to 
 share in the shipwreck of a vessel in which 
 he has been embarked by violence, and 
 which has been steered contrary to his wish 
 and his opinion. And yet such is perpet- 
 ually the case in life. We all of us pay for v 
 the faults of the few. 
 
 Human solidarity is a fact more evident 
 and more certain than personal responsi- 
 bility, and even than individual liberty. 
 Our dependence has it over our indepen- 
 dence ; for we are only independent in will 
 and desire, while we are dependent upon 
 our health, upon Nature and society ; in 
 short, upon everything in us and without
 
 268 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 us. Our liberty is confined to one single 
 point. We may protest against all these 
 oppressive and fatal powers ; we may say, 
 Crush me, you will never win my con- 
 sent ! We may, by an exercise of will, 
 throw ourselves into opposition to necessity, 
 and refuse it homage and obedience. In 
 that consists our moral liberty. But except 
 for that, we belong, body and goods, to the 
 world. We are its playthings, as the dust 
 is the plaything of the wind, or the dead 
 leaf of the floods. God at least respects our 
 dignity, but the world rolls us contemptu- 
 ously along in its merciless waves, in order 
 to make it plain that we are its thing and 
 its chattel. 
 
 All theories of the nullity of the individ- 
 ual, all pantheistic and materialist concep- 
 tions, are now but so much forcing of an 
 open door, so much slaying of the slain. 
 As soon as we cease to glorify this imper- 
 ceptible point of conscience, and to uphold 
 the value of it, the individual becomes 
 naturally a mere atom in the human mass, 
 which is but an atom in the planetary 
 mass, which is a mere nothing in the uni- 
 verse. The individual is then but a nothing 
 of the third power, with a capacity for 
 measuring its nothingness ! Thought leads
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 269 
 
 to resignation. Self-doubt leads to passiv- 
 ity, and passivity to servitude. From this 
 a voluntary submission is the only escape, 
 that is to say, a state of dependence relig- 
 iously accepted, a vindication of ourselves 
 as free beings, bowed before duty only. 
 Duty thus becomes our principle of action, 
 our source of energy, the guarantee of our 
 partial independence of the world, the con- 
 dition of our dignity, the sign of our nobil- 
 ity. The world can neither make me will 
 nor make me will my duty ; here I am my 
 own and only master, and treat with it as 
 sovereign with sovereign. It holds my 
 body in its clutches ; but my soul escapes 
 and braves it. My thought and my love, 
 my faith and my hope, are beyond its reach. 
 My true being, the essence of my nature, 
 myself, remain inviolate and inaccessible 
 to the world's attacks. In this respect we 
 are greater than the universe, which has 
 mass and not will ; we become once more 
 independent even in relation to the human 
 mass, which also can destroy nothing more 
 than our happiness, just as the mass of the 
 universe can destroy nothing more than our 
 body. Submission, then, is not defeat ; 
 on the contrary, it is strength.
 
 270 AMIF.L'S JOURNAL. 
 
 28th April 1866. I have just read the 
 proces-verbal of the Conference of Pastors 
 held on the loth and 16th of April at Paris. 
 The question of the supernatural has split 
 the Church of France in two. The Lib- 
 erals insist upon individual right ; the 
 orthodox upon the notion of a Church. 
 And it is true indeed that a Church is an 
 affirmation, that it subsists by the positive 
 element in 'it, by definite belief ; the pure 
 critical element dissolves it. Protestantism 
 is a combination of two factors the au- 
 thority of the Scriptures and free inquiry ; 
 as soon as one of these factors is threatened 
 or disappears, Protestantism disappears ; a 
 new form of Christianity succeeds it, as, 
 for example, the Church of the Brothers 
 of the Holy Ghost, or that of Christian 
 Theism. As far as I am concerned, I see 
 nothing objectionable in such a result, but 
 I think the friends of the Protestant Church 
 are logical in their refusal to abandon the 
 Apostles' Creed, and the individualists are 
 illogical in imagining that they can keep 
 Protestantism and do away with authority. 
 
 It is a question of method which sepa- 
 rates the two camps. I am fundamentally 
 separated from both. As I understand it, 
 Christianity is above all religious, and re-
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 271 
 
 ligion is not a method, it is a life, a higher 
 and supernatural life, mystical in its root 
 and practical in its fruits, a communion 
 with God, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a 
 love which radiates, a force which acts, a 
 happiness which overflows. Religion, in 
 short, is a state of the soul. These quarrels 
 as to method have their value, but it is a 
 secondary value ; they will never console 
 a heart or edify a conscience. This is why 
 I feel so little interest in these ecclesiastical 
 struggles. Whether the one party or the 
 other gain the majority and the victory, 
 what is essential is in no way profited, for 
 dogma, criticism, the Church, are not relig- 
 ion ; and it is religion, the sense of a divine 
 life, which matters. ' Seek ye first the 
 kingdom of God and his righteousness, and 
 all these things shall be added unto you.' 
 The most holy is the most Christian ; this 
 will always be the criterion which is least 
 deceptive. ' By this ye shall know my 
 disciples, if they have love one to another. ' 
 As is the worth of the individual, so is 
 the worth of his religion. Popular instinct 
 and philosophic reason are at one on this 
 point. Be good and pious, patient and 
 heroic, faithful and devoted, humble and 
 charitable ; the catechism which has taught
 
 2/2 AMIEI/9 JOURNAL. 
 
 you these things is beyond the reach of 
 blame. By religion we live in God ; but all 
 these quarrels lead to nothing but life with 
 men or with cassocks. There is therefore 
 no equivalence between the two points of 
 view. 
 
 Perfection as an end, a noble example 
 for sustenance on the way, the divine 
 proved by its own excellence, is not this 
 the whole of Christianity ? God manifest 
 in all men, is not this its true goal and con- 
 summation ? 
 
 20th September 1866. My old friends 
 are, I am afraid, disappointed in me ; they 
 think that I do nothing, that I have deceived 
 their expectations and their hopes. I too 
 am disappointed. All that would restore 
 my self-respect, and give me a right to be 
 proud of myself, seems to me unattainable 
 and impossible, and I fall back upon triv- 
 ialities, gay talk, distractions. I am always 
 equally lacking in hope, in faith, in resolu- 
 tion. The only difference is that my weak- 
 ness takes sometimes the form of despairing 
 melancholy and sometimes that of a cheer- 
 ful quietism. And yet I read, I talk, I 
 teach, I write, but to no effect ; it is as 
 though I were walking in my sleep. The
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 273 
 
 Buddhist tendency in me blunts the faculty 
 of free self-government and weakens the 
 power of action ; self-distrust kills all de- 
 sire, and reduces me again and again to a 
 fundamental scepticism. I care for noth- 
 ing but the serious and the real, and I can 
 take neither myself nor my circumstances 
 seriously. I hold my own personality, my 
 own aptitudes, my own aspirations, too 
 cheap. I am for ever making light of my- 
 self in the name of all that is beautiful and 
 admirable. In a word, I bear within me 
 a perpetual self-detractor, and this is what 
 takes all spring out of my life. I have 
 been passing the evening with Charles 
 Heim, who, in his sincerity, has never paid 
 me any literary compliment. As I love 
 and respect him, he is forgiven. Self-love 
 has nothing to do with it and yet it would 
 be sweet to be praised by so upright a 
 friend ! It is depressing to feel oneself 
 silently disapproved of ; I will try to satisfy 
 him, and to think of a book which may 
 please both him and Scherer. 
 
 6th October 1866. I have just picked up 
 on the stairs a little yellowish cat, ugly and 
 pitiable. Now, curled up in a chair at my 
 side, he seems perfectly happy, and as if
 
 274 AMI EL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 he wanted nothing more. Far from being 
 wild, nothing will induce him to leave me, 
 and he has followed me from room to room 
 all day. I have nothing at all that is eata- 
 ble in the house, but what I have I give him 
 that is to say, a look and a caress and 
 that seems to be enough for him, at least 
 for the moment. Small animals, small 
 children, young lives, they are all the 
 same as far as the need of protection and 
 of gentleness is concerned. . . . People 
 have sometimes said to me that weak and 
 feeble creatures are happy with me. Per- 
 haps such a fact has to do with some special 
 gift or beneficent force which flows from 
 one when one is in the sympathetic state. 
 I have often a direct perception of such a 
 force ; but I am no ways proud of it, nor do 
 I look upon it as anything belonging to me, 
 but simply as a natural gift. It seems to 
 me sometimes as though I could woo the 
 birds to build in my beard as they do in the 
 headgear of some cathedral saint ! After 
 all, this is the natural state and the true 
 relation of man towards all inferior creat- 
 ures. If man was what he ought to be he 
 would be adored by the animals, of whom 
 he is too often the capricious and sangui- 
 nary tyrant. The legend of Saint Francis of
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 275 
 
 Assisi is not so legendary as we think ; 
 and it is not so certain that it was the wild 
 beasts who attacked man first. . . . But" 
 to exaggerate nothing, let us leave on one 
 side the beasts of prey, the carnivora, and 
 those that live by rapine and slaughter. 
 How many other species are there, by thou- 
 sands and tens of thousands, who ask peace 
 from us and with whom we. persist in wag- 
 ing a brutal war ? Our race is by far the 
 most destructive, the most hurtful, and 
 the most formidable, of all the species of 
 the planet. It has even invented for its 
 own use the right of the strongest, a di- 
 vine right which quiets its conscience in the 
 face of the conquered and the oppressed ; 
 we have outlawed all that lives except our- 
 selves. Kevolting and manifest abuse ; no- 
 torious and contemptible breach of the law 
 of justice ! The bad faith and hypocrisy of 
 it are renewed on a small scale by all suc- 
 cessful usurpers. We are always making 
 God our accomplice, that so we may legalise 
 our own iniquities. Every successful mas- 
 sacre is consecrated by a Te Deum, and the 
 clergy have never been wanting in benedic- 
 tions for any victorious enormity. So that 
 what, in the beginning, was the relation of 
 man to the animal becomes that of people 
 to people and man to man.
 
 276 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 If so, we have before us an expiation too 
 seldom noticed but altogether just. All 
 crime must be expiated, and slavery is the 
 repetition among men of the sufferings bru- 
 tally imposed by man upon other living 
 beings ; it is the theory bearing its fruits. 
 The right of man over the animal seems 
 to me to cease -with the need of defence and 
 of subsistence. So that all unnecessary 
 murder and torture are cowardice and even 
 crime. The animal renders a service of 
 utility : man in return owes it a meed of 
 protection and of kindness. In a word, the 
 animal has claims on man, and the man has 
 duties to the animal. Buddhism, no doubt, 
 exaggerates this truth, but the Westerns 
 leave it out of count altogether. A day will 
 come, however, when our standard will be 
 higher, our humanity more exacting, than 
 it is to-day. Homo homini lupus, said 
 Hobbes : the time will come when man will 
 be humane even for the wolf homo htpo 
 homo. 
 
 30th December 1866. Scepticism pure 
 and simple as the only safeguard of intel- 
 lectual independence, such is the point of 
 view of almost all our young men of talent. 
 Absolute freedom from credulity seems to
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 277 
 
 them the glory of man. My impression has 
 always been that this excessive detachment 
 of the individual from all received preju- 
 dices and opinions in reality does the work 
 of tyranny. This evening, in listening to 
 the conversation of some of our most culti- 
 vated men, I thought of the Renaissance, of 
 the Ptolemies, of the reign of Louis XV., 
 of all those times in which the exultant 
 anarchy of the intellect has had despotic 
 government for its correlative, and, on the 
 other hand, of England, of Holland, of the 
 United States, countries in which political 
 liberty is bought at the price of necessary 
 prejudices and a priori opinions. 
 
 That society may hold together at all, we 
 must have a principle of cohesion that is 
 to say, a common belief, principles recog- 
 nised and undisputed, a series of practical 
 axioms and institutions which are not at the 
 mercy of every caprice of public opinion. 
 By treating everything as if it were an open 
 question, we endanger everything. Doubt 
 is the accomplice of tyranny. ' If a people 
 will not believe it must obey,' said Tocque- 
 ville. All liberty implies dependence, and 
 has its conditions ; this is what negative 
 and quarrelsome minds are apt to forget. 
 They think they can do away with religion ;
 
 278 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 they do not know that religion is indestruc- 
 tible, and that the question is simply, Which 
 will you have ? Voltaire plays the game of 
 Loyola, and vice versa. Between these two 
 there is no peace, nor can there be any for 
 the society which has once thrown itself 
 into the dilemma. The only solution lies 
 in a free religion, a religion of free choice 
 and free adhesion. 
 
 23d! December 1866. It is raining over 
 the whole sky as far at least as I can see 
 from my high point of observation. All is 
 gray from the Saleve to the Jura, and from 
 the pavement to the clouds ; everything that 
 one sees or touches is gray ; colour, life, 
 and gaiety are dead each living thing 
 seems to lie hidden in its own particular 
 shell. What are the birds doing in such 
 weather as this ? We who have food and 
 shelter, fire on the hearth, books around us, 
 portfolios of engravings close at hand, a 
 nestful of dreams in the heart, and a whirl- 
 wind of thoughts ready to rise from the ink- 
 bottle, we find Nature ugly and triste, 
 and turn away our eyes from it ; but you, 
 poor sparrows, what can you be doing ? 
 Bearing and hoping and waiting ? After 
 all, is not this the task of each one of us ?
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 279 
 
 I have just been reading over a volume 
 of this Journal, and feel a little ashamed of 
 the languid complaining tone of so much of 
 it. These pages reproduce me very imper- 
 fectly, and there are many things in me of 
 which I find no trace in them. I suppose 
 it is because, in the first place, sadness takes 
 up the pen more readily than joy ; and, in 
 the next, because I depend so much upon 
 surrounding circumstances. When there is 
 no call upon me, and nothing to put me to 
 the test, I fall back into melancholy ; and 
 so the practical man, the cheerful man, the 
 literary man, does not appear in these pages. 
 The portrait is lacking in proportion and 
 breadth ; it is one-sided, and wants a centre ; 
 it has, as it were, been painted from too 
 near. 
 
 The true reason why we know ourselves 
 so little lies in the difficulty we find in 
 standing at a proper distance from our- 
 selves, in taking up the right point of view, 
 so that the details may help rather than 
 hide the general effect. We must learn to 
 look at ourselves socially and historically if 
 we wish to have an extra idea of our rela- 
 tive worth, and to look at our life as a 
 whole, or at least as one complete period 
 of life, if we wish to know what we are
 
 280 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 and what we are not. The ant which 
 crawls to and fro over a face, the fly perched 
 upon the forehead of a maiden, touch them 
 indeed but do not see them, for they never 
 embrace the whole at a glance. 
 
 Is it wonderful that misunderstandings 
 should play so great a part in the world, 
 when one sees how difficult it is to produce 
 a faithful portrait of a person whom one 
 has been studying for more than twenty 
 years ? Still, the effort has not been al- 
 together lost ; its reward has been the 
 sharpening of one's perceptions of the outer 
 world. If I have any special power of 
 appreciating different shades of mind, I 
 owe it no doubt to the analysis I have so 
 perpetually and unsuccessfully practised on 
 myself. In fact, I have always regarded 
 myself as matter of study, and what has 
 interested me most in myself has been the 
 pleasure of having under my hand a man, 
 a person, in whom, as an authentic speci- 
 men of human nature, I could follow, with- 
 out importunity or indiscretion, all the 
 metamorphoses, the secret thoughts, the 
 heart-beats, and the temptations of hu- 
 manity. My attention has been drawn to 
 myself impersonally and philosophically. 
 One uses what one has, and one must shape 
 one's arrow out of one's own wood.
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 281 
 
 To arrive at a faithful portrait, succession 
 must be converted into simultaneousness, 
 plurality into unity, and all the changing 
 phenomena must be traced back to their 
 essence. There are ten men in me, accord- 
 ing to time, place, surrounding, and occa- 
 sion ; and in their restless diversity I am 
 for ever escaping myself. Therefore, what- 
 ever I may reveal of my past, of my Jour- 
 nal, or of myself, is of no use to him who 
 is without the poetic intuition, and cannot 
 recompose me as a whole, with or in spite 
 of the elements which I confide to him. 
 
 I. feel myself a chameleon, a kaleidoscope, 
 a Proteus ; changeable in every way, open 
 to every kind of polarisation ; fluid, virtual, 
 and therefore latent latent even in mani- 
 festation, and absent even in presentation. 
 I am a spectator, so to speak, of the molec- 
 ular whirlwind which men call individual 
 life ; I am conscious of an incessant meta- 
 morphosis, an irresistible movement of 
 existence, which is going on within me. I 
 am sensible of the flight, the revival, the 
 modification, of all the atoms of my being, 
 all the particles of my river, all the radia- 
 tions of my special force. 
 
 This phenomenology of myself serves 
 both as the magic lantern of my own des-
 
 282 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 tiny, and as a window opened upon the 
 mystery of the world. I am, or rather, my 
 sensible consciousness is concentrated upon 
 this ideal standing-point, this invisible 
 threshold, as it were, whence one hears the 
 impetuous passage of time, rushing and 
 foaming as it flows out into the changeless 
 ocean of eternity. After all the bewilder- 
 ing distractions of life, after having drowned 
 myself in a multiplicity of trifles and in the 
 caprices of this fugitive existence, yet with- 
 out ever attaining to self-intoxication or 
 self-delusion, I come again upon the fathom- 
 less abyss, the silent and melancholy cavern 
 where dwell 'Die Mutter," 1 ll where sleeps 
 that which neither lives nor dies, that which 
 has neither movement, nor change, nor 
 extension, nor form, and which lasts when 
 all else passes away. 
 
 Dans 1'eternel azur de 1'insondable espace 
 S'enveloppe de paix notre globe agitee : 
 Homme, enveloppe ainsi tes jours, reve qui 
 
 passe, 
 Du calme firmament de ton e'ternite'. 
 
 (H. F. AMIEL, Penseroso.) 
 
 GENEVA, llth January 1867. 
 
 ' Eheu f ugaces, Postume, Postume, 
 Labuutur anui. . . .'
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 283 
 
 I hear the drops of my life falling distinctly 
 one by one into the devouring abyss of 
 eternity. I feel my days flying before the 
 pursuit of death. All that remains to me 
 of weeks, or months, or years, in which I 
 may drink in the light of the sun, seems to 
 me no more than a single night, a summer 
 night, which scarcely counts, because it 
 will so soon be at an end. 
 
 Death ! Silence ! Eternity ! What mys- 
 teries, what names of terror to the being 
 who longs for happiness, immortality, per- 
 fection ! Where shall I be to-morrow in 
 a little while when the breath of life has 
 forsaken me ? Where will those be whom 
 I love ? Whither are we all going ? The 
 eternal problems rise before us in their im- 
 placable solemnity. Mystery on all sides ! 
 And faith the only star in this darkness and 
 uncertainty ! 
 
 No matter ! so long as the world is the 
 work of eternal goodness, and so long as 
 conscience has not deceived us. To give 
 happiness and to do good, there is our only 
 law, our anchor of salvation, our beacon 
 light, our reason for existing. All religions 
 may crumble away ; so long as this survives 
 we have still an ideal, and life is worth 
 living.
 
 284 AMIKL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 Nothing can lessen the dignity and value 
 of humanity so long as the religion of love, 
 of unselfishness and devotion endures ; and 
 none can destroy the altars of this faith for 
 us so long as we feel ourselves still capable 
 of love. 
 
 15th April 1867 (Seven A.M.) Rain 
 storms in the night the weather is show- 
 ing its April caprice. From the window 
 one sees a gray and melancholy sky, and 
 roofs glistening with rain. The spring is at 
 its work. Yes, and the implacable flight of 
 time is driving us towards the grave. Well 
 
 each has his turn ! 
 
 ' Allez, allez, 6 jeunes filles, 
 Cueillir des bleuets dans les ble's ! ' 
 
 I am overpowered with melancholy, lan- 
 guor, lassitude. A longing for the last 
 great sleep has taken possession of me, 
 combated, however, by a thirst for sacrifice 
 
 sacrifice heroic and long-sustained. 
 Are not both simply ways of escape from 
 oneself ? ' Sleep, or self -surrender, that I 
 may die to self ! ' such is the cry of the 
 heart. Poor heart ! 
 
 17th April 1867. Awake, thou that 
 sleepest, and rise from the dead.
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 285 
 
 What needs perpetually refreshing and 
 renewing in me is my store of courage. By 
 nature I am so easily disgusted with life, I 
 fall a prey so readily to despair and pessi- 
 mism. 
 
 ' The happy man, as this century is able 
 
 to produce him,' according to Madame , 
 
 is a Weltmude, one who keeps a brave face 
 before the world, and distracts himself as 
 best he can from dwelling upon the thought 
 which is hidden at his heart a thought 
 which has in it the sadness of death the 
 thought of the irreparable. The outward 
 peace of such a man is but despair well 
 masked ; his gaiety is the carelessness of a 
 heart which has lost all its illusions, and has 
 learned to acquiesce in an indefinite putting 
 off of happiness. His wisdom is really ac- 
 climatisation to sacrifice, his gentleness 
 should be taken to mean privation patiently 
 borne rather than resignation. In a word, 
 he submits to an existence in which he feels 
 no joy, and he cannot hide from himself 
 that all the alleviations with which it is 
 strewn cannot satisfy the soul. The thirst 
 for the infinite is never anpeased. God is 
 wanting. 
 
 To win true peace, a man needs to feel 
 himself directed, pardoned, and sustained
 
 286 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 by a supreme power, to feel himself in the 
 right road, at the point where God would 
 have him be, in order with God and the 
 universe. This faith gives strength and 
 calm. I have not got it. All that is, seems 
 to me arbitrary and fortuitous. It may as 
 well not be, as be. Nothing in my own cir- 
 cumstances seems to me providential. All 
 appears to me left to my own responsibility, 
 and it is this thought which disgusts me 
 with the government of my own life. I 
 longed to give myself up wholly to some 
 great love, some noble end ; I would will- 
 ingly have lived and died for the ideal 
 that is to say, for a holy cause. But once 
 the impossibility of this made clear to me, 
 I have never since taken a serious interest 
 in anything, and have, as it were, but 
 amused myself with a destiny of which I 
 was no longer the dupe. 
 
 Sybarite and dreamer, will you go on like 
 this to the end for ever tossed backwards 
 and forwards between duty and happiness, 
 incapable of choice, of action ? Is not life 
 the test of our moral force, and all these 
 inward waverings, are they not temptations 
 of the soul ? 
 
 6th September 1867, Weissenstein 16 (Ten
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 287 
 
 o'clock in the morning'). A marvellous 
 view of blinding and bewildering beauty. 
 Above a milky sea of cloud, flooded with 
 morning light, the rolling waves of which 
 are beating up against the base of the 
 wooded steeps of the Weissenstein, the vast 
 circle of the Alps soars to a sublime height. 
 The eastern side of the horizon is drowned 
 in the splendours of the rising mists ; but 
 from the Todi westward, the whole chain 
 floats pure and clear between the milky 
 plain and the pale blue sky. The giant as- 
 sembly is sitting in council above the valleys 
 and the lakes still submerged in vapour. 
 The Clariden, the Spannorter, the Titlis, 
 then the Bernese colossi from the Wetter- 
 horn to the Diablerets, then the peaks of 
 Vaud, Valais, and Fribourg, and beyond 
 these high chains the two kings of the Alps, 
 Mont Blanc, of a pale pink, and the bluish 
 point of Monte Eosa, peering out through 
 a cleft in the Doldenhorn : such is the 
 composition of the great snowy amphi- 
 theatre. The outline of the horizon takes 
 all possible forms : needles, ridges, battle- 
 ments, pyramids, obelisks, teeth, fangs, 
 pincers, horns, cupolas ; the mountain pro- 
 file sinks, rises again, twists and sharpens 
 itself in a thousand ways, but always so as
 
 288 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 to maintain an angular and serrated line. 
 Only the inferior and secondary groups of 
 mountains show any large curves or sweep- 
 ing undulations of form. The Alps are 
 more than an upheaval ; they are a tearing 
 and gashing of the earth's surface. Their 
 granite peaks bite into the sky instead of 
 caressing it. The Jura, on the contrary, 
 spreads its broad back complacently under 
 the blue dome of air. 
 
 Eleven o'clock. The sea of vapour has 
 risen and attacked the mountains, which 
 for a long time overlooked it like so many 
 huge reefs. For a while it surged in vain 
 over the lower slopes of the Alps. Then 
 rolling back upon itself, it made a more 
 successful onslaught upon the Jura, and 
 now we are enveloped in its moving waves. 
 The milky sea has become one vast cloud, 
 which has swallowed up the plain and 
 the mountains, observatory and observer. 
 Within this cloud one may hear the sheep- 
 bells ringing, and see the sunlight darting 
 hither and thither. Strange and fanciful 
 sight ! 
 
 The Hanoverian pianist has gone ; the 
 family from Colmar has gone ; a young girl 
 and her brother have arrived. The girl is
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 289 
 
 very pretty, and particularly dainty and ele- 
 gant in all her ways ; she seems to touch 
 things only with the tips of her fingers ; 
 one compares her to an ermine, a gazelle. 
 But at the same time she has no interests, 
 does not know how to admire, and thinks 
 of herself more than of anything else. This 
 perhaps is a drawback inseparable from a 
 beauty and a figure which attract all eyes. 
 She is, besides, a townswoman to the core, 
 and feels herself out of place in this great 
 nature, which probably seems to her bar- 
 barous and ill bred. At any rate she does 
 not let it interfere with her in any way, and 
 parades herself on the mountains with her 
 little bonnet and her scarcely perceptible 
 sunshade, as though she were on the boule- 
 vard. She belongs to that class of tourists 
 so amusingly drawn by Topffer. Charac- 
 ter : naive conceit. Country : France. 
 Standard of life : fashion. Some clever- 
 ness but no sense of reality, no understand- 
 ing of nature, no consciousness of the 
 manifold diversities of the world and of the 
 right of life to be what it is, and to follow 
 its own way and not ours. 
 
 This ridiculous element in her is con- 
 nected with the same national prejudice 
 which holds France to be the centre point
 
 290 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 of the world, and leads Frenchmen to neg- 
 lect geography and languages. The ordi- 
 nary French townsman is really deliciously 
 stupid in spite of all his natural cleverness, 
 for he understands nothing but himself. 
 His pole, his axis, his centre, his all is 
 Paris, or even less, Parisian manners, 
 the taste of the day, fashion. Thanks to 
 this organised fetishism, we have millions 
 of copies of one single original pattern ; a 
 whole people moving together like bobbins 
 hi the same machine, or the legs of a single 
 corps cFarmee. The result is wonderful but 
 wearisome ; wonderful in point of material 
 strength, wearisome psychologically. A 
 hundred thousand sheep are not more in- 
 structive than one sheep, but they furnish 
 a' hundred thousand times more wool, meat, 
 and manure. This is all, you may say, 
 that the shepherd that is, the master 
 requires. Very well, but one can only 
 maintain breeding-farms or monarchies on 
 these principles. For a republic you must 
 have men : it cannot get on without indi- 
 vidualities. 
 
 Noon. An exquisite effect. A great 
 herd of cattle are running across the mead- 
 ows under my window, which is just illumi-
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 2QI 
 
 nated by a furtive ray of sunshine. The 
 picture has a ghostly suddenness and brill- 
 iancy ; it pierces the mists which close 
 upon it, like the slide of a magic lantern. 
 What a pity I must leave this place now 
 that everything is so bright ! 
 
 The calm sea says more to the thoughtful 
 soul than the same sea in storm and tumult. 
 But we need the understanding of eternal 
 things and the sentiment of the infinite to 
 be able to feel this. The divine state par 
 excellence is that of silence and repose, be- 
 cause all speech and all action are in them- 
 selves limited and fugitive. Napoleon with 
 his arms crossed over his breast is more 
 expressive than the furious Hercules beat- 
 ing the air with his athlete's fists. People 
 of passionate temperament never under- 
 stand this. They are only sensitive to the 
 energy of succession ; they know nothing 
 of the energy of condensation. They can 
 only be impressed by acts and effects, by 
 noise and effort. They ^iave no instinct 
 of contemplation, no sense of the pure 
 cause, the fixed source of all movement, 
 the principle of all effects, the centre of all 
 light, which does not need to spend itself 
 in order to be sure of its own wealth, nor
 
 292 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 to throw itself into violent motion to be 
 certain of its own power. The art of pas- 
 sion is sure to please, but it is not the high- 
 est art ; it is true, indeed, that under the 
 rule of democracy, the serener and calmer 
 forms of art become more and more diffi- 
 cult ; the turbulent herd no longer knows 
 the gods. 
 
 Minds accustomed to analysis never al- 
 low objections more than a half-value, be- 
 cause they appreciate the variable and 
 relative elements which enter in. 
 
 A well-governed mind learns in time to 
 find pleasure in nothing but the true and 
 the just. 
 
 Wth January 1868 (Eleven P.M.) We 
 have had a philosophical meeting at the 
 house of Edouard Claparede. 19 The ques- 
 tion on the order of the day was the nature 
 of sensation. Claparede pronounced for 
 the absolute subjectivity of all experience 
 in other words, for pure idealism which 
 is amusing from a naturalist. According 
 to him the ego alone exists, and the uni- 
 verse is but a projection of the ego, a 
 phantasmagoria which we ourselves create
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 293 
 
 without suspecting it, believing all the time 
 that we are lookers-on. It is our noiimenon 
 which objectifies itself as phenomenon. 
 The ego, according to him, is a radiating 
 force which, modified without knowing 
 what it is that modifies it, imagines it, by 
 virtue of the principle of causality that 
 is to say, produces the great illusion of the 
 objective world in order so to explain itself. 
 Our waking life, therefore, is but a more 
 connected dream. The self is an unknown 
 which gives birth to an infinite number of 
 unknowns, by a fatality of its nature. 
 Science is summed up in the consciousness 
 that nothing exists but consciousness. In 
 other words, the intelligent issues from the 
 unintelligible in order to return to it, or 
 rather the ego explains itself by the hypoth- 
 esis of the non-ego, while in reality it is 
 but a dream, dreaming itself. We might 
 say with Scarron 
 
 ' Et je vis 1' ombre d'un esprit 
 Qui tra9ait 1'orabre d'un systeme 
 Avec 1'ombre de 1'ombre meme.' 
 
 This abolition of nature by natural science 
 is logical, and it was, in fact, Schelling's 
 starting-point. From the standpoint of 
 physiology, nature is but a necessary illu-
 
 294 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 sion, a constitutional hallucination. We 
 only escape from this bewitchment by the 
 moral activity of the ego, which feels itself 
 a cause and a free cause, and which by its 
 responsibility breaks the spell and issues 
 from the enchanted circle of Maia. 
 
 Maia ! Is she indeed the true goddess ? 
 Hindoo wisdom long ago regarded the 
 world as the dream of Brahma. Must we 
 hold with Fichte that it is the individual 
 dream of each individual ego? Every fool 
 would then be a cosmogonic poet producing 
 the firework of the universe under the dome 
 of the infinite. But why then give our- 
 selves such gratuitous trouble to learn ? In 
 our dreams, at least, nightmare excepted, 
 we endow ourselves with complete ubiquity, 
 liberty, and omniscience. Are we then less 
 ingenious and inventive awake than asleep ? 
 
 25th January 1868. It is when the 
 outer man begins to decay that it becomes 
 vitally important to us to believe in immor- 
 tality, and to feel with the Apostle that the 
 inner man is renewed from day to day. 
 But for those who doubt it and have no 
 hope of it ? For them the remainder of 
 life can only be the compulsory dismember- 
 ment of their small empire, the gradual
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 295 
 
 dismantling of their being by inexorable 
 destiny. How hard it is to bear this 
 long-drawn death, of which the stages are 
 melancholy and the end inevitable ! It is 
 easy to see why it was that Stoicism main- 
 tained the right of suicide. What is my 
 real faith ? Has the universal, or at any 
 rate the very general and common doubt of 
 science, invaded me in my turn ? I have 
 defended the cause of the immortality of 
 the soul against those who questioned it, 
 and yet when I have reduced them to 
 silence, I have scarcely known whether at 
 bottom I was not after all on their side. I try 
 to do without hope ; but it is possible that 
 I have no longer the strength for it, and 
 that, like other men, I must be sustained 
 and consoled by a belief, by the belief in 
 pardon and immortality that is to say, by 
 religious belief of the Christian type. Rea- 
 son and thought grow tired, like muscles 
 and nerves. They must have their sleep, 
 and this sleep is the relapse into the tradi- 
 tion of childhood, into the common hope. 
 It takes so much effort to maintain oneself 
 in an exceptional point of view, that one 
 falls back into prejudice by pure exhaus- 
 tion, just as the man who stands indefinitely 
 always ends by sinking to the ground and 
 reassuming the horizontal position.
 
 296 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 What is to become of us when everything 
 leaves us, health, joy, affections, the 
 freshness of sensation, memory, capacity 
 for work, when the sun seems to us to 
 have lost its warmth, and life is stripped of 
 all its charm ? What is to become of us 
 without hope ? Must we either harden or 
 forget ? There is but one answer, keep 
 close to duty. Never mind the future, if 
 only you have peace of conscience, if you 
 feel yourself reconciled, and in harmony 
 with the order of things. Be what you 
 ought to be ; the rest is God's affair. It is 
 for Him to know what is best, to take care 
 of His own glory, to ensure the happiness 
 of what depends on Him, whether by an- 
 other life or by annihilation. And suppos- 
 ing that there were no good and holy God, 
 nothing but universal being, the law of the 
 all, an ideal without hypostasis or reality, 
 duty would still be the key of the enigma, 
 the pole-star of a wandering humanity. 
 
 ' Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra.' 
 
 26th January 1868. Blessed be child- 
 hood, which brings down something of 
 heaven into the midst of our rough earthli- 
 ness. These 80,000 daily births, of which 
 statistics tell us, represent as it were an
 
 AMIEL'S JOUKNAL. 297 
 
 effusion of innocence and freshness, strug- 
 gling not only against the death of the race, 
 but against human corruption, and the 
 universal gangrene of sin. All the good 
 and wholesome feeling which is intertwined 
 with childhood and the cradle is one of the 
 secrets of the providential government of 
 the world. Suppress this life-giving dew, 
 and human society would be scorched and 
 devastated by selfish passion. Supposing 
 that humanity had been composed of a 
 thousand millions of immortal beings, 
 whose number could neither increase nor 
 diminish, where should we be, and what 
 should we be ! A thousand times more 
 learned, no doubt, but a thousand times 
 more evil. There would have been a vast 
 accumulation of science, but all the virtues 
 engendered by suffering and devotion 
 that is to say, by the family and society 
 would have no existence. And for this 
 there would be no compensation. 
 
 Blessed be childhood for the good that it 
 does, and for the good which it brings 
 about carelessly and unconsciously, by 
 simply making us love it and letting itself 
 be loved. What little of Paradise we see 
 still on earth is due to its presence among 
 us. Without fatherhood, without mother-
 
 298 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 hood, I think that love itself would not be 
 enough to prevent men from devouring 
 each other men, that is to say, such as 
 human passions have made them. The 
 angels have no need of birth and death as 
 foundations for their life, because their life 
 is heavenly. 
 
 Wth February 1868. I have been finish- 
 ing About's Nainfroy (Les Manages de 
 Province). What subtlety, what clever- 
 ness, what verve, what aplu'nth .' About is 
 a master of epithet, of quick light-winged 
 satire. For all his cavalier freedom of 
 manner, his work is conceived at bottom in 
 a spirit of the subtlest irony, and his de- 
 tachment of mind is so great that he is able 
 to make sport of everything, to mock at 
 others and himself, while all the time 
 amusing himself extremely with his own 
 ideas and inventions. This is indeed the 
 characteristic mark, the common signature, 
 so to speak, of esprit like his. 
 
 Irrepressible mischief, indefatigable elas- 
 ticity, a power of luminous mockery, de- 
 light in the perpetual discharge of innumer- 
 able arrows from an inexhaustible quiver, 
 the unquenchable laughter of some little 
 earth-born demon, perpetual gaiety, and a
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 299 
 
 radiant force of epigram, there are all 
 these in the true humorist. Stulti sunt 
 innumerabiles, said Erasmus, the patron 
 of all these dainty mockers. Folly, con- 
 ceit, foppery, silliness, affectation, hypoc- 
 risy, attitudinising and pedantry of all 
 shades, and in all forms, everything that 
 poses, prances, bridles, struts, bedizens, 
 and plumes itself, everything that takes 
 itself seriously and tries to impose itself on 
 mankind, all this is the natural prey of 
 the satirist, so many targets ready for 
 his arrows, so many victims offered to his 
 attack. And we all know how rich the 
 world is in prey of this kind ! An alder- 
 man's feast of folly is served up to him 
 in perpetuity ; the spectacle of society 
 offers him an endless noce de Gamache. 
 With what glee he raids through his 
 domains, and what signs of destruction 
 and massacre mark the path of the sports- 
 man ! His hand is infallible like his glance. 
 The spirit of sarcasm lives and thrives in 
 the midst of universal wreck ; its balls are 
 enchanted and itself invulnerable, and it 
 braves retaliations and reprisals because 
 itself is a mere flash, a bodiless and magi- 
 cal nothing. 
 Clever men will recognise and tolerate
 
 300 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 nothing but cleverness ; every authority 
 rouses their ridicule, every superstition 
 amuses them, every convention moves 
 them to contradiction. Only force finds 
 favour in their eyes, and they have no 
 toleration for anything that is not purely 
 natural and spontaneous. And yet ten 
 clever men are not worth one man of 
 talent, nor ten men of talent worth one 
 man of genius. And in the individual, 
 feeling is more than cleverness, reason is 
 worth as much as feeling, and conscience 
 has it over reason. If, then, the clever 
 man is not mockable, lie may at least be 
 neither loved, nor considered, nor esteemed. 
 He may make himself feared, it is true, 
 and force others to respect his indepen- 
 dence ; but this negative advantage, which 
 is the result of a negative superiority, 
 brings no happiness with it. Cleverness is 
 serviceable for everything, sufficient for 
 nothing. 
 
 8th March 1868. Madame kept me 
 
 to have tea with three young friends of hers 
 three sisters, I think. The two youn- 
 gest are extremely pretty, the dark one as 
 pretty as the blonde. Their fresh faces, 
 radiant with the bloom of youth, were a
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 301 
 
 perpetual delight to the eye. This electric 
 force of beauty has a beneficent effect upon 
 the man of letters ; it acts as a real restora- 
 tive. Sensitive, impressionable, absorbent 
 as I am, the neighbourhood of health, of 
 beauty, of intelligence and of goodness, ex- 
 ercises a powerful influence upon my whole 
 being ; and in the same way I am troubled 
 and affected just as easily by the presence 
 near me of troubled lives or diseased souls. 
 
 Madame said of me that I must be 
 
 ' superlatively feminine ' in all my percep- 
 tions. This ready sympathy and sensitive- 
 ness is the reason of it. If I had but 
 desired it ever so little, I should have had 
 the magical clairvoyance of the somnambu- 
 list, and could have reproduced in myself a 
 number of strange phenomena. I know it, 
 but I have always been on my guard against 
 it, whether from indifference or from pru- 
 dence. When I think of the intuitions of 
 every kind which have come to me since 
 my youth, it seems to me that I have lived 
 a multitude of lives. Every characteristic 
 individuality shapes itself ideally in me, or 
 rather moulds me for the moment into its 
 own image ; and I have only to turn my 
 attention upon myself at such a time to be 
 able to understand a new mode of being, a
 
 302 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 new phase of human nature. In this way 
 I have been, turn by turn, mathematician, 
 musician, savant, monk, child, or mother. 
 In these states of universal sympathy I 
 have even seemed to myself sometimes to 
 enter into the condition of the animal or 
 the plant, and even of an individual animal, 
 of a given plant. This faculty of ascending 
 and descending metamorphosis, this power 
 of simplifying or of adding to one's individ- 
 uality, has sometimes astounded my friends, 
 even the most subtle of them. It has to do 
 no doubt with the extreme facility which I 
 have for impersonal and objective thought, 
 and this again accounts for the difficulty 
 which I feel in realising my own individu- 
 ality, in being simply one man having his 
 proper number and ticket. To withdraw 
 within my own individual limits has always 
 seemed to me a strange, arbitrary, and con- 
 ventional process. I seem to myself to be a 
 mere conjuror's apparatus, an instrument 
 of vision and perception, a person without 
 personality, a subject without any deter- 
 mined individuality an instance, to speak 
 technically, of pure ' determinability ' and 
 ' formability,' and therefore I can only 
 resign myself with difficulty to play the 
 purely arbitrary part of a private citizen,
 
 AMI EL'S JOURNAL. 303 
 
 Inscribed upon the roll of a particular town 
 or a particular country. In action I feel 
 myself out of place ; my true milieu is con- 
 templation. Pure virtuality and perfect 
 equilibrium in these I am most at home. 
 There I feel myself free, disinterested, and 
 sovereign. Is it a call or a temptation ? 
 
 It represents perhaps the oscillation be- 
 tween the two geniuses, the Greek and the 
 Roman, the eastern and the western, the 
 ancient and the Christian, or the struggle 
 between the two ideals, that of liberty and 
 that of holiness. Liberty raises us to the 
 gods ; holiness prostrates us on the ground. 
 Action limits us ; whereas in the state of 
 contemplation we are endlessly expansive. 
 Will localises us ; thought universalises us. 
 My soul wavers between half a dozen an- 
 tagonistic general conceptions, because it is 
 responsive to all the great instincts of hu- 
 man nature, and its aspiration is to the ab- 
 solute, which is only to be reached through 
 a succession of contraries. It has taken me 
 a great deal of time to understand myself, 
 and I frequently find myself beginning over 
 again the study of the oft-solved problem, 
 so difficult is it for us to maintain any fixed 
 point within us. I love everything, and 
 detest one thing only the hopeless im-
 
 304 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 prisonment of my being within a single 
 arbitrary form, even were it chosen by my- 
 self. Liberty for the inner man is then the 
 strongest of my passions perhaps my only 
 passion. Is such a passion lawful ? It has 
 been my habit to think so, but intermit- 
 tently, by fits and starts. I am not per- 
 fectly sure of it. 
 
 nth March 1868. Women wish to be 
 loved without a why or a wherefore ; not 
 because they are pretty, or good, or well 
 bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but be- 
 cause they are themselves. All analysis 
 seems to them to imply a loss of considera- 
 tion, a subordination of their personality to 
 something which dominates and measures 
 it. They will have none of it ; and their 
 instinct is just. As soon as we can give a 
 reason for a feeling we are no longer under 
 the spell of it ; we appreciate, we weigh, 
 we are free, at least in principle. Love 
 must always remain a fascination, a witch- 
 ery, if the empire of woman is to endure. 
 Once the mystery gone, the power goes with 
 it. Love must always seem to us indivisi- 
 ble, insoluble, superior to all analysis, if it 
 is to preserve that appearance of infinity, 
 of something supernatural and miraculous,
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 305 
 
 which makes its chief beauty. The major- 
 ity of beiiigs despise what they understand, 
 and bow only before the inexplicable. The 
 feminine triumph par excellence is to con- 
 vict of obscurity that virile intelligence 
 which makes so much pretence to enlight- 
 enment. And when a woman inspires love, 
 it is then especially that she enjoys this 
 proud triumph. I admit that her exulta- 
 tion has its grounds. Still, it seems to 
 me that love true and profound love 
 should be a source of light and calm, a re- 
 ligion and a revelation, in which there is no 
 place left for the lower victories of vanity. 
 Great souls care only for what is great, and 
 to the spirit which hovers in the sight of 
 the Infinite, any sort of artifice seems a 
 disgraceful puerility. 
 
 IQth March 1868. What we call little 
 things are merely the causes of great 
 things ; they are the beginning, the embryo, 
 and it is the point of departure which, gen- 
 erally speaking, decides the whole future 
 of an existence. One single black speck 
 may be the beginning of a gangrene, of a 
 storm, of a revolution. From one insig- 
 nificant misunderstanding hatred and sepa- 
 ration may finally issue. An enormous
 
 306 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 avalanche begins by the displacement of 
 one atom, and the conflagration of a town 
 by the fall of a match. Almost everything 
 comes from almost nothing, one might 
 think. It is only the first crystallisation 
 which is the affair of mind ; the ultimate 
 aggregation is the affair of mass, of attrac- 
 tion, of acquired momentum, of mechanical 
 acceleration. History, like nature, illus- 
 trates for us the application of the law of 
 inertia and agglomeration which is put 
 lightly in the proverb, 'Nothing succeeds 
 like success.' Find the right point at start- 
 ing ; strike straight, begin well ; everything 
 depends on it. Or more simply still, pro- 
 vide yourself with good luck, for accident 
 plays a vast part in human affairs. Those 
 who have succeeded most in this world 
 (Napoleon or Bismarck) confess it ; calcu- 
 lation is not without its uses, but chance 
 makes mock of calculation, and the result 
 of a planned combination is in no wise pro- 
 portional to its merit. From the super- 
 natural point of view people say : ' This 
 chance, as you call it, is, in reality, the 
 action of providence. Man may give him- 
 self what trouble he will, God leads him 
 all the same.' Only, unfortunately, this 
 supposed intervention as often as not enas
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 307 
 
 in the defeat of zeal, virtue, and devotion, 
 and the success of crime, stupidity, and 
 selfishness. Poor, sorely-tried Faith ! She 
 has but one way out of the difficulty the 
 word Mystery ! It is in the origins of 
 things that the great secret of destiny lies 
 hidden, although the breathless sequence 
 of after events has often many surprises 
 for us too. So that at first sight history 
 seems to us accident and confusion ; looked 
 at for the second time, it seems to us logical 
 and necessary ; looked at for the third time, 
 it appears to us a mixture of necessity and 
 liberty ; on the fourth examination we 
 scarcely know what to think of it, for if 
 force is the source of right and chance the 
 origin of force, we come back to our first 
 explanation, only with a heavier heart than 
 when we began. 
 
 Is Democritus right after all ? Is Chance 
 the foundation of everything, all laws being 
 but the imaginations of our reason, which, 
 itself born of accident, has a certain power 
 of self-deception and of inventing laws 
 which it believes to be real and objective, 
 just as a man who dreams of a meal thinks 
 that he is eating, while in reality there is 
 neither table nor food nor guest nor nour- 
 ishment ? Everything goes on as if there
 
 308 AMIEL'S joruxAi.. 
 
 were order and reason and logic in the 
 world, while in reality everything is fortui- 
 tous, accidental, and apparent. The uni- 
 verse is but the kaleidoscope which turns 
 within the mind of the so-called thinking 
 being, who is himself a curiosity without a 
 cause, an accident conscious of the great 
 accident around him, and who amuses him- 
 self with it so long as the phenomenon of 
 his vision lasts. Science is a lucid niadm-ss 
 occupied in tabulating its own necessary 
 hallucinations. The philosopher laughs, 
 for he alone escapes being duped, while he 
 sees other men the victims of persistent 
 illusion. He is like some mischievous spec- 
 tator of a ball who has cleverly taken all 
 the strings from the violins, and yet sees 
 musicians and dancers moving and pirouet- 
 ting before him as though the music were still 
 going on. Such an experience would de- 
 light him as proving that the universal St. 
 Vitus' dance is also nothing but an aberra- 
 tion of the inner consciousness, and that 
 the philosopher is in the right of it as 
 against the general credulity. Is it not even 
 enough simply to shut one's ears in a ball- 
 room, to believe oneself in a mad-house ? 
 
 The multitude of religions on the earth 
 must have very much the same effect upon
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 309 
 
 the man who has killed the religious idea 
 in himself. But it is a dangerous attempt, 
 this repudiation of the common law of the 
 race this claim to be in the right, as 
 against all the world.- 
 
 It is not often that the philosophic scoffers 
 forget themselves for others. Why should 
 they ? Self-devotion is a serious thing, and 
 seriousness would be inconsistent with their 
 role of mockery. To be unselfish we must 
 love ; to love we must believe in the reality 
 of what we love ; we must know how to 
 suffer, how to forget ourselves, how to yield 
 ourselves up, in a word, how to be serious. 
 A spirit of incessant mockery means abso- 
 lute isolation ; it is the sign of a thorough- 
 going egotism. If we wish to do good to 
 men we must pity and not despise them. 
 We must learn to say of them, not ' What 
 fools ! ' but ' What unfortunates ! ' The 
 pessimist or the Nihilist seems to me less 
 cold and icy than the mocking atheist. He 
 reminds me of the sombre words of Ahas- 
 vfirus : 
 
 ' Vous qui raanquez de charite, 
 Tremblez a mon supplice e'trange : 
 Ce n'est point sa divinite, 
 C'est 1'humanite que Dieu venge ! ' 21
 
 310 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 It is better to be lost than to be saved all 
 alone ; and it is a wrong to one's kind to 
 wish to be wise without making others 
 share our wisdom. It is, besides, an illu- 
 sion to suppose that such a privilege is 
 possible, when everything proves the soli- 
 darity of individuals, and when no one can 
 think at all except by means of the general 
 store of thought, accumulated and refined 
 by centuries of cultivation and experience. 
 Absolute individualism is an absurdity. A 
 man may be isolated in his own particular 
 and temporary milieu, but every one of our 
 thoughts or feelings finds, has found, and 
 will find, its echo in humanity. Such an 
 echo is immense and far- resounding in the 
 case of those representative men who have 
 been adopted by great fractions of human- 
 ity as guides, revealers, and reformers ; but 
 it exists for everybody. Every sincere 
 utterance of the soul, every testimony faith- 
 fully borne to a personal conviction, is of 
 use to some one and some thing, even when 
 you know it not, and when your mouth is 
 stopped by violence, or the noose tightens 
 round your neck. A word spoken to some 
 one preserves an indestructible influence, 
 jnst as any movement whatever may be 
 metamorphosed, but not undone. Here,
 
 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 311 
 
 then, is a reason for not mocking, for not 
 being silent, for affirming, for acting. We 
 must have faith in truth ; we must seek the 
 true and spread it abroad ; we must love 
 men and serve them. 
 
 9th April 1868. I have been spend- 
 ing three hours over Lotze's big volume 
 (Geschichte der Aesthetik in Deutschland~) . 
 It begins attractively, but the attraction 
 wanes, and by the end I was very tired of 
 it. Why ? Because the noise of a mill- 
 wheel sends one to sleep, and these pages 
 without paragraphs, these interminable t\ 
 chapters, and this incessant dialectical 
 clatter, affect me as though I were listening 
 to a word-mill. I end by yawning like any 
 simple non-philosophical mortal in the face 
 of all this heaviness and pedantry. Erudi- 
 tion, and even thought, are not everything. 
 An occasional touch of esprit, a little 
 sharpness of phrase, a little vivacity, imagi- 
 nation, and grace, would spoil neither. 
 Do these pedantic books leave a single 
 image or formula, a single new or striking 
 fact behind them in the memory, when one 
 puts them down ? No ; nothing but con- 
 fusion and fatigue. Oh for clearness, 
 terseness, brevity ! Diderot, Voltaire, and
 
 312 AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 
 
 even Galiani ! A short article by Sainte- 
 Beuve, Scherer, Renan, Victor Cherbuliez, 
 gives one more pleasure, and makes one 
 think and reflect more, than a thousand of 
 these heavy German pages, stuffed to the 
 brim, and showing rather the work itself 
 than its results. The Germans gather fuel 
 for the pile : it is the French who kindle it. 
 For heaven's sake, spare me your lucubra- 
 tions ; give me facts or ideas. Keep your 
 vats, your must, your dregs, in the back- 
 ground. What I ask is wine wine which 
 will sparkle in the glass, and stimulate in- 
 telligence instead of weighing it down. 
 
 END OF VOL. I.
 
 NOTES. 
 
 [A few of the following notes are translated from 
 the French edition of the Journal.] 
 
 1. P. 3. Amiel left Geneva for Paris and 
 Berlin in April 1843, the preceding year, 1841- 
 42, having been spent in Italy and Sicily. 
 
 2. P. 7. Angelas Silesias, otherwise Jo- 
 hannes Scheffler, the German seventeenth-cen- 
 tury hymn-writer, whose tender and mystical 
 verses have been popularised in England by 
 Miss Winkworth's translations in the Lyra 
 Germanica. 
 
 3. P. 17. Of these Marheineke, Neander, 
 and Lachmann had been lecturing at Berlin 
 during Amiel's residence there. The Danish 
 dramatic poet Oelenschlager and the Swedish 
 writer Tegner were among the Scandinavian 
 men of letters with whom he made acquaint- 
 ance during his tour in Sweden and Denmark 
 in 1845. He probably came across the Swed- 
 ish historian Geijer on the same occasion. 
 Schelling and Alexander von Humboldt, men- 
 tioned a little lower down, were also still 
 holding sway at Berlin when he was a stu-
 
 3H NOTES. 
 
 dent. There is an interesting description in 
 one of his articles on Berlin, published in the 
 Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve, of a Uni- 
 versity ceremonial there in or about 1847, and 
 of the effect produced on the student's young 
 imagination by the sight of half the leaders 
 of European research gathered into a single 
 room. He saw Schlosser, the veteran histo- 
 rian, at Heidelberg at the end of 1843. 
 
 4. P. 22. Arnold Ruge, born in 1803, died 
 at Brighton in 1880, principal editor of the 
 Hallische, afterwards the Deutsche Jahrbiicher 
 (1838-43), in which Strauss, Bruno Bauer, and 
 Louis Feuerbach wrote. He was a member of 
 the Parliament of Frankfort. 
 
 5. P. 37. Compare Clough's lines 
 
 ' Where are the great, whom thou would'st wish to 
 
 praise thee ? 
 Where are the pure, whom thou would'st choose to 
 
 love thee ? 
 
 Where are the brave, to stand supreme above thee, 
 Whose high commands would cheer, whose chid- 
 
 ings raise thee ? 
 
 Seek, seeker, in thyself; submit to find 
 In the stones, bread, and life in the blank mind.' 
 
 6. P. 44. Christian Frederick Krause, died 
 1832, Hegel's younger contemporary, and the 
 author of a system which he called panenthe- 
 ism, Amiel alludes to it later on. 
 
 7. P. 45. A village near Geneva.
 
 NOTES. 315 
 
 8. P. 51. The allusions in this passage are 
 to Topffer's best known books, Le Presby- 
 tere and La Bibliotheque de mon Oncle, that 
 airy chronicle of a hundred romantic or viva- 
 cious nothings which has the young student 
 Jules for its centre. 
 
 9. P. 53. Jacob-Elysee Cellerier, Professor 
 of theology at the Academy of Geneva, and 
 son of the pastor of Satiguy mentioned in 
 Madame de Stael's L'Allemagne. 
 
 10. P. 118. Geschichte der Poesie, by Ro- 
 senkrantz, the pupil and biographer of Hegel. 
 
 11. P. 136. Also a village in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Geneva. 
 
 12. P. 161. The well-known Genevese 
 preacher and writer, Ernest Naville, the son 
 of a Genevese pastor, was born in 1816, be- 
 came Professor at the Academy of Geneva in 
 1844, lost his post after the Revolution of 1846, 
 and, except for a short interval in 1860, has 
 since then held no official position. His 
 courses of theological lectures, delivered at 
 intervals from 1859 onwards, were an extraor- 
 dinary success. They were at first confined 
 to men only, and an audience of 2000 persons 
 sometimes assembled to hear them. To litera- 
 ture he is mainly known as the editor of Maine 
 de Birau's Journal.
 
 316 NOTES. 
 
 13. P. 171. Joseph Goerres, a German mys 
 tic and disciple of Schelling. He published, 
 among other works, Mythenc/eschichte der 
 Asiatischen Welt, and Christlic.he Mystik. 
 
 14. P. 187. The following passage from 
 Sainte-Beuve may be taken as a kind of 
 answer by anticipation to this accusation, 
 which Amiel brings more than once in the 
 course of the Journal : 
 
 ' Toute nation livree a elle-meme et a son propre 
 ge'nie se fait une critique litteraire qui y est cou- 
 forme. J,a France en son beau temps a eu la 
 sienne, qui ne ressemble ni a celle de 1'Allemagnc 
 ni a celle de see autrea voieina ; un pen plus super- 
 liciulle, dira-t-on; je ne le crois pas: mais plus 
 vive, moins chargee d'erudition, moins theorique et 
 systematique, plus conflante au sentiment immediat 
 du gout. Un peu de chaque chose et rien de I'en- 
 semble, a la franyaise : telle etait la devise de Mou- 
 taigne et telle est aussi la devise de la critique 
 francaise. Nous ne somraes pas synthetiques, 
 comme dlraient les Allemands; le mot me me n'est 
 pas francais. L'imagination de detail nous suffit. 
 Montaigne, La Fontaine, Madame de Sevigne, sout 
 volontiers nos livres de cbevet.' 
 
 The French critic then goes on to give a 
 rapid sketch of the authors and the books, 
 ' qui out peu a peu forme comme uotre rheto- 
 rique.' French criticism of the old character- 
 istic kind rests ultimately upon the minute and 
 delicate knowledge of a few Greek and Latin 
 classics. Arnauld, Boileau, Fe'nelou, Rolliu,
 
 NOTES. 317 
 
 Ra:ine fils, Voltaire, La Harpe, Marmontel, 
 Delille, Fontanes, and Chateaubriand in one 
 aspect, are the typical names of this tradition, 
 the creators and maintainers of this common 
 literary fonds, this ' sorte de circulation cou- 
 rante a 1'usage des gens instruits. J'avoue 
 ma faiblesse : nous soinmes devenus bien plus 
 forts dans la dissertation erudite, mais j'aurais 
 un etcrnel regret pour cette moyenne et plus 
 libre habitude littcraire qui laissait a 1'imagi- 
 nation tout son espace et a 1'esprit tout son 
 jeu; qui formait une atmosphere saine et 
 facile oil le talent respirait et se mouvait a 
 son gre : cette atmosphere-la, je ne la trouve 
 plus, et je la regrette.' ((Jkateau-briand et 
 BOJI Groupe Litteraire, vol. i. p. 311.) 
 
 The following pensee of La Bruyere applies 
 to the second half of Amiel's criticism of the 
 French mind : ' If you wish to travel in the 
 [nferno or the Paradiso you must take other 
 guides,' etc. 
 
 ' Un borame ne Chretien et Fran<jois se trouve 
 contraint dans la satyre; les grands sujets lui sont 
 defendus, il les entame quelquefois, et se detourne 
 ensuite sur de petites choses qu'il releve par In 
 beaute de son geuie et de son style." (Les Carac- 
 tkres, etc., ' Des Ouvrages de I' Esprit.') 
 
 15. P. 223. The Vouache is the hill which 
 bounds the horizon of Geneva to the south- 
 west. 
 
 16. P. 229. The saying of Pascal's alluded 
 to is in the Pensees, Art. xi. No. 10 : ' A mesure
 
 318 NOTES. 
 
 qu'on a plus d'esprit on trouve qu'il y a plus 
 d'hommes originaux. Les gens du commun ne 
 trouvent pas de difference entre les homines.' 
 
 17. P. 282. 'Die Mutter' an allusion to 
 a strange and enigmatical, but very effective, 
 conception in Faust (Part II. Act I. Scene v.). 
 Die Mutter are the prototypes, the abstract 
 forms, the generative ideas, of things. ' Sie 
 sehn dich nicht, denn Schemen sehn sie nur.' 
 Goethe borrowed the term from a passage of 
 Plutarch's, but he has made the idea half 
 Platonic, half legendary. Amiel, however, 
 seems rather to have in his mind Faust's 
 speech in Scene vii. than the speech of Mephis- 
 topheles in Scene v. 
 
 ' In eurem Namen, Miitter, die ihr thront 
 liu Granzcnlosen, ewig rinsnm wobnt, 
 Und doch gesellig! Euer Haupt utnschweben 
 Des Lebens Bilder, regaani, ohne Leben. 
 Was einmal war, in allem Glanz und Schein, 
 Es regt sich dort; denn es will ewig sein. 
 Und ihr vertheilt es, allgHwaltige Ma'chte, 
 Zura Zelt des Tages, zuin Gewiilb' der Xachte." 
 
 18. P. 286. Weissenstein is a high point 
 in the Jura, above Soleure. 
 
 19. P. 292. Edouard Claparede, a Gene- 
 vese naturalist, born 1832, died 1871. 
 
 20. P. 299. Noce de Gumuche = ' repas tres 
 somptueux.' Littre'. The allusion, of course, 
 is to Don Quixote, Part II. cap. xx. ' Donde
 
 NOTES. 319 
 
 se cuentan las bodas de Camacho el rico, con 
 el suceso de Basilio el pobre.' 
 
 21. P. 309. The quotation is from Quinet's 
 Ahasvtfrus (first published 1833), that strange 
 Wclt-gedicht, which the author himself de- 
 scribed as ' 1'histoire du monde, de Dieu dans 
 le monde, et enfin du doute dans le monde,' 
 and which, with Faust, probably suggested 
 the unfinished but in many ways brilliant 
 performance of the young Spaniard, Espron- 
 ceda, El Diablo Mundo.
 
 This book is DUE on the last 
 / date stamped below 
 
 3 o 19 
 
 MAY 1 4 1935 
 
 1 7 1935 " 
 
 APR 1 5 1936 
 
 7 
 
 OCT 1 2
 
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