AMIEL'S JOURNAL

THE JOURNAL INTIME OF HENRI-FRÉDÉRIC AMIEL

TRANSLATED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

By Mrs. HUMPHREY WARD

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

In this second edition of the English translation of Amiel's "JournalIntime, " I have inserted a good many new passages, taken from the lastFrench edition (_Cinquiéme édition, revue et augmentée_. ) But I have nottranslated all the fresh material to be found in that edition nor have Iomitted certain sections of the Journal which in these two recentvolumes have been omitted by their French editors. It would be of nointerest to give my reasons for these variations at length. They dependupon certain differences between the English and the French public, which are more readily felt than explained. Some of the passages which Ihave left untranslated seemed to me to overweight the introspective sideof the Journal, already so full--to overweight it, at any rate, forEnglish readers. Others which I have retained, though they often relateto local names and books, more or less unfamiliar to the general public, yet seemed to me valuable as supplying some of that surrounding detail, that setting, which helps one to understand a life. Besides, we Englishare in many ways more akin to Protestant and Puritan Geneva than theFrench readers to whom the original Journal primarily addresses itself, and some of the entries I have kept have probably, by the nature ofthings, more savor for us than for them. 

M. A. W. 

PREFACE. 

This translation of Amiel's "Journal Intime" is primarily addressed tothose whose knowledge of French, while it may be sufficient to carrythem with more or less complete understanding through a novel or anewspaper, is yet not enough to allow them to understand and appreciatea book containing subtle and complicated forms of expression. I believethere are many such to be found among the reading public, and amongthose who would naturally take a strong interest in such a life and mindas Amiel's, were it not for the barrier of language. It is, at any rate, in the hope that a certain number of additional readers may be therebyattracted to the "Journal Intime" that this translation of it has beenundertaken. 

The difficulties of the translation have been sometimes considerable, owing, first of all, to those elliptical modes of speech which a mannaturally employs when he is writing 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 Frenchman, but for which an Englishequivalent, at once terse and clear, is hard to find. Another difficultyhas been his constant use of a technical philosophical language, which, according to his French critics, is not French--even philosophicalFrench--but German. Very often it has been impossible to give any otherthan a literal rendering of such passages, if the thought of theoriginal was to be preserved; but in those cases where a choice was opento me, I have preferred the more literary to the more technicalexpression; and I have been encouraged to do so by the fact that Amiel, when he came to prepare for publication a certain number of "Pensées, "extracted from the Journal, and printed at the end of a volume of poemspublished in 1853, frequently softened his phrases, so that sentenceswhich survive in the Journal in a more technical form are to be found ina more literary form in the "Grains de Mil. "

In two or three cases--not more, I think--I have allowed myself totranspose a sentence bodily, and in a few instances I have added someexplanatory words to the text, which wherever the addition was of anyimportance, are indicated by square brackets. 

My warmest thanks are due to my friend and critic, M. Edmond Scherer, from whose valuable and interesting study, prefixed to the FrenchJournal, as well as from certain materials in his possession which hehas very kindly allowed me to make use of, I have drawn by far thegreater part of the biographical material embodied in the Introduction. M. Scherer has also given me help and advice through the whole processof translation--advice which his scholarly knowledge of English has madeespecially worth having. 

In the translation of the more technical philosophical passages I havebeen greatly helped by another friend, Mr. Bernard Bosanquet, Fellow ofUniversity College, Oxford, the translator of Lotze, of whose care andpains in the matter I cherish a grateful remembrance. 

But with all the help that has been so freely given me, not only bythese friends but by others, I confide the little book to the publicwith many a misgiving! May it at least win a few more friends andreaders here and there for one who lived alone, and died sadly persuadedthat his life had been a barren mistake; whereas, all the while--such isthe irony of things--he had been in reality working out the missionassigned him in the spiritual economy, and faithfully obeying the secretmandate which had impressed itself upon his youthful consciousness:"_Let the living live; and you, gather together your thoughts, leavebehind 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 ofHenri Frédéric Amiel's "Journal Intime" was published at Geneva. Thebook, of which the general literary world knew nothing prior to itsappearance, contained a long and remarkable Introduction from the pen ofM. Edmond Scherer, the well-known French critic, who had been for manyyears one of Amiel's most valued friends, and it was prefaced also by alittle _Avertissement_, in which the "Editors"--that is to say, theGenevese friends to whom the care and publication of the Journal hadbeen in the first instance entrusted--described in a few reserved andsober words the genesis and objects of the publication. Some thousandsof sheets of Journal, covering a period of more than thirty years, hadcome into the hands of Amiel's literary heirs. "They were written, " saidthe _Avertissement_, "with several ends in view. Amiel recorded in themhis various occupations, and the incidents of each day. He preserved inthem his psychological observations, and the impressions produced on himby books. But his Journal was, above all, the confidant of his mostprivate and intimate thoughts; a means whereby the thinker becameconscious of his own inner life; a safe shelter wherein his questioningsof fate and the future, the voice of grief, of self-examination andconfession, the soul's cry for inward peace, might make themselvesfreely heard. 

". . . In the directions concerning his papers which he left behind him, Amiel expressed the wish that his literary executors should publishthose parts of the Journal which might seem to them to possess eitherinterest as thought or value as experience. The publication of thisvolume is the fulfillment of this desire. The reader will find in it, _not a volume of Memoirs_, but the confidences of a solitary thinker, the meditations of a philosopher for whom the things of the soul werethe sovereign realities of existence. "

Thus modestly announced, the little volume made its quiet _début_. Itcontained nothing, or almost nothing, of ordinary biographical material. M. Scherer's Introduction supplied such facts as were absolutelynecessary to the understanding of Amiel's intellectual history, butnothing more. Everything of a local or private character that could beexcluded was excluded. The object of the editors in their choice ofpassages for publication was declared to be simply "the reproduction ofthe moral and intellectual physiognomy of their friend, " while M. Scherer expressly disclaimed any biographical intentions, and limitedhis Introduction as far as possible to "a study of the character andthought of Amiel. " The contents of the volume, then, were purelyliterary and philosophical; its prevailing tone was a tone ofintrospection, and the public which can admit the claims and overlookthe inherent defects of introspective literature has always been a smallone. The writer of the Journal had been during his lifetime whollyunknown to the general European public. In Geneva itself he had beencommonly regarded as a man who had signally disappointed the hopes andexpectations of his friends, whose reserve and indecision of characterhad in many respects spoiled his life, and alienated the society aroundhim; while his professional lectures were generally pronounced dry andunattractive, and the few volumes of poems which represented almost hisonly contributions to literature had nowhere met with any realcordiality of reception. Those concerned, therefore, in the publicationof the first volume of the Journal can hardly have had much expectationof a wide success. Geneva is not a favorable starting-point for a Frenchbook, 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 localcircle. 

But "wisdom is justified of her children!" It is now nearly three yearssince the first volume of the "Journal Intime" appeared; the impressionmade by it was deepened and extended by the publication of the secondvolume in 1884; and it is now not too much to say that this remarkablerecord of a life has made its way to what promises to be a permanentplace in literature. Among those who think and read it is beginning tobe generally recognized that another book has been added to the bookswhich live--not to those, perhaps, which live in the public view, muchdiscussed, much praised, the objects of feeling and of struggle, but tothose in which a germ of permanent life has been deposited silently, almost secretly, which compel no homage and excite no rivalry, and whichowe the place that the world half-unconsciously yields to them tonothing but that indestructible sympathy of man with man, that eternalanswering of feeling to feeling, which is one of the great principles, perhaps the greatest principle, at the root of literature. M. Scherernaturally was the first among the recognized guides of opinion toattempt the placing of his friend's Journal. "The man who, during hislifetime, was incapable of giving us any deliberate or conscious workworthy of his powers, has now left us, after his death, a book whichwill not die. For the secret of Amiel's malady is sublime, and theexpression of it wonderful. " So ran one of the last paragraphs of theIntroduction, and one may see in the sentences another instance of thatcourage, that reasoned rashness, which distinguishes the good from themediocre critic. For it is as true now as it was in the days when LaBruyère rated the critics of his time for their incapacity to praise, and praise at once, that "the surest test of a man's critical power ishis judgment of contemporaries. " M. Renan, I think, with that exquisiteliterary sense of his, was the next among the authorities to mentionAmiel's name with the emphasis it deserved. He quoted a passage from theJournal in his Preface to the "Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse, "describing it as the saying "_d'un penseur distingué, M. Amiel deGenève_. " Since then M. Renan has devoted two curious articles to thecompleted Journal in the _Journal des Desbats_. The first object ofthese reviews, no doubt, was not so much the critical appreciation ofAmiel as the development of certain paradoxes which have been hauntingvarious corners of M. Renan's mind for several years past, and to whichit is to be hoped he has now given expression with sufficient emphasisand _brusquerie_ to satisfy even his passion for intellectual adventure. Still, the rank of the book was fully recognized, and the first articleespecially contained some remarkable criticisms, to which we shall findoccasion to recur. "In these two volumes of _pensées_, " said M. Renan, "without any sacrifice of truth to artistic effect, we have both theperfect mirror of a modern mind of the best type, matured by the bestmodern culture, and also a striking picture of the sufferings whichbeset the sterility of genius. These two volumes may certainly bereckoned among the most interesting philosophical writings which haveappeared of late years. "

M. Caro's article on the first volume of the Journal, in the _Revue desDeux Mondes_ for February, 1883, may perhaps count as the firstintroduction of the book to the general cultivated public. He gave acareful analysis of the first half of the Journal--resumed eighteenmonths later in the same periodical on the appearance of the secondvolume--and, while protesting against what he conceived to be thegeneral tendency and effect of Amiel's mental story, he showed himselffully conscious of the rare and delicate qualities of the new writer. "_La rêverie a réussi à notre auteur_, " he says, a littlereluctantly--for M. Caro has his doubts as to the legitimacy of_rêverie_; "_Il en aufait une oeuvure qui restera_. " The same finaljudgment, accompanied by a very different series of comments, waspronounced on the Journal a year later by M. Paul Bourget, a young andrising writer, whose article is perhaps chiefly interesting as showingthe kind of effect produced by Amiel's thought on minds of a typeessentially alien from his own. There is a leaven of something positiveand austere, of something which, for want of a better name, one callsPuritanism, in Amiel, which escapes the author of "Une Cruelle Enigme. "But whether he has understood Amiel or no, M. Bourget is fully alive tothe mark which the Journal is likely to make among modern records ofmental history. He, too, insists that the book is already famous andwill remain so; in the first place, because of its inexorable realismand sincerity; in the second, because it is the most perfect exampleavailable of a certain variety of the modern mind. 

Among ourselves, although the Journal has attracted the attention of allwho keep a vigilant eye on the progress of foreign literature, andalthough one or two appreciative articles have appeared on it in themagazines, the book has still to become generally known. One remarkableEnglish testimony to it, however, must be quoted. Six months after thepublication of the first volume, the late Mark Pattison, who since thenhas himself bequeathed to literature a strange and memorable fragment ofautobiography, addressed a letter to M. Scherer as the editor of the"Journal Intime, " which M. Scherer has since published, nearly a yearafter the death of the writer. The words have a strong and melancholyinterest for all who knew Mark Pattison; and they certainly deserve aplace in any attempt to estimate the impression already made oncontemporary thought by the "Journal Intime. "

"I wish to convey to you, sir, " writes the rector of Lincoln, "thethanks of one at least of the public for giving the light to thisprecious record of a unique experience. I say unique, but I can vouchthat there is in existence at least one other soul which has livedthrough the same struggles, mental and moral, as Amiel. In your patheticdescription of the _volonté qui voudrait vouloir, mais impuissante à sefournir à elle-même des motifs_--of the repugnance for all action--thesoul petrified by the sentiment of the infinite, in all this I recognizemyself. _Celui qui a déchiffré le secret de la vie finie, qui en a lu lemot, est sorti du monde des vivants, il est mort de fait_. I can feelforcibly the truth of this, as it applies to myself!

"It is not, however, with the view of thrusting my egotism upon you thatI have ventured upon addressing you. As I cannot suppose that sopeculiar a psychological revelation will enjoy a wide popularity, Ithink it a duty to the editor to assure him that there are persons inthe world whose souls respond, in the depths of their inmost nature, tothe cry of anguish which makes itself heard in the pages of theseremarkable confessions. "

So much for the place which the Journal--the fruit of so many years ofpainful thought and disappointed effort; seems to be at last securingfor its author among those contemporaries who in his lifetime knewnothing of him. It is a natural consequence of the success of the bookthat the more it penetrates, the greater desire there is to knowsomething more than its original editors and M. Scherer have yet told usabout the personal history of the man who wrote it--about hiseducation, his habits, and his friends. Perhaps some day this wish mayfind its satisfaction. It is an innocent one, and the public may even besaid to have a kind of right to know as much as can be told it of thepersonalities which move and stir it. At present the biographicalmaterial available is extremely scanty, and if it were not for thekindness of M. Scherer, who has allowed the present writer access tocertain manuscript material in his possession, even the sketch whichfollows, vague and imperfect as it necessarily is, would have beenimpossible. 

[Footnote: Four or five articles on the subject of Amiel's life havebeen contributed to the _Révue Internationale_ by Mdlle. Berthe Vadierduring the passage of the present book through the press. My knowledgeof them, however, came too late to enable me to make use of them for thepurposes of the present introduction. ]

Henri Frédéric Amiel was born at Geneva in September, 1821. He belongedto one of the emigrant families, of which a more or less steady supplyhad enriched the little republic during the three centuries followingthe Reformation. Amiel's ancestors, like those of Sismondi, leftLanguedoc for Geneva after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Hisfather must have been a youth at the time when Geneva passed into thepower of the French republic, and would seem to have married and settledin the halcyon days following the restoration of Genevese independencein 1814. Amiel was born when the prosperity of Geneva was at its height, when the little state was administered by men of European reputation, and Genevese society had power to attract distinguished visitors andadmirers from all parts. The veteran Bonstetten, who had been the friendof Gray and the associate of Voltaire, was still talking and enjoyinglife in his _appartement_ overlooking the woods of La Bâtie. Rossi andSismondi were busy lecturing to the Genevese youth, or taking part inGenevese legislation; an active scientific group, headed by the Pictets, De la Rive, and the botanist Auguste-Pyrame de Candolle, kept thecountry abreast of European thought and speculation, while the mixednationality of the place--the blending in it of French keenness withProtestant enthusiasms and Protestant solidity--was beginning to findinimitable and characteristic expression in the stories of Töpffer. Thecountry was governed by an aristocracy, which was not so much anaristocracy of birth as one of merit and intellect, and the moderateconstitutional ideas which represented the Liberalism of thepost-Waterloo period were nowhere more warmly embraced or moreintelligently carried out than in Geneva. 

During the years, however, which immediately followed Amiel's birth, some signs of decadence began to be visible in this brilliant Genevesesociety. The generation which had waited for, prepared, and controlled, the Restoration of 1814, was falling into the background, and theyounger generation, with all its respectability, wanted energy, aboveall, wanted leaders. The revolutionary forces in the state, which hadmade themselves violently felt during the civil turmoils of the periodpreceding the assembly of the French States General, and had afterwardproduced the miniature Terror which forced Sismondi into exile, had beenfor awhile laid to sleep by the events of 1814. But the slumber was ashort one at Geneva as elsewhere, and when Rossi quitted the republicfor France in 1833, he did so with a mind full of misgivings as to thepolitical future of the little state which had given him--an exile and aCatholic--so generous a welcome in 1819. The ideas of 1830 were shakingthe fabric and disturbing the equilibrium of the Swiss Confederation asa whole, and of many of the cantons composing it. Geneva was stillapparently tranquil while her neighbors were disturbed, but no onelooking back on the history of the republic, and able to measure thestrength of the Radical force in Europe after the fall of Charles X. , could have felt much doubt but that a few more years would bring Genevaalso into the whirlpool of political change. 

In the same year--1833--that M. Rossi had left Geneva, Henri FrédéricAmiel, at twelve years old, was left orphaned of both his parents. Theyhad died comparatively young--his mother was only just over thirty, andhis father cannot have been much older. On the death of the mother thelittle family was broken up, the boy passing into the care of onerelative, his two sisters into that of another. Certain notes in M. Scherer's possession throw a little light here and there upon achildhood and youth which must necessarily have been a little bare andforlorn. They show us a sensitive, impressionable boy, of health ratherdelicate than robust, already disposed to a more or less melancholy anddreamy view of life, and showing a deep interest in those religiousproblems and ideas in which the air of Geneva has been steeped since thedays of Calvin. The religious teaching which a Genevese lad undergoesprior to his admission to full church membership, made a deep impressionon him, and certain mystical elements of character, which remainedstrong in him to the end, showed themselves very early. At the collegeor public school of Geneva, and at the académie, he would seem to havedone only moderately as far as prizes and honors were concerned. We aretold, however, that he read enormously, and that he was, generallyspeaking, inclined rather to make friends with men older than himselfthan with his contemporaries. He fell specially under the influence ofAdolphe Pictet, a brilliant philologist and man of letters belonging toa well-known Genevese family, and in later life he was able, whilereviewing one of M. Pictet's books, to give grateful expression to hissense of obligation. 

Writing in 1856 he describes the effect produced in Geneva by M. Pictet's Lectures on Aesthetics in 1840--the first ever delivered in atown in which the Beautiful had been for centuries regarded as the rivaland enemy of the True. "He who is now writing, " says Amiel, "was thenamong M. Pictet's youngest hearers. Since then twenty experiences of thesame kind have followed each other in his intellectual experience, yetnone has effaced the deep impression made upon him by these lectures. Coming as they did at a favorable moment, and answering many a positivequestion and many a vague aspiration of youth, they exercised a decisiveinfluence over his thought; they were to him an important step in thatcontinuous initiation which we call life, they filled him with freshintuitions, they brought near to him the horizons of his dreams. And, asalways happens with a first-rate man, what struck him even more than theteaching was the teacher. So that this memory of 1840 is still dear andprecious to him, and for this double service, which is not of the kindone forgets, the student of those days delights in expressing to theprofessor of 1840 his sincere and filial gratitude. "

Amiel's first literary production, or practically his first, seems tohave been the result partly of these lectures, and partly of a visit toItaly which began in November, 1841. In 1842, a year which was spententirely in Italy and Sicily, he contributed three articles on M. Rio'sbook, "L'Art Chrétien, " to the _Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève_. Wesee in them the young student conscientiously writing his firstreview--writing it at inordinate length, as young reviewers are apt todo, and treating the subject _ab ovo_ in a grave, pontifical way, whichis a little naïve and inexperienced indeed, but still promising, as allseriousness of work and purpose is promising. All that is individual init is first of all the strong Christian feeling which much of it shows, and secondly, the tone of melancholy which already makes itself felthere and there, especially in one rather remarkable passage. As to theChristian feeling, we find M. Rio described as belonging to "that nobleschool 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 trueprogress and true civilization. " The Renaissance is treated as adisastrous but inevitable crisis, in which the idealism of the MiddleAges was dethroned by the naturalism of modern times--"The Renaissanceperhaps robbed us of more than it gave us"--and so on. The tone ofcriticism is instructive enough to the student of Amiel's mind, but theproduct itself has no particular savor of its own. The occasional noteof depression and discouragement, however, is a different thing; here, for those who know the "Journal Intime, " there is already somethingcharacteristic, something which foretells the future. For instance, after dwelling with evident zest on the nature of the metaphysicalproblems lying at the root of art in general, and Christian art inparticular, the writer goes on to set the difficulty of M. Rio's taskagainst its attractiveness, to insist on the intricacy of theinvestigations involved, and on the impossibility of making the twoinstruments on which their success depends--the imaginative and theanalytical faculty--work harmoniously and effectively together. Andsupposing the goal achieved, supposing a man by insight and patience hassucceeded in forcing his way farther than any previous explorer into therecesses of the Beautiful or the True, there still remains the enormous, the insuperable difficulty of expression, of fit and adequatecommunication from mind to mind; there still remains the questionwhether, after all, "he who discovers a new world in the depths of theinvisible would not do wisely to plant on it a flag known to himselfalone, and, like Achilles, 'devour his heart in secret;' whether thegreatest problems which have ever been guessed on earth had not betterhave remained buried in the brain which had found the key to them, andwhether the deepest thinkers--those whose hand has been boldest indrawing aside the veil, and their eye keenest in fathoming the mysteriesbeyond it--had not better, like the prophetess of Ilion, have kept forheaven, and heaven only, secrets and mysteries which human tongue cannottruly express, nor human intelligence conceive. "

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 vaguesonorous phrases have pleased the writer's immature literary sense; butthere is something else too--there is a breath of that same speculativepassion which burns in the Journal, and one hears, as it were, the firstaccents of a melancholy, the first expression of a mood of mind, whichbecame in after years the fixed characteristic of the writer. "At twentyhe was already proud, timid, and melancholy, " writes an old friend; anda little farther on, "Discouragement took possession of him _veryearly_. "

However, in spite of this inbred tendency, which was probably hereditaryand inevitable, the years which followed these articles, from 1842 toChristmas, 1848, were years of happiness and steady intellectualexpansion. They were Amiel's _Wanderjahre_, spent in a free, wanderingstudent life, which left deep marks on his intellectual development. During four years, from 1844 to 1848, his headquarters were at Berlin;but every vacation saw him exploring some new country or freshintellectual center--Scandinavia in 1845, Holland in 1846, Vienna, Munich, and Tübingen in 1848, while Paris had already attracted him in1841, and he was to make acquaintance with London ten years later, in1851. No circumstances could have been more favorable, one would havethought, to the development of such a nature. With his extraordinarypower of "throwing himself into the object"--of effacing himself and hisown personality in the presence of the thing to be understood andabsorbed--he must have passed these years of travel and acquisition in astate of continuous intellectual energy and excitement. It is in nospirit of conceit that he says in 1857, comparing himself with Maine deBiran, "This nature is, as it were, only one of the men which exist inme. My horizon is vaster; I have seen much more of men, things, countries, peoples, books; I have a greater mass of experiences. " Thisfact, indeed, of a wide and varied personal experience, must never beforgotten in any critical estimate of Amiel as a man or writer. We mayso easily conceive him as a sedentary professor, with the ordinaryprofessorial knowledge, or rather ignorance, of men and the world, falling into introspection under the pressure of circumstance, and forwant, as it were, of something else to think about. Not at all. The manwho has left us these microscopic analyses of his own moods andfeelings, had penetrated more or less into the social and intellectuallife of half a dozen European countries, and was familiar not only withthe books, but, to a large extent also, with the men of his generation. The meditative and introspective gift was in him, not the product, butthe mistress of circumstance. It took from the outer world what thatworld had to give, and then made the stuff so gained subservient to itsown ends. 

Of these years of travel, however, the four years spent at Berlin wereby far the most important. "It was at Heidelberg and Berlin, " says M. Scherer, "that the world of science and speculation first opened on thedazzled eyes of the young man. He was accustomed to speak of his fouryears at Berlin as 'his intellectual phase, ' and one felt that heinclined to regard them as the happiest period of his life. The spellwhich Berlin laid upon him lasted long. " Probably his happiness inGermany was partly owing to a sense of reaction against Geneva. Thereare signs that he had felt himself somewhat isolated at school andcollege, and that in the German world his special individuality, withits dreaminess and its melancholy, found congenial surroundings far morereadily than had been the case in the drier and harsher atmosphere ofthe Protestant Rome. However this may be, it is certain that Germanthought took possession of him, that he became steeped not only inGerman methods of speculation, but in German modes of expression, inGerman forms of sentiment, which clung to him through life, and vitallyaffected both his opinions and his style. M. Renan and M. Bourget shaketheir heads over the Germanisms, which, according to the latter, give acertain "barbarous" air to many passages of the Journal. But both admitthat Amiel's individuality owes a great part of its penetrating force tothat intermingling of German with French elements, of which there aresuch abundant traces in the "Journal Intime. " Amiel, in fact, is onemore typical product of a movement which is certainly of enormousimportance in the history of modern thought, even though we may not beprepared to assent to all the sweeping terms in which a writer like M. Taine describes it. "From 1780 to 1830, " says M. Taine, "Germanyproduced all the ideas of our historical age, and during anotherhalf-century, perhaps another century, _notre grande affaire sera de lesrepenser_. " He is inclined to compare the influence of German ideas onthe modern world to the ferment of the Renaissance. No spiritual force"more original, more universal, more fruitful in consequences of everysort and bearing, more capable of transforming and remaking everythingpresented to it, has arisen during the last three hundred years. Likethe spirit of the Renaissance and of the classical age, it attracts intoits orbit all the great works of contemporary intelligence. " Quinet, pursuing a somewhat different line of thought, regards the worship ofGerman ideas inaugurated in France by Madame de Staël as the naturalresult of reaction from the eighteenth century and all its ways. "Germansystems, German hypotheses, beliefs, and poetry, all were eagerlywelcomed as a cure for hearts crushed by the mockery of Candide and thematerialism of the Revolution. . . . Under the Restoration France continuedto study German philosophy and poetry with profound veneration andsubmission. We imitated, translated, compiled, and then again wecompiled, translated, imitated. " The importance of the part played byGerman influence in French Romanticism has indeed been much disputed, but the debt of French metaphysics, French philology, and Frenchhistorical study, to German methods and German research during the lasthalf-century is beyond dispute. And the movement to-day is as strong asever. A modern critic like M. Darmstetter regards it as a misfortunethat the artificial stimulus given by the war to the study of Germanhas, to some extent, checked the study of English in France. He thinksthat the French have more to gain from our literature--taking literaturein its general and popular sense--than from German literature. But heraises no question as to the inevitable subjection of the French to theGerman mind in matters of exact thought and knowledge. "To studyphilology, mythology, history, without reading German, " he is as readyto confess as any one else, "is to condemn one's self to remain in everydepartment twenty years behind the progress of science. "

Of this great movement, already so productive, Amiel is then a fresh andremarkable instance. Having caught from the Germans not only their loveof exact knowledge but also their love of vast horizons, theirinsatiable curiosity as to the whence and whither of all things, theirsense of mystery and immensity in the universe, he then brings thoseelements in him which belong to his French inheritance--and somethingindividual besides, which is not French but Genevese--to bear on his newacquisitions, and the result is of the highest literary interest andvalue. Not that he succeeds altogether in the task of fusion. For onewho was to write and think in French, he was perhaps too long inGermany; he had drunk too deeply of German thought; he had been too muchdazzled by the spectacle of Berlin and its imposing intellectualactivities. "As to his _literary_ talent, " says M. Scherer, afterdwelling on the rapid growth of his intellectual powers under Germaninfluence, "the profit which Amiel derived from his stay at Berlin ismore doubtful. Too long contact with the German mind had led to thedevelopment in him of certain strangenesses of style which he hadafterward to get rid of, and even perhaps of some habits of thoughtwhich he afterward felt the need of checking and correcting. " This isvery true. Amiel is no doubt often guilty, as M. Caro puts it, ofattempts "to write German in French, " and there are in his thoughtitself veins of mysticism, elements of _Schwärmerei_, here and there, ofwhich 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 toParis. Paris, he thinks, would have counteracted the Hegelian influencesbrought to hear upon him at Berlin, [Footnote: See a not, however, onthe subject of Amiel's philosophical relationships, printed as anAppendix to the present volume. ] would have taught him cheerfulness, andtaught him also the art of writing, not beautiful fragments, but a book. Possibly--but how much we should have lost! Instead of the Amiel weknow, we should have had one accomplished French critic the more. Instead of the spiritual drama of the "Journal Intime, " some furtheradditions to French _belles lettres_; instead of something to love, something to admire! No, there is no wishing the German element in Amielaway. Its invading, troubling effect upon his thought and temperamentgoes far to explain the interest and suggestiveness of his mentalhistory. The language he speaks is the language of that French criticismwhich--we have Sainte-Beuve's authority for it--is best described bythe motto of Montaigne, "_Un peu de chaque chose et rien de l'ensemble, à la française_, " and the thought he tries to express in it is thoughttorn and strained by the constant effort to reach the All, the totalityof things: "What I desire is the sum of all desires, and what I seek toknow is the sum of all different kinds of knowledge. Always thecomplete, the absolute, the _teres atque rotundum_. " And it was thisantagonism, or rather this fusion of traditions in him, which went farto make him original, which opened to him, that is to say, so many newlights on old paths, and stirred in him such capacities of fresh andindividual expression. 

We have been carried forward, however, a little too far by this generaldiscussion of Amiel's debts to Germany. Let us take up the biographicalthread again. In 1848 his Berlin apprenticeship came to an end, and hereturned to Geneva. "How many places, how many impressions, observations, thoughts--how many forms of men and things--have passedbefore me and in me since April, 1843, " he writes in the Journal, two orthree months after his return. "The last seven years have been the mostimportant of my life; they have been the novitiate of my intelligence, the initiation of my being into being. " The first literary evidence ofhis matured powers is to be found in two extremely interesting papers onBerlin, which he contributed to the _Bibliothèque Universelle_ in 1848, apparently just before he left Germany. Here for the first time we havethe Amiel of the "Journal Intime. " The young man who five years beforehad written his painstaking review of M. Rio is now in his turn amaster. He speaks with dignity and authority, he has a graphic, vigorousprose at command, the form of expression is condensed and epigrammatic, and there is a mixture of enthusiasm and criticism in his description ofthe powerful intellectual machine then working in the Prussian capitalwhich represents a permanent note of character, a lasting attitude ofmind. A great deal, of course, in the two papers is technical andstatistic, but what there is of general comment and criticism is so goodthat one is tempted to make some melancholy comparisons between them andanother article in the _Bibliothèque_, that on Adolphe Pictet, writtenin 1856, and from which we have already quoted. In 1848 Amiel was forawhile master of his powers and his knowledge; no fatal divorce had yettaken place in him between the accumulating and producing faculties; hewrites readily even for the public, without labor, without affectations. Eight years later the reflective faculty has outgrown his control;composition, which represents the practical side of the intellectuallife, has become difficult and painful to him, and he has developed whathe himself calls "a wavering manner, born of doubt and scruple. "

How few could have foreseen the failure in public and practical lifewhich lay before him at the moment of his reappearance at Geneva in1848! "My first meeting with him in 1849 is still vividly present tome, " says M. Scherer. "He was twenty-eight, and he had just come fromGermany laden with science, but he wore his knowledge lightly, his lookswere attractive, his conversation animated, and no affectation spoiledthe favorable impression he made on the bystander--the whole effect, indeed, was of something brilliant and striking. In his young alertnessAmiel seemed to be entering upon life as a conqueror; one would havesaid the future was all his own. "

His return, moreover, was marked by a success which seemed to secure himat once an important position in his native town. After a publiccompetition he was appointed, in 1849, professor of esthetics and Frenchliterature at the Academy of Geneva, a post which he held for fouryears, exchanging it for the professorship of moral philosophy in 1854. Thus at twenty-eight, without any struggle to succeed, he had gained, itwould have seemed, that safe foothold in life which should be all thephilosopher or the critic wants to secure the full and fruitfuldevelopment of his gifts. Unfortunately the appointment, instead of thefoundation and support, was to be the stumbling block of his career. Geneva at the time was in a state of social and political ferment. Aftera long struggle, beginning with the revolutionary outbreak of November, 1841, the Radical party, led by James Fazy, had succeeded in ousting theConservatives--that is to say, the governing class, which had ruled therepublic since the Restoration--from power. And with the advent of thedemocratic constitution of 1846, and the exclusion of the old Genevesefamilies from the administration they had so long monopolized, a numberof subsidiary changes were effected, not less important to the ultimatesuccess of Radicalism than the change in political machinery introducedby the new constitution. Among them was the disappearance of almost thewhole existing staff of the academy, then and now the center of Geneveseeducation, and up to 1847 the stronghold of the moderate ideas of 1814, followed by the appointment of new men less likely to hamper the Radicalorder of things. 

Of these new men Amiel was one. He had been absent from Geneva duringthe years of conflict which had preceded Fazy's triumph; he seems tohave had no family or party connections with the leaders of the defeatedside, and as M. Scherer points out, he could accept a non-political postat the hands of the new government, two years after the violent measureswhich had marked its accession, without breaking any pledges orsacrificing any convictions. But none the less the step was a fatal one. M. Renan is so far in the right. If any timely friend had at that momentsucceeded in tempting Amiel to Paris, as Guizot tempted Rossi in 1833, there can be little question that the young professor's after life wouldhave been happier and saner. As it was, Amiel threw himself into thecompetition for the chair, was appointed professor, and then foundhimself in a hopelessly false position, placed on the threshold of life, in relations and surroundings for which he was radically unfitted, andcut off by no fault of his own from the _milieu_ to which he rightlybelonged, and in which his sensitive individuality might have expandednormally and freely. For the defeated upper class very naturally shuttheir doors on the nominees of the new _régime_, and as this classrepresented at that moment almost everything that was intellectuallydistinguished in Geneva, as it was the guardian, broadly speaking, ofthe scientific and literary traditions of the little state, we caneasily imagine how galling such a social ostracism must have been to theyoung professor, accustomed to the stimulating atmosphere, the commonintellectual interests of Berlin, and tormented with perhaps more thanthe ordinary craving of youth for sympathy and for affection. In a greatcity, containing within it a number of different circles of life, Amielwould easily have found his own circle, nor could political discordshave affected his social comfort to anything like the same extent. Butin a town not much larger than Oxford, and in which the cultured classhad hitherto formed a more or less homogeneous and united whole, it wasalmost impossible for Amiel to escape from his grievance and establish asufficient barrier of friendly interests between himself and the societywhich ignored him. There can be no doubt that he suffered, both in mindand character, from the struggle the position involved. He had nonatural sympathy with radicalism. His taste, which was extremelyfastidious, his judgment, his passionate respect for truth, were alloffended by the noise, the narrowness, the dogmatism of the triumphantdemocracy. So that there was no making up on the one side for what hehad lost on the other, and he proudly resigned himself to an isolationand a reserve which, reinforcing, as they did, certain native weaknessesof character, had the most unfortunate effect upon his life. 

In a passage of the Journal written nearly thirty years after hiselection he allows himself a few pathetic words, half of accusation, half of self-reproach, which make us realize how deeply thisuntowardness of social circumstance had affected him. He is discussingone of Madame de Staël's favorite words, the word _consideration_. "Whatis _consideration_?" he asks. "How does a man obtain it? how does itdiffer from fame, esteem, admiration?" And then he turns upon himself. "It is curious, but the idea of consideration has been to me so littleof a motive that I have not even been conscious of such an idea. Butought I not to have been conscious of it?" he asks himselfanxiously--"ought I not to have been more careful to win the goodopinion of others, more determined to conquer their hostility orindifference? 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 consideration and reputation--to force the esteem of others--seemed to me an effort unworthy ofmyself, almost a degradation. A struggle with unfavorable opinion hasseemed to me beneath me, for all the while my heart has been full ofsadness and disappointment, and I have known and felt that I have beensystematically and deliberately isolated. Untimely despair and thedeepest discouragement have been my constant portion. Incapable oftaking any interest in my talents for their own sake, I let everythingslip as soon as the hope of being loved for them and by them hadforsaken me. A hermit against my will, I have not even found peace insolitude, because my inmost conscience has not been any better satisfiedthan my heart. "

Still one may no doubt easily exaggerate this loneliness of Amiel's. Hissocial difficulties represent rather a dull discomfort in his life, which in course of time, and in combination with a good many othercauses, produced certain unfavorable results on his temperament and onhis public career, than anything very tragic and acute. They were real, and he, being what he was, was specially unfitted to cope with andconquer them. But he had his friends, his pleasures, and even to someextent his successes, like other men. "He had an elasticity of mind, "says M. Scherer, speaking of him as he knew him in youth, "which reactedagainst vexations from without, and his cheerfulness was readilyrestored by conversation and the society of a few kindred spirits. Wewere accustomed, two or three friends and I, to walk every Thursday tothe Salève, Lamartine's _Salève aux flancs azurés_; we dined there, anddid not return till nightfall. " They were days devoted to _débauchesplatoniciennes_, to "the free exchange of ideas, the free play of fancyand of gayety. Amiel was not one of the original members of theseThursday parties; but whenever he joined us we regarded it as afête-day. In serious discussion he was a master of the unexpected, andhis energy, his _entrain_, affected us all. If his grammaticalquestions, his discussions of rhymes and synonyms, astonished us attimes, how often, on the other hand, did he not give us cause to admirethe variety of his knowledge, the precision of his ideas, the charm ofhis quick intelligence! We found him always, besides, kindly andamiable, 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 aman so richly gifted produced nothing, or only trivialities_. "

In these last words of M. Scherer's we have come across the determiningfact of Amiel's life in its relation to the outer world--that "sterilityof genius, " of which he was the victim. For social ostracism andpolitical anxiety would have mattered to him comparatively little if hecould but have lost himself in the fruitful activities of thought, inthe struggles and the victories of composition and creation. A Germanprofessor of Amiel's knowledge would have wanted nothing beyond his_Fach_, and nine men out of ten in his circumstances would have madethemselves the slave of a _magnum opus_, and forgotten the vexations ofeveryday life in the "_douces joies de la science_. " But there werecertain characteristics in Amiel which made it impossible--whichneutralized his powers, his knowledge, his intelligence, and condemnedhim, so far as his public performance was concerned, to barrenness andfailure. What were these characteristics, this element of unsoundnessand disease, which M. Caro calls "_la maladie de l'idéal_?"

Before we can answer the question we must go back a little and try torealize the intellectual and moral equipment of the young man oftwenty-eight, who seemed to M. Scherer to have the world at his feet. What were the chief qualities of mind and heart which Amiel brought backwith him from Berlin? In the first place, an omnivorous desire to know:"Amiel, " says M. Scherer, "read everything. " In the second, anextraordinary power of sustained and concentrated thought, and apassionate, almost a religious, delight in the exercise of his power. Knowledge, science, stirred in him no mere sense of curiosity or coldcritical instinct--"he came to his desk as to an altar. " "A friend whoknew him well, " says M. Scherer, "remembers having heard him speak withdeep emotion of that lofty serenity of mood which he had experiencedduring his years in Germany whenever, in the early morning before dawn, with his reading-lamp beside him, he had found himself penetrating oncemore into the region of pure thought, 'conversing with ideas, enjoyingthe inmost life of things. '" "Thought, " he says somewhere in theJournal, "is like opium. It can intoxicate us and yet leave us broadawake. " To this intoxication of thought he seems to have been alwaysspecially liable, and his German experience--unbalanced, as such anexperience generally is with a young man, by family life, or by anyhealthy commonplace interests and pleasures--developed the intellectualpassion in him to an abnormal degree. For four years he had devotedhimself to the alternate excitement and satisfaction of this passion. Hehad read enormously, thought enormously, and in the absence of anyimperative claim on the practical side of him, the accumulative, reflective faculties had grown out of all proportion to the rest of thepersonality. Nor had any special subject the power to fix him. Had hebeen in France, what Sainte-Beuve calls the French "_imagination dedétail_" would probably have attracted his pliant, responsive nature, and he would have found happy occupation in some one of the innumerabledepartments of research on which the French have been patiently spendingtheir analytical gift since that general widening of horizons whichaccompanied and gave value to the Romantic movement. But instead he wasat Berlin, in the center of that speculative ferment which followed thedeath of Hegel and the break-up of the Hegelian idea into a number ofdifferent and conflicting sections of philosophical opinion. He wasunder the spell of German synthesis, of that traditional, involuntaryeffort which the German mind makes, generation after generation, to findthe unity of experience, to range its accumulations from life andthought under a more and more perfect, a more and more exhaustive, formula. Not this study or that study, not this detail or that, but thewhole of things, the sum of Knowledge, the Infinite, the Absolute, alonehad value or reality. In his own words: "There is no repose for the mindexcept in the absolute; for feeling except in the infinite; for the soulexcept in the divine. Nothing finite is true, is interesting, is worthyto fix my attention. All that is particular is exclusive, and all thatis exclusive repels me. There is nothing non-exclusive but the All; myend is communion with Being through the whole of Being. "

It was not, indeed, that he neglected the study of detail; he had astrong natural aptitude for it, and his knowledge was wide and real; butdetail was ultimately valuable to him, not in itself, but as food for aspeculative hunger, for which, after all, there is no real satisfaction. All the pleasant paths which traverse the kingdom of Knowledge, in whichso many of us find shelter and life-long means of happiness, led Amielstraight into the wilderness of abstract speculation. And the longer helingered in the wilderness, unchecked by any sense of intellectualresponsibility, and far from the sounds of human life, the stranger andthe weirder grew the hallucinations of thought. The Journal givesmarvelous expression to them: "I can find no words for what I feel. Myconsciousness is withdrawn into itself; I hear my heart beating, and mylife passing. It seems to me that I have become a statue on the banks ofthe river of time, that I am the spectator of some mystery, and shallissue from it old, or no longer capable of age. " Or again: "I am aspectator, so to speak, of the molecular whirlwind which men callindividual life; I am conscious of an incessant metamorphosis, anirresistible movement of existence, which is going on within me--andthis phenomenology of myself serves as a window opened upon the mysteryof the world. I am, or rather my sensible consciousness is, concentratedupon this ideal standing-point, this invisible threshold, as it were, whence one hears the impetuous passage of time, rushing and foaming asit flows out into the changeless ocean of eternity. After all thebewildering distractions of life--after having drowned myself in amultiplicity of trifles and in the caprices of this fugitive existence, yet without ever attaining to self-intoxication or self-delusion--I comeagain upon the fathomless abyss, the silent and melancholy cavern, wheredwell '_Die Mütter_, ' where sleeps that which neither lives nor dies, which has neither movement nor change, nor extension, nor form, andwhich lasts when all else passes away. "

Wonderful sentences! "_Prodiges de la pensée speculative, décrits dansune langue non moins prodigieuse_, " as M. Scherer says of theinnumerable passages which describe either this intoxication of theinfinite, or the various forms and consequences of that deadening ofpersonality which the abstract processes of thought tend to produce. Butit is easy to understand that a man in whom experiences of this kindbecome habitual is likely to lose his hold upon the normal interests oflife. What are politics or literature to such a mind but fragmentswithout real importance--dwarfed reflections of ideal truths for whichneither language nor institutions provide any adequate expression! Howis it possible to take seriously what is so manifestly relative andtemporary as the various existing forms of human activity? Above all, how is it possible to take one's self seriously, to spend one's thoughton the petty interests of a petty individuality, when the beatificvision of universal knowledge, of absolute being, has once dawned on thedazzled beholder? The charm and the savor of everything relative andphenomenal is gone. A man may go on talking, teaching, writing--but thespring of personal action is broken; his actions are like the actions ofa somnambulist. 

No doubt to some extent this mood is familiar to all minds endowed withthe true speculative genius. The philosopher has always tended to becomeunfit for practical life; his unfitness, indeed, is one of the comicmotives, so to speak, of literature. But a mood which, in the greatmajority of thinkers, is intermittent, and is easily kept within boundsby the practical needs, the mere physical instincts of life, was inAmiel almost constant, and the natural impulse of the human animaltoward healthy movement and a normal play of function, never very strongin him, was gradually weakened and destroyed by an untoward combinationof circumstances. The low health from which he suffered more or lessfrom his boyhood, and then the depressing influences of the socialdifficulties we have described, made it more and more difficult for therest of the organism to react against the tyranny of the brain. And asthe normal human motives lost their force, what he calls "the Buddhisttendency in me" gathered strength year by year, until, like some strangemisgrowth, it had absorbed the whole energies and drained the innermostlife-blood of the personality which had developed it. And the result isanother soul's tragedy, another story of conflict and failure, whichthrows fresh light on the mysterious capacities of human nature, andwarns us, as the letters of Obermann in their day warned the generationof George Sand, that with the rise of new intellectual perceptions newspiritual dangers come into being, and that across the path ofcontinuous evolution which the modern mind is traversing there lies manya _selva oscura_, many a lonely and desolate tract, in which loss andpain await it. The story of the "Journal Intime" is a story to make usthink, to make us anxious; but at the same time, in the case of a naturelike Amiel's, there is so much high poetry thrown off from the longprocess of conflict, the power of vision and of reproduction which theintellect gains at the expense of the rest of the personality is in manyrespects so real and so splendid, and produces results so stirring oftento the heart and imagination of the listener, that in the end we putdown the record not so much with a throb of pity as with an impulse ofgratitude. The individual error and suffering is almost forgotten; allthat we can realize is the enrichment of human feeling, the quickenedsense of spiritual reality bequeathed to us by the baffled and solitarythinker whose _via dolorosa_ is before us. 

The manner in which this intellectual idiosyncrasy we have beendescribing gradually affected Amiel's life supplies abundant proof ofits actuality and sincerity. It is a pitiful story. Amiel might havebeen saved from despair by love and marriage, by paternity, by strenuousand successful literary production; and this mental habit of his--thistyranny of ideal conceptions, helped by the natural accompaniment ofsuch a tyranny, a critical sense of abnormal acuteness--stood betweenhim and everything healing and restoring. "I am afraid of an imperfect, a faulty synthesis, and I linger in the provisional, from timidity andfrom loyalty. " "As soon as a thing attracts me I turn away from it; orrather, I cannot either be content with the second-best, or discoveranything which satisfies my aspiration. The real disgusts me, and Icannot find the ideal. " And so one thing after another 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 mythoughts, of my hopes; within a common worship--toward the world outsidekindness and beneficence; education to undertake; the thousand and onemoral relations which develop round the first--all these ideasintoxicate me sometimes. " But in vain. "Reality, the present, theirreparable, the necessary, repel and even terrify me. I have too muchimagination, conscience, and penetration and not enough character. _Thelife of thought alone seems to me to have enough elasticity andimmensity, to be free enough from the irreparable; practical life makesme afraid. _ I am distrustful of myself and of happiness because I knowmyself. The ideal poisons for me all imperfect possession. And I abhoruseless regrets and repentance. "

It is the same, at bottom, with his professional work. He protects theintellectual freedom, as it were, of his students with the same jealousyas he protects his own. There shall be no oratorical device, nopersuading, no cajoling of the mind this way or that. "A professor isthe priest of his subject, and should do the honors of it gravely andwith dignity. " And so the man who in his private Journal is master of aneloquence and a poetry, capable of illuminating the most difficult andabstract of subjects, becomes in the lecture-room a dry compendium ofuniversal knowledge. "Led by his passion for the whole, " says M. Scherer, "Amiel offered his hearers, not so much a series of positiveteachings, as an index of subjects, a framework--what the Germans calla _Schematismus_. The skeleton was admirably put together, and excellentof its kind, and lent itself admirably to a certain kind of analysis anddemonstration; but it was a skeleton--flesh, body, and life werewanting. "

So that as a professor he made no mark. He was conscientiousness itselfin whatever he conceived to be his duty. But with all the critical andphilosophical power which, as we know from the Journal, he might havelavished on his teaching, had the conditions been other than they were, the study of literature, and the study of philosophy as such, owe himnothing. But for the Journal his years of training and his years ofteaching would have left equally little record behind them. "His pupilsat Geneva, " writes one who was himself among the number, [Footnote: M. Alphonse Rivier, now Professor of International Law at the Universityof Brussels. ] "never learned to appreciate him at his true worth. We didjustice no doubt to a knowledge as varied as it was wide, to his vaststores of reading, to that cosmopolitanism of the best kind which he hadbrought 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 hislectures. "

Many a student, however, has shrunk from the burden and risks of familylife, and has found himself incapable of teaching effectively what heknows, and has yet redeemed all other incapacities in the field ofliterary production. And here indeed we come to the strangest feature inAmiel's career--his literary sterility. That he possessed literary powerof the highest order is abundantly proved by the "Journal Intime. "Knowledge, insight, eloquence, critical power--all were his. And theimpulse to produce, which is the natural, though by no means theinvariable, accompaniment of the literary gift, must have been fairlystrong in him also. For the "Journal Intime" runs to 17, 000 folio pagesof MS. , and his half dozen volumes of poems, though the actual quantityis not large, represent an amount of labor which would have more thancarried him through some serious piece of critical or philosophicalwork, 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 wasa contributor to the best literary periodical which Geneva possessed. Hewas a charming correspondent, and in spite of his passion for abstractthought, his intellectual interest, at any rate, in all the activitiesof the day--politics, religious organizations, literature, art--was ofthe keenest kind. And yet at the time of his death all that this finecritic and profound thinker had given to the world, after a lifeentirely spent in the pursuit of letters, was, in the first place, a fewvolumes of poems which had had no effect except on a small number ofsympathetic friends; a few pages of _pensées_ intermingled with thepoems, and, as we now know, extracted from the Journal; and four or fivescattered essays, the length of magazine articles, on Mme. De Staël, Rousseau, the history of the Academy of Geneva, the literature ofFrench-speaking Switzerland, and so on! And more than this, theproduction, such as it was, had been a production born of effort anddifficulty; and the labor squandered on poetical forms, on metricalexperiments and intricate problems of translation, as well as theoccasional affectations of the prose style, might well have convincedthe critical bystander that the mind of which these things were theoffspring could have no real importance, no profitable message, for theworld. 

The whole "Journal Intime" is in some sense Amiel's explanation of thesefacts. In it he has made full and bitter confession of his weakness, hisfailure; he has endeavored, with an acuteness of analysis no other handcan rival, to make the reasons of his failure and isolation clear bothto himself and others. "To love, to dream, to feel, to learn, tounderstand--all these are possible to me if only I may be dispensed fromwilling--I have a sort of primitive horror of ambition, of struggle, ofhatred, of all which dissipates the soul and makes it dependent onexternal things and aims. The joy of becoming once more conscious ofmyself, of listening to the passage of time and the flow of theuniversal life, is sometimes enough to make me forget every desire andto quench in me both the wish to produce and the power to execute. " Itis the result of what he himself calls _"l'éblouissement de l'infini_. "He no sooner makes a step toward production, toward action and therealization of himself, than a vague sense of peril overtakes him. Theinner life, with its boundless horizons and its indescribableexaltations, seems endangered. Is he not about to place between himselfand the forms of speculative truth some barrier of sense and matter--togive up the real for the apparent, the substance for the shadow? One isreminded 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 speculative sense, with the tendencywhich carries a man toward the contemplative study of life and nature asa whole, is the critical sense--the tendency which, in the realm ofaction and concrete performance, carries him, as Amiel expresses it, _"droit au défaut, "_ and makes him conscious at once of the weak point, the germ of failure in a project or an action. It is another aspect ofthe same idiosyncrasy. "The point I have reached seems to be explainedby a too restless search for perfection, by the abuse of the criticalfaculty, and by an unreasonable distrust of first impulses, firstthoughts, first words. Confidence and spontaneity of life are driftingout of my reach, and this is why I can no longer act. " For abuse of thecritical faculty brings with it its natural consequences--timidity ofsoul, paralysis of the will, complete self-distrust. "To know is enoughfor me; expression seems to me often a profanity. What I lack ischaracter, will, individuality. " "By what mystery, " he writes to M. Scherer, "do others expect much from me? whereas I feel myself to beincapable of anything serious or important. " _Défiance_ and_impuissance_ are the words constantly on his lips. "My friends see whatI might have been; I see what I am. "

And yet the literary instinct remains, and must in some way besatisfied. And so he takes refuge in what he himself calls scales, exercises, _tours de force_ in verse-translation of the most laboriousand difficult kind, in ingenious _vers d'occasion_, in metricalexperiments and other literary trifling, as his friends think it, of thesame sort. "I am afraid of greatness. I am not afraid of ingenuity; allmy published literary 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 itscapacity and skill. But the work itself remains unachieved. I am alwayspreparing and never accomplishing, and my energy is swallowed up in akind of barren curiosity. "

Not that he surrenders himself to the nature which is stronger than heall at once. His sense of duty rebels, his conscience suffers, and hemakes resolution after resolution to shake himself free from the mentaltradition which had taken such hold upon him--to write, to produce, tosatisfy his friends. In 1861, a year after M. Scherer had left Geneva, Amiel wrote to him, describing his difficulties and his discouragements, and asking, as one may ask an old friend of one's youth, for help andcounsel. M. Scherer, much touched by the appeal, answered it plainly andfrankly--described the feeling of those who knew him as they watched hislife slipping away unmarked by any of the achievements of which hisyouth had given promise, and pointed out various literary openings inwhich, if he were to put out his powers, he could not but succeed. Tobegin with, he urged him to join the _Revue Germanique, _ then beingstarted by Charles Dollfus, Renan, Littré, and others. Amiel left theletter for three months unanswered and then wrote a reply which M. Scherer probably received with a sigh of impatience. For, rightlyinterpreted, it meant that old habits were too strong, and that themomentary impulse had died away. When, a little later, "Les Etrangères, "a collection of verse-translations, came out, it was dedicated to M. Scherer, who did not, however, pretend to give it any very cordialreception. Amiel took his friend's coolness in very good part, callinghim 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 nowfeel to have been tragic. A kind of remorse seizes me that I was notable to understand my friend better, and to soothe his suffering by asympathy which would have been a mixture of pity and admiration. "

Was it that all the while Amiel felt himself sure of his _revanche_ thathe knew the value of all those sheets of Journal which were slowlyaccumulating under his hand? Did he say to himself sometimes: "Myfriends are wrong; my gifts and my knowledge are not lost; I have givenexpression to them in the only way possible to me, and when I die itwill be found that I too, like other men, have performed the taskappointed me, and contributed my quota to the human store?" It is clearthat very early he began to regard it as possible that portions of theJournal should be published after his death, and, as we have seen, heleft certain "literary instructions, " dated seven years before his lastillness, in which his executors were directed to publish such parts ofit as might seem to them to possess any general interest. But it isclear also that the Journal was not, in any sense, written forpublication. "These pages, " say the Geneva editors, "written _au courantde la plume_--sometimes in the morning, but more often at the end of theday, without any idea of composition or publicity--are marked by therepetition, the _lacunae_, the carelessness, inherent in this kind ofmonologue. The thoughts and sentiments expressed have no other aim thansincerity of rendering. "

And his estimate of the value of the record thus produced was, ingeneral, a low one, especially during the depression and discouragementof his later years. "This Journal of mine, " he writes in 1876, "represents the material of a good many volumes; what prodigious wasteof time, of thought, of strength! It will be useful to nobody, and evenfor myself--it has rather helped me to shirk life than to practice it. "And again: "Is everything I have produced, taken together--mycorrespondence, these thousands of Journal pages, my lectures, myarticles, my poems, my notes of different kinds--anything better thanwithered leaves? To whom and to what have I been useful? Will my namesurvive me a single day, and will it ever mean anything to anybody? Alife of no account! When all is added up--nothing!" In passages likethese there is no anticipation of any posthumous triumph over thedisapproval of his friends and the criticism of his fellow-citizens. TheJournal was a relief, the means of satisfying a need of expression whichotherwise could find no outlet; "a grief-cheating device, " but nothingmore. It did not still the sense of remorse for wasted gifts andopportunities which followed poor Amiel through the painful months ofhis last illness. Like Keats, he passed away, feeling that all was over, and the great game of life lost forever. 

It still remains for us to gather up a few facts and impressions of adifferent kind from those which we have been dwelling on, which mayserve to complete and correct the picture we have so far drawn of theauthor of the Journal. For Amiel is full of contradictions andsurprises, which, are indeed one great source of his attractiveness. Hadhe only been the thinker, the critic, the idealist we have beendescribing, he would never have touched our feeling as he now does; whatmakes him so interesting is that there was in him a _fond_ of heredity, a temperament and disposition, which were perpetually reacting againstthe oppression of the intellect and its accumulations. In his hours ofintellectual concentration he freed himself from all trammels of countryor society, or even, as he insists, from all sense of personality. Butat other times he was the dutiful son of a country which he loved, taking a warm interest in everything Genevese, especially in everythingthat represented the older life of the town. When it was a question ofseparating the Genevese state from the church, which had been the centerof the national life during three centuries of honorable history, Amielthe philosopher, the cosmopolitan, threw himself ardently on to the sideof the opponents of separation, and rejoiced in their victory. A largeproportion of his poems deal with national subjects. He was one of thefirst members of "_L'Institut Genevois_, " founded in 1853, and he took awarm interest in the movement started by M. Eugene Rambert toward 1870, for the improvement of secondary education throughout French-speakingSwitzerland. One of his friends dwells with emphasis on his "_sensprofond des nationalités, des langues, des villes_"--on his love forlocal characteristics, for everything deep-rooted in the past, andhelping to sustain the present. He is convinced that no state can liveand thrive without a certain number of national prejudices, without _àpriori_ beliefs and traditions. It pleases him to see that there is aforce in the Genevese nationality which resists the leveling influencesof a crude radicalism; it rejoices him that Geneva "has not yet become amere copy of anything, and that she is still capable of deciding forherself. Those who say to her, 'Do as they do at New York, at Paris, atRome, at Berlin, ' are still in the minority. The _doctrinaires_ whowould split her up and destroy her unity waste their breath upon her. She divines the snare laid for her, and turns away. I like this proof ofvitality. "

His love of traveling never left him. Paris attracted him, as itattracts all who cling to letters, and he gained at one time or anothera certain amount of acquaintance with French literary men. In 1852 wefind him for a time brought into contact with Thierry, Lamennais, Béranger, Mignet, etc. , as well as with Romantics like Alfred de Vignyand Théophile Gautier. There are poems addressed to De Vigny and Gautierin his first published volume of 1854. He revisited Italy and his oldhaunts and friends in Germany more than once, and in general kept thecurrent of his life fresh and vigorous by his openness to impressionsand additions from without. 

He was, as we have said, a delightful correspondent, "taking pains withthe smallest note, " and within a small circle of friends much liked. Hiswas not a nature to be generally appreciated at its true value; themotives which governed his life were too remote from the ordinarymotives of human conduct, and his characteristics just those which havealways excited the distrust, if not the scorn, of the more practical andvigorous order of minds. Probably, too--especially in his lateryears--there was a certain amount of self-consciousness andartificiality in his attitude toward the outer world, which was theresult partly of the social difficulties we have described, partly ofhis own sense of difference from his surroundings, and partly again ofthat timidity of nature, that self-distrust, which is revealed to us inthe Journal. So that he was by no means generally popular, and the greatsuccess of the Journal is still a mystery to the majority of those whoknew him merely as a fellow-citizen and acquaintance. But his friendsloved him and believed in him, and the reserved student, whose mannerswere thought affected in general society, could and did make himselfdelightful to those who understood him, or those who looked to him foraffection. "According to my remembrance of him, " writes M. Scherer, "hewas bright, sociable, a charming companion. Others who knew him betterand longer than I say the same. The mobility of his dispositioncounteracted his tendency to exaggerations of feeling. In spite of hisfits of melancholy, his natural turn of mind was cheerful; up to the endhe was young, a child even, amused by mere nothings; and whoever hadheard him laugh his hearty student's laugh would have found it difficultto identify him with the author of so many somber pages. " M. Rivier, hisold pupil, remembers him as "strong and active, still handsome, delightful in conversation, ready to amuse and be amused. " Indeed, ifthe photographs of him are to be trusted, there must have been somethingspecially attractive in the sensitive, expressive face, with its loftybrow, fine eyes, and kindly mouth. It is the face of a poet rather thanof a student, and makes one understand certain other little points whichhis friends lay stress on--for instance, his love for and popularitywith children. 

In his poems, or at any rate in the earlier ones, this lighter sidefinds more expression, proportionally, than in the Journal. In thevolume called "Grains de Mil, " published in 1854, and containing versewritten between the ages of eighteen and thirty, there are poemsaddressed, now to his sister, now to old Genevese friends, and now tofamous men of other countries whom he had seen and made friends with inpassing, which, read side by side with the "Journal Intime, " bring acertain gleam and sparkle into an otherwise somber picture. Amiel wasnever a master of poetical form; his verse, compared to his prose, istame and fettered; it never reaches the glow and splendor of expressionwhich mark the finest passages of the Journal. It has ability, thought--beauty even, of a certain kind, but no plastic power, none ofthe incommunicable magic which a George Eliot seeks for in vain, whileit comes unasked, to deck with imperishable charm the commonplacemetaphysic and the simpler emotions of a Tennyson or a Burns. Still asAmiel's work, his poetry has an interest for those who are interested inhim. Sincerity is written in every line of it. Most of the thoughts andexperiences with which one grows familiar in the Journal are repeated init; the same joys, the same aspirations, the same sorrows are visiblethroughout it, so that in reading it one is more and more impressed withthe force and reality of the inner life which has left behind it sodefinite an image of itself. And every now and then the poems add adetail, a new impression, which seems by contrast to give fresh value tothe fine-spun speculations, the lofty despairs, of the Journal. Takethese verses, written at twenty-one, to his younger sister:

 "Treize ans! et sur ton front aucun baiser de mère Ne viendra, pauvre enfant, invoquer le bonheur; Treize ans! et dans ce jour mil regard de ton père Ne fera d'allégresse épanouir ton coeur. 

 "Orpheline, c'est là le nom dont tu t'appelles, Oiseau né dans un nid que la foudre a brisé; De la couvée, hélas! seuls, trois petits, sans ailes Furent lancés au vent, loin du reste écrasé. 

 "Et, semés par l'éclair sur les monts, dans les plaines, Un même toit encor n'a pu les abriter, Et du foyer natal, malgré leurs plaintes vaines Dieu, peut-être longtemps, voudra les écarter. 

 "Pourtant console-toi! pense, dans tes alarmes, Qu'un double bien te reste, espoir et souvenir; Une main dans le ciel pour essuyer tes larmes; Une main ici-bas, enfant, pour te bénir. "

The last stanza is especially poor, and in none of them is there muchpoetical promise. But the pathetic image of a forlorn and orphanedchildhood, "_un nid que la foudre a brisé_, " which it calls up, and thetone of brotherly affection, linger in one's memory. And through much ofthe volume of 1863, in the verses to "My Godson, " or in the charmingpoem to Loulou, the little girl who at five years old, daisy in hand, had sworn him eternal friendship over Gretchen's game of "_Er liebtmich--liebt mich nicht_, " one hears the same tender note. 

 "Merci, prophétique fleurette, Corolle à l'oracle vainqueur, Car voilà 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 fidèle, Fidèle comme aux premiers jours. "

His last poetical volume, "Jour à Jour, " published in 1880, is far moreuniformly melancholy and didactic in tone than the two earliercollections from which we have been quoting. But though the dominantnote is one of pain and austerity, of philosophy touched with emotion, and the general tone more purely introspective, there are many traces init of the younger Amiel, dear, for very ordinary human reasons, to hissisters and his friends. And, in general, the pathetic interest of thebook for all whose sympathy answers to what George Sand calls "_lestragédies que la pensée aperçoit et que l'oeil ne voit point_" is verygreat. Amiel published it a year before his death, and the struggle withfailing power which the Journal reveals to us in its saddest and mostintimate 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 thelife of the religious soul--they are all here, and the _Dernier Mot_with which the sad little volume ends is poor Amiel's epitaph onhimself, his conscious farewell to that more public aspect of his lifein which he had suffered much and achieved comparatively so little. 

 "Nous avons à plaisir compliqué le bonheur, Et par un idéal frivole et suborneur Attaché nos coeurs à la terre; Dupes des faux dehors tenus pour l'important, Mille choses pour nous ont du prix . . . Et pourtant Une seule était nécessaire. 

 "Sans fin nous prodiguons calculs, efforts, travaux; Cependant, au milieu des succès, des bravos En nous quelque chose soupire; Multipliant nos pas et nos soins de fourmis, Nous vondrions nous faire une foule d'amis. . . . Pourtant un seul pouvait suffire. 

 "Victime des désirs, esclave des regrets, L'homme s'agite, et s'use, et vieillit sans progrès Sur sa toile de Pénélope; Comme un sage mourant, puissions-nous dire en paix J'ai trop longtemps erré, cherché; je me trompais; Tout est bien, mon Dieu m'enveloppe. "

Upon the small remains of Amiel's prose outside the Journal there is nooccasion to dwell. The two essays on Madame de Staël and Rousseaucontain much fine critical remark, and might find a place perhaps as anappendix to some future edition of the Journal; and some of the"Pensées, " published in the latter half of the volume containing the"Grains de Mils, " are worthy of preservation. But in general, whateverhe himself published was inferior to what might justly have beenexpected 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 whichfilled the last seven years of his life, is abundantly told in theJournal--we must not repeat it here. He had never been a strong man, andat fifty-three he received, at his doctor's hands, his _arrêt de mort_. We are told that what killed him was "heart disease, complicated bydisease of the larynx, " and that he suffered "much and long. " He wasburied in the cemetery of Clarens, not far from his great contemporaryAlexander Vinet; and the affection of a sculptor friend provided themonument which now marks his resting-place. 

We have thus exhausted all the biographical material which is at presentavailable for the description of Amiel's life and relations toward theoutside world. It is to be hoped that the friends to whom the charge ofhis memory has been specially committed may see their way in the future, if not to a formal biography, which is very likely better leftunattempted, at least to a volume of Letters, which would complete the"Journal Intime, " as Joubert's "Correspondence" completes the "Pensées. "There must be ample material for it; and Amiel's letters would probablysupply us with more of that literary and critical reflection which hismind produced so freely and so well, as long as there was no question ofpublication, but which is at present somewhat overweighted in the"Journal Intime. "

But whether biography or correspondence is ever forthcoming or not, theJournal remains--and the Journal is the important matter. We shall readthe Letters if they appear, as we now read the Poems, for the Journal'ssake. The man himself, as poet, teacher, and _littérateur_, produced noappreciable effect on his generation; but the posthumous record of hisinner life has stirred the hearts of readers all over Europe, and wonhim a niche in the House of Fame. What are the reasons for this strikingtransformation of a man's position--a transformation which, as M. Scherer says, will rank among the curiosities of literary history? Inother words, what has given the "Journal Intime" its sudden andunexpected success?

In the first place, no doubt, its poetical quality, its beauty ofmanner--that fine literary expression in which Amiel has been able toclothe the subtler processes of thought, no less than the secrets ofreligious feeling, or the aspects of natural scenery. Style is whatgives value and currency to thought, and Amiel, in spite of all hisGermanisms, has style of the best kind. He possesses in prose thatindispensable magic which he lacks in poetry. 

His style, indeed, is by no means always in harmony with the centralFrench tradition. Probably a Frenchman will be inclined to applySainte-Beuve's remarks on Amiel's elder countryman, Rodolphe Töpffer, toAmiel himself: "_C'est ainsi qu'on écrit dans les littératures qui n'ontpoint de capitale, de quartier général classique, ou d'Académie; c'estainsi qu'un Allemand, qu'un Américain, ou même un Anglais, use à son gréde sa langue. En France au contraire, où il y a une Académie Française. . . On doit trouver qu'un tel style est une très-grande nouveauté et lesuccés qu'il a obtenu un evènement: il a fallu bien des circonstancespour y préparer_. " No doubt the preparatory circumstance in Amiel's casehas been just that Germanization of the French mind on which M. Taineand 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 livingwriters of French have hailed these pages--instinct, as one declares, "with a strange and marvelous poetry;" full of phrases "_d'une intensesuggestion de beauté_;" according to another. Not that the whole of theJournal flows with the same ease, the same felicity. There are a certainnumber of passages where Amiel ceases to be the writer, and becomes thetechnical philosopher; there are others, though not many, into which acertain German heaviness and diffuseness has crept, dulling the edge ofthe sentences, and retarding the development of the thought. When alldeductions have been made, however, Amiel's claim is still first andforemost, the claim of the poet and the artist; of the man whose thoughtuses at will the harmonies and resources of speech, and who hasattained, in words of his own, "to the full and masterly expression ofhimself. "

Then to the poetical beauty of manner which first helped the book topenetrate, _faire sa trouée_, as the French say, we must add itsextraordinary psychological interest. Both as poet and as psychologist, Amiel makes another link in a special tradition; he adds another name tothe list of those who have won a hearing from their fellows asinterpreters of the inner life, as the revealers of man to himself. Heis the successor of St. Augustine and Dante; he is the brother ofObermann and Maurice de Guérin. What others have done for the spirituallife of other generations he has done for the spiritual life of this, and the wealth of poetical, scientific, and psychological faculty whichhe has brought to the analysis of human feeling and human perceptionsplaces him--so far as the present century is concerned--at the head ofthe small and delicately-gifted class to which he belongs. For besidehis spiritual experience Obermann's is superficial, and Maurice deGuérin's a passing trouble, a mere quick outburst of passionate feeling. Amiel indeed has neither the continuous romantic beauty nor the richdescriptive wealth of Senancour. The Dent du Midi, with its untroddensolitude, its primeval silences and its hovering eagles, the Swisslandscape described in the "Fragment on the Ranz des Vaches, " the summermoonlight on the Lake of Neufchâtel--these various pictures are the workof one of the most finished artists in words that literature hasproduced. But how true George Sand's criticism is! "_Chez Obermann lasensibilité est active, l'intelligence est paresseuse ou insuffisante. _"He has a certain antique power of making the truisms of life splendidand impressive. No one can write more poetical exercises than he on theold text of _pulvis et umbra sumus_, but beyond this his philosophicalpower fails him. As soon as he leaves the region of romantic descriptionhow wearisome the pages are apt to grow! Instead of a poet, "_unergoteur Voltairien_;" instead of the explorer of fresh secrets of theheart, a Parisian talking a cheap cynicism! Intellectually, the groundgives way; there is no solidity of knowledge, no range of thought. Aboveall, the scientific idea in our sense is almost absent; so that whileAmiel represents the modern mind at its keenest and best, dealing atwill with the vast additions to knowledge which the last fifty yearshave brought forth, Senancour is still in the eighteenth-century stage, talking like Rousseau of a return to primitive manners, and discussingChristianity in the tone of the "Encyclopédie. "

Maurice de Guérin, again, is the inventor of new terms in the languageof feeling, a poet as Amiel and Senancour are. His love of nature, theearth-passion which breathes in his letters and journal, has a strangesavor, a force and flame which is all his own. Beside his actual senseof community with the visible world, Amiel's love of landscape has atame, didactic air. The Swiss thinker is too ready to make nature a merevehicle of moral or philosophical thought; Maurice de Guérin loves herfor herself alone, and has found words to describe her influence overhim of extraordinary individuality and power. But for the rest the storyof his inner life has but small value in the history of thought. Hisdifficulties do not go deep enough; his struggle is intellectually notserious enough--we see in it only a common incident of modern experiencepoetically told; it throws no light on the genesis and progress of thegreat forces which are molding and renovating the thought of thepresent--it tells us nothing for the future. 

No--there is much more in the "Journal Intime" than the imagination orthe poetical glow which Amiel shares with his immediate predecessors inthe art of confession-writing. His book is representative of humanexperience in its more intimate and personal forms to an extent hardlyequaled since Rousseau. For his study of himself is only a means to anend. "What interests me in myself, " he declares, "is that I find in myown case a genuine example of human nature, and therefore a specimen ofgeneral value. " It is the human consciousness of to-day, of the modernworld, in its two-fold relation--its relation toward the infinite andthe unknowable, and its relation toward the visible universe whichconditions it--which is the real subject of the "Journal Intime. " Thereare few elements of our present life which, in a greater or less degree, are not made vocal in these pages. Amiel's intellectual interest isuntiring. Philosophy, science, letters, art--he has penetrated thespirit of them all; there is nothing, or almost nothing, within the widerange of modern activities which he has not at one time or other feltthe attraction of, and learned in some sense to understand. "Amiel, "says M. Renan, "has his defects, but he was certainly one of thestrongest speculative heads who, during the period from 1845 to 1880, have reflected on the nature of things. " And, although a certain fatalspiritual weakness debarred him to a great extent from the world ofpractical life, his sympathy with action, whether it was the action ofthe politician or the social reformer, or merely that steadyhalf-conscious performance of its daily duty which keeps humanity sweetand living, was unfailing. His horizon was not bounded by his own"prison-cell, " or by that dream-world which he has described with somuch subtle beauty; rather the energies which should have found theirnatural expression in literary or family life, pent up within the minditself, excited in it a perpetual eagerness for intellectual discovery, and new powers of sympathy with whatever crossed its field of vision. 

So that the thinker, the historian, the critic, will find himself athome with Amiel. The power of organizing his thought, the art of writinga book, _monumentum aere perennius_, was indeed denied him--he lamentsit bitterly; but, on the other hand, he is receptivity itself, responsive to all the great forces which move the time, catching andreflecting on the mobile mirror of his mind whatever winds are blowingfrom the hills of thought. 

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 whichprobably goes farther than any other to explain his fascination for alarge and growing class of readers. For, while he represents all theintellectual complexities of a time bewildered by the range and numberof its own acquisitions, the religious instinct in him is as strong andtenacious as in any of the representative exponents of the life offaith. The intellect is clear and unwavering; but the heart clings toold traditions, and steadies itself on the rock of duty. His Calvinistictraining lingers long in him; and what detaches him from the Hegelianschool, with which he has much in common, is his own stronger sense ofpersonal need, his preoccupation with the idea of "sin. " "He speaks, "says M. Renan contemptuously, "of sin, of salvation, of redemption, andconversion, as if these things were realities. He asks me 'What does M. Renan make of sin?' _Eh bien, je crois que je le supprime_. " But it isjust because Amiel is profoundly sensitive to the problems of evil andresponsibility, and M. Renan dismisses them with this half-tolerant, half-skeptical smile, that M. Renan's "Souvenirs" inform and entertainus, while the "Journal Intime" makes a deep impression on that moralsense which is at the root of individual and national life. 

The Journal is full, indeed, of this note of personal religion. Religion, Amiel declares again and again, cannot be replaced byphilosophy. The redemption of the intelligence is not the redemption ofthe heart. The philosopher and critic may succeed in demonstrating thatthe various definite forms into which the religious thought of man hasthrown itself throughout history are not absolute truth, but only thetemporary creations of a need which gradually and surely outgrows themall. "The Trinity, the life to come, paradise and hell, may cease to bedogmas and spiritual realities, the form and the letter may vanishaway--the question of humanity remains: What is it which saves?" Amiel'sanswer to the question will recall to a wide English circle the methodand spirit of an English teacher, whose dear memory lives to-day in manya heart, and is guiding many an effort in the cause of good--the methodand spirit of the late Professor Green of Balliol. In many respectsthere was a gulf of difference between the two men. The one had all thewill and force of personality which the other lacked. But the ultimatecreed of both, the way in which both interpret the facts of nature andconsciousness, is practically the same. In Amiel's case, we have togather it through all the variations and inevitable contradictions of aJournal which is the reflection of a life, not the systematic expressionof a series of ideas, but the main results are clear enough. Man issaved by love and duty, and by the hope which springs from duty, orrather from the moral facts of consciousness, as a flower springs fromthe soil. Conscience and the moral progress of the race--these are hispoints of departure. Faith in the reality of the moral law is what heclings to when his inherited creed has yielded to the pressure of theintellect, and after all the storms of pessimism and necessitarianismhave passed over him. The reconciliation of the two certitudes, the twomethods, the scientific and the religious, "is to be sought for in thatmoral law which is also a fact, and every step of which requires for itsexplanation another cosmos than the cosmos of necessity. " "Nature is thevirtuality of mind, the soul the fruit of life, and liberty the flowerof necessity. " Consciousness is the one fixed point in this boundlessand bottomless gulf of things, and the soul's inward law, as it has beenpainfully elaborated by human history, the only revelation of God. 

The only but the sufficient revelation! For this first article of areasonable creed is the key to all else--the clue which leads the mindsafely through the labyrinth of doubt into the presence of the Eternal. Without attempting to define the indefinable, the soul rises from thebelief in the reality of love and duty to the belief in "a holy will atthe root of nature and destiny"--for "if man is capable of conceivinggoodness, the general principle of things, which cannot be inferior toman, must be good. " And then the religious consciousness seizes on thisintellectual deduction, and clothes it in language of the heart, in thetender and beautiful language of faith. "There is but one thingneedful--to possess God. All our senses, all our powers of mind andsoul, are so many ways of approaching the Divine, so many modes oftasting and adoring God. Religion is not a method; it is a life--ahigher and supernatural life, mystical in its root and practical in itsfruits; a communion with God, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love whichradiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows. " And thefaith of his youth and his maturity bears the shock of suffering, andsupports him through his last hours. He writes a few months before theend: "The animal expires; man surrenders his soul to the author of thesoul. " . . . "We dream alone, we suffer alone, we die alone, we inhabit thelast resting-place alone. But there is nothing to prevent us fromopening our solitude to God. And so what was an austere monologuebecomes dialogue, reluctance becomes docility, renunciation passes intopeace, and the sense of painful defeat is lost in the sense of recoveredliberty"--_"Tout est bien, mon Dieu m'enveloppe. "_

Nor is this all. It is not only that Amiel's inmost thought andaffections are stayed on this conception of "a holy will at the root ofnature and destiny"--in a certain very real sense he is a Christian. Noone is more sensitive than he to the contribution which Christianity hasmade to the religious wealth of mankind; no one more penetrated than hewith the truth of its essential doctrine "death unto sin and a new birthunto righteousness. " "The religion of sin, of repentance andreconciliation, " he cries, "the religion of the new birth and of eternallife, is not a religion to be ashamed of. " The world has foundinspiration and guidance for eighteen centuries in the religiousconsciousness of Jesus. "The gospel has modified the world and consoledmankind, " and so "we may hold aloof from the churches and yet bowourselves before Jesus. We may be suspicious of the clergy and refuse tohave anything to do with catechisms, and yet love the Holy and the Justwho came to save and not to curse. " And in fact Amiel's whole life andthought are steeped in Christianity. He is the spiritual descendant ofone of the intensest and most individual forms of Christian belief, andtraces of his religious ancestry are visible in him at every step. Protestantism of the sincerer and nobler kind leaves an indelibleimpression on the nature which has once surrounded itself to the austereand penetrating influences flowing from the religion of sin and grace;and so far as feeling and temperament are concerned, Amiel retainedthroughout his life the marks of Calvinism and Geneva. 

And yet how clear the intellect remains, through all the anxieties ofthought, and in the face of the soul's dearest memories and mostpassionate needs! Amiel, as soon as his reasoning faculty has oncereached its maturity, never deceives himself as to the special claims ofthe religion which by instinct and inheritance he loves; he makes nocompromise with dogma or with miracle. Beyond the religions of thepresent he sees always the essential religion which lasts when all localforms and marvels have passed away; and as years go on, with more andmore clearness of conviction, he learns to regard all special beliefsand systems as "prejudices, useful in practice, but still narrownessesof the mind;" misgrowths of thought, necessary in their time and place, but still of no absolute value, and having no final claim on the thoughtof man. 

And it is just here--in this mixture of the faith which clings andaspires, with the intellectual pliancy which allows the mind to swayfreely under the pressure of life and experience, and the deep respectfor truth, which will allow nothing to interfere between thought and itsappointed tasks--that Amiel's special claim upon us lies. It is thisbalance of forces in him which makes him so widely representative of themodern mind--of its doubts, its convictions, its hopes. He speaks forthe life of to-day as no other single voice has yet spoken for it; inhis contradictions, his fears, his despairs, and yet in the constantstraining toward the unseen and the ideal which gives a fundamentalunity to his inner life, he is the type of a generation universallytouched with doubt, and yet as sensitive to the need of faith as anythat have gone before it; more widely conscious than its predecessors ofthe limitations of the human mind, and of the iron pressure of man'sphysical environment; but at the same time--paradox as it may seem--moreconscious of man's greatness, more deeply thrilled by the spectacle ofthe nobility and beauty interwoven with the universe. 

And he plays this part of his so modestly, with so much hesitation, somuch doubt of his thought and of himself! He is no preacher, likeEmerson and Carlyle, with whom, as poet and idealist, he has so much incommon; there is little resemblance between him and the men who speak, as it were, from a height to the crowd beneath, sure always ofthemselves and what they have to say. And here again he represents thepresent and foreshadows the future. For the age of the preachers ispassing those who speak with authority on the riddles of life and natureas the priests of this or that all-explaining dogma, are becoming lessimportant as knowledge spreads, and the complexity of experience is madeevident to a wider range of minds. The force of things is against _thecertain people_. Again and again truth escapes from the prisons made forher by mortal hands, and as humanity carries on the endless pursuit shewill pay more and more respectful heed to voices like this voice of thelonely Genevese thinker--with its pathetic alterations of hope and fear, and the moral steadfastness which is the inmost note of it--to thesemeditative lives, which, through all the ebb and flow of thought, and inthe dim ways of doubt and suffering, rich in knowledge, and yet rich infaith, grasp in new forms, and proclaim to us in new words, "The mighty hopes which make us men. "

AMIEL'S JOURNAL. 

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[Where no other name is mentioned, Geneva is to be understood as theauthor's place of residence. ]

BERLIN, July 16. 1848. --There is but one thing needful--to possess God. All our senses, all our powers of mind and soul, all our externalresources, are so many ways of approaching the divinity, so many modesof tasting and of adoring God. We must learn to detach ourselves fromall that is capable of being lost, to bind ourselves absolutely only towhat is absolute and eternal, and to enjoy the rest as a loan, ausufruct. . . . To adore, to understand, to receive, to feel, to give, toact: there is my law my duty, my happiness, my heaven. Let come whatcome will--even death. Only be at peace with self, live in the presenceof God, in communion with Him, and leave the guidance of existence tothose universal powers against whom thou canst do nothing! If deathgives me time, so much the better. If its summons is near, so much thebetter still; if a half-death overtake me, still so much the better, forso the path of success is closed to me only that I may find openingbefore me the path of heroism, of moral greatness and resignation. Everylife has its potentiality of greatness, and as it is impossible to beoutside God, the best is consciously to dwell in Him. 

BERLIN, July 20, 1848. --It gives liberty and breadth to thought, tolearn to judge our own epoch from the point of view of universalhistory, history from the point of view of geological periods, geologyfrom the point of view of astronomy. When the duration of a man's lifeor of a people's life appears to us as microscopic as that of a fly andinversely, the life of a gnat as infinite as that of a celestial body, with all its dust of nations, we feel ourselves at once very small andvery great, and we are able, as it were, to survey from the height ofthe spheres our own existence, and the little whirlwinds which agitateour little Europe. 

At bottom there is but one subject of study: the forms and metamorphosesof mind. All other subjects may be reduced to that; all other studiesbring us back to this study. 

GENEVA, April 20, 1849. --It is six years [Footnote: Amiel left Genevafor Paris and Berlin in April, 1848, the preceding year, 1841-42, having been spent in Italy and Sicily. ] to-day since I last left Geneva. How many journeys, how many impressions, observations, thoughts, howmany 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 havebeen the novitiate of my intelligence, the initiation of my being intobeing. 

Three snowstorms this afternoon. Poor blossoming plum-trees and peachtrees! 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 ofBurgundy threw great gusts of perfume into my face!. . . 

May 3, 1849. --I have never felt any inward assurance of genius, or anypresentiment of glory or of happiness. I have never seen myself inimagination great or famous, or even a husband, a father, an influentialcitizen. This indifference to the future, this absolute self-distrust, are, no doubt, to be taken as signs. What dreams I have are all vagueand indefinite; I ought not to live, for I am now scarcely capable ofliving. Recognize your place; let the living live; and you, gathertogether your thoughts, leave behind you a legacy of feeling and ideas;you will be most useful so. Renounce yourself, accept the cup given you, with its honey and its gall, as it comes. Bring God down into yourheart. Embalm your soul in Him now, make within you a temple for theHoly Spirit, be diligent in good works, make others happier and better. 

Put personal ambition away from you, and then you will find consolationin living or in dying, whatever may happen to you. 

May 27, 1849. --To be misunderstood even by those whom one loves is thecross and bitterness of life. It is the secret of that sad andmelancholy smile on the lips of great men which so few understand; it isthe cruelest trial reserved for self-devotion; it is what must haveoftenest wrung the heart of the Son of man; and if God could suffer, itwould be the wound we should be forever inflicting upon Him. He also--Heabove all--is the great misunderstood, 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 hopealways, like God; to love always--this is duty. 

June 3, 1849. --Fresh and delicious weather. A long morning walk. Surprised the hawthorn and wild rose-trees in flower. From the fieldsvague and health-giving scents. The Voirons fringed with dazzling mists, and tints of exquisite softness over the Salève. Work in the fields, twodelightful donkeys, one pulling greedily at a hedge of barberry. Thenthree little children. I felt a boundless desire to caress and play withthem. To be able to enjoy such leisure, these peaceful fields, fineweather, contentment; to have my two sisters with me; to rest my eyes onbalmy meadows and blossoming orchards; to listen to the life singing inthe grass and on the trees; to be so calmly happy--is it not too much?is it deserved? O let me enjoy it with gratitude. The days of troublecome soon enough and are many enough. I have no presentiment ofhappiness. 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 ofothers; let me see only the folds of thy queenly mantle, and hide allmiserable and ignoble things from me under thy bounties and splendors!

October 1, 1849. --Yesterday, Sunday, I read through and made extractsfrom the gospel of St. John. It confirmed me in my belief that aboutJesus we must believe no one but Himself, and that what we have to do isto discover the true image of the founder behind all the prismaticreactions 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 hasbeen broken into a thousand rainbow colors and carried in a thousanddirections. It is the historical task of Christianity to assume withevery succeeding age a fresh metamorphosis, and to be foreverspiritualizing more and more her understanding of the Christ and ofsalvation. 

I am astounded at the incredible amount of Judaism and formalism whichstill exists nineteen centuries after the Redeemer's proclamation, "itis the letter which killeth"--after his protest against a deadsymbolism. The new religion is so profound that it is not understoodeven now, and would seem a blasphemy to the greater number ofChristians. The person of Christ is the center of it. Redemption, eternal life, divinity, humanity, propitiation, incarnation, judgment, Satan, heaven and hell--all these beliefs have been so materialized andcoarsened, that with a strange irony they present to us the spectacle ofthings having a profound meaning and yet carnally interpreted. Christianboldness and Christian liberty must be reconquered; it is the churchwhich is heretical, the church whose sight is troubled and her hearttimid. Whether we will or no, there is an esoteric doctrine, there is arelative revelation; each man enters into God so much as God enters intohim, or as Angelus, [Footnote: Angelus Silesius, otherwise JohannesSoheffler, the German seventeenth century hymn-writer, whose tender andmystical verses have been popularized in England by Miss Winkworth'stranslations in the _Lyra Germanica_. ] I think, said, "the eye by whichI see God is the same eye by which He sees me. "

Christianity, if it is to triumph over pantheism, must absorb it. To ourpusillanimous eyes Jesus would have borne the marks of a hatefulpantheism, for he confirmed the Biblical phrase "ye are gods, " and sowould St. Paul, who tells us that we are of "the race of God. " Ourcentury wants a new theology--that is to say, a more profoundexplanation of the nature of Christ and of the light which it flashesupon heaven and upon humanity. 

 * * * * *

Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh--that is tosay, over fear: fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of sickness, of isolation, and of death. There is no serious piety without heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage. 

 * * * * *

Duty has the virtue of making us feel the reality of a positive worldwhile at the same time detaching us from it. 

 * * * * *

December 30, 1850. --The relation of thought to action filled my mind onwaking, and I found myself carried toward a bizarre formula, which seemsto have something of the night still clinging about it: _Action is butcoarsened thought_; thought become concrete, obscure, and unconscious. It seemed to me that our most trifling actions, of eating, walking, andsleeping, were the condensation of a multitude of truths and thoughts, and that the wealth of ideas involved was in direct proportion to thecommonness of the action (as our dreams are the more active, the deeperour sleep). We are hemmed round with mystery, and the greatest mysteriesare contained in what we see and do every day. In all spontaneity thework of creation is reproduced in analogy. When the spontaneity isunconscious, you have simple action; when it is conscious, intelligentand moral action. At bottom this is nothing more than the proposition ofHegel: ["What is rational is real; and what is real is rational;"] butit had never seemed to me more evident, more palpable. Everything whichis, is thought, but not conscious and individual thought. The humanintelligence is but the consciousness of being. It is what I haveformulated before: Everything is a symbol of a symbol, and a symbol ofwhat? of mind. 

. . . I have just been looking through the complete works of Montesquieu, and cannot yet make plain to myself the impression left on me by thissingular style, with its mixture of gravity and affectation, ofcarelessness and precision, of strength and delicacy; so full of slyintention for all its coldness, expressing at once inquisitiveness andindifference, abrupt, piecemeal, like notes thrown together haphazard, and yet deliberate. I seem to see an intelligence naturally grave andaustere donning a dress of wit for convention's sake. The author desiresto entertain as much as to teach, the thinker is also a _bel-esprit_, the jurisconsult has a touch of the coxcomb, and a perfumed breath fromthe temple of Venus has penetrated the tribunal of Minos. Here we haveausterity, as the century understood it, in philosophy or religion. InMontesquieu, the art, if there is any, lies not in the words but in thematter. The words run freely and lightly, but the thought isself-conscious. 

 * * * * *

Each bud flowers but once and each flower has but its minute of perfectbeauty; so, in the garden of the soul each feeling has, as it were, itsflowering instant, its one and only moment of expansive grace andradiant kingship. Each star passes but once in the night through themeridian over our heads and shines there but an instant; so, in theheaven of the mind each thought touches its zenith but once, and in thatmoment all its brilliancy and all its greatness culminate. Artist, poet, or thinker, if you want to fix and immortalize your ideas or yourfeelings, seize them at this precise and fleeting moment, for it istheir highest point. Before it, you have but vague outlines or dimpresentiments of them. After it you will have only weakened reminiscenceor powerless regret; that moment is the moment of your ideal. 

Spite is anger which is afraid to show itself, it is an impotent furyconscious of its impotence. 

 * * * * *

Nothing resembles pride so much as discouragement. 

 * * * * *

To repel one's cross is to make it heavier. 

 * * * * *

In the conduct of life, habits count for more than maxims, because habitis a living maxim, becomes flesh and instinct. To reform one's maxims isnothing: it is but to change the title of the book. To learn new habitsis everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but atissue of habits. 

 * * * * *

February 17, 1851. --I have been reading, for six or seven hours withoutstopping the _Pensées_ of Joubert. I felt at first a very strongattraction toward the book, and a deep interest in it, but I havealready a good deal cooled down. These scattered and fragmentarythoughts, falling upon one without a pause, like drops of light, tire, not my head, but reasoning power. The merits of Joubert consist in thegrace of the style, the vivacity or _finesse_ of the criticisms, thecharm of the metaphors; but he starts many more problems than he solves, he notices and records more than he explains. His philosophy is merelyliterary and popular; his originality is only in detail and inexecution. Altogether, he is a writer of reflections rather than aphilosopher, a critic of remarkable gifts, endowed with exquisitesensibility, but, as an intelligence, destitute of the capacity forco-ordination. He wants concentration and continuity. It is not that hehas no claims to be considered a philosopher or an artist, but ratherthat he is both imperfectly, for he thinks and writes marvelously, _on asmall scale_. He is an entomologist, a lapidary, a jeweler, a coiner ofsentences, of adages, of criticisms, of aphorisms, counsels, problems;and his book, extracted from the accumulations of his journal duringfifty years of his life, is a collection of precious stones, ofbutterflies, coins and engraved gems. The whole, however, is more subtlethan strong, more poetical than profound, and leaves upon the readerrather the impression of a great wealth of small curiosities of value, than of a great intellectual existence and a new point of view. Theplace of Joubert seems to me then, below and very far from thephilosophers and the true poets, but honorable among the moralists andthe critics. He is one of those men who are superior to their works, andwho have themselves the unity which these lack. This first judgment is, besides, indiscriminate and severe. I shall have to modify it later. 

February 20th. --I have almost finished these two volumes of _Pensées_and the greater part of the _Correspondance_. This last has especiallycharmed me; it is remarkable for grace, delicacy, atticism, andprecision. The chapters on metaphysics and philosophy are the mostinsignificant. All that has to do with large views with the whole ofthings, is very little at Joubert's command; he has no philosophy ofhistory, no speculative intuition. He is the thinker of detail, and hisproper field is psychology and matters of taste. In this sphere of thesubtleties and delicacies of imagination and feeling, within the circleof personal affectation and preoccupations, of social and educationalinterests, he abounds in ingenuity and sagacity, in fine criticisms, inexquisite touches. It is like a bee going from flower to flower, ateasing, plundering, wayward zephyr, an Aeolian harp, a ray of furtivelight stealing through the leaves. Taken as a whole, there is somethingimpalpable and immaterial about him, which I will not venture to calleffeminate, but which is scarcely manly. He wants bone and body: timid, dreamy, and _clairvoyant_, he hovers far above reality. He is rather asoul, a breath, than a man. It is the mind of a woman in the characterof a child, so that we feel for him less admiration than tenderness andgratitude. 

February 27, 1851. --Read over the first book of _Emile_. I was revolted, contrary to all expectation, for I opened the book with a sort of hungerfor style and beauty. I was conscious instead of an impression ofheaviness and harshness, of labored, _hammering_ emphasis, of somethingviolent, passionate, and obstinate, without serenity, greatness, nobility. Both the qualities and the defects of the book produced in mea sense of lack of good manners, a blaze of talent, but no grace, nodistinction, the accent of good company wanting. I understood how it isthat Rousseau rouses a particular kind of repugnance, the repugnance ofgood taste, and I felt the danger to style involved in such a model aswell as the danger to thought arising from a truth so alloyed andsophisticated. What there is of true and strong in Rousseau did notescape me, and I still admired him, but his bad sides appeared to mewith a clearness relatively new. 

(_Same day. _)--The _pensée_-writer is to the philosopher what the_dilettante_ is to the artist. He plays with thought, and makes itproduce a crowd of pretty things in detail, but he is more anxious abouttruths than truth, and what is essential in thought, its sequence, itsunity, escapes him. He handles his instrument agreeably, but he does notpossess it, still less does he create it. He is a gardener and not ageologist; he cultivates the earth only so much as is necessary to makeit produce for him flowers and fruits; he does not dig deep enough intoit to understand it. In a word, the _pensée_-writer deals with what issuperficial and fragmentary. He is the literary, the oratorical, thetalking or writing philosopher; whereas the philosopher is thescientific _pensée_-writer. The _pensée_-writers serve to stimulate orto popularize the philosophers. They have thus a double use, besidestheir charm. They are the pioneers of the army of readers, the doctorsof the crowd, the money-changers of thought, which they convert intocurrent coin. The writer of _pensée_ is a man of letters, though of aserious type, and therefore he is popular. The philosopher is aspecialist, as far as the form of his science goes, though not insubstance, and therefore he can never become popular. In France, for onephilosopher (Descartes) there have been thirty writers of _pensées_; inGermany, for ten such writers there have been twenty philosophers. 

March 25, 1851. --How many illustrious men whom I have known have beenalready reaped by death, Steffens, Marheineke, Neander, Mendelssohn, Thorwaldsen, Oelenschläger, Geijer, Tegner, Oersted, Stuhr, Lachmann;and with us, Sismondi, Töpffer, de Candolle, savants, artists, poets, musicians, historians. [Footnote: Of these Marheineke, Neander, andLachmann had been lecturing at Berlin during Amiel's residence there. The Danish dramatic poet Oelenschläger and the Swedish writer Tegnerwere among the Scandinavian men of letters with whom he madeacquaintance during his tour of Sweden and Denmark in 1845. He probablycame across the Swedish historian Geijer on the same occasion. Schellingand Alexander von Humboldt, mentioned a little lower down, were alsostill holding sway at Berlin when he was a student. There is aninteresting description in one of his articles on Berlin, published inthe _Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève_, of a university ceremonialthere in or about 1847, and of the effect produced on the student'syoung imagination by the sight of half the leaders of European researchgathered into a single room. He saw Schlosser, the veteran historian, atHeidelberg at the end of 1843. ] The old generation is going. What willthe new bring us? What shall we ourselves contribute? A few great oldmen--Schelling, Alexander von Humboldt, Schlosser--still link us withthe glorious past. Who is preparing to bear the weight of the future? Ashiver seizes us when the ranks grow thin around us, when age isstealing upon us, when we approach the zenith, and when destiny says tous: "Show what is in thee! Now is the moment, now is the hour, else fallback into nothingness! It is thy turn! Give the world thy measure, saythy 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 ofapprenticeship is over. Servant, show us what thou hast done with thytalent. Speak now, or be silent forever. " This appeal of the conscienceis a solemn summons in the life of every man, solemn and awful as thetrumpet of the last judgment. It cries, "Art thou ready? Give anaccount. Give an account of thy years, thy leisure, thy strength, thystudies, thy talent, and thy works. Now and here is the hour of greathearts, the hour of heroism and of genius. "

April 6, 1851. --Was there ever any one so vulnerable as I? If I were afather how many griefs and vexations, a child might cause me. As ahusband I should have a thousand ways of suffering because my happinessdemands a thousand conditions I have a heart too easily reached, a toorestless imagination; despair is easy to me, and every sensationreverberates again and again within me. What might be, spoils for mewhat is. What ought to be consumes me with sadness. So the reality, thepresent, the irreparable, the necessary, repel and even terrify me. Ihave too much imagination, conscience and penetration, and not enoughcharacter. The life of thought alone seems to me to have enoughelasticity 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. Familylife, especially, in all its delightfulness, in all its moral depth, appeals to me almost like a duty. Sometimes I cannot escape from theideal of it. A companion of my life, of my work, of my thoughts, of myhopes; within, a common worship, toward the world outside, kindness andbeneficence; educations to undertake, the thousand and one moralrelations which develop round the first, all these ideas intoxicate mesometimes. But I put them aside because every hope is, as it were, anegg whence a serpent may issue instead of a dove, because every joymissed is a stab; because every seed confided to destiny contains an earof grief which the future may develop. 

I am distrustful of myself and of happiness because I know myself. Theideal poisons for me all imperfect possession. Everything whichcompromises the future or destroys my inner liberty, which enslaves meto things or obliges me to be other than I could and ought to be, allwhich injures my idea of the perfect man, hurts me mortally, degradesand wounds me in mind, even beforehand. I abhor useless regrets andrepentances. The fatality of the consequences which follow upon everyhuman act, the leading idea of dramatic art and the most tragic elementof life, arrests me more certainly than the arm of the _Commandeur_. Ionly act with regret, and almost by force. 

To be dependent is to me terrible; but to depend upon what isirreparable, arbitrary and unforeseen, and above all to be so dependentby my fault and through my own error, to give up liberty and hope, toslay sleep and happiness, this would be hell!

All that is necessary, providential, in short, _unimputable_, I couldbear, I think, with some strength of mind. But responsibility mortallyenvenoms grief; and as an act is essentially voluntary, therefore I actas little as possible. 

Last outbreak of a rebellious and deceitful self-will, craving forrepose for satisfaction, for independence! is there not some relic ofselfishness in such a disinterestedness, such a fear, such idlesusceptibility. 

I wish to fulfill my duty, but where is it, what is it? Here inclinationcomes in again and interprets the oracle. And the ultimate question isthis: Does duty consist in obeying one's nature, even the best and mostspiritual? or in conquering it?

Life, is it essentially the education of the mind and intelligence, orthat of the will? And does will show itself in strength or inresignation? If the aim of life is to teach us renunciation, thenwelcome sickness, hindrances, sufferings of every kind! But if its aimis to produce the perfect man, then one must watch over one's integrityof mind and body. To court trial is to tempt God. At bottom, the God ofjustice veils from me the God of love. I tremble instead of trusting. 

Whenever conscience speaks with a divided, uncertain, and disputedvoice, it is not yet the voice of God. Descend still deeper intoyourself, until you hear nothing but a clear and undivided voice, avoice which does away with doubt and brings with it persuasion, lightand serenity. Happy, says the apostle, are they who are at peace withthemselves, and whose heart condemneth them not in the part they take. This inner identity, this unity of conviction, is all the more difficultthe more the mind analyzes, discriminates, and foresees. It isdifficult, 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 reconquer the points of view already won, we must _fight the fight_!The human heart, like kings, signs mere truces under a pretence ofperpetual peace. The eternal life is eternally to be re-won. Alas, yes!peace itself is a struggle, or rather it is struggle and activity whichare the law. We only find rest in effort, as the flame only findsexistence in combustion. O Heraclitus! the symbol of happiness is afterall the same as that of grief; anxiety and hope, hell and heaven, areequally restless. The altar of Vesta and the sacrifice of Beelzebub burnwith the same fire. Ah, yes, there you have life--life double-faced anddouble-edged. The fire which enlightens is also the fire which consumes;the element of the gods may become that of the accursed. 

April 7, 1851. --Read a part of Ruge's [Footnote: Arnold Ruge, born in1803, died at Brighton in 1880, principal editor of the _Hallische_, afterward the _Deutsche Jahrbücher_ (1838-43), in which Strauss, BrunoBauer, and Louis Feuerbach wrote. He was a member of the parliament ofFrankfort. ] volume "_Die Academie_" (1848) where the humanism of theneo-Hegelians in politics, religion, and literature is represented bycorrespondents or articles (Kuno Fischer, Kollach, etc). They recall the_philosophist_ party of the last century, able to dissolve anything byreason and reasoning, but unable to construct anything; for constructionrests upon feeling, instinct, and will. One finds them mistakingphilosophic consciousness for realizing power, the redemption of theintelligence for the redemption of the heart, that is to say, the partfor the whole. These papers make me understand the radical differencebetween morals and intellectualism. The writers of them wish to supplantreligion by philosophy. Man is the principle of their religion, andintellect is the climax of man. Their religion, then, is the religion ofintellect. There you have the two worlds: Christianity brings andpreaches salvation by the conversion of the will, humanism by theemancipation of the mind. One attacks the heart, the other the brain. Both wish to enable man to reach his ideal. But the ideal differs, ifnot by its content, at least by the disposition of its content, by thepredominance and sovereignty given to this for that inner power. Forone, the mind is the organ of the soul; for the other, the soul is aninferior state of the mind; the one wishes to enlighten by makingbetter, the other to make better by enlightening. It is the differencebetween Socrates and Jesus. 

_The cardinal question is that of sin. _ The question of immanence or ofdualism is secondary. The trinity, the life to come, paradise and hell, may cease to be dogmas, and spiritual realities, the form and the lettermay vanish away, the question of humanity remains: What is it whichsaves? How can man be led to be truly man? Is the ultimate root of hisbeing responsibility, yes or no? And is doing or knowing the right, acting or thinking, his ultimate end? If science does not produce loveit is insufficient. Now all that science gives is the _amorintellectualis_ of Spinoza, light without warmth, a resignation which iscontemplative and grandiose, but inhuman, because it is scarcelytransmissible and remains a privilege, one of the rarest of all. Morallove places the center of the individual in the center of being. It hasat least salvation in principle, the germ of eternal life. _To love isvirtually to know; to know is not virtually to love_; there you have therelation of these two modes of man. The redemption wrought by science orby intellectual love is then inferior to the redemption wrought by willor by moral love. The first may free a man from himself, it mayenfranchise 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, fertilizing, positive. Science, howeverspiritual and substantial it may be in itself, is still formalrelatively to love. Moral force is then the vital point. And this forceis only produced by moral force. Like alone acts upon like. Therefore donot amend by reasoning, but by example; approach feeling by feeling; donot hope to excite love except by love. Be what you wish others tobecome. Let yourself 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 beenrevolutionaries. To save from the outside to the inside--and by theoutside I understand also the intelligence relatively to the will--is anerror and danger. The negative part of the humanist's work is good; itwill strip Christianity of an outer shell, which has become superfluous;but Ruge and Feuerbach cannot save humanity. She must have her saintsand her heroes to complete the work of her philosophers. Science is thepower of man, and love his strength; man _becomes_ man only by theintelligence, but he _is_ man only by the heart. Knowledge, love, power--there is the complete life. 

June 16, 1851. --This evening I walked up and down on the Pont desBergues, under a clear, moonless heaven delighting in the freshness ofthe water, streaked with light from the two quays, and glimmering underthe twinkling stars. Meeting all these different groups of young people, families, couples and children, who were returning to their homes, totheir garrets or their drawing-rooms, singing or talking as they went, Ifelt a movement of sympathy for all these passers-by; my eyes and earsbecame those of a poet or a painter; while even one's mere kindlycuriosity seems to bring with it a joy in living and in seeing otherslive. 

August 15, 1851. --To know how to be ready, a great thing, a preciousgift, and one that implies calculation, grasp and decision. To be alwaysready 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 whichit is enwrapped, for everything cannot be equally considered; in a word, he must be able to simplify his duties, his business, and his life. Toknow how to be ready, is to know how to start. 

It is astonishing how all of us are generally cumbered up with thethousand and one hindrances and duties which are not such, but whichnevertheless wind us about with their spider threads and fetter themovement 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 ofprocrastination. To know how to be ready we must be able to finish. Nothing is done but what is finished. The things which we leave draggingbehind us will start up again later on before us and harass our path. Let each day take thought for what concerns it, liquidate its ownaffairs and respect the day which is to follow, and then we shall bealways ready. To know how to be ready is at bottom to know how to die. 

September 2, 1851. --Read the work of Tocqueville ("_De la Democratie enAmérique_. ") My impression is as yet a mixed one. A fine book, but Ifeel in it a little too much imitation of Montesquieu. This abstract, piquant, sententious style, too, is a little dry, over-refined andmonotonous. It has too much cleverness and not enough imagination. Itmakes one think, more than it charms, and though really serious, itseems flippant. His method of splitting up a thought, of illuminating asubject by successive facets, has serious inconveniences. We see thedetails too clearly, to the detriment of the whole. A multitude ofsparks gives but a poor light. Nevertheless, the author is evidently aripe and penetrating intelligence, who takes a comprehensive view of hissubject, while at the same time possessing a power of acute andexhaustive analysis. 

September 6th. --Tocqueville's book has on the whole a calming effectupon the mind, but it leaves a certain sense of disgust behind. It makesone realize the necessity of what is happening around us and theinevitableness of the goal prepared for us; but it also makes it plainthat the era of _mediocrity_ in everything is beginning, and mediocrityfreezes all desire. Equality engenders uniformity, and it is bysacrificing what is excellent, remarkable, and extraordinary that we getrid of what is bad. The whole becomes less barbarous, and at the sametime more vulgar. 

The age of great men is going; the epoch of the ant-hill, of life inmultiplicity, is beginning. The century of individualism, if abstractequality triumphs, runs a great risk of seeing no more true individuals. By continual leveling and division of labor, society will becomeeverything and man nothing. 

As the floor of valleys is raised by the denudation and washing down ofthe mountains, what is average will rise at the expense of what isgreat. The exceptional will disappear. A plateau with fewer and fewerundulations, without contrasts and without oppositions, such will be theaspect of human society. The statistician will register a growingprogress, and the moralist a gradual decline: on the one hand, aprogress of things; on the other, a decline of souls. The useful willtake the place of the beautiful, industry of art, political economy ofreligion, and arithmetic of poetry. The spleen will become the malady ofa leveling age. 

Is this indeed the fate reserved for the democratic era? May not thegeneral well-being be purchased too dearly at such a price? The creativeforce which in the beginning we see forever tending to produce andmultiply differences, will it afterward retrace its steps and obliteratethem one by one? And equality, which in the dawn of existence is mereinertia, torpor, and death, is it to become at last the natural form oflife? Or rather, above the economic and political equality to which thesocialist and non-socialist democracy aspires, taking it too often forthe term of its efforts, will there not arise a new kingdom of mind, achurch of refuge, a republic of souls, in which, far beyond the regionof mere right and sordid utility, beauty, devotion, holiness, heroism, enthusiasm, the extraordinary, the infinite, shall have a worship and anabiding city? Utilitarian materialism, barren well-being, the idolatryof the flesh and of the "I, " of the temporal and of mammon, are they tobe the goal if our efforts, the final recompense promised to the laborsof our race? I do not believe it. The ideal of humanity is somethingdifferent and higher. 

But the animal in us must be satisfied first, and we must first banishfrom among us all suffering which is superfluous and has its origin insocial arrangements, before we can return to spiritual goods. 

September 7, 1851. (_Aix_). --It is ten o'clock at night. A strange andmystic moonlight, with a fresh breeze and a sky crossed by a fewwandering clouds, makes our terrace delightful. These pale and gentlerays shed from the zenith a subdued and penetrating peace; it is likethe calm joy or the pensive smile of experience, combined with a certainstoic strength. The stars shine, the leaves tremble in the silver light. Not a sound in all the landscape; great gulfs of shadow under the greenalleys and at the corners of the steps. Everything is secret, solemn, mysterious. 

O night hours, hours of silence and solitude! with you are grace andmelancholy; you sadden and you console. You speak to us of all that haspassed away, and of all that must still die, but you say to us, "courage!" and you promise us rest. 

November 9, 1851. (Sunday). --At the church of St. Gervais, a secondsermon from Adolphe Monod, less grandiose perhaps but almost moreoriginal, and to me more edifying than that of last Sunday. The subjectwas St. Paul or the active life, his former one having been St. John orthe inner life, of the Christian. I felt the golden spell of eloquence:I found myself hanging on the lips of the orator, fascinated by hisboldness, his grace, his energy, and his art, his sincerity, and histalent; and it was borne in upon me that for some men difficulties are asource of inspiration, so that what would make others stumble is forthem 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 hisold cloak, his prescriptions of water and wine to Timothy, the canvasthat he mended, his friend Tychicus, in short, all that could raise asmile; and from it he drew the most unfailing pathos, the most austereand penetrating lessons. He made the whole St. Paul, martyr, apostle andman, his grief, his charities, his tenderness, live again before us, andthis with a grandeur, an unction, a warmth of reality, such as I hadnever seen equaled. 

How stirring is such an apotheosis of pain in our century of comfort, when shepherds and sheep alike sink benumbed in Capuan languors, such anapotheosis of ardent charity in a time of coldness and indifferencetoward souls, such an apotheosis of a _human_, natural, inbredChristianity, in an age, when some put it, so to speak, above man, andothers below man! Finally, as a peroration, he dwelt upon the necessityfor a new people, for a stronger generation, if the world is to be savedfrom the tempests which threaten it. "People of God, awake! Sow intears, that ye may reap in triumph!" What a study is such a sermon! Ifelt all the extraordinary literary skill of it, while my eyes werestill dim with tears. Diction, composition, similes, all is instructiveand precious to remember. I was astonished, shaken, taken hold of. 

November 18, 1851. --The energetic subjectivity, which has faith initself, which does not fear to be something particular and definitewithout any consciousness or shame of its subjective illusion, isunknown to me. I am, so far as the intellectual order is concerned, essentially objective, and my distinctive speciality, is to be able toplace myself in all points of view, to see through all eyes, toemancipate myself, that is to say, from the individual prison. Henceaptitude for theory and irresolution in practice; hence critical talentand difficulty in spontaneous production. Hence, also, a continuousuncertainty of conviction and opinion, so long as my aptitude remainedmere instinct; but now that it is conscious and possesses itself, it isable to conclude and affirm in its turn, so that, after having broughtdisquiet, it now brings peace. It says: "There is no repose for the mindexcept in the absolute; for feeling, except in the infinite; for thesoul, except in the divine. " Nothing finite is true, is interesting, orworthy to fix my attention. All that is particular is exclusive, and allthat is exclusive, repels me. There is nothing non-exclusive but theAll; my end is communion with Being through the whole of Being. Then, inthe light of the absolute, every idea becomes worth studying; in that ofthe infinite, every existence worth respecting; in that of the divine, every creature worth loving. 

December 2, 1851. --Let mystery have its place in you; do not be alwaysturning up your whole soil with the plowshare of self-examination, butleave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the windsmay bring, and reserve a nook of shadow for the passing bird; keep aplace in your heart for the unexpected guests, an altar for the unknownGod. Then if a bird sing among your branches, do not be too eager totame it. If you are conscious of something new--thought or feeling, wakening in the depths of your being--do not be in a hurry to let inlight upon it, to look at it; let the springing germ have the protectionof being forgotten, hedge it round with quiet, and do not break in uponits darkness; let it take shape and grow, and not a word of yourhappiness to any one! Sacred work of nature as it is, all conceptionshould be enwrapped by the triple veil of modesty, silence and night. 

 * * * * *

Kindness is the principle of tact, and respect for others the firstcondition of _savoir-vivre_. 

 * * * * *

He who is silent is forgotten; he who abstains is taken at his word; hewho does not advance, falls back; he who stops is overwhelmed, distanced, crushed; he who ceases to grow greater becomes smaller; hewho leaves off, gives up; the stationary condition is the beginning ofthe end--it is the terrible symptom which precedes death. To live, isto achieve a perpetual triumph; it is to assert one's self againstdestruction, against sickness, against the annulling and dispersion ofone's physical and moral being. It is to will without ceasing, or ratherto refresh one's will day by day. 

 * * * * *

It is not history which teaches conscience to be honest; it is theconscience which educates history. Fact is corrupting, it is we whocorrect it by the persistence of our ideal. The soul moralizes the pastin order not to be demoralized by it. Like the alchemists of the middleages, she finds in the crucible of experience only the gold that sheherself has poured into it. 

 * * * * *

February 1, 1852. (Sunday). --Passed the afternoon in reading the_Monologues_ of Schleiermacher. This little book made an impression onme almost as deep as it did twelve years ago, when I read it for thefirst time. It replunged me into the inner world, to which I return withjoy whenever I may have forsaken it. I was able besides, to measure myprogress since then by the transparency of all the thoughts to me, andby 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, andeven selfishness. For the center of the universe is still the self, thegreat _Ich_ of Fichte. The tameless liberty, the divine dignity of theindividual spirit, expanding till it admits neither any limit noranything foreign to itself, and conscious of a strength instinct withcreative force, such is the point of view of the _Monologues_. 

The inner life in its enfranchisement from time, in its double end, therealization of the species and of the individuality, in its prouddominion over all hostile circumstances, in its prophetic certainty ofthe future, in its immortal youth, such is their theme. Through them weare enabled to enter into a life of monumental interest, wholly originaland beyond the influence of anything exterior, an astonishing example ofthe autonomy of the _ego_, an imposing type of character, Zeno andFichte 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 amagnificent model to imitate as a precious subject of study. This idealof a liberty, absolute, indefeasible, inviolable, respecting itselfabove all, disdaining the visible and the universe, and developingitself after its own laws alone, is also the ideal of Emerson, the stoicof a young America. According to it, man finds his joy in himself, and, safe in the inaccessible sanctuary, of his personal consciousness, becomes almost a god. [Footnote: 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 chidings raise thee? Seek, seeker, in thyself; submit to find In the stones, bread, and life in the blank mind. "]

He is himself principle, motive, and end of his own destiny; he ishimself, and that is enough for him. This superb triumph of life is notfar from being a sort of impiety, or at least a displacement ofadoration. By the mere fact that it does away with humility, such asuperhuman point of view becomes dangerous; it is the very temptation towhich the first man succumbed, that of becoming his own master bybecoming like unto the Elohim. Here then the heroism of the philosopherapproaches temerity, and the _Monologues_ are therefore open to threereproaches: Ontologically, the position of man in the spiritualuniverse is wrongly indicated; the individual soul, not being unique andnot springing from itself, can it be conceived without God?Psychologically, the force of spontaneity in the _ego_ is allowed adominion too exclusive of any other. As a fact, it is not everything inman. Morally, evil is scarcely named, and conflict, the condition oftrue peace, is left out of count. So that the peace described in the_Monologues_ is neither a conquest by man nor a grace from heaven; it israther a stroke of good fortune. 

February 2d. --Still the _Monologues_. Critically I defended myselfenough against them yesterday; I may abandon myself now, without scrupleand without danger, to the admiration and the sympathy with which theyinspire me. This life so proudly independent, this sovereign conceptionof human dignity, this actual possession of the universe and theinfinite, this perfect emancipation from all which passes, this calmsense of strength and superiority, this invincible energy of will, thisinfallible clearness of self-vision, this autocracy of the consciousnesswhich is its own master, all these decisive marks of a royal personalityof a nature Olympian, profound, complete, harmonious, penetrate the mindwith joy and heart with gratitude. What a life! what a man! Theseglimpses into the inner regions of a great soul do one good. Contact ofthis 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 thesight of a _man_ we too say to ourselves, let us also be men. 

March 3, 1852. --Opinion has its value and even its power: to have itagainst us is painful when we are among friends, and harmful in the caseof the outer world. We should neither flatter opinion nor court it; butit 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 beashamed of the one; we may regret the other. Look to yourself; you aremuch 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 showyourself ready and clever like others. This world of skillful egotismsand active ambitions, this world of men, in which one must deceive bysmiles, conduct, and silence as much as by actual words, a worldrevolting to the proud and upright soul, it is our business to learn tolive in it! Success is required in it: succeed. Only force is recognizedthere: be strong. Opinion seeks to impose her law upon all, instead ofsetting her at defiance, it would be better to struggle with her andconquer. . . . I understand the indignation of contempt, and the wish tocrush, roused irresistibly by all that creeps, all that is tortuous, oblique, ignoble. . . . But I cannot maintain such a mood, which is a moodof vengeance, for long. This world is a world of men, and these men areour brothers. We must not banish from us the divine breath, we mustlove. Evil must be conquered by good; and before all things one mustkeep a pure conscience. Prudence may be preached from this point of viewtoo. "Be ye simple as the dove and prudent as the serpent, " are thewords of Jesus. Be careful of your reputation, not through vanity, butthat you may not harm your life's work, and out of love for truth. Thereis still something of self-seeking in the refined disinterestednesswhich will not justify itself, that it may feel itself superior toopinion. It requires ability, to make what we seem agree with what weare, and humility, to feel that we are no great things. 

There, thanks to this journal, my excitement has passed away. I havejust read the last book of it through again, and the morning has passedby. On the way I have been conscious of a certain amount of monotony. Itdoes not signify! These pages are not written to be read; they arewritten for my own consolation and warning. They are landmarks in mypast; and some of the landmarks are funeral crosses, stone pyramids, withered stalks grown green again, white pebbles, coins--all of themhelpful toward finding one's way again through the Elysian fields of thesoul. The pilgrim has marked his stages in it; he is able to trace by ithis thoughts, his tears, his joys. This is my traveling diary: if somepassages from it may be useful to others, and if sometimes even I havecommunicated such passages to the public, these thousand pages as awhole are only of value to me and to those who, after me, may take someinterest in the itinerary of an obscurely conditioned soul, far from theworld's noise and fame. These sheets will be monotonous when my life isso; they will repeat themselves when feelings repeat themselves; truthat any rate will be always there, and truth is their only muse, theironly pretext, their only duty. 

April 2, 1852. --What a lovely walk! Sky clear, sun rising, all the tintsbright, all the outlines sharp, save for the soft and misty infinite ofthe lake. A pinch of white frost, powdered the fields, lending ametallic relief to the hedges of green box, and to the whole landscape, still without leaves, an air of health and vigor, of youth andfreshness. "Bathe, O disciple, thy thirsty soul in the dew of the dawn!"says Faust, to us, and he is right. The morning air breathes a new andlaughing energy into veins and marrow. If every day is a repetition oflife, every dawn gives signs as it were a new contract with existence. At dawn everything is fresh, light, simple, as it is for children. Atdawn spiritual truth, like the atmosphere, is more transparent, and ourorgans, like the young leaves, drink in the light more eagerly, breathein more ether, and less of things earthly. If night and the starry skyspeak to the meditative soul of God, of eternity and the infinite, thedawn is the time for projects, for resolutions, for the birth of action. While the silence and the "sad serenity of the azure vault, " incline thesoul to self-recollection, the vigor and gayety of nature spread intothe heart and make it eager for life and living. Spring is upon us. Primroses and violets have already hailed her coming. Rash blooms areshowing on the peach trees; the swollen buds of the pear trees and thelilacs point to the blossoming that is to be; the honeysuckles arealready green. 

April 26, 1852. --This evening a feeling of emptiness took possession ofme; and the solemn ideas of duty, the future, solitude, pressedthemselves upon me. I gave myself to meditation, a very necessarydefense against the dispersion and distraction brought about by theday's work and its detail. Read a part of Krause's book "_Urbild derMenschheit_" [Footnote: Christian Frederick Krause, died 1832, Hegel'syounger contemporary, and the author of a system which he called_panentheism_--Amiel alludes to it later on. ] which answered marvelouslyto my thought and my need. This philosopher has always a beneficenteffect upon me; his sweet religious serenity gains upon me and invadesme. He inspires me with a sense of peace and infinity. 

Still I miss something, common worship, a positive religion, shared withother people. Ah! when will the church to which I belong in heart riseinto being? I cannot like Scherer, content myself with being in theright all alone. I must have a less solitary Christianity. My religiousneeds are not satisfied any more than my social needs, or my needs ofaffection. 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 waverbetween languor and _ennui_, between frittering myself away on theinfinitely little, and longing after what is unknown and distant. It islike the situation which French novelists are so fond of, the story of a_vie de province_; only the province is all that is not the country ofthe soul, every place where the heart feels itself strange, dissatisfied, restless and thirsty. Alas! well understood, this place isthe earth, this country of one's dreams is heaven, and this suffering isthe eternal homesickness, the thirst for happiness. 

"_In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister_, " says Goethe. _Mâlerésignation_, this also is the motto of those who are masters of the artof life; "manly, " that is to say, courageous, active, resolute, persevering, "resignation, " that is to say, self-sacrifice, renunciation, limitation. Energy in resignation, there lies the wisdomof the sons of earth, the only serenity possible in this life ofstruggle and of combat. In it is the peace of martyrdom, in it too thepromise of triumph. 

April 28, 1852. (Lancy. ) [Footnote: A village near Geneva. ]--Once more Ifeel the spring languor creeping over me, the spring air about me. Thismorning the poetry of the scene, the song of the birds, the tranquilsunlight, the breeze blowing over the fresh green fields, all rose intoand filled my heart. Now all is silent. O silence, thou art terrible!terrible as that calm of the ocean which lets the eye penetrate thefathomless abysses below. Thou showest us in ourselves depths which makeus giddy, inextinguishable needs, treasures of suffering. Welcometempests! at least they blur and trouble the surface of these waterswith their terrible secrets. Welcome the passion blasts which stir thewares of the soul, and so veil from us its bottomless gulfs! In all ofus, children of dust, sons of time, eternity inspires an involuntaryanguish, and the infinite, a mysterious terror. We seem to be entering akingdom of the dead. Poor heart, thy craving is for life, for love, forillusions! And thou art right after all, for life is sacred. 

In these moments of _tête-à-tête_ with the infinite, how different lifelooks! How all that usually occupies and excites us becomes suddenlypuerile, frivolous and vain. We seem to ourselves mere puppets, marionettes, strutting seriously through a fantastic show, and mistakinggewgaws for things of great price. At such moments, how everythingbecomes transformed, how everything changes! Berkeley and Fichte seemright, Emerson too; the world is but an allegory; the idea is more realthan the fact; fairy tales, legends, are as true as natural history, andeven more true, for they are emblems of greater transparency. The onlysubstance properly so called is the soul. What is all the rest? Mereshadow, pretext, figure, symbol, or dream. Consciousness alone isimmortal, positive, perfectly real. The world is but a firework, asublime phantasmagoria, destined to cheer and form the soul. Consciousness is a universe, and its sun is love. . . . 

Already I am falling back into the objective life of thought. Itdelivers me from--shall I say? no, it deprives me of the intimate lifeof feeling. Reflection solves reverie and burns her delicate wings. Thisis 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 putspontaneity, _naïveté_, before reflection, experience before study; letus make life itself our study. Shall I then never have the heart of awoman to rest upon? a son in whom to live again, a little world where Imay see flowering and blooming all that is stifled in me? I shrink anddraw back, for fear of breaking my dream. I have staked so much on thiscard that I dare not play it. Let me dream again. . . . 

Do no violence to yourself, respect in yourself the oscillations offeeling. They are your life and your nature; One wiser than you ordainedthem. Do not abandon yourself altogether either to instinct or to will. Instinct is a siren, will a despot. Be neither the slave of yourimpulses and sensations of the moment, nor of an abstract and generalplan; be open to what life brings from within and without, and welcomethe unforeseen; but give to your life unity, and bring the unforeseenwithin the lines of your plan. Let what is natural in you raise itselfto the level of the spiritual, and let the spiritual become once morenatural. Thus will your development be harmonious, and the peace ofheaven will shine upon your brow; always on condition that your peace ismade, and that you have climbed your Calvary. 

_Afternoon_--Shall I ever enjoy again those marvelous reveries of pastdays, as, for instance, once, when I was still quite a youth, in theearly dawn, sitting among the ruins of the castle of Faucigny; anothertime in the mountains above Lavey, under the midday sun, lying under atree and visited by three butterflies; and again another night on thesandy shore of the North Sea, stretched full length upon the beach, myeyes wandering over the Milky Way? Will they ever return to me, thosegrandiose, immortal, cosmogonic dreams, in which one seems to carry theworld in one's breast, to touch the stars, to possess the infinite?Divine moments, hours of ecstasy, when thought flies from world toworld, penetrates the great enigma, breathes with a respiration large, tranquil, and profound, like that of the ocean, and hovers serene andboundless like the blue heaven! Visits from the muse, Urania, who tracesaround the foreheads of those she loves the phosphorescent nimbus ofcontemplative power, and who pours into their hearts the tranquilintoxication, if not the authority of genius, moments of irresistibleintuition in which a man feels himself great like the universe and calmlike 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 ourbreast, and accomplishes in us its eternal work with the regularity ofdestiny and the passionate ardor of love. What hours, what memories! Thetraces which remain to us of them are enough to fill us with respect andenthusiasm, as though they had been visits of the Holy Spirit. And then, to fall back again from these heights with their boundless horizons intothe muddy ruts of triviality! what a fall! Poor Moses! Thou too sawestundulating in the distance the ravishing hills of the promised land, andit was thy fate nevertheless to lay thy weary bones in a grave dug inthe desert! Which of us has not his promised land, his day of ecstasyand his death in exile? What a pale counterfeit is real life of the lifewe see in glimpses, and how these flaming lightnings of our propheticyouth make the twilight of our dull monotonous manhood more dark anddreary!

April 29 (Lancy). --This morning the air was calm, the sky slightlyveiled. I went out into the garden to see what progress the spring wasmaking. I strolled from the irises to the lilacs, round the flower-beds, and in the shrubberies. Delightful surprise! at the corner of the walk, half hidden under a thick clump of shrubs, a small leaved _chorchorus_had flowered during the night. Gay and fresh as a bunch of bridalflowers, the little shrub glittered before me in all the attraction ofits opening beauty. What springlike innocence, what soft and modestloveliness, there was in these white corollas, opening gently to thesun, like thoughts which smile upon us at waking, and perched upon theiryoung leaves of virginal green like bees upon the wing! Mother ofmarvels, mysterious and tender nature, why do we not live more in thee?The poetical _flâneurs_ of Töpffer, his Charles and Jules, the friendsand passionate lovers of thy secret graces, the dazzled and ravishedbeholders of thy beauties, rose up in my memory, at once a reproach anda lesson. A modest garden and a country rectory, the narrow horizon of agarret, contain for those who know how to look and to wait moreinstruction than a library, even than that of _Mon oncle_. [Footnote:The allusions in this passage are to Töpffer's best known books--"LaPresbytère" and "La Bibliothèque de mon Oncle, " that airy chronicle of ahundred romantic or vivacious nothings which has the young student Julesfor its center. ] Yes, we are too busy, too encumbered, too muchoccupied, too active! We read too much! The one thing needful is tothrow off all one's load of cares, of preoccupations, of pedantry, andto become again young, simple, child-like, living happily and gratefullyin the present hour. We must know how to put occupation aside, whichdoes not mean that we must be idle. In an inaction which is meditativeand attentive the wrinkles of the soul are smoothed away, and the soulitself spreads, unfolds, and springs afresh, and, like the trodden grassof the roadside or the bruised leaf of a plant, repairs its injuries, becomes new, spontaneous, true, and original. Reverie, like the rain ofnight, restores color and force to thoughts which have been blanched andwearied by the heat of the day. With gentle fertilizing power it awakenswithin us a thousand sleeping germs, and as though in play, gathersround us materials for the future, and images for the use of talent. _Reverie is the Sunday of thought_; and who knows which is the moreimportant and fruitful for man, the laborious tension of the week, orthe life-giving repose of the Sabbath? The _flânerie_ so exquisitelyglorified and sung by Töpffer is not only delicious, but useful. It islike a bath which gives vigor and suppleness to the whole being, to themind as to the body; it is the sign and festival of liberty, a joyousand wholesome banquet, the banquet of the butterfly wandering fromflower to flower over the hills and in the fields. And remember, thesoul too is a butterfly. 

May 2, 1852. (Sunday) Lancy. --This morning read the epistle of St. James, the exegetical volume of Cellérier [Footnote: Jacob-ÉlyséeCellérier, professor of theology at the Academy of Geneva, and son ofthe pastor of Satigny mentioned in Madame de Staël's "L'Allemagne. "] onthis epistle, and a great deal of Pascal, after having first of allpassed more than an hour in the garden with the children. I made themclosely examine the flowers, the shrubs, the grasshoppers, the snails, in order to practice them in observation, in wonder, in kindness. 

How enormously important are these first conversations of childhood! Ifelt it this morning with a sort of religious terror. Innocence andchildhood are sacred. The sower who casts in the seed, the father ormother casting in the fruitful word are accomplishing a pontifical actand ought to perform it with religious awe, with prayer and gravity, forthey are laboring at the kingdom of God. All seed-sowing is a mysteriousthing, whether the seed fall into the earth or into souls. Man is ahusbandman; his whole work rightly understood is to develop life, to sowit everywhere. Such is the mission of humanity, and of this divinemission the great instrument is speech. We forget too often thatlanguage is both a seed-sowing and a revelation. The influence of a wordin season, is it not incalculable? What a mystery is speech! But we areblind to it, because we are carnal and earthy. We see the stones and thetrees by the road, the furniture of our houses, all that is palpable andmaterial. We have no eyes for the invisible phalanxes of ideas whichpeople the air and hover incessantly around each one of us. 

Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable andsilent propaganda. As far as lies in its power, it tends to transformthe universe and humanity into its own image. Thus we have all a cure ofsouls. Every man is the center of perpetual radiation like a luminousbody; he is, as it were, a beacon which entices a ship upon the rocks ifit does not guide it into port. Every man is a priest, eveninvoluntarily; his conduct is an unspoken sermon, which is foreverpreaching to others; but there are priests of Baal, of Moloch, and ofall the false gods. Such is the high importance of example. Thence comesthe terrible responsibility which weighs upon us all. An evil example isa spiritual poison: it is the proclamation of a sacrilegious faith, ofan impure God. Sin would be only an evil for him who commits it, were itnot a crime toward the weak brethren, whom it corrupts. Therefore, ithas been said: "It were better for a man not to have been born than tooffend one of these little ones. "

May 6, 1852. --It is women who, like mountain flowers, mark with mostcharacteristic precision the gradation of social zones. The hierarchy ofclasses is plainly visible among them; it is blurred in the other sex. With women this hierarchy has the average regularity of nature; amongmen we see it broken by the incalculable varieties of human freedom. Thereason 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 theone modifies and shapes circumstance by his own energy, while thegentleness of the other is dominated by and reflects circumstance; sothat woman, so to speak, inclines to be species, and man to beindividual. 

Thus, which is curious, women are at once the sex which is most constantand most variable. Most constant from the moral point of view, mostvariable from the social. A confraternity in the first case, a hierarchyin the second. All degrees of culture and all conditions of society areclearly marked in their outward appearance, their manners and theirtastes; but the inward fraternity is traceable in their feelings, theirinstincts, and their desires. The feminine sex represents at the sametime natural and historical inequality; it maintains the unity of thespecies and marks off the categories of society, it brings together anddivides, it gathers and separates, it makes castes and breaks throughthem, according as it interprets its twofold _rôle_ in the one sense orthe other. At bottom, woman's mission is essentially conservative, butshe is a conservative without discrimination. On the one side, shemaintains God's work in man, all that is lasting, noble, and trulyhuman, in the race, poetry, religion, virtue, tenderness. On the other, she maintains the results of circumstance, all that is passing, local, and artificial in society; that is to say, customs, absurdities, prejudices, littlenesses. She surrounds with the same respectful andtenacious 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 adivine law that you are tracing, and therefore good. The womanpreserves; she is tradition as the man is progress. And if there is nofamily and no humanity without the two sexes, without these two forcesthere is no history. 

May 14, 1852. (Lancy. )--Yesterday I was full of the philosophy of joy, of youth, of the spring, which smiles and the roses which intoxicate; Ipreached the doctrine of strength, and I forgot that, tried andafflicted like the two friends with whom I was walking, I shouldprobably have reasoned and felt as they did. 

Our systems, it has been said, are the expression of our character, orthe theory of our situation, that is to say, we like to think of whathas been given as having been acquired, we take our nature for our ownwork, and our lot in life for our own conquest, an illusion born ofvanity and also of the craving for liberty. We are unwilling to be theproduct of circumstances, or the mere expansion of an inner germ. Andyet we have received everything, and the part which is really ours, issmall indeed, for it is mostly made up of negation, resistance, faults. We receive everything, both life and happiness; but the _manner_ inwhich we receive, this is what is still ours. Let us then, receivetrustfully without shame or anxiety. Let us humbly accept from God evenour own nature, and treat it charitably, firmly, intelligently. Not thatwe are called upon to accept the evil and the disease in us, but let usaccept _ourselves_ in spite of the evil and the disease. And let usnever be afraid of innocent joy; God is good, and what He does is welldone; resign yourself to everything, even to happiness; ask for thespirit of sacrifice, of detachment, of renunciation, and above all, forthe spirit of joy and gratitude, that genuine and religious optimismwhich sees in God a father, and asks no pardon for His benefits. We mustdare to be happy, and dare to confess it, regarding ourselves always asthe depositaries, not as the authors of our own joy. 

 * * * * *

. . . This evening I saw the first glow-worm of the season in the turfbeside the little winding road which descends from Lancy toward thetown. It was crawling furtively under the grass, like a timid thought ora dawning talent. 

June 17, 1852. --Every despotism has a specially keen and hostileinstinct for whatever keeps up human dignity, and independence. And itis curious to see scientific and realist teaching used everywhere as ameans of stifling all freedom of investigation as addressed to moralquestions under a dead weight of facts. Materialism is the auxiliarydoctrine of every tyranny, whether of the one or of the masses. To crushwhat is spiritual, moral, human so to speak, in man, by specializinghim; to form mere wheels of the great social machine, instead of perfectindividuals; to make society and not conscience the center of life, toenslave the soul to things, to de-personalize man, this is the dominantdrift of our epoch. Everywhere you may see a tendency to substitute thelaws 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; numbers doing dutyfor argument; negative liberty, which has no law _in itself_, andrecognizes no limit except in force, everywhere taking the place ofpositive liberty, which means action guided by an inner law and curbedby a moral authority. Socialism _versus_ individualism: this is howVinet put the dilemma. I should say rather that it is only the eternalantagonism between letter and spirit, between form and matter, betweenthe outward and the inward, appearance and reality, which is alwayspresent in every conception and in all ideas. 

Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything; makes everything vulgarand every truth false. And there is a religious and politicalmaterialism which spoils all that it touches, liberty, equality, individuality. So that there are two ways of understanding democracy. . . . 

What is threatened to-day is moral liberty, conscience, respect for thesoul, the very nobility of man. To defend the soul, its interests, itsrights, its dignity, is the most pressing duty for whoever sees thedanger. What the writer, the teacher, the pastor, the philosopher, hasto 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 thatfortifies, ennobles, and raises him. The test of every religious, political, or educational system, is the man which it forms. If a systeminjures the intelligence it is bad. If it injures the character it isvicious. If it injures the conscience it is criminal. 

August 12, 1852. (Lancy. )--Each sphere of being tends toward a highersphere, and has already revelations and presentiments of it. The idealunder all its forms is the anticipation and the prophetic vision of thatexistence, higher than his own, toward which every being perpetuallyaspires. And this higher and more dignified existence is more inward incharacter, that is to say, more spiritual. Just as volcanoes reveal tous the secrets of the interior of the globe, so enthusiasm and ecstasyare the passing explosions of this inner world of the soul; and humanlife is but the preparation and the means of approach to this spirituallife. The degrees of initiation are innumerable. Watch, then, discipleof life, watch and labor toward the development of the angel withinthee! For the divine Odyssey is but a series of more and more etherealmetamorphoses, in which each form, the result of what goes before, isthe condition of those which follow. The divine life is a series ofsuccessive deaths, in which the mind throws off its imperfections andits symbols, and yields to the growing attraction of the ineffablecenter of gravitation, the sun of intelligence and love. Created spiritsin the accomplishment of their destinies tend, so to speak, to formconstellations and milky ways within the empyrean of the divinity; inbecoming gods, they surround the throne of the sovereign with asparkling court. In their greatness lies their homage. The divinity withwhich they are invested is the noblest glory of God. God is the fatherof spirits, and the constitution of the eternal kingdom rests on thevassalship of love. 

September 27, 1852. (Lancy. )--To-day I complete my thirty-first year. . . . 

The most beautiful poem there is, is life--life which discerns its ownstory in the making, in which inspiration and self-consciousness gotogether and help each other, life which knows itself to be the world inlittle, a repetition in miniature of the divine universal poem. Yes, beman; that is to say, be nature, be spirit, be the image of God, be whatis greatest, most beautiful, most lofty in all the spheres of being, beinfinite will and idea, a reproduction of the great whole. And beeverything while being nothing, effacing thyself, letting God enter intothee as the air enters an empty space, reducing the _ego_ to the merevessel which contains the divine essence. Be humble, devout, silent, that so thou mayest hear within the depths of thyself the subtle andprofound voice; be spiritual and pure, that so thou mayest havecommunion with the pure spirit. Withdraw thyself often into thesanctuary of thy inmost consciousness; become once more point and atom, that so thou mayest free thyself from space, time, matter, temptation, dispersion, that thou mayest escape thy very organs themselves and thineown life. That is to say, die often, and examine thyself in the presenceof this death, as a preparation for the last death. He who can withoutshuddering 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 faram I from anything of the sort, how far is my heart from any suchstoicism! But at least we can try to detach ourselves from all that canbe taken away from us, to accept everything as a loan and a gift, and tocling only to the imperishable--this at any rate we can attempt. Tobelieve in a good and fatherly God, who educates us, who tempers thewind to the shorn lamb, who punishes only when he must, and takes awayonly with regret; this thought, or rather this conviction, gives courageand security. Oh, what need we have of love, of tenderness, ofaffection, of kindness, and how vulnerable we are, we the sons of God, we, immortal and sovereign beings! Strong as the universe or feeble asthe worm, according as we represent God or only ourselves, as we leanupon infinite being, or as we stand alone. 

The point of view of religion, of a religion at once active and moral, spiritual and profound, alone gives to life all the dignity and all theenergy of which it is capable. Religion makes invulnerable andinvincible. Earth can only be conquered in the name of heaven. All goodthings are given over and above to him who desires but righteousness. Tobe disinterested is to be strong, and the world is at the feet of himwhom it cannot tempt. Why? Because spirit is lord of matter, and theworld belongs to God. "Be of good cheer, " saith a heavenly voice, "Ihave overcome the world. "

Lord, lend thy strength to those who are weak in the flesh, but willingin the spirit!

October 31, 1852. (Lancy. )--Walked for half an hour in the garden. Afine rain was falling, and the landscape was that of autumn. The sky washung with various shades of gray, and mists hovered about the distantmountains, a melancholy nature. The leaves were falling on all sideslike the last illusions of youth under the tears of irremediable grief. A brood of chattering birds were chasing each other through theShrubberies, and playing games among the branches, like a knot of hidingschoolboys. The ground strewn with leaves, brown, yellow, and reddish;the trees half-stripped, some more, some less, and decked in raggedsplendors of dark-red, scarlet, and yellow; the reddening shrubs andplantations; a few flowers still lingering behind, roses, nasturtiums, dahlias, shedding their petals round them; the bare fields, the thinnedhedges; and the fir, the only green thing left, vigorous and stoical, like eternal youth braving decay; all these innumerable and marveloussymbols which forms colors, plants, and living beings, the earth and thesky, yield at all times to the eye which has learned to look for them, charmed and enthralled me. I wielded a poetic wand, and had but to toucha phenomenon to make it render up to me its moral significance. Everylandscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetratesinto both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in eachdetail. True poetry is truer than science, because it is synthetic, andseizes at once what the combination of all the sciences is able at mostto attain as a final result. The soul of nature is divined by the poet;the man of science, only serves to accumulate materials for itsdemonstration. 

November 6, 1852. --I am capable of all the passions, for I bear them allwithin 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 nascentlove. Why? Because with that prophetic certainty which belongs to moralintuition, 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 lovesof sense, of imagination, of sentiment, I have seen through and rejectedthem all; I sought the love which springs from the central profunditiesof being. And I still believe in it. I will have none of those passionsof straw which dazzle, burn up, and wither; I invoke, I await, and Ihope for the love which is great, pure and earnest, which lives andworks in all the fibres and through all the powers of the soul. And evenif I go lonely to the end, I would rather my hope and my dream died withme, than that my soul should content itself with any meaner union. 

November 8, 1852. --Responsibility is my invisible nightmare. To sufferthrough one's own fault is a torment worthy of the lost, for so grief isenvenomed by ridicule, and the worst ridicule of all, that which springsfrom shame of one's self. I have only force and energy wherewith to meetevils coming from outside; but an irreparable evil brought about bymyself, a renunciation for life of my liberty, my peace of mind, thevery thought of it is maddening--I expiate my privilege indeed. Myprivilege is to be spectator of my life drama, to be fully conscious ofthe tragi-comedy of my own destiny, and, more than that, to be in thesecret of the tragi-comic itself, that is to say, to be unable to takemy illusions seriously, to see myself, so to speak, from the theater onthe stage, or to be like a man looking from beyond the tomb intoexistence. I feel myself forced to feign a particular interest in myindividual part, while all the time I am living in the confidence of thepoet who is playing with all these agents which seem so important, andknows all that they are ignorant of. It is a strange position, and onewhich becomes painful as soon as grief obliges me to betake myself oncemore to my own little _rôle_, binding me closely to it, and warning methat I am going too far in imagining myself, because of my conversationswith the poet, dispensed from taking up again my modest part of valet inthe piece. Shakespeare must have experienced this feeling often, andHamlet, I think, must express it somewhere. It is a _Doppelgängerei_, quite German in character, and which explains the disgust with realityand the repugnance to public life, so common among the thinkers ofGermany. There is, as it were, a degradation a gnostic fall, in thusfolding one's wings and going back again into the vulgar shell of one'sown individuality. Without grief, which is the string of thisventuresome kite, man would soar too quickly and too high, and thechosen souls would be lost for the race, like balloons which, save forgravitation, would never return from the empyrean. 

How, then, is one to recover courage enough for action? By striving torestore in one's self something of that unconsciousness, spontaneity, instinct, which reconciles us to earth and makes man useful andrelatively happy. 

By believing more practically in the providence which pardons and allowsof reparation. 

By accepting our human condition in a more simple and childlike spirit, fearing trouble less, calculating less, hoping more. For we decrease ourresponsibility, if we decrease our clearness of vision, and fear lessenswith the lessening of responsibility. 

By extracting a richer experience out of our losses and lessons. 

November 9, 1852. --A few pages of the _Chrestomathie Française_ andVinet's remarkable letter at the head of the volume, have given me oneor two delightful hours. As a thinker, as a Christian, and as a man, Vinet occupies a typical place. His philosophy, his theology, hisesthetics, in short, his work, will be, or has been already surpassed atall points. His was a great soul and a fine talent. But neither werewell enough served by circumstances. We see in him a personality worthyof all veneration, a man of singular goodness and a writer ofdistinction, but not quite a great man, nor yet a great writer. Profundity and purity, these are what he possesses in a high degree, butnot greatness, properly speaking. For that, he is a little too subtleand analytical, too ingenious and fine-spun; his thought is overladenwith detail, and has not enough flow, eloquence, imagination, warmth, and largeness. Essentially and constantly meditative, he has notstrength enough left to deal with what is outside him. The casuistriesof conscience and of language, eternal self-suspicion, andself-examination, his talent lies in these things, and is limited bythem. Vinet wants passion, abundance, _entraînement_, and thereforepopularity. The individualism which is his title to glory is also thecause of his weakness. 

We find in him always the solitary and the ascetic. His thought is, asit were, perpetually at church; it is perpetually devising trials andpenances for itself. Hence the air of scruple and anxiety whichcharacterizes it even in its bolder flights. Moral energy, balanced by adisquieting delicacy of fibre; a fine organization marred, so to speak, by low health, such is the impression it makes upon us. Is it reproachor praise to say of Vinet's mind that it seems to one a forceperpetually reacting upon itself? A warmer and more self-forgetfulmanner; more muscles, as it were, around the nerves, more circles ofintellectual and historical life around the individual circle, these arewhat Vinet, of all writers perhaps the one who makes us _think_ most, isstill lacking in. Less _reflexivity_ and more plasticity, the eye moreon the object, would raise the style of Vinet, so rich in substance, sonervous, so full of ideas, and variety, into a grand style. Vinet, tosum up, is conscience personified, as man and as writer. Happy theliterature and the society which is able to count at one time two orthree like him, if not equal to him!

November 10, 1852. --How much have we not to learn from the Greeks, thoseimmortal ancestors of ours! And how much better they solved theirproblem than we have solved ours. Their ideal man is not ours, but theyunderstood infinitely better than we how to reverence, cultivate andennoble the man whom they knew. In a thousand respects we are stillbarbarians beside them, as Béranger said to me with a sigh in 1843:barbarians in education, in eloquence, in public life, in poetry, inmatters of art, etc. We must have millions of men in order to produce afew elect spirits: a thousand was enough in Greece. If the measure of acivilization is to be the number of perfected men that it produces, weare 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 livesside by side with us. We carry within us much greater things than they, but we ourselves are smaller. It is a strange result. Objectivecivilization produced great men while making no conscious effort towardsuch a result; subjective civilization produces a miserable andimperfect race, contrary to its mission and its earnest desire. Theworld 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 andinner, the world into earth and heaven, hell and paradise, hasdecomposed the human unity, in order, it is true, to reconstruct it moreprofoundly and more truly. But Christianity has not yet digested thispowerful leaven. She has not yet conquered the true humanity; she isstill living under the antimony of sin and grace, of here below andthere above. She has not penetrated into the whole heart of Jesus. Sheis still in the _narthex_ of penitence; she is not reconciled, and eventhe churches still wear the livery of service, and have none of the joyof the daughters of God, baptized of the Holy Spirit. 

Then, again, there is our excessive division of labor; our bad andfoolish education which does not develop the whole man; and the problemof poverty. We have abolished slavery, but without having solved thequestion of labor. In law there are no more slaves, in fact, there aremany. And while the majority of men are not free, the free man, in thetrue sense of the term can neither be conceived nor realized. Here areenough causes for our inferiority. 

November 12, 1852. --St. Martin's summer is still lingering, and the daysall begin in mist. I ran for a quarter of an hour round the garden toget some warmth and suppleness. Nothing could be lovelier than the lastrosebuds, or than the delicate gaufred edges of the strawberry leavesembroidered with hoar-frost, while above them Arachne's delicate webshung swaying in the green branches of the pines, little ball-rooms forthe fairies carpeted with powdered pearls and kept in place by athousand dewy strands hanging from above like the chains of a lamp andsupporting them from below like the anchors of a vessel. These littleairy edifices had all the fantastic lightness of the elf-world and allthe vaporous freshness of dawn. They recalled to me the poetry of thenorth, wafting to me a breath from Caledonia or Iceland or Sweden, Frithiof and the Edda, Ossian and the Hebrides. All that world of coldand mist, of genius and of reverie, where warmth comes not from the sunbut from the heart where man is more noticeable than nature--that chasteand vigorous world in which will plays a greater part than sensation andthought has more power than instinct--in short the whole romantic cycleof German and northern poetry, awoke little by little in my memory andlaid claim upon my sympathy. It is a poetry of bracing quality, and actsupon one like a moral tonic. Strange charm of imagination! A twig ofpine wood and a few spider-webs are enough to make countries, epochs, and nations live again before her. 

December 26, 1852. (Sunday. )--If I reject many portions of our theologyand of our church system, it is that I may the better reach the Christhimself. My philosophy allows me this. It does not state the dilemma asone of religion or philosophy, but as one of religion accepted orexperienced, understood or not understood. For me philosophy is a mannerof apprehending things, a mode of perception of reality. It does notcreate nature, man or God, but it finds them and seeks to understandthem. Philosophy is consciousness taking account of itself with all thatit contains. Now consciousness may contain a new life--the facts ofregeneration and of salvation, that is to say, Christian experience. Theunderstanding of the Christian consciousness is an integral part ofphilosophy, as the Christian consciousness is a leading form ofreligious consciousness, and religious consciousness an essential formof consciousness. 

 * * * * *

An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truthwhich it contains. 

Look twice, if what you want is a just conception; look once, if whatyou want is a sense of beauty. 

 * * * * *

A man only understands what is akin to something already existing inhimself. 

 * * * * *

Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed ofexperience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life. 

 * * * * *

The wealth of each mind is proportioned to the number and to theprecision of its categories and its points of view. 

 * * * * *

To feel himself freer than his neighbor is the reward of the critic. 

Modesty (_pudeur_) is always the sign and safeguard of a mystery. It isexplained by its contrary--profanation. Shyness or modesty is, in truth, the half-conscious sense of a secret of nature or of the soul toointimately individual to be given or surrendered. It is _exchanged_. Tosurrender what is most profound and mysterious in one's being andpersonality at any price less than that of absolute reciprocity isprofanation. 

January 6, 1853. --Self-government with tenderness--here you have thecondition of all authority over children. The child must discover in usno passion, no weakness of which he can make use; he must feel himselfpowerless to deceive or to trouble us; then he will recognize in us hisnatural superiors, and he will attach a special value to our kindness, because he will respect it. The child who can rouse in us anger, orimpatience, or excitement, feels himself stronger than we, and a childonly respects strength. The mother should consider herself as herchild's sun, a changeless and ever radiant world, whither the smallrestless 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 divinity, under that form of itwhich is accessible to childhood. If she is herself passionate, she willinculcate on her child a capricious and despotic God, or even severaldiscordant gods. The religion of a child depends on what its mother andits father are, and not on what they say. The inner and unconsciousideal which guides their life is precisely what touches the child; theirwords, their remonstrances, their punishments, their bursts of feelingeven, are for him merely thunder and comedy; what they worship, this itis which his instinct divines and reflects. 

The child sees what we are, behind what we wish to be. Hence hisreputation as a physiognomist. He extends his power as far as he canwith each of us; he is the most subtle of diplomatists. Unconsciously hepasses under the influence of each person about him, and reflects itwhile transforming it after his own nature. He is a magnifying mirror. This is why the first principle of education is: train yourself; and thefirst rule to follow if you wish to possess yourself of a child's willis: master your own. 

February 5, 1853 (seven o'clock in the morning). --I am always astonishedat the difference between one's inward mood of the evening and that ofthe morning. The passions which are dominant in the evening, in themorning leave the field free for the contemplative part of the soul. Ourwhole being, irritated and overstrung by the nervous excitement of theday, arrives in the evening at the culminating point of its humanvitality; the same being, tranquilized by the calm of sleep, is in themorning nearer heaven. We should weigh a resolution in the two balances, and examine an idea under the two lights, if we wish to minimize thechances of error by taking the average of our daily oscillations. Ourinner life describes regular curves, barometical curves, as it were, independent of the accidental disturbances which the storms of sentimentand passion may raise in us. Every soul has its climate, or rather, is aclimate; it has, so to speak, its own meteorology in the generalmeteorology of the soul. Psychology, therefore, cannot be complete solong as the physiology of our planet is itself incomplete--that scienceto which we give nowadays the insufficient name of physics of the globe. 

I became conscious this morning that what appears to us impossible isoften an impossibility altogether subjective. Our mind, under the actionof the passions, produces by a strange mirage gigantic obstacles, mountains or abysses, which stop us short. Breathe upon the passion andthe phantasmagoria will vanish. This power of mirage, by which we areable to delude and fascinate ourselves, is a moral phenomenon worthy ofattentive study. We make for ourselves, in truth, our own spiritualworld monsters, chimeras, angels, we make objective what ferments in us. All is marvelous for the poet; all is divine for the saint; all is greatfor the hero; all is wretched, miserable, ugly, and bad for the baseand sordid soul. The bad man creates around him a pandemonium, theartist, an Olympus, the elect soul, a paradise, which each of them seesfor himself alone. We are all visionaries, and what we see is our soulin 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 areconscious is but a part of our activity, and voluntary activity is but apart of our conscious activity. Here we have the basis of a wholepsychology and system of morals. Man reproducing the world, surroundinghimself with a nature which is the objective rendering of his spiritualnature, rewarding and punishing himself; the universe identical withthe divine nature, and the nature of the perfect spirit only becomingunderstood according to the measure of our perfection; intuition therecompense of inward purity; science as the result of goodness; inshort, a new phenomenology more complete and more moral, in which thetotal soul of things becomes spirit. This shall perhaps be my subjectfor my summer lectures. How much is contained in it! the whole domain ofinner education, all that is mysterious in our life, the relation ofnature to spirit, of God and all other beings to man, the repetition inminiature of the cosmogony, mythology, theology, and history of theuniverse, the evolution of mind, in a word the problem of problems intowhich I have often plunged but from which finite things, details, minutiae, have turned me back a thousand times. I return to the brink ofthe great abyss with the clear perception that here lies the problem ofscience, that to sound it is a duty, that God hides Himself only inlight and love, that He calls upon us to become spirits, to possessourselves and to possess Him in the measure of our strength and that itis our incredulity, our spiritual cowardice, which is our infirmity andweakness. 

Dante, gazing into the three worlds with their divers heavens, saw underthe form of an image what I would fain seize under a purer form. But hewas a poet, and I shall only be a philosopher. The poet makes himselfunderstood by human generations and by the crowd; the philosopheraddresses himself only to a few rare minds. The day has broken. Itbrings with it dispersion of thought in action. I feel myselfde-magnetized, pure clairvoyance gives place to study, and the etherealdepth of the heaven of contemplation vanishes before the glitter offinite things. Is it to be regretted? No. But it proves that the hoursmost apt for philosophical thought are those which precede the dawn. 

February 10, 1853. --This afternoon I made an excursion to the Salèvewith my particular friends, Charles Heim, Edmond Scherer, ÉlieLecoultre, and Ernest Naville. The conversation was of the mostinteresting kind, and prevented us from noticing the deep mud whichhindered our walking. It was especially Scherer, Naville, and I who keptit alive. Liberty in God, the essence of Christianity, new publicationsin philosophy, these were our three subjects of conversation. Theprinciple result for me was an excellent exercise in dialectic and inargumentation with solid champions. If I learned nothing, many of myideas gained new confirmation, and I was able to penetrate more deeplyinto the minds of my friends. I am much nearer to Scherer than toNaville, but from him also I am in some degree separated. 

It is a striking fact, not unlike the changing of swords in "Hamlet, "that the abstract minds, those which move from ideas to facts, arealways fighting on behalf of concrete reality; while the concrete minds, which move from facts to ideas, are generally the champions of abstractnotions. Each pretends to that over which he has least power; each aimsinstinctively at what he himself lacks. It is an unconscious protestagainst the incompleteness of each separate nature. We all tend towardthat which we possess least of, and our point of arrival is essentiallydifferent from our point of departure. The promised land is the landwhere one is not. The most intellectual of natures adopts an ethicaltheory of mind; the most moral of natures has an intellectual theory ofmorals. This reflection was brought home to me in the course of ourthree or four hours' discussion. Nothing is more hidden from us than theillusion which lives with us day by day, and our greatest illusion is tobelieve that we are what we think ourselves to be. 

The mathematical intelligence and the historical intelligence (the twoclasses of intelligences) can never understand each other. When theysucceed in doing so as to words, they differ as to the things which thewords mean. At the bottom of every discussion of detail between themreappears the problem of the origin of ideas. If the problem is notpresent to them, there is confusion; if it is present to them, there isseparation. They only agree as to the goal--truth; but never as to theroad, the method, and the criterion. 

Heim represented the impartiality of consciousness, Naville the moralityof consciousness, Lecoultre the religion of consciousness, Scherer theintelligence of consciousness, and I the consciousness of consciousness. A common ground, but differing individualities. _Discrimen ingeniorum_. 

What charmed me most in this long discussion was the sense of mentalfreedom which it awakened in me. To be able to set in motion thegreatest subjects of thought without any sense of fatigue, to be greaterthan the world, to play with one's strength, this is what makes thewell-being of intelligence, the Olympic festival of thought. _Habere, non haberi_. There is an equal happiness in the sense of reciprocalconfidence, of friendship, and esteem in the midst of conflict; likeathletes, we embrace each other before and after the combat, and thecombat is but a deploying of the forces of free and equal men. 

March 20, 1853. --I sat up alone; two or three times I paid a visit tothe children's room. It seemed to me, young mothers, that I understoodyou! sleep is the mystery of life; there is a profound charm in thisdarkness broken by the tranquil light of the night-lamp, and in thissilence measured by the rhythmic breathings of two young sleepingcreatures. It was brought home to me that I was looking on at amarvelous operation of nature, and I watched it in no profane spirit. Isat silently listening, a moved and hushed spectator of this poetry ofthe cradle, this ancient and ever new benediction of the family, thissymbol of creation, sleeping under the wing of God, of our consciousnesswithdrawing into the shade that it may rest from the burden of thought, and of the tomb, that divine bed, where the soul in its turn rests fromlife. To sleep is to strain and purify our emotions, to deposit the mudof life, to calm the fever of the soul, to return into the bosom ofmaternal nature, thence to re-issue, healed and strong. Sleep is a sortof innocence and purification. Blessed be He who gave it to the poorsons of men as the sure and faithful companion of life, our daily healerand consoler. 

April 27, 1853. --This evening I read the treatise by Nicole so muchadmired by Mme. De Sévigné: "_Des moyens de conserver la paix avec leshommes. _" Wisdom so gentle and so insinuating, so shrewd, piercing, andyet humble, which divines so well the hidden thoughts and secrets of theheart, and brings them all into the sacred bondage of love to God andman, how good and delightful a thing it is! Everything in it is smooth, even well put together, well thought out, but no display, no tinsel, noworldly ornaments of style. The moralist forgets himself and in usappeals only to the conscience. He becomes a confessor, a friend, acounsellor. 

May 11, 1853. --Psychology, poetry, philosophy, history, and science, Ihave swept rapidly to-day on the wings of the invisible hippogriffthrough all these spheres of thought. But the general impression hasbeen one of tumult and anguish, temptation and disquiet. 

I love to plunge deep into the ocean of life; but it is not withoutlosing sometimes all sense of the axis and the pole, without losingmyself and feeling the consciousness of my own nature and vocationgrowing faint and wavering. The whirlwind of the wandering Jew carriesme away, tears me from my little familiar enclosure, and makes me beholdall the empires of men. In my voluntary abandonment to the generality, the universal, the infinite, my particular _ego_ evaporates like a dropof water in a furnace; it only condenses itself anew at the return ofcold, after enthusiasm has died out and the sense of reality hasreturned. Alternate expansion and condensation, abandonment and recoveryof self, the conquest of the world to be pursued on the one side, thedeepening of consciousness on the other--such is the play of the innerlife, the march of the microcosmic mind, the marriage of the individualsoul with the universal soul, the finite with the infinite, whencesprings the intellectual progress of man. Other betrothals unite thesoul to God, the religious consciousness with the divine; these belongto the history of the will. And what precedes will is feeling, precededitself by instinct. Man is only what he becomes--profound truth; but hebecomes only what he is, truth still more profound. What am I? Terriblequestion! Problem of predestination, of birth, of liberty, there liesthe abyss. And yet one must plunge into it, and I have done so. Theprelude of Bach I heard this evening predisposed me to it; it paints thesoul tormented and appealing and finally seizing upon God, andpossessing itself of peace and the infinite with an all-prevailingfervor and passion. 

May 14, 1853. --Third quartet concert. It was short. Variations for pianoand violin by Beethoven, and two quartets, not more. The quartets wereperfectly clear and easy to understand. One was by Mozart and the otherby Beethoven, so that I could compare the two masters. Theirindividuality seemed to become plain to me: Mozart--grace, liberty, certainty, freedom, and precision of style, and exquisite andaristocratic beauty, serenity of soul, the health and talent of themaster, both on a level with his genius; Beethoven--more pathetic, morepassionate, more torn with feeling, more intricate, more profound, lessperfect, more the slave of his genius, more carried away by his fancyor his passion, more moving, and more sublime than Mozart. Mozartrefreshes you, like the "Dialogues" of Plato; he respects you, revealsto you your strength, gives you freedom and balance. Beethoven seizesupon you; he is more tragic and oratorical, while Mozart is moredisinterested and poetical. Mozart is more Greek, and Beethoven moreChristian. One is serene, the other serious. The first is stronger thandestiny, because he takes life less profoundly; the second is lessstrong, because he has dared to measure himself against deeper sorrows. His talent is not always equal to his genius, and pathos is hisdominant feature, as perfection is that of Mozart. In Mozart the balanceof the whole is perfect, and art triumphs; in Beethoven feeling governseverything and emotion troubles his art in proportion as it deepens it. 

July 26, 1853. --Why do I find it easier and more satisfactory, as awriter of verse, to compose in the short metres than in the long andserious ones? Why, in general, am I better fitted for what is difficultthan for what is easy? Always for the same reason. I cannot bringmyself to move freely, to show myself without a veil, to act on my ownaccount and act seriously, to believe in and assert myself, whereas apiece of badinage which diverts attention from myself to the thing inhand, 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, anddistrustful as I am both of my gift and my instrument, I like toreassure myself by an elaborate practice of execution. All my publishedliterary 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 itscapacity and skill. But the work itself remains unachieved. My effortexpires, and satisfied with the _power_ to act I never arrive at thewill to act. I am always preparing and never accomplishing, and myenergy is swallowed up in a kind of barren curiosity. Timidity, then, and curiosity--these are the two obstacles which bar against me aliterary career. Nor must procrastination be forgotten. I am alwaysreserving for the future what is great, serious, and important, andmeanwhile, I am eager to exhaust what is pretty and trifling. Sure of mydevotion to things that are vast and profound, I am always lingering intheir contraries lest I should neglect them. Serious at bottom, I amfrivolous in appearance. A lover of thought, I seem to care above all, for expression; I keep the substance for myself, and reserve the formfor others. So that the net result of my timidity is that I never treatthe public seriously, and that I only show myself to it in what isamusing, enigmatical, or capricious; the result of my curiosity is thateverything tempts me, the shell as well as the mountain, and that I losemyself in endless research; while the habit of procrastination keeps meforever at preliminaries and antecedents, and production itself is nevereven begun. 

But if that is the fact, the fact might be different. I understandmyself, but I do not approve myself. 

August 1, 1853. --I have just finished Pelletan's book, "Profession defoi du dix-neuvième Siècle. " It is a fine book Only one thing is wantingto it--the idea of evil. It is a kind of supplement to the theory ofCondorcet--indefinite perfectibility, man essentially good, _life_, which is a physiological notion, dominating virtue, duty, and holiness, in short, a non-ethical conception of history, liberty identified withnature, the natural man taken for the whole man. The aspirations whichsuch a book represents are generous and poetical, but in the first placedangerous, since they lead to an absolute confidence in instinct; and inthe second, credulous and unpractical, for they set before us a meredream man, and throw a veil over both present and past reality. Thebook is at once the plea justificatory of progress, conceived as fataland irresistible, and an enthusiastic hymn to the triumph of humanity. It is earnest, but morally superficial; poetical, but fanciful anduntrue. It confounds the progress of the race with the progress of theindividual, the progress of civilization with the advance of the innerlife. Why? Because its criterion is quantitative, that is to say, purely exterior (having regard to the wealth of life), and notqualitative (the goodness of life). Always the same tendency to takethe appearance for the thing, the form for the substance, the law forthe essence, always the same absence of moral personality, the sameobtuseness of conscience, which has never recognized sin present in thewill, which places evil outside of man, moralizes from outside, andtransforms to its own liking the whole lesson of history! What is atfault is the philosophic superficiality of France, which she owes to herfatal notion of religion, itself due to a life fashioned by Catholicismand by absolute monarchy. 

Catholic thought cannot conceive of personality as supreme and consciousof itself. Its boldness and its weakness come from one and the samecause--from an absence of the sense of responsibility, from that vassalstate of conscience which knows only slavery or anarchy, whichproclaims but does not obey the law, because the law is outside it, notwithin it. Another illusion is that of Quinet and Michelet, who imagineit possible to come out of Catholicism without entering into any otherpositive form of religion, and whose idea is to fight Catholicism byphilosophy, a philosophy which is, after all, Catholic at bottom, sinceit springs from anti-Catholic reaction. The mind and the conscience, which have been formed by Catholicism, are powerless to rise to anyother form of religion. From Catholicism, as from Epicureanism there isno return. 

October 11, 1853. --My third day at Turin, is now over. I have been ableto penetrate farther than ever before into the special genius of thistown and people. I have felt it live, have realized it little by little, as my intuition became more distinct. That is what I care for most: toseize the soul of things, the soul of a nation; to live the objectivelife, the life outside self; to find my way into a new moral country. Ilong to assume the citizenship of this unknown world, to enrich myselfwith this fresh form of existence, to feel it from within, to linkmyself to it, and to reproduce it sympathetically; this is the end andthe reward of my efforts. To-day the problem grew clear to me as I stoodon the terrace of the military hospital, in full view of the Alps, theweather fresh and clear in spite of a stormy sky. Such an intuitionafter all is nothing out a synthesis wrought by instinct, a synthesis towhich everything--streets, houses, landscape, accent, dialect, physiognomies, history, and habits contribute their share. I might callit the ideal integration of a people or its reduction to the generatingpoint, or an entering into its consciousness. This generating pointexplains everything else, art, religion, history, politics, manners; andwithout it nothing can be explained. The ancients realized theirconsciousness in the national God. Modern nationalities, morecomplicated and less artistic, are more difficult to decipher. What oneseeks for in them is the daemon, the fatum, the inner genius, themission, the primitive disposition, both what there is desire for andwhat there is power for, the force in them and its limitations. 

A pure and life-giving freshness of thought and of the spiritual lifeseemed to play about me, borne on the breeze descending from the Alps. Ibreathed an atmosphere of spiritual freedom, and I hailed with emotionand rapture the mountains whence was wafted to me this feeling ofstrength and purity. A thousand sensations, thoughts, and analogiescrowded upon me. History, too, the history of the sub-Alpine countries, from the Ligurians to Hannibal, from Hannibal to Charlemagne, fromCharlemagne to Napoleon, passed through my mind. All the possible pointsof view, were, so to speak, piled upon each other, and one caughtglimpses of some eccentrically across others. I was enjoying and I waslearning. Sight passed into vision without a trace of hallucination, andthe landscape was my guide, my Virgil. 

All this made me very sensible of the difference between me and themajority of travelers, all of whom have a special object, and contentthemselves with one thing or with several, while I desire all ornothing, and am forever straining toward the total, whether of allpossible objects, or of all the elements present in the reality. Inother words, what I desire is the sum of all desires, and what I seek toknow is the sum of all different kinds of knowledge. Always thecomplete, the absolute; the _teres atque rotundum_, sphericity, non-resignation. 

October 27, 1853. --I thank Thee, my God, for the hour that I have justpassed in Thy presence. Thy will was clear to me; I measured my faults, counted my griefs, and felt Thy goodness toward me. I realized my ownnothingness, 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 itthat one may receive it, to possess nothing that one may conquer all, torenounce self that God may give Himself to us, how impossible a problem, and how sublime a reality! No one truly knows happiness who has notsuffered, and the redeemed are happier than the elect. 

(Same day. )--The divine miracle _par excellence_ consists surely in theapotheosis of grief, the transfiguration of evil by good. The work ofcreation finds its consummation, and the eternal will of the infinitemercy finds its fulfillment only in the restoration of the free creatureto God and of an evil world to goodness, through love. Every soul inwhich conversion has taken place is a symbol of the history of theworld. 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, theaim of existence. And happiness is cumulative, as misery may be. Aneternal growth is an unchangeable peace, an ever profounder depth ofapprehension, a possession constantly more intense and more spiritual ofthe joy of heaven--this is happiness. Happiness has no limits, becauseGod has neither bottom nor bounds, and because happiness is nothing butthe conquest of God through love. 

The center of life is neither in thought nor in feeling, nor in will, nor even in consciousness, so far as it thinks, feels, or wishes. Formoral truth may have been penetrated and possessed in all these ways, and escape us still. Deeper even than consciousness there is our beingitself, our very substance, our nature. Only those truths which haveentered into this last region, which have become ourselves, becomespontaneous and involuntary, instinctive and unconscious, are really ourlife--that is to say something more than our property. So long as we areable to distinguish any space whatever between the truth and us weremain outside it. The thought, the feeling, the desire, theconsciousness of life, are not yet quite life. But peace and repose cannowhere be found except in life, and in eternal life and the eternallife is the divine life, is God. To become divine is then the aim oflife: then only can truth be said to be ours beyond the possibility ofloss, because it is no longer outside us, nor even in us, but we are it, and it is we; we ourselves are a truth, a will, a work of God. Libertyhas become nature; the creature is one with its creator--one throughlove. It is what it ought to be; its education is finished, and itsfinal happiness begins. The sun of time declines and the light ofeternal blessedness arises. 

Our fleshly hearts may call this mysticism. It is the mysticism ofJesus: "I am one with my Father; ye shall be one with me. We will be onewith 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 theinfinite. 

There are two states or conditions of pride. The first is one ofself-approval, the second one of self-contempt. Pride is seen probablyat its purest in the last. 

 * * * * *

It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing thatwe think, by pumping that we draw water into the well. 

 * * * * *

February 1, 1854. --A walk. The atmosphere incredibly pure, a warmcaressing gentleness in the sunshine--joy in one's whole being. Seatedmotionless upon a bench on the Tranchées, beside the slopes clothed withmoss and tapestried with green, I passed some intense delicious moments, allowing great elastic waves of music, wafted to me from a military bandon the terrace of St. Antoine, to surge and bound through me. Every wayI was happy, as idler, as painter, as poet. Forgotten impressions ofchildhood and youth came back to me--all those indescribable effectswrought by color, shadow, sunlight, green hedges, and songs of birds, upon the soul just opening to poetry. I became again young, wondering, and simple, as candor and ignorance are simple. I abandoned myself tolife and to nature, and they cradled me with an infinite gentleness. Toopen one's heart in purity to this ever pure nature, to allow thisimmortal life of things to penetrate into one's soul, is at the sametime to listen to the voice of God. Sensation may be a prayer, andself-abandonment an act of devotion. 

February 18, 1854. --Everything tends to become fixed, solidified, andcrystallized in this French tongue of ours, which seeks form and notsubstance, the result and not its formation, what is seen rather thanwhat is thought, the outside rather than the inside. 

We like the accomplished end and not the pursuit of the end, the goaland not the road, in short, ideas ready-made and bread ready-baked, thereverse of Lessing's principle. What we look for above all areconclusions. This clearness of the "ready-made" is a superficialclearness--physical, outward, solar clearness, so to speak, but in theabsence of a sense for origin and genesis it is the clearness of theincomprehensible, the clearness of opacity, the clearness of theobscure. We are always trifling on the surface. Our temper isformal--that is to say, frivolous and material, or rather artistic andnot philosophical. For what it seeks is the figure, the fashion andmanner of things, not their deepest life, their soul, their secret. 

March 16, 1854. (From Veevay to Geneva. )--What message had this lake forme, with its sad serenity, its soft and even tranquility, in which wasmirrored the cold monotonous pallor of mountains and clouds? Thatdisenchanted disillusioned life may still be traversed by duty, lit by amemory of heaven. I was visited by a clear and profound intuition of theflight of things, of the fatality of all life, of the melancholy whichis below the surface of all existence, but also of that deepest depthwhich subsists forever beneath the fleeting wave. 

December 17, 1854. --When we are doing nothing in particular, it is thenthat we are living through all our being; and when we cease to add toour growth it is only that we may ripen and possess ourselves. Will issuspended, but nature and time are always active and if our life is nolonger our work, the work goes on none the less. With us, without us, orin spite of us, our existence travels through its appointed phases, ourinvisible Psyche weaves the silk of its chrysalis, our destiny fulfillsitself, and all the hours of life work together toward that floweringtime which we call death. This activity, then, is inevitable and fatal;sleep and idleness do not interrupt it, but it may become free andmoral, a joy instead of a terror. 

Nothing is more characteristic of a man than the manner in which hebehaves toward fools. 

It costs us a great deal of trouble not to be of the same opinion as ourself-love, and not to be ready to believe in the good taste of those whobelieve in our merits. 

Does not true humility consist in accepting one's infirmity as a trial, and one's evil disposition as a cross, in sacrificing all one'spretensions and ambitions, even those of conscience? True humility iscontentment. 

 * * * * *

A man only understands that of which he has already the beginnings inhimself. 

Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secretof eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority. 

 * * * * *

March 28, 1855. --Not a blade of grass but has a story to tell, not aheart but has its romance, not a life which does not hide a secret whichis either its thorn or its spur. Everywhere grief, hope, comedy, tragedy; even under the petrifaction of old age, as in the twisted formsof fossils, we may discover the agitations and tortures of youth. Thisthought is the magic wand of poets and of preachers: it strips thescales 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 understandthe thousand languages of nature. Thwarted love makes a man a polyglot, and grief transforms him into a diviner and a sorcerer. 

April 16, 1855. --I realized this morning the prodigious effect ofclimate on one's state of mind. I was Italian or Spanish. In this blueand limpid air, and under this southern sun, the very walls smile atyou. All the chestnut trees were en fete; with their glistening budsshining like little flames at the curved ends of the branches, they werethe candelabra of the spring decking the festival of eternal nature. Howyoung everything was, how kindly, how gracious! the moist freshness ofthe grass, the transparent shadows in the courtyards, the strength ofthe old cathedral towers, the white edges of the roads. I felt myself achild; the sap of life mounted again into my veins as it does in plants. How sweet a thing is a little simple enjoyment! And now, a brass bandwhich has stopped in the street makes my heart leap as it did ateighteen. Thanks be to God; there have been so many weeks and monthswhen 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 yourimmortal spells; sing your siren melodies, make me drink of the cup ofimmortality, lead me back to the Olympus of the soul. Or rather, nopaganism! God of joy and of grief, do with me what Thou wilt; grief isgood, and joy is good also. Thou art leading me now through joy. I takeit from Thy hands, and I give Thee thanks for it. 

April 17, 1855. --The weather is still incredibly brilliant, warm, andclear. The day is full of the singing of birds, the night is full ofstars, nature has become all kindness, and it is a kindness clothed uponwith splendor. 

For nearly two hours have I been lost in the contemplation of thismagnificent spectacle. I felt myself in the temple of the infinite, inthe presence of the worlds, God's guest in this vast nature. The starswandering in the pale ether drew me far away from earth. What peacebeyond the power of words, what dews of life eternal, they shed on theadoring soul! I felt the earth floating like a boat in this blue ocean. Such deep and tranquil delight nourishes the whole man, it purifies andennobles. I surrendered myself, I was all gratitude and docility. 

April 21, 1855. --I have been reading a great deal: ethnography, comparative anatomy, cosmical systems. I have traversed the universefrom the deepest depths of the empyrean to the peristaltic movements ofthe atoms in the elementary cell. I have felt myself expanding in theinfinite, and enfranchised in spirit from the bounds of time and space, able to trace back the whole boundless creation to a point withoutdimensions, and seeing the vast multitude of suns, of milky ways, ofstars, and nebulae, all existent in the point. 

And on all sides stretched mysteries, marvels and prodigies, withoutlimit, without number, and without end. I felt the unfathomable thoughtof which the universe is the symbol live and burn within me; I touched, proved, tasted, embraced my nothingness and my immensity; I kissed thehem of the garments of God, and gave Him thanks for being Spirit and forbeing life. Such moments are glimpses of the divine. They make oneconscious of one's immortality; they bring home to one that an eternityis 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. 

May 23, 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 thoughit 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 ondevouring us, is in the depth of our own being, and our liberty floatsover this void, which is always seeking to swallow it up. Our onlytalisman lies in that concentration of moral force which we callconscience, that small inextinguishable flame of which the light is dutyand 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 greatwaters; it alone can enable us to escape the temptations of the sea, thestorms and the monsters which are the offspring of night and the deluge. Faith in God, in a holy, merciful, fatherly God, is the divine ray whichkindles this flame. 

How deeply I feel the profound and terrible poetry of all theseprimitive terrors from which have issued the various theogonies of theworld, and how it all grows clear to me, and becomes a symbol of the onegreat unchanging thought, the thought of God about the universe! Howpresent and sensible to my inner sense is the unity of everything! Itseems to me that I am able to pierce to the sublime motive which, in allthe infinite spheres of existence, and through all the modes of spaceand time, every created form reproduces and sings within the bond of aneternal harmony. From the infernal shades I feel myself mounting towardthe regions of light; my flight across chaos finds its rest in paradise. Heaven, hell, the world, are within us. Man is the great abyss. 

July 27, 1855. --So life passes away, tossed like a boat by the waves upand down, hither and thither, drenched by the spray, stained by thefoam, now thrown upon the bank, now drawn back again according to theendless caprice of the water. Such, at least, is the life of the heartand the passions, the life which Spinoza and the stoics reprove, andwhich is the exact opposite of that serene and contemplative life, always equable like the starlight, in which man lives at peace, and seeseverything tinder its eternal aspect; the opposite also of the life ofconscience, in which God alone speaks, and all self-will surrendersitself to His will made manifest. 

I pass from one to another of these three existences, which are equallyknown to me; but this very mobility deprives me of the advantages ofeach. For my heart is worn with scruples, the soul in me cannot crushthe needs of the heart, and the conscience is troubled and no longerknows how to distinguish, in the chaos of contradictory inclinations, the voice of duty or the will of God. The want of simple faith, theindecision which springs from distrust of self, tend to make all mypersonal life a matter of doubt and uncertainty. I am afraid of thesubjective life, and recoil from every enterprise, demand, or promisewhich may oblige me to realize myself; I feel a terror of action, and amonly at ease in the impersonal, disinterested, and objective life ofthought. The reason seems to be timidity, and the timidity springs fromthe excessive development of the reflective power which has almostdestroyed in me all spontaneity, impulse, and instinct, and thereforeall boldness and confidence. Whenever I am forced to act, I see causefor error and repentance everywhere, everywhere hidden threats andmasked vexations. From a child I have been liable to the disease ofirony, and that it may not be altogether crushed by destiny, my natureseems to have armed itself with a caution strong enough to prevailagainst any of life's blandishments. It is just this strength which ismy 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 orbe deceived. Humiliation, then, is the sorrow which I fear the most, andtherefore it would seem as if pride were the deepest rooted of myfaults. 

This may be logical, but it is not the truth: it seems to me that it isreally distrust, incurable doubt of the future, a sense of the justicebut not of the goodness of God--in short, unbelief, which is mymisfortune and my sin. Every act is a hostage delivered over to avengingdestiny--there is the instinctive belief which chills and freezes; everyact is a pledge confided to a fatherly providence, there is the beliefwhich calms. 

Pain seems to me a punishment and not a mercy: this is why I have asecret horror of it. And as I feel myself vulnerable at all points, andeverywhere accessible to pain, I prefer to remain motionless, like atimid child, who, left alone in his father's laboratory, dares not touchanything for fear of springs; explosions, and catastrophes, which mayburst from every corner at the least movement of his inexperiencedhands. I have trust in God directly and as revealed in nature, but Ihave a deep distrust of all free and evil agents. I feel or foreseeevil, moral and physical, as the consequence of every error, fault, orsin, and I am ashamed of pain. 

At bottom, is it not a mere boundless self-love, the purism ofperfection, an incapacity to accept our human condition, a tacit protestagainst the order of the world, which lies at the root of my inertia? Itmeans _all or nothing_, a vast ambition made inactive by disgust, ayearning that cannot be uttered for the ideal, joined with an offendeddignity and a wounded pride which will have nothing to say to what theyconsider beneath them. It springs from the ironical temper which refusesto take either self or reality seriously, because it is forevercomparing both with the dimly-seen infinite of its dreams. It is a stateof mental reservation in which one lends one's self to circumstances forform's sake, but refuses to recognize them in one's heart because onecannot see the necessity or the divine order in them. I am disinterestedbecause I am indifferent; I have nothing to say against what is, and yetI am never satisfied. I am too weak to conquer, and yet I will not beConquered--it is the isolation of the disenchanted soul, which has puteven hope away from it. 

But even this is a trial laid upon one. Its providential purpose is nodoubt to lead one to that true renunciation of which charity is the signand symbol. It is when one expects nothing more for one's self that oneis able to love. To do good to men because we love them, to use everytalent we have so as to please the Father from whom we hold it for Hisservice, there is no other way of reaching and curing this deepdiscontent with life which hides itself under an appearance ofindifference. 

September 4, 1855. --In the government of the soul the parliamentary formsucceeds the monarchical. Good sense, conscience, desire, reason, thepresent and the past, the old man and the new, prudence and generosity, take up their parable in turn; the reign of argument begins; chaosreplaces order, and darkness light. Simple will represents theautocratic _régime_, interminable discussion the deliberate regime ofthe soul. The one is preferable from the theoretical point of view, theother from the practical. Knowledge and action are their two respectiveadvantages. 

But the best of all would be to be able to realize three powers in thesoul. Besides the man of counsel we want the man of action and the manof judgment. In me, reflection comes to no useful end, because it isforever returning upon itself, disputing and debating. I am wanting inboth the general who commands and the judge who decides. 

Analysis is dangerous if it overrules the synthetic faculty; reflectionis to be feared if it destroys our power of intuition, and inquiry isfatal if it supplants faith. Decomposition becomes deadly when itsurpasses in strength the combining and constructive energies of life, and the _separate_ action of the powers of the soul tends to meredisintegration and destruction as soon as it becomes impossible to bringthem to bear as _one_ undivided force. When the sovereign abdicatesanarchy 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 passion for dialectic, for finedistinctions, absorbs and weakens me. The point which I have reachedseems to be explained by a too restless search for perfection, by theabuse of the critical faculty, and by an unreasonable distrust of firstimpulses, first thoughts, first words. Unity and simplicity of being, confidence, and spontaneity of life, are drifting out of my reach, andthis is why I can no longer act. 

Give up, then, this trying to know all, to embrace all. Learn to limityourself, to content yourself with some definite thing, and somedefinite work; dare to be what you are, and learn to resign with a goodgrace all that you are not, and to believe in your own individuality. Self-distrust is destroying you; trust, surrender, abandon yourself;"believe and thou shalt be healed. " Unbelief is death, and depressionand 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 thefulfillment of duty brings peace, not happiness. It is divine love, thelove of the holiest, the possession of God by faith, which solves thedifficulty; for if sacrifice has itself become a joy, a lasting, growingand imperishable joy--the soul is then secure of an all-sufficient andunfailing nourishment. 

 * * * * *

January 21, 1856. --Yesterday seems to me as far off as though it werelast year. My memory holds nothing more of the past than its generalplan, just as my eye perceives nothing more in the starry heaven. It isno more possible for me to recover one of my days from the depths ofmemory than if it were a glass of water poured into a lake; it is not somuch a lost thing as a thing melted and fused; the individual hasreturned into the whole. The divisions of time are categories which haveno power to mold my life, and leave no more lasting impression thanlines traced by a stick in water. My life, my individuality, are fluid, there is nothing for it but to resign one's self. 

April 9, 1856. --How true it is that our destinies are decided bynothings and that a small imprudence helped by some insignificantaccident, as an acorn is fertilized by a drop of rain, may raise thetrees on which perhaps we and others shall be crucified. What happens isquite different from that we planned; we planned a blessing and theresprings from it a curse. How many times the serpent of fatality, orrather the law of life, the force of things, intertwining itself withsome very simple facts, cannot be cut away by any effort, and the logicof situations and characters leads inevitably to a dreaded _dénouement_. It is the fatal spell of destiny, which obliges us to feed our grieffrom our own hand, to prolong the existence of our vulture, to throwinto the furnace of our punishment and expiation, our powers, ourqualities, our very virtues, one by one, and so forces us to recognizeour nothingness, our dependence and the implacable majesty of law. Faithin a providence softens punishment but does not do away with it. Thewheels of the divine chariot crush us first of all that justice may besatisfied and an example given to men, and then a hand is stretched outto us to raise us up, or at least to reconcile us with the love hiddenunder the justice. Pardon cannot precede repentance and repentance onlybegins with humility. And so long as any fault whatever appears triflingto us, so long as we see, not so much the culpability of as the excusesfor imprudence or negligence, so long, in short, as Job murmurs and asprovidence is thought to be too severe, so long as there is any innerprotestation against fate, or doubt as to the perfect justice of God, there is not yet entire humility or true repentance. It is when weaccept the expiation that it can be spared us; it is when we submitsincerely that grace can be granted to us. Only when grief finds itswork done can God dispense us from it. Trial then only stops when it isuseless: that is why it scarcely ever stops. Faith in the justice andlove of the Father is the best and indeed the only support under thesufferings of this life. The foundation of all of our pains is unbelief;we doubt whether what happens to us ought to happen to us; we thinkourselves wiser than providence, because to avoid fatalism we believe inaccident. Liberty in submission--what a problem! And yet that is what wemust always come back to. 

May 7, 1856. --I have been reading Rosenkrantz's "History of Poetry"[Footnote: "Geschichte der Poesie, " by Rosenkrantz, the pupil andbiographer of Hegel] all day: it touches upon all the great names ofSpain, Portugal, and France, as far as Louis XV. It is a good thing totake these rapid surveys; the shifting point of view gives a perpetualfreshness to the subject and to the ideas presented, a literaryexperience which is always pleasant and bracing. For one of mytemperament, this philosophic and morphological mode of embracing andexpounding literary history has a strong attraction. But it is theantipodes of the French method of proceeding, which takes, as it were, only the peaks of the subject, links them together by theoreticalfigures and triangulations, and then assumes these lines to representthe genuine face of the country. The real process of formation of ageneral opinion, of a public taste, of an established _genre_, cannot belaid bare by an abstract method, which suppresses the period of growthin favor of the final fruit, which prefers clearness of outline tofullness of statement, and sacrifices the preparation to the result, themultitude to the chosen type. This French method, however, is eminentlycharacteristic, and it is linked by invisible ties to their respect forcustom and fashion, to the Catholic and dualist instinct which admitstwo truths, two contradictory worlds, and accepts quite naturally whatis magical, incomprehensible, and arbitrary in God, the king, orlanguage. It is the philosophy of accident become habit, instinct, nature and belief, it is the religion of caprice. 

By one of those eternal contrasts which redress the balance of things, the romance peoples, who excel in the practical matters of life, carenothing for the philosophy of it; while the Germans, who know verylittle about the practice of life, are masters of its theory. Everyliving being seeks instinctively to complete itself; this is the secretlaw according to which that nation whose sense of life is fullest andkeenest, drifts most readily toward a mathematical rigidity of theory. Matter and form are the eternal oppositions, and the mathematicalintellects are often attracted by the facts of life, just as thesensuous minds are often drawn toward the study of abstract law. Thusstrangely enough, what we think we are is just what we are not: what wedesire to be is what suits us least; our theories condemn us, and ourpractice gives the lie to our theories. And the contradiction is anadvantage, for it is the source of conflict, of movement, and thereforea condition of progress. Every life is an inward struggle, everystruggle supposes two contrary forces; nothing real is simple, andwhatever thinks itself simple is in reality the farthest fromsimplicity. Therefore it would seem that every state is a moment in aseries; every being a compromise between contraries. In concretedialectic we have the key which opens to us the understanding of beingsin the series of beings, of states in the series of moments; and it isin dynamics that we have the explanation of equilibrium. Every situationis an _equilibrium_ of forces; every life is a _struggle_ betweenopposing forces working within the limits of a certain equilibrium. 

These two principles have been often clear to me, but I have neverapplied them widely or rigorously enough. 

July 1, 1856. --A man and still more a woman, always betrays something ofhis or her nationality. The women of Russia, for instance, like thelakes and rivers of their native country, seem to be subject to suddenand prolonged fits of torpor. In their movement, undulating andcaressing like that of water, there is always a threat of unforeseenfrost. The high latitude, the difficulty of life, the inflexibility oftheir autocratic _régime_, the heavy and mournful sky, the inexorableclimate, all these harsh fatalities have left their mark upon theMuscovite race. A certain somber obstinacy, a kind of primitiveferocity, a foundation of savage harshness which, under the influence ofcircumstances, might become implacable and pitiless; a cold strength, anindomitable power of resolution which would rather wreck the whole worldthan yield, the indestructible instinct of the barbarian tribe, perceptible in the half-civilized nation, all these traits are visibleto an attentive eye, even in the harmless extravagances and caprices ofa young woman of this powerful race. Even in their _badinage_ theybetray something of that fierce and rigid nationality which burns itsown towns and [as Napoleon said] keeps battalions of dead soldiers ontheir feet. 

What terrible rulers the Russians would be if ever they should spreadthe night of their rule over the countries of the south! They wouldbring us a polar despotism, tyranny such as the world has never known, silent as darkness, rigid as ice, insensible as bronze, decked with anouter amiability and glittering with the cold brilliancy of snow, aslavery without compensation or relief. Probably, however, they willgradually lose both the virtues and the defects of their semi-barbarism. The centuries as they pass will ripen these sons of the north, and theywill enter into the concert of peoples in some other capacity than as amenace or a dissonance. They have only to transform their hardiness intostrength, their cunning into grace, their Muscovitism into humanity, towin love instead of inspiring aversion or fear. 

July 3, 1856. --The German admires form, but he has no genius for it. Heis the opposite of the Greek; he has critical instinct, aspiration, anddesire, but no serene command of beauty. The south, more artistic, moreself-satisfied, more capable of execution, rests idly in the sense ofits 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 southernpeoples is on this earth. The Germanic race thinks and feels; thesoutherners feel and express; the Anglo-Saxons will and do. To know, tofeel, to act, there you have the trio of Germany, Italy, England. Franceformulates, speaks, decides, and laughs. Thought, talent, will, speech;or, in other words science, art, action, proselytism. So the parts ofthe quartet are assigned. 

July 21, 1856. --_Mit sack und pack_ here I am back again in my townrooms. I have said good-bye to my friends and my country joys, toverdure, flowers, and happiness. Why did I leave them after all? Thereason I gave myself was that I was anxious about my poor uncle, who isill. But at bottom are there not other reasons? Yes, several. There isthe fear of making myself a burden upon the two or three families offriends who show me incessant kindness, for which I can make no return. There are my books, which call me back. There is the wish to keep faithwith myself. But all that would be nothing, I think, without anotherinstinct, the instinct of the wandering Jew, which snatches from me thecup I have but just raised to my lips, which forbids me any prolongedenjoyment, and cries "go forward! Let there be no falling asleep, nostopping, no attaching yourself to this or that!" This restless feelingis not the need of change. It is rather the fear of what I love, themistrust of what charms me, the unrest of happiness. What a _bizarre_tendency, and what a strange nature! not to be able to enjoy anythingsimply, naïvely, without scruple, to feel a force upon one impelling oneto leave the table, for fear the meal should come to an end. Contradiction and mystery! not to use, for fear of abusing; to thinkone's self obliged to go, not because one has had enough, but becauseone has stayed awhile. I am indeed always the same; the being whowanders when he need not, the voluntary exile, the eternal traveler, theman incapable of repose, who, driven on by an inward voice, buildsnowhere, buys and labors nowhere, but passes, looks, camps, and goes. And is there not another reason for all this restlessness, in a certainsense of void? of incessant pursuit of something wanting? of longing fora truer peace and a more entire satisfaction? Neighbors, 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 alwayswaiting for the woman and the work which shall be capable of takingentire possession of my soul, and of becoming my end and aim. 

 "Promenant par tout séjour Le deuil que tu cèles, Psyché-papillon, un jour Puisses-tu trouver l'amour Et perdre tes ailes!"

I have not given away my heart: hence this restlessness of spirit. Iwill not let it be taken captive by that which cannot fill and satisfyit; hence this instinct of pitiless detachment from all that charms mewithout permanently binding me; so that it seems as if my love ofmovement, which looks so like inconstancy, was at bottom only aperpetual search, a hope, a desire, and a care, the malady of the ideal. 

. . . Life indeed must always be a compromise between common sense and theideal, the one abating nothing of its demands, the other accommodatingitself to what is practicable and real. But marriage by common sense!arrived at by a bargain! Can it be anything but a profanation? On theother, hand, is that not a vicious ideal which hinders life fromcompleting itself, and destroys the family in germ? Is there not toomuch of pride in my ideal, pride which will not accept the commondestiny?. . . 

Noon. --I have been dreaming--my head in my hand. About what? Abouthappiness. I have as it were, been asleep on the fatherly breast of God. His will be done!

August 3, 1856. --A delightful Sunday afternoon at Pressy. Returned late, under a great sky magnificently starred, with summer lightning playingfrom a point behind the Jura. Drunk with poetry, and overwhelmed bysensation after sensation, I came back slowly, blessing the God of life, and plunged in the joy of the infinite. One thing only I lacked, a soulwith whom to share it all--for emotion and enthusiasm overflowed likewater from a full cup. The Milky Way, the great black poplars, theripple of the waves, the shooting stars, distant songs, the lamp-littown, all spoke to me in the language of poetry. I felt myself almost apoet. The wrinkles of science disappeared under the magic breath ofadmiration; the old elasticity of soul, trustful, free, and living wasmine once more. I was once more young, capable of self-abandonment andof love. All my barrenness had disappeared; the heavenly dew hadfertilized the dead and gnarled stick; it began to be green and floweragain. My God, how wretched should we be without beauty! But with it, everything is born afresh in us; the senses, the heart, imagination, reason, will, come together like the dead bones of the prophet, andbecome one single and self-same energy. What is happiness if it is notthis plentitude of existence, this close union with the universal anddivine life? I have been happy a whole half day, and I have beenbrooding over my joy, steeping myself in it to the very depths ofconsciousness. 

October 22, 1856. --We must learn to look upon life as an apprenticeshipto a progressive renunciation, a perpetual diminution in ourpretensions, our hopes, our powers, and our liberty. The circle growsnarrower and narrower; we began with being eager to learn everything, tosee everything, to tame and conquer everything, and in all directions wereach our limit--_non plus ultra_. Fortune, glory, love, power, health, happiness, long life, all these blessings which have been possessed byother men seem at first promised and accessible to us, and then we haveto put the dream away from us, to withdraw one personal claim afteranother to make ourselves small and humble, to submit to feel ourselveslimited, feeble, dependent, ignorant and poor, and to throw ourselvesupon God for all, recognizing our own worthlessness, and that we have noright to anything. It is in this nothingness that we recover somethingof life--the divine spark is there at the bottom of it. Resignationcomes to us, and, in believing love, we reconquer the true greatness. 

October 27, 1856. --In all the chief matters of life we are alone, andour true history is scarcely ever deciphered by others. The chief partof the drama is a monologue, rather an intimate debate between God, ourconscience, and ourselves. Tears, griefs, depressions, disappointments, irritations, good and evil thoughts, decisions, uncertainties, deliberations, all these belong to our secret, and are almost allincommunicable and intransmissible, even when we try to speak of them, and even when we write them down. What is most precious in us nevershows itself, never finds an issue even in the closest intimacy. Only apart of it reaches our consciousness, it scarcely enters into actionexcept in prayer, and is perhaps only perceived by God, for our pastrapidly becomes strange to us. Our monad may be influenced by othermonads, but none the less does it remain impenetrable to them in itsessence; and we ourselves, when all is said, remain outside our ownmystery. The center of our consciousness is unconscious, as the kernelof the sun is dark. All that we are, desire, do, and know, is more orless superficial, and below the rays and lightnings of our peripherythere remains the darkness of unfathomable substance. 

I was then well-advised when, in my theory of the inner man, I placed atthe foundation of the self, after the seven spheres which the selfcontains had been successively disengaged, a lowest depth of darkness, the abyss of the un-revealed, the virtual pledge of an infinite future, the obscure self, the pure subjectivity which is incapable of realizingitself in mind, conscience, or reason, in the soul, the heart, theimagination, or the life of the senses, and which makes for itselfattributes 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 theopportunity of all victory and all progress. Whether it call itselffatality, death, night, or matter, it is the pedestal of life, of light, of liberty, and the spirit. For it represents _resistance_--that is tosay, the fulcrum of all activity, the occasion for its development andits triumph. 

December 17, 1856. --This evening was the second quartet concert. Itstirred me much more than the first; the music chosen was loftier andstronger. It was the quartet in D minor of Mozart, and the quartet in Cmajor of Beethoven, separated by a Spohr concerto. This last, vivid, andbrilliant 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 ina mediocre personality. With the two others you are at once in contactwith genius; you are admitted to the secrets of two great souls. Mozartstands for inward liberty, Beethoven for the power of enthusiasm. Theone sets us free, the other ravishes us out of ourselves. I do not thinkI ever felt more distinctly than to-day, or with more intensity, thedifference between these two masters. Their two personalities becametransparent 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 aspiration andexecutive capacity, the sovereignty of a grace which is always mistressof itself, marvelous harmony and perfect unity. His quartet describes aday in one of those Attic souls who pre-figure on earth the serenity ofElysium. The first scene is a pleasant conversation, like that ofSocrates on the banks of the Ilissus; its chief mark is an exquisiteurbanity. The second scene is deeply pathetic. A cloud has risen in theblue of this Greek heaven. A storm, such as life inevitably brings withit, even in the case of great souls who love and esteem each other, hascome to trouble the original harmony. What is the cause of it--amisunderstanding, apiece of neglect? Impossible to say, but it breaksout notwithstanding. 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 andgrows graver, but remains affectionate and dignified. Then, the stormhas passed, the sun has come back, the explanation has taken place, peace is re-established. The third scene paints the brightness ofreconciliation. Love, in its restored confidence, and as though in slyself-testing, permits itself even gentle mocking and friendly_badinage_. And the _finale_ brings us back to that tempered gaiety andhappy serenity, that supreme freedom, flower of the inner life, which isthe leading motive of the whole composition. 

In Beethoven's on the other hand, a spirit of tragic irony paints foryou the mad tumult of existence as it dances forever above thethreatening abyss of the infinite. No more unity, no more satisfaction, no more serenity! We are spectators of the eternal duel between thegreat forces, that of the abyss which absorbs all finite things, andthat of life which defends and asserts itself, expands, and enjoys. Thefirst bars break the seals and open the caverns of the great deep. Thestruggle begins. It is long. Life is born, and disports itself gay andcareless as the butterfly which flutters above a precipice. Then itexpands the realm of its conquests, and chants its successes. It foundsa kingdom, it constructs a system of nature. But the typhon rises fromthe 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 powersof chaos. Life triumphs at last, but the victory is not final, andthrough all the intoxication of it there is a certain note of terror andbewilderment. The soul of Beethoven was a tormented soul. The passionand the awe of the infinite seemed to toss it to and fro from heaven tohell, Hence its vastness. Which is the greater, Mozart or Beethoven?Idle question! The one is more perfect, the other more colossal. Thefirst gives you the peace of perfect art, beauty, at first sight. Thesecond gives you sublimity, terror, pity, a beauty of second impression. The one gives that for which the other rouses a desire. Mozart has theclassic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romanticgrandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soulof Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that ofBeethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessedbe they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does usgood. Our love is due to both. 

 * * * * *

To judge is to see clearly, to care for what is just and therefore to beimpartial, more exactly, to be disinterested, more exactly still, to beimpersonal. 

 * * * * *

To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To dowhat is impossible for talent is the mark of genius. 

 * * * * *

Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according toour powers. 

 * * * * *

If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion. 

 * * * * *

Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity onlybegins for man with self-surrender. 

 * * * * *

The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before hedecides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret. 

 * * * * *

Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like theflint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth itsspark. 

February 3, 1857. --The phantasmagoria of the soul cradles and soothes meas though I were an Indian yoghi, and everything, even my own life, becomes to me smoke, shadow, vapor, and illusion. I hold so lightly toall phenomena that they end by passing over me like gleams over alandscape, and are gone without leaving any impression. Thought is akind of opium; it can intoxicate us, while still broad awake; it canmake transparent the mountains and everything that exists. It is by loveonly that one keeps hold upon reality, that one recovers one's properself, that one becomes again will, force, and individuality. Love coulddo everything with me; by myself and for myself I prefer to benothing. . . . 

I have the imagination of regret and not that of hope. Myclear-sightedness is retrospective, and the result with me ofdisinterestedness and prudence is that I attach myself to what I have nochance of obtaining. . . . 

May 27, 1857. (Vandoeuvres. [Footnote: Also a village in theneighborhood of Geneva. ])--We are going down to Geneva to hear the"Tannhäuser" of Richard Wagner performed at the theater by the Germantroup now passing through. Wagner's is a powerful mind endowed withstrong poetical sensitiveness. His work is even more poetical thanmusical. The suppression of the lyrical element, and therefore ofmelody, is with him a systematic _parti pris_. No more duos or trios;monologue and the _aria_ are alike done away with. There remains onlydeclamation, the recitative, and the choruses. In order to avoid theconventional in singing, Wagner falls into another convention--that ofnot singing at all. He subordinates the voice to articulate speech, andfor fear lest the muse should take flight he clips her wings. So thathis works are rather symphonic dramas than operas. The voice is broughtdown to the rank of an instrument, put on a level with the violins, thehautboys, and the drums, and treated instrumentally. Man is deposed fromhis superior position, and the center of gravity of the work passes intothe baton of the conductor. It is music depersonalized, neo-Hegelianmusic--music multiple instead of individual. If this is so, it is indeedthe music of the future, the music of the socialist democracy replacingthe art which is aristocratic, heroic, or subjective. 

The overture pleased me even less than at the first hearing: it is likenature before man appeared. Everything in it is enormous, savage, elementary, like the murmur of forests and the roar of animals. It isforbidding and obscure, because man, that is to say, mind, the key ofthe enigma, personality, the spectator, is wanting to it. 

The idea of the piece is grand. It is nothing less than the struggle ofpassion and pure love, of flesh and spirit, of the animal and the angelin man. The music is always expressive, the choruses very beautiful, theorchestration skillful, but the whole is fatiguing and excessive, toofull, too laborious. When all is said, it lacks gayety, ease, naturalness and vivacity--it has no smile, no wings. Poetically one isfascinated, but one's musical enjoyment is hesitating, often doubtful, and one recalls nothing but the general impression--Wagner's musicrepresents the abdication of the self, and the emancipation of all theforces once under its rule. It is a falling back into Spinozism--thetriumph of fatality. This music has its root and its fulcrum in twotendencies of the epoch, materialism and socialism--each of themignoring the true value of the human personality, and drowning it in thetotality of nature or of society. 

June 17, 1857. (Vandoeuvres). --I have just followed Maine de Biran fromhis twenty-eighth to his forty-eighth year by means of his journal, anda crowd of thoughts have besieged me. Let me disengage those whichconcern myself. In this eternal self-chronicler and observer I seem tosee myself reflected with all my faults, indecision, discouragement, over-dependence on sympathy, difficulty of finishing, with my habit ofwatching myself feel and live, with my growing incapacity for practicalaction, with my aptitude for psychological study. But I have alsodiscovered 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 mydepartments. It is not the whole of my territory, the whole of my innerkingdom. Intellectually, I am more objective and more constructive; myhorizon is vaster; I have seen much more of men, things, countries, peoples and books; I have a greater mass of experiences--in a word, Ifeel that I have more culture, greater wealth, range, and freedom ofmind, in spite of my wants, my limits, and my weaknesses. Why does Mainede Biran make _will_ the whole of man? Perhaps because he had too littlewill. A man esteems most highly what he himself lacks, and exaggerateswhat he longs to possess. Another incapable of thought, and meditation, would have made self-consciousness the supreme thing. Only the totalityof things has an objective value. As soon as one isolates a part fromthe whole, as soon as one chooses, the choice is involuntarily andinstinctively dictated by subjective inclinations which obey one orother of the two opposing laws, the attraction of similars or theaffinity of contraries. 

Five o'clock. --The morning has passed like a dream. I went on with thejournal of Maine de Biran down to the end of 1817. After dinner I passedmy time with the birds in the open air, wandering in the shady walkswhich wind along under Pressy. The sun was brilliant and the air clear. The midday orchestra of nature was at its best. Against the hummingbackground made by a thousand invisible insects there rose the delicatecaprices and improvisations of the nightingale singing from theash-trees, or of the hedge-sparrows and the chaffinches in their nests. The hedges are hung with wild roses, the scent of the acacia stillperfumes the paths; the light down of the poplar seeds floated in theair like a kind of warm, fair-weather snow. I felt myself as gay as abutterfly. 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 itagain, I look at it across interposing memories; the romantic interestof it seems to me to have vanished, but not the poetical, pathetic, ormoral interest. 

June 18th. --I have just been spending three hours in the orchard underthe shade of the hedge, combining the spectacle of a beautiful morningwith reading and taking a turn between each chapter. Now the sky isagain covered with its white veil of cloud, and I have come up withBiran, whose "Pensée" I have just finished, and Corinne, whom I havefollowed with Oswald in their excursions among the monuments of theeternal city. Nothing is so melancholy and wearisome as this journal ofMaine de Biran. This unchanging monotony of perpetual reflection has anenervating and depressing effect upon one. Here, then, is the life of adistinguished man seen in its most intimate aspects! It is one longrepetition, in which the only change is an almost imperceptibledisplacement of center in the writer's manner of viewing himself. Thisthinker takes thirty years to move from the Epicurean quietude to thequietism of Fénélon, and this only speculatively, for his practical liferemains the same, and all his anthropological discovery consists inreturning to the theory of the three lives, lower, human, and higher, which is in Pascal and in Aristotle. And this is what they call aphilosopher in France! Beside the great philosophers, how poor andnarrow seems such an intellectual life! It is the journey of an ant, bounded by the limits of a field; of a mole, who spends his days in theconstruction of a mole-hill. How narrow and stifling the swallow whoflies across the whole Old World, and whose sphere of life embracesAfrica and Europe, would find the circle with which the mole and the antare content! This volume of Biran produces in me a sort of asphyxia; asI assimilate it, it seems to paralyze me; I am chained to it by somespell of secret sympathy. I pity, and I am afraid of my pity, for I feelhow near I am to the same evils and the same faults. . . . 

Ernest Naville's introductory essay is full of interest, written in aserious and noble style; but it is almost as sad as it is ripe andmature. What displeases me in it a little is its exaggeration of themerits of Biran. For the rest, the small critical impatience which thevolume has stirred in me will be gone by to-morrow. Maine de Biran is animportant link in the French literary tradition. It is from him that ourSwiss critics descend, Naville father and son, Secrétan. He is thesource of our best contemporary psychology, for Stapfer, Royer-Collard, and Cousin called him their master, and Ampère, his junior by nineyears, was his friend. 

July 25, 1857. (Vandoeuvres). --At ten o'clock this evening, under astarlit sky, a group of rustics under the windows of the salon employedthemselves in shouting disagreeable songs. Why is it that this tunelessshrieking of false notes and scoffing words delights these people? Whyis it that this ostentatious parade of ugliness, this jarring vulgarityand grimacing is their way of finding expression and expansion in thegreat solitary and tranquil night?

Why? Because of a sad and secret instinct. Because of the need they haveof realizing themselves as individuals, of asserting themselvesexclusively, egotistically, idolatrously--opposing the self in them toeverything else, placing it in harsh contrast with the nature whichenwraps us, with the poetry which raises us above ourselves, with theharmony which binds us to others, with the adoration which carries ustoward God. No, no, no! Myself only, and that is enough! Myself bynegation, by ugliness, by grimace and irony! Myself, in my caprice, inmy independence, in my irresponsible sovereignty; myself, set free bylaughter, free as the demons are, and exulting in my freedom; I, masterof myself, invincible and self-sufficient, living for this one time yetby and for myself! This is what seems to me at the bottom of thismerry-making. One hears in it an echo of Satan, the temptation to makeself the center of all things, to be like an Elohim, the worst and lastrevolt of man. It means also, perhaps, some rapid perception of what isabsolute in personality, some rough exaltation of the subject, theindividual, who thus claims, by abasing them, the rights of subjectiveexistence. If so, it is the caricature of our most precious privilege, the parody of our apotheosis, a vulgarizing of our highest greatness. Shout away, then, drunkards! Your ignoble concert, with all itsrepulsive vulgarity, still reveals to us, without knowing it, somethingof the majesty of life and the sovereign power of the soul. 

September 15, 1857. --I have just finished Sismondi's journal andcorrespondence. Sismondi is essentially the honest man, conscientious, upright, respectable, the friend of the public good and the devotedupholder of a great cause, the amelioration of the common lot of men. Character and heart are the dominant elements in his individuality, andcordiality is the salient feature of his nature. Sismondi's is a mostencouraging example. With average faculties, very little imagination, not much taste, not much talent, without subtlety of feeling, withoutgreat elevation or width or profundity of mind, he yet succeeded inachieving a career which was almost illustrious, and he has left behindhim some sixty volumes, well-known and well spoken of. How was this? Hislove for men on the one side, and his passion for work on the other, arethe two factors in his fame. In political economy, in literary orpolitical history, in personal action, Sismondi showed nogenius--scarcely talent; but in all he did there was solidity, loyalty, good sense and integrity. The poetical, artistic and philosophic senseis deficient in him, but he attracts and interests us by his moralsense. We see in him the sincere writer, a man of excellent heart, agood citizen and warm friend, worthy and honest in the widest sense ofterms, not brilliant, but inspiring trust and confidence by hischaracter, his principles and his virtues. More than this, he is thebest type of good Genevese liberalism, republican but not democratic, Protestant but not Calvinist, human but not socialist, progressive butwithout any sympathy with violence. He was a conservative without eitheregotism or hypocrisy, a patriot without narrowness. In his theories hewas governed by experience and observation, and in his practice bygeneral ideas. A laborious philanthropist, the past and the present wereto him but fields of study, from which useful lessons might be gleaned. Positive and reasonable in temper, his mind was set upon a high averagewell-being for human society, and his efforts were directed towardfounding such a social science as might most readily promote it. 

September 24, 1857. --In the course of much thought yesterday about"Atala" and "René, " Châteaubriand became clear to me. I saw in him agreat artist but not a great man, immense talent but a still vasterpride--a nature at once devoured with ambition and unable to findanything to love or admire in the world except itself--indefatigable inlabor and capable of everything except of true devotion, self-sacrificeand faith. Jealous of all success, he was always on the opposition side, that he might be the better able to disavow all services received, andto hold aloof from any other glory but his own. Legitimist under theempire, a parliamentarian tinder the legitimist _régime_, republicanunder the constitutional monarchy, defending Christianity when Francewas philosophical, and taking a distaste for religion as soon as itbecame once more a serious power, the secret of these endlesscontradictions in him was simply the desire to reign alone like thesun--a devouring thirst for applause, an incurable and insatiablevanity, which, with the true, fierce instinct of tyranny, would endureno brother near the throne. A man of magnificent imagination but of poorcharacter, of indisputable power, but cursed with a cold egotism and anincurable barrenness of feeling, which made it impossible for him totolerate about him anybody but slaves or adorers. A tormented soul andmiserable life, when all is said, under its aureole of glory and itscrown of laurels!

Essentially jealous and choleric, Châteaubriand from the beginning wasinspired by mistrust, by the passion for contradicting, for crushing andconquering. This motive may always be traced in him. Rousseau seems tome his point of departure, the man who suggested to him by contrast andopposition all his replies and attacks, Rousseau is revolutionary:Châteaubriand therefore writes his "Essay on Revolutions. " Rousseau isrepublican and Protestant; Châteaubriand will be royalist and Catholic. Rousseau is _bourgeois_; Chateaubriand will glorify nothing but noblebirth, honor, chivalry and deeds of arms. Rousseau conquered nature forFrench letters, above all the nature of the mountains and of the Swissand Savoy, and lakes. He pleaded for her against civilization. Châteaubriand will take possession of a new and colossal nature, of theocean, of America; but he will make his savages speak the language ofLouis XIV. , he will bow Atala before a Catholic missionary, and sanctifypassions born on the banks of the Mississippi by the solemnities ofCatholic ceremonial. Rousseau was the apologist of reverie;Châteaubriand will build the monument of it in order to break it inRené. Rousseau preaches Deism with all his eloquence in the "VicaireSavoyard;" Châteaubriand surrounds the Roman creed with all the garlandsof his poetry in the "Génie du Christianisme. " Rousseau appeals tonatural law and pleads for the future of nations; Châteaubriand willonly sing the glories of the past, the ashes of history and the nobleruins of empires. Always a rôle to be filled, cleverness to bedisplayed, a _parti-pris_ to be upheld and fame to be won--his theme, one of imagination, his faith one to order, but sincerity, loyalty, candor, seldom or never! Always a real indifference simulating a passionfor truth; always an imperious thirst for glory instead of devotion tothe good; always the ambitious artist, never the citizen, the believer, the man. Châteaubriand posed all his life as the wearied Colossus, smiling pitifully upon a pygmy world, and contemptuously affecting todesire nothing from it, though at the same time wishing it to bebelieved that he could if he pleased possess himself of everything bymere force of genius. He is the type of an untoward race, and the fatherof a disagreeable lineage. 

But to return to the two episodes. "René" seems to me very superior to"Atala. '" Both the stories show a talent of the first rank, but of thetwo the beauty of "Atala" is of the more transitory kind. The attempt torender in the style of Versailles the loves of a Natchez and a Seminole, and to describe the manners of the adorers of the Manitous in the toneof Catholic sentiment, was an attempt too violent to succeed. But thework is a _tour de force_ of style, and it was only by the polishedclassicism of the form, that the romantic matter of the sentiments andthe descriptions could have been imported into the colorless literatureof the empire. "Atala" is already old-fashioned and theatrical in allthe parts which are not descriptive or European--that is to say, throughout all the sentimental savagery. 

"René" is infinitely more durable. Its theme, which is the malady of awhole generation--distaste for life brought about by idle reverie andthe ravages of a vague and unmeasured ambition--is true to reality. Without knowing or wishing it, Châteaubriand has been sincere, for Renéis himself. This little sketch is in every respect a masterpiece. It isnot, like "Atala, " spoilt artistically by intentions alien to thesubject, by being made the means of expression of a particular tendency. Instead of taking a passion for René, indeed, future generations willscorn and wonder at him; instead of a hero they will see in him apathological case; but the work itself, like the Sphinx, will endure. Awork of art will bear all kinds of interpretations; each in turn finds abasis in it, while the work itself, because it represents an idea, andtherefore partakes of the richness and complexity which belong to ideas, suffices for all and survives all. A portrait proves whatever one asksof it. Even in its forms of style, in the disdainful generality of theterms in which the story is told, in the terseness of the sentences, inthe sequence of the images and of the pictures, traced with classicpurity and marvelous vigor, "René" maintains its monumental character. Carved, as it were, in material of the present century, with the toolsof classical art, "René" is the immortal cameo of Châteaubriand. 

We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontentedwith ourselves. The consciousness of wrong-doing makes us irritable, andour heart in its cunning quarrels with what is outside it, in order thatit may deafen the clamor within. 

 * * * * *

The faculty of intellectual metamorphosis is the first and indispensablefaculty of the critic; without it he is not apt at understanding otherminds, and ought, therefore, if he love truth, to hold his peace. Theconscientious critic must first criticise himself; what we do notunderstand we have not the right to judge. 

 * * * * *

June 14, 1858. --Sadness and anxiety seem to be increasing upon me. Likecattle in a burning stable, I cling to what consumes me, to the solitarylife which does me so much harm. I let myself be devoured by inwardsuffering. . . . 

Yesterday, however, I struggled against this fatal tendency. I went outinto the country, and the children's caresses restored to me somethingof serenity and calm. After we had dined out of doors all three sangsome songs and school hymns, which were delightful to listen to. Thespring fairy had been scattering flowers over the fields with lavishhands; it was a little glimpse of paradise. It is true, indeed, that theserpent too was not far off. Yesterday there was a robbery close by thehouse, and death had visited another neighbor. Sin and death lurk aroundevery Eden, and sometimes within it. Hence the tragic beauty, themelancholy poetry of human destiny. Flowers, shade, a fine view, asunset sky, joy, grace, feeling, abundance and serenity, tenderness andsong--here you have the element of beauty: the dangers of the presentand the treacheries of the future, here is the element of pathos. Thefashion of this world passeth away. Unless we have laid hold uponeternity, unless we take the religious view of life, these bright, fleeting days can only be a subject for terror. Happiness should be aprayer--and grief also. Faith in the moral order, in the protectingfatherhood of God, appeared to me in all its serious sweetness. 

 "Pense, aime, agis et souffre en Dieu C'est la grande science. "

July 18, 1858. --To-day I have been deeply moved by the _nostalgia_ ofhappiness and by the appeals of memory. My old self, the dreams whichused to haunt me in Germany, passionate impulses, high aspirations, allrevived in me at once with unexpected force. The dread lest I shouldhave missed my destiny and stifled my true nature, lest I should haveburied myself alive, passed through me like a shudder. Thirst for theunknown, passionate love of life, the yearning for the blue vaults ofthe infinite and the strange worlds of the ineffable, and that sadecstasy which the ideal wakens in its beholders--all these carried meaway in a whirlwind of feeling that I cannot describe. Was it a warning, a punishment, a temptation? Was it a secret protest, or a violent act ofrebellion on the part of a nature which is unsatisfied?--the last agonyof happiness and of a hope that will not die?

What raised all this storm? Nothing but a book--the first number of the"_Revue Germanique_. " The articles of Dollfus, Renan, Littré, Montégut, Taillandier, by recalling to me some old and favorite subjects, made meforget ten wasted years, and carried me back to my university life. Iwas 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 ardor and of faith. 

. . . I have been dreaming alone since ten o'clock at the window, whilethe stars twinkled among the clouds, and the lights of the neighborsdisappeared one by one in the houses round. Dreaming of what? Of themeaning of this tragic comedy which we call life. Alas! alas! I was asmelancholy as the preacher. A hundred years seemed to me a dream, life abreath, and everything a nothing. What tortures of mind and soul, andall that we may die in a few minutes! What should interest us, and why?

 "Le temps n'est rien pour l'âme, enfant, ta vie est pleine, 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 andmore impossible and amazing. At twenty I was the embodiment ofcuriosity, elasticity and spiritual ubiquity; at thirty-seven I have nota will, a desire, or a talent left; the fireworks of my youth have leftnothing but a handful of ashes behind them. 

December 13, 1858. --Consider yourself a refractory pupil for whom youare responsible as mentor and tutor. To sanctify sinful nature, bybringing it gradually under the control of the angel within us, by thehelp of a holy God, is really the whole of Christian pedagogy and ofreligious morals. Our work--my work--consists in taming, subduing, evangelizing and _angelizing_ the evil self; and in restoring harmonywith the good self. Salvation lies in abandoning the evil self inprinciple and in taking refuge with the other, the divine self, inaccepting with courage and prayer the task of living with one's owndemon, and making it into a less and less rebellious instrument of good. The Abel in us must labor for the salvation of the Cain. To undertake itis to be converted, and this conversion must be repeated day by day. Abel only redeems and touches Cain by exercising him constantly in goodworks. 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 andsecret joy, contentment and peace. Sanctification implies perpetualmartyrdom, but it is a martyrdom which glorifies. A crown of thorns isthe sad eternal symbol of the life of the saints. The best measure ofthe profundity of any religious doctrine is given by its conception ofsin and the cure of sin. 

A duty is no sooner divined than from that very moment it becomesbinding upon us. 

 * * * * *

Latent genius is but a presumption. Everything that can be, is bound tocome into being, and what never comes into being is nothing. 

July 14, 1859. --I have just read "Faust" again. Alas, every year I amfascinated afresh by this somber figure, this restless life. It is thetype of suffering toward which I myself gravitate, and I am alwaysfinding in the poem words which strike straight to my heart. Immortal, malign, accursed type! Specter of my own conscience, ghost of my owntorment, image of the ceaseless struggle of the soul which has not yetfound its true aliment, its peace, its faith--art thou not the typicalexample of a life which feeds upon itself, because it has not found itsGod, and which, in its wandering flight across the worlds, carrieswithin it, like a comet, an inextinguishable flame of desire, and anagony of incurable disillusion? I also am reduced to nothingness, and Ishiver on the brink of the great empty abysses of my inner being, stifled by longing for the unknown, consumed with the thirst for theinfinite, prostrate before the ineffable. I also am torn sometimes bythis blind passion for life, these desperate struggles for happiness, though more often I am a prey to complete exhaustion and taciturndespair. What is the reason of it all? Doubt--doubt of one's self, ofthought, of men, and of life--doubt which enervates the will and weakensall our powers, which makes us forget God and neglect prayer andduty--that restless and corrosive doubt which makes existence impossibleand meets all hope with satire. 

July 17, 1859. --Always and everywhere salvation is torture, deliverancemeans death, and peace lies in sacrifice. If we would win our pardon, wemust kiss the fiery crucifix. Life is a series of agonies, a Calvary, which we can only climb on bruised and aching knees. We seekdistractions; we wander away; we deafen and stupefy ourselves that wemay escape the test; we turn away oar eyes from the _via dolorosa_; andyet there is no help for it--we must come back to it in the end. What wehave to recognize is that each of us carries within himself his ownexecutioner--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 thehighest theoretical solution of the inner life. Only in it is there anypeace 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 arethe ideas which remain with one. To live in God and to do his work--thisis religion, salvation, life eternal; this is both the effect and thesign of love and of the Holy Spirit; this is the new man announced byJesus, and the new life into which we enter by the second birth. To beborn again is to renounce the old life, sin, and the natural man, and totake to one's self another principle of life. It is to exist for Godwith another self, another will, another love. 

August 9, 1859. --Nature is forgetful: the world is almost more so. However little the individual may lend himself to it, oblivion sooncovers him like a shroud. This rapid and inexorable expansion of theuniversal life, which covers, overflows, and swallows up all individualbeing, which effaces our existence and annuls all memory of us, fills mewith unbearable melancholy. To be born, to struggle, to disappear--thereis the whole ephemeral drama of human life. Except in a few hearts, andnot even always in one, our memory passes like a ripple on the water, ora breeze in the air. If nothing in us is immortal, what a small thing islife. 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 myconsciousness at the moment when it returns upon itself. I feel myselfthen stripped and empty, like a convalescent who remembers nothing. Mytravels, my reading, my studies, my projects, my hopes, have faded frommy mind. It is a singular state. All my faculties drop away from me likea cloak that one takes off, like the chrysalis case of a larva. I feelmyself returning into a more elementary form. I behold my ownunclothing; I forget, still more than I am forgotten; I pass gently intothe grave while still living, and I feel, as it were, the indescribablepeace of annihilation, and the dim quiet of the Nirvana. I am consciousof the river of time passing before and in me, of the impalpable shadowsof life gliding past me, but nothing breaks the cateleptic tranquillitywhich enwraps me. 

I come to understand the Buddhist trance of the Soufis, the kief of theTurk, the "ecstasy" of the orientals, and yet I am conscious all thetime that the pleasure of it is deadly, that, like the use of opium orof hasheesh, it is a kind of slow suicide, inferior in all respects tothe joys of action, to the sweetness of love, to the beauty ofenthusiasm, to the sacred savor of accomplished duty. November 28, 1859. --This evening I heard the first lecture of Ernest Naville[Footnote: The well-known Genevese preacher and writer, Ernest Naville, the son of a Genevese pastor, was born in 1816, became professor at theAcademy of Geneva in 1844, lost his post after the revolution of 1846, and, except for a short interval in 1860, has since then held noofficial position. His courses of theological lectures, delivered atintervals from 1859 onward, were an extraordinary success. They were atfirst confined to men only, and an audience of two thousand personssometimes assembled to hear them. To literature he is mainly known asthe editor of Maine de Biran's Journal. ] on "The Eternal Life. " It wasadmirably sure in touch, true, clear, and noble throughout. He provedthat, whether we would or no, we were bound to face the question ofanother life. Beauty of character, force of expression, depth ofthought, were all equally visible in this extemporized address, whichwas as closely reasoned as a book, and can scarcely be disentangled fromthe quotations of which it was full. The great room of the Casino wasfull to the doors, and one saw a fairly large number of white heads. 

December 13, 1859. --Fifth lecture on "The Eternal Life" ("The Proof ofthe Gospel by the Supernatural. ") The same talent and great eloquence;but the orator does not understand that the supernatural must either behistorically proved, or, supposing it cannot be proved, that it mustrenounce all pretensions to overstep the domain of faith and to encroachupon that of history and science. He quotes Strauss, Renan, Scherer, buthe touches only the letter of them, not the spirit. Everywhere one seesthe Cartesian dualism and a striking want of the genetic, historical, and critical sense. The idea of a living evolution has not penetratedinto the consciousness of the orator. With every intention of dealingwith things as they are, he remains, in spite of himself, subjective andoratorical. There is the inconvenience of handling a matter polemicallyinstead of in the spirit of the student. Naville's moral sense is toostrong for his discernment and prevents him from seeing what he does notwish to see. In his metaphysic, will is placed above intelligence, andin his personality the character is superior to the understanding, asone might logically expect. And the consequence is, that he may prop upwhat is tottering, but he makes no conquests; he may help to preserveexisting truths and beliefs, but he is destitute of initiative orvivifying power. He is a moralizing but not a suggestive or stimulatinginfluence. A popularizer, apologist and orator of the greatest merit, heis a schoolman at bottom; his arguments are of the same type as those ofthe twelfth century, and he defends Protestantism in the same way inwhich Catholicism has been commonly defended. The best way ofdemonstrating the insufficiency of this point of view is to show byhistory how incompletely it has been superseded. The chimera of a simpleand absolute truth is wholly Catholic and anti-historic. The mind ofNaville is mathematical and his objects moral. His strength lies in_mathematicizing_ morals. As soon as it becomes a question ofdevelopment, metamorphosis, organization--as soon as he is brought intocontact with the mobile world of actual life, especially of thespiritual life, he has no longer anything serviceable to say. Languageis for him a system of fixed signs; a man, a people, a book, are so manygeometrical figures of which we have only to discover the properties. 

December 15th. --Naville's sixth lecture, an admirable one, because itdid nothing more than expound the Christian doctrine of eternal life. Asan extempore performance--marvelously exact, finished, clear and noble, marked by a strong and disciplined eloquence. There was not a singlereservation to make in the name of criticism, history or philosophy. Itwas all beautiful, noble, true and pure. It seems to me that Naville hasimproved in the art of speech during these latter years. He has alwayshad a kind of dignified and didactic beauty, but he has now added to itthe contagious cordiality and warmth of feeling which complete theorator; he moves the whole man, beginning with the intellect butfinishing with the heart. He is now very near to the true virileeloquence, and possesses one species of it indeed very nearly inperfection. He has arrived at the complete command of the resources ofhis own nature, at an adequate and masterly expression of himself. Suchexpression is the joy and glory of the oratorical artist as of everyother. Naville is rapidly becoming a model in the art of premeditatedand self-controlled eloquence. 

There is another kind of eloquence--that which seems inspired, whichfinds, discovers, and illuminates by bounds and flashes, which is bornin the sight of the audience and transports it. Such is not Naville'skind. Is it better worth having? I do not know. 

 * * * * *

Every real need is stilled, and every vice is stimulated bysatisfaction. 

 * * * * *

Obstinacy is will asserting itself without being able to justify itself. It is persistence without a plausible motive. It is the tenacity ofself-love substituted for the tenacity of reason or conscience. 

It is not what he has, nor even what he does, which directly expressesthe worth of a man, but what he is. 

 * * * * *

What comfort, what strength, what economy there is in _order_--materialorder, intellectual order, moral order. To know where one is going andwhat one wishes--this is order; to keep one's word and one'sengagements--again order; to have everything ready under one's hand, tobe able to dispose of all one's forces, and to have all one's means ofwhatever kind under command--still order; to discipline one's habits, one's effort, one's wishes; to organize one's life, to distribute one'stime, to take the measure of one's duties and make one's rightsrespected; to employ one's capital and resources, one's talent and one'schances profitably--all this belongs to and is included in the word_order_. Order means light and peace, inward liberty and free commandover one's self; order is power. Aesthetic and moral beauty consist, thefirst in a true perception of order, and the second in submission to it, and in the realization of it, by, in, and around one's self. Order isman's greatest need and his true well-being. 

April 17, 1860. --The cloud has lifted; I am better. I have been able totake my usual walk on the Treille; all the buds were opening and theyoung shoots were green on all the branches. The rippling of clearwater, the merriment of birds, the young freshness of plants, and thenoisy play of children, produce a strange effect upon an invalid. Orrather it was strange to me to be looking at such things with the eyesof a sick and dying man; it was my first introduction to a new phase ofexperience. There is a deep sadness in it. One feels one's self cut offfrom nature--outside her communion as it were. She is strength and joyand eternal health. "Room for the living, " she cries to us; "do not cometo darken my blue sky with your miseries; each has his turn: begone!"But to strengthen our own courage, we must say to ourselves, No; it isgood for the world to see suffering and weakness; the sight adds zest tothe joy of the happy and the careless, and is rich in warning for allwho think. Life has been lent to us, and we owe it to our travelingcompanions to let them see what use we make of it to the end. We mustshow our brethren both how to live and how to die. These first summonsesof illness have besides a divine value; they give us glimpses behind thescenes of life; they teach us something of its awful reality and itsinevitable end. They teach us sympathy. They warn us to redeem the timewhile it is yet day. They awaken in us gratitude for the blessings whichare 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, atouch of God's fatherly scourge. 

How frail a thing is health, and what a thin envelope protects our lifeagainst being swallowed up from without, or disorganized from within! Abreath, and the boat springs a leak or founders; a nothing, and all isendangered; a passing cloud, and all is darkness! Life is indeed aflower which a morning withers and the beat of a passing wing breaksdown; it is the widow's lamp, which the slightest blast of airextinguishes. In order to realize the poetry which clings to morningroses, one needs to have just escaped from the claws of that vulturewhich we call illness. The foundation and the heightening of all thingsis the graveyard. The only certainty in this world of vain agitationsand endless anxieties, is the certainty of death, and that which is theforetaste and small change of death--pain. 

As long as we turn our eyes away from this implacable reality, thetragedy of life remains hidden from us. As soon as we look at it face toface, the true proportions of everything reappear, and existence becomessolemn again. It is made clear to us that we have been frivolous andpetulant, intractable and forgetful, and that we have been wrong. 

We must die and give an account of our life: here in all its simplicityis the teaching 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 departure:" such is the cry of conscience and ofreason. 

May 3, 1860. --Edgar Quinet has attempted everything: he has aimed atnothing but the greatest things; he is rich in ideas, a master ofsplendid imagery, serious, enthusiastic, courageous, a noble writer. Howis it, then, that he has not more reputation? Because he is too pure;because he is too uniformly ecstatic, fantastic, inspired--a mood whichsoon palls on Frenchmen. Because he is too single-minded, candid, theoretical, and speculative, too ready to believe in the power of wordsand of ideas, too expansive and confiding; while at the same time he islacking in the qualities which amuse clever people--in sarcasm, irony, cunning and _finesse_. He is an idealist reveling in color: a Platonistbrandishing the _thyrsus_ of the Menads. At bottom his is a mind of noparticular country. It is in vain that he satirizes Germany and abusesEngland; he does not make himself any more of a Frenchman by doing so. It is a northern intellect wedded to a southern imagination, but themarriage has not been a happy one. He has the disease of chronicmagniloquence, of inveterate sublimity; abstractions for him becomepersonified and colossal beings, which act or speak in colossal fashion;he is intoxicated with the infinite. But one feels all the time that hiscreations are only individual monologues; he cannot escape from thebounds of a subjective lyrism. Ideas, passions, anger, hopes, complaints--he himself is present in them all. We never have the delightof escaping from his magic circle, of seeing truth as it is, of enteringinto relation with the phenomena and the beings of whom he speaks, withthe reality of things. This imprisonment of the author within hispersonality looks like conceit. But on the contrary, it is because theheart is generous that the mind is egotistical. It is because Quinetthinks himself so much of a Frenchman that he is it so little. Theseironical compensations of destiny are very familiar to me: I have oftenobserved them. Man is nothing but contradiction: the less he knows itthe more dupe he is. In consequence of his small capacity for seeingthings as they are, Quinet has neither much accuracy nor much balance ofmind. He recalls Victor Hugo, with much less artistic power but morehistorical sense. His principal gift is a great command of imagery andsymbolism. He seems to me a Görres [Footnote: Joseph Goerres, a Germanmystic and disciple of Schelling. He published, among other works, "Mythengeschichte der Asiatischen Welt, " and "Christliche Mystik. "]transplanted to Franche Comté, a sort of supernumerary prophet, withwhom his nation hardly knows what to do, seeing that she loves neitherenigmas nor ecstasy nor inflation of language, and that the intoxicationof 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 ofnationalities. He was born, to understand these souls, at once more vastand 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. Thetranslation is not bad, I think. But what a difference between the twolanguages in the matter of precision! It is like the difference betweenstump and graving-tool--the one showing the effort, the other noting theresult of the act; the one making you feel all that is merely dreamed orvague, formless or vacant, the other determining, fixing, giving shapeeven to the indefinite; the one representing the cause, the force, thelimbo whence things issue, the other the things themselves. German hasthe obscure depth of the infinite, French the clear brightness of thefinite. 

May 5, 1860. --To grow old is more difficult than to die, because torenounce a good once and for all, costs less than to renew the sacrificeday by day and in detail. To bear with one's own decay, to accept one'sown 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 longsadness in declining strength. But look closer: so studied, a resignedand religious old age will often move us more than the heroic ardor ofyoung years. The maturity of the soul is worth more than the firstbrilliance of its faculties, or the plentitude of its strength, and theeternal in us can but profit from all the ravages made by time. There iscomfort in this thought. 

May 22, 1860. --There is in me a secret incapacity for expressing my truefeeling, for saying what pleases others, for bearing witness to thepresent--a reserve which I have often noticed in myself with vexation. My heart never dares to speak seriously, either because it is ashamed ofbeing thought to flatter, or afraid lest it should not find exactly theright expression. I am always trifling with the present moment. Feelingin me is retrospective. My refractory nature is slow to recognize thesolemnity of the hour in which I actually stand. An ironical instinct, born of timidity, makes me pass lightly over what I have on pretence ofwaiting for some other thing at some other time. Fear of being carriedaway, and distrust of myself pursue me even in moments of emotion; by asort of invincible pride, I can never persuade myself to say to anyparticular instant: "Stay! decide for me; be a supreme moment! stand outfrom the monotonous depths of eternity and mark a unique experience inmy life!" I trifle, even with happiness, out of distrust of the future. 

May 27, 1860. (Sunday). --I heard this morning a sermon on the HolySpirit--good but insufficient. Why was I not edified? Because there wasno unction. Why was there no unction? Because Christianity from thisrationalistic point of view is a Christianity of _dignity_, not ofhumility. Penitence, the struggles of weakness, austerity, find no placein it. The law is effaced, holiness and mysticism evaporate; thespecifically Christian accent is wanting. My impression is always thesame--faith is made a dull poor thing by these attempts to reduce it tosimple moral psychology. I am oppressed by a feeling ofinappropriateness and _malaise_ at the sight of philosophy in thepulpit. "They have taken away my Saviour, and I know not where they havelaid him;" so the simple folk have a right to say, and I repeat it withthem. Thus, while some shock me by their sacerdotal dogmatism, othersrepel me by their rationalizing laicism. It seems to me that goodpreaching ought to combine, as Schleiermacher did, perfect moralhumility with energetic independence of thought, a profound sense of sinwith respect for criticism and a passion for truth. 

 * * * * *

The free being who abandons the conduct of himself, yields himself toSatan; in the moral world there is no ground without a master, and thewaste lands belong to the Evil One. 

The poetry of childhood consists in simulating and forestalling thefuture, just as the poetry of mature life consists often in goingbackward to some golden age. Poetry is always in the distance. The wholeart of moral government lies in gaining a directing and shaping holdover the poetical ideals of an age. 

January 9, 1861. --I have just come from the inaugural lecture of VictorCherbuliez in a state of bewildered admiration. As a lecture it wasexquisite: if it was a recitation of prepared matter, it was admirable;if an extempore performance, it was amazing. In the face of superiorityand perfection, says Schiller, we have but one resource--to love them, which is what I have done. I had the pleasure, mingled with a littlesurprise, of feeling in myself no sort of jealousy toward this youngconqueror. 

March 15th. --This last lecture in Victor Cherbuliez's course on"Chivalry, " which is just over, showed the same magical power over hissubject as that with which he began the series two months ago. It was atriumph and a harvest of laurels. Cervantes, Ignatius Loyola, and theheritage of chivalry--that is to say, individualism, honor, the poetryof the present and the poetry of contrasts, modern liberty andprogress--have been the subjects of this lecture. 

The general impression left upon me all along has been one of admirationfor the union in him of extraordinary skill in execution with admirablecultivation of mind. With what freedom of spirit he uses and wields hisvast erudition, and what capacity for close attention he must have to beable to carry the weight of a whole improvised speech with the same easeas though it were a single sentence! I do not know if I am partial, butI find no occasion for anything but praise in this young wizard and hislectures. The fact is, that in my opinion we have now one more firstrate mind, one more master of language among us. This course, with the"Causeries Athéniennes, " seems to me to establish Victor Cherbuliez'sposition at Geneva. 

March 17, 1861. --This afternoon a homicidal languor seized hold uponme--disgust, weariness of life, mortal sadness. I wandered out into thechurchyard, hoping to find quiet and peace there, and so to reconcilemyself with duty. Vain dream! The place of rest itself had becomeinhospitable. Workmen were stripping and carrying away the turf, thetrees were dry, the wind cold, the sky gray--something arid, irreverent, and prosaic dishonored the resting-place of the dead. I wasstruck with something wanting in our national feeling--respect for thedead, the poetry of the tomb, the piety of memory. Our churches are toolittle open; our churchyards too much. The result in both cases is thesame. The tortured and trembling heart which seeks, outside the scene ofits daily miseries, to find some place where it may pray in peace, orpour out its grief before God, or meditate in the presence of eternalthings, with us has nowhere to go. Our church ignores these wants of thesoul instead of divining and meeting them. She shows very littlecompassionate care for her children, very little wise consideration forthe more delicate griefs, and no intuition of the deeper mysteries oftenderness, no religious suavity. Under a pretext of spirituality we arealways checking legitimate aspirations. We have lost the mystical 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 inreligion, and we ought perhaps to make more room for them than we do. 

April 28, 1861. --In the same way as a dream transforms according to itsnature, the incidents of sleep, so the soul converts into psychicalphenomena the ill-defined impressions of the organism. An uncomfortableattitude becomes nightmare; an atmosphere charged with storm becomesmoral torment. Not mechanically and by direct causality; but imaginationand conscience engender, according to their own nature, analogouseffects; they translate into their own language, and cast into their ownmold, whatever reaches them from outside. Thus dreams may be helpful tomedicine and to divination, and states of weather may stir up and setfree within the soul vague and hidden evils. The suggestions andsolicitations which act upon life come from outside, but life producesnothing but itself after all. Originality consists in rapid and clearreaction against these outside influences, in giving to them ourindividual stamp. To think is to withdraw, as it were, into one'simpression--to make it clear to one's self, and then to put it forth inthe shape of a personal judgment. In this also consistsself-deliverance, self-enfranchisement, self-conquest. All that comesfrom outside is a question to which we owe an answer--a pressure to bemet by counter-pressure, if we are to remain free and living agents. Thedevelopment of our unconscious nature follows the astronomical laws ofPtolemy; everything in it is change--cycle, epi-cycle, andmetamorphosis. 

Every man then possesses in himself the analogies and rudiments of allthings, of all beings, and of all forms of life. He who knows how todivine the small beginnings, the germs and symptoms of things, canretrace in himself the universal mechanism, and divine by intuition theseries which he himself will not finish, such as vegetable and animalexistences, human passions and crises, the diseases of the soul andthose of the body. The mind which is subtle and powerful may penetrateall these potentialities, and make every point flash out the world whichit contains. This is to be conscious of and to possess the general life, this is to enter into the divine sanctuary of contemplation. 

September 12, 1861. --In me an intellect which would fain forget itselfin things, is contradicted by a heart which yearns to live in humanbeings. The uniting link of the two contradictions is the tendencytoward self-abandonment, toward ceasing to will and exist for one'sself, toward laying down one's own personality, and losing--dissolving--one's self in love and contemplation. What I lackabove all things is character, will, individuality. But, as alwayshappens, the appearance is exactly the contrary of the reality, and myoutward life the reverse of my true and deepest aspiration. I whosewhole being--heart and intellect--thirsts to absorb itself in reality, in its neighbor man, in nature and in God, I, whom solitude devours anddestroys, I shut myself up in solitude and seem to delight only inmyself and to be sufficient for myself. Pride and delicacy of soul, timidity of heart, have made me thus do violence to all my instincts andinvert the natural order of my life. It is not astonishing that I shouldbe unintelligible to others. In fact I have always avoided whatattracted me, and turned my back upon the point where secretly I desiredto be. 

 "Deux instincts sont en moi: vertige et déraison; J'ai l'effroi du bonheur et la soif du poison. "

It is the Nemesis which dogs the steps of life, the secret instinct andpower of death in us, which labors continually for the destruction ofall that seeks to be, to take form, to exist; it is the passion fordestruction, the tendency toward suicide, identifying itself with theinstinct of self-preservation. This antipathy toward all that does onegood, all that nourishes and heals, is it not a mere variation of theantipathy to moral light and regenerative truth? Does not sin alsocreate 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 consequence of it; the principle of deathin me and the influence of the Prince of Darkness have waxed strongertogether. My will in abdicating has yielded up the scepter to instinct;and as the corruption of the best results in what is worst, love of theideal, tenderness, unworldliness, have led me to a state in which Ishrink from hope and crave for annihilation. Action is my cross. 

October 11, 1861. (_Heidelberg_). --After eleven days journey, here I amunder the roof of my friends, in their hospitable house on the banks ofthe Neckar, with its garden climbing up the side of the Heiligenberg. . . . Blazing sun; my room is flooded with light and warmth. Sitting oppositethe Geisberg, I write to the murmur of the Neckar, which rolls its greenwaves, flecked with silver, exactly beneath the balcony on which my roomopens. A great barge coming from Heilbron passes silently under my eyes, while the wheels of a cart which I cannot see are dimly heard on theroad which skirts the river. Distant voices of children, of cocks, ofchirping sparrows, the clock of the Church of the Holy Spirit, whichchimes the hour, serve to gauge, without troubling, the generaltranquility of the scene. One feels the hours gently slipping by, andtime, instead of flying, seems to hover. A peace beyond words stealsinto my heart, an impression of morning grace, of fresh country poetrywhich brings back the sense of youth, and has the true German savor. . . . Two decked barges carrying red flags, each with a train of flat boatsfilled with coal, are going up the river and making their way under thearch of the great stone bridge. I stand at the window and see a wholeperspective of boats sailing in both directions; the Neckar is asanimated as the street of some great capital; and already on the slopeof the wooded mountain, streaked by the smoke-wreaths of the town, thecastle throws its shadow like a vast drapery, and traces the outlines ofits battlements and turrets. Higher up, in front of me, rises the darkprofile of the Molkenkur; higher still, in relief against the dazzlingeast, I can distinguish the misty forms of the two towers of theKaiserstuhl and the Trutzheinrich. 

But enough of landscape. My host, Dr. George Weber, tells me that hismanual of history is translated into Polish, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, and French, and that of his great "Universal History"--three volumes arealready published. What astonishing power of work, what prodigioustenacity, what solidity! _O deutscher Fleiss_!

November 25, 1861. --To understand a drama requires the same mentaloperation as to understand an existence, a biography, a man. It is aputting back of the bird into the egg, of the plant into its seed, areconstitution of the whole genesis of the being in question. Art issimply the bringing into relief of the obscure thought of nature; asimplification of the lines, a falling into place of groups otherwiseinvisible. The fire of inspiration brings out, as it were, designstraced beforehand in sympathetic ink. The mysterious grows clear, theconfused plain; what is complicated becomes simple--what is accidental, necessary. 

In short, art reveals nature by interpreting its intentions andformulating its desires. Every ideal is the key of a long enigma. Thegreat artist is the simplifier. 

Every man is a tamer of wild beasts, and these wild beasts are hispassions. To draw their teeth and claws, to muzzle and tame them, toturn them into servants and domestic animals, fuming, perhaps, butsubmissive--in this consists personal education. 

February 3, 1862. --Self-criticism is the corrosive of all oratorical orliterary spontaneity. The thirst to know turned upon the self ispunished, like the curiosity of Psyche, by the flight of the thingdesired. Force should remain a mystery to itself; as soon as it tries topenetrate its own secret it vanishes away. The hen with the golden eggsbecomes unfruitful as soon as she tries to find out why her eggs aregolden. The consciousness of consciousness is the term and end ofanalysis. True, but analysis pushed to extremity devours itself, likethe Egyptian serpent. We must give it some external matter to crush anddissolve if we wish to prevent its destruction by its action uponitself. "We are, and ought to be, obscure to ourselves, " said Goethe, "turned outward, and working upon the world which surrounds us. " Outwardradiation constitutes health; a too continuous concentration upon whatis within brings us back to vacuity and blank. It is better that lifeshould dilate and extend itself in ever-widening circles, than that itshould be perpetually diminished and compressed by solitary contraction. Warmth tends to make a globe out of an atom; cold, to reduce a globe tothe dimensions of an atom. Analysis has been to me self-annulling, self-destroying. 

April 23, 1862. (_Mornex sur Salève_). --I was awakened by the twitteringof 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 eastwas 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, coverts de leurs fleurs étoiléens, Neige odorante du printemps. "

The view was exquisite, and nature, in full festival, spread freshnessand joy around her. I breakfasted, read the paper, and here I am. Theladies of the _pension_ are still under the horizon. I pity them for theloss of two or three delightful hours. 

Eleven o'clock. --Preludes, scales, piano-exercises going on under myfeet. In the garden children's voices. I have just finished Rosenkrantzon "Hegel's Logic, " and have run through a few articles in theReviews. . . . The limitation of the French mind consists in theinsufficiency of its spiritual alphabet, which does not allow it totranslate the Greek, German, or Spanish mind without changing theaccent. The hospitality of French manners is not completed by a realhospitality of thought. . . . My nature is just the opposite. I amindividual in the presence of men, objective in the presence of things. I attach myself to the object, and absorb myself in it; I detach myselffrom subjects [_i. E. _. Persons], and hold myself on my guard againstthem. I feel myself different from the mass of men, and akin to thegreat whole of nature. My way of asserting myself is in cherishing thissense of sympathetic unity with life, which I yearn to understand, andin repudiating the tyranny of commonplace. All that is imitative andartificial inspires me with a secret repulsion, while the smallest trueand spontaneous existence (plant, animal, child) draws and attracts me. I feel myself in community of spirit with the Goethes, the Hegels, theSchleiermachers, the Leibnitzes, opposed as they are among themselves;while the French mathematicians, philosophers, or rhetoricians, in spiteof their high qualities, leave me cold, because there is in them nosense of the whole, the sum of things [Footnote: The following passagefrom Sainte-Beuve may be taken as a kind of answer by anticipation tothis accusation, which Amiel brings more than once in the course of theJournal:

"Toute nation livrée à elle-même et à son propre génie se fait unecritique littéraire qui y est conforme. La France en son beau temps a eula sienne, qui ne ressemble ni à celle de l'Allemagne ni à celle de sesautres voisins--un peu plus superficielle, dira-t-on--je ne le croispas: mais plus vive, moins chargée d'erudition, moins théorique etsystématique, plus confiante au sentiment immédiat du goût. _Un peu dechaque chose et rien de l'ensemble, à la Française_: telle était ladevise de Montaigne et telle est aussi la devise de la critiquefrançaise. Nous ne sommes pas _synthétiques_, comme diraient lesAllemands; le mot même n'est pas française. L'imagination de détail noussuffit. Montaigne, La Fontaine Madame de Sévigné, sont volontiers noslivres de chevet. "

The French critic then goes on to give a rapid sketch of the authors andthe books, "qui ont peu a peu formé comme notre rhétorique. " Frenchcriticism of the old characteristic kind rests ultimately upon theminute and delicate knowledge of a few Greek and Latin classics. Arnauld, Boileau, Fénélon, Rollin, Racine _fils_, Voltaire, La Harpe, Marmontel, Delille, Fontanes, and Châteaubriand in one aspect, are thetypical names of this tradition, the creators and maintainers of thiscommon literary _fonds_, this "sorte de circulation courante à l'usagedes gens instruits. J'avoue ma faiblesse: nous sommes devenus bien plusforts dans la dissertation érudite, mais j'aurais un éternel regret pourcette moyenne et plus libre habitude littéraire qui laissait àl'imagination tout son espace et à l'esprit tout son jeu; qui formaitune atmosphère saine et facile où le talent respirait et se mouvait àson gré: cette atmosphère-là, je ne la trouve plus, et je laregrette. "--(_Châteaubriand et son Groupe Littéraire_, vol. I. P. 311. )

The following _pensée_ of La Bruyère applies to the second half ofAmiel's criticism of the French mind: "If you wish to travel in theInferno or the Paradiso you must take other guides, " etc. 

"Un homme né Chrétien et François se trouve contraint dans la satyre;les grands sujets lui sont défendus, il les entame quelquefois, et sedétourne ensuite sur de petites choses qu'il relève par la beauté de songénie et de son style. "--_Les Caractères_, etc. , "_Des Ouvragesdel'Esprit_. "]--because they have no _grasp_ of reality in itsfullness, and therefore either cramp and limit me or awaken my distrust. The French lack that intuitive faculty to which the living unity ofthings is revealed, they have very little sense of what is sacred, verylittle penetration into the mysteries of being. What they excel in isthe construction of special sciences; the art of writing a book, style, courtesy, grace, literary models, perfection and urbanity; the spirit oforder, the art of teaching, discipline, elegance, truth of detail, powerof arrangement; the desire and the gift for proselytism, the vigornecessary for practical conclusions. But if you wish to travel in the"Inferno" or the "Paradiso" you must take other guides. Their home is onthe earth, in the region of the finite, the changing, the historical, and the diverse. Their logic never goes beyond the category of mechanismnor their metaphysic beyond dualism. When they undertake anything elsethey are doing violence to themselves. 

April 24th. (_Noon_). --All around me profound peace, the silence of themountains in spite of a full house and a neighboring village. No soundis to be heard but the murmur of the flies. There is something verystriking in this calm. The middle of the day is like the middle of thenight. Life seems suspended just when it is most intense. These are themoments in which one hears the infinite and perceives the ineffable. Victor Hugo, in his "Contemplations, " has been carrying me from world toworld, and since then his contradictions have reminded me of theconvinced Christian with whom I was talking yesterday in a house nearby. . . . The same sunlight floods both the book and nature, the doubtingpoet and the believing preacher, as well as the mobile dreamer, who, inthe midst of all these various existences, allows himself to be swayedby every passing breath, and delights, stretched along the car of hisballoon, in floating aimlessly through all the sounds and shallows ofthe ether, and in realizing within himself all the harmonies anddissonances of the soul, of feeling, and of thought. Idleness andcontemplation! Slumber of the will, lapses of the vital force, indolenceof the whole being--how well I know you! To love, to dream, to feel, tolearn, to understand--all these are possible to me if only I may berelieved from willing. It is my tendency, my instinct, my fault, my sin. I have a sort of primitive horror of ambition, of struggle, of hatred, of all which dissipates the soul and makes it dependent upon externalthings and aims. The joy of becoming once more conscious of myself, oflistening to the passage of time and the flow of the universal life, issometimes enough to make me forget every desire, and to quench in meboth the wish to produce and the power to execute. IntellectualEpicureanism is always threatening to overpower me. I can only combat itby 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 l'âme et le front, Ceux qui d'un haut destin gravissent l'âpre cime, Ceux qui marchent pensifs, épris d'un but sublime, Ayant devant les yeux sans cesse, nuit et jour, Ou quelque saint labeur ou quelque grand amour!"

[Footnote: Victor Hugo, "Les Chatiments. "]

_Five o'clock. _--In the afternoon our little society met in general talkupon the terrace. Some amount of familiarity and friendliness begins toshow itself in our relations to each other. I read over again withemotion some passages of "Jocelyn. " How admirable it is!

 "Il se fit de sa vie une plus mâle idée: Sa douleur d'un seul trait ne l'avait pas vidée; Mais, adorant de Dieu le sévère dessein, Il sut la porter pleine et pure dans son sein, Et ne se hâtant pas de la répandre toute, Sa résignation l'épancha goutte à goutte, Selon la circonstance et le besoin d'autrui, Pour tout vivifier sur terre autour de lui. "

[Footnote: Epilogue of "Jocelyn. "]

The true poetry is that which raises you, as this does, toward heaven, and fills you with divine emotion; which sings of love and death, ofhope and sacrifice, and awakens the sense of the infinite. "Jocelyn"always stirs in me impulses of tenderness which it would be hateful tome to see profaned by satire. As a tragedy of feeling, it has noparallel in French, for purity, except "Paul et Virginie, " and I thinkthat I prefer "Jocelyn. " To be just, one ought to read them side byside. 

_Six o'clock. _--One more day is drawing to its close. With the exceptionof Mont Blanc, all the mountains have already lost their color. Theevening chill succeeds the heat of the afternoon. The sense of theimplacable flight of things, of the resistless 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 whatdays, after all, would we keep and hold? Not only the happy days, butthe lost days! The first have left at least a memory behind them, theothers nothing but a regret which is almost a remorse. . . . 

_Eleven o'clock. _--A gust of wind. A few clouds in the sky. Thenightingale is silent. On the other hand, the cricket and the river arestill singing. 

August 9, 1862. --Life, which seeks its own continuance, tends to repairitself without our help. It mends its spider's webs when they have beentorn; it re-establishes in us the conditions of health, and itself healsthe injuries inflicted upon it; it binds the bandage again upon oureyes, brings back hope into our hearts, breathes health once more intoour organs, and regilds the dream of our imagination. But for this, experience would have hopelessly withered and faded us long before thetime, and the youth would be older than the centenarian. The wise partof us, then, is that which is unconscious of itself; and what is mostreasonable in man are those elements in him which do not reason. Instinct, nature, a divine, an impersonal activity, heal in us thewounds made by our own follies; the invisible _genius_ of our life isnever tired of providing material for the prodigalities of the self. Theessential, maternal basis of our conscious life, is therefore thatunconscious life which we perceive no more than the outer hemisphere ofthe moon perceives the earth, while all the time indissolubly andeternally bound to it. It is our [Greek: antichoon], to speak withPythagoras. 

November 7, 1862. --How malign, infectious, and unwholesome is theeternal smile of that indifferent criticism, that attitude of ironicalcontemplation, which corrodes and demolishes everything, that mockingpitiless temper, which holds itself aloof from every personal duty andevery vulnerable affection, and cares only to understand withoutcommitting itself to action! Criticism become a habit, a fashion, and asystem, means the destruction of moral energy, of faith, and of allspiritual force. One of my tendencies leads me in this direction, but Irecoil before its results when I come across more emphatic types of itthan myself. And at least I cannot reproach myself with having everattempted to destroy the moral force of others; my reverence for lifeforbade it, and my self-distrust has taken from me even the temptationto it. 

This kind of temper is very dangerous among us, for it flatters all theworst instincts of men--indiscipline, irreverence, selfishindividualism--and it ends in social atomism. Minds inclined to merenegation are only harmless in great political organisms, which gowithout them and in spite of them. The multiplication of them amongourselves will bring about the ruin of our little countries, for smallstates only live by faith and will. Woe to the society where negationrules, for life is an affirmation; and a society, a country, a nation, is a living whole capable of death. No nationality is possible withoutprejudices, for public spirit and national tradition are but webs wovenout of innumerable beliefs which have been acquired, admitted, andcontinued without formal proof and without discussion. To act, we mustbelieve; to believe, we must make up our minds, affirm, decide, and inreality prejudge the question. He who will only act upon a fullscientific certitude is unfit for practical life. But we are made foraction, and we cannot escape from duty. Let us not, then, condemnprejudice so long as we have nothing but doubt to put in its place, orlaugh 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 whichseparates them. This element may be religion, country, language, education. But all these being supposed common, there still remainssomething which serves as a line of demarcation--namely, the ideal. Tohave an ideal or to have none, to have this ideal or that--this is whatdigs gulfs between men, even between those who live in the same familycircle, under the same roof or in the same room. You must love with thesame love, think with the same thought as some one else, if you are toescape solitude. 

Mutual respect implies discretion and reserve even in love itself; itmeans preserving as much liberty as possible to those whose life weshare. We must distrust our instinct of intervention, for the desire tomake one's own will prevail is often disguised under the mask ofsolicitude. 

How many times we become hypocrites simply by remaining the sameoutwardly and toward others, when we know that inwardly and to ourselveswe are different. It is not hypocrisy in the strict sense, for we borrowno other personality than our own; still, it is a kind of deception. Thedeception humiliates us, and the humiliation is a chastisement which themask inflicts upon the face, which our past inflicts upon our present. Such humiliation is good for us; for it produces shame, and shame givesbirth to repentance. Thus in an upright soul good springs out of evil, and it falls only to rise again. 

 * * * * *

January 8, 1863. --This evening I read through the "Cid" and "Rodogune. "My impression is still a mixed and confused one. There is muchdisenchantment in my admiration, and a good deal of reserve in myenthusiasm. What displeases me in this dramatic art, is the mechanicalabstraction of the characters, and the scolding, shrewish tone of theinterlocutors. I had a vague impression of listening to giganticmarionettes, perorating through a trumpet, with the emphasis ofSpaniards. There is power in it, but we have before us heroic idolsrather than human beings. The element of artificiality, of strainedpomposity and affectation, which is the plague of classical tragedy, iseverywhere apparent, and one hears, as it were, the cords and pulleys ofthese majestic _colossi_ creaking and groaning. I much prefer Racine andShakespeare; the one from the point of view of aesthetic sensation, theother from that of psychological sensation. The southern theater cannever free itself from masks. Comic masks are bearable, but in the caseof tragic heroes, the abstract type, the mask, make one impatient. I canlaugh with personages of tin and pasteboard: I can only weep with theliving, or what resembles them. Abstraction turns easily to caricature;it is apt to engender mere shadows on the wall, mere ghosts and puppets. It is psychology of the first degree--elementary psychology--just as thecolored pictures of Germany are elementary painting. And yet with allthis, you have a double-distilled and often sophistical refinement: justas savages are by no means simple. The fine side of it all is the manlyvigor, the bold frankness of ideas, words, and sentiments. Why is itthat we find so large an element of factitious grandeur, mingled withtrue grandeur, in this drama of 1640, from which the whole dramaticdevelopment of monarchical France was to spring? Genius is there, but itis hemmed round by a conventional civilization, and, strive as he may, no man wears a wig with impunity. 

January 13, 1863. --To-day it has been the turn of "Polyeucte" and "LaMorte de Pompée. " Whatever one's objections may be, there is somethinggrandiose in the style of Corneille which reconciles you at last even tohis stiff, emphatic manner, and his over-ingenious rhetoric. But it isthe dramatic _genre_ which is false. His heroes are rôles rather thanmen. They pose as magnanimity, virtue, glory, instead of realizing thembefore us. They are always _en scène_, studied by others, or bythemselves. With them glory--that is to say, the life of ceremony and ofaffairs, and the opinion of the public--replaces nature--becomes nature. They never speak except _ore rotundo_, in _cothurnus_, or sometimes onstilts. And what consummate advocates they all are! The French drama isan oratorical tournament, a long suit between opposing parties, on a daywhich is to end with the death of somebody, and where all the personagesrepresented are in haste to speak before the hour of silence strikes. Elsewhere, speech serves to make action intelligible; in French tragedyaction is but a decent motive for speech. It is the procedure calculatedto extract the finest possible speeches from the persons who are engagedin the action, and who represent different perceptions of it atdifferent moments and from different points of view. Love and nature, duty and desire, and a dozen other moral antitheses, are the limbs movedby the wire of the dramatist, who makes them fall into all the tragicattitudes. What is really curious and amusing is that the people of allothers the most vivacious, gay, and intelligent, should have alwaysunderstood the grand style in this pompous, pedantic fashion. But it wasinevitable. 

April 8, 1863. --I have been turning over the 3, 500 pages of "LesMisérables, " trying to understand the guiding idea of this vastcomposition. The fundamental idea of "Les Misérables" seems to be this. Society engenders certain frightful evils--prostitution, vagabondage, rogues, thieves, convicts, war, revolutionary clubs and barricades. Sheought to impress this fact on her mind, and not treat all those who comein contact with her law as mere monsters. The task before us is tohumanize law and opinion, to raise the fallen as well as the vanquished, to create a social redemption. How is this to be done? By enlighteningvice and lawlessness, and so diminishing the sum of them, and bybringing to bear upon the guilty the healing influence of pardon. Atbottom is it not a Christianization of society, this extension ofcharity from the sinner to the condemned criminal, this application toour present life of what the church applies more readily to the other?Struggle to restore a human soul to order and to righteousness bypatience and by love, instead of crushing it by your inflexiblevindictiveness, your savage justice! Such is the cry of the book. It isgreat and noble, but it is a little optimistic and Rousseau-like. According to it the individual is always innocent and society alwaysresponsible, and the ideal before us for the twentieth century is a sortof democratic age of gold, a universal republic from which war, capitalpunishment, and pauperism will have disappeared. It is the religion andthe city of progress; in a word, the Utopia of the eighteenth centuryrevived on a great scale. There is a great deal of generosity in it, mixed with not a little fanciful extravagance. The fancifulness consistschiefly in a superficial notion of evil. The author ignores or pretendsto 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 lawis a cruel hypocrisy, in so far as it arrogates to itself the right ofdividing society according to its own standard into elect andreprobates, and thus confounds the relative with the absolute. Theleading passage is that in which Javert, thrown off the rails, upsetsthe whole moral system of the strict Javert, half spy, half priest--ofthe irreproachable police-officer. In this chapter the writer shows ussocial charity illuminating and transforming a harsh and unrighteousjustice. Suppression of the social hell, that is to say, of allirreparable stains, of all social outlawries for which there is neitherend nor hope--it is an essentially religious idea. 

The erudition, the talent, the brilliancy of execution, shown in thebook are astonishing, bewildering almost. Its faults are to be found inthe 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 ofessential truth. Effect is the misfortune of Victor Hugo, because hemakes it the center of his aesthetic system; and hence exaggeration, monotony of emphasis, theatricality of manner, a tendency to force andover-drive. A powerful artist, but one with whom you never forget theartist; and a dangerous model, for the master himself is already grazingthe rock of burlesque, and passes from the sublime to the repulsive, from lack of power to produce one harmonious impression of beauty. It isnatural enough that he should detest Racine. 

But what astonishing philological and literary power has Victor Hugo! Heis master of all the dialects contained in our language, dialects of thecourts of law, of the stock-exchange, of war, and of the sea, ofphilosophy and the convict-gang, the dialects of trade and ofarchaeology, of the antiquarian and the scavenger. All the bric-à-bracof history and of manners, so to speak, all the curiosities of soil, andsubsoil, are known and familiar to him. He seems to have turned hisParis over and over, and to know it body and soul as one knows thecontents of one's pocket. What a prodigious memory and what a luridimagination! He is at once a visionary and yet master of his dreams; hesummons up and handles at will the hallucinations of opium or ofhasheesh, without ever becoming their dupe; he makes of madness one ofhis tame animals, and bestrides, with equal coolness, Pegasus orNightmare, the Hippogriff or the Chimera. As a psychological phenomenonhe is of the deepest interest. Victor Hugo draws in sulphuric acid, helights his pictures with electric light. He deafens, blinds, andbewilders his reader rather than he charms or persuades him. Strengthcarried to such a point as this is a fascination; without seeming totake you captive, it makes you its prisoner; it does not enchant you, but it holds you spellbound. His ideal is the extraordinary, thegigantic, the overwhelming, the incommensurable. His most characteristicwords are _immense, colossal, enormous, huge, monstrous_. He finds a wayof making even child-nature extravagant and bizarre. The only thingwhich seems impossible to him is to be natural. In short, his passion isgrandeur, his fault is excess; his distinguishing mark is a kind ofTitanic power with strange dissonances of puerility in its magnificence. Where he is weakest is, in measure, taste, and sense of humor: he failsin _esprit_, in the subtlest sense of the word. Victor Hugo is agallicized Spaniard, or rather he unites all the extremes of south andnorth, the Scandinavian and the African. Gaul has less part in him thanany other country. And yet, by a caprice of destiny, he is one of theliterary geniuses of France in the nineteenth century! His resources areinexhaustible, and age seems to have no power over him. What an infinitestore of words, forms, and ideas he carries about with him, and what apile of works he has left behind him to mark his passage! His eruptionsare like those of a volcano; and, fabulous workman that he is, he goeson forever raising, destroying, crushing, and rebuilding a world of hisown creation, and a world rather Hindoo than Hellenic. 

He amazes me: and yet I prefer those men of genius who awaken in me thesense of truth, and who increase the sum of one's inner liberty. In Hugoone feels the effort of the laboring Cyclops; give me rather thesonorous bow of Apollo, and the tranquil brow of the Olympian Jove. Histype is that of the Satyr in the "Légende des Siècles, " who crushesOlympus, a type midway between the ugliness of the faun and theoverpowering sublimity of the great Pan. 

May 23, 1863. --Dull, cloudy, misty weather; it rained in the night andyet the air is heavy. This somber reverie of earth and sky has asacredness of its own, but it fills the spectator with a vague andstupefying _ennui_. Light brings life: darkness may bring thought, but adull daylight, the uncertain glimmer of a leaden sky, merely make onerestless and weary. These indecisive and chaotic states of nature areugly, like all amorphous things, like smeared colors, or bats, or theviscous polyps of the sea. The source of all attractiveness is to befound in character, in sharpness of outline, in individualization. Allthat is confused and indistinct, without form, or sex, or accent, isantagonistic to beauty; for the mind's first need is light; light meansorder, and order means, in the first place, the distinction of theparts, in the second, their regular action. Beauty is based on reason. 

August 7, 1863. --A walk after supper, a sky sparkling with stars, theMilky Way magnificent. Alas! all the same my heart is heavy. At bottom Iam always brought up against an incurable distrust of myself and oflife, which toward my neighbor has become indulgence, but for myself hasled to a _régime_ of absolute abstention. All or nothing! This is myinborn disposition, my primitive stuff, my "old man. " And yet if someone will but give me a little love, will but penetrate a little into myinner feeling, I am happy and ask for scarcely anything else. A child'scaresses, a friend's talk, are enough to make me gay and expansive. Sothen I aspire to the infinite, and yet a very little contents me;everything disturbs me and the least thing calms me. I have oftensurprised in my self the wish for death, and yet my ambitions forhappiness scarcely go beyond those of the bird: wings! sun! a nest! Ipersist in solitude because of a taste for it, so people think. No, itis from distaste, disgust, from shame at my own need of others, shame atconfessing it, a fear of passing into bondage if I do confess it. 

September 2, 1863. --How shall I find a name for that subtle feelingwhich seized hold upon me this morning in the twilight of waking? It wasa reminiscence, charming indeed, but nameless, vague, and featureless, like the figure of a woman seen for an instant by a sick man in theuncertainty of delirium, and across the shadows of his darkened room. Ihad a distinct sense of a form which I had seen somewhere, and which hadmoved and charmed me once, and then had fallen back with time into thecatacombs 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 fluttering veil under which the enigma--the secretof happiness--might have been hidden. And I was awake enough to be surethat it was not a dream. 

In impressions like these we recognize the last trace of things whichare sinking out of sight and call within us, of memories which areperishing. It is like a shimmering marsh-light falling upon some vagueoutline of which one scarcely knows whether it represents a pain or apleasure--a gleam upon a grave. How strange! One might almost call suchthings the ghosts of the soul, reflections of past happiness, the_manes_ of our dead emotions. If, as the Talmud, I think, says, everyfeeling of love gives birth involuntarily to an invisible genius orspirit which yearns to complete its existence, and these glimmeringphantoms, which have never taken to themselves form and reality, arestill wandering in the limbo of the soul, what is there to astonish usin the strange apparitions which sometimes come to visit our pillow? Atany rate, the fact remains that I was not able to force the phantom totell me its name, nor to give any shape or distinctness to myreminiscence. 

What a melancholy aspect life may wear to us when we are floating downthe current of such dreamy thoughts as these! It seems like some vastnocturnal shipwreck in which a hundred loving voices are clamoring forhelp, while the pitiless mounting wave is silencing all the cries one byone, before we have been able, in this darkness of death, to press ahand or give the farewell kiss. Prom such a point of view destiny looksharsh, savage, and cruel, and the tragedy of life rises like a rock inthe midst of the dull waters of daily triviality. It is impossible notto be serious under the weight of indefinable anxiety produced in us bysuch a spectacle. The surface of things may be smiling or commonplace, but the depths below are austere and terrible. As soon as we touch uponeternal things, upon the destiny of the soul, upon truth or duty, uponthe secrets of life and death, we become grave whether we will or no. 

Love at its highest point--love sublime, unique, invincible--leads usstraight to the brink of the great abyss, for it speaks to us directlyof the infinite and of eternity. It is eminently religious; it may evenbecome religion. When all around a man is wavering and changing, wheneverything is growing dark and featureless to him in the far distance ofan 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 insmoke, and all realities are penetrated with doubt, what is the fixedpoint which may still be his? The faithful heart of a woman! There hemay rest his head; there he will find strength to live, strength tobelieve, and, if need be, strength to die in peace with a benediction onhis lips. Who knows if love and its beatitude, clear manifestation as itis of the universal harmony of things, is not the best demonstration ofa fatherly and understanding God, just as it is the shortest road bywhich to reach him? Love is a faith, and one faith leads to another. Andthis faith is happiness, light and force. Only by it does a man enterinto the series of the living, the awakened, the happy, the redeemed--ofthose true men who know the value of existence and who labor for theglory of God and of the truth. Till then we are but babblers andchatterers, spendthrifts of our time, our faculties and our gifts, without aim, without real joy--weak, infirm, and useless beings, of noaccount in the scheme of things. Perhaps it is through love that I shallfind my way back to faith, to religion, to energy, to concentration. Itseems to me, at least, that if I could but find my work-fellow and mydestined companion, all the rest would be added unto me, as though toconfound my unbelief and make me blush for my despair. Believe, then, ina fatherly Providence, and dare to love!

November 25, 1863. --Prayer is the essential weapon of all religions. Hewho can no longer pray because he doubts whether there is a being towhom prayer ascends and from whom blessing descends, he indeed iscruelly solitary and prodigiously impoverished. And you, what do youbelieve 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 ofmetamorphosis. Truth above all, even when it upsets and overwhelms us!But what I believe is that the highest idea we can conceive of theprinciple of things will be the truest, and that the truest truth isthat which makes man the most wholly good, wisest, greatest, andhappiest. 

My creed is in transition. Yet I still believe in God, and theimmortality of the soul. I believe in holiness, truth, beauty; I believein the redemption of the soul by faith in forgiveness. I believe inlove, devotion, honor. I believe in duty and the moral conscience. Ibelieve even in prayer. I believe in the fundamental intuitions of thehuman race, and in the great affirmations of the inspired of all ages. Ibelieve that our higher nature is our truer nature. 

Can one get a theology and a theodicy out of this? Probably, but justnow I do not see it distinctly. It is so long since I have ceased tothink about my own metaphysic, and since I have lived in the thoughts ofothers, that I am ready even to ask myself whether the crystallizationof my beliefs is necessary. Yes, for preaching and acting; less forstudying, contemplating and learning. 

December 4, 1863. --The whole secret of remaining young in spite ofyears, and even of gray hairs, is to cherish enthusiasm in one's self bypoetry, by contemplation, by charity--that is, in fewer words, by themaintenance of harmony in the soul. When everything is in its rightplace within us, we ourselves are in equilibrium with the whole work ofGod. Deep and grave enthusiasm for the eternal beauty and the eternalorder, reason touched with emotion and a serene tenderness ofheart--these surely are the foundations of wisdom. 

Wisdom! how inexhaustible a theme! A sort of peaceful aureole surroundsand illumines this thought, in which are summed up all the treasures ofmoral experience, and which is the ripest fruit of a well-spent life. Wisdom never grows old, for she is the expression of order itself--thatis, of the Eternal. Only the wise man draws from life, and from everystage of it, its true savor, because only he feels the beauty, thedignity, and the value of life. The flowers of youth may fade, but thesummer, the autumn, and even the winter of human existence, have theirmajestic grandeur, which the wise man recognizes and glorifies. To seeall things in God; to make of one's own life a journey toward the ideal;to live with gratitude, with devoutness, with gentleness and courage;this was the splendid aim of Marcus Aurelius. And if you add to it thehumility which kneels, and the charity which gives, you have the wholewisdom of the children of God, the immortal joy which is the heritage ofthe true Christian. But what a false Christianity is that which slanderswisdom and seeks to do without it! In such a case I am on the side ofwisdom, which is, as it were, justice done to God, even in this life. The relegation of life to some distant future, and the separation of theholy man from the virtuous man, are the signs of a false religiousconception. This error is, in some degree, that of the whole MiddleAge, and belongs, perhaps, to the essence of Catholicism. But the trueChristianity must purge itself from so disastrous a mistake. The eternallife is not the future life; it is life in harmony with the true orderof things--life in God. We must learn to look upon time as a movement ofeternity, as an undulation in the ocean of being. To live, so as to keepthis consciousness of ours in perpetual relation with the eternal, is tobe wise; to live, so as to personify and embody the eternal, is to bereligious. 

The modern leveler, after having done away with conventionalinequalities, with arbitrary privilege and historical injustice, goesstill farther, and rebels against the inequalities of merit, capacity, and virtue. Beginning with a just principle, he develops it into anunjust one. Inequality may be as true and as just as equality: itdepends upon what you mean by it. But this is precisely what nobodycares to find out. All passions dread the light, and the modern zeal forequality is a disguised hatred which tries to pass itself off as love. 

Liberty, equality--bad principles! The only true principle for humanityis justice, and justice toward the feeble becomes necessarily protectionor kindness. 

April 2, 1864. --To-day April has been displaying her showery caprices. We have had floods of sunshine followed by deluges of rain, alternatetears and smiles from the petulant sky, gusts of wind and storms. Theweather is like a spoiled child whose wishes and expression changetwenty times in an hour. It is a blessing for the plants, and means aninflux of life through all the veins of the spring. The circle ofmountains 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 isbut a new caprice, a simple stage decoration ready to disappear at thesignal of the scene-shifter. 

How sensible I am to the restless change which rules the world. Toappear, and to vanish--there is the biography of all individuals, whatever may be the length of the cycle of existence which theydescribe, and the drama of the universe is nothing more. All life is theshadow of a smoke-wreath, a gesture in the empty air, a hieroglyphtraced for an instant in the sand, and effaced a moment afterward by abreath of wind, an air-bubble expanding and vanishing on the surface ofthe great river of being--an appearance, a vanity, a nothing. But thisnothing is, however, the symbol of the universal being, and this passingbubble is the epitome of the history of the world. 

The man who has, however imperceptibly, helped in the work of theuniverse, has lived; the man who has been conscious, in however small adegree, of the cosmical movement, has lived also. The plain man servesthe world by his action and as a wheel in the machine; the thinkerserves it by his intellect, and as a light upon its path. The man ofmeditative soul, who raises and comforts and sustains his travelingcompanions, mortal and fugitive like himself, plays a nobler part still, for he unites the other two utilities. Action, thought, speech, are thethree modes of human life. The artisan, the savant, and the orator, areall three God's workmen. To do, to discover, to teach--these three thingsare all labor, 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 yetprolong our perishable being in the memory of men, or at least in thecontexture of after events. Everything disappears, but nothing is lost, and the civilization or city of man is but an immense spiritual pyramid, built up out of the work of all that has ever lived under the forms ofmoral being, just as our calcareous mountains are made of the debris ofmyriads of nameless creatures who have lived under the forms ofmicroscopic animal life. 

April 5, 1864. --I have been reading "Prince Vitale" for the second time, and have been lost in admiration of it. What wealth of color, facts, ideas--what learning, what fine-edged satire, what _esprit_, science, andtalent, and what an irreproachable finish of style--so limpid, and yetso profound! It is not heartfelt and it is not spontaneous, but allother kinds of merit, culture, and cleverness the author possesses. Itwould be impossible to be more penetrating, more subtle, and lessfettered in mind, than this wizard of language, with his irony and hischameleon-like variety. Victor Cherbuliez, like the sphinx, is able toplay all lyres, and takes his profit from them all, with a Goethe-likeserenity. It seems as if passion, grief, and error had no hold on thisimpassive soul. The key of his thought is to be looked for in Hegel's"Phenomenology of Mind, " remolded by Greek and French influences. 

His faith, if he has one, is that of Strauss-Humanism. But he isperfectly master of himself and of his utterances, and will take goodcare 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 andprejudice. One might almost say that Cherbuliez knows all that he wishesto know, without the trouble of learning it. He is a calmMephistopheles, with perfect manners, grace, variety, and an exquisiteurbanity; and Mephisto is a clever jeweler; and this jeweler is a subtlemusician; and this fine singer and storyteller, with his amber-likedelicacy and brilliancy, is making mock of us all the while. He takes amalicious pleasure in withdrawing his own personality from scrutiny anddivination, while he himself divines everything, and he likes to make usfeel that although he holds in his hand the secret of the universe, hewill only unfold his prize at his own time, and if it pleases him. Victor Cherbuliez is a little like Proudhon and plays with paradoxes, toshock the _bourgeois_. Thus he amuses himself with running down Lutherand the Reformation in favor of the Renaissance. Of the troubles ofconscience he seems to know nothing. His supreme tribunal is reason. Atbottom he is Hegelian and intellectualist. But it is a splendidorganization. Only sometimes he must be antipathetic to those men ofduty who make renunciation, sacrifice, and humility the measure ofindividual worth. 

July, 1864. --Among the Alps I become a child again, with all the folliesand _naïveté_ of childhood. Shaking off the weight of years, thetrappings of office, and all the tiresome and ridiculous caution withwhich one lives, I plunge into the full tide of pleasure, and amusemyself sans façon, as it comes. In this careless light-hearted mood, myordinary formulas and habits fall away from me so completely that I feelmyself no longer either townsman, or professor, or savant, or bachelor, and I remember no more of my past than if it were a dream. It is like abath in Lethe. 

It makes me really believe that the smallest illness would destroy mymemory, and wipe out all my previous existence, when I see with whatease I become a stranger to myself, and fall back once more into thecondition of a blank sheet, a _tabula rasa_. Life wears such adream-aspect to me that I can throw myself without any difficulty intothe situation of the dying, before whose eyes all this tumult of imagesand forms fades into nothingness. I have the inconsistency of a fluid, avapor, a cloud, and all is easily unmade or transformed in me;everything passes and is effaced like the waves which follow each otheron 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 feelthat the things of the soul, our immortal aspirations, our deepestaffections, are not drawn into this chaotic whirlwind of impressions. Itis the finite things which are mortal and fugitive. Every man feels itOH his deathbed. I feel it during the whole of life; that is the onlydifference between me and others. Excepting only love, thought, andliberty, almost everything is now a matter of indifference to me, andthose objects which excite the desires of most men, rouse in me littlemore than curiosity. What does it mean--detachment of soul, disinterestedness, weakness, or wisdom?

September 19, 1864. --I have been living for two hours with a noblesoul--with Eugénie de Guérin, the pious heroine of fraternal love. Howmany thoughts, feelings, griefs, in this journal of six years! How itmakes one dream, think and live! It produces a certain homesickimpression on me, a little like that of certain forgotten melodieswhereof the accent touches the heart, one knows not why. It is as thoughfar-off paths came back to me, glimpses of youth, a confused murmur ofvoices, echoes from my past. Purity, melancholy, piety, a thousandmemories of a past existence, forms fantastic and intangible, like thefleeting shadows of a dream at waking, began to circle round theastonished reader. 

September 20, 1864. --Read Eugénie de Guérin's volume again right andleft with a growing sense of attraction. Everything is heart, force, impulse, in these pages which have the power of sincerity and abrilliance of suffused poetry. A great and strong soul, a clear mind, distinction, elevation, the freedom of unconscious talent, reserve anddepth--nothing is wanting for this Sévigné of the fields, who has tohold herself in with both hands lest she should write verse, so strongin her is the artistic impulse. 

October 16, 1864. --I have just read a part of Eugénie de Guérin'sjournal over again. It charmed me a little less than the first time. Thenature seemed to me as beautiful, but the life of Eugénie was too empty, and the circle of ideas which occupied her, too narrow. 

It is touching and wonderful to see how little space is enough forthought to spread its wings in, but this perpetual motion within thefour walls of a cell ends none the less by becoming wearisome to mindswhich are accustomed to embrace more objects in their field of vision. Instead of a garden, the world; instead of a library, the whole ofliterature; instead of three or four faces, a whole people and allhistory--this is what the virile, the philosophic temper demands. Menmust have more air, more room, mere horizon, more positive knowledge, and they end by suffocating in this little cage where Eugenie lives andmoves, though the breath of heaven blows into it and the radiance of thestars shines down upon it. 

October 27, 1864. (_Promenade de la Treille_). --The air this morning wasso perfectly clear and lucid that one might have distinguished a figureon the Vouache. [Footnote: The Vouache is the hill which bounds thehorizon of Geneva to the south-west. ] This level and brilliant sun hadset fire to the whole range of autumn colors; amber, saffron, gold, sulphur, yellow ochre, orange, red, copper-color, aquamarine, amaranth, shone resplendent on the leaves which were still hanging from the boughsor had already fallen beneath the trees. It was delicious. The martialstep of our two battalions going out to their drilling-ground, thesparkle of the guns, the song of the bugles, the sharp distinctness ofthe house outlines, still moist with the morning dew, the transparentcoolness of all the shadows--every detail in the scene was instinct witha keen and wholesome gayety. 

There are two forms of autumn: there is the misty and dreamy autumn, there is the vivid and brilliant autumn: almost the difference betweenthe two sexes. The very word autumn is both masculine and feminine. Hasnot every season, in some fashion, its two sexes? Has it not its minorand its major key, its two sides of light and shadow, gentleness andforce? Perhaps. All that is perfect is double; each face has twoprofiles, each coin two sides. The scarlet autumn stands for vigorousactivity: the gray autumn for meditative feeling. The one is expansiveand overflowing; the other still and withdrawn. Yesterday our thoughtswere with the dead. To-day we are celebrating the vintage. 

November 16, 1864. --Heard of the death of--. Will and intelligencelasted 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 isout of gear, his machine falls to pieces, his thought vanishes, theworld disappears from him like a dream at morning. On what a spiderthread is hung our individual existence! Fragility, appearance, nothingness. If it were for our powers of self-detraction andforgetfulness, all the fairy world which surrounds and draws us wouldseem to us but a broken spectre in the darkness, an empty appearance, afleeting hallucination. Appeared--disappeared--there is the wholehistory of a man, or of a world, or of an infusoria. 

Time is the supreme illusion. It is but the inner prism by which wedecompose being and life, the mode under which we perceive successivelywhat is simultaneous in idea. The eye does not see a sphere all at oncealthough the sphere exists all at once. Either the sphere must turnbefore the eye which is looking at it, or the eye must go round thesphere. In the first case it is the world which unrolls, or seems tounroll in time; in the second case it is our thought which successivelyanalyzes and recomposes. For the supreme intelligence there is no time;what will be, is. Time and space are fragments of the infinite for theuse 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 innumerable steps bywhich the creation reascends to its Creator, participates in being, tastes of life, perceives the absolute, and can adore the fathomlessmystery of the infinite divinity. That is the other side of thequestion. Our life is nothing, it is true, but our life is divine. Abreath of nature annihilates us, but we surpass nature in penetratingfar beyond her vast phantasmagoria to the changeless and the eternal. Toescape by the ecstasy of inward vision from the whirlwind of time, tosee one's self _sub specie eterni_ is the word of command of all thegreat religions of the higher races; and this psychological possibilityis the foundation of all great hopes. The soul may be immortal becauseshe is fitted to rise toward that which is neither born nor dies, towardthat which exists substantially, necessarily, invariably, that is to saytoward God. 

To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it wemust be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to read thechildish soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing thekey, we keep up the attraction and vary the song. 

The germs of all things are in every heart, and the greatest criminalsas well as the greatest heroes are but different modes of ourselves. Only evil grows of itself, while for goodness we want effort andcourage. 

Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of allrivers 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, thesecret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or lessclosely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps theuniverse. 

A man takes to "piety" from a thousand different reasons--from imitationor from eccentricity, from bravado or from reverence, from shame of thepast or from terror of the future, from weakness and from pride, forpleasure's sake or for punishment'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. 

January 11, 1865. --It is pleasant to feel nobly--that is to say, to liveabove the lowlands of vulgarity. Manufacturing Americanism and Caesariandemocracy tend equally to the multiplying of crowds, governed byappetite, applauding charlatanism, vowed to the worship of mammon and ofpleasure, and adoring no other God than force. What poor samples ofmankind they are who make up this growing majority! Oh, let us remainfaithful to the altars of the ideal! It is possible that thespiritualists may become the stoics of a new epoch of Caesarian rule. Materialistic naturalism has the wind in its sails, and a general moraldeterioration is preparing. NO matter, so long as the salt does not loseits savor, and so long as the friends of the higher life maintain thefire of Vesta. The wood itself may choke the flame, but if the flamepersists, the fire will only be the more splendid in the end. The greatdemocratic deluge will not after all be able to effect what the invasionof the barbarians was powerless to bring about; it will not drownaltogether the results of the higher culture; but we must resignourselves to the fact that it tends in the beginning to deform andvulgarize everything. It is clear that aesthetic delicacy, elegance, distinction, and nobleness--that atticism, urbanity, whatever is suaveand exquisite, fine and subtle--all that makes the charm of the higherkinds of literature and of aristocratic cultivation--vanishessimultaneously with the society which corresponds to it. If, as Pascal, [Footnote: The saying of Pascal's alluded to is in the _Pensées_, Art. Xi. No. 10: "A mesure qu'on a plus d'esprit on trouve qu'il y a plusd'hommes originaux. Les gens du commun ne trouvent pas de différenceentre les hommes. "] I think, says, the more one develops, the moredifference one observes between man and man, then we cannot say that thedemocratic instinct tends to mental development, since it tends to makea man believe that the pretensions have only to be the same to make themerits equal also. 

March 20, 1865. --I have just heard of fresh cases of insubordinationamong the students. Our youth become less and less docile, and seem totake for their motto, "Our master is our enemy. " The boy insists uponhaving the privileges of the young man, and the young man tries to keepthose of the _gamin_. At bottom all this is the natural consequence ofour system of leveling democracy. As soon as difference of quality is, in politics, officially equal to zero, the authority of age, ofknowledge, and of function disappears. 

The only counterpoise of pure equality is military discipline. Inmilitary uniform, in the police court, in prison, or on the executionground, there is no reply possible. But is it not curious that the_régime_ of individual right should lead to nothing but respect forbrute strength? Jacobinism brings with it Caesarism; the rule of thetongue leads to the rule of the sword. Democracy and liberty are not onebut two. A republic supposes a high state of morals, but no such stateof morals is possible without the habit of respect; and there is norespect without humility. Now the pretension that every man has thenecessary qualities of a citizen, simply because he was born twenty-oneyears ago, is as much as to say that labor, merit, virtue, character, and experience are to count for nothing; and we destroy humility when weproclaim that a man becomes the equal of all other men, by the meremechanical and vegetative process of natural growth. Such a claimannihilates even the respect for age; for as the elector of twenty-oneis worth as much as the elector of fifty, the boy of nineteen has noserious reason to believe himself in any way the inferior of his elderby one or two years. Thus the fiction on which the political order ofdemocracy is based ends in something altogether opposed to that whichdemocracy desires: its aim was to increase the whole sum of liberty; butthe result is to diminish it for all. 

The modern state is founded on the philosophy of atomism. Nationality, public spirit, tradition, national manners, disappear like so manyhollow and worn-out entities; nothing remains to create movement but theaction of molecular force and of dead weight. In such a theory libertyis identified with caprice, and the collective reason and age-longtradition of an old society are nothing more than soap-bubbles which thesmallest urchin may shiver with a snap of the fingers. 

Does this mean that I am an opponent of democracy? Not at all. Fictionfor fiction, it is the least harmful. But it is well not to confound itspromises with realities. The fiction consists in the postulate of alldemocratic government, that the great majority of the electors in astate are enlightened, free, honest, and patriotic--whereas such apostulate is a mere chimera. The majority in any state is necessarilycomposed of the most ignorant, the poorest, and the least capable; thestate is therefore at the mercy of accident and passion, and it alwaysends by succumbing at one time or another to the rash conditions whichhave been made for its existence. A man who condemns himself to liveupon the tight-rope must inevitably fall; one has no need to be aprophet to foresee such a result. 

"[Greek: Aridton men udor], " said Pindar; the best thing in the world iswisdom, and, in default of wisdom, science. States, churches, societyitself, may fall to pieces; science alone has nothing to fear--until atleast society once more falls a prey to barbarism. Unfortunately thistriumph of barbarism is not impossible. The victory of the socialistUtopia, or the horrors of a religious war, reserve for us perhaps eventhis lamentable experience. 

April 3, 1865. --What doctor possesses such curative resources as thoselatent in a spark of happiness or a single ray of hope? The mainspringof life is in the heart. Joy is the vital air of the soul, and grief isa kind of asthma complicated by atony. Our dependence upon surroundingcircumstances increases with our own physical weakness, and on the otherhand, 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 makeany one happy, then, is strictly to augment his store of being, todouble the intensity of his life, to reveal him to himself, to ennoblehim and transfigure him. Happiness does away with ugliness, and evenmakes the beauty of beauty. The man who doubts it, can never havewatched the first gleams of tenderness dawning in the clear eyes of onewho loves; sunrise itself is a lesser marvel. In paradise, then, everybody will be beautiful. For, as the righteous soul is naturallybeautiful, as the spiritual body is but the _visibility_ of the soul, its impalpable and angelic form, and as happiness beautifies all that itpenetrates or even touches, ugliness will have no more place in theuniverse, and will disappear with grief, sin, and death. 

To the materialist philosopher the beautiful is a mere accident, andtherefore rare. To the spiritualist philosopher the beautiful is therule, the law, the universal foundation of things, to which every formreturns as soon as the force of accident is withdrawn. Why are we ugly?Because we are not in the angelic state, because we are evil, morose, and unhappy. 

Heroism, ecstasy, prayer, love, enthusiasm, weave a halo round the brow, for they are a setting free of the soul, which through them gains forceto make its envelope transparent and shine through upon all around it. Beauty is, then, a phenomenon belonging to the spiritualization ofmatter. It is a momentary transfiguration of the privileged object orbeing--a token fallen from heaven to earth in order to remind us of theideal world. To study it, is to Platonize almost inevitably. As apowerful electric current can render metals luminous, and reveal theiressence by the color of their flame, so intense life and supreme joy canmake the most simple mortal dazzlingly beautiful. Man, therefore, isnever more truly man than in these divine states. 

The ideal, after all, is truer than the real: for the ideal is theeternal element in perishable things: it is their type, their sum, their_raison d'être_, their formula in the book of the Creator, and thereforeat once the most exact and the most condensed expression of them. 

April 11, 1865. --I have been measuring and making a trial of the newgray plaid which is to take the place of my old mountain shawl. The oldservant which has been my companion for ten years, and which recalls tome so many poetical and delightful memories, pleases me better than itsbrilliant successor, even though this last has been a present from afriendly hand. But can anything take the place of the past, and have noteven the inanimate witnesses of our life voice and language for us?Glion, Villars, Albisbrunnen, the Righi, the Chamossaire, and a hundredother places, have left something of themselves behind them in themeshes of this woolen stuff which makes a part of my most intimatehistory. The shawl, besides, is the only _chivalrous_ article of dresswhich is still left to the modern traveler, the only thing about himwhich may be useful to others than himself, and by means of which he maystill do his _devoir_ to fair women! How many times mine has served themfor a cushion, a cloak, a shelter, on the damp grass of the Alps, onseats of hard rock, or in the sudden cool of the pinewood, during thewalks, the rests, the readings, and the chats of mountain life! How manykindly smiles it has won for me! Even its blemishes are dear to me, foreach darn and tear has its story, each scar is an armorial bearing. Thistear was made by a hazel tree under Jaman--that by the buckle of a strapon the Frohnalp--that, again, by a bramble at Charnex; and each timefairy needles have repaired the injury. 

 "Mon vieux manteau, que je vous remercie Car c'est à vous que je dois ces plaisirs!"

And has it not been to me a friend in suffering, a companion in good andevil fortune? It reminds me of that centaur's tunic which could not betorn off without carrying away the flesh and blood of its wearer. I amunwilling to give it up; whatever gratitude for the past, and whateverpiety toward my vanished youth is in me, seem to forbid it. The warp ofthis rag is woven out of Alpine joys, and its woof out of humanaffections. It also says to me in its own way:

 "Pauvre bouquet, fleurs aujourd'hui fanées!"

And the appeal is one of those which move the heart, although profaneears neither hear it nor understand it. 

What a stab there is in those words, _thou hast been_! when the sense ofthem becomes absolutely clear to us. One feels one's self sinkinggradually into one's grave, and the past tense sounds the knell of ourillusions as to ourselves. What is past is past: gray hairs will neverbecome black curls again; the forces, the gifts, the attractions ofyouth, have vanished with our young days. 

 "Plus d'amour; partant plus de joie. "

How hard it is to grow old, when we have missed our life, when we haveneither the crown of completed manhood nor of fatherhood! How sad it isto feel the mind declining before it has done its work, and the bodygrowing weaker before it has seen itself renewed in those who mightclose our eyes and honor our name! The tragic solemnity of existencestrikes us with terrible force, on that morning when we wake to find themournful word _too late_ ringing in our ears! "Too late, the sand isturned, the hour is past! Thy harvest is unreaped--too late! Thou hastbeen dreaming, forgetting, sleeping--so much the worse! Every manrewards or punishes himself. To whom or of whom wouldst thoucomplain?"--Alas!

April 21, 1865. (_Mornex_). --A morning of intoxicating beauty, fresh asthe feelings of sixteen, and crowned with flowers like a bride. Thepoetry of youth, of innocence, and of love, overflowed my soul. Even tothe light mist hovering over the bosom of the plain--image of thattender modesty which veils the features and shrouds in mystery theinmost thoughts of the maiden--everything that I saw delighted my eyesand spoke to my imagination. It was a sacred, a nuptial day! and thematin bells ringing in some distant village harmonized marvelously withthe hymn of nature. "Pray, " they said, "and love! Adore a fatherly andbeneficent God. " They recalled to me the accent of Haydn; there was inthem and in the landscape a childlike joyousness, a naïve gratitude, aradiant heavenly joy innocent of pain and sin, like the sacred, simple-hearted ravishment of Eve on the first day of her awakening inthe new world. How good a thing is feeling, admiration! It is the breadof angels, the eternal food of cherubim and seraphim. 

I have not yet felt the air so pure, so life-giving, so ethereal, duringthe five days that I have been here. To breathe is a beatitude. Oneunderstands the delights of a bird's existence--that emancipation fromall encumbering weight--that luminous and empyrean life, floating inblue space, and passing from one horizon to another with a stroke of thewing. One must have a great deal of air below one before one can beconscious of such inner freedom as this, such lightness of the wholebeing. Every element has its poetry, but the poetry of air is liberty. Enough; to your work, dreamer!

May 30, 1865. --All snakes fascinate their prey, and pure wickednessseems to inherit the power of fascination granted to the serpent. Itstupefies and bewilders the simple heart, which sees it withoutunderstanding it, which touches it without being able to believe in it, and which sinks engulfed in the problem of it, like Empedocles in Etna. _Non possum capere te, cape me_, says the Aristotelian motto. Everydiminutive of Beelzebub is an abyss, each demoniacal act is a gulf ofdarkness. Natural cruelty, inborn perfidy and falseness, even inanimals, cast lurid gleams, as it were, into that fathomless pit ofSatanic perversity which is a moral reality. 

Nevertheless behind this thought there rises another which tells me thatsophistry is at the bottom of human wickedness, that the majority ofmonsters like to justify themselves in their own eyes, and that thefirst attribute of the Evil One is to be the father of lies. Beforecrime is committed conscience must be corrupted, and every bad man whosucceeds in reaching a high point of wickedness begins with this. It isall very well to say that hatred is murder; the man who hates isdetermined to see nothing in it but an act of moral hygiene. It is to dohimself good that he does evil, just as a mad dog bites to get rid ofhis thirst. 

To injure others while at the same time knowingly injuring one's self isa step farther; evil then becomes a frenzy, which, in its turn, sharpensinto a cold ferocity. 

Whenever a man, under the influence of such a diabolical passion, surrenders himself to these instincts of the wild or venomous beast hemust seem to the angels a madman--a lunatic, who kindles his own Gehennathat he may consume the world in it, or as much of it as his devilishdesires can lay hold upon. Wickedness is forever beginning a new spiralwhich penetrates deeper still into the abysses of abomination, for thecircles of hell have this property--that they have no end. It seems asthough divine perfection were an infinite of the first degree, but asthough diabolical perfection were an infinite of unknown power. But no;for if so, evil would be the true God, and hell would swallow upcreation. According to the Persian and the Christian faiths, good is toconquer evil, and perhaps even Satan himself will be restored tograce--which is as much as to say that the divine order will beeverywhere re-established. Love will be more potent than hatred; Godwill save his glory, and his glory is in his goodness. But it is verytrue that all gratuitous wickedness troubles the soul, because it seemsto make the great lines of the moral order tremble within us by thesudden withdrawal of the curtain which hides from us the action of thosedark corrosive forces which have ranged themselves in battle against thedivine plan. 

June 26, 1865. --One may guess the why and wherefore of a tear and yetfind it too subtle to give any account of. A tear may be the poetical_resumé_ of so many simultaneous impressions, the quintessence of somany opposing thoughts! It is like a drop of one of those preciouselixirs of the East which contain the life of twenty plants fused into asingle aroma. Sometimes it is the mere overflow of the soul, the runningover of the cup of reverie. All that one cannot or will not say, allthat one refuses to confess even to one's self--confused desires, secrettrouble, suppressed grief, smothered conflict, voiceless regret, theemotions we have struggled against, the pain we have sought to hide, oursuperstitious fears, our vague sufferings, our restless presentiments, our unrealized dreams, the wounds inflicted upon our ideal, thedissatisfied languor, the vain hopes, the multitude of smallindiscernible ills which accumulate slowly in a corner of the heart likewater dropping noiselessly from the roof of a cavern--all thesemysterious movements of the inner life end in an instant of emotion, andthe emotion concentrates itself in a tear just visible on the edge ofthe eyelid. 

For the rest, tears express joy as well as sadness. They are the symbolof the powerlessness of the soul to restrain its emotion and to remainmistress of itself. Speech implies analysis; when we are overcome bysensation or by feeling analysis ceases, and with it speech and liberty. Our only resource, after silence and stupor, is the language ofaction--pantomime. Any oppressive weight of thought carries us back to astage anterior to humanity, to a gesture, a cry, a sob, and at last toswooning and collapse; that is to say, incapable of bearing theexcessive strain of sensation as men, we fall back successively to thestage of mere animate being, and then to that of the vegetable. Danteswoons at every turn in his journey through hell, and nothing paintsbetter the violence of his emotions and the ardor of his piety. 

. . . And intense joy? It also withdraws into itself and is silent. Tospeak is to disperse and scatter. Words isolate and localize life in asingle point; they touch only the circumference of being; they analyze, they treat one thing at a time. Thus they decentralize emotion, andchill it in doing so. The heart would fain brood over its feeling, cherishing and protecting it. Its happiness is silent and meditative; itlistens to its own beating and feeds religiously upon itself. 

August 8, 1865. (_Gryon sur Bex_). --Splendid moonlight without a cloud. The night is solemn and majestic. The regiment of giants sleeps whilethe stars keep sentinel. In the vast shadow of the valley glimmer a fewscattered roofs, while the torrent, organ-like, swells its eternal notein the depths of this mountain cathedral which has the heavens for roof. 

A last look at this blue night and boundless landscape. Jupiter is justsetting on the counterscarp of the Dent du Midi. Prom the starry vaultdescends an invisible snow-shower of dreams, calling us to a pure sleep. Nothing of voluptuous or enervating in this nature. All is strong, austere and pure. Good night to all the world!--to the unfortunate andto the happy. Rest and refreshment, renewal and hope; a day isdead--_vive le lendemain!_ Midnight is striking. Another step madetoward the tomb. 

August 13, 1865. --I have just read through again the letter of J. J. Rousseau to Archbishop Beaumont with a little less admiration than Ifelt for it--was it ten or twelve years ago? This emphasis, thisprecision, which never tires of itself, tires the reader in the longrun. The intensity of the style produces on one the impression of atreatise on mathematics. One feels the need of relaxation after it insomething easy, natural, and gay. The language of Rousseau demands anamount of labor which makes one long for recreation and relief. 

But how many writers and how many books descend from our Rousseau! On myway I noticed the points of departure of Châteaubriand, Lamennais, Proudhon. Proudhon, for instance, modeled the plan of his great work, "De la Justice dang l'Eglise et dans la Révolution, " upon the letter ofRousseau to Beaumont; his three volumes are a string of letters to anarchbishop; 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!Rousseau, for instance, has created a number of different _genres_. Imagination transforms him, and he is able to play the most varied partswith credit, among them even that of the pure logician. But as theimagination is his intellectual axis--his master faculty--he is, as itwere, in all his works only half sincere, only half in earnest. We feelthat his talent has laid him the wager of Carneades; it will lose nocause, however bad, as soon as the point of honor Is engaged. It isindeed the temptation of all talent to subordinate things to itself andnot itself to things; to conquer for the sake of conquest, and to putself-love in the place of conscience. Talent is glad enough, no doubt, to triumph in a good cause; but it easily becomes a free lance, content, whatever the cause, so long as victory follows its banner. I do not knoweven whether success in a weak and bad cause is not the most flatteringfor talent, which then divides the honors of its triumph with nothingand no one. 

Paradox is the delight of clever people and the joy of talent. It is sopleasant to pit one's self against the world, and to overbear merecommonplace good sense and vulgar platitudes! Talent and love of truthare then not identical; their tendencies and their paths are different. In order to make talent obey when its instinct is rather to command, avigilant moral sense and great energy of character are needed. TheGreeks--those artists of the spoken or written word--were artificial bythe time of Ulysses, sophists by the time of Pericles, cunning, rhetorical, and versed in all the arts of the courtier down to the endof the lower empire. From the talent of the nation sprang its vices. 

For a man to make his mark, like Rousseau by polemics, is to condemnhimself to perpetual exaggeration and conflict. Such a man expiates hiscelebrity by a double bitterness; he is never altogether true, and he isnever able to recover the free disposal of himself. To pick a quarrelwith the world is attractive, but dangerous. 

J. J. Rousseau is an ancestor in all things. It was he who foundedtraveling on foot before Töpffer, reverie before "René, " literary botanybefore George Sand, the worship of nature before Bernardin de S. Pierre, the democratic theory before the Revolution of 1789, politicaldiscussion and theological discussion before Mirabeau and Renan, thescience of teaching before Pestalozzi, and Alpine description before DeSaussure. He made music the fashion, and created the taste forconfessions to the public. He formed a new French style--the close, chastened, passionate, interwoven style we know so well. Nothing indeedof Rousseau has been lost, and nobody has had more influence than heupon the French Revolution, for he was the demigod of it, and standsbetween Neckar and Napoleon. Nobody, again, has had more than he uponthe nineteenth century, for Byron, Châteaubriand, Madame de Staël, andGeorge Sand all descend from him. 

And yet, with these extraordinary talents, he was an extremely unhappyman--why? Because he always allowed himself to be mastered by hisimagination and his sensations; because he had no judgment in deciding, no self-control in acting. Regret indeed on this score would be hardlyreasonable, for a calm, judicious, orderly Rousseau would never havemade so great an impression. He came into collision with his time: hencehis eloquence and his misfortunes. His naïve confidence in life andhimself ended in jealous misanthropy and hypochondria. 

What a contrast to Goethe or Voltaire, and how differently theyunderstood the practical wisdom of life and the management of literarygifts! They were the able men--Rousseau is a visionary. They knewmankind as it is--he always represented it to himself either whiter orblacker than it is; and having begun by taking life the wrong way, heended in madness. In the talent of Rousseau there is always somethingunwholesome, uncertain, stormy, and sophistical, which destroys theconfidence of the reader; and the reason is no doubt that we feelpassion to have been the governing force in him as a writer: passionstirred his imagination, and ruled supreme over his reason. 

 * * * * *

Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology forour faults--a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us ourfavorite sin. 

 * * * * *

The unfinished is nothing. 

 * * * * *

Great men are the true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. Theyare not extraordinary--they are in the true order. It is the otherspecies of men who are not what they ought to be. 

January 7, 1866. --Our life is but a soap-bubble hanging from a reed; itis formed, expands to its full size, clothes itself with the loveliestcolors of the prism, and even escapes at moments from the law ofgravitation; but soon the black speck appears in it, and the globe ofemerald and gold vanishes into space, leaving behind it nothing but asimple drop of turbid water. All the poets have made this comparison, itis so striking and so true. To appear, to shine, to disappear; to beborn, to suffer, and to die; is it not the whole sum of life, for abutterfly, for a nation, for a star?

Time is but the measure of the difficulty of a conception. Pure thoughthas scarcely any need of time, since it perceives the two ends of anidea almost at the same moment. The thought of a planet can only beworked out by nature with labor and effort, but supreme intelligencesums up the whole in an instant. Time is then the successive dispersionof being, just as speech is the successive analysis of an intuition orof an act of will. In itself it is relative and negative, and disappearswithin the absolute being. God is outside time because he thinks allthought at once; Nature is within time, because she is only speech--thediscursive unfolding of each thought contained within the infinitethought. But nature exhausts herself in this impossible task, for theanalysis of the infinite is a contradiction. With limitless duration, boundless space, and number without end, Nature does at least what shecan to translate into visible form the wealth of the creative formula. By the vastness of the abysses into which she penetrates, in theeffort--the unsuccessful effort--to house and contain the eternalthought, we may measure the greatness of the divine mind. For as soon asthis mind goes out of itself and seeks to explain itself, the effort atutterance heaps universe upon universe, during myriads of centuries, andstill it is not expressed, and the great harangue must go on for everand ever. 

The East prefers immobility as the form of the Infinite: the West, movement. It is because the West is infected by the passion for details, and sets proud store by individual worth. Like a child upon whom ahundred thousand francs have been bestowed, he thinks she is multiplyingher fortune by counting it out in pieces of twenty sous, or fivecentimes. Her passion for progress is in great part the product of aninfatuation, which consists in forgetting the goal to be aimed at, andabsorbing herself in the pride and delight of each tiny step, one afterthe other. Child that she is, she is even capable of confounding changewith improvement--beginning over again, with growth in perfectness. 

At the bottom of the modern man there is always a great thirst forself-forgetfulness, self-distraction; he has a secret horror of allwhich makes him feel his own littleness; the eternal, the infinite, perfection, therefore scare and terrify him. He wishes to approvehimself, to admire and congratulate himself; and therefore he turns awayfrom all those problems and abysses which might recall to him his ownnothingness. This is what makes the real pettiness of so many of ourgreat minds, and accounts for the lack of personal dignity amongus--civilized parrots that we are--as compared with the Arab of thedesert; or explains the growing frivolity of our masses, more and moreeducated, no doubt, but also more and more superficial in all theirconceptions of happiness. 

Here, then, is the service which Christianity--the oriental element inour culture--renders to us Westerns. It checks and counterbalances ournatural tendency toward the passing, the finite, and the changeable, byfixing the mind upon the contemplation of eternal things, and byPlatonizing our affections, which otherwise would have too littleoutlook upon the ideal world. Christianity leads us back from dispersionto concentration, from worldliness to self-recollection. It restores toour souls, fevered with a thousand sordid desires, nobleness, gravity, and calm. Just as sleep is a bath of refreshing for our actual life, soreligion is a bath of refreshing for our immortal being. What is sacredhas a purifying virtue; religious emotion crowns the brow with anaureole, and thrills the heart with an ineffable joy. 

I think that the adversaries of religion as such deceive themselves asto the needs of the western man, and that the modern world will lose itsbalance as soon as it has passed over altogether to the crude doctrineof progress. We have always need of the infinite, the eternal, theabsolute; and since science contents itself with what is relative, itnecessarily leaves a void, which it is good for man to fill withcontemplation, worship, and adoration. "Religion, " said Bacon, "is thespice which is meant to keep life from corruption, " and this isespecially true to-day of religion taken in the Platonist and orientalsense. A capacity for self-recollection--for withdrawal from the outwardto the inward--is in fact the condition of all noble and usefulactivity. 

This return, indeed, to what is serious, divine, and sacred, is becomingmore and more difficult, because of the growth of critical anxietywithin the church itself, the increasing worldliness of religiouspreaching, and the universal agitation and disquiet of society. But sucha 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 profitableresistance to circumstance. If the sailor did not carry with him his owntemperature he could not go from the pole to the equator, and remainhimself in spite of all. The man who has no refuge in himself, wholives, so to speak, in his front rooms, in the outer whirlwind of thingsand opinions, is not properly a personality at all; he is not distinct, free, original, a cause--in a word, _some one_. He is one of a crowd, ataxpayer, an elector, an anonymity, but not a man. He helps to make upthe mass--to fill up the number of human consumers or producers; but heinterests nobody but the economist and the statistician, who take theheap of sand as a whole into consideration, without troubling themselvesabout the uninteresting uniformity of the individual grains. The crowdcounts only as a massive elementary force--why? because its constituentparts are individually insignificant: they are all like each other, andwe add them up like the molecules of water in a river, gauging them bythe fathom instead of appreciating them as individuals. Such men arereckoned and weighed merely as so many bodies: they have never beenindividualized by conscience, after the manner of souls. 

He who floats with the current, who does not guide himself according tohigher principles, who has no ideal, no convictions--such a man is amere article of the world's furniture--a thing moved, instead of aliving and moving being--an echo, not a voice. The man who has no innerlife is the slave of his surroundings, as the barometer is the obedientservant of the air at rest, and the weathercock the humble servant ofthe air in motion. 

January 21, 1866. --This evening after supper I did not know whither tobetake my solitary self. I was hungry for conversation, society, exchange of ideas. It occurred to me to go and see our friends, the----s; they were at supper. Afterward we went into the _salon_: motherand daughter sat down to the piano and sang a duet by Boïeldieu. Theivory keys of the old grand piano, which the mother had played on beforeher marriage, and which has followed and translated into music thevarying fortunes of the family, were a little loose and jingling; butthe poetry of the past sang in this faithful old servant, which had beena friend in trouble, a companion in vigils, and the echo of a lifetimeof duty, affection, piety and virtue. I was more moved than I can say. It was like a scene of Dickens, and I felt a rush of sympathy, untouchedeither by egotism or by melancholy. 

Twenty-five years! It seems to me a dream as far as I am concerned, andI can scarcely believe my eyes, or this inanimate witness to so manylustres passed away. How strange a thing _to have lived_, and to feelmyself so far from a past which yet is so present to me! One does notknow whether one is sleeping or waking. Time is but the space betweenour memories; as soon as we cease to perceive this space, time hasdisappeared. The whole life of an old man may appear to him no longerthan 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 feltit anew this evening with strange intensity. 

January 29, 1866. (_Nine o'clock in the morning_). --The gray curtain ofmist has spread itself again over the town; everything is dark and dull. The bells are ringing in the distance for some festival; with thisexception everything is calm and silent. Except for the crackling of thefire, no noise disturbs my solitude in this modest home, the shelter ofmy thoughts and of my work, where the man of middle age carries on thelife of his student-youth without the zest of youth, and the sedentaryprofessor repeats day by day the habits which he formed as a traveler. 

What is it which makes the charm of this existence outwardly so barrenand empty? Liberty! What does the absence of comfort and of all elsethat is wanting to these rooms matter to me? These things areindifferent to me. I find under this roof light, quiet, shelter. I amnear to a sister and her children, whom I love; my material life isassured--that ought to be enough for a bachelor. . . . Am I not, besides, acreature of habit? more attached to the _ennuis_ I know, than in lovewith pleasures unknown to me. I am, then, free and not unhappy. Then Iam well off here, and I should be ungrateful to complain. Nor do I. Itis 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 gothrough torments and troubles in order to satisfy themselves, and allwithout success; others foresee the inevitable result, and by a timelyresignation save themselves a barren and fruitless effort. Since wecannot be happy, why give ourselves so much trouble? It is best to limitone's self to what is strictly necessary, to live austerely and by rule, to content one's self with a little, and to attach no value to anythingbut peace of conscience and a sense of duty done. 

It is true that this itself is no small ambition, and that it only landsus in another impossibility. No--the simplest course is to submit one'sself wholly and altogether to God. Everything else, as saith thepreacher, is but vanity and vexation of spirit. 

It is a long while now since this has been plain to me, and since thisreligious renunciation has been sweet and familiar to me. It is theoutward distractions of life, the examples of the world, and theirresistible influence exerted upon us by the current of things whichmake us forget the wisdom we have acquired and the principles we haveadopted. That is why life is such weariness! This eternal beginning overagain is tedious, even to repulsion. It would be so good to go to sleepwhen we have gathered the fruit of experience, when we are no longer inopposition 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 oftemptations, disputes, _ennuis_, and forgettings, has to be faced againand again, and we fall back into prose, into commonness, into vulgarity. How melancholy, how humiliating! The poets are wise in withdrawing theirheroes more quickly from the strife, and in not dragging them aftervictory along the common rut of barren days. "Whom the gods love dieyoung, " said the proverb of antiquity. 

Yes, but it is our secret self-love which is set upon this favor from onhigh; such may be our desire, but such is not the will of God. We are tobe exercised, humbled, tried, and tormented to the end. It is ourpatience which is the touchstone of our virtue. To bear with life evenwhen illusion and hope are gone; to accept this position of perpetualwar, while at the same time loving only peace; to stay patiently in theworld, even when it repels us as a place of low company, and seems to usa mere arena of bad passions; to remain faithful to one's own faithwithout breaking with the followers of the false gods; to make noattempt to escape from the human hospital, long-suffering and patient asJob upon his dung hill--this is duty. When life ceases to be a promiseit does not cease to be a task; its true name even is trial. 

April 2, 1866. (_Mornex_). --The snow is melting and a damp fog is spreadover everything. The asphalt gallery which runs along the _salon_ is asheet of quivering water starred incessantly by the hurrying dropsfalling from the sky. It seems as if one could touch the horizon withone's hand, and the miles of country which were yesterday visible areall 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--solong, at least, as he is not frozen and congealed by cold. Fog hascertainly a poetry of its own--a grace, a dreamy charm. It does for thedaylight what a lamp does for us at night; it turns the mind towardmeditation; it throws the soul back on itself. The sun, as it were, sheds us abroad in nature, scatters and disperses us; mist draws ustogether and concentrates us--it is cordial, homely, charged withfeeling. The poetry of the sun has something of the epic in it; that offog and mist is elegaic and religious. Pantheism is the child of light;mist engenders faith in near protectors. When the great world is shutoff from us, the house becomes itself a small universe. Shrouded inperpetual mist, men love each other better; for the only reality then isthe family, and, within the family, the heart; and the greatest thoughtscome from the heart--so says the moralist. 

April 6, 1866. --The novel by Miss Mulock, "John Halifax, Gentleman, " isa bolder book than it seems, for it attacks in the English way thesocial problem of equality. And the solution reached is that every onemay become a gentleman, even though he may be born in the gutter. In itsway the story protests against conventional superiorities, and showsthat true nobility consists in character, in personal merit, in moraldistinction, in elevation of feeling and of language, in dignity oflife, and in self-respect. This is better than Jacobinism, and theopposite of the mere brutal passion for equality. Instead of draggingeverybody down, the author simply proclaims the right of every one torise. A man may be born rich and noble--he is not born a gentleman. Thisword is the Shibboleth of England; it divides her into two halves, andcivilized society into two castes. Among gentlemen--courtesy, equality, and politeness; toward those below--contempt, disdain, coldness andindifference. It is the old separation between the _ingenui_ and allothers; between the [Greek: eleutheroi] and the [Greek: banauphoi], thecontinuation of the feudal division between the gentry and the_roturiers_. 

What, then, is a gentleman? Apparently he is the free man, the man whois stronger than things, and believes in personality as superior to allthe accessory attributes of fortune, such as rank and power, and asconstituting what is essential, real, and intrinsically valuable in theindividual. Tell me what you are, and I will tell you what you areworth. "God and my Right;" there is the only motto he believes in. Suchan ideal is happily opposed to that vulgar ideal which is equallyEnglish, the ideal of wealth, with its formula, "_How much_ is heworth?" In a country where poverty is a crime, it is good to be able tosay that a nabob need not as such be a gentleman. The mercantile idealand the chivalrous ideal counterbalance each other; and if the oneproduces the ugliness of English society and its brutal side, the otherserves as a compensation. 

The gentleman, then, is the man who is master of himself, who respectshimself, and makes others respect him. The essence of gentlemanliness isself-rule, the sovereignty of the soul. It means a character whichpossesses itself, a force which governs itself, a liberty which affirmsand regulates itself, according to the type of true dignity. Such anideal is closely akin to the Roman type of _dignitas cum auctoritate_. It is more moral than intellectual, and is particularly suited toEngland, which is pre-eminently the country of will. But fromself-respect a thousand other things are derived--such as the care of aman's person, of his language, of his manners; watchfulness over hisbody and over his soul; dominion over his instincts and his passions;the effort to be self-sufficient; the pride which will accept no favor;carefulness not to expose himself to any humiliation or mortification, and to maintain himself independent of any human caprice; the constantprotection of his honor and of his self-respect. Such a condition ofsovereignty, insomuch as it is only easy to the man who is well-born, well-bred, and rich, was naturally long identified with birth, rank, andabove all with property. The idea "gentleman" is, then, derived fromfeudality; it is, as it were, a milder version of the seigneur. 

In order to lay himself open to no reproach, a gentleman will keephimself irreproachable; in order to be treated with consideration, hewill always be careful himself to observe distances, to apportionrespect, and to observe all the gradations of conventional politeness, according to rank, age, and situation. Hence it follows that he will beimperturbably cautious in the presence of a stranger, whose name andworth are unknown to him, and to whom he might perhaps show too much ortoo little courtesy. He ignores and avoids him; if he is approached, heturns away, if he is addressed, he answers shortly and with _hauteur_. His politeness is not human and general, but individual and relative topersons. This is why every Englishman contains two different men--oneturned toward the world, and another. The first, the outer man, is acitadel, a cold and angular wall; the other, the inner man, is asensible, affectionate, cordial, and loving creature. Such a type isonly formed in a moral climate full of icicles, where, in the face of anindifferent world, the hearth alone is hospitable. 

So that an analysis of the national type of gentlemen reveals to us thenature and the history of the nation, as the fruit reveals the tree. 

April 7, 1866. --If philosophy is the art of understanding, it is evidentthat it must begin by saturating itself with facts and realities, andthat premature abstraction kills it, just as the abuse of fastingdestroys the body at the age of growth. Besides, we only understand thatwhich is already within us. To understand is to possess the thingunderstood, first by sympathy and then by intelligence. Instead, then, of first dismembering and dissecting the object to be conceived, weshould begin by laying hold of it in its _ensemble_, then in itsformation, last of all in its parts. The procedure is the same, whetherwe study a watch or a plant, a work of art or a character. We muststudy, respect, and question what we want to know, instead of massacringit. We must assimilate ourselves to things and surrender ourselves tothem; we must open our minds with docility to their influence, and steepourselves in their spirit and their distinctive form, before we offerviolence to them by dissecting them. 

April 14, 1866. --Panic, confusion, _sauve qui peut_ on the Bourse atParis. In our epoch of individualism, and of "each man for himself andGod for all, " the movements of the public funds are all that nowrepresent to us the beat of the common heart. The solidarity ofinterests which they imply counterbalances the separateness of modernaffections, and the obligatory sympathy they impose upon us recalls toone a little the patriotism which bore the forced taxes of old days. Wefeel ourselves bound up with and compromised in all the world's affairs, and we must interest ourselves whether we will or no in the terriblemachine whose wheels may crush us at any moment. Credit produces arestless society, trembling perpetually for the security of itsartificial basis. Sometimes society may forget for awhile that it isdancing upon a volcano, but the least rumor of war recalls the fact toit 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 inpeace. 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 andtremble with me!" To accept humanity, as one does nature, and to resignone's self to the will of an individual, as one does to destiny, is noteasy. 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 beenembarked by violence, and which has been steered contrary to his wishand his opinion. And yet such is perpetually the case in life. We all ofus pay for the faults of the few. 

Human solidarity is a fact more evident and more certain than personalresponsibility, and even than individual liberty. Our dependence has itover our independence; for we are only independent in will and desire, while we are dependent upon our health, upon nature and society; inshort, upon everything in us and without us. Our liberty is confined toone single point. We may protest against all these oppressive and fatalpowers; we may say, Crush me--you will never win my consent! We may, byan exercise of will, throw ourselves into opposition to necessity, andrefuse it homage and obedience. In that consists our moral liberty. Butexcept for that, we belong, body and goods, to the world. We are itsplaythings, as the dust is the plaything of the wind, or the dead leafof the floods. God at least respects our dignity, but the world rolls uscontemptuously along in its merciless waves, in order to make it plainthat we are its thing and its chattel. 

All theories of the nullity of the individual, all pantheistic andmaterialist conceptions, are now but so much forcing of an open door, somuch slaying of the slain. As soon as we cease to glorify thisimperceptible point of conscience, and to uphold the value of it, theindividual becomes naturally a mere atom in the human mass, which is butan atom in the planetary mass, which is a mere nothing in the universe. The individual is then but a nothing of the third power, with a capacityfor measuring its nothingness! Thought leads to resignation. Self-doubtleads to passivity, and passivity to servitude. From this a voluntarysubmission is the only escape, that is to say, a state of dependencereligiously accepted, a vindication of ourselves as free beings, bowedbefore duty only. Duty thus becomes our principle of action, our sourceof energy, the guarantee of our partial independence of the world, thecondition of our dignity, the sign of our nobility. The world canneither make me will nor make me will my duty; here I am my own and onlymaster, and treat with it as sovereign with sovereign. It holds my bodyin its clutches; but my soul escapes and braves it. My thought and mylove, my faith and my hope, are beyond its reach. My true being, theessence of my nature, myself, remain inviolate and inaccessible to theworld's attacks. In this respect we are greater than the universe, whichhas mass and not will; we become once more independent even in relationto the human mass, which also can destroy nothing more than ourhappiness, just as the mass of the universe can destroy nothing morethan our body. Submission, then, is not defeat; on the contrary, it isstrength. 

April 28, 1866. --I have just read the _procès-verbal_ of the Conferenceof Pastors held on the 15th and 16th of April at Paris. The question ofthe supernatural has split the church of France in two. The liberalsinsist upon individual right; the orthodox upon the notion of a church. And it is true indeed that a church is an affirmation, that it subsistsby the positive element in it, by definite belief; the pure criticalelement dissolves it. Protestantism is a combination of two factors--theauthority of the Scriptures and free inquiry; as soon as one of thesefactors is threatened or disappears, Protestantism disappears; a newform of Christianity succeeds it, as, for example, the church of theBrothers of the Holy Ghost, or that of Christian Theism. As far as I amconcerned, I see nothing objectionable in such a result, but I think thefriends of the Protestant church are logical in their refusal to abandonthe apostle's creed, and the individualists are illogical in imaginingthat they can keep Protestantism and do away with authority. 

It is a question of method which separates the two camps. I amfundamentally separated from both. As I understand it, Christianity isabove all religions, and religion is not a method, it is a life, ahigher and supernatural life, mystical in its root and practical in itsfruits, a communion with God, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love whichradiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows. Religion, inshort, is a state of the soul. These quarrels as to method have theirvalue, but it is a secondary value; they will never console a heart oredify a conscience. This is why I feel so little interest in theseecclesiastical struggles. Whether the one party or the other gain themajority and the victory, what is essential is in no way profited, fordogma, criticism, the church, are not religion; and it is religion, thesense of a divine life, which matters. "Seek ye first the kingdom of Godand his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. "The most holy is the most Christian; this will always be the criterionwhich is least deceptive. "By this ye shall know my disciples, if theyhave 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. Begood and pious, patient and heroic, faithful and devoted, humble andcharitable; the catechism which has taught you these things is beyondthe reach of blame. By religion we live in God; but all these quarrelslead to nothing but life with men or with cassocks. There is thereforeno equivalence between the two points of view. 

Perfection as an end--a noble example for sustenance on the way--thedivine proved by its own excellence, is not this the whole ofChristianity? God manifest in all men, is not this its true goal andconsummation?

September 20, 1866. --My old friends are, I am afraid, disappointed inme; they think that I do nothing, that I have deceived theirexpectations and their hopes. I, too, am disappointed. All that wouldrestore my self-respect and give me a right to be proud of myself, seemsto me unattainable and impossible, and I fall back upon trivialities, gay talk, distractions. I am always equally lacking in hope, in faith, in resolution. The only difference is that my weakness takes sometimesthe form of despairing melancholy and sometimes that of a cheerfulquietism. And yet I read, I talk, I teach, I write, but to no effect; itis as though I were walking in my sleep. The Buddhist tendency in meblunts the faculty of free self-government and weakens the power ofaction; self-distrust kills all desire, and reduces me again and againto a fundamental skepticism. I care for nothing but the serious and thereal, and I can take neither myself nor my circumstances seriously. Ihold my own personality, my own aptitudes, my own aspirations, toocheap. I am forever making light of myself in the name of all that isbeautiful and admirable. In a word, I bear within me a perpetualself-detractor, and this is what takes all spring out of my life. I havebeen passing the evening with Charles Heim, who, in his sincerity, hasnever paid me any literary compliment. As I love and respect him, he isforgiven. Self-love has nothing to do with it--and yet it would be sweetto be praised by so upright a friend! It is depressing to feel one'sself silently disapproved of; I will try to satisfy him, and to think ofa book which may please both him and Scherer. 

October 6, 1866. --I have just picked up on the stairs a little yellowishcat, ugly and pitiable. Now, curled up in a chair at my side, he seemsperfectly happy, and as if he wanted nothing more. Far from being wild, nothing will induce him to leave me, and he has followed me from room toroom all day. I have nothing at all that is eatable in the house, butwhat I have I give him--that is to say, a look and a caress--and thatseems 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 ofprotection and of gentleness is concerned. . . . People have sometimes saidto me that weak and feeble creatures are happy with me. Perhaps such afact has to do with some special gift or beneficent force which flowsfrom one when one is in the sympathetic state. I have often a directperception of such a force; but I am no ways proud of it, nor do I lookupon it as anything belonging to me, but simply as a natural gift. Itseems to me sometimes as though I could woo the birds to build in mybeard as they do in the headgear of some cathedral saint! After all, this is the natural state and the true relation of man toward allinferior creatures. If man was what he ought to be he would be adored bythe animals, of whom he is too often the capricious and sanguinarytyrant. The legend of Saint Francis of Assisi is not so legendary as wethink; and it is not so certain that it was the wild beasts who attackedman first. . . . But to exaggerate nothing, let us leave on one side thebeasts of prey, the carnivora, and those that live by rapine andslaughter. How many other species are there, by thousands and tens ofthousands, who ask peace from us and with whom we persist in waging abrutal 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 eveninvented for its own use the right of the strongest--a divine rightwhich quiets its conscience in the face of the conquered and theoppressed; we have outlawed all that lives except ourselves. Revoltingand manifest abuse; notorious and contemptible breach of the law ofjustice! The bad faith and hypocrisy of it are renewed on a small scaleby all successful usurpers. We are always making God our accomplice, that so we may legalize our own iniquities. Every successful massacre isconsecrated by a Te Deum, and the clergy have never been wanting inbenedictions for any victorious enormity. So that what, in thebeginning, was the relation of man to the animal becomes that of peopleto people and man to man. 

If so, we have before us an expiation too seldom noticed but altogetherjust. All crime must be expiated, and slavery is the repetition amongmen of the sufferings brutally imposed by man upon other living beings;it is the theory bearing its fruits. The right of man over the animalseems to me to cease with the need of defense and of subsistence. Sothat all unnecessary murder and torture are cowardice and even crime. The animal renders a service of utility; man in return owes it a need ofprotection and of kindness. In a word, the animal has claims on man, andthe man has duties to the animal. Buddhism, no doubt, exaggerates thistruth, but the Westerns leave it out of count altogether. A day willcome, however, when our standard will be higher, our humanity moreexacting, than it is to-day. _Homo homini lupus_, said Hobbes: the timewill come when man will be humane even for the wolf--_homo lupo homo_. 

December 30, 1866. --Skepticism pure and simple as the only safeguard ofintellectual independence--such is the point of view of almost all ouryoung men of talent. Absolute freedom from credulity seems to them theglory of man. My impression has always been that this excessivedetachment of the individual from all received prejudices and opinionsin reality does the work of tyranny. This evening, in listening to theconversation of some of our most cultivated men, I thought of theRenaissance, of the Ptolemies, of the reign of Louis XV. , of all thosetimes in which the exultant anarchy of the intellect has had despoticgovernment for its correlative, and, on the other hand, of England, ofHolland, of the United States, countries in which political liberty isbought at the price of necessary prejudices and _à priori_ opinions. 

That society may hold together at all, we must have a principle ofcohesion--that is to say, a common belief, principles recognized andundisputed, a series of practical axioms and institutions which are notat the mercy of every caprice of public opinion. By treating everythingas if it were an open question, we endanger everything. 

Doubt is the accomplice of tyranny. "If a people will not believe itmust obey, " said Tocqueville. All liberty implies dependence, and hasits conditions; this is what negative and quarrelsome minds are apt toforget. They think they can do away with religion; they do not know thatreligion is indestructible, and that the question is simply, Which willyou have? Voltaire plays the game of Loyola, and _vice versâ_. Betweenthese two there is no peace, nor can there be any for the society whichhas once thrown itself into the dilemma. The only solution lies in afree religion, a religion of free choice and free adhesion. 

December 23, 1866. --It is raining over the whole sky--as far at least asI can see from my high point of observation. All is gray from the Salèveto the Jura, and from the pavement to the clouds; everything that onesees or touches is gray; color, life, and gayety are dead--each livingthing seems to lie hidden in its own particular shell. What are thebirds doing in such weather as this? We who have food and shelter, fireon the hearth, books around us, portfolios of engravings close at hand, a nestful of dreams in the heart, and a whirlwind of thoughts ready torise from the ink-bottle--we find nature ugly and _triste_, and turnaway 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 eachone of us?

I have just been reading over a volume of this Journal, and feel alittle ashamed of the languid complaining tone of so much of it. Thesepages reproduce me very imperfectly, and there are many things in me ofwhich I find no trace in them. I suppose it is because, in the firstplace, sadness takes up the pen more readily than joy; and in the next, because I depend so much upon surrounding circumstances. When there isno call upon me, and nothing to put me to the test, I fall back intomelancholy; and so the practical man, the cheerful man, the literaryman, does not appear in these pages. The portrait is lacking inproportion and breadth; it is one-sided, and wants a center; it has, asit were, been painted from too near. 

The true reason why we know ourselves so little lies in the difficultywe find in standing at a proper distance from ourselves, in taking upthe right point of view, so that the details may help rather than hidethe general effect. We must learn to look at ourselves socially andhistorically if we wish to have an exact idea of our relative worth, andto look at our life as a whole, or at least as one complete period oflife, if we wish to know what we are and what we are not. The ant whichcrawls to and fro over a face, the fly perched upon the forehead of amaiden, touch them indeed, but do not see them, for they never embracethe whole at a glance. 

Is it wonderful that misunderstandings should play so great a part inthe world, when one sees how difficult it is to produce a faithfulportrait of a person whom one has been studying for more than twentyyears? Still, the effort has not been altogether lost; its reward hasbeen the sharpening of one's perceptions of the outer world. If I haveany special power of appreciating different shades of mind, I owe it nodoubt to the analysis I have so perpetually and unsuccessfully practicedon myself. In fact, I have always regarded myself as matter for study, and what has interested me most in myself has been the pleasure ofhaving under my hand a man, a person, in whom, as an authentic specimenof human nature, I could follow, without importunity or indiscretion, all the metamorphoses, the secret thoughts, the heart-beats, and thetemptations of humanity. My attention has been drawn to myselfimpersonally and philosophically. One uses what one has, and one mustshape one's arrow out of one's own wood. 

To arrive at a faithful portrait, succession must be converted intosimultaneousness, plurality into unity, and all the changing phenomenamust be traced back to their essence. There are ten men in me, accordingto time, place, surrounding, and occasion; and in their restlessdiversity I am forever escaping myself. Therefore, whatever I may revealof my past, of my Journal, or of myself, is of no use to him who iswithout the poetic intuition, and cannot recompose me as a whole, withor in spite of the elements which I confide to him. 

I feel myself a chameleon, a kaleidoscope, a Proteus; changeable inevery way, open to every kind of polarization; fluid, virtual, andtherefore latent--latent even in manifestation, and absent even inpresentation. I am a spectator, so to speak, of the molecular whirlwindwhich men call individual life; I am conscious of an incessantmetamorphosis, an irresistible movement of existence, which is going onwithin 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 theradiations of my special force. 

This phenomenology of myself serves both as the magic lantern of my owndestiny, and as a window opened upon the mystery of the world. I am, orrather, my sensible consciousness is concentrated upon this idealstanding-point, this invisible threshold, as it were, whence one hearsthe impetuous passage of time, rushing and foaming as it flows out intothe changeless ocean of eternity. After all the bewildering distractionsof life, after having drowned myself in a multiplicity of trifles and inthe caprices of this fugitive existence, yet without ever attaining toself-intoxication or self-delusion, I come again upon the fathomlessabyss, the silent and melancholy cavern where dwell "_Die Mütter_, "[Footnote: "_Die Mütter_"--an allusion to a strange and enigmatical, but very effective conception in "Faust" (Part II. Act I. Scene v. ) _DieMütter_ are the prototypes, the abstract forms, the generative ideas, ofthings. "Sie sehn dich nicht, denn Schemen sehn sie nur. " Goetheborrowed the term from a passage of Plutarch's, but he has made the ideahalf Platonic, half legendary. Amiel, however, seems rather to have inhis mind Faust's speech in Scene vii. Than the speech of Mephistophelesin Scene v:

 "In eurem Namen, Mütter, die ihr thront Im Gränzenlosen, ewig einsam wohnt, Und doch gesellig! Euer haupt umschweben Des Lebens Bilder, regsam, ohne Leben. "]

where sleeps that which neither lives nor dies, that which has neithermovement, nor change, nor extension, nor form, and which lasts when allelse passes away. 

 "Dans l'éternel azur de l'insondable espace S'enveloppe de paix notre globe agitée: Homme, enveloppe ainsi tes jours, rêve qui passe, Du calme firmament de ton éternité. "

(H. P. AMIEL, _Penseroso_. )

Geneva, January 11, 1867. 

 "Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume, Labuntar anni. . . . "

I hear the drops of my life falling distinctly one by one into thedevouring abyss of eternity. I feel my days flying before the pursuit ofdeath. All that remains to me of weeks, or months, or years, in which Imay drink in the light of the sun, seems to me no more than a singlenight, a summer night, which scarcely counts, because it will so soon beat an end. 

Death! Silence! Eternity! What mysteries, what names of terror to thebeing who longs for happiness, immortality, perfection! Where shall I beto-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 eternalproblems rise before us in their implacable solemnity. Mystery on allsides! And faith the only star in this darkness and uncertainty!

No matter!--so long as the world is the work of eternal goodness, and solong as conscience has not deceived us. To give happiness and to dogood, there is our only law, our anchor of salvation, our beacon light, our reason for existing. All religions may crumble away; so long as thissurvives we have still an ideal, and life is worth living. 

Nothing can lessen the dignity and value of humanity

 Was einmal war, in allem Glanz und Schein, Es regt sich dort; denn es will ewig sein. Und ihr vertheilt es, allgewaltige Mächte, Zum Zelt des Tages, zum Gewölb' der Nächte. 

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 feelourselves still capable of love. 

April 15, 1867--(_Seven_ A. M. ). --Rain storms in the night--the weatheris showing its April caprice. From the window one sees a gray andmelancholy sky, and roofs glistering with rain. The spring is at itswork. Yes, and the implacable flight of time is driving us toward thegrave. Well--each has his turn!

 "Allez, allez, ô jeunes filles, Cueillir des bleuets dans les blés!"

I am overpowered with melancholy, languor, lassitude. A longing for thelast great sleep has taken possession of me, combated, however, by athirst for sacrifice--sacrifice heroic and long-sustained. Are not bothsimply ways of escape from one's self? "Sleep, or self-surrender, that Imay die to self!"--such is the cry of the heart. Poor heart!

April 17, 1867. --Awake, thou that sleepest, and rise from the dead. 

What needs perpetually refreshing and renewing in me is my store ofcourage. By nature I am so easily disgusted with life, I fall a prey soreadily to despair and pessimism. 

"The happy man, as this century is able to produce him, " according toMadame ----, is a _Weltmüde_, one who keeps a brave face before theworld, and distracts himself as best he can from dwelling upon thethought which is hidden at his heart--a thought which has in it thesadness of death--the thought of the irreparable. The outward peace ofsuch a man is but despair well masked; his gayety is the carelessness ofa heart which has lost all its illusions, and has learned to acquiescein an indefinite putting off of happiness. His wisdom is reallyacclimatization to sacrifice, his gentleness should be taken to meanprivation patiently borne rather than resignation. In a word, he submitsto an existence in which he feels no joy, and he cannot hide fromhimself that all the alleviations with which it is strewn cannot satisfythe soul. The thirst for the infinite is never appeased. God is wanting. 

To win true peace, a man needs to feel himself directed, pardoned, andsustained by a supreme power, to feel himself in the right road, at thepoint 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 circumstances seems to me providential. All appears tome left to my own responsibility, and it is this thought which disgustsme with the government of my own life. I longed to give myself up whollyto some great love, some noble end; I would willingly have lived anddied for the ideal--that is to say, for a holy cause. But once theimpossibility of this made clear to me, I have never since taken aserious interest in anything, and have, as it were, but amused myselfwith a destiny of which I was no longer the dupe. 

Sybarite and dreamer, will you go on like this to the end--forevertossed backward and forward between duty and happiness, incapable ofchoice, of action? Is not life the test of our moral force, and allthese inward waverings, are they not temptations of the soul?

September 6, 1867, _Weissenstein_. [Footnote: Weissenstein is a highpoint in the Jura, above Soleure. ] (_Ten o'clock in the morning_). --Amarvelous view of blinding and bewildering beauty. Above a milky sea ofcloud, flooded with morning light, the rolling waves of which arebeating up against the base of the wooded steeps of the Weissenstein, the vast circle of the Alps soars to a sublime height. The eastern sideof the horizon is drowned in the splendors of the rising mists; but fromthe Tödi westward, the whole chain floats pure and clear between themilky plain and the pale blue sky. The giant assembly is sitting incouncil above the valleys and the lakes still submerged in vapor. TheClariden, the Spannörter, the Titlis, then the Bernese _colossi_ fromthe Wetterhorn to the Diablerets, then the peaks of Vaud, Valais, andFribourg, and beyond these high chains the two kings of the Alps, MontBlanc, of a pale pink, and the bluish point of Monte Rosa, peering outthrough a cleft in the Doldenhorn--such is the composition of the greatsnowy amphitheatre. The outline of the horizon takes all possible forms:needles, ridges, battlements, pyramids, obelisks, teeth, fangs, pincers, horns, cupolas; the mountain profile sinks, rises again, twists andsharpens itself in a thousand ways, but always so as to maintain anangular and serrated line. Only the inferior and secondary groups ofmountains show any large curves or sweeping undulations of form. TheAlps are more than an upheaval; they are a tearing and gashing of theearth's surface. Their granite peaks bite into the sky instead ofcaressing it. The Jura, on the contrary, spreads its broad backcomplacently under the blue dome of air. 

_Eleven o'clock_. --The sea of vapor has risen and attacked themountains, which for a long time overlooked it like so many huge reefs. For awhile it surged in vain over the lower slopes of the Alps. Thenrolling back upon itself, it made a more successful onslaught upon theJura, and now we are enveloped in its moving waves. The milky sea hasbecome one vast cloud, which has swallowed up the plain and themountains, observatory and observer. Within this cloud one may hear thesheep-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; ayoung girl and her brother have arrived. The girl is very pretty, andparticularly dainty and elegant in all her ways; she seems to touchthings 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 howto admire, and thinks of herself more than of anything else. Thisperhaps is a drawback inseparable from a beauty and a figure whichattract all eyes. She is, besides, a townswoman to the core, and feelsherself out of place in this great nature, which probably seems to herbarbarous and ill-bred. At any rate she does not let it interfere withher in any way, and parades herself on the mountains with her littlebonnet and her scarcely perceptible sunshade, as though she were on theboulevard. She belongs to that class of tourists so amusingly drawn byTöpffer. Character: _naïve_ conceit. Country: France. Standard of life:fashion. Some cleverness but no sense of reality, no understanding ofnature, no consciousness of the manifold diversities of the world and ofthe right of life to be what it is, and to follow its own way and notours. 

This ridiculous element in her is connected with the same nationalprejudice which holds France to be the center point of the world, andleads Frenchmen to neglect geography and languages. The ordinary Frenchtownsman is really deliciously stupid in spite of all his naturalcleverness, for he understands nothing but himself. His pole, his axis, his center, his all is Paris--or even less--Parisian manners, the tasteof the day, fashion. Thanks to this organized fetishism, we havemillions of copies of one single original pattern; a whole people movingtogether like bobbins in the same machine, or the legs of a single_corps d'armée_. The result is wonderful but wearisome; wonderful inpoint of material strength, wearisome psychologically. A hundredthousand sheep are not more instructive than one sheep, but they furnisha hundred thousand times more wool, meat, and manure. This is all, youmay say, that the shepherd--that is, the master--requires. Very well, but one can only maintain breeding-farms or monarchies on theseprinciples. For a republic you must have men: it cannot get on withoutindividualities. 

_Noon_. --An exquisite effect. A great herd of cattle are running acrossthe meadows under my window, which is just illuminated by a furtive rayof sunshine. The picture has a ghostly suddenness and brilliancy; itpierces the mists which close upon it, like the slide of a magiclantern. 

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 stormand tumult. But we need the understanding of eternal things and thesentiment of the infinite to be able to feel this. The divine state _parexcellence_ is that of silence and repose, because all speech and allaction are in themselves limited and fugitive. Napoleon with his armscrossed over his breast is more expressive than the furious Herculesbeating the air with his athlete's fists. People of passionatetemperament never understand this. They are only sensitive to the energyof succession; they know nothing of the energy of condensation. They canonly be impressed by acts and effects, by noise and effort. They have noinstinct of contemplation, no sense of the pure cause, the fixed sourceof all movement, the principle of all effects, the center of all light, which does not need to spend itself in order to be sure of its ownwealth, nor to throw itself into violent motion to be certain of its ownpower. The art of passion is sure to please, but it is not the highestart; it is true, indeed, that under the rule of democracy, the serenerand calmer forms of art become more and more difficult; the turbulentherd no longer knows the gods. 

 * * * * *

Minds accustomed to analysis never allow objections more than ahalf-value, because they appreciate the variable and relative elementswhich enter in. 

 * * * * *

A well-governed mind learns in time to find pleasure in nothing but thetrue and the just. 

January 10, 1868. (_Eleven_ P. M. ). --We have had a philosophical meetingat the house of Edouard Claparède. [Footnote: Edouard Claparède, aGenevese naturalist, born 1832, died 1871. ] The question on the order ofthe day was the nature of sensation. Claparède pronounced for theabsolute subjectivity of all experience--in other words, for pureidealism--which is amusing, from a naturalist. According to him the_ego_ alone exists, and the universe is but a projection of the _ego_, aphantasmagoria which we ourselves create without suspecting it, believing all the time that we are lookers-on. It is our noümenon whichobjectifies itself as phenomenon. The _ego_, according to him, is aradiating force which, modified without knowing what it is that modifiesit, imagines it, by virtue of the principle of causality--that is tosay, produces the great illusion of the objective world in order so toexplain itself. Our waking life, therefore, is but a more connecteddream. The self is an unknown which gives birth to an infinite number ofunknowns, by a fatality of its nature. Science is summed up in theconsciousness that nothing exists but consciousness. In other words, theintelligent issues from the unintelligible in order to return to it, orrather the ego explains itself by the hypothesis of the _non-ego_, whilein reality it is but a dream, dreaming itself. We might say withScarron:

 "Et je vis l'ombre d'un esprit Qui traçait l'ombre d'um système Avec l'ombre de l'ombre même. "

This abolition of nature by natural science is logical, and it was, infact, Schelling's starting-point. From the standpoint of physiology, nature is but a necessary illusion, a constitutional hallucination. Weonly escape from this bewitchment by the moral activity of the _ego_, which feels itself a cause and a free cause, and which by itsresponsibility breaks the spell and issues from the enchanted circle ofMaïa. 

Maïa! Is she indeed the true goddess? Hindoo wisdom long ago regardedthe world as the dream of Brahma. Must we hold with Fichte that it isthe individual dream of each individual _ego_? Every fool would then bea cosmogonic poet producing the firework of the universe under the domeof the infinite. But why then give ourselves such gratuitous trouble tolearn? In our dreams, at least, nightmare excepted, we endow ourselveswith complete ubiquity, liberty and omniscience. Are we then lessingenious and inventive awake than asleep?

January 25, 1868. --It is when the outer man begins to decay that itbecomes vitally important to us to believe in immortality, and to feelwith the apostle that the inner man is renewed from day to day. But forthose who doubt it and have no hope of it? For them the remainder oflife can only be the compulsory dismemberment of their small empire, thegradual dismantling of their being by inexorable destiny. How hard it isto bear--this long-drawn death, of which the stages are melancholy andthe end inevitable! It is easy to see why it was that stoicismmaintained the right of suicide. What is my real faith? Has theuniversal, 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 ofthe soul against those who questioned it, and yet when I have reducedthem to silence, I have scarcely known whether at bottom I was not afterall on their side. I try to do without hope; but it is possible that Ihave no longer the strength for it, and that, like other men, I must besustained and consoled by a belief, by the belief in pardon andimmortality--that is to say, by religious belief of the Christian type. Reason and thought grow tired, like muscles and nerves. They must havetheir sleep, and this sleep is the relapse into the tradition ofchildhood, into the common hope. It takes so much effort to maintainone's self in an exceptional point of view, that one falls back intoprejudice by pure exhaustion, just as the man who stands indefinitelyalways ends by sinking to the ground and reassuming the horizontalposition. 

What is to become of us when everything leaves us--health, joy, affections, the freshness of sensation, memory, capacity for work--whenthe sun seems to us to have lost its warmth, and life is stripped of allits charm? What is to become of us without hope? Must we either hardenor forget? There is but one answer--keep close to duty. Never mind thefuture, if only you have peace of conscience, if you feel yourselfreconciled, and in harmony with the order of things. Be what you oughtto be; the rest is God's affair. It is for him to know what is best, totake care of his own glory, to ensure the happiness of what depends onhim, whether by another life or by annihilation. And supposing thatthere were no good and holy God, nothing but universal being, the law ofthe all, an ideal without hypostasis or reality, duty would still be thekey of the enigma, the pole-star of a wandering humanity. 

 "Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra. "

January 26, 1868. --Blessed be childhood, which brings down something ofheaven into the midst of our rough earthliness. These eighty thousanddaily births, of which statistics tell us, represent as it were aneffusion of innocence and freshness, struggling not only against thedeath of the race, but against human corruption, and the universalgangrene of sin. All the good and wholesome feeling which is intertwinedwith childhood and the cradle is one of the secrets of the providentialgovernment of the world. Suppress this life-giving dew, and humansociety would be scorched and devastated by selfish passion. Supposingthat humanity had been composed of a thousand millions of immortalbeings, whose number could neither increase nor diminish, where shouldwe be, and what should we be! A thousand times more learned, no doubt, but a thousand times more evil. There would have been a vastaccumulation of science, but all the virtues engendered by suffering anddevotion--that is to say, by the family and society--would have noexistence. And for this there would be no compensation. 

Blessed be childhood for the good that it does, and for the good whichit brings about carelessly and unconsciously by simply making us love itand letting itself be loved. What little of paradise we see still onearth is due to its presence among us. Without fatherhood, withoutmotherhood, I think that love itself would not be enough to prevent menfrom devouring each other--men, that is to say, such as human passionshave made them. The angels have no need of birth and death asfoundations for their life, because their life is heavenly. 

February 16, 1868. --I have been finishing About's "Mainfroy (LesMariages de Province). " What subtlety, what cleverness, what _verve_, what _aplomb_! About is a master of epithet, of quick, light-wingedsatire. For all his cavalier freedom of manner, his work is conceived atbottom in a spirit of the subtlest irony, and his detachment of mind isso great that he is able to make sport of everything, to mock at othersand himself, while all the time amusing himself extremely with his ownideas and inventions. This is indeed the characteristic mark, the commonsignature, so to speak, of _esprit_ like his. 

Irrepressible mischief, indefatigable elasticity, a power of luminousmockery, delight in the perpetual discharge of innumerable arrows froman inexhaustible quiver, the unquenchable laughter of some littleearth-born demon, perpetual gayety, and a radiant force ofepigram--there are all these in the true humorist. _Stulti suntinnumerabiles_, said Erasmus, the patron of all these dainty mockers. Folly, conceit, foppery, silliness, affectation, hypocrisy, attitudinizing and pedantry of all shades, and in all forms, everythingthat poses, prances, bridles, struts, bedizens, and plumes itself, everything that takes itself seriously and tries to impose itself onmankind--all this is the natural prey of the satirist, so many targetsready for his arrows, so many victims offered to his attack. And we allknow how rich the world is in prey of this kind! An alderman's feast offolly is served up to him in perpetuity; the spectacle of society offershim an endless _noce de Gamache_. [Footnote: _Noce de Gamache_--"repastrès somptueux. "--Littré. The allusion, of course, is to Don Quixote, Part II. Chap. Xx. --"Donde se cuentan las bodas de Bamacho el rico, conel suceso de Basilio el pobre. "] With what glee he raids through hisdomains, and what signs of destruction and massacre mark the path of thesportsman! His hand is infallible like his glance. The spirit of sarcasmlives and thrives in the midst of universal wreck; its balls areenchanted and itself invulnerable, and it braves retaliations andreprisals because itself is a mere flash, a bodiless and magicalnothing. 

Clever men will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness; everyauthority rouses their ridicule, every superstition amuses them, everyconvention moves them to contradiction. Only force finds favor in theireyes, and they have no toleration for anything that is not purelynatural and spontaneous. And yet ten clever men are not worth one man oftalent, nor ten men of talent worth one man of genius. And in theindividual, feeling is more than cleverness, reason is worth as much asfeeling, and conscience has it over reason. If, then, the clever man isnot _mockable_, he may at least be neither loved, nor considered, noresteemed. He may make himself feared, it is true, and force others torespect his independence; but this negative advantage, which is theresult of a negative superiority, brings no happiness with it. Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing. 

March 8, 1868. --Madame----kept me to have tea with three young friendsof hers--three sisters, I think. The two youngest are extremely pretty, the dark one as pretty as the blonde. Their fresh faces, radiant withthe bloom of youth, were a perpetual delight to the eye. This electricforce of beauty has a beneficent effect upon the man of letters; it actsas a real restorative. Sensitive, impressionable, absorbent as I am, theneighborhood of health, of beauty, of intelligence and of goodness, exercises a powerful influence upon my whole being; and in the same wayI am troubled and affected just as easily by the presence near me oftroubled lives or diseased souls. Madame ---- said of me that I must be"superlatively feminine" in all my perceptions. This ready sympathy andsensitiveness is the reason of it. If I had but desired it ever solittle, I should have had the magical clairvoyance of the somnambulist, and could have reproduced in myself a number of strange phenomena. Iknow it, but I have always been on my guard against it, whether fromindifference or from prudence. When I think of the intuitions of everykind which have come to me since my youth, it seems to me that I havelived a multitude of lives. Every characteristic individuality shapesitself ideally in me, or rather molds me for the moment into its ownimage; and I have only to turn my attention upon myself at such a timeto be able to understand a new mode of being, a new phase of humannature. In this way I have been, turn by turn, mathematician, musician, _savant_, monk, child, or mother. In these states of universal sympathyI have even seemed to myself sometimes to enter into the condition ofthe animal or the plant, and even of an individual animal, of a givenplant. This faculty of ascending and descending metamorphosis, thispower of simplifying or of adding to one's individuality, has sometimesastounded my friends, even the most subtle of them. It has to do nodoubt with the extreme facility which I have for impersonal andobjective thought, and this again accounts for the difficulty which Ifeel in realizing my own individuality, in being simply one man havinghis proper number and ticket. To withdraw within my own individuallimits has always seemed to me a strange, arbitrary, and conventionalprocess. I seem to myself to be a mere conjuror's apparatus, aninstrument of vision and perception, a person without personality, asubject without any determined individuality--an instance, to speaktechnically, of pure "determinability" and "formability, " and thereforeI can only resign myself with difficulty to play the purely arbitrarypart of a private citizen, inscribed upon the roll of a particular townor a particular country. In action I feel myself out of place; my true_milieu_ is contemplation. Pure virtuality and perfect equilibrium--inthese I am most at home. There I feel myself free, disinterested, andsovereign. Is it a call or a temptation?

It represents perhaps the oscillation between the two geniuses, theGreek and the Roman, the eastern and the western, the ancient and theChristian, or the struggle between the two ideals, that of liberty andthat of holiness. Liberty raises us to the gods; holiness prostrates uson the ground. Action limits us; whereas in the state of contemplationwe are endlessly expansive. Will localizes us; thought universalizes us. My soul wavers between half a dozen antagonistic general conceptions, because it is responsive to all the great instincts of human nature, andits aspiration is to the absolute, which is only to be reached through asuccession of contraries. It has taken me a great deal of time tounderstand myself, and I frequently find myself beginning over again thestudy of the oft-solved problem, so difficult is it for us to maintainany fixed point within us. I love everything, and detest one thingonly--the hopeless imprisonment of my being within a single arbitraryform, even were it chosen by myself. Liberty for the inner man is thenthe strongest of my passions--perhaps my only passion. Is such a passionlawful? It has been my habit to think so, but intermittently, by fitsand starts. I am not perfectly sure of it. 

March 17, 1868. --Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore;not because they are pretty, or good, or well bred, or graceful, orintelligent, but because they are themselves. All analysis seems to themto imply a loss of consideration, a subordination of their personalityto 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 afeeling we are no longer under the spell of it; we appreciate, we weigh, we are free, at least in principle. Love must always remain afascination, a witchery, if the empire of woman is to endure. Once themystery gone, the power goes with it. Love must always seem to usindivisible, insoluble, superior to all analysis, if it is to preservethat appearance of infinity, of something supernatural and miraculous, which makes its chief beauty. The majority of beings despise what theyunderstand, and bow only before the inexplicable. The feminine triumph_par excellence_ is to convict of obscurity that virile intelligencewhich makes so much pretense to enlightenment. And when a woman inspireslove, it is then especially that she enjoys this proud triumph. I admitthat her exultation has its grounds. Still, it seems to me thatlove--true and profound love--should be a source of light and calm, areligion and a revelation, in which there is no place left for the lowervictories of vanity. Great souls care only for what is great, and to thespirit which hovers in the sight of the Infinite, any sort of artificeseems a disgraceful puerility. 

March 19, 1868. --What we call little things are merely the causes ofgreat things; they are the beginning, the embryo, and it is the point ofdeparture which, generally speaking, decides the whole future of anexistence. One single black speck may be the beginning of a gangrene, ofa storm, of a revolution. From one insignificant misunderstanding hatredand separation may finally issue. An enormous avalanche begins by thedisplacement of one atom, and the conflagration of a town by the fall ofa match. Almost everything comes from almost nothing, one might think. It is only the first crystallization which is the affair of mind; theultimate aggregation is the affair of mass, of attraction, of acquiredmomentum, of mechanical acceleration. History, like nature, illustratesfor us the application of the law of inertia and agglomeration which isput lightly in the proverb, "Nothing succeeds like success. " Find theright point at starting; strike straight, begin well; everything dependson it. Or more simply still, provide yourself with good luck--foraccident plays a vast part in human affairs. Those who have succeededmost in this world (Napoleon or Bismarck) confess it; calculation is notwithout its uses, but chance makes mock of calculation, and the resultof a planned combination is in no wise proportional to its merit. Fromthe supernatural point of view people say: "This chance, as you call it, is, in reality, the action of providence. Man may give himself whattrouble he will--God leads him all the same. " Only, unfortunately, thissupposed intervention as often as not ends in the defeat of zeal, virtue, and devotion, and the success of crime, stupidity, andselfishness. Poor, sorely-tried Faith! She has but one way out of thedifficulty--the word Mystery! It is in the origins of things that thegreat secret of destiny lies hidden, although the breathless sequence ofafter events has often many surprises for us too. So that at first sighthistory seems to us accident and confusion; looked at for the secondtime, it seems to us logical and necessary; looked at for the thirdtime, it appears to us a mixture of necessity and liberty; on the fourthexamination we scarcely know what to think of it, for if force is thesource of right, and chance the origin of force, we come back to ourfirst 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 ofaccident, has a certain power of self-deception and of inventing lawswhich it believes to be real and objective, just as a man who dreams ofa meal thinks that he is eating, while in reality there is neithertable, nor food, nor guest nor nourishment? Everything goes on as ifthere were order and reason and logic in the world, while in realityeverything is fortuitous, accidental, and apparent. The universe is butthe kaleidoscope which turns within the mind of the so-called thinkingbeing, who is himself a curiosity without a cause, an accident consciousof the great accident around him, and who amuses himself with it so longas the phenomenon of his vision lasts. Science is a lucid madnessoccupied in tabulating its own necessary hallucinations. The philosopherlaughs, for he alone escapes being duped, while he sees other men thevictims of persistent illusion. He is like some mischievous spectator ofa ball who has cleverly taken all the strings from the violins, and yetsees musicians and dancers moving and pirouetting before him as thoughthe music were still going on. Such an experience would delight him asproving that the universal St. Vitus' dance is also nothing but anaberration of the inner consciousness, and that the philosopher is inthe right of it as against the general credulity. Is it not even enoughsimply to shut one's ears in a ballroom, to believe one's self in amadhouse?

The multitude of religions on the earth must have very much the sameeffect upon the man who has killed the religious idea in himself. But itis a dangerous attempt, this repudiation of the common law of therace--this claim to be in the right, as against all the world. 

It is not often that the philosophic scoffers forget themselves forothers. Why should they? Self-devotion is a serious thing, andseriousness would be inconsistent with their rôle of mockery. To beunselfish we must love; to love we must believe in the reality of whatwe love; we must know how to suffer, how to forget ourselves, how toyield ourselves up--in a word, how to be serious. A spirit of incessantmockery means absolute isolation; it is the sign of a thoroughgoingegotism. 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 themocking atheist. He reminds me of the somber words of "Ahasvérus:"

 "Vous qui manquez de charité, Tremblez à mon supplice étrange: Ce n'est point sa divinité, C'est l'humanité que Dieu venge!"

[Footnote: The quotation is from Quinet's "Ahasvérus" (first published1833), that strange _Welt-gedicht_, which the author himself describedas "l'histoire du monde, de Dieu dans le monde, et enfin du doute dansle monde, " and which, with Faust, probably suggested the unfinished butin many ways brilliant performance of the young Spaniard, Espronceda--_El Diablo Mundo_. ]

It is better to be lost than to be saved all alone; and it is a wrong toone's kind to wish to be wise without making others share our wisdom. Itis, besides, an illusion to suppose that such a privilege is possible, when everything proves the solidarity of individuals, and when no onecan 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 ownparticular and temporary _milieu_, but every one of our thoughts orfeelings finds, has found, and will find, its echo in humanity. Such anecho is immense and far-resounding in the case of those representativemen who have been adopted by great fractions of humanity as guides, revealers, and reformers; but it exists for everybody. Every sincereutterance of the soul, every testimony faithfully borne to a personalconviction, is of use to some one and some thing, even when you know itnot, and when your mouth is stopped by violence, or the noose tightensround your neck. A word spoken to some one preserves an indestructibleinfluence, just as any movement whatever may be metamorphosed, but notundone. Here, then, is a reason for not mocking, for not being silent, for affirming, for acting. We must have faith in truth; we must seek thetrue and spread it abroad; we must love men and serve them. 

April 9, 1868. --I have been spending three hours over Lotze's big volume("Geschichte der Aesthetikin Deutschland"). It begins attractively, butthe 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 pageswithout paragraphs, these interminable chapters, and this incessant, dialectical clatter, affect me as though I were listening to aword-mill. I end by yawning like any simple non-philosophical mortal inthe face of all this heaviness and pedantry. Erudition, and eventhought, are not everything. An occasional touch of esprit, a littlesharpness of phrase, a little vivacity, imagination, and grace, wouldspoil neither. Do these pedantic books leave a single image or formula, a single new or striking fact behind them in the memory, when one putsthem down? No; nothing but confusion and fatigue. Oh for clearness, terseness, brevity! Diderot, Voltaire, and even Galiani!

A short article by Sainte-Beuve, Scherer, Renan, Victor Cherbuliez, gives one more pleasure, and makes one think and reflect more, than athousand of these heavy German pages, stuffed to the brim, and showingrather the work itself than its results. The Germans gather fuel for thepile: it is the French who kindle it. For heaven's sake, spare me yourlucubrations; give me facts or ideas. Keep your vats, your must, yourdregs, in the background. What I ask is wine--wine which will sparkle inthe glass, and stimulate intelligence instead of weighing it down. 

April 11, 1868. (_Mornex sur Salève_). --I left town in a great storm ofwind, which was raising clouds of dust along the suburban roads, and twohours later I found myself safely installed among the mountains, justlike last year. I think of staying a week here. . . . The sounds of thevillage are wafted to my open window, barkings of distant dogs, voicesof women at the fountain, the songs of birds in the lower orchards. Thegreen carpet of the plain is dappled by passing shadows thrown upon itby the clouds; the landscape has the charm of delicate tint and a sortof languid grace. Already I am full of a sense of well-being, I amtasting the joys of that contemplative state in which the soul, issuingfrom itself, becomes as it were the soul of a country or a landscape, and feels living within it a multitude of lives. Here is no moreresistance, negation, blame; everything is affirmative; I feel myself inharmony with nature and with surroundings, of which I seem to myself theexpression. The heart opens to the immensity of things. This is what Ilove! _Nam mihires, non me rebus submittere conor_. April 12, 1868. (_Easter Day_), _Mornex Eight_ A. M. --The day has opened solemnly andreligiously. There is a tinkling of bells from the valley: even thefields seem to be breathing forth a canticle of praise. Humanity musthave a worship, and, all things considered, is not the Christian worshipthe best among those which have existed on a large scale? The religionof sin, of repentance, and reconciliation--the religion of the new birthand of eternal life--is not a religion to be ashamed of. In spite of allthe aberrations of fanaticism, all the superstitions of formalism, allthe ugly superstructures of hypocrisy, all the fantastic puerilities oftheology, the gospel has modified the world and consoled mankind. Christian humanity is not much better than pagan humanity, but it wouldbe much worse without a religion, and without this religion. Everyreligion proposes an ideal and a model; the Christian ideal is sublime, and its model of a divine beauty. 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 Holyand the Just, who came to save and not to curse. Jesus will alwayssupply us with the best criticism of Christianity, and when Christianityhas passed away the religion of Jesus will in all probability survive. After Jesus as God we shall come back to faith in the God of Jesus. 

_Five o'clock_ P. M. --I have been for a long walk through Cézargues, Eseri, and the Yves woods, returning by the Pont du Loup. The weatherwas cold and gray. A great popular merrymaking of some sort, with itsmultitude of blouses, and its drums and fifes, has been going onriotously for an hour under my window. The crowd has sung a number ofsongs, drinking songs, ballads, romances, but all more or less heavy andugly. The muse has never touched our country people, and the Swiss raceis not graceful even in its gayety. A bear in high spirits--this is whatone thinks of. The poetry it produces, too, is desperately vulgar andcommonplace. Why? In the first place, because, in spite of the pretensesof our democratic philosophies, the classes whose backs are bent withmanual labor are aesthetically inferior to the others. In the nextplace, because our old rustic peasant poetry is dead, and the peasant, when he tries to share the music or the poetry of the cultivatedclasses, only succeeds in caricaturing it, and not in copying it. Democracy, by laying it down that there is but one class for all men, has in fact done a wrong to everything that is not first-rate. As we canno longer without offense judge men according to a certain recognizedorder, we can only compare them to the best that exists, and then theynaturally seem to us more mediocre, more ugly, more deformed thanbefore. If the passion for equality potentially raises the average, it_really_ degrades nineteen-twentieths of individuals below their formerplace. There is a progress in the domain of law and a falling back inthe domain of art. And meanwhile the artists see multiplying before themtheir _bête-noire_, the _bourgeois_, the Philistine, the presumptuousignoramus, the quack who plays at science, and the feather-brain whothinks himself the equal of the intelligent. 

"Commonness will prevail, " as De Candolle said in speaking of thegraminaceous plants. The era of equality means the triumph ofmediocrity. It is disappointing, but inevitable; for it is one of time'srevenges. Humanity, after having organized itself on the basis of thedissimilarity of individuals, is now organizing itself on the basis oftheir similarity, and the one exclusive principle is about as true asthe other. Art no doubt will lose, but justice will gain. Is notuniversal leveling-down the law of nature, and when all has been leveledwill not all have been destroyed? So that the world is striving with allits force for the destruction of what it has itself brought forth. Lifeis the blind pursuit of its own negation; as has been said of thewicked, nature also works for her own disappointment, she labors at whatshe hates, she weaves her own shroud, and piles up the stones of her owntomb. God may well forgive us, for "we know not what to do. "

Just as the sum of force is always identical in the material universe, and presents a spectacle not of diminution nor of augmentation butsimply of constant metamorphosis, so it is not impossible that the sumof good is in reality always the same, and that therefore all progresson one side is compensated inversely on another side. If this were so weought never to say that period or a people is absolutely and as a wholesuperior to another time or another people, but only that there issuperiority in certain points. The great difference between man and manwould, on these principles, consist in the art of transforming vitalityinto spirituality, and latent power into useful energy. The samedifference would hold good between nation and nation, so that the objectof the simultaneous or successive competition of mankind in historywould be the extraction of the maximum of humanity from a given amountof animality. Education, morals, and politics would be only variationsof the same art, the art of living--that is to say, of disengaging thepure form and subtlest essence of our individual being. 

April 26, 1868. (_Sunday, Mid-day_). --A gloomy morning. On all sides adepressing outlook, and within, disgust with self. 

_Ten_ P. M. --Visits and a walk. I have spent the evening alone. Manythings to-day have taught me lessons of wisdom. I have seen thehawthorns covering themselves with blossom, and the whole valleyspringing up afresh under the breath of the spring. I have been thespectator of faults of conduct on the part of old men who will not growold, and whose heart is in rebellion against the natural law. I havewatched the working of marriage in its frivolous and commonplace forms, and listened to trivial preaching. I have been a witness of griefswithout hope, of loneliness that claimed one's pity. I have listened topleasantries on the subject of madness, and to the merry songs of thebirds. And everything has had the same message for me: "Place yourselfonce more in harmony with the universal law; accept the will of God;make a religious use of life; work while it is yet day; be at onceserious and cheerful; know how to repeat with the apostle, 'I havelearned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content. '"

August 26, 1868. --After all the storms of feeling within and the organicdisturbances without, which during these latter months have pinned me soclosely to my own individual existence, shall I ever be able to reascendinto the region of pure intelligence, to enter again upon thedisinterested and impersonal life, to recover my old indifference towardsubjective miseries, and regain a purely scientific and contemplativestate of mind? Shall I ever succeed in forgetting all the needs whichbind me to earth and to humanity? Shall I ever become pure spirit? Alas!I cannot persuade myself to believe it possible for an instant. I seeinfirmity and weakness close upon me, I feel I cannot do withoutaffection, and I know that I have no ambition, and that my faculties aredeclining. I remember that I am forty-seven years old, and that all mybrood of youthful hopes has flown away. So that there is no deceivingmyself as to the fate which awaits me: increasing loneliness, mortification of spirit, long-continued regret, melancholy neither to beconsoled nor confessed, a mournful old age, a slow decay, a death in thedesert!

Terrible dilemma! Whatever is still possible to me has lost its savor, while all that I could still desire escapes me, and will always escapeme. Every impulse ends in weariness and disappointment. Discouragement, depression, weakness, apathy; there is the dismal series which must beforever begun and re-begun, while we are still rolling up the Sisypheanrock of life. Is it not simpler and shorter to plunge head-foremost intothe gulf?

No, rebel as we may, there is but one solution--to submit to the generalorder, to accept, to resign ourselves, and to do still what we can. Itis our self-will, our aspirations, our dreams, that must be sacrificed. We must give up the hope of happiness once for all! Immolation of theself--death to self--this is the only suicide which is either useful orpermitted. In my present mood of indifference and disinterestedness, there is some secret ill-humor, some wounded pride, a little rancor;there is selfishness in short, since a premature claim for rest isimplied in it. Absolute disinterestedness is only reached in thatperfect humility which tramples the self under foot for the glory ofGod. 

I have no more strength left, I wish for nothing; but that is not whatis wanted. I must wish what God wishes; I must pass from indifference tosacrifice, and from sacrifice to self-devotion. The cup which I wouldfain put away from me is the misery of living, the shame of existing andsuffering as a common creature who has missed his vocation; it is thebitter and increasing humiliation of declining power, of growing oldunder the weight of one's own disapproval, and the disappointment ofone's friends! "Wilt thou be healed?" was the text of last Sunday'ssermon. "Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy-laden, and I willgive you rest. " "And if our heart condemn us, God is greater than ourheart. "

August 27, 1868. --To-day I took up the "Penseroso" [Footnote: "IIPenseroso, " poésies-maximes par H. F. Amiel: Genève, 1858. This littlebook, which contains one hundred and thirty-three maxims, several ofwhich are quoted in the _Journal Intime_, is prefaced by a mottotranslated from Shelley--"Ce n'est pas la science qui nous manque, ànous modernes; nous l'avons surabondamment. . . . Mais ce que nous avonsabsorbé nous absorbe. . . . Ce qui nous manque c'est la poésie de la vie. "]again. I have often violated its maxims and forgotten its lessons. Still, this volume is a true son of my soul, and breathes the truespirit of the inner life. Whenever I wish to revive my consciousness ofmy own tradition, it is pleasant to me to read over this little gnomiccollection which has had such scant justice done to it, and which, wereit another's, I should often quote. I like to feel that in it I haveattained to that relative truth which may be defined as consistency withself, the harmony of appearance with reality, of thought withexpression--in other words, sincerity, ingenuousness, inwardness. It ispersonal experience in the strictest sense of the word. 

September 21, 1868. (_Villars_). --A lovely autumn effect. Everything wasveiled in gloom this morning, and a gray mist of rain floated between usand the whole circle of mountains. Now the strip of blue sky which madeits appearance at first behind the distant peaks has grown larger, hasmounted to the zenith, and the dome of heaven, swept almost clear ofcloud, sends streaming down upon us the pale rays of a convalescent sun. The day now promises kindly, and all is well that ends well. 

Thus after a season of tears a sober and softened joy may return to us. Say to yourself that you are entering upon the autumn of your life; thatthe graces of spring and the splendors of summer are irrevocably gone, but that autumn too has its beauties. The autumn weather is oftendarkened by rain, cloud, and mist, but the air is still soft, and thesun still delights the eyes, and touches the yellowing leavescaressingly; it is the time for fruit, for harvest, for the vintage, themoment for making provision for the winter. Here the herds of milch-cowshave already come down to the level of the _châlet_, and next week theywill be lower than we are. This living barometer is a warning to us thatthe time has come to say farewell to the mountains. There is nothing togain, and everything to lose, by despising the example of nature, andmaking arbitrary rules of life for one's self. Our liberty, wiselyunderstood, is but a voluntary obedience to the universal laws of life. My life has reached its month of September. May I recognize it in time, and suit thought and action to the fact!

November 13, 1868. --I am reading part of two books by Charles Secrétan[Footnote: Charles Secrétan, a Lausanne professor, the friend of Vinet, born 1819. He published "Leçons sur la Philosophie de Leibnitz, ""Philosophie de la Liberté, " "La Raison et le Christianisme, " etc. ]"Recherches sur la Méthode, " 1857; "Précis élémentaire de Philosophie, "1868. The philosophy of Secrétan is the philosophy of Christianity, considered as the one true religion. Subordination of nature tointelligence, of intelligence to will, and of will to dogmatic faith--such is its general framework. Unfortunately there are no signs ofcritical, or comparative, or historical study in it, and as anapologetic--in which satire is curiously mingled with glorification ofthe religion of love--it leaves upon one an impression of _parti pris_. A philosophy of religion, apart from the comparative science ofreligions, and apart also from a disinterested and general philosophy ofhistory, must always be more or less arbitrary and factitious. It isonly pseudo-scientific, this reduction of human life to threespheres--industry, law, and religion. The author seems to me to possess avigorous and profound mind, rather than a free mind. Not only is hedogmatic, but he dogmatizes in favor of a given religion, to which hiswhole allegiance is pledged. Besides, Christianity being an X which eachchurch defines in its own way, the author takes the same liberty, anddefines the X in his way; so that he is at once too free and not freeenough; too free in respect to historical Christianity, not free enoughin respect to Christianity as a particular church. He does not satisfythe believing Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed Churchman, or Catholic; andhe does not satisfy the freethinker. This Schellingian type ofspeculation, which consists in logically deducing a particularreligion--that is to say, in making philosophy the servant of Christiantheology--is a legacy from the Middle Ages. 

After belief comes judgment; but a believer is not a judge. A fish livesin the ocean, but it cannot see all around it; it cannot take a view ofthe whole; therefore it cannot judge what the ocean is. In order tounderstand Christianity we must put it in its historical place, in itsproper framework; we must regard it as a part of the religiousdevelopment of humanity, and so judge it, not from a Christian point ofview, but from a human point of view, _sine ira nec studio_. 

December 16, 1868. --I am in the most painful state of anxiety as to mypoor kind friend, Charles Heim. . . . Since the 30th of November I have hadno letter from the dear invalid, who then said his last farewell to me. How long these two weeks have seemed to me--and how keenly I haverealized that strong craving which many feel for the last words, thelast looks, of those they love! Such words and looks are a kind oftestament. They have a solemn and sacred character which is not merelyan effect of our imagination. For that which is on the brink of deathalready participates to some extent in eternity. A dying man seems tospeak to us from beyond the tomb; what he says has the effect upon us ofa sentence, an oracle, an injunction; we look upon him as one endowedwith second sight. Serious and solemn words come naturally to the manwho feels life escaping him, and the grave opening before him. Thedepths of his nature are then revealed; the divine within him need nolonger hide itself. Oh, do not let us wait to be just or pitiful ordemonstrative toward those we love until they or we are struck down byillness or threatened with death! Life is short and we have never toomuch time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the darkjourney with us. Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind!

December 26, 1868. --My dear friend died this morning at Hyères. Abeautiful soul has returned to heaven. So he has ceased to suffer! Is hehappy now?

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If men are always more or less deceived on the subject of women, it isbecause they forget that they and women do not speak altogether the samelanguage, and that words have not the same weight or the same meaningfor them, especially in questions of feeling. Whether from shyness orprecaution or artifice, a woman never speaks out her whole thought, andmoreover what she herself knows of it is but a part of what it reallyis. Complete frankness seems to be impossible to her, and completeself-knowledge seems to be forbidden her. If she is a sphinx to us, itis because she is a riddle of doubtful meaning even to herself. She hasno need of perfidy, for she is mystery itself. A woman is somethingfugitive, irrational, indeterminable, illogical, and contradictory. Agreat deal of forbearance ought to be shown her, and a good deal ofprudence exercised with regard to her, for she may bring aboutinnumerable evils without knowing It. Capable of all kinds of devotion, and of all kinds of treason, "_monstre incompréhensible_, " raised to thesecond power, she is at once the delight and the terror of man. 

 * * * * *

The more a man loves, the more he suffers. The sum of possible grief foreach soul is in proportion to its degree of perfection. 

 * * * * *

He who is too much afraid of being duped has lost the power of beingmagnanimous. 

 * * * * *

Doubt of the reality of love ends by making us doubt everything. Thefinal result of all deceptions and disappointments is atheism, which maynot always yield up its name and secret, but which lurks, a maskedspecter, within the depths of thought, as the last supreme explainer. "Man is what his love is, " and follows the fortunes of his love. 

 * * * * *

The beautiful souls of the world have an art of saintly alchemy, bywhich bitterness is converted into kindness, the gall of humanexperience into gentleness, ingratitude into benefits, insults intopardon. And the transformation ought to become so easy and habitual thatthe lookers-on may think it spontaneous, and nobody give us credit forit. 

January 27, 1869. --What, then, is the service rendered to the world byChristianity? The proclamation of "good news. " And what is this "goodnews?" The pardon of sin. The God of holiness loving the world andreconciling it to himself by Jesus, in order to establish the kingdom ofGod, the city of souls, the life of heaven upon earth--here you have thewhole of it; but in this is a revolution. "Love ye one another, as Ihave loved you;" "Be ye one with me, as I am one with the Father:" forthis is life eternal, here is perfection, salvation, joy. Faith in thefatherly love of God, who punishes and pardons for our good, and whodesires not the death of the sinner, but his conversion and hislife--here is the motive power of the redeemed. 

What we call Christianity is a vast ocean, into which flow a number ofspiritual currents of distant and various origin; certain religions, that is to say, of Asia and of Europe, the great ideas of Greek wisdom, and especially those of Platonism. Neither its doctrine nor itsmorality, as they have been historically developed, are new orspontaneous. What is essential and original in it is the practicaldemonstration that the human and the divine nature may co-exist, maybecome fused into one sublime flame; that holiness and pity, justice andmercy, may meet together and become one, in man and in God. What isspecific in Christianity is Jesus--the religious consciousness of Jesus. The sacred sense of his absolute union with God through perfect love andself-surrender, this profound, invincible, and tranquil faith of his, has become a religion; the faith of Jesus has become the faith ofmillions and millions of men. From this torch has sprung a vastconflagration. And such has been the brilliancy and the radiance both ofrevealer and revelation, that the astonished world has forgotten itsjustice in its admiration, and has referred to one single benefactor thewhole of those benefits which are its heritage from the past. 

The conversion of ecclesiastical and confessional Christianity intohistorical Christianity is the work of biblical science. The conversionof historical Christianity into philosophical Christianity is an attemptwhich is to some extent an illusion, since faith cannot be entirelyresolved into science. The transference, however, of Christianity fromthe region of history to the region of psychology is the great cravingof our time. What we are trying to arrive at is the _eternal_ gospel. But before we can reach it, the comparative history and philosophy ofreligions must assign to Christianity its true place, and must judge it. The religion, too, which Jesus professed must be disentangled from thereligion which has taken Jesus for its object. And when at last we areable to point out the state of consciousness which is the primitivecell, the principle of the eternal gospel, we shall have reached ourgoal, for in it is the _punctum saliens_ of pure religion. 

Perhaps the extraordinary will take the place of the supernatural, andthe great geniuses of the world will come to be regarded as themessengers of God in history, as the providential revealers through whomthe spirit of God works upon the human mass. What is perishing is notthe admirable and the adorable; it is simply the arbitrary, theaccidental, the miraculous. Just as the poor illuminations of a village_fête_, or the tapers of a procession, are put out by the great marvelof the sun, so the small local miracles, with their meanness anddoubtfulness, will sink into insignificance beside the law of the worldof spirits, the incomparable spectacle of human history, led by thatall-powerful Dramaturgus whom we call God. _Utinam!_

March 1, 1869. --Impartiality and objectivity are as rare as justice, ofwhich they are but two special forms. Self-interest is an inexhaustiblesource of convenient illusions. The number of beings who wish to seetruly is extraordinarily small. What governs men is the fear of truth, unless truth is useful to them, which is as much as to say thatself-interest is the principle of the common philosophy or that truth ismade for us but not we for truth. As this fact is humiliating, themajority of people will neither recognize nor admit it. And thus aprejudice of self-love protects all the prejudices of the understanding, which are themselves the result of a stratagem of the _ego_. Humanityhas always slain or persecuted those who have disturbed this selfishrepose of hers. She only improves in spite of herself. The only progresswhich she desires is an increase of enjoyments. All advances in justice, in morality, in holiness, have been imposed upon or forced from her bysome noble violence. Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, hasnever been the law of societies. It is too often by employing one viceagainst another--for example, vanity against cupidity, greed againstidleness--that the great agitators have broken through routine. In aword, the human world is almost entirely directed by the law of nature, and the law of the spirit, which is the leaven of its coarse paste, hasbut rarely succeeded in raising it into generous expansion. 

From the point of view of the ideal, humanity is _triste_ and ugly. Butif we compare it with its probable origins, we see that the human racehas not altogether wasted its time. Hence there are three possible viewsof history: the view of the pessimist, who starts from the ideal; theview of the optimist, who compares the past with the present; and theview of the hero-worshiper, who sees that all progress whatever has costoceans of blood and tears. 

European hypocrisy veils its face before the voluntary suicide of thoseIndian fanatics who throw themselves under the wheels of their goddess'triumphal car. And yet these sacrifices are but the symbol of what goeson in Europe as elsewhere, of that offering of their life which is madeby the martyrs of all great causes. We may even say that the fierce andsanguinary goddess is humanity itself, which is only spurred to progressby remorse, and repents only when the measure of its crimes runs over. The fanatics who sacrifice themselves are an eternal protest against theuniversal selfishness. We have only overthrown those idols which aretangible and visible, but perpetual sacrifice still exists everywhere, and everywhere the _élite_ of each generation suffers for the salvationof the multitude. It is the austere, bitter, and mysterious law ofsolidarity. Perdition and redemption in and through each other is thedestiny of men. 

March 18, 1869 (_Thursday_). --Whenever I come back from a walk outsidethe town I am disgusted and repelled by this cell of mine. Out of doors, sunshine, birds, spring, beauty, and life; in here, ugliness, piles ofpaper, melancholy, and death. And yet my walk was one of the saddestpossible. I wandered along the Rhone and the Arve, and all the memoriesof the past, all the disappointments of the present and all theanxieties of the future laid siege to my heart like a whirlwind ofphantoms. I took account of my faults, and they ranged themselves inbattle against me. The vulture of regret gnawed at my heart, and thesense of the irreparable choked me like the iron collar of the pillory. It seemed to me that I had failed in the task of life, and that now lifewas failing me. Ah! how terrible spring is to the lonely! All the needswhich had been lulled to sleep start into life again, all the sorrowswhich had disappeared are reborn, and the old man which had been gaggedand conquered rises once more and makes his groans heard. It is asthough all the old wounds opened and bewailed themselves afresh. Justwhen one had ceased to think, when one had succeeded in deadeningfeeling by work or by amusement, all of a sudden the heart, solitarycaptive that it is, sends a cry from its prison depths, a cry whichshakes to its foundations the whole surrounding edifice. 

Even supposing that one had freed one's self from all other fatalities, there is still one yoke left from which it is impossible to escape--thatof Time. I have succeeded in avoiding all other servitudes, but I hadreckoned without the last--the servitude of age. Age comes, and itsweight is equal to that of all other oppressions taken together. Man, under his mortal aspect, is but a species of ephemera. 

As I looked at the banks of the Rhone, which have seen the river flowingpast them some ten or twenty thousand years, or at the trees forming theavenue of the cemetery, which, for two centuries, have been thewitnesses of so many funeral processions; as I recognized the walls, thedykes, the paths, which saw me playing as a child, and watched otherchildren running over that grassy plain of Plain Palais which bore myown childish steps--I had the sharpest sense of the emptiness of lifeand the flight of things. I felt the shadow of the upas tree darkeningover me. I gazed into the great implacable abyss in which are swallowedup all those phantoms which call themselves living beings. I saw thatthe living are but apparitions hovering for a moment over the earth, made out of the ashes of the dead, and swiftly re-absorbed by eternalnight, as the will-o'-the-wisp sinks into the marsh. The nothingness ofour joys, the emptiness of our existence, and the futility of ourambitions, filled me with a quiet disgust. From regret to disenchantmentI floated on to Buddhism, to universal weariness. Ah, the hope of ablessed immortality would be better worth having!

With what different eyes one looks at life at ten, at twenty, at thirty, at sixty! Those who live alone are specially conscious of thispsychological metamorphosis. Another thing, too, astonishes them; it isthe universal conspiracy which exists for hiding the sadness of theworld, for making men forget suffering, sickness, and death, forsmothering the wails and sobs which issue from every house, for paintingand beautifying the hideous face of reality. Is it out of tenderness forchildhood and youth, or is it simply from fear, that we are thus carefulto veil the sinister truth? Or is it from a sense of equity? and doeslife contain as much good as evil--perhaps more? However it may be, menfeed themselves rather upon illusion than upon truth. Each one unwindshis own special reel of hope, and as soon as he has come to the end ofit he sits him down to die, and lets his sons and his grandsons beginthe same experience over again. We all pursue happiness, and happinessescapes the pursuit of all. 

The only _viaticum_ which can help us in the journey of life is thatfurnished by a great duty and some serious affections. And evenaffections die, or at least their objects are mortal; a friend, a wife, a child, a country, a church, may precede us in the tomb; duty alonelasts as long as we. 

This maxim exorcises the spirits of revolt, of anger, discouragement, vengeance, indignation, and ambition, which rise one after another totempt and trouble the heart, swelling with the sap of the spring. O allye saints of the East, of antiquity, of Christianity, phalanx of heroes!Ye too drank deep of weariness and agony of soul, but ye triumphed overboth. Ye who have come forth victors from the strife, shelter us underyour palms, fortify us by your example!

April 6, 1869. --Magnificent weather. The Alps are dazzling under theirsilver haze. Sensations of all kinds have been crowding upon me; thedelights of a walk under the rising sun, the charms of a wonderful view, longing for travel, and thirst for joy, hunger for work, for emotion, for life, dreams of happiness and of love. A passionate wish to live, tofeel, to express, stirred the depths of my heart. It was a suddenre-awakening of youth, a flash of poetry, a renewing of the soul, afresh growth of the wings of desire--I was overpowered by a host ofconquering, vagabond, adventurous aspirations. I forgot my age, myobligations, my duties, my vexations, and youth leaped within me asthough life were beginning again. It was as though something explosivehad caught fire, and one's soul were scattered to the four winds; insuch a mood one would fain devour the whole world, experienceeverything, see everything. Faust's ambition enters into one, universaldesire--a horror of one's own prison cell. One throws off one's hairshirt, and one would fain gather the whole of nature into one's arms andheart. O ye passions, a ray of sunshine is enough to rekindle you all!The cold black mountain is a volcano once more, and melts its snowycrown with one single gust of flaming breath. It is the spring whichbrings about these sudden and improbable resurrections, the springwhich, sending a thrill and tumult of life through all that lives, isthe parent of impetuous desires, of overpowering inclinations, ofunforeseen and inextinguishable outbursts of passion. It breaks throughthe rigid bark of the trees, and rends the mask on the face ofasceticism; it makes the monk tremble in the shadow of his convent, themaiden behind the curtains of her room, the child sitting on his schoolbench, the old man bowed under his rheumatism. 

 "O Hymen, Hymenae!"

April 24, 1869. --Is Nemesis indeed more real than Providence, thejealous God more true than the good God? grief more certain than joy?darkness more secure of victory than light? Is it pessimism or optimismwhich is nearest the truth, and which--Leibnitz or Schopenhauer--hasbest understood the universe? Is it the healthy man or the sick man whosees best to the bottom of things? which is in the right?

Ah! the problem of grief and evil is and will be always the greatestenigma of being, only second to the existence of being itself. Thecommon faith of humanity has assumed the victory of good over evil. Butif good consists not in the result of victory, but in victory itself, then good implies an incessant and infinite contest, interminablestruggle, and a success forever threatened. And if this is life, is notBuddha right in regarding life as synonymous with evil since it meansperpetual restlessness and endless war? Repose according to the Buddhistis only to be found in annihilation. The art of self-annihilation, ofescaping the world's vast machinery of suffering, and the misery ofrenewed existence--the art of reaching Nirvâna, is to him the supremeart, the only means of deliverance. The Christian says to God: Deliverus from evil. The Buddhist adds: And to that end deliver us from finiteexistence, give us back to nothingness! The first believes that when heis enfranchised from the body he will enter upon eternal happiness; thesecond believes that individuality is the obstacle to all repose, and helongs for the dissolution of the soul itself. The dread of the first isthe paradise of the second. 

One thing only is necessary--the committal of the soul to God. Look thatthou thyself art in order, and leave to God the task of unraveling theskein of the world and of destiny. What do annihilation or immortalitymatter? What is to be, will be. And what will be, will be for the best. Faith in good--perhaps the individual wants nothing more for his passagethrough life. Only he must have taken sides with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno, against materialism, against the religion ofaccident and pessimism. Perhaps also he must make up his mind againstthe Buddhist nihilism, because a man's system of conduct isdiametrically opposite according as he labors to increase his life or tolessen it, according as he aims at cultivating his faculties or atsystematically deadening them. 

To employ one's individual efforts for the increase of good in theworld--this modest ideal is enough for us. To help forward the victoryof good has been the common aim of saints and sages. _Socii Dei sumus_was the word of Seneca, who had it from Cleanthus. 

April 30, 1869. --I have just finished Vacherot's [Footnote: EtienneVacherot, a French philosophical writer, who owed his first successesin life to the friendship of Cousin, and was later brought very muchinto notice by his controversy with the Abbé Gratry, by the prosecutionbrought against him in consequence of his book, "La Démocratie" (1859), and by his rejection at the hands of the Academy of Moral and PoliticalSciences in 1865, for the same kind of reasons which had brought aboutthe exclusion of Littré in the preceding year. In 1868, however, hebecame a member of the Institute in succession to Cousin. A Liberal ofthe old school, he has separated himself from the republicans since thewar, and has made himself felt as a severe critic of republican blundersin the _Revue des deux Mondes_. _La Religion_, which discusses thepsychological origins of the religious sense, was published in 1868. ]book "La Religion, " 1869, and it has set me thinking. I have a feelingthat his notion of religion is not rigorous and exact, and thattherefore his logic is subject to correction. If religion is apsychological stage, anterior to that of reason, it is clear that itwill disappear in man, but if, on the contrary, it is a mode of theinner life, it may and must last, as long as the need of feeling, andalongside the need of thinking. The question is between theism andnon-theism. If God is only the category of the ideal, religion willvanish, of course, like the illusions of youth. But if Universal Beingcan be felt and loved at the same time as conceived, the philosopher maybe a religious man just as he may be an artist, an orator, or a citizen. He may attach himself to a worship or ritual without derogation. Imyself incline to this solution. To me religion is life before God andin God. 

And even if God were defined as the universal life, so long as this lifeis positive and not negative, the soul penetrated with the sense of theinfinite is in the religious state. Religion differs from philosophy asthe simple and spontaneous self differs from the reflecting self, assynthetic intuition differs from intellectual analysis. We are initiatedinto the religious state by a sense of voluntary dependence on, andjoyful submission to the principle of order and of goodness. Religiousemotion makes man conscious of himself; he finds his own place withinthe infinite unity, and it is this perception which is sacred. 

But in spite of these reservations I am much impressed by the book, which is a fine piece of work, ripe and serious in all respects. 

May 13, 1869. --A break in the clouds, and through the blue interstices abright sun throws flickering and uncertain rays. Storms, smiles, whims, anger, tears--it is May, and nature is in its feminine phase! Shepleases our fancy, stirs our heart, and wears out our reason by theendless succession of her caprices and the unexpected violence of herwhims. 

This recalls to me the 213th verse of the second book of the Laws ofManou. "It is in the nature of the feminine sex to seek here below tocorrupt men, and therefore wise men never abandon themselves to theseductions of women. " The same code, however, says: "Wherever women arehonored the gods are satisfied. " And again: "In every family where thehusband takes pleasure in his wife, and the wife in her husband, happiness is ensured. " And again: "One mother is more venerable than athousand fathers. " But knowing what stormy and irrational elements thereare in this fragile and delightful creature, Manou concludes: "At no ageought a woman to be allowed to govern herself as she pleases. "

Up to the present day, in several contemporary and neighboring codes, awoman is a minor all her life. Why? Because of her dependence uponnature, and of her subjection to passions which are the diminutives ofmadness; in other words, because the soul of a woman has somethingobscure and mysterious in it, which lends itself to all superstitionsand weakens the energies of man. To man belong law, justice, science, and philosophy, all that is disinterested, universal, and rational. Women, on the contrary, introduce into everything favor, exception, andpersonal prejudice. As soon as a man, a people, a literature, an epoch, become feminine in type, they sink in the scale of things. As soon as awoman quits the state of subordination in which her merits have freeplay, we see a rapid increase in her natural defects. Complete equalitywith man makes her quarrelsome; a position of supremacy makes hertyrannical. To honor her and to govern her will be for a long time yetthe best solution. When education has formed strong, noble, and seriouswomen in whom conscience and reason hold sway over the effervescence offancy and sentimentality, then we shall be able not only to honor woman, but to make a serious end of gaining her consent and adhesion. Then shewill be truly an equal, a work-fellow, a companion. At present she is soonly in theory. The moderns are at work upon the problem, and have notsolved it yet. 

June 15, 1869. --The great defect of liberal Christianity [Footnote: Atthis period the controversy between the orthodox party and "LiberalChristianity" was at its height, both in Geneva and throughoutSwitzerland. ] is that its conception of holiness is a frivolous one, or, what comes to the same thing, its conception of sin is a superficialone. The defects of the baser sort of political liberalism recur inliberal Christianity; it is only half serious, and its theology is toomuch mixed with worldliness. The sincerely pious folk look upon theliberals as persons whose talk is rather profane, and who offendreligious feelings by making sacred subjects a theme for rhetoricaldisplay. They shock the _convenances_ of sentiment, and affront thedelicacy of conscience by the indiscreet familiarities they take withthe great mysteries of the inner life. They seem to be mere cleverspecial pleaders, religious rhetoricians like the Greek sophists, ratherthan guides in the narrow road which leads to salvation. 

It is not to the clever folk, nor even to the scientific folk, that theempire over souls belongs, but to those who impress us as havingconquered nature by grace, passed through the burning bush, and asspeaking, not the language of human wisdom, but that of the divine will. In religious matters it is holiness which gives authority; it is love, or the power of devotion and sacrifice, which goes to the heart, whichmoves and persuades. 

What all religious, poetical, pure, and tender souls are least able topardon is the diminution or degradation of their ideal. We must neverrouse an ideal against us; our business is to point men to anotherideal, purer, higher, more spiritual than the old, and so to raisebehind a lofty summit one more lofty still. In this way no one isdespoiled; we gain men's confidence, while at the same time forcing themto think, and enabling those minds which are already tending towardchange to perceive new objects and goals for thought. Only that which isreplaced is destroyed, and an ideal is only replaced by satisfying theconditions of the old with some advantages over. 

Let the liberal Protestants offer us a spectacle of Christian virtue ofa holier, intenser, and more intimate kind than before; let us see itactive in their persons and in their influence, and they will havefurnished the proof demanded by the Master; the tree will be judged byits fruits. 

 * * * * *

June 22, 1869 (_Nine_ A. M). --Gray and lowering weather. A fly lies deadof cold on the page of my book, in full summer! What is life? I said tomyself, as I looked at the tiny dead creature. It is a loan, as movementis. The universal life is a sum total, of which the units are visiblehere, there, and everywhere, just as an electric wheel throws off sparksalong its whole surface. Life passes through us; we do not possess it. Hirn admits three ultimate principles: [Footnote: Gustave-Adolphe Hirn, a French physicist, born near Colmar, 1815, became a correspondingmember of the Academy of Sciences in 1867. The book of his to whichAmiel refers is no doubt _Conséquences philosophiques at métaphysiquesde la thermodynamique, Analyse élémentaire de l'univers_ (1869). ] theatom, the force, the soul; the force which acts upon atoms, the soulwhich acts upon force. Probably he distinguishes between anonymous soulsand personal souls. Then my fly would be an anonymous soul. 

(_Same day_). --The national churches are all up in arms againstso-called Liberal Christianity; Basle and Zurich began the fight, andnow Geneva has entered the lists too. Gradually it is becoming plainthat historical Protestantism has no longer a _raison d'être_ betweenpure liberty and pure authority. It is, in fact, a provisional stage, founded on the worship of the Bible--that is to say, on the idea of awritten revelation, and of a book divinely inspired, and thereforeauthoritative. When once this thesis has been relegated to the rank of afiction Protestantism crumbles away. There is nothing for it but toretire up on natural religion, or the religion of the moralconsciousness. M. M. Réville, Conquerel, Fontanes, Buisson, [Footnote:The name of M. Albert Réville, the French Protestant theologian, is moreor less familiar in England, especially since his delivery of theHibbert lectures in 1884. Athanase Coquerel, born 1820, died 1876, thewell-known champion of liberal ideas in the French Protestant Church, was suspended from his pastoral functions by the Consistory of Paris, onaccount of his review of M. Renan's "Vie de Jésus" in 1864. Ferdinand-Edouard Buisson, a liberal Protestant, originally a professorat Lausanne, was raised to the important function of Director of PrimaryInstruction by M. Ferry in 1879. He was denounced by Bishop Dupanloup, in the National Assembly of 1871, as the author of certain liberalpamphlets on the dangers connected with Scripture-teaching in schools, and, for the time, lost his employment under the Ministry of Education. ]accept this logical outcome. They are the advance-guard of Protestantismand the laggards of free thought. 

Their mistake is not seeing that all institutions rest upon a legalfiction, and that every living thing involves a logical absurdity. Itmay be logical to demand a church based on free examination and absolutesincerity; but to realize it is a different matter. A church lives bywhat is positive, and this positive element necessarily limitsinvestigation. People confound the right of the individual, which is tobe free, with the duty of the institution, which is to be something. They take the principle of science to be the same as the principle ofthe church, which is a mistake. They will not see that religion isdifferent from philosophy, and that the one seeks union by faith, whilethe other upholds the solitary independence of thought. That the breadshould be good it must have leaven; but the leaven is not the bread. Liberty is the means whereby we arrive at an enlightened faith--granted;but an assembly of people agreeing only upon this criterion and thismethod could not possibly found a church, for they might differcompletely as to the results of the method. Suppose a newspaper thewriters of which were of all possible parties--it would no doubt be acuriosity in journalism, but it would have no opinions, no faith, nocreed. A drawing-room filled with refined people, carrying on politediscussion, is not a church, and a dispute, however courteous, is notworship. It is a mere confusion of kinds. 

July 13, 1869. --Lamennais, Heine--the one the victim of a mistakenvocation, the other of a tormenting craving to astonish and mystify hiskind. The first was wanting in common sense; the second was wanting inseriousness. The Frenchman was violent, arbitrary, domineering; theGerman was a jesting Mephistopheles, with a horror of Philistinism. TheBreton was all passion and melancholy; the Hamburger all fancy andsatire. Neither developed freely nor normally. Both of them, because ofan initial mistake, threw themselves into an endless quarrel with theworld. Both were revolutionists. They were not fighting for the goodcause, for impersonal truth; both were rather the champions of their ownpride. Both suffered greatly, and died isolated, repudiated, andreviled. Men of magnificent talents, both of them, but men of smallwisdom, who did more harm than good to themselves and to others! It is alamentable existence which wears itself out in maintaining a firstantagonism, or a first blunder. The greater a man's intellectual power, the more dangerous is it for him to make a false start and to begin lifebadly. 

July 20, 1869. --I have been reading over again five or six chapters, hereand there, of Renan's "St. Paul. " Analyzed to the bottom, the writer isa freethinker, but a free thinker whose flexible imagination stillallows him the delicate epicurism of religious emotion. In his eyes theman who will not lend himself to these graceful fancies is vulgar, andthe man who takes them seriously is prejudiced. He is entertained by thevariations of conscience, but he is too clever to laugh at them. Thetrue critic neither concludes nor excludes; his pleasure is tounderstand without believing, and to profit by the results ofenthusiasm, while still maintaining a free mind, unembarrassed byillusion. Such a mode of proceeding has a look of dishonesty; it isnothing, however, but the good-tempered irony of a highly-cultivatedmind, which will neither be ignorant of anything nor duped by anything. It is the dilettantism of the Renaissance in its perfection. At the sametime what innumerable proofs of insight and of exultant scientificpower!

August 14, 1869. --In the name of heaven, who art thou? what wiltthou--wavering inconstant creature? What future lies before thee? Whatduty or what hope appeals to thee?

My longing, my search is for love, for peace, for something to fill myheart; an idea to defend; a work to which I might devote the rest of mystrength; an affection which might quench this inner thirst; a cause forwhich I might die with joy. But shall I ever find them? I long for allthat is impossible and inaccessible: for true religion, serioussympathy, the ideal life; for paradise, immortality, holiness, faith, inspiration, and I know not what besides! What I really want is to dieand to be born again, transformed myself, and in a different world. AndI can neither stifle these aspirations nor deceive myself as to thepossibility of satisfying them. I seem condemned to roll forever therock of Sisyphus, and to feel that slow wearing away of the mind whichbefalls the man whose vocation and destiny are in perpetual conflict. "AChristian heart and a pagan head, " like Jacobi; tenderness and pride;width of mind and feebleness of will; the two men of St. Paul; aseething chaos of contrasts, antinomies, and contradictions; humilityand pride; childish simplicity and boundless mistrust; analysis andintuition; patience and irritability; kindness and dryness of heart;carelessness and anxiety; enthusiasm and languor; indifference andpassion; altogether a being incomprehensible and intolerable to myselfand to others!

Then from a state of conflict I fall back into the fluid, vague, indeterminate state, which feels all form to be a mere violence anddisfigurement. All ideas, principles, acquirements, and habits areeffaced in me like the ripples on a wave, like the convolutions of acloud. My personality has the least possible admixture of individuality. I am to the great majority of men what the circle is to rectilinearfigures; I am everywhere at home, because I have no particular andnominative self. Perhaps, on the whole, this defect has good in it. Though I am less of _a_ man, I am perhaps nearer to _the_ man; perhapsrather more _man_. There is less of the individual, but more of thespecies, in me. My nature, which is absolutely unsuited for practicallife, shows great aptitude for psychological study. It prevents me fromtaking sides, but it allows me to understand all sides. It is not onlyindolence which prevents me from drawing conclusions; it is a sort of asecret aversion to all _intellectual proscription_. I have a feelingthat something of everything is wanted to make a world, that allcitizens have a right in the state, and that if every opinion is equallyinsignificant in itself, all opinions have some hold upon truth. To liveand let live, think and let think, are maxims which are equally dear tome. My tendency is always to the whole, to the totality, to the generalbalance of things. What is difficult to me is to exclude, to condemn, tosay no; except, indeed, in the presence of the exclusive. I am alwaysfighting for the absent, for the defeated cause, for that portion oftruth which seems to me neglected; my aim is to complete every thesis, to see round every problem, to study a thing from all its possiblesides. Is this skepticism? Yes, in its result, but not in its purpose. It is rather the sense of the absolute and the infinite reducing totheir proper value and relegating to their proper place the finite andthe relative. But here, in the same way, my ambition is greater than mypower; my philosophical perception is superior to my speculative gift. Ihave not the energy of my opinions; I have far greater width thaninventiveness of thought, and, from timidity, I have allowed thecritical intelligence in me to swallow up the creative genius. Is itindeed from timidity?

Alas! with a little more ambition, or a little more good luck, adifferent man might have been made out of me, and such as my youth gavepromise of. 

August 16, 1869. --I have been thinking over Schopenhauer. It has struckme and almost terrified me to see how well I represent Schopenhauer'stypical man, for whom "happiness is a chimera and suffering a reality, "for whom "the negation of will and of desire is the only road todeliverance, " and "the individual life is a misfortune from whichimpersonal contemplation is the only enfranchisement, " etc. But theprinciple that life is an evil and annihilation a good lies at the rootof the system, and this axiom I have never dared to enunciate in anygeneral way, although I have admitted it here and there in individualcases. What I still like in the misanthrope of Frankfort, is hisantipathy to current prejudice, to European hobbies, to westernhypocrisies, to the successes of the day. Schopenhauer is a man ofpowerful mind, who has put away from him all illusions, who professesBuddhism in the full flow of modern Germany, and absolute detachment ofmind In the very midst of the nineteenth-century orgie. His greatdefects are barrenness of soul, a proud and perfect selfishness, anadoration of genius which is combined with complete indifference to therest of the world, in spite of all his teaching of resignation andsacrifice. He has no sympathy, no humanity, no love. And here Irecognize the unlikeness between us. Pure intelligence and solitarylabor might easily lead me to his point of view; but once appeal to theheart, and I feel the contemplative attitude untenable. Pity, goodness, charity, and devotion reclaim their rights, and insist even upon thefirst place. 

August 29, 1869. --Schopenhauer preaches impersonality, objectivity, purecontemplation, the negation of will, calmness, and disinterestedness, anaesthetic study of the world, detachment from life, the renunciation ofall desire, solitary meditation, disdain of the crowd, and indifferenceto all that the vulgar covet. He approves all my defects, mychildishness, my aversion to practical life, my antipathy to theutilitarians, my distrust of all desire. In a word, he flatters all myinstincts; he caresses and justifies them. 

This pre-established harmony between the theory of Schopenhauer and myown natural man causes me pleasure mingled with terror. I might indulgemyself in the pleasure, but that I fear to delude and stifle conscience. Besides, I feel that goodness has no tolerance for this contemplativeindifference, and that virtue consists in self-conquest. 

August 30, 1869. --Still some chapters of Schopenhauer. Schopenhauerbelieves in the unchangeableness of innate tendencies in the individual, and in the invariability of the primitive disposition. He refuses tobelieve in the new man, in any real progress toward perfection, or inany positive improvement in a human being. Only the appearances arerefined; there is no change below the surface. Perhaps he confusestemperament, character, and individuality? I incline to think thatindividuality is fatal and primitive, that temperament reaches far back, but is alternable, and that character is more recent and susceptible ofvoluntary or involuntary modifications. Individuality is a matter ofpsychology, temperament, a matter of sensation or aesthetics; characteralone is a matter of morals. Liberty and the use of it count for nothingin the first two elements of our being; character is a historical fruit, and the result of a man's biography. For Schopenhauer, character isidentified with temperament just as will with passion. In short, hesimplifies too much, and looks at man from that more elementary point ofview which is only sufficient in the case of the animal. Thatspontaneity which is vital or merely chemical he already calls will. Analogy is not equation; a comparison is not reason; similes andparables are not exact language. Many of Schopenhauer's originalitiesevaporate when we come to translate them into a more close and preciseterminology. 

_Later_. --One has merely to turn over the "Lichtstrahlem" of Herder tofeel the difference between him and Schopenhauer. The latter is full ofmarked features and of observations which stand out from the page andleave a clear and vivid impression. Herder is much less of a writer; hisideas are entangled in his style, and he has no brilliant condensations, no jewels, no crystals. While he proceeds by streams and sheets ofthought which have no definite or individual outline, Schopenhauerbreaks the current of his speculation with islands, striking, original, and picturesque, which engrave themselves in the memory. It is the samedifference as there is between Nicole and Pascal, between Bayle andSatin-Simon. 

What is the faculty which gives relief, brilliancy, and incisiveness tothought? Imagination. Under its influence expression becomesconcentrated, colored, and strengthened, and by the power it has ofindividualizing all it touches, it gives life and permanence to thematerial on which it works. A writer of genius changes sand into glassand glass into crystal, ore into iron and iron into steel; he marks withhis own stamp every idea he gets hold of. He borrows much from thecommon stock, and gives back nothing; but even his robberies arewillingly reckoned to him as private property. He has, as it were, _carte blanche_, and public opinion allows him to take what he will. 

August 31, 1869. --I have finished Schopenhauer. My mind has been atumult of opposing systems--Stoicism, Quietism, Buddhism, Christianity. Shall I never be at peace with myself? If impersonality is a good, whyam I not consistent in the pursuit of it? and if it is a temptation, whyreturn to it, after having judged and conquered it?

Is happiness anything more than a conventional fiction? The deepestreason for my state of doubt is that the supreme end and aim of lifeseems to me a mere lure and deception. The individual is an eternaldupe, who never obtains what he seeks, and who is forever deceived byhope. My instinct is in harmony with the pessimism of Buddha and ofSchopenhauer. It is a doubt which never leaves me even in my moments ofreligious fervor. Nature is indeed for me a Maïa; and I look at her, asit were, with the eyes of an artist. My intelligence remains skeptical. What, then, do I believe in? I do not know. And what is it I hope for?It would be difficult to say. Folly! I believe in goodness, and I hopethat good will prevail. Deep within this ironical and disappointed beingof mine there is a child hidden--a frank, sad, simple creature, whobelieves in the ideal, in love, in holiness, and all heavenlysuperstitions. A whole millennium of idylls sleeps in my heart; I am apseudo-skeptic, a pseudo-scoffer. 

 "Borné dans sa nature, infini dans ses voeux, L'homme est un dieu tombé qui se souvient des cieux. "

October 14, 1869. --Yesterday, Wednesday, death of Sainte-Beuve. What aloss!

October 16, 1869. --_Laboremus_ seems to have been the motto ofSainte-Beuve, as it was that of Septimius Severus. He died in harness, and up to the evening before his last day he still wrote, overcoming thesufferings of the body by the energy of the mind. To-day, at this verymoment, they are laying him in the bosom of mother earth. He refused thesacraments of the church; he never belonged to any confession; he wasone of the "great diocese"--that of the independent seekers of truth, and he allowed himself no final moment of hypocrisy. He would havenothing to do with any one except God only--or rather the mysteriousIsis beyond the veil. Being unmarried, he died in the arms of hissecretary. He was sixty-five years old. His power of work and of memorywas immense and intact. What is Scherer thinking about this life andthis death?

October 19, 1869. --An admirable article by Edmond Scherer onSainte-Beuve in the _Temps_. He makes him the prince of French criticsand the last representative of the epoch of literary taste, the futurebelonging to the bookmakers and the chatterers, to mediocrity and toviolence. The article breathes a certain manly melancholy, befitting afuneral oration over one who was a master in the things of the mind. Thefact is, that Sainte-Beuve leaves a greater void behind him than eitherBéranger or Lamartine; their greatness was already distant, historical;he was still helping us to think. The true critic acts as a fulcrum forall the world. He represents the public judgment, that is to say thepublic reason, the touchstone, the scales, the refining rod, which teststhe value of every one and the merit of every work. Infallibility ofjudgment is perhaps rarer than anything else, so fine a balance ofqualities does it demand--qualities both natural and acquired, qualitiesof mind and heart. What years of labor, what study and comparison, areneeded to bring the critical judgment to maturity! Like Plato's sage, itis only at fifty that the critic rises to the true height of hisliterary priesthood, or, to put it less pompously, of his socialfunction. By then only can he hope for insight into all the modes ofbeing, and for mastery of all possible shades of appreciation. AndSainte-Beuve joined to this infinitely refined culture a prodigiousmemory, and an incredible multitude of facts and anecdotes stored up forthe service of his thought. 

December 8, 1869. --Everything has chilled me this morning; the cold ofthe season, the physical immobility around me, but, above all, Hartman's"Philosophy of the Unconscious. " This book lays down the terrible thesisthat creation is a mistake; being, such as it is, is not as good asnon-being, and death is better than life. 

I felt the same mournful impression that Obermann left upon me in myyouth. The black melancholy of Buddhism encompassed and overshadowed me. If, in fact, it is only illusion which hides from us the horror ofexistence and makes life tolerable to us, then existence is a snare andlife an evil. Like the Greek Annikeris, we ought to counsel suicide, orrather with Buddha and Schopenhauer we ought to labor for the radicalextirpation of hope and desire--the causes of life and resurrection. _Not_ to rise again; there is the point, and there is the difficulty. Death is simply a beginning again, whereas it is annihilation that wehave to aim at. Personal consciousness being the root of all ourtroubles, we ought to avoid the temptation to it and the possibility ofit as diabolical and abominable. What blasphemy! And yet it is alllogical; it is the philosophy of happiness carried to its farthestpoint. Epicurism must end in despair. The philosophy of duty is lessdepressing. But salvation lies in the conciliation of duty andhappiness, in the union of the individual will with the divine will, andin the faith that this supreme will is directed by love. 

 * * * * *

It is as true that real happiness is good, as that the good becomebetter under the purification of trial. Those who have not suffered arestill wanting in depth; but a man who has not got happiness cannotimpart it. We can only give what we have. Happiness, grief, gayety, sadness, are by nature contagious. Bring your health and your strengthto the weak and sickly, and so you will be of use to them. Give them, not your weakness, but your energy, so you will revive and lift them up. Life alone can rekindle life. What others claim from us is not ourthirst and our hunger, but our bread and our gourd. 

The benefactors of humanity are those who have thought great thoughtsabout her; but her masters and her idols are those who have flatteredand despised her, those who have muzzled and massacred her, inflamed herwith fanaticism or used her for selfish purposes. Her benefactors arethe poets, the artists, the inventors, the apostles and all pure hearts. Her masters are the Caesars, the Constantines, the Gregory VII. 's, theInnocent III. 's, the Borgias, the Napoleons. 

 * * * * *

Every civilization is, as it were, a dream of a thousand years, in whichheaven and earth, nature and history, appear to men illumined byfantastic light and representing a drama which is nothing but aprojection of the soul itself, influenced by some intoxication--I wasgoing to say hallucination--or other. Those who are widest awake stillsee the real world across the dominant illusion of their race or time. And the reason is that the deceiving light starts from our own mind: thelight is our religion. Everything changes with it. It is religion whichgives to our kaleidoscope, if not the material of the figures, at leasttheir color, their light and shade, and general aspect. Every religionmakes men see the world and humanity under a special light; it is a modeof apperception, which can only be scientifically handled when we havecast it aside, and can only be judged when we have replaced it by abetter. 

 * * * * *

February 23, 1870. --There is in man an instinct of revolt, an enemy ofall law, a rebel which will stoop to no yoke, not even that of reason, duty, and wisdom. This element in us is the root of all sin--_dasradicale Böse_ of Kant. The independence which is the condition ofindividuality is at the same time the eternal temptation of theindividual. That which makes us beings makes us also sinners. 

Sin is, then, in our very marrow. It circulates in us like the blood inour veins, it is mingled with all our substance, [Footnote: This is oneof the passages which rouses M. Renan's wonder: "Voila la grandedifference, " he writes, "entre l'éducation catholique et l'éducationprotestante. Ceux qui comme moi ont reçu une éducation catholique en ontgardé de profonds vestiges. Mais ces vestiges ne sont pas des dogmes, cesont des rêves. Une fois ce grand rideau de drap d'or, bariolé de soie, d'indienne et de calicot, par lequel le catholicisme nous masque la vuedu monde, une fois, dis-je ce rideau déchiré, on voit l'univers en sasplendeur infinie, la nature en sa haute et pleine majesté. Leprotestant le plus libre garde souvent quelque chose de triste, un fondd'austérité intellectuelle analogue au pessimisme slave. "--(_Journal desDébats_, September 30, 1884). 

One is reminded of Mr. Morley's criticism of Emerson. Emerson, he pointsout, has almost nothing to say of death, and "little to say of thathorrid burden and impediment on the soul which the churches call sin, and which, by whatever name we call it, is a very real catastrophe inthe moral nature of man--the courses of nature, and the prodigiousinjustices of mail in society affect him with neither horror nor awe. Hewill see no monster if he can help it. "

Here, then, we have the eternal difference between the two orders oftemperament--the men whose overflowing energy forbids them to realizethe ever-recurring defeat of the human spirit at the hands ofcircumstance, like Renan and Emerson, and the men for whom "horror andawe" are interwoven with experience, like Amiel. ] Or rather I am wrong:temptation is our natural state, but sin is not necessary. Sin consistsin the voluntary confusion of the independence which is good with theindependence which is bad; it is caused by the half-indulgence grantedto a first sophism. We shut our eyes to the beginnings of evil becausethey are small, and in this weakness is contained the germ of ourdefeat. _Principiis obsta_--this maxim dutifully followed would preserveus from almost all our catastrophes. 

We will have no other master but our caprice--that is to say, our evilself will have no God, and the foundation of our nature is seditious, impious, insolent, refractory, opposed to, and contemptuous of all thattries to rule it, and therefore contrary to order, ungovernable andnegative. It is this foundation which Christianity calls the naturalman. But the savage which is within us, and constitutes the primitivestuff of us, must be disciplined and civilized in order to produce aman. And the man must be patiently cultivated to produce a wise man, andthe wise man must be tested and tried if he is to become righteous. Andthe righteous man must have substituted the will of God for hisindividual will, if he is to become a saint. And this new man, thisregenerate being, is the spiritual man, the heavenly man, of which theVedas speak as well as the gospel, and the Magi as well as theNeo-Platonists. 

March 17, 1870. --This morning the music of a brass band which hadstopped under my windows moved me almost to tears. It exercised anindefinable, nostalgic power over me; it set me dreaming of anotherworld, of infinite passion and supreme happiness. Such impressions arethe echoes of paradise in the soul; memories of ideal spheres, whose sadsweetness ravishes and intoxicates the heart. O Plato! O Pythagoras!ages ago you heard these harmonies--surprised these moments of inwardecstacy--knew these divine transports! If music thus carries us toheaven, it is because music is harmony, harmony is perfection, perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven. This world of quarrelsand bitterness, of selfishness, ugliness, and misery, makes us longinvoluntarily for the eternal peace, for the adoration which has nolimits, and the love which has no end. It is not so much the infinite asthe beautiful that we yearn for. It is not being, or the limits ofbeing, which weigh upon us; it is evil, in us and without us. It is notall necessary to be great, so long as we are in harmony with the orderof the universe. Moral ambition has no pride; it only desires to fillits place, and make its note duly heard in the universal concert of theGod of love. 

March 30, 1870. --Certainly, nature is unjust and shameless, withoutprobity, and without faith. Her only alternatives are gratuitous favoror mad aversion, and her only way of redressing an injustice is tocommit another. The happiness of the few is expiated by the misery ofthe greater number. It is useless to accuse a blind force. 

The human conscience, however, revolts against this law of nature, andto satisfy its own instinct of justice it has imagined two hypotheses, out of which it has made for itself a religion--the idea of anindividual providence, and the hypothesis of another life. 

In these we have a protest against nature, which is thus declaredimmoral and scandalous to the moral sense. Man believes in good, andthat he may ground himself on justice he maintains that the injusticeall around him is but an appearance, a mystery, a cheat, and thatjustice _will_ be done. _Fiat justitia, pereal mundus!_

It is a great act of faith. And since humanity has not made itself, thisprotest has some chance of expressing a truth. If there is conflictbetween the natural world and the moral world, between reality andconscience, conscience must be right. 

It is by no means necessary that the universe should exist, but it isnecessary that justice should be done, and atheism is bound to explainthe fixed obstinacy of conscience on this point. Nature is not just; weare the products of nature: why are we always claiming and prophesyingjustice? why does the effect rise up against its cause? It is a singularphenomenon. Does the protest come from any puerile blindness of humanvanity? No, it is the deepest cry of our being, and it is for the honorof God that the cry is uttered. Heaven and earth may pass away, but good_ought_ to be, and injustice ought _not_ to be. Such is the creed of thehuman race. Nature will be conquered by spirit; the eternal will triumphover time. 

April 1, 1870. --I am inclined to believe that for a woman love is thesupreme authority--that which judges the rest and decides what is goodor evil. For a man, love is subordinate to right. It is a great passion, but it is not the source of order, the synonym of reason, the criterionof excellence. It would seem, then, that a woman places her ideal in theperfection of love, and a man in the perfection of justice. It was inthis sense that St. Paul was able to say, "The woman is the glory of theman, and the man is the glory of God. " Thus the woman who absorbsherself in the object of her love is, so to speak, in the line ofnature; she is truly woman, she realizes her fundamental type. On thecontrary, the man who should make life consist in conjugal adoration, and who should imagine that he has lived sufficiently when he has madehimself the priest of a beloved woman, such a one is but half a man; heis despised by the world, and perhaps secretly disdained by womenthemselves. The woman who loves truly seeks to merge her ownindividuality in that of the man she loves. She desires that her loveshould make him greater, stronger, more masculine, and more active. Thuseach sex plays its appointed part: the woman is first destined for man, and man is destined for society. Woman owes herself to one, man oweshimself to all; and each obtains peace and happiness only when he or shehas recognized this law and accepted this balance of things. The samething may be a good in the woman and an evil in the man, may be strengthin her, weakness in him. 

There is then a feminine and a masculine morality--preparatory chapters, as it were, to a general human morality. Below the virtue which isevangelical and sexless, there is a virtue of sex. And this virtue ofsex is the occasion of mutual teaching, for each of the two incarnationsof virtue makes it its business to convert the other, the firstpreaching love in the ears of justice, the second justice in the ears oflove. And so there is produced an oscillation and an average whichrepresent a social state, an epoch, sometimes a whole civilization. 

Such at least is our European idea of the harmony of the sexes in agraduated order of functions. America is on the road to revolutionizethis ideal by the introduction of the democratic principle of theequality of individuals in a general equality of functions. Only, whenthere is nothing left but a multitude of equal individualities, neitheryoung nor old, neither men nor women, neither benefited norbenefactors--all social difference will turn upon money. The wholehierarchy will rest upon the dollar, and the most brutal, the mosthideous, the most inhuman of inequalities will be the fruit of thepassion for equality. What a result! Plutolatry--the worship of wealth, the madness of gold--to it will be confided the task of chastising afalse principle and its followers. And plutocracy will be in its turnexecuted by equality. It would be a strange end for it, if Anglo-Saxonindividualism were ultimately swallowed up in Latin socialism. 

It is my prayer that the discovery of an equilibrium between the twoprinciples may be made in time, before the social war, with all itsterror and ruin, overtakes us. But it is scarcely likely. The masses arealways ignorant and limited, and only advance by a succession ofcontrary errors. They reach good only by the exhaustion of evil. Theydiscover the way out, only after having run their heads against allother possible issues. 

April 15, 1870. --_Crucifixion!_ That is the word we have to meditateto-day. Is it not Good Friday?

To curse grief is easier than to bless it, but to do so is to fall backinto the point of view of the earthly, the carnal, the natural man. Bywhat has Christianity subdued the world if not by the apotheosis ofgrief, by its marvelous transmutation of suffering into triumph, of thecrown of thorns into the crown of glory, and of a gibbet into a symbolof salvation? What does the apotheosis of the Cross mean, if not thedeath of death, the defeat of sin, the beatification of martyrdom, theraising to the skies of voluntary sacrifice, the defiance of pain? "ODeath, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?" By longbrooding over this theme--the agony of the just, peace in the midst ofagony, and the heavenly beauty of such peace--humanity came tounderstand that a new religion was born--a new mode, that is to say, ofexplaining life and of understanding suffering. 

Suffering was a curse from which man fled; now it becomes a purificationof the soul, a sacred trial sent by eternal love, a divine dispensationmeant to sanctify and ennoble us, an acceptable aid to faith, a strangeinitiation into happiness. O power of belief! All remains the same, andyet all is changed. A new certitude arises to deny the apparent and thetangible; it pierces through the mystery of things, it places aninvisible Father behind visible nature, it shows us joy shining throughtears, and makes of pain the beginning of joy. 

And so, for those who have believed, the tomb becomes heaven, and on thefuneral pyre of life they sing the hosanna of immortality; a sacredmadness has renewed the face of the world for them, and when they wishto explain what they feel, their ecstasy makes them incomprehensible;they speak with tongues. A wild intoxication of self-sacrifice, contemptfor death, the thirst for eternity, the delirium of love--these are whatthe unalterable gentleness of the Crucified has had power to bringforth. By his pardon of his executioners, and by that unconquerablesense in him of an indissoluble union with God, Jesus, on his cross, kindled an inextinguishable fire and revolutionized the world. Heproclaimed and realized salvation by faith in the infinite mercy, and inthe pardon granted to simple repentance. By his saying, "There is morejoy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and ninejust persons who need no repentance, " he made humility the gate ofentrance into paradise. 

Crucify the rebellious self, mortify yourself wholly, give up all toGod, and the peace which is not of this world will descend upon you. Foreighteen centuries no grander word has been spoken; and althoughhumanity is forever seeking after a more exact and complete applicationof justice, yet her secret faith is not in justice but in pardon, forpardon alone conciliates the spotless purity of perfection with theinfinite pity due to weakness--that is to say, it alone preserves anddefends the Idea of holiness, while it allows full scope to that oflove. The gospel proclaims the ineffable consolation, the good news, which disarms all earthly griefs, and robs even death of itsterrors--the news of irrevocable pardon, that is to say, of eternallife. The Cross is the guarantee of the gospel. 

Therefore it has been its standard. 

May 7, 1870. --The faith which clings to its idols and resists allinnovation is a retarding and conservative force; but it is the propertyof all religion to serve as a curb to our lawless passion for freedom, and to steady and quiet our restlessness of temper. Curiosity is theexpansive force, which, if it were allowed an unchecked action upon us, would disperse and volatilize us; belief represents the force ofgravitation and cohesion which makes separate bodies and individuals ofus. Society lives by faith, develops by science. Its basis then is themysterious, the unknown, the intangible--religion--while the fermentingprinciple in it is the desire of knowledge. Its permanent substance isthe uncomprehended or the divine; its changing form is the result of itsintellectual labor. The unconscious adhesions, the confused intuitions, the obscure presentiments, which decide the first faith of a people, arethen of capital importance in its history. All history moves between thereligion which is the genial instinctive and fundamental philosophy of arace, and the philosophy which is the ultimate religion--the clearperception, that is to say, of those principles which have engenderedthe whole spiritual development of humanity. 

It is always the same thing which is, which was, and which will be; butthis thing--the absolute--betrays with more or less transparency andprofundity the law of its life and of its metamorphoses. In its fixedaspect it is called God; in its mobile aspect the world or nature. Godis present in nature, but nature is not God; there is a nature in God, but it is not God himself. I am neither for immanence nor fortranscendence taken alone. 

May 9, 1870. --Disraeli, in his new novel, "Lothair, " shows that the twogreat forces of the present are Revolution and Catholicism, and that thefree nations are lost if either of these two forces triumphs. It isexactly my own idea. Only, while in France, in Belgium, in Italy, and inall Catholic societies, it is only by checking one of these forces bythe other that the state and civilization can be maintained, theProtestant countries are better off; in them there is a third force, amiddle faith between the two other idolatries, which enables them toregard liberty not as a neutralization of two contraries, but as a moralreality, self-subsistent, and possessing its own center of gravity andmotive force. In the Catholic world religion and liberty exclude eachother. In the Protestant world they accept each other, so that in thesecond case there is a smaller waste of force. 

Liberty is the lay, the philosophical principle. It expresses thejuridical and social aspiration of the race. But as there is no societypossible without regulation, without control, without limitations onindividual liberty, above all without moral limitations, the peopleswhich are legally the freest do well to take their religiousconsciousness for check and ballast. In mixed states, Catholic orfree-thinking, the limit of action, being a merely penal one, invitesincessant contravention. 

The puerility of the freethinkers consists in believing that a freesociety can maintain itself and keep itself together without a commonfaith, without a religious prejudice of some kind. Where lies the willof God? Is it the common reason which expresses it, or rather, are aclergy or a church the depositories of it? So long as the response isambiguous and equivocal in the eyes of half or the majority ofconsciences--and this is the case in all Catholic states--public peaceis impossible, and public law is insecure. If there is a God, we musthave him on our side, and if there is not a God, it would be necessaryfirst of all to convert everybody to the same idea of the lawful and theuseful, to reconstitute, that is to say, a lay religion, before anythingpolitically solid could be built. 

Liberalism is merely feeding upon abstractions, when it persuades itselfthat liberty is possible without free individuals, and when it will notrecognize that liberty in the individual is the fruit of a foregoingeducation, a moral education, which presupposes a liberating religion. To preach liberalism to a population jesuitized by education, is topress the pleasures of dancing upon a man who has lost a leg. How is itpossible for a child who has never been out of swaddling clothes towalk? How can the abdication of individual conscience lead to thegovernment of individual conscience? To be free, is to guide one's self, to have attained one's majority, to be emancipated, master of one'sactions, and judge of good and evil; but ultramontane Catholicism neveremancipates its disciples, who are bound to admit, to believe, and toobey, as they are told, because they are minors in perpetuity, and theclergy alone possess the law of right, the secret of justice, and themeasure of truth. This is what men are landed in by the idea of anexterior revelation, cleverly made use of by a patient priesthood. 

But what astonishes me is the short-sight of the statesmen of the south, who do not see that the question of questions is the religious question, and even now do not recognize that a liberal state is whollyincompatible with an anti-liberal religion, and almost equallyincompatible with the absence of religion. They confound accidentalconquests and precarious progress with lasting results. 

There is some probability that all this noise which is made nowadaysabout liberty may end in the suppression of liberty; it is plain thatthe internationals, the irreconcilables, and the ultramontanes, are, allthree of them, aiming at absolutism, at dictatorial omnipotence. Happilythey are not one but many, and it will not be difficult to turn themagainst each other. 

If liberty is to be saved, it will not be by the doubters, the men ofscience, or the materialists; it will be by religious conviction, by thefaith of individuals who believe that God wills man to be free but alsopure; it will be by the seekers after holiness, by those old-fashionedpious persons who speak of immortality and eternal life, and prefer thesoul to the whole world; it will be by the enfranchised children of theancient faith of the human race. 

June 5, 1870. --The efficacy of religion lies precisely in that which isnot rational, philosophic, nor external; its efficacy lies in theunforeseen, the miraculous, the extraordinary. Thus religion attractsmore devotion in proportion as it demands more faith--that is to say, asit becomes more incredible to the profane mind. The philosopher aspiresto explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. It ismystery, on the other hand, which the religious instinct demands andpursues; it is mystery which constitutes the essence of worship, thepower of proselytism. When the cross became the "foolishness" of thecross, it took possession of the masses. And in our own day, those whowish to get rid of the supernatural, to enlighten religion, to economizefaith, find themselves deserted, like poets who should declaim againstpoetry, or women who should decry love. Faith consists in the acceptanceof the incomprehensible, and even in the pursuit of the impossible, andis self-intoxicated with its own sacrifices, its own repeatedextravagances. 

It is the forgetfulness of this psychological law which stultifies theso-called liberal Christianity. It is the realization of it whichconstitutes the strength of Catholicism. 

Apparently no positive religion can survive the supernatural elementwhich is the reason for its existence. Natural religion seems to be thetomb of all historic cults. All concrete religions die eventually in thepure air of philosophy. So long then as the life of nations is in needof religion as a motive and sanction of morality, as food for faith, hope, and charity, so long will the masses turn away from pure reasonand naked truth, so long will they adore mystery, so long--and rightlyso--will they rest in faith, the only region where the ideal presentsitself to them in an attractive form. 

June 9, 1870. --At bottom, everything depends upon the presence orabsence of one single element in the soul--hope. All the activity ofman, all his efforts and all his enterprises, presuppose a hope in himof attaining an end. Once kill this hope and his movements becomesenseless, spasmodic, and convulsive, like those of some one fallingfrom a height. To struggle with the inevitable has something childish init. To implore the law of gravitation to suspend its action would nodoubt be a grotesque prayer. Very well! but when a man loses faith inthe efficacy of his efforts, when he says to himself, "You are incapableof realizing your ideal; happiness is a chimera, progress is anillusion, the passion for perfection is a snare; and supposing all yourambitions were gratified, everything would still be vanity, " then hecomes to see that a little blindness is necessary if life is to becarried on, and that illusion is the universal spring of movement. Complete disillusion would mean absolute immobility. He who hasdeciphered the secret and read the riddle of finite life escapes fromthe great wheel of existence; he has left the world of the living--he isalready dead. Is this the meaning of the old belief that to raise theveil of Isis or to behold God face to face brought destruction upon therash mortal who attempted it? Egypt and Judea had recorded the fact, Buddha gave the key to it; the individual life is a nothing ignorant ofitself, and as soon as this nothing knows itself, individual life isabolished in principle. For as soon as the illusion vanishes, Nothingness resumes its eternal sway, the suffering of life is over, error has disappeared, time and form have ceased to be for thisenfranchised individuality; the colored air-bubble has burst in theinfinite space, and the misery of thought has sunk to rest in thechangeless repose of all-embracing Nothing. The absolute, if it werespirit, would still be activity, and it is activity, the daughter ofdesire, which is incompatible with the absolute. The absolute, then, must be the zero of all determination, and the only manner of beingsuited to it is Non-being. 

July 2, 1870. --One of the vices of France is the frivolity whichsubstitutes public conventions for truth, and absolutely ignorespersonal dignity and the majesty of conscience. The French are ignorantof the A B C of individual liberty, and still show an essentiallycatholic intolerance toward the ideas which have not attaineduniversality or the adhesion of the majority. The nation is an armywhich can bring to bear mass, number, and force, but not an assembly offree men in which each individual depends for his value on himself. Theeminent Frenchman depends upon others for his value; if he possessstripe, cross, scarf, sword, or robe--in a word, function anddecoration--then he is held to be something, and he feels himselfsomebody. It is the symbol which establishes his merit, it is the publicwhich raises him from nothing, as the sultan creates his viziers. Thesehighly-trained and social races have an antipathy for individualindependence; everything with them must be founded upon authoritymilitary, civil, or religious, and God himself is non-existent until hehas been established by decree. Their fundamental dogma is that socialomnipotence which treats the pretension of truth to be true without anyofficial stamp, as a mere usurpation and sacrilege, and scouts the claimof the individual to possess either a separate conviction or a personalvalue. 

July 20, 1870 (_Bellalpe_). --A marvelous day. The panorama before me isof a grandiose splendor; it is a symphony of mountains, a cantata ofsunny Alps. 

I am dazzled and oppressed by it. The feeling uppermost is one ofdelight in being able to admire, of joy, that is to say, in a recoveredpower of contemplation which is the result of physical relief, in beingable at last to forget myself and surrender myself to things, as befitsa man in my state of health. Gratitude is mingled with enthusiasm. Ihave just spent two hours of continuous delight at the foot of theSparrenhorn, the peak behind us. A flood of sensations overpowered me. Icould only look, feel, dream, and think. 

_Later_. --Ascent of the Sparrenhorn. The peak of it is not very easy toclimb, because of the masses of loose stones and the steepness of thepath, which runs between two abysses. But how great is one's reward!

The view embraces the whole series of the Valais Alps from the Furka tothe Combin; and even beyond the Furka one sees a few peaks of the Ticinoand the Rhaetian Alps; while if you turn you see behind you a wholepolar world of snowfields and glaciers forming the southern side of theenormous Bernese group of the Finsteraarahorn, the Mönch, and theJungfrau. The near representative of the group is the Aletschhorn, whence diverge like so many ribbons the different Aletsch glaciers whichwind about the peak from which I saw them. I could study the differentzones, one above another--fields, woods, grassy Alps, bare rock andsnow, and the principle types of mountain; the pagoda-shaped Mischabel, with its four _arêtes_ as flying buttresses and its staff of nineclustered peaks; the cupola of the Fletchhorn, the dome of Monte Rosa, the pyramid of the Weisshorn, the obelisk of the Cervin. 

Bound me fluttered a multitude of butterflies and brilliant green-backedflies; but nothing grew except a few lichens. The deadness and emptinessof the upper Aletsch glacier, like some vast white street, called up theimage of an icy Pompeii. All around boundless silence. On my way back Inoticed some effects of sunshine--the close elastic mountain grass, starred with gentian, forget-me-not, and anemones, the mountain cattlestanding out against the sky, the rocks just piercing the soil, variouscircular dips in the mountain side, stone waves petrified thousands ofthousands of years ago, the undulating ground, the tender quiet of theevening; and I invoked the soul of the mountains and the spirit of theheights!

July 22, 1870 (_Bellalpe_). --The sky, which was misty and overcast thismorning, has become perfectly blue again, and the giants of the Valaisare bathed in tranquil light. 

Whence this solemn melancholy which oppresses and pursues me? I havejust read a series of scientific books (Bronn on the "Laws ofPalaeontology, " Karl Ritter on the "Law of Geographical Forms"). Arethey the cause of this depression? or is it the majesty of this immenselandscape, the splendor of this setting sun, which brings the tears tomy eyes?

 "Créature d'un jour qui t'agites une heure, "

what weighs upon thee--I know it well--is the sense of thine utternothingness!. . . The names of great men hover before my eyes like asecret reproach, and this grand impassive nature tells me that to-morrowI shall have disappeared, butterfly that I am, without having lived. Orperhaps it is the breath of eternal things which stirs in me the shudderof Job. What is man--this weed which a sunbeam withers? What is our lifein the infinite abyss? I feel a sort of sacred terror, not only formyself, but for my race, for all that is mortal. Like Buddha, I feel thegreat wheel turning--the wheel of universal illusion--and the dumbstupor which enwraps me is full of anguish. Isis lilts the corner of herveil, and he who perceives the great mystery beneath is struck withgiddiness. I can scarcely breathe. It seems to me that I am hanging by athread above the fathomless abyss of destiny. Is this the Infinite faceto face, an intuition of the last great death?

 "Créature d'un jour qui t'agites une heure, Ton âme est immortelle et tes pleurs vont finir. "

_Finir?_ When depths of ineffable desire are opening in the heart, asvast, as yawning as the immensity which surrounds us? Genius, self-devotion, love--all these cravings quicken into life and torture meat once. Like the shipwrecked sailor about to sink under the waves, I amconscious of a mad clinging to life, and at the same time of a rush ofdespair and repentance, which forces from me a cry for pardon. And thenall this hidden agony dissolves in wearied submission. "Resign yourselfto the inevitable! Shroud away out of sight the flattering delusions ofyouth! Live and die in the shade! Like the insects humming in thedarkness, offer up your evening prayer. Be content to fade out of lifewithout a murmur whenever the Master of life shall breathe upon yourtiny flame! It is out of myriads of unknown lives that every clod ofearth is built up. The infusoria do not count until they are millionsupon millions. Accept your nothingness. " Amen!

But there is no peace except in order, in law. Am I in order? Alas, no!My changeable and restless nature will torment me to the end. I shallnever see plainly what I ought to do. The love of the better will havestood between me and the good. Yearning for the ideal will have lost mereality. Vague aspiration and undefined desire will have been enough tomake my talents useless, and to neutralize my powers. Unproductivenature that I am, tortured by the belief that production was required ofme, may not my very remorse be a mistake and a superfluity?

Scherer's phrase comes back to me, "We must accept ourselves as we are. "

September 8, 1870 (_Zurich_). --All the exiles are returning toParis--Edgar Quinet, Louis Blanc, Victor Hugo. By the help of theirunited experience will they succeed in maintaining the republic? It isto be hoped so. But the past makes it lawful to doubt. While therepublic is in reality a fruit, the French look upon it as aseed-sowing. Elsewhere such a form of government presupposes free men;in France it is and must be an instrument of instruction and protection. France has once more placed sovereignty in the hands of universalsuffrage, as though the multitude were already enlightened, judicious, and reasonable, and now her task is to train and discipline the forcewhich, by a fiction, is master. 

The ambition of France is set upon self-government, but her capacity forit has still to be proved. For eighty years she has confoundedrevolution with liberty; will she now give proof of amendment and ofwisdom? Such a change is not impossible. Let us wait for it withsympathy, but also with caution. 

September 12, 1870 (_Basle_). --The old Rhine is murmuring under mywindow. The wide gray stream rolls its great waves along and breaksagainst the arches of the bridge, just as it did ten years or twentyyears ago; the red cathedral shoots its arrow-like spires toward heaven;the ivy on the terraces which fringe the left bank of the Rhine hangsover the walls like a green mantle; the indefatigable ferry-boat goesand comes as it did of yore; in a word, things seem to be eternal, whileman's hair turns gray and his heart grows old. I came here first as astudent, then as a professor. Now I return to it at the downward turn ofmiddle age, and nothing in the landscape has changed except myself. 

The melancholy of memory may be commonplace and puerile--all the same itis true, it is inexhaustible, and the poets of all times have been opento its attacks. 

At bottom, what is individual life? A variation of an eternal theme--tobe born, to live, to feel, to hope, to love, to suffer, to weep, to die. Some would add to these, to grow rich, to think, to conquer; but infact, whatever frantic efforts one may make, however one may strain andexcite one's self, one can but cause a greater or slighter undulation inthe line of one's destiny. Supposing a man renders the series offundamental phenomena a little more evident to others or a little moredistinct to himself, what does it matter? The whole is still nothing buta fluttering of the infinitely little, the insignificant repetition ofan invariable theme. In truth, whether the individual exists or no, thedifference is so absolutely imperceptible in the whole of things thatevery complaint and every desire is ridiculous. Humanity in its entiretyis but a flash in the duration of the planet, and the planet may returnto the gaseous state without the sun's feeling it even for a second. Theindividual is the infinitesimal of nothing. 

What, then, is nature? Nature is Maïa--that is to say, an incessant, fugitive, indifferent series of phenomena, the manifestation of allpossibilities, the inexhaustible play of all combinations. 

And is Maïa all the while performing for the amusement of somebody, ofsome spectator--Brahma? Or is Brahma working out some serious andunselfish end? From the theistic point of view, is it the purpose of Godto make souls, to augment the sum of good and wisdom by themultiplication of himself in free beings--facets which may flash back tohim his own holiness and beauty? This conception is far more attractiveto the heart. But is it more true? The moral consciousness affirms it. If man is capable of conceiving goodness, the general principle ofthings, which cannot be inferior to man, must be good. The philosophy oflabor, of duty, of effort, is surely superior to that of phenomena, chance, and universal indifference. If so, the whimsical Maïa would besubordinate to Brahma, the eternal thought, and Brahma would be in histurn subordinate to a holy God. 

October 25, 1870 (_Geneva_). --"Each function to the most worthy:" thismaxim governs all constitutions, and serves to test them. Democracy isnot forbidden to apply it, but democracy rarely does apply it, becauseshe holds, for example, that the most worthy man is the man who pleasesher, whereas he who pleases her is not always the most worthy, andbecause she supposes that reason guides the masses, whereas in realitythey are most commonly led by passion. And in the end every falsehoodhas to be expiated, for truth always takes its revenge. 

Alas, whatever one may say or do, wisdom, justice, reason, and goodnesswill never be anything more than special cases and the heritage of a fewelect souls. Moral and intellectual harmony, excellence in all itsforms, will always be a rarity of great price, an isolated _chefd'oeuvre_. All that can be expected from the most perfect institutionsis that they should make it possible for individual excellence todevelop itself, not that they should produce the excellent individual. Virtue and genius, grace and beauty, will always constitute a _noblesse_such as no form of government can manufacture. It is of no use, therefore, to excite one's self for or against revolutions which haveonly an importance of the second order--an importance which I do notwish either to diminish or to ignore, but an importance which, afterall, is mostly negative. The political life is but the means of the truelife. 

October 26, 1870. --Sirocco. A bluish sky. The leafy crowns of the treeshave dropped at their feet; the finger of winter has touched them. Theerrand-woman has just brought me my letters. Poor little woman, what alife! She spends her nights in going backward and forward from herinvalid husband to her sister, who is scarcely less helpless, and herdays are passed in labor. Resigned and indefatigable, she goes onwithout complaining, till she drops. 

Lives such as hers prove something: that the true ignorance is moralignorance, that labor and suffering are the lot of all men, and thatclassification according to a greater or less degree of folly isinferior to that which proceeds according to a greater or less degree ofvirtue. The kingdom of God belongs not to the most enlightened but tothe best; and the best man is the most unselfish man. Humble, constant, voluntary self-sacrifice--this is what constitutes the true dignity ofman. And therefore is it written, "The last shall be first. " Societyrests upon conscience and not upon science. Civilization is first andforemost a moral thing. Without honesty, without respect for law, without the worship of duty, without the love of one's neighbor--in aword, without virtue--the whole is menaced and falls into decay, andneither letters nor art, neither luxury nor industry, nor rhetoric, northe policeman, nor the custom-house officer, can maintain erect andwhole an edifice of which the foundations are unsound. 

A state founded upon interest alone and cemented by fear is an ignobleand unsafe construction. The ultimate ground upon which everycivilization rests is the average morality of the masses, and asufficient amount of practical righteousness. Duty is what upholds all. So that those who humbly and unobtrusively fulfill it, and set a goodexample thereby, are the salvation and the sustenance of this brilliantworld, which knows nothing about them. Ten righteous men would havesaved Sodom, but thousands and thousands of good homely folk are neededto preserve a people from corruption and decay. 

If ignorance and passion are the foes of popular morality, it must beconfessed that moral indifference is the malady of the cultivatedclasses. The modern separation of enlightenment and virtue, of thoughtand conscience, of the intellectual aristocracy from the honest andvulgar crowd, is the greatest danger that can threaten liberty. When anysociety produces an increasing number of literary exquisites, ofsatirists, skeptics, and _beaux esprits_, some chemical disorganizationof fabric may be inferred. Take, for example, the century of Augustus, and that of Louis XV. Our cynics and railers are mere egotists, whostand aloof from the common duty, and in their indolent remoteness areof no service to society against any ill which may attack it. Theircultivation consists in having got rid of feeling. And thus they fallfarther and farther away from true humanity, and approach nearer to thedemoniacal nature. What was it that Mephistopheles lacked? Notintelligence certainly, but goodness. 

October 28, 1870. --It is strange to see how completely justice isforgotten in the presence of great international struggles. Even thegreat majority of the spectators are no longer capable of judging exceptas their own personal tastes, dislikes, fears, desires, interests, orpassions may dictate--that is to say, their judgment is not a judgment atall. How many people are capable of delivering a fair verdict on thestruggle now going on? Very few! This horror of equity, this antipathyto justice, this rage against a merciful neutrality, represents a kindof eruption of animal passion in man, a blind fierce passion, which isabsurd enough to call itself a reason, whereas it is nothing but aforce. 

November 16, 1870. --We are struck by something bewildering and ineffablewhen we look down into the depths of an abyss; and every soul is anabyss, a mystery of love and piety. A sort of sacred emotion descendsupon me whenever I penetrate the recesses of this sanctuary of man, andhear the gentle murmur of the prayers, hymns, and supplications whichrise from the hidden depths of the heart. These involuntary confidencesfill me with a tender piety and a religious awe and shyness. The wholeexperience seems to me as wonderful as poetry, and divine with thedivineness of birth and dawn. Speech fails me, I bow myself and adore. And, whenever I am able, I strive also to console and fortify. 

December 6, 1870. --"Dauer im Wechsel"--"Persistence in change. " Thistitle of a poem by Goethe is the summing up of nature. Everythingchanges, but with such unequal rapidity that one existence appearseternal to another. A geological age, for instance, compared to theduration of any living being, the duration of a planet compared to ageological age, appear eternities--our life, too, compared to thethousand impressions which pass across us in an hour. Wherever onelooks, one feels one's self overwhelmed by the infinity of infinites. The universe, seriously studied, rouses one's terror. Everything seemsso relative that it is scarcely possible to distinguish whether anythinghas a real value. 

Where is the fixed point in this boundless and bottomless gulf? Must itnot be that which perceives the relations of things--in other words, thought, infinite thought? The perception of ourselves within theinfinite thought, the realization of ourselves in God, self-acceptancein him, the harmony of our will with his--in a word, religion--herealone is firm ground. Whether this thought be free or necessary, happiness lies in identifying one's self with it. Both the stoic and theChristian surrender themselves to the Being of beings, which the onecalls sovereign wisdom and the other sovereign goodness. St. John says, "God is Light, " "God is Love. " The Brahmin says, "God is theinexhaustible fount of poetry. " Let us say, "God is perfection. " Andman? Man, for all his inexpressible insignificance and frailty, maystill apprehend the idea of perfection, may help forward the supremewill, and die with Hosanna on his lips!

 * * * * *

All teaching depends upon a certain presentiment and preparation in thetaught; we can only teach others profitably what they already virtuallyknow; we can only give them what they had already. This principle ofeducation is also a law of history. Nations can only be developed on thelines of their tendencies and aptitudes. Try them on any other and theyare rebellious and incapable of improvement. 

 * * * * *

By despising himself too much a man comes to be worthy of his owncontempt. 

 * * * * *

Its way of suffering is the witness which a soul bears to itself. 

 * * * * *

The beautiful is superior to the sublime because it lasts and does notsatiate, while the sublime is relative, temporary and violent. 

 * * * * *

February 4, 1871. --Perpetual effort is the characteristic of modernmorality. A painful process has taken the place of the old harmony, theold equilibrium, the old joy and fullness of being. We are all so manyfauns, satyrs, or Silenuses, aspiring to become angels; so manydeformities laboring for our own embellishment; so many clumsychrysalises each working painfully toward the development of thebutterfly within him. Our ideal is no longer a serene beauty of soul; itis the agony of Laocoon struggling with the hydra of evil. The lot iscast irrevocably. There are no more happy whole-natured men among us, nothing but so many candidates for heaven, galley-slaves on earth. 

 "Nous ramons notre vie en attendant le port. "

Molière said that reasoning banished reason. It is possible also thatthe progress toward perfection we are so proud of is only a pretentiousimperfection. Duty seems now to be more negative than positive; it meanslessening evil rather than actual good; it is a generous discontent, butnot happiness; it is an incessant pursuit of an unattainable goal, anoble madness, but not reason; it is homesickness for theimpossible--pathetic and pitiful, but still not wisdom. 

The being which has attained harmony, and every being may attain it, hasfound its place in the order of the universe, and represents the divinethought at least as clearly as a flower or a solar system. Harmony seeksnothing outside itself. It is what it ought to be; it is the expressionof right, order, law, and truth; it is greater than time, and representseternity. 

February 6, 1871. --I am reading Juste Olivier's "Chansons du Soir" overagain, and all the melancholy of the poet seems to pass into my veins. It is the revelation of a complete existence, and of a whole world ofmelancholy reverie. 

How much character there is in "Musette, " the "Chanson de l'Alouette, "the "Chant du Retour, " and the "Gaîté, " and how much freshness in"Lina, " and "A ma fille!" But the best pieces of all are "Au delà, ""Homunculus, " "La Trompeuse, " and especially "Frère Jacques, " itsauthor's masterpiece. To these may be added the "Marionettes" and thenational song, "Helvétie. " Serious purpose and intention disguised ingentle gayety and childlike _badinage_, feeling hiding itself under asmile of satire, a resigned and pensive wisdom expressing itself inrustic round or ballad, the power of suggesting everything in anothing--these are the points in which the Vaudois poet triumphs. On thereader's side there is emotion and surprise, and on the author's a sortof pleasant slyness which seems to delight in playing tricks upon you, only tricks of the most dainty and brilliant kind. Juste Olivier has thepassion we might imagine a fairy to have for delicate mystification. Hehides his gifts. He promises nothing and gives a great deal. Hisgenerosity, which is prodigal, has a surly air; his simplicity is reallysubtlety; his malice pure tenderness; and his whole talent is, as itwere, the fine flower of the Vaudois mind in its sweetest and dreamiestform. 

February 10, 1871. --My reading for this morning has been some vigorouschapters of Taine's "History of English Literature. " Taine is a writerwhose work always produces a disagreeable impression upon me, as thoughof a creaking of pulleys and a clicking of machinery; there is a smellof the laboratory about it. His style is the style of chemistry andtechnology. The science of it is inexorable; it is dry and forcible, penetrating and hard, strong and harsh, but altogether lacking in charm, humanity, nobility, and grace. The disagreeable effect which it makes onone's taste, ear, and heart, depends probably upon two things: upon themoral philosophy of the author and upon his literary principles. Theprofound contempt for humanity which characterizes the physiologicalschool, and the intrusion of technology into literature inaugurated byBalzac and Stendhal, explain the underlying aridity of which one issensible in these pages, and which seems to choke one like the gasesfrom a manufactory of mineral products. The book is instructive in thehighest degree, but instead of animating and stirring, it parches, corrodes, and saddens its reader. It excites no feeling whatever; it issimply a means of information. I imagine this kind of thing will be theliterature of the future--a literature _à l'Américaine_, as different aspossible from Greek art, giving us algebra instead of life, the formulainstead of the image, the exhalations of the crucible instead of thedivine madness of Apollo. Cold vision will replace the joys of thought, and we shall see the death of poetry, flayed and dissected by science. 

February 15, 1871. --Without intending it, nations educate each other, while having apparently nothing in view but their own selfish interests. It was France who made the Germany of the present, by attempting itsdestruction during ten generations; it is Germany who will regeneratecontemporary France, by the effort to crush her. Revolutionary Francewill teach equality to the Germans, who are by nature hierarchical. Germany will teach the French that rhetoric is not science, and thatappearance is not as valuable as reality. The worship of prestige--thatis to say, of falsehood; the passion for vainglory--that is to say, forsmoke and noise; these are what must die in the interests of the world. It is a false religion which is being destroyed. I hope sincerely thatthis war will issue in a new balance of things better than any which hasgone before--a new Europe, in which the government of the individual byhimself will be the cardinal principle of society, in opposition to theLatin principle, which regards the individual as a thing, a means to anend, an instrument of the church or of the state. 

In the order and harmony which would result from free adhesion andvoluntary submission to a common ideal, we should see the rise of a newmoral world. It would be an equivalent, expressed in lay terms, to theidea of a universal priesthood. The model state ought to resemble agreat musical society in which every one submits to be organized, subordinated, and disciplined for the sake of art, and for the sake ofproducing a masterpiece. Nobody is coerced, nobody is made use of forselfish purposes, nobody plays a hypocritical or selfish part. All bringtheir talent to the common stock, and contribute knowingly and gladly tothe common wealth. Even self-love itself is obliged to help on thegeneral action, under pain of rebuff should it make itself apparent. 

February 18, 1871. --It is in the novel that the average vulgarity ofGerman society, and its inferiority to the societies of France andEngland, are most clearly visible. The notion of "bad taste" seems tohave no place in German aesthetics. Their elegance has no grace in it;and they cannot understand the enormous difference there is betweendistinction (what is _gentlemanly_, _ladylike_), and their stiff_vornehmlichkeit_. Their imagination lacks style, training, education, and knowledge of the world; it has an ill-bred air even in its Sundaydress. The race is poetical and intelligent, but common andill-mannered. Pliancy and gentleness, manners, wit, vivacity, taste, dignity, and charm, are qualities which belong to others. 

Will that inner freedom of soul, that profound harmony of all thefaculties which I have so often observed among the best Germans, evercome to the surface? Will the conquerors of to-day ever learn tocivilize and soften their forms of life? It is by their future novelsthat we shall be able to judge. As soon as they are capable of the novelof "good society" they will have excelled all rivals. Till then, finish, polish, the maturity of social culture, are beyond them; they may havehumanity of feeling, but the delicacies, the little perfections of life, are unknown to them. They may be honest and well-meaning, but they areutterly without _savoir vivre_. 

February 22, 1871. --_Soirée_ at the M--. About thirty peoplerepresenting our best society were there, a happy mixture of sexes andages. There were gray heads, young girls, bright faces--the whole framedin some Aubusson tapestries which made a charming background, and gave asoft air of distance to the brilliantly-dressed groups. 

In society people are expected to behave as if they lived on ambrosiaand concerned themselves with nothing but the loftiest interests. Anxiety, need, passion, have no existence. All realism is suppressed asbrutal. In a word, what we call "society" proceeds for the moment on theflattering illusory assumption that it is moving in an etherealatmosphere and breathing the air of the gods. All vehemence, all naturalexpression, all real suffering, all careless familiarity, or any franksign of passion, are startling and distasteful in this delicate_milieu_; they at once destroy the common work, the cloud palace, themagical architectural whole, which has been raised by the generalconsent and effort. It is like the sharp cock-crow which breaks thespell of all enchantments, and puts the fairies to flight. These selectgatherings produce, without knowing it, a sort of concert for eyes andears, an improvised work of art. By the instinctive collaboration ofeverybody concerned, intellect and taste hold festival, and theassociations of reality are exchanged for the associations ofimagination. So understood, society is a form of poetry; the cultivatedclasses deliberately recompose the idyll of the past and the buriedworld of Astrea. Paradox or no, I believe that these fugitive attemptsto reconstruct a dream whose only end is beauty represent confusedreminiscences of an age of gold haunting the human heart, or ratheraspirations toward a harmony of things which every day reality denies tous, and of which art alone gives us a glimpse. 

April 28, 1871. --For a psychologist it is extremely interesting to bereadily and directly conscious of the complications of one's ownorganism and the play of its several parts. It seems to me that thesutures of my being are becoming just loose enough to allow me at once aclear perception of myself as a whole and a distinct sense of my ownbrittleness. A feeling like this makes personal existence a perpetualastonishment and curiosity. Instead of only seeing the world whichsurrounds me, I analyze myself. Instead of being single, all of a piece, I become legion, multitude, a whirlwind--a very cosmos. Instead ofliving on the surface, I take possession of my inmost self, I apprehendmyself, if not in my cells and atoms, at least so far as my groups oforgans, almost my tissues, are concerned. In other words, the centralmonad isolates itself from all the subordinate monads, that it mayconsider them, and finds its harmony again in itself. 

Health is the perfect balance between our organism, with all itscomponent parts, and the outer world; it serves us especially foracquiring a knowledge of that world. Organic disturbance obliges us toset up a fresh and more spiritual equilibrium, to withdraw within thesoul. Thereupon our bodily constitution itself becomes the object ofthought. It is no longer we, although it may belong to us; it is nothingmore than the vessel in which we make the passage of life, a vessel ofwhich we study the weak points and the structure without identifying itwith our own individuality. 

Where is the ultimate residence of the self? In thought, or rather inconsciousness. But below consciousness there is its germ, the _punctumsaliens_ of spontaneity; for consciousness is not primitive, it_becomes_. The question is, can the thinking monad return into itsenvelope, that is to say, into pure spontaneity, or even into the darkabyss of virtuality? I hope not. The kingdom passes; the king remains;or rather is it the royalty alone which subsists--that is to say, theidea--the personality begin in its turn merely the passing vesture ofthe permanent idea? Is Leibnitz or Hegel right? Is the individualimmortal under the form of the spiritual body? Is he eternal under theform of the individual idea? Who saw most clearly, St. Paul or Plato?The theory of Leibnitz attracts me most because it opens to us aninfinite of duration, of multitude, and evolution. For a monad, which isthe virtual universe, a whole infinite of time is not too much todevelop the infinite within it. Only one must admit exterior actions andinfluences which affect the evolution of the monad. Its independencemust be a mobile and increasing quantity between zero and the infinite, without ever reaching either completeness or nullity, for the monad canbe neither absolutely passive nor entirely free. 

June 21, 1871. --The international socialism of the _ouvriers_, ineffectually put down in Paris, is beginning to celebrate itsapproaching victory. For it there is neither country, nor memories, norproperty, nor religion. There is nothing and nobody but itself. Itsdogma is equality, its prophet is Mably, and Baboeuf is its god. 

[Footnote: Mably, the Abbé Mably, 1709-85, one of the precursors of therevolution, the professor of a cultivated and classical communism basedon a study of antiquity, which Babeuf and others like him, in thefollowing generation, translated into practical experiment. "CaiusGracchus" Babeuf, born 1764, and guillotined in 1797 for a conspiracyagainst the Directory, is sometimes called the first French socialist. Perhaps socialist doctrines, properly so called, may be said to maketheir first entry into the region of popular debate and practicalagitation with his "Manifeste des Égaux, " issued April 1796. ]

How is the conflict to be solved, since there is no longer one singlecommon principle between the partisans and the enemies of the existingform of society, between liberalism and the worship of equality? Theirrespective notions of man, duty, happiness--that is to say, of life andits end--differ radically. I suspect that the communism of the_Internationale_ is merely the pioneer of Russian nihilism, which willbe the common grave of the old races and the servile races, the Latinsand the Slavs. If so, the salvation of humanity will depend uponindividualism of the brutal American sort. I believe that the nations ofthe present are rather tempting chastisement than learning wisdom. Wisdom, which means balance and harmony, is only met within individuals. Democracy, which means the rule of the masses, gives preponderance toinstinct, to nature, to the passions--that is to say, to blind impulse, to elemental gravitation, to generic fatality. Perpetual vacillationbetween contraries becomes its only mode of progress, because itrepresents that childish form of prejudice which falls in love andcools, adores, and curses, with the same haste and unreason. Asuccession of opposing follies gives an impression of change which thepeople readily identify with improvement, as though Enceladus was moreat ease on his left side than on his right, the weight of the volcanoremaining the same. The stupidity of Demos is only equaled by itspresumption. It is like a youth with all his animal and none of hisreasoning powers developed. 

Luther's comparison of humanity to a drunken peasant, always ready tofall from his horse on one side or the other, has always struck me as aparticularly happy one. It is not that I deny the right of thedemocracy, but I have no sort of illusion as to the use it will make ofits right, so long, at any rate, as wisdom is the exception and conceitthe rule. Numbers make law, but goodness has nothing to do with figures. Every fiction is self-expiating, and democracy rests upon this legalfiction, that the majority has not only force but reason on itsside--that it possesses not only the right to act but the wisdomnecessary for action. The fiction is dangerous because of its flattery;the demagogues have always flattered the private feelings of the masses. The masses will always be below the average. Besides, the age ofmajority will be lowered, the barriers of sex will be swept away, anddemocracy will finally make itself absurd by handing over the decisionof all that is greatest to all that is most incapable. Such an end willbe the punishment of its abstract principle of equality, which dispensesthe ignorant man from the necessity of self-training, the foolish manfrom that of self-judgment, and tells the child that there is no needfor him to become a man, and the good-for-nothing that self-improvementis of no account. Public law, founded upon virtual equality, willdestroy itself by its consequences. It will not recognize theinequalities of worth, of merit, and of experience; in a word, itignores individual labor, and it will end in the triumph of platitudeand the residuum. The _régime_ of the Parisian Commune has shown us whatkind of material comes to the top in these days of frantic vanity anduniversal suspicion. 

Still, humanity is tough, and survives all catastrophes. Only it makesone impatient to see the race always taking the longest road to an end, and exhausting all possible faults before it is able to accomplish onedefinite step toward improvement. These innumerable follies, that are tobe and must be, have an irritating effect upon me. The more majestic isthe history of science, the more intolerable is the history of politicsand religion. The mode of progress in the moral world seems an abuse ofthe patience of God. 

Enough! There is no help in misanthropy and pessimism. If our race vexesus, let us keep a decent silence on the matter. We are imprisoned on thesame ship, and we shall sink with it. Pay your own debt, and leave therest to God. Sharer, as you inevitably are, in the sufferings of yourkind, set a good example; that is all which is asked of you. Do all thegood you can, and say all the truth you know or believe; and for therest be patient, resigned, submissive. God does his business, do yours. 

July 29, 1871. --So long as a man is capable of self-renewal he is aliving being. Goethe, Schleiermacher and Humboldt, were masters of theart. If we are to remain among the living there must be a perpetualrevival of youth within us, brought about by inward change and by loveof the Platonic sort. The soul must be forever recreating itself, tryingall its various modes, vibrating in all its fibres, raising up newinterests for itself. . . . 

The "Epistles" and the "Epigrams" of Goethe which I have been readingto-day do not make one love him. Why? Because he has so little soul. Hisway of understanding love, religion, duty, and patriotism has somethingmean and repulsive in it. There is no ardor, no generosity in him. Asecret barrenness, an ill-concealed egotism, makes itself felt throughall the wealth and flexibility of his talent. It is true that theegotism of Goethe has at least this much that is excellent in it, thatit respects the liberty of the individual, and is favorable to alloriginality. But it will go out of its way to help nobody; it will giveitself no trouble for anybody; it will lighten nobody else's burden; ina word, it does away with charity, the great Christian virtue. Perfection for Goethe consists in personal nobility, not in love; hisstandard is aesthetic, not moral. He ignores holiness, and has neverallowed himself to reflect on the dark problem of evil. A Spinozist tothe core, he believes in individual luck, not in liberty, nor inresponsibility. He is a Greek of the great time, to whom the inwardcrises of the religious consciousness are unknown. He represents, then, a state of soul earlier than or subsequent to Christianity, what theprudent critics of our time call the "modern spirit;" and only onetendency of the modern spirit--the worship of nature. For Goethe standsoutside all the social and political aspirations of the generality ofmankind; he takes no more interest than Nature herself in thedisinherited, the feeble, and the oppressed. . . . 

The restlessness of our time does not exist for Goethe and his school. It is explicable enough. The deaf have no sense of dissonance. The manwho knows nothing of the voice of conscience, the voice of regret orremorse, cannot even guess at the troubles of those who live under twomasters and two laws, and belong to two worlds--that of nature and thatof liberty. For himself, his choice is made. But humanity cannot chooseand exclude. All needs are vocal at once in the cry of her suffering. She hears the men of science, but she listens to those who talk to herof religion; pleasure attracts her, but sacrifice moves her; and shehardly knows whether she hates or whether she adores the crucifix. 

_Later_. --Still re-reading the sonnets and the miscellaneous poems ofGoethe. The impression left by this part of the "Gedichte" is much morefavorable than that made upon me by the "Elegies" and the "Epigrams. "The "Water Spirits" and "The Divine" are especially noble in feeling. One must never be too hasty in judging these complex natures. Completelylacking as he is in the sense of obligation and of sin, Goethenevertheless finds his way to seriousness through dignity. Greeksculpture has been his school of virtue. 

August 15, 1871. --Re-read, for the second time, Renan's "Vie de Jesus, "in the sixteenth popular edition. The most characteristic feature ofthis analysis of Christianity is that sin plays no part at all in it. Now, if anything explains the success of the gospel among men, it isthat it brought them deliverance from sin--in a word, salvation. A man, however, is bound to explain a religion seriously, and not to shirk thevery center of his subject. This white-marble Christ is not the Christwho inspired the martyrs and has dried so many tears. The author lacksmoral seriousness, and confounds nobility of character with holiness. Hespeaks as an artist conscious of a pathetic subject, but his moral senseis not interested in the question. It is not possible to mistake theepicureanism of the imagination, delighting itself in an aestheticspectacle, for the struggles of a soul passionately in search of truth. In Renan there are still some remains of priestly _ruse_; he strangleswith sacred cords. His tone of contemptuous indulgence toward a more orless captious clergy might be tolerated, but he should have shown a morerespectful sincerity in dealing with the sincere and the spiritual. Laugh at Pharisaism as you will, but speak simply and plainly to honestfolk. [Footnote: "'Persifflez les pharisaïsmes, mais parlez droit auxhonnêtes gens' me dit Amiel, avec une certaine aigreur. Mon Dieu, queles honnêtes gens sont souvent exposés à être des pharisiens sans lesavoir!"--(M. Renan's article, already quoted). ]

_Later_. --To understand is to be conscious of the fundamental unity ofthe thing to be explained--that is to say, to conceive it in itsentirety both of life and development, to be able to remake it by amental process without making a mistake, without adding or omittinganything. It means, first, complete identification of the object, andthen the power of making it clear to others by a full and justinterpretation. To understand is more difficult than to judge, forunderstanding is the transference of the mind into the conditions of theobject, whereas judgment is simply the enunciation of the individualopinion. 

August 25, 1871. (_Charnex-sur-Montreux_). --Magnificent weather. Themorning seems bathed in happy peace, and a heavenly fragrance rises frommountain and shore; it is as though a benediction were laid upon us. Novulgar intrusive noise disturbs the religious quiet of the scene. Onemight believe one's self in a church--a vast temple in which every beingand every natural beauty has its place. I dare not breathe for fear ofputting the dream to flight--a dream traversed by angels. 

 "Comme autrefois j'entends dans l'éther infini La musique du temps et l'hosanna des mondes. "

In these heavenly moments the cry of Pauline rises to one's lips. [Footnote: "Polyeuete, " Act. V. Scene v. 

 "Mon époux en mourant m'a laissé ses lumiéres; Son sang dont tes bourreaux viennent de me couvrir M'a dessillé les yeux et me les vient d'ouvrir. Je vois, je sais, je crois----"]

"I feel! I believe! I see!" All the miseries, the cares, the vexationsof life, are forgotten; the universal joy absorbs us; we enter into thedivine order, and into the blessedness of the Lord. Labor and tears, sin, pain, and death have passed away. To exist is to bless; life ishappiness. In this sublime pause of things all dissonances havedisappeared. It is as though creation were but one vast symphony, glorifying the God of goodness with an inexhaustible wealth of praiseand harmony. We question no longer whether it is so or not. We haveourselves become notes in the great concert; and the soul breaks thesilence of ecstasy only to vibrate in unison with the eternal joy. 

September 22, 1871. (_Charnex_). --Gray sky--a melancholy day. A friendhas left me, the sun is unkind and capricious. Everything passes away, everything forsakes us. And in place of all we have lost, age and grayhairs! . . . After dinner I walked to Chailly between two showers. A rainylandscape has a great charm for me; the dark tints become more velvety, the softer tones more ethereal. The country in rain is like a face withtraces of tears upon it--less beautiful no doubt, but more expressive. 

Behind the beauty which is superficial, gladsome, radiant, and palpable, the aesthetic sense discovers another order of beauty altogether, hidden, veiled, secret and mysterious, akin to moral beauty. This sortof beauty only reveals itself to the initiated, and is all the moreexquisite for that. It is a little like the refined joy of sacrifice, like the madness of faith, like the luxury of grief; it is not withinthe reach of all the world. Its attraction is peculiar, and affects onelike some strange perfume, or bizarre melody. When once the taste for itis set up the mind takes a special and keen delight in it, for one findsin it

 "Son bien premièrement, puis le dédain d'autrui, "

and it is pleasant to one's vanity not to be of the same opinion as thecommon herd. This, however, is not possible with things which areevident, and beauty which is incontestable. Charm, perhaps, is a bettername for the esoteric and paradoxical beauty, which escapes the vulgar, and appeals to our dreamy, meditative side. Classical beauty belongs, soto speak, to all eyes; it has ceased to belong to itself. Esotericbeauty is shy and retiring. It only unveils itself to unsealed eyes, andbestows its favors only upon love. 

This is why my friend ----, who places herself immediately in relationwith the souls of those she meets, does not see the ugliness of peoplewhen once she is interested in them. She likes and dislikes, and thoseshe likes are beautiful, those she dislikes are ugly. There is nothingmore complicated in it than that. For her, aesthetic considerations arelost in moral sympathy; she looks with her heart only; she passes by thechapter of the beautiful, and goes on to the chapter of charm. I can dothe same; only it is by reflection and on second thoughts; my frienddoes it involuntarily and at once; she has not the artistic fiber. Thecraving for a perfect correspondence between the inside and the outsideof things--between matter and form--is not in her nature. She does notsuffer from ugliness, she scarcely perceives it. As for me, I can onlyforget what shocks me, I cannot help being shocked. All corporal defectsirritate me, and the want of beauty in women, being something whichought not to exist, shocks me like a tear, a solecism, a dissonance, aspot of ink--in a word, like something out of order. On the other hand, beauty restores and fortifies me like some miraculous food, likeOlympian ambrosia. 

 "Que le bon soit toujours camarade du beau Dès demain je chercherai femme. Mais comme le divorce entre eux n'est pas nouveau, Et que peu de beaux corps, hôtes d'une belle âme, Assemblent l'un et l'autre point----"

I will not finish, for after all one must resign one's self, A beautifulsoul in a healthy body is already a rare and blessed thing; and if onefinds heart, common sense, intellect, and courage into the bargain, onemay well do without that ravishing dainty which we call beauty, andalmost without that delicious seasoning which we call grace. We dowithout--with a sigh, as one does without a luxury. Happy we, to possesswhat is necessary. 

December 29, 1871. --I have been reading Bahnsen ("Critique del'évolutionisme de Hegel-Hartmann, au nom des principes deSchopenhauer"). What a writer! Like a cuttle-fish in water, everymovement produces a cloud of ink which shrouds his thought in darkness. And what a doctrine! A thoroughgoing pessimism, which regards the worldas absurd, "absolutely idiotic, " and reproaches Hartmann for havingallowed the evolution of the universe some little remains of logic, while, on the contrary, this evolution is eminently contradictory, andthere is no reason anywhere except in the poor brain of the reasoner. Ofall possible worlds that which exists is the worst. Its only excuse isthat it tends of itself to destruction. The hope of the philosopher isthat reasonable beings will shorten their agony and hasten the return ofeverything to nothing. It is the philosophy of a desperate Satanism, which has not even the resigned perspectives of Buddhism to offer to thedisappointed and disillusioned soul. The individual can but protest andcurse. This frantic Sivaism is developed from the conception which makesthe world the product of blind will, the principle of everything. 

The acrid blasphemy of the doctrine naturally leads the writer toindulgence in epithets of bad taste which prevent our regarding his workas the mere challenge of a paradoxical theorist. We have really to dowith a theophobist, whom faith in goodness rouses to a fury of contempt. In order to hasten the deliverance of the world, he kills allconsolation, all hope, and all illusion in the germ, and substitutes forthe love of humanity which inspired Çakyamouni, that Mephistopheliangall which defiles, withers, and corrodes everything it touches. 

Evolutionism, fatalism, pessimism, nihilism--how strange it is to seethis desolate and terrible doctrine growing and expanding at the verymoment when the German nation is celebrating its greatness and itstriumphs! The contrast is so startling that it sets one thinking. 

This orgie of philosophic thought, identifying error with existenceitself, and developing the axiom of Proudhon--"Evil is God, " will bringback the mass of mankind to the Christian theodicy, which is neitheroptimist nor pessimist, but simply declares that the felicity whichChristianity calls eternal life is accessible to man. 

Self-mockery, starting from a horror of stupidity and hypocrisy, andstanding in the way of all wholeness of mind and all trueseriousness--this is the goal to which intellect brings us at last, unless conscience cries out. 

The mind must have for ballast the clear conception of duty, if it isnot to fluctuate between levity and despair. 

 * * * * *

Before giving advice we must have secured its acceptance, or rather, have made it desired. 

 * * * * *

If we begin by overrating the being we love, we shall end by treating itwith wholesale injustice. 

 * * * * *

It is dangerous to abandon one's self to the luxury of grief; itdeprives one of courage, and even of the wish for recovery. 

 * * * * *

We learn to recognize a mere blunting of the conscience in thatincapacity for indignation which is not to be confounded with thegentleness of charity, or the reserve of humility. 

February 7, 1872. --Without faith a man can do nothing. 

But faith can stifle all science. 

What, then, is this Proteus, and whence?

Faith is a certitude without proofs. Being a certitude, it is anenergetic principle of action. Being without proof, it is the contraryof science. Hence its two aspects and its two effects. Is its point ofdeparture intelligence? No. Thought may shake or strengthen faith; itcannot produce it. Is its origin in the will? No; good will may favorit, ill-will may hinder it, but no one believes by will, and faith isnot a duty. Faith is a sentiment, for it is a hope; it is an instinct, for it precedes all outward instruction. Faith is the heritage of theindividual at birth; it is that which binds him to the whole of being. The individual only detaches himself with difficulty from the maternalbreast; he only isolates himself by an effort from the nature aroundhim, from the love which enwraps him, the ideas in which he floats, thecradle in which he lies. He is born in union with humanity, with theworld, and with God. The trace of this original union is faith. Faith isthe reminiscence of that vague Eden whence our individuality issued, butwhich it inhabited in the somnambulist state anterior to the personallife. 

Our individual life consists in separating ourselves from our _milieu_;in so reacting upon it that we apprehend it consciously, and makeourselves spiritual personalities--that is to say, intelligent andfree. Our primitive faith is nothing more than the neutral matter whichour experience of life and things works up a fresh, and which may be soaffected by our studies of every kind as to perish completely in itsoriginal form. We ourselves may die before we have been able to recoverthe harmony of a personal faith which may satisfy our mind andconscience as well as our hearts. But the need of faith never leaves us. It is the postulate of a higher truth which is to bring all things intoharmony. It is the stimulus of research; it holds out to us the reward, it points us to the goal. Such at least is the true, the excellentfaith. That which is a mere prejudice of childhood, which has neverknown doubt, which ignores science, which cannot respect or understandor tolerate different convictions--such a faith is a stupidity and ahatred, the mother of all fanaticisms. We may then repeat of faith whatAesop said of the tongue--

 "Quid medius linguâ, linguâ quid pejus eadem?"

To draw the poison-fangs of faith in ourselves, we must subordinate itto the love of truth. The supreme worship of the true is the only meansof purification for all religions all confessions, all sects. Faithshould only be allowed the second place, for faith has a judge--intruth. When she exalts herself to the position of supreme judge theworld is enslaved: Christianity, from the fourth to the seventeenthcentury, is the proof of it. . . Will the enlightened faith ever conquerthe vulgar faith? We must look forward in trust to a better future. 

The difficulty, however, is this. A narrow faith has much more energythan an enlightened faith; the world belongs to will much more than towisdom. It is not then certain that liberty will triumph overfanaticism; and besides, independent thought will never have the forceof prejudice. The solution is to be found in a division of labor. Afterthose whose business it will have been to hold up to the world the idealof a pure and free faith, will come the men of violence, who will bringthe new creed within the circle of recognized interests, prejudices, andinstitutions. Is not this just what happened to Christianity? After thegentle Master, the impetuous Paul and the bitter Councils. It is truethat this is what corrupted the gospel. But still Christianity has donemore good than harm to humanity, and so the world advances, by thesuccessive decay of gradually improved ideals. 

June 19, 1872. --The wrangle in the Paris Synod still goes on. [Footnote:A synod of the Reformed churches of France was then occupied indetermining the constituent conditions of Protestant belief. ] Thesupernatural is the stone of stumbling. 

It might be possible to agree on the idea of the divine; but no, that isnot the question--the chaff must be separated from the good grain. Thesupernatural is miracle, and miracle is an objective phenomenonindependent of all preceding casuality. Now, miracle thus understoodcannot be proved experimentally; and besides, the subjective phenomena, far more important than all the rest, are left out of account in thedefinition. Men will not see that miracle is a perception of the soul; avision of the divine behind nature; a psychical crisis, analogous tothat of Aeneas on the last day of Troy, which reveals to us the heavenlypowers prompting and directing human action. For the indifferent thereare no miracles. It is only the religious souls who are capable ofrecognizing the finger of God in certain given facts. 

The minds which have reached the doctrine of immanence areincomprehensible to the fanatics of transcendence. They will neverunderstand--these last--that the _panentheism_ of Krause is ten timesmore religious than their dogmatic supernaturalism. Their passion forthe facts which are objective, isolated, and past, prevents them fromseeing the facts which are eternal and spiritual. They can only adorewhat comes to them from without. As soon as their dramaturgy isinterpreted symbolically all seems to them lost. They must have theirlocal prodigies--their vanished unverifiable miracles, because for themthe divine is there and only there. 

This faith can hardly fail to conquer among the races pledged to theCartesian dualism, who call the incomprehensible clear, and abhor whatis profound. Women also will always find local miracle more easy tounderstand than universal miracle, and the visible objectiveintervention of God more probable than his psychological and inwardaction. The Latin world by its mental form is doomed to petrify itsabstractions, and to remain forever outside the inmost sanctuary oflife, that central hearth where ideas are still undivided, without shapeor determination. The Latin mind makes everything objective, because itremains outside things, and outside itself. It is like the eye whichonly perceives what is exterior to it, and which cannot see itselfexcept artificially, and from a distance, by means of the reflectingsurface of a mirror. 

August 30, 1872. --_A priori_ speculations weary me now as much asanybody. All the different scholasticisms make me doubtful of what theyprofess to demonstrate, because, instead of examining, they affirm fromthe beginning. Their object is to throw up entrenchments around aprejudice, and not to discover the truth. They accumulate that whichdarkens rather than that which enlightens. They are descended, all ofthem, from the Catholic procedure, which excludes comparison, information, and previous examination. Their object is to trick men intoassent, to furnish faith with arguments, and to suppress free inquiry. But to persuade me, a man must have no _parti pris_, and must begin withshowing a temper of critical sincerity; he must explain to me how thematter lies, point out to me the questions involved in it, their origin, their difficulties, the different solutions attempted, and their degreeof probability. He must respect my reason, my conscience, and myliberty. All scholasticism is an attempt to take by storm; the authoritypretends to explain itself, but only pretends, and its deference ismerely illusory. The dice are loaded and the premises are pre-judged. The unknown is taken as known, and all the rest is deduced from it. 

Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind, and thereforeindependence of all social, political, or religious prejudice. It is tobegin with neither Christian nor pagan, neither monarchical nordemocratic, neither socialist nor individualist; it is critical andimpartial; it loves one thing only--truth. If it disturbs the ready-madeopinions of the church or the state--of the historical medium--in whichthe philosopher happens to have been born, so much the worse, but thereis no help for it. 

 "Est ut est aut non est, "

Philosophy means, first, doubt; and afterward the consciousness of whatknowledge means, the consciousness of uncertainty and of ignorance, theconsciousness of limit, shade, degree, possibility. The ordinary mandoubts nothing and suspects nothing. The philosopher is more cautious, but he is thereby unfitted for action, because, although he sees thegoal less dimly than others, he sees his own weakness too clearly, andhas no illusions as to his chances of reaching it. 

The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universalintoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatures arethe willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbor by his ownnature. He judges more sanely, he sees things as they are. It is in thisthat his liberty consists--in the ability to see clearly and soberly, inthe power of mental record. Philosophy has for its foundation criticallucidity. The end and climax of it would be the intuition of theuniversal law, of the first principle and the final aim of the universe. Not to be deceived is its first desire; to understand, its second. Emancipation from error is the condition of real knowledge. Thephilosopher is a skeptic seeking a plausible hypothesis, which mayexplain to him the whole of his experiences. When he imagines that hehas found such a key to life he offers it to, but does not force it onhis fellow men. 

October 9, 1872. --I have been taking tea at the M's. These English homesare very attractive. They are the recompense and the result of along-lived civilization, and of an ideal untiringly pursued. What ideal?That of a moral order, founded on respect for self and for others, andon reverence for duty--in a word, upon personal worth and dignity. Themaster shows consideration to his guests, the children are deferentialto their parents, and every one and everything has its place. Theyunderstand both how to command and how to obey. The little world is wellgoverned, and seems to go of itself; duty is the _genius loci_--but dutytinged with a reserve and self-control which is the Englishcharacteristic. The children are the great test of this domestic system;they are happy, smiling, trustful, and yet no trouble. One feels thatthey know themselves to be loved, but that they know also that they mustobey. _Our_ children behave like masters of the house, and when anydefinite order comes to limit their encroachments they see in it anabuse of power, an arbitrary act. Why? Because it is their principle tobelieve that everything turns round them. Our children may be gentle andaffectionate, but they are not grateful, and they know nothing ofself-control. 

How do English mothers attain this result? By a rule which isimpersonal, invariable, and firm; in other words, by law, which formsman for liberty, while arbitrary decree only leads to rebellion andattempts at emancipation. This method has the immense advantage offorming characters which are restive under arbitrary authority, and yetamenable to justice, conscious of what is due to them and what they oweto others, watchful over conscience, and practiced in self-government. In every English child one feels something of the national motto--"Godand my right, " and in every English household one has a sense that thehome is a citadel, or better still, a ship in which every one has hisplace. Naturally in such a world the value set on family lifecorresponds with the cost of producing it; it is sweet to those whoseefforts maintain it. 

October l4, 1872. --The man who gives himself to contemplation looks onat, rather than directs his life, is rather a spectator than an actor, seeks rather to understand than to achieve. Is this mode of existenceillegitimate, immoral? Is one bound to act? Is such detachment anidiosyncrasy to be respected or a sin to be fought against? I havealways hesitated on this point, and I have wasted years in futileself-reproach and useless fits of activity. My western conscience, penetrated as it is with Christian morality, has always persecuted myoriental quietism and Buddhist tendencies. I have not dared to approvemyself, I have not known how to correct myself. In this, as in all else, I have remained divided, and perplexed, wavering between two extremes. So equilibrium is somehow preserved, but the crystallization of actionor thought becomes impossible. 

Having early a glimpse of the absolute, I have never had the indiscreeteffrontery of individualism. What right have I to make a merit of adefect? I have never been able to see any necessity for imposing myselfupon others, nor for succeeding. I have seen nothing clearly except myown deficiencies and the superiority of others. That is not the way tomake a career. With varied aptitudes and a fair intelligence, I had nodominant tendency, no imperious faculty, so that while by virtue ofcapacity I felt myself free, yet when free I could not discover what wasbest. Equilibrium produced indecision, and indecision has rendered allmy faculties barren. 

November 8, 1872. (_Friday_). --I have been turning over the "Stoics"again. Poor Louisa Siefert! [Footnote: Louise Siefert, a modern Frenchpoetess, died 1879. In addition to "Les Stoïques, " she published"L'Année Républicaine, " Paris 1869, and other works. ] Ah! we play thestoic, and all the while the poisoned arrow in the side pierces andwounds, _lethalis arundo_. What is it that, like all passionate souls, she really craves for? Two things which are contradictory--glory andhappiness. She adores two incompatibles--the Reformation and theRevolution, France and the contrary of France; her talent itself is acombination of two opposing qualities, inwardness and brilliancy, noisydisplay and lyrical charm. She dislocates the rhythm of her verse, whileat the same time she has a sensitive ear for rhyme. She is alwayswavering between Valmore and Baudelaire, between Leconte de Lisle andSainte-Beuve--that is to say, her taste is a bringing together ofextremes. She herself has described it:

 "Toujours extrême en mes désirs, Jadis, enfant joyeuse et folle, Souvent une seule parole Bouleversait tous mes plaisirs. "

But what a fine instrument she possesses! what strength of soul! whatwealth of imagination!

December 3, 1872. --What a strange dream! I was under an illusion and yetnot under it; I was playing a comedy to myself, deceiving my imaginationwithout being able to deceive my consciousness. This power which dreamshave of fusing incompatibles together, of uniting what is exclusive, ofidentifying yes and no, is what is most wonderful and most symbolical inthem. In a dream our individuality is not shut up within itself; itenvelops, so to speak, its surroundings; it is the landscape, and allthat it contains, ourselves included. But if our imagination is not ourown, if it is impersonal, then personality is but a special and limitedcase of its general functions. _A fortiori_ it would be the same forthought. And if so, thought might exist without possessing itselfindividually, without embodying itself in an _ego_. In other words, dreams lead us to the idea of an imagination enfranchised from thelimits of personality, and even of a thought which should be no longerconscious. The individual who dreams is on the way to become dissolvedin the universal phantasmagoria of Maïa. Dreams are excursions into thelimbo of things, a semi-deliverance from the human prison. The man whodreams is but the _locale_ of various phenomena of which he is thespectator in spite of himself; he is passive and impersonal; he is theplaything of unknown vibrations and invisible sprites. 

The man who should never issue from the state of dream would have neverattained humanity, properly so called, but the man who had never dreamedwould only know the mind in its completed or manufactured state, andwould not be able to understand the genesis of personality; he would belike a crystal, incapable of guessing what crystallization means. Sothat the waking life issues from the dream life, as dreams are anemanation from the nervous life, and this again is the fine flower oforganic life. Thought is the highest point of a series of ascendingmetamorphoses, which is called nature. Personality by means of thought, recovers in inward profundity what it has lost in extension, and makesup for the rich accumulations of receptive passivity by the enormousprivilege of that empire over self which is called liberty. Dreams, byconfusing and suppressing all limits, make us feel, indeed, the severityof the conditions attached to the higher existence; but conscious andvoluntary thought alone brings knowledge and allows us to act--that isto say, is alone capable of science and of perfection. Let us then takepleasure in dreaming for reasons of psychological curiosity and mentalrecreation; but let us never speak ill of thought, which is our strengthand our dignity. Let us begin as Orientals, and end as Westerns, forthese are the two halves of wisdom. 

December 11, 1872. --A deep and dreamless sleep and now I wake up to thegray, lowering, rainy sky, which has kept us company for so long. Theair is mild, the general outlook depressing. I think that it is partlythe fault of my windows, which are not very clean, and contribute bytheir dimness to this gloomy aspect of the outer world. Rain and smokehave besmeared them. 

Between us and things how many screens there are! Mood, health, thetissues of the eye, the window-panes of our cell, mist, smoke, rain, dust, and light itself--and all infinitely variable! Heraclitus said:"No man bathes twice in the same river. " I feel inclined to say; No onesees the same landscape twice over, for a window is one kaleidoscope, and the spectator another. 

What is madness? Illusion, raised to the second power. A sound mindestablishes regular relations, a _modus vivendi_, between things, men, and itself, and it is under the delusion that it has got hold of stabletruth and eternal fact. Madness does not even see what sanity sees, deceiving itself all the while by the belief that it sees better thansanity. The sane mind or common sense confounds the fact of experiencewith necessary fact, and assumes in good faith that what is, is themeasure of what may be; while madness cannot perceive any differencebetween what is and what it imagines--it confounds its dreams withreality. 

Wisdom consists in rising superior both to madness and to common sense, and in lending one's self to the universal illusion without becoming itsdupe. It is best, on the whole, for a man of taste who knows how to begay with the gay, and serious with the serious, to enter into the gameof Maïa, and to play his part with a good grace in the fantastictragi-comedy which is called the Universe. It seems to me that hereintellectualism reaches its limit. [Footnote: "We all believe in duty, "says M. Renan, "and in the triumph of righteousness;" but it is possiblenotwithstanding, "que tout le contraire soit vrai--et que le monde nesoit qu'une amusante féerie dont aucun dieu ne se soucie. Il faut doncnous arranger de maniere à ceque, dans le cas où le seconde hypothèseserait la vraie, nous n'ayons pas été trop dupés. "

This strain of remark, which is developed at considerable length, ismeant as a criticism of Amiel's want of sensitiveness to the irony ofthings. But in reality, as the passage in the text shows, M. Renan isonly expressing a feeling with which Amiel was just as familiar as hiscritic. Only he is delivered from this last doubt of all by his habitualseriousness; by that sense of "horror and awe" which M. Renan puts awayfrom him. Conscience saves him "from the sorceries of Maïa. "] The mind, in its intellectual capacity, arrives at the intuition that all realityis but the dream of a dream. What delivers us from the palace of dreamsis pain, personal pain; it is also the sense of obligation, or thatwhich combines the two, the pain of sin; and again it is love; in short, the moral order. What saves us from the sorceries of Maïa is conscience;conscience dissipates the narcotic vapors, the opium-likehallucinations, the placid stupor of contemplative indifference. Itdrives us into contact with the terrible wheels within wheels of humansuffering and human responsibility; it is the bugle-call, the cockcrow, which puts the phantoms to flight; it is the armed archangel who chasesman from an artificial paradise. Intellectualism may be described as anintoxication conscious of itself; the moral energy which replaces it, onthe other hand, represents a state of fast, a famine and a sleeplessthirst. Alas! Alas!

Those who have the most frivolous idea of sin are just those who supposethat there is a fixed gulf between good people and others. 

 * * * * *

The ideal which the wife and mother makes for herself, the manner inwhich she understands duty and life, contain the fate of the community. Her faith becomes the star of the conjugal ship, and her love theanimating principle that fashions the future of all belonging to her. Woman is the salvation or destruction of the family. She carries itsdestinies in the folds of her mantle. 

 * * * * *

Perhaps it is not desirable that a woman should be free in mind; shewould immediately abuse her freedom. She cannot become philosophicalwithout losing her special gift, which is the worship of all that isindividual, the defense of usage, manners, beliefs, traditions. Her rôleis to slacken the combustion of thought. It is analogous to that ofazote in vital air. 

 * * * * *

In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past--a pious guardianof some affection, of which the object has disappeared. 

January 6, 1873. --I have been reading the seven tragedies of Aeschylus, in the translation of Leconte de Lisle. The "Prometheus" and the"Eumenides" are greatest where all is great; they have the sublimity ofthe old prophets. Both depict a religious revolution--a profound crisisin the life of humanity. In "Prometheus" it is civilization wrenchedfrom the jealous hands of the gods; in the "Eumenides" it is thetransformation of the idea of justice, and the substitution of atonementand pardon for the law of implacable revenge. "Prometheus" shows us themartyrdom which waits for all the saviors of men; the "Eumenides" is theglorification of Athens and the Areopagus--that is to say, of a trulyhuman civilization. How magnificent it is as poetry, and how small theadventures of individual passion seem beside this colossal type oftragedy, of which the theme is the destinies of nations!

March 31, 1873. (4 P. M. )--

 "En quel songe Se plonge Mon coeur, et que veut-il?"

For an hour past I have been the prey of a vague anxiety; I recognize myold enemy. . . . It is a sense of void and anguish; a sense of somethinglacking: what? Love, peace--God perhaps. The feeling is one of pure wantunmixed with hope, and there is anguish in it because I can clearlydistinguish neither the evil nor its remedy. 

 "O printemps sans pitié, dans l'âme endolorie, Avec tes chants d'oiseaux, tes brises, ton azur, Tu creuses sourdement, conspirateur obscur, Le gouffre des langueurs et de la rêverie. "

Of all the hours of the day, in fine weather, the afternoon, about 3o'clock, is the time which to me is most difficult to bear. I never feelmore strongly than I do then, "_le vide effrayant de la vie_, " thestress of mental anxiety, or the painful thirst for happiness. Thistorture born of the sunlight is a strange phenomenon. Is it that thesun, just as it brings out the stain upon a garment, the wrinkles in aface, or the discoloration of the hair, so also it illumines withinexorable distinctness the scars and rents of the heart? Does it rousein us a sort of shame of existence? In any case the bright hours of theday are capable of flooding the whole soul with melancholy, of kindlingin us the passion for death, or suicide, or annihilation, or of drivingus to that which is next akin to death, the deadening of the senses bythe pursuit of pleasure. They rouse in the lonely man a horror ofhimself; they make him long to escape from his own misery and solitude--

 "Le coeur trempé sept fois dans le néant divin. "

People talk of the temptations to crime connected with darkness, but thedumb sense of desolation which is often the product of the mostbrilliant moment of daylight must not be forgotten either. From the one, as from the other, God is absent; but in the first case a man followshis senses and the cry of his passion; in the second, he feels himselflost and bewildered, a creature forsaken by all the world. 

 "En nous sont deux instincts qui bravent la raison, C'est l'effroi du bonheur et la soif du poison. Coeur solitaire, à toi prends garde!"

April 3, 1873. --I have been to see my friends ----. Their niece has justarrived with two of her children, and the conversation turned on FatherHyacinthe's lecture. 

Women of an enthusiastic temperament have a curious way of speaking ofextempore preachers and orators. They imagine that inspiration radiatesfrom a crowd as such, and that inspiration is all that is wanted. Couldthere be a more _naïf_ and childish explanation of what is really alecture in which nothing has been left to accident, neither the plan, nor the metaphors, nor even the length of the whole, and whereeverything has been prepared with the greatest care! But women, in theirlove of what is marvelous and miraculous, prefer to ignore all this. Themeditation, the labor, the calculation of effects, the art, in a word, which have gone to the making of it, diminishes for them the value ofthe thing, and they prefer to believe it fallen from heaven, or sentdown from on high. They ask for bread, but cannot bear the idea of abaker. The sex is superstitious, and hates to understand what it wishesto admire. It would vex it to be forced to give the smaller share tofeeling, and the larger share to thought. It wishes to believe thatimagination can do the work of reason, and feeling the work of science, and it never asks itself how it is that women, so rich in heart andimagination, have never distinguished themselves as orators--that is tosay, have never known how to combine a multitude of facts, ideas, andimpulses, into one complex unity. Enthusiastic women never even suspectthe difference that there is between the excitement of a popularharangue, which is nothing but a mere passionate outburst, and theunfolding of a didactic process, the aim of which is to prove somethingand to convince its hearers. Therefore, for them, study, reflection, technique, count as nothing; the improvisatore mounts upon the tripod, Pallas all armed issues from his lips, and conquers the applause of thedazzled assembly. 

Evidently women divide orators into two groups; the artisans of speech, who manufacture their laborious discourses by the aid of the midnightlamp, and the inspired souls, who simply give themselves the trouble tobe born. They will never understand the saying of Quintilian, "_Fitorator, nascitur poeta. _"

The enthusiasm which acts is perhaps an enlightening force, but theenthusiasm which accepts is very like blindness. For this latterenthusiasm confuses the value of things, ignores their shades ofdifference, and is an obstacle to all sensible criticism and all calmjudgment. The "Ewig-Weibliche" favors exaggeration, mysticism, sentimentalism--all that excites and startles. It is the enemy ofclearness, of a calm and rational view of things, the antipodes ofcriticism and of science. I have had only too much sympathy and weaknessfor the feminine nature. The very excess of my former indulgence towardit makes me now more conscious of its infirmity. Justice and science, law and reason, are virile things, and they come before imagination, feeling, reverie, and fancy. When one reflects that Catholicsuperstition is maintained by women, one feels how needful it is not tohand over the reins to the "Eternal Womanly. "

May 23, 1873. --The fundamental error of France lies in her psychology. France has always believed that to say a thing is the same as to do it, as though speech were action, as though rhetoric were capable ofmodifying the tendencies, habits, and character of real beings, and asthough verbiage were an efficient substitute for will, conscience, andeducation. 

France proceeds by bursts of eloquence, of cannonading, or oflaw-making; she thinks that so she can change the nature of things; andshe produces only phrases and ruins. She has never understood the firstline of Montesquieu: "Laws are necessary relations, derived from thenature of things. " She will not see that her incapacity to organizeliberty comes from her own nature; from the notions which she has of theindividual, of society, of religion, of law, of duty--from the manner inwhich she brings up children. Her way is to plant trees downward, andthen she is astonished at the result! Universal suffrage, with a badreligion and a bad popular education, means perpetual wavering betweenanarchy and dictatorship, between the red and the black, between Dantonand Loyola. 

How many scapegoats will Prance sacrifice before it occurs to her tobeat her own breast in penitence?

August 18, 1873. (_Scheveningen_). --Yesterday, Sunday, the landscape wasclear and distinct, the air bracing, the sea bright and gleaming, and ofan ashy-blue color. There were beautiful effects of beach, sea, anddistance; and dazzling tracks of gold upon the waves, after the sun hadsunk below the bands of vapor drawn across the middle sky, and before ithad disappeared in the mists of the sea horizon. The place was veryfull. All Scheveningen and the Hague, the village and the capital, hadstreamed out on to the terrace, amusing themselves at innumerabletables, and swamping the strangers and the bathers. The orchestra playedsome Wagner, some Auber, and some waltzes. What was all the worlddoing? Simply enjoying life. 

A thousand thoughts wandered through my brain. I thought how muchhistory it had taken to make what I saw possible; Judaea, Egypt, Greece, Germany, Gaul; all the centuries from Moses to Napoleon, and all thezones from Batavia to Guiana, had united in the formation of thisgathering. The industry, the science, the art, the geography, thecommerce, the religion of the whole human race, are repeated in everyhuman combination; and what we see before our own eyes at any givenmoment is inexplicable without reference to all that has ever been. Thisinterlacing of the ten thousand threads which necessity weaves into theproduction of one single phenomenon is a stupefying thought. One feelsone's self in the presence of law itself--allowed a glimpse of themysterious workshop of nature. The ephemeral perceives the eternal. 

What matters the brevity of the individual span, seeing that thegenerations, the centuries, and the worlds themselves are but occupiedforever with the ceaseless reproduction of the hymn of life, in all thehundred thousand modes and variations which make up the universalsymphony? The motive is always the same; the monad has but one law: alltruths are but the variation of one single truth. The universerepresents the infinite wealth of the Spirit seeking in vain to exhaustall possibilities, and the goodness of the Creator, who would fain sharewith the created all that sleeps within the limbo of Omnipotence. 

To contemplate and adore, to receive and give back, to have utteredone's note and moved one's grain of sand, is all which is expected fromsuch insects as we are; it is enough to give motive and meaning to ourfugitive apparition in existence. . . . 

After the concert was over the paved esplanade behind the hotels and thetwo roads leading to the Hague were alive with people. One might havefancied one's self upon one of the great Parisian boulevards just whenthe theaters are emptying themselves--there were so many carriages, omnibuses, and cabs. Then, when the human tumult had disappeared, thepeace of the starry heaven shone out resplendent, and the dreamy glimmerof the Milky Way was only answered by the distant murmur of the ocean. 

_Later_. --What is it which has always come between real life and me?What glass screen has, as it were, interposed itself between me and theenjoyment, the possession, the contact of things, leaving me only therole of the looker-on?

False shame, no doubt. I have been ashamed to desire. Fatal result oftimidity, aggravated by intellectual delusion! This renunciationbeforehand of all natural ambitions, this systematic putting aside ofall longings and all desires, has perhaps been false in idea; it hasbeen too like a foolish, self-inflicted mutilation. Fear, too, has had alarge share in it--

 "La peur de ce que j'aime est ma fatalité. "

I very soon discovered that it was simpler for me to give up a wish thanto satisfy it. Not being able to obtain all that my nature longed for, Irenounced the whole _en bloc_, without even taking the trouble todetermine in detail what might have attracted me; for what was the goodof stirring up trouble in one's self and evoking images of inaccessibletreasure?

Thus I anticipated in spirit all possible disillusions, in the truestoical fashion. Only, with singular lack of logic, I have sometimesallowed regret to overtake me, and I have looked at conduct founded uponexceptional principles with the eyes of the ordinary man. I should havebeen ascetic to the end; contemplation ought to have been enough for me, especially now, when the hair begins to whiten. But, after all, I am aman, and not a theorem. A system cannot suffer, but I suffer. Logicmakes only one demand--that of consequence; but life makes a thousand;the body wants health, the imagination cries out for beauty, and theheart for love; pride asks for consideration, the soul yearns for peace, the conscience for holiness; our whole being is athirst for happinessand for perfection; and we, tottering, mutilated, and incomplete, cannotalways feign philosophic insensibility; we stretch out our arms towardlife, and we say to it under our breath, "Why--why--hast thou deceivedme?"

August 19, 1873. (_Scheveningen_). --I have had a morning walk. It hasbeen raining in the night. There are large clouds all round; the sea, veined with green and drab, has put on the serious air of labor. She isabout her business, in no threatening but at the same time in nolingering mood. She is making her clouds, heaping up her sands, visitingher shores and bathing them with foam, gathering up her floods for thetide, carrying the ships to their destinations, and feeding theuniversal life. I found in a hidden nook a sheet of fine sand which thewater had furrowed and folded like the pink palate of a kitten's mouth, or like a dappled sky. Everything repeats itself by analogy, and eachlittle fraction of the earth reproduces in a smaller and individual formall the phenomena of the planet. Farther on I came across a bank ofcrumbling shells, and it was borne in upon me that the sea-sand itselfmight well be only the detritus of the organic life of preceding eras, avast monument or pyramid of immemorial age, built up by countlessgenerations of molluscs who have labored at the architecture of theshores like good workmen of God. If the dunes and the mountains are thedust of living creatures who have preceded us, how can we doubt but thatour death will be as serviceable as our life, and that nothing which hasbeen lent is lost? Mutual borrowing and temporary service seem to be thelaw of existence. Only, the strong prey upon and devour the weak, andthe concrete inequality of lots within the abstract equality ofdestinies wounds and disquiets the sense of justice. 

_Same day_. --A new spirit governs and inspires the generation which willsucceed me. It is a singular sensation to feel the grass growing underone's feet, to see one's self intellectually uprooted. One must addressone's contemporaries. Younger men will not listen to you. Thought, likelove, will not tolerate a gray hair. Knowledge herself loves the young, as Fortune used to do in olden days. Contemporary civilization does notknow what to do with old age; in proportion as it defies physicalexperiment, it despises moral experience. One sees therein the triumphof Darwinism; it is a state of war, and war must have young soldiers; itcan only put up with age in its leaders when they have the strength andthe mettle of veterans. 

In point of fact, one must either be strong or disappear, eitherconstantly rejuvenate one's self or perish. It is as though the humanityof our day had, like the migratory birds, an immense voyage to makeacross space; she can no longer support the weak or help on thelaggards. The great assault upon the future makes her hard and pitilessto all who fall by the way. Her motto is, "The devil take the hindmost. "

The worship of strength has never lacked altars, but it looks as thoughthe more we talk of justice and humanity, the more that other god seeshis kingdom widen. 

August 20, 1873. (_Scheveningen_). --I have now watched the sea whichbeats upon this shore under many different aspects. On the whole, Ishould class it with the Baltic. As far as color, effect, and landscapego, it is widely different from the Breton or Basque ocean, and, aboveall, from the Mediterranean. It never attains to the blue-green of theAtlantic, nor the indigo of the Ionian Sea. Its scale of color runs fromflint to emerald, and when it turns to blue, the blue is a turquoiseshade splashed with gray. The sea here is not amusing itself; it has abusy and serious air, like an Englishman or a Dutchman. Neither polypsnor jelly-fish, neither sea-weed nor crabs enliven the sands at lowwater; the sea life is poor and meagre. What is wonderful is thestruggle of man against a miserly and formidable power. Nature has donelittle for him, but she allows herself to be managed. Stepmother thoughshe be, she is accommodating, subject to the occasional destruction of ahundred thousand lives in a single inundation. 

The air inside the dune is altogether different from that outside it. The air of the sea is life-giving, bracing, oxydized; the air inland issoft, relaxing, and warm. In the same way there are two Hollands inevery Dutchman: there is the man of the _polder_, heavy, pale, phlegmatic, slow, patient himself, and trying to the patience of others, and there is the man of the _dune_, of the harbor, the shore, the sea, who is tenacious, seasoned, persevering, sunburned, daring. Where thetwo agree is in calculating prudence, and in methodical persistency ofeffort. 

August 22, 1873. (_Scheveningen_). --The weather is rainy, the wholeatmosphere gray; it is a time favorable to thought and meditation. Ihave a liking for such days as these; they revive one's converse withone's self and make it possible to live the inner life; they are quietand peaceful, like a song in a minor key. We are nothing but thought, but we feel our life to its very center. Our very sensations turn toreverie. It is a strange state of mind; it is like those silences inworship which are not the empty moments of devotion, but the fullmoments, and which are so because at such times the soul, instead ofbeing polarized, dispersed, localized, in a single impression orthought, feels her own totality and is conscious of herself. She tastesher own substance. She is no longer played upon, colored, set in motion, affected, from without; she is in equilibrium and at rest. Openness andself-surrender become possible to her; she contemplates and she adores. She sees the changeless and the eternal enwrapping all the phenomena oftime. She is in the religious state, in harmony with the general order, or at least in intellectual harmony. For _holiness_, indeed, more iswanted--a harmony of will, a perfect self-devotion, death to self andabsolute submission. 

Psychological peace--that harmony which is perfect but virtual--is butthe zero, the potentiality of all numbers; it is not that moral peacewhich is victorious over all ills, which is real, positive, tried byexperience, and able to face whatever fresh storms may assail it. 

The peace of fact is not the peace of principle. There are indeed twohappinesses, that of nature and that of conquest--two equilibria, thatof Greece and that of Nazareth--two kingdoms, that of the natural manand that of the regenerate man. 

_Later_. (_Scheveningen_). --Why do doctors so often make mistakes?Because they are not sufficiently individual in their diagnoses or theirtreatment. They class a sick man under some given department of theirnosology, whereas every invalid is really a special case, a uniqueexample. How is it possible that so coarse a method of sifting shouldproduce judicious therapeutics? Every illness is a factor simple orcomplex, which is multiplied by a second factor, invariably complex--theindividual, that is to say, who is suffering from it, so that the resultis a special problem, demanding a special solution, the more so thegreater the remoteness of the patient from childhood or from countrylife. 

The principal grievance which I have against the doctors is that theyneglect the real problem, which is to seize the unity of the individualwho claims their care. Their methods of investigation are far tooelementary; a doctor who does not read you to the bottom is ignorant ofessentials. To me the ideal doctor would be a man endowed with profoundknowledge of life and of the soul, intuitively divining any suffering ordisorder of whatever kind, and restoring peace by his mere presence. Such a doctor is possible, but the greater number of them lack thehigher and inner life, they know nothing of the transcendentlaboratories of nature; they seem to me superficial, profane, strangersto divine things, destitute of intuition and sympathy. The model doctorshould be at once a genius, a saint, a man of God. 

September 11, 1873. (_Amsterdam_). --The doctor has just gone. He says Ihave fever about me, and does not think that I can start for anotherthree days without imprudence. I dare not write to my Genevese friendsand tell them that I am coming back from the sea in a radically worsestate of strength and throat than when I went there, and that I haveonly wasted my time, my trouble, my money, and my hopes. . . . 

This contradictory double fact--on the one side an eager hopefulnessspringing up afresh after all disappointments, and on the other anexperience almost invariably unfavorable--can be explained like allillusions by the whim of nature, which either wills us to be deceived orwills us to act as if we were so. 

Skepticism is the wiser course, but in delivering us from error it tendsto paralyze life. Maturity of mind consists in taking part in theprescribed game as seriously as though one believed in it. Good-humoredcompliance, tempered by a smile, is, on the whole, the best line totake; one lends one's self to an optical illusion, and the voluntaryconcession has an air of liberty. Once imprisoned in existence, we mustsubmit to its laws with a good grace; to rebel against it only ends inimpotent rage, when once we have denied ourselves the solution ofsuicide. 

Humility and submission, or the religious point of view; clear-eyedindulgence with a touch of irony, or the point of view of worldlywisdom--these two attitudes are possible. The second is sufficient forthe minor ills of life, the other is perhaps necessary in the greaterones. The pessimism of Schopenhauer supposes at least health andintellect as means of enduring the rest of life. But optimism either ofthe stoical or the Christian sort is needed to make it possible for usto bear the worst sufferings of flesh, heart and soul. If we are toescape the grip of despair, we must believe either that the whole ofthings at least is good, or that grief is a fatherly grace, a purifyingtrial. 

There can be no doubt that the idea of a happy immortality, serving as aharbor of refuge from the tempests of this mortal existence, andrewarding the fidelity, the patience, the submission, and the courage ofthe travelers on life's sea--there can be no doubt that this idea, thestrength of so many generations, and the faith of the church, carrieswith it inexpressible consolation to those who are wearied, burdened, and tormented by pain and suffering. To feel one's self individuallycared for and protected by God gives a special dignity and beauty tolife. Monotheism lightens the struggle for existence. But does the studyof nature allow of the maintenance of those local revelations which arecalled Mosaism, Christianity, Islamism? These religions founded upon aninfantine cosmogony, and upon a chimerical history of humanity, can theybear confronting with modern astronomy and geology? The present mode ofescape, which consists in trying to satisfy the claims of both scienceand faith--of the science which contradicts all the ancient beliefs, andthe faith which, in the case of things that are beyond nature andincapable of verification, affirms them on her own responsibilityonly--this mode of escape cannot last forever. Every fresh cosmicalconception demands a religion which corresponds to it. Our age oftransition stands bewildered between the two incompatible methods, thescientific method and the religious method, and between the twocertitudes, which contradict each other. 

Surely the reconciliation of the two must be sought for in the morallaw, which is also a fact, and every step of which requires for itsexplanation another cosmos than the cosmos of necessity. Who knows ifnecessity is not a particular case of liberty, and its condition? Whoknows if nature is not a laboratory for the fabrication of thinkingbeings who are ultimately to become free creatures? Biology protests, and indeed the supposed existence of souls, independently of time, space, and matter, is a fiction of faith, less logical than the Platonicdogma. But the question remains open. We may eliminate the idea ofpurpose from nature, yet, as the guiding conception of the highest beingof our planet, it is a fact, and a fact which postulates a meaning inthe history of the universe. 

My thought is straying in vague paths: why? because I have no creed. Allmy studies end in notes of interrogation, and that I may not drawpremature or arbitrary conclusions I draw none. 

_Later on_. --My creed has melted away, but I believe in good, in themoral order, and in salvation; religion for me is to live and die inGod, in complete abandonment to the holy will which is at the root ofnature and destiny. I believe even in the gospel, the good news--that isto say, in the reconciliation of the sinner with God, by faith in thelove of a pardoning Father. 

October 4, 1873. (_Geneva_). --I have been dreaming a long while in themoonlight, which floods my room with a radiance, full of vague mystery. The state of mind induced in us by this fantastic light is itself so dimand ghost-like that analysis loses its way in it, and arrives at nothingarticulate. It is something indefinite and intangible, like the noise ofwaves which is made up of a thousand fused and mingled sounds. It is thereverberation of all the unsatisfied desires of the soul, of all thestifled sorrows of the heart, mingling in a vague sonorous whole, anddying away in cloudy murmurs. All those imperceptible regrets, whichnever individually reach the consciousness, accumulate at last into adefinite result; they become the voice of a feeling of emptiness andaspiration; their tone is melancholy itself. In youth the tone of theseAeolian vibrations of the heart is all hope--a proof that thesethousands of indistinguishable accents make up indeed the fundamentalnote of our being, and reveal the tone of our whole situation. Tell mewhat you feel in your solitary room when the full moon is shining inupon you and your lamp is dying out, and I will tell you how old youare, and I shall know if you are happy. 

 * * * * *

The best path through life is the high road, which initiates us at theright moment into all experience. Exceptional itineraries aresuspicious, and matter for anxiety. What is normal is at once mostconvenient, most honest, and most wholesome. Cross roads may tempt usfor one reason or another, but it is very seldom that we do not come toregret having taken them. 

 * * * * *

Each man begins the world afresh, and not one fault of the first man hasbeen avoided by his remotest descendant. The collective experience ofthe race accumulates, but individual experience dies with theindividual, and the result is that institutions become wiser andknowledge as such increases; but the young man, although morecultivated, is just as presumptuous, and not less fallible to-day thanhe ever was. So that absolutely there is progress, and relatively thereis none. Circumstances improve, but merit remains the same. The whole isbetter, perhaps, but man is not positively better--he is only different. His defects and his virtues change their form, but the total balancedoes not show him to be the richer. A thousand things advance, ninehundred and ninety-eight fall back, this is progress. There is nothingin it to be proud of, but something, after all, to console one. 

February 4, 1874. --I am still reading the "Origines du Christianisme" byErnest Havet. [Footnote: Ernest Havet, born 1813, a distinguished Frenchscholar and professor. He became professor of Latin oratory at theCollège de France in 1855, and a member of the Institute in January, 1880. His admirable edition of the "Pensées de Pascal" is well-known. "Le Christianisme et ses Origines, " an important book, in four volumes, was developed from a series of articles in the _Revue des deux Mondes_, and the _Revue Contemporaine_. ] I like the book and I dislike it. I likeit for its independence and courage; I dislike it for the insufficiencyof its fundamental ideas, and the imperfection of its categories. 

The author, for instance, has no clear idea of religion; and hisphilosophy of history is superficial. He is a Jacobin. "The Republic andFree Thought"--he cannot get beyond that. This curt and narrow school ofopinion is the refuge of men of independent mind, who have beenscandalized by the colossal fraud of ultramontanism; but it leads ratherto cursing history than to understanding it. It is the criticism of theeighteenth century, of which the general result is purely negative. ButVoltairianism is only the half of the philosophic mind. Hegel freesthought in a very different way. 

Havet, too, makes another mistake. He regards Christianity as synonymouswith Roman Catholicism and with the church. I know very well that theRoman Church does the same, and that with her the assimilation is amatter of sound tactics; but scientifically it is inexact. We ought noteven to identify Christianity with the gospel, nor the gospel withreligion in general. It is the business of critical precision to clearaway these perpetual confusions in which Christian practice andChristian preaching abound. To disentangle ideas, to distinguish andlimit them, to fit them into their true place and order, is the firstduty of science whenever it lays hands upon such chaotic and complexthings as manners, idioms, or beliefs. Entanglement is the condition oflife; order and clearness are the signs of serious and successfulthought. 

Formerly it was the ideas of nature which were a tissue of errors andincoherent fancies; now it is the turn of moral and psychological ideas. The best issue from the present Babel would be the formation or thesketching out of a truly scientific science of man. 

February 16, 1874. --The multitude, who already possess force, and even, according to the Republican view, right, have always been persuaded bythe Cleons of the day that enlightenment, wisdom, thought, and reason, are also theirs. The game of these conjurors and quacks of universalsuffrage has always been to flatter the crowd in order to make aninstrument of it. They pretend to adore the puppet of which they pullthe threads. 

The theory of radicalism is a piece of juggling, for it supposespremises of which it knows the falsity; it manufactures the oracle whoserevelations it pretends to adore; it proclaims that the multitudecreates a brain for itself, while all the time it is the clever man whois the brain of the multitude, and suggests to it what it is supposed toinvent. To reign by flattery has been the common practice of thecourtiers of all despotisms, the favorites of all tyrants; it is an oldand trite method, but none the less odious for that. 

The honest politician should worship nothing but reason and justice, andit is his business to preach them to the masses, who represent, on anaverage, the age of childhood and not that of maturity. We corruptchildhood if we tell it that it cannot be mistaken, and that it knowsmore than its elders. We corrupt the masses when we tell them that theyare wise and far-seeing and possess the gift of infallibility. 

It is one of Montesquieu's subtle remarks, that the more wise men youheap together the less wisdom you will obtain. Radicalism pretends thatthe greater number of illiterate, passionate, thoughtless--above all, young people, you heap together, the greater will be the enlightenmentresulting. The second thesis is no doubt the repartee to the first, butthe joke is a bad one. All that can be got from a crowd is instinct orpassion; the instinct may be good, but the passion may be bad, andneither is the instinct capable of producing a clear idea, nor thepassion of leading to a just resolution. 

A crowd is a material force, and the support of numbers gives aproposition the force of law; but that wise and ripened temper of mindwhich takes everything into account, and therefore tends to truth, isnever engendered by the impetuosity of the masses. The masses are thematerial of democracy, but its form--that is to say, the laws whichexpress the general reason, justice, and utility--can only be rightlyshaped by wisdom, which is by no means a universal property. Thefundamental error of the radical theory is to confound the right to dogood with good itself, and universal suffrage with universal wisdom. Itrests upon a legal fiction, which assumes a real equality ofenlightenment and merit among those whom it declares electors. It isquite possible, however, that these electors may not desire the publicgood, and that even if they do, they may be deceived as to the manner ofrealizing it. Universal suffrage is not a dogma--it is an instrument;and according to the population in whose hands it is placed, theinstrument is serviceable or deadly to the proprietor. 

February 27, 1874. --Among the peoples, in whom the social gifts are thestrongest, the individual fears ridicule above all things, and ridiculeis the certain result of originality. No one, therefore, wishes to makea party of his own; every one wishes to be on the side of all the world. "All the world" is the greatest of powers; it is sovereign, and callsitself _we_. _We_ dress, _we_ dine, _we_ walk, _we_ go out, _we_ comein, like this, and not like that. This _we_ is always right, whatever itdoes. The subjects of _We_ are more prostrate than the slaves of theEast before the Padishah. The good pleasure of the sovereign decidesevery appeal; his caprice is law. What _we_ does or says is calledcustom, what it thinks is called opinion, what it believes to bebeautiful or good is called fashion. Among such nations as these _we_ isthe brain, the conscience, the reason, the taste, and the judgment ofall. The individual finds everything decided for him without histroubling about it. He is dispensed from the task of finding outanything whatever. Provided that he imitates, copies, and repeats themodels furnished by _we_, he has nothing more to fear. He knows all thathe need know, and has entered into salvation. 

April 29, 1874. --Strange reminiscence! At the end of the terrace of LaTreille, on the eastern side, as I looked down the slope, it seemed tome that I saw once more in imagination a little path which existed therewhen I was a child, and ran through the bushy underwood, which wasthicker then than it is now. It is at least forty years since thisimpression disappeared from my mind. The revival of an image so dead andso forgotten set me thinking. Consciousness seems to be like a book, inwhich the leaves turned by life successively cover and hide each otherin spite of their semi-transparency; but although the book may be openat the page of the present, the wind, for a few seconds, may blow backthe first pages into view. 

And at death will these leaves cease to hide each other, and shall wesee all our past at once? Is death the passage from the successive tothe simultaneous--that is to say, from time to eternity? Shall we thenunderstand, in its unity, the poem or mysterious episode of ourexistence, which till then we have spelled out phrase by phrase? And isthis the secret of that glory which so often enwraps the brow andcountenance of those who are newly dead? If so, death would be like thearrival of a traveler at the top of a great mountain, whence he seesspread out before him the whole configuration of the country, of whichtill then he had had but passing glimpses. To be able to overlook one'sown history, to divine its meaning in the general concert and in thedivine plan, would be the beginning of eternal felicity. Till then wehad sacrificed ourselves to the universal order, but then we shouldunderstand and appreciate the beauty of that order. We had toiled andlabored under the conductor of the orchestra; and we should findourselves become surprised and delighted hearers. We had seen nothingbut our own little path in the mist; and suddenly a marvelous panoramaand boundless distances would open before our dazzled eyes. Why not?

May 31, 1874. --I have been reading the philosophical poems of MadameAckermann. She has rendered in fine verse that sense of desolation whichhas been so often stirred in me by the philosophy of Schopenhauer, ofHartmann, Comte, and Darwin. What tragic force and power! What thoughtand passion! She has courage for everything, and attacks the mosttremendous subjects. 

Science is implacable; will it suppress all religions? All those whichstart from a false conception of nature, certainly. But if thescientific conception of nature proves incapable of bringing harmony andpeace to man, what will happen? Despair is not a durable situation. Weshall have to build a moral city without God, without an immortality ofthe soul, without hope. Buddhism and stoicism present themselves aspossible alternatives. 

But even if we suppose that there is no finality in the cosmos, it iscertain that man has ends at which he aims, and if so the notion of endor purpose is a real phenomenon, although a limited one. Physicalscience may very well be limited by moral science, and _vice versâ_. Butif these two conceptions of the world are in opposition, which must giveway?

I still incline to believe that nature is the virtuality of mind--thatthe soul is the fruit of life, and liberty the flower of necessity--thatall is bound together, and that nothing can be done without. Our modernphilosophy has returned to the point of view of the Ionians, the [Greek:_physikoi_], or naturalist thinkers. But it will have to pass once morethrough Plato and through Aristotle, through the philosophy of"goodness" and "purpose, " through the science of mind. 

July 3, 1874. --Rebellion against common sense is a piece of childishnessof which I am quite capable. But it does not last long. I am soonbrought back to the advantages and obligations of my situation; I returnto a calmer self-consciousness. It is disagreeable to me, no doubt, torealize all that is hopelessly lost to me, all that is now and will beforever denied to me; but I reckon up my privileges as well as mylosses--I lay stress on what I have, and not only on what I want. And soI escape from that terrible dilemma of "all or nothing, " which for mealways ends in the adoption of the second alternative. It seems to me atsuch times that a man may without shame content himself with being_some_ thing and _some_ one--

 "Ni si haut, ni si bas. . . . "

These brusque lapses into the formless, indeterminate state, are theprice of my critical faculty. All my former habits become suddenlyfluid; it seems to me that I am beginning life over again, and that allmy acquired capital has disappeared at a stroke. I am forever new-born;I am a mind which has never taken to itself a body, a country, anavocation, a sex, a species. Am I even quite sure of being a man, aEuropean, an inhabitant of this earth? It seems to me so easy to besomething else, that to be what I am appears to me a mere piece ofarbitrary choice. I cannot possibly take an accidental structure ofwhich the value is purely relative, seriously. When once a man hastouched the absolute, all that might be other than what it is seems tohim indifferent. All these ants pursuing their private ends excite hismirth. He looks down from the moon upon his hovel; he beholds the earthfrom the heights of the sun; he considers his life from the point ofview of the Hindoo pondering the days of Brahma; he sees the finite fromthe distance of the infinite, and thenceforward the insignificance ofall those things which men hold to be important makes effort ridiculous, passion burlesque, and prejudice absurd. 

August 7, 1874. (_Clarens_). --A day perfectly beautiful, luminous, limpid, brilliant. 

I passed the morning in the churchyard; the "Oasis" was delightful. Innumerable sensations, sweet and serious, peaceful and solemn, passedover me. . . . Around me Russians, English, Swedes, Germans, were sleepingtheir last sleep under the shadow of the Cubly. The landscape was onevast splendor; the woods were deep and mysterious, the roses full blown;all around me were butterflies--a noise of wings--the murmur of birds. Icaught glimpses through the trees of distant mists, of soaringmountains, of the tender blue of the lake. . . . A little conjunction ofthings struck me. Two ladies were tending and watering a grave; twonurses were suckling their children. This double protest against deathhad something touching and poetical in it. "Sleep, you who are dead; we, the living, are thinking of you, or at least carrying on the pilgrimageof the race!" such seemed to me the words in my ear. It was clear to methat the Oasis of Clarens is the spot in which I should like to rest. Here I am surrounded with memories; here death is like a sleep--a sleepinstinct with hope. 

 * * * * *

Hope is not forbidden us, but peace and submission are the essentials. 

September 1, 1874. (_Clarens_). --On waking it seemed to me that I wasstaring into the future with wide startled eyes. Is it indeed to _me_that these things apply. [Footnote: Amiel had just received at the handsof his doctor the medical verdict, which was his _arrêt de mort_. ]Incessant and growing humiliation, my slavery becoming heavier, mycircle of action steadily narrower!. . . What is hateful in my situationis that deliverance can never be hoped for, and that one misery willsucceed another in such a way as to leave me no breathing space, noteven in the future, not even in hope. All possibilities are closed tome, one by one. It is difficult for the natural man to escape from adumb rage against inevitable agony. 

_Noon_. --An indifferent nature? A Satanic principle of things? A goodand just God? Three points of view. The second is improbable andhorrible. The first appeals to our stoicism. My organic combination hasnever been anything but mediocre; it has lasted as long as it could. Every man has his turn, and all must submit. To die quickly is aprivilege; I shall die by inches. Well, submit. Rebellion would beuseless and senseless. After all, I belong to the better-endowed half ofhuman-kind, and my lot is superior to the average. 

But the third point of view alone can give joy. Only is it tenable? Isthere a particular Providence directing all the circumstances of ourlife, and therefore imposing all our trials upon us for educationalends? Is this heroic faith compatible with our actual knowledge of thelaws of nature? Scarcely; But what this faith makes objective we mayhold as subjective truth. The moral being may moralize his sufferings byusing natural facts for his own inner education. What he cannot changehe calls the will of God, and to will what God wills brings him peace. 

To nature both our continued existence and our morality are equallyindifferent. But God, on the other hand, if God is, desires oursanctification; and if suffering purifies us, then we may consoleourselves or suffering. This is what makes the great advantage of theChristian faith; it is the triumph over pain, the victory over death. There is but one thing necessary--death unto sin, the immolation of ourselfish will, the filial sacrifice of our desires. Evil consists inliving for _self_--that is to say, for one's own vanity, pride, sensuality, or even health. Righteousness consists in willinglyaccepting one's lot, in submitting to, and espousing the destinyassigned us, in willing what God commands, in renouncing what he forbidsus, in consenting to what he takes from us or refuses us. 

In my own particular case, what has been taken from me is health--thatis to say, the surest basis of all independence; but friendship andmaterial comfort are still left to me; I am neither called upon to bearthe slavery of poverty nor the hell of absolute isolation. 

Health cut off, means marriage, travel, study, and work forbidden orendangered. It means life reduced in attractiveness and utility byfive-sixths. 

Thy will be done!

September 14, 1874. (_Charnex_). --A long walk and conversation with----. We followed a high mountain path. Seated on the turf, and talkingwith open heart, our eyes wandered over the blue immensity below us, andthe smiling outlines of the shore. All was friendly, azure-tinted, caressing, to the sight. The soul I was reading was profound and pure. Such an experience is like a flight into paradise. A few light cloudsclimbed the broad spaces of the sky, steamers made long tracks upon thewater at our feet, white sails were dotted over the vast distance of thelake, and sea-gulls like gigantic butterflies quivered above itsrippling surface. 

September 21, 1874. (_Charnex_). --A wonderful day! Never has the lakebeen bluer, or the landscape softer. It was enchanting. But tragedy ishidden under the eclogue; the serpent crawls under the flowers. All thefuture is dark. The phantoms which for three or four weeks I have beenable to keep at bay, wait for me behind the door, as the Eumenideswaited for Orestes. Hemmed in on all sides!

 "On ne croit plus à son étoile, On sent que derrière la toile Sont le deuil, les maux et la mort. "

For a fortnight I have been happy, and now this happiness is going. 

There are no more birds, but a few white or blue butterflies are stillleft. Flowers are becoming rare--a few daisies in the fields, some blueor yellow chicories and colchicums, some wild geraniums growing amongfragments of old walls, and the brown berries of the privet--this is allwe were able to find. In the fields they are digging potatoes, beatingdown the nuts, and beginning the apple harvest. The leaves are thinningand changing color; I watch them turning red on the pear-trees, gray onthe plums, yellow on the walnut-trees, and tinging the thickly-strewnturf with shades of reddish-brown. We are nearing the end of the fineweather; the coloring is the coloring of late autumn; there is no neednow to keep out of the sun. Everything is soberer, more measured, morefugitive, less emphatic. Energy is gone, youth is past, prodigality atan end, the summer over. The year is on the wane and tends towardwinter; it is once more in harmony with my own age and position, andnext Sunday it will keep my birthday. All these different consonancesform a melancholy harmony. 

 * * * * *

The distinguishing mark of religion is not so much liberty as obedience, and its value is measured by the sacrifices which it can extract fromthe individual. 

 * * * * *

A young girl's love is a kind of piety. We must approach it withadoration if we are not to profane it, and with poetry if we are tounderstand it. If there is anything in the world which gives us a sweet, ineffable impression, of the ideal, it is this trembling modest love. Todeceive it would be a crime. Merely to watch its unfolding life is blissto the beholder; he sees in it the birth of a divine marvel. When thegarland of youth fades on our brow, let us try at least to have thevirtues of maturity; may we grow better, gentler, graver, like the fruitof the vine, while its leaf withers and falls. 

 * * * * *

To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of themost difficult chapters in the great art of living. 

 * * * * *

He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own nature, and acontinuous moral progress toward inward contentment and religioussubmission, is less liable than any one else to miss and waste life. 

January 2, 1875. (_Hyères_. )--In spite of my sleeping draught I have hada bad night. Once it seemed as if I must choke, for I could breatheneither way. 

Could I be more fragile, more sensitive, more vulnerable! People talk tome as if there were still a career before me, while all the time I knowthat the ground is slipping from under me, and that the defense of myhealth is already a hopeless task. At bottom, I am only living on out ofcomplaisance and without a shadow of self-delusion. I know that not oneof my desires will be realized, and for a long time I have had nodesires at all. I simply accept what comes to me as though it were abird perching on my window. I smile at it, but I know very well that myvisitor has wings and will not stay long. The resignation which comesfrom despair has a kind of melancholy sweetness. It looks at life as aman sees it from his death-bed, and judges it without bitterness andwithout vain regrets. 

I no longer hope to get well, or to be useful, or to be happy. I hopethat those who have loved me will love me to the end; I should wish tohave done them some good, and to leave them a tender memory of myself. Iwish to die without rebellion and without weakness; that is about all. Is this relic of hope and of desire still too much? Let all be as Godwill. I resign myself into his hands. 

January 22, 1875. (_Hyères_). --The French mind, according to Gioberti, apprehends only the outward form of truth, and exaggerates it byisolating it, so that it acts as a solvent upon the realities with whichit works. It takes the shadow for the substance, the word for the thing, appearance for reality, and abstract formula for truth. It lives in aworld of intellectual _assignats_. If you talk to a Frenchman of art, oflanguage, of religion, of the state, of duty, of the family, you feel inhis way of speaking that his thought remains outside the subject, thathe never penetrates into its substance, its inmost core. He is notstriving to understand it in its essence, but only to say somethingplausible about it. On his lips the noblest words become thin and empty;for example--mind, idea, religion. The French mind is superficial andyet not comprehensive; it has an extraordinarily fine edge, and yet nopenetrating power. Its desire is to enjoy its own resources by the helpof things, but it has none of the respect, the disinterestedness, thepatience, and the self-forgetfulness, which, are indispensable if wewish to see things as they are. Far from being the philosophic mind, itis a mere counterfeit of it, for it does not enable a man to solve anyproblem whatever, and remains incapable of understanding all that isliving, complex, and concrete. Abstraction is its original sin, presumption its incurable defect, and plausibility its fatal limit. 

The French language has no power of expressing truths of birth andgermination; it paints effects, results, the _caput mortuum_, but notthe cause, the motive power, the native force the development of anyphenomenon whatever. It is analytic and descriptive, but it explainsnothing, for it avoids all beginnings and processes of formation. Withit crystallization is not the mysterious act itself by which a substancepasses from the fluid state to the solid state. It is the product ofthat act. 

The thirst for truth is not a French passion. In everything appearanceis preferred to reality, the outside to the inside, the fashion to thematerial, that which shines to that which profits, opinion toconscience. That is to say, the Frenchman's center of gravity is alwaysoutside him--he is always thinking of others, playing to the gallery. Tohim individuals are so many zeros; the unit which turns them into anumber must be added from outside; it may be royalty, the writer of theday, the favorite newspaper, or any other temporary master of fashion. All this is probably the result of an exaggerated sociability, whichweakens the soul's forces of resistance, destroys its capacity forinvestigation and personal conviction, and kills in it the worship ofthe ideal. 

January 27, 1875. (_Hyères_). --The whole atmosphere has a luminousserenity, a limpid clearness. The islands are like swans swimming in agolden stream. Peace, splendor, boundless space!. . . And I meanwhile lookquietly on while the soft hours glide away. I long to catch the wildbird, happiness, and tame it. Above all, I long to share it with others. These delicious mornings impress me indescribably. They intoxicate me, they carry me away. I feel beguiled out of myself, dissolved insunbeams, breezes, perfumes, and sudden impulses of joy. And yet all thetime I pine for I know not what intangible Eden. 

Lamartine in the "Préludes" has admirably described this oppressiveeffect of happiness on fragile human nature. I suspect that the reasonfor it is that the finite creature feels itself invaded by the infinite, and the invasion produces dizziness, a kind of vertigo, a longing tofling one's self into the great gulf of being. To feel life toointensely is to yearn for death; and for man, to die means to becomelike unto the gods--to be initiated into the great mystery. Pathetic andbeautiful illusion. 

_Ten o'clock in the evening_. --From one end to the other the day hasbeen perfect, and my walk this afternoon to Beau Vallon was one longdelight. It was like an expedition into Arcadia. Here was a wild andwoodland corner, which would have made a fit setting for a dance ofnymphs, and there an ilex overshadowing a rock, which reminded me of anode of Horace or a drawing of Tibur. I felt a kind of certainty that thelandscape had much that was Greek in it. And what made the sense ofresemblance the more striking was the sea, which one feels to be alwaysnear, though one may not see it, and which any turn of the valley maybring into view. We found out a little tower with an overgrown garden, of which the owner might have been taken for a husbandman of theOdyssey. He could scarcely speak any French, but was not without acertain grave dignity. I translated to him the inscription on hissun-dial, "_Hora est benefaciendi_, " which is beautiful, and pleased himgreatly. It would be an inspiring place to write a novel in. Only I donot know whether the little den would have a decent room, and one wouldcertainly have to live upon eggs, milk, and figs, like Philemon. February 15, 1875. (_Hyères_). --I have just been reading the two last"Discours" at the French Academy, lingering over every word and weighingevery idea. This kind of writing is a sort of intellectual dainty, forit is the art "of expressing truth with all the courtesy and finessepossible;" the art of appearing perfectly at ease without the smallestloss of manners; of being gracefully sincere, and of making criticismitself a pleasure to the person criticized. Legacy as it is from themonarchical tradition, this particular kind of eloquence is thedistinguishing mark of those men of the world who are also men ofbreeding, and those men of letters who are also gentlemen. Democracycould never have invented it, and in this delicate _genre_ of literatureFrance may give points to all rival peoples, for it is the fruit of thatrefined and yet vigorous social sense which is produced by court anddrawing-room life, by literature and good company, by means of a mutualeducation continued for centuries. This complicated product is asoriginal in its way as Athenian eloquence, but it is less healthy andless durable. If ever France becomes Americanized this _genre_ at leastwill perish, without hope of revival. 

April 16, 1875. (_Hyères_). --I have already gone through the variousemotions of leave-taking. I have been wandering slowly through thestreets and up the castle hill, gathering a harvest of images andrecollections. Already I am full of regret that I have not made a betterstudy of the country, in which I have now spent four months and more. Itis like what happens when a friend dies; we accuse ourselves of havingloved him too little, or loved him ill; or it is like our own death, when we look back upon life and feel that it has been misspent. 

August 16, 1875. --Life is but a daily oscillation between revolt andsubmission, between the instinct of the _ego_, which is to expand, totake delight in its own tranquil sense of inviolability, if not totriumph in its own sovereignty, and the instinct of the soul, which isto obey the universal order, to accept the will of God. 

The cold renunciation of disillusioned reason brings no real peace. Peace is only to be found in reconciliation with destiny, when destinyseems, in the religious sense of the word, _good_; that is to say, whenman feels himself directly in the presence of God. Then, and then only, does the will acquiesce. Nay more, it only completely acquiesces when itadores. The soul only submits to the hardness of fate by virtue of itsdiscovery of a sublime compensation--the loving kindness of theAlmighty. That is to say, it cannot resign itself to lack or famine, itshrinks from the void around it, and the happiness either of hope orfaith is essential to it. It may very well vary its objects, but someobject it must have. It may renounce its former idols, but it willdemand another cult. The soul hungers and thirsts after happiness, andit is in vain that everything deserts it--it will never submit to itsabandonment. 

August 28, 1875. (_Geneva_). --A word used by Sainte-Beuve à propos ofBenjamin Constant has struck me: it is the word _consideration_. Topossess or not to possess _consideration_ was to Madame de Staël amatter of supreme importance--the loss of it an irreparable evil, theacquirement of it a pressing necessity. What, then, is this good thing?The esteem of the public. And how is it gained? By honorable characterand life, combined with a certain aggregate of services rendered and ofsuccesses obtained. It is not exactly a good conscience, but it issomething like it, for it is the witness from without, if not thewitness from within. _Consideration_ is not reputation, still lesscelebrity, fame, or glory; it has nothing to do with _savoir faire_, andis not always the attendant of talent or genius. It is the reward givento constancy in duty, to probity of conduct. It is the homage renderedto a life held to be irreproachable. It is a little more than esteem, and a little less than admiration. To enjoy public consideration is atonce a happiness and a power. The loss of it is a misfortune and asource of daily suffering. Here am I, at the age of fifty-three, withoutever having given this idea the smallest place in my life. It iscurious, but the desire for consideration has been to me so little of amotive that I have not even been conscious of such an idea at all. Thefact shows, I suppose, that for me the audience, the gallery, thepublic, has never had more than a negative importance. I have neitherasked nor expected anything from it, not even justice; and to be adependent upon it, to solicit its suffrages and its good graces, hasalways seemed to me an act of homage and flunkeyism against which mypride has instinctively rebelled. I have never even tried to gain thegood will of a _côterìe_ or a newspaper, nor so much as the vote of anelector. And yet 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 good will. But to hunt down consideration andreputation--to force the esteem of others--seemed to me an effortunworthy of myself, almost a degradation. I have never even thought ofit. 

Perhaps I have lost consideration by my indifference to it. Probably Ihave disappointed public expectation by thus allowing an over-sensitiveand irritable consciousness to lead me into isolation and retreat. Iknow that the world, which is only eager to silence you when you dospeak, is angry with your silence as soon as its own action has killedin you the wish to speak. No doubt, to be silent with a perfectly clearconscience a man must not hold a public office. I now indeed say tomyself that a professor is morally bound to justify his position bypublication; that students, authorities, and public are placed therebyin a healthier relation toward him; that it is necessary for his goodrepute in the world, and for the proper maintenance of his position. Butthis point of view has not been a familiar one to me. I have endeavoredto give conscientious lectures, and I have discharged all the subsidiaryduties of my post to the best of my ability; but I have never been ableto bend myself to a struggle with hostile opinion, for all the while myheart has been full of sadness and disappointment, and I have known andfelt that I have been systematically and deliberately isolated. Premature despair and the deepest discouragement have been my constantportion. Incapable of taking any interest in my talents for my own sake, I let everything slip as soon as the hope of being loved for them and bythem had forsaken me. A hermit against my will, I have not even foundpeace in solitude, because my inmost conscience has not been any bettersatisfied than my heart. 

Does not all this make up a melancholy lot, a barren failure of a life?What use have I made of my gifts, of my special circumstances, of myhalf-century of existence? What have I paid back to my country? Are allthe documents I have produced, taken together, my correspondence, thesethousands of journal pages, my lectures, my articles, my poems, my notesof different kinds, anything better than withered leaves? To whom and towhat have I been useful? Will my name survive me a single day, and willit ever mean anything to anybody? A life of no account! A great manycomings and goings, a great many scrawls--for nothing. When all is addedup--nothing! And worst of all, it has not been a life used up in theservice of some adored object, or sacrificed to any future hope. Itssufferings will have been vain, its renunciations useless, itssacrifices gratuitous, its dreariness without reward. . . . No, I am wrong;it will have had its secret treasure, its sweetness, its reward. It willhave inspired a few affections of great price; it will have given joy toa few souls; its hidden existence will have had some value. Besides, ifin itself it has been nothing, it has understood much. If it has notbeen in harmony with the great order, still it has loved it. If it hasmissed happiness and duty, it has at least felt its own nothingness, andimplored its pardon. 

_Later on. _--There is a great affinity in me with the Hindoogenius--that mind, vast, imaginative, loving, dreamy, and speculative, but destitute of ambition, personality, and will. Pantheisticdisinterestedness, the effacement of the self in the great whole, womanish gentleness, a horror of slaughter, antipathy to action--theseare all present in my nature, in the nature at least which has beendeveloped by years and circumstances. Still the West has also had itspart in me. What I have found difficult is to keep up a prejudice infavor of any form, nationality, or individuality whatever. Hence myindifference to my own person, my own usefulness, interest, or opinionsof the moment. What does it all matter? _Omnis determinatio estnegatio_. Grief localizes us, love particularizes us, but thoughtdelivers us from personality. . . . To be a man is a poor thing, to be aman is well; to be _the_ man--man in essence and in principle--thatalone is to be desired. 

Yes, but in these Brahmanic aspirations what becomes of thesubordination of the individual to duty? Pleasure may lie in ceasing tobe individual, but duty lies in performing the microscopic task allottedto us. The problem set before us is to bring our daily task into thetemple of contemplation and ply it there, to act as in the presence ofGod, to interfuse one's little part with religion. So only can we informthe detail of life, all that is passing, temporary, and insignificant, with beauty and nobility. So may we dignify and consecrate the meanestof occupations. So may we feel that we are paying our tribute to theuniversal work and the eternal will. So are we reconciled with life anddelivered from the fear of death. So are we in order and at peace. 

September 1, 1875. --I have been working for some hours at my article onMme. De Staël, but with what labor, what painful effort! When I writefor publication every word is misery, and my pen stumbles at every line, so anxious am I to find the ideally best expression, and so great is thenumber of possibilities which open before me at every step. 

Composition demands a concentration, decision, and pliancy which I nolonger possess. I cannot fuse together materials and ideas. If we are togive anything a form, we must, so to speak, be the tyrants of it. [Footnote: Compare this paragraph from the "Pensées of a new writer, M. Joseph Roux, a country curé, living in a remote part of the _BasLimousin_, whose thoughts have been edited and published this year by M. Paul Mariéton (Paris: Alphonse Lemerre):

"Le verbe ne souffre et ne connait que la volonté qui le dompte, etn'emporte loin sans péril que l'intelligence qui lui ménage avec empirel'éperon et le frein. "]

We must treat our subject brutally, and not be always trembling lest weare doing it a wrong. We must be able to transmute and absorb it intoour own substance. This sort of confident effrontery is beyond me: mywhole nature tends to that impersonality which respects and subordinatesitself to the object; it is love of truth which holds me back fromconcluding and deciding. And then I am always retracing my steps:instead of going forward I work in a circle: I am afraid of havingforgotten a point, of having exaggerated an expression, of having used aword out of place, while all the time I ought to have been thinking ofessentials and aiming at breadth of treatment. I do not know how tosacrifice anything, how to give up anything whatever. Hurtful timidity, unprofitable conscientiousness, fatal slavery to detail!

In reality I have never given much thought to the art of writing, to thebest way of making an article, an essay, a book, nor have I evermethodically undergone the writer's apprenticeship; it would have beenuseful to me, and I was always ashamed of what was useful. I have felt, as it were, a scruple against trying to surprise the secret of themasters of literature, against picking _chef-d'oeuvres_ to pieces. WhenI think that I have always postponed the serious study of the art ofwriting, from a sort of awe of it, and a secret love of its beauty, I amfurious with my own stupidity, and with my own respect. Practice androutine would have given me that ease, lightness, and assurance, withoutwhich the natural gift and impulse dies away. But on the contrary, Ihave developed two opposed habits of mind, the habit of scientificanalysis which exhausts the material offered to it, and the habit ofimmediate notation of passing impressions. The art of composition liesbetween the two; you want for it both the living unity of the thing andthe sustained operation of thought. 

October 25, 1875. --I have been listening to M. Taine's first lecture (onthe "Ancien Régime") delivered in the university hall. It was anextremely substantial piece of work--clear, instructive, compact, andfull of matter. As a writer he shows great skill in the French method ofsimplifying his subject by massing it in large striking divisions; hisgreat defect is a constant straining after points; his principal meritis the sense he has of historical reality, his desire to see things asthey are. For the rest, he has extreme openness of mind, freedom ofthought, and precision of language. The hall was crowded. 

October 26, 1875. --All origins are secret; the principle of everyindividual or collective life is a mystery--that is to say, somethingirrational, inexplicable, not to be defined. We may even go farther andsay, Every individuality is an insoluble enigma, and no beginningexplains it. In fact, all that has _become_ may be explainedretrospectively, but the beginning of anything whatever did not_become_. It represents always the "_fiat lux_, " the initial miracle, the act of creation; for it is the consequence of nothing else, itsimply appears among anterior things which make a _milieu_, an occasion, a surrounding for it, but which are witnesses of its appearance withoutunderstanding whence it comes. 

Perhaps also there are no true individuals, and, if so, no beginning butone only, the primordial impulse, the first movement. All men on thishypothesis would be but _man_ in two sexes; man again might be reducedto the animal, the animal to the plant, and the only individuality leftwould be a living nature, reduced to a living matter, to the hylozoismof Thales. However, even upon this hypothesis, if there were but oneabsolute beginning, relative beginnings would still remain to us asmultiple symbols of the absolute. Every life, called individual forconvenience sake and by analogy, would represent in miniature thehistory of the world, and would be to the eye of the philosopher amicroscopic compendium of it. 

The history of the formation of ideas is what, frees the mind. 

 * * * * *

A philosophic truth does not become popular until some eloquent soul hashumanized it or some gifted personality has translated and embodied it. Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicatedby contagion. 

January 30, 1876. --After dinner I went two steps off, to Marc Monnier's, to hear the "Luthier de Crémone, " a one-act comedy in verse, read by theauthor, François Coppée. 

It was a feast of fine sensations, of literary dainties. For the littlepiece is a pearl. It is steeped in poetry, and every line is a freshpleasure to one's taste. 

This young _maestro_ is like the violin he writes about, vibrating andpassionate; he has, besides delicacy, point, grace, all that a writerwants to make what is simple, naïve, heartfelt, and out of the beatentrack, acceptable to a cultivated society. 

How to return to nature through art: there is the problem of all highlycomposite literatures like our own. Rousseau himself attacked letterswith all the resources of the art of writing, and boasted the delightsof savage life with a skill and adroitness developed only by the mostadvanced civilization. And it is indeed this marriage of contrarieswhich charms us; this spiced gentleness, this learned innocence, thiscalculated simplicity, this yes and no, this foolish wisdom. It is thesupreme irony of such combinations which tickles the taste of advancedand artificial epochs, epochs when men ask for two sensations at once, like the contrary meanings fused by the smile of La Gioconda. And oursatisfaction, too, in work of this kind is best expressed by thatambiguous curve of the lip which says: I feel your charm, but I am notyour dupe; I see the illusion both from within and from without; I yieldto you, but I understand you; I am complaisant, but I am proud; I amopen to sensations, yet not the slave of any; you have talent, I havesubtlety of perception; we are quits, and we understand each other. 

February 1, 1876. --This evening we talked of the infinitely great andthe infinitely small. The great things of the universe are for----somuch easier to understand than the small, because all greatness is amultiple of herself, whereas she is incapable of analyzing what requiresa different sort of measurement. 

It is possible for the thinking being to place himself in all points ofview, and to teach his soul to live under the most different modes ofbeing. But it must be confessed that very few profit by the possibility. Men are in general imprisoned, held in a vice by their circumstancesalmost as the animals are, but they have very little suspicion of itbecause they have so little faculty of self-judgment. It is only thecritic and the philosopher who can penetrate into all states of being, and realize their life from within. 

When the imagination shrinks in fear from the phantoms which it creates, it may be excused because it is imagination. But when the intellectallows itself to be tyrannized over or terrified by the categories towhich itself gives birth, it is in the wrong, for it is not allowed tointellect--the critical power of man--to be the dupe of anything. 

Now, in the superstition of size the mind is merely the dupe of itself, for it creates the notion of space. The created is not more than thecreator, the son not more than the father. The point of view wantsrectifying. The mind has to free itself from space, which gives it afalse notion of itself, but it can only attain this freedom by reversingthings and by learning to see space in the mind instead of the mind inspace. How can it do this? Simply by reducing space to its virtuality. Space is dispersion; mind is concentration. 

And that is why God is present everywhere, without taking up a thousandmillions of cube leagues, nor a hundred times more nor a hundred timesless. 

In the state of thought the universe occupies but a single point; but inthe state of dispersion and analysis this thought requires the heaven ofheavens for its expansion. 

In the same way, time and number are contained in the mind. Man, asmind, is not their inferior, but their superior. 

It is true that before he can reach this state of freedom his own bodymust appear to him at will either speck or world--that is to say, hemust be independent of it. So long as the self still feels itselfspatial, dispersed, corporeal, it is but a soul, it is not a mind; it isconscious of itself only as the animal is, the impressionable, affectionate, active and restless animal. 

The mind being the subject of phenomena cannot be itself phenomenal; themirror of an image, if it was an image, could not be a mirror. There canbe no echo without a noise. Consciousness means some one who experiencessomething. And all the somethings together cannot take the place of thesome one. The phenomenon exists only for a point which is not itself, and for which it is an object. The perceptible supposes the perceiver. 

May 15, 1876. --This morning I corrected the proofs of the "Etrangères. "[Footnote: _Les Etrangères: Poésies traduites de diverseslittératures_, par H. F. Amiel, 1876. ] Here at least is one thing off myhands. The piece of prose theorizing which ends the volume pleased andsatisfied me a good deal more than my new meters. The book, as a whole, may be regarded as an attempt to solve the problem of Frenchverse-translation considered as a special art. It is science applied topoetry. It ought not, I think, to do any discredit to a philosopher, for, after all, it is nothing but applied psychology. 

Do I feel any relief, any joy, pride, hope? Hardly. It seems to me thatI feel nothing at all, or at least my feeling is so vague and doubtfulthat I cannot analyze it. On the whole, I am rather tempted to say tomyself, how much labor for how small a result--_Much ado about nothing!_And yet the work in itself is good, is successful. But what doesverse-translation matter? Already my interest in it is fading; my mindand my energies clamor for something else. 

What will Edmond Scherer say to the volume?

 * * * * *

To the inmost self of me this literary attempt is quite indifferent--aLilliputian affair. In comparing my work with other work of the samekind, I find a sort of relative satisfaction; but I see the intrinsicfutility of it, and the insignificance of its success or failure. I donot believe in the public; I do not believe in my own work; I have noambition, properly speaking, and I blow soap-bubbles for want ofsomething to do. 

 "Car le néant peut seul bien cacher l'infini. "

Self-satire, disillusion, absence of prejudice, may be freedom, but theyare not strength. 

July 12, 1876. --Trouble on trouble. My cough has been worse than ever. Icannot see that the fine weather or the holidays have made any changefor the better in my state of health. On the contrary, the process ofdemolition seems more rapid. It is a painful experience, this prematuredecay!. . . "_Après tant de malheurs, que vous reste-t-il? Moi. _" This_"moi"_ is the central consciousness, the trunk of all the brancheswhich have been cut away, that which bears every successive mutilation. Soon I shall have nothing else left than bare intellect. Death reducesus to the mathematical "point;" the destruction which precedes it forcesus back, as it were, by a series of ever-narrowing concentric circles tothis last inaccessible refuge. Already I have a foretaste of that zeroin which all forms and all modes are extinguished. I see how we returninto the night, and inversely I understand how we issue from it. Life isbut a meteor, of which the whole brief course is before me. Birth, life, death assume a fresh meaning to us at each phase of our existence. Tosee one's self as a firework in the darkness--to become a witness ofone's own fugitive phenomenon--this is practical psychology. I preferindeed the spectacle of the world, which is a vaster and more splendidfirework; but when illness narrows my horizon and makes me dwellperforce upon my own miseries, these miseries are still capable ofsupplying food for my psychological curiosity. What interests me inmyself, in spite of my repulsions is, that I find in my own case agenuine example of human nature, and therefore a specimen of generalvalue. The sample enables me to understand a multitude of similarsituations, and numbers of my fellow-men. 

To enter consciously into all possible modes of being would besufficient occupation for hundreds of centuries--at least for our finiteintelligences, which are conditioned by time. The progressive happinessof the process, indeed may be easily poisoned and embittered by theambition which asks for everything at once, and clamors to reach theabsolute at a bound. But it may be answered that aspirations arenecessarily prophetic, for they could only have come into being underthe action of the same cause which will enable them to reach their goal. The soul can only imagine the absolute because the absolute exists; ourconsciousness of a possible perfection is the guarantee that perfectionwill be realized. 

Thought itself is eternal. It is the consciousness of thought which isgradually achieved through the long succession of ages, races, andhumanities. Such is the doctrine of Hegel. The history of the mind is, according to him one of approximation to the absolute, and the absolutediffers at the two ends of the story. It _was_ at the beginning; it_knows itself_ at the end. Or rather it advances in the possession ofitself with the gradual unfolding of creation. Such also was theconception of Aristotle. 

If the history of the mind and of consciousness is the very marrow andessence of being, then to be driven back on psychology, even personalpsychology, is to be still occupied with the main question of things, tokeep to the subject, to feel one's self in the center of the universaldrama. There is comfort in the idea. Everything else may be taken awayfrom us, but if thought remains we are still connected by a magic threadwith the axis of the world. But we may lose thought and speech. Thennothing remains but simple feeling, the sense of the presence of God andof death in God--the last relic of the human privilege, which is toparticipate in the whole, to commune with the absolute. 

 "Ta vie est un éclair qui meurt dans son nuage, Mais l'éclair t'a sauvé s'il t'a fait voir le ciel. "

July 26, 1876. --A private journal is a friend to idleness. It frees usfrom the necessity of looking all round a subject, it puts up with everykind of repetition, it accompanies all the caprices and meanderings ofthe inner life, and proposes to itself no definite end. This journal ofmine represents the material of a good many volumes: what prodigiouswaste of time, of thought, of strength! It will be useful to nobody, andeven for myself--it has rather helped me to shirk life than to practiceit. A journal takes the place of a confidant, that is, of friend orwife; it becomes a substitute for production, a substitute for countryand public. It is a grief-cheating device, a mode of escape andwithdrawal; but, factotum as it is, though it takes the place ofeverything, properly speaking it represents nothing at all. . . . 

What is it which makes the history of a soul? It is the stratificationof its different stages of progress, the story of its acquisitions andof the general course of its destiny. Before my history can teachanybody anything, or even interest myself, it must be disentangled fromits materials, distilled and simplified. These thousands of pages arebut the pile of leaves and bark from which the essence has still to beextracted. A whole forest of cinchonas are worth but one cask ofquinine. A whole Smyrna rose-garden goes to produce one vial of perfume. 

This mass of written talk, the work of twenty-nine years, may in the endbe worth nothing at all; for each is only interested in his own romance, his own individual life. Even I perhaps shall never have time to readthem over myself. So--so what? I shall have lived my life, and lifeconsists in repeating the human type, and the burden of the human song, as myriads of my kindred have done, are doing, and will do, centuryafter century. To rise to consciousness of this burden and this type issomething, and we can scarcely achieve anything further. The realizationof the type is more complete, and the burden a more joyous one, ifcircumstances are kind and propitious, but whether the puppets have donethis or that--

 "Trois p'tits tours et puis s'en vont!"

everything falls into the same gulf at last, and comes to very much thesame thing. 

To rebel against fate--to try to escape the inevitable issue--is almostpuerile. When the duration of a centenarian and that of an insect arequantities sensibly equivalent--and geology and astronomy enable us toregard such durations from this point of view--what is the meaning ofall our tiny efforts and cries, the value of our anger, our ambition, our hope? For the dream of a dream it is absurd to raise thesemake-believe tempests. The forty millions of infusoria which make up acube-inch of chalk--do they matter much to us? and do the forty millionsof men who make up France matter any more to an inhabitant of the moonor Jupiter?

To be a conscious monad--a nothing which knows itself to be themicroscopic phantom of the universe: this is all we can ever attain to. 

September 12, 1876. --What is your own particular absurdity? Why, simplythat you exhaust yourself in trying to understand wisdom withoutpracticing it, that you are always making preparations for nothing, thatyou live without living. Contemplation which has not the courage to bepurely contemplative, renunciation which does not renounce completely, chronic contradiction--there is your case. Inconsistent skepticism, irresolution, not convinced but incorrigible, weakness which will notaccept itself and cannot transform itself into strength--there is yourmisery. 

The comic side of it lies in capacity to direct others, becomingincapacity to direct one's self, in the dream of the infinitely greatstopped short by the infinitely little, in what seems to be the utteruselessness of talent. To arrive at immobility by excess of motion, atzero from abundance of numbers, is a strange farce, a sad comedy; thepoorest gossip can laugh at its absurdity. 

September 19, 1876. --My reading to-day has been Doudan's "Lettres etMélanges. " [Footnote: Ximénès Doudan, born in 1800, died 1872, thebrilliant friend and tutor of the De Broglie family, whose conversationwas so much sought after in life, and whose letters have been so eagerlyread in France since his death. Compare M. Scherer's two articles onDoudan's "Lettres" and "Pensées" in his last published volume ofessays. ] A fascinating book! Wit, grace, subtlety, imagination, thought--these letters possess them all. How much I regret that I neverknew the man himself. He was a Frenchman of the best type, _un délicatné sublime_, to quote Sainte-Beuve's expression. Fastidiousness oftemper, and a too keen love of perfection, led him to withhold histalent from the public, but while still living, and within his owncircle, he was the recognized equal of the best. He scarcely lackedanything except that fraction of ambition, of brutality and materialforce which are necessary to success in this world; but he wasappreciated by the best society of Paris, and he cared for nothing else. He reminds me of Joubert. 

September 20th. --To be witty is to satisfy another's wits by thebestowal on him of two pleasures, that of understanding one thing andthat of guessing another, and so achieving a double stroke. 

Thus Doudan scarcely ever speaks out his thought directly; he disguisesand suggests it by imagery, allusion, hyperbole; he overlays it withlight irony and feigned anger, with gentle mischief and assumedhumility. The more the thing to be guessed differs from the thing said, the more pleasant surprise there is for the interlocutor or thecorrespondent concerned. These charming and delicate ways of expressionallow a man to teach what he will without pedantry, and to venture whathe will without offense. There is something Attic and aerial in them;they mingle grave and gay, fiction and truth, with a light grace oftouch such as neither La Fontaine nor Alcibiades would have been ashamedof. Socratic _badinage_ like this presupposes a free and equal mind, victorious over physical ill and inward discontents. Such delicateplayfulness is the exclusive heritage of those rare natures in whomsubtlety is the disguise of superiority, and taste its revelation. "Whatbalance of faculties and cultivation it requires! What personaldistinction it shows! Perhaps only a valetudinarian would have beencapable of this _morbidezza_ of touch, this marriage of virile thoughtand feminine caprice. If there is excess anywhere, it lies perhaps in acertain effeminacy of sentiment. Doudan can put up with nothing but whatis perfect--nothing but what is absolutely harmonious; all that isrough, harsh, powerful, brutal, and unexpected, throws him intoconvulsions. Audacity--boldness of all kinds--repels him. This Athenianof the Roman time is a true disciple of Epicurus in all matters ofsight, hearing, and intelligence--a crumpled rose-leaf disturbs him. 

 "Une ombre, un souffle, un rien, tout lui donnait la fièvre. "

What all this softness wants is strength, creative and muscular force. His range is not as wide as I thought it at first. The classical worldand the Renaissance--that is to say, the horizon of La Fontaine--is hishorizon. He is out of his element in the German or Slav literatures. Heknows nothing of Asia. Humanity for him is not much larger than France, and he has never made a bible of Nature. In music and painting he ismore or less exclusive. In philosophy he stops at Kant. To sum up: he isa man of exquisite and ingenious taste, but he is not a first-ratecritic, still less a poet, philosopher, or artist. He was an admirabletalker, a delightful letter writer, who might have become an author hadhe chosen to concentrate himself. I must wait for the second volume inorder to review and correct this preliminary impression. 

Midday. --I have now gone once more through the whole volume, lingeringover the Attic charm of it, and meditating on the originality anddistinction of the man's organization. Doudan was a keen penetratingpsychologist, a diviner of aptitudes, a trainer of minds, a man ofinfinite taste and talent, capable of every _nuance_ and of everydelicacy; but his defect was a want of persevering energy of thought, alack of patience in execution. Timidity, unworldliness, indolence, indifference, confined him to the role of the literary counsellor andmade him judge of the field in which he ought rather to have fought. Butdo I mean to blame him?--no indeed! In the first place, it would be tofire on my allies; in the second, very likely he chose the better part. 

Was it not Goethe who remarked that in the neighborhood of all famousmen we find men who never achieve fame, and yet were esteemed by thosewho did, as their equals or superiors? Descartes, I think, said the samething. Fame will not run after the men who are afraid of her. She makesmock of those trembling and respectful lovers who deserve but cannotforce her favors. The public is won by the bold, imperious talents--bythe enterprising and the skillful. It does not believe in modesty, whichit regards as a device of impotence. The golden book contains but asection of the true geniuses; it names those only who have taken gloryby storm. 

November 15, 1876. --I have been reading "L'Avenir Religieux des PeuplesCivilisés, " by Emile de Laveleye. The theory of this writer is that thegospel, in its pure form, is capable of providing the religion of thefuture, and that the abolition of all religious principle, which is whatthe socialism of the present moment demands, is as much to be feared asCatholic superstition. The Protestant method, according to him, is themeans of transition whereby sacerdotal Christianity passes into the purereligion of the gospel. Laveleye does not think that civilization canlast without the belief in God and in another life. Perhaps he forgetsthat Japan and China prove the contrary. But it is enough to determinehim against atheism if it can be shown that a general atheism wouldbring about a lowering of the moral average. After all, however, this isnothing but a religion of utilitarianism. A belief is not true becauseit is useful. And it is truth alone--scientific, established, proved, and rational truth--which is capable of satisfying nowadays the awakenedminds of all classes. We may still say perhaps, "faith governs theworld"--but the faith of the present is no longer in revelation or inthe priest--it is in reason and in science. Is there a science ofgoodness and happiness?--that is the question. Do justice and goodnessdepend upon any particular religion? How are men to be made free, honest, just, and good?--there is the point. 

On my way through the book I perceived many new applications of my lawof irony. Every epoch has two contradictory aspirations which arelogically antagonistic and practically associated. Thus the philosophicmaterialism of the last century was the champion of liberty. And at thepresent moment we find Darwinians in love with equality, while Darwinismitself is based on the right of the stronger. Absurdity is interwovenwith life: real beings are animated contradictions, absurdities broughtinto action. Harmony with self would mean peace, repose, and perhapsimmobility By far the greater number of human beings can only conceiveaction, or practice it, under the form of war--a war of competition athome, a bloody war of nations abroad, and finally war with self. So thatlife is a perpetual combat; it wills that which it wills not, and willsnot that it wills. Hence what I call the law of irony--that is to say, the refutation of the self by itself, the concrete realization of theabsurd. 

Is such a result inevitable? I think not. Struggle is the caricature ofharmony, and harmony, which is the association of contraries, is also aprinciple of movement. War is a brutal and fierce means of pacification;it means the suppression of resistance by the destruction or enslavementof the conquered. Mutual respect would be a better way out ofdifficulties. Conflict is the result of the selfishness which willacknowledge no other limit than that of external force. The laws ofanimality govern almost the whole of history. The history of man isessentially zoological; it becomes human late in the day, and then onlyin the beautiful souls, the souls alive to justice, goodness, enthusiasm, and devotion. The angel shows itself rarely and withdifficulty through the highly-organized brute. The divine aureole playsonly with a dim and fugitive light around the brows of the world'sgoverning race. 

The Christian nations offer many illustrations of the law of irony. Theyprofess the citizenship of heaven, the exclusive worship of eternalgood; and never has the hungry pursuit of perishable joys, the love ofthis world, or the thirst for conquest, been stronger or more activethan among these nations. Their official motto is exactly the reverse oftheir real aspiration. Under a false flag they play the smuggler with adroll ease of conscience. Is the fraud a conscious one? No--it is but anapplication of the law of irony. The deception is so common a one thatthe delinquent becomes unconscious of it. Every nation gives itself thelie in the course of its daily life, and not one feels the ridicule ofits position. A man must be a Japanese to perceive the burlesquecontradictions of the Christian civilization. He must be a native of themoon to understand the stupidity of man and his state of constantdelusion. The philosopher himself falls under the law of irony, forafter having mentally stripped himself of all prejudice--having, that isto say, wholly laid aside his own personality, he finds himself slippingback perforce into the rags he had taken off, obliged to eat and drink, to be hungry, cold, thirsty, and to behave like all other mortals, afterhaving for a moment behaved like no other. This is the point where thecomic poets are lying in wait for him; the animal needs revengethemselves for his flight into the Empyrean, and mock him by their cry:_Thou art dust, thou art nothing, than art man_!

November 26, 1876. --I have just finished a novel of Cherbuliez, "Lefiancé de Mademoiselle de St. Maur. " It is a jeweled mosaic of preciousstones, sparkling with a thousand lights. But the heart gets little fromit. The Mephistophelian type of novel leaves one sad. This subtle, refined world is strangely near to corruption; these artificial womenhave an air of the Lower Empire. There is not a character who is notwitty, and neither is there one who has not bartered conscience forcleverness. The elegance of the whole is but a mask of immorality. Thesestories of feeling in which there is no feeling make a strange andpainful impression upon me. 

December 4, 1876. --I have been thinking a great deal of VictorCherbuliez. Perhaps his novels make up the most disputable part of hiswork--they are so much wanting in simplicity, feeling, reality. And yetwhat knowledge, style, wit, and subtlety--how much thought everywhere, and what mastery of language! He astonishes one; I cannot but admirehim. 

Cherbuliez's mind is of immense range, clear-sighted, keen, full ofresource; he is an Alexandrian exquisite, substituting for the feelingwhich makes men earnest the irony which leaves them free. Pascal wouldsay of him--"He has never risen from the order of thought to the orderof charity. " But we must not be ungrateful. A Lucian is not worth anAugustine, but still he is Lucian. Those who enfranchise the mind renderservice to man as well as those who persuade the heart. After theleaders come the liberators, and the negative and critical minds havetheir place and function beside the men of affirmation, the convincedand inspired souls. The positive element in Victor Cherbuliez's work isbeauty, not goodness, not moral or religious life. Aesthetically he isserious; what he respects is style. And therefore he has found hisvocation; for he is first and foremost a writer--a consummate, exquisite, and model writer. He does not win our love, but he claims ourhomage. 

In every union there is a mystery--a certain invisible bond which mustnot be disturbed. This vital bond in the filial relation is respect; infriendship, esteem; in marriage, confidence; in the collective life, patriotism; in the religious life, faith. Such points are best leftuntouched by speech, for to touch them is almost to profane them. 

 * * * * *

Men of genius supply the substance of history, while the mass of men arebut the critical filter, the limiting, slackening, passive force neededfor the modification of the ideas supplied by genius. Stupidity isdynamically the necessary balance of intellect. To make an atmospherewhich human life can breathe, oxygen must be combined with a greatdeal--with three-fourths--of azote. And so, to make history, there mustbe a great deal of resistance to conquer and of weight to drag. 

January 5, 1877. --This morning I am altogether miserable, half-stifledby bronchitis--walking a difficulty--the brain weak--this last the worstmisery of all, for thought is my only weapon against my other ills. Rapid deterioration of all the bodily powers, a dull continuous waste ofvital organs, brain decay: this is the trial laid upon me, a trial thatno one suspects! Men pity you for growing old outwardly; but what doesthat matter?--nothing, so long as the faculties are intact. This boon ofmental soundness to the last has been granted to so many students that Ihoped for it a little. Alas, must I sacrifice that too? Sacrifice isalmost easy when we believe it laid upon us, asked of us, rather, by afatherly God and a watchful Providence; but I know nothing of thisreligious joy. The mutilation of the self which is going on in me lowersand lessens me without doing good to anybody. Supposing I became blind, who would be the gainer? Only one motive remains to me--that of manlyresignation to the inevitable--the wish to set an example to others--thestoic view of morals pure and simple. 

This moral education of the individual soul--is it then wasted? When ourplanet has accomplished the cycle of its destinies, of what use will ithave been to any one or anything in the universe? Well, it will havesounded its note in the symphony of creation. And for us, individualatoms, seeing monads, we appropriate a momentary consciousness of thewhole and the unchangeable, and then we disappear. Is not this enough?No, it is not enough, for if there is not progress, increase, profit, there is nothing but a mere chemical play and balance of combinations. Brahma, after having created, draws his creation back into the gulf. Ifwe are a laboratory of the universal mind, may that mind at least profitand grow by us! If we realize the supreme will, may God have the joy ofit! If the trustful humility of the soul rejoices him more than thegreatness of intellect, let us enter into his plan, his intention. This, in theological language, is to live to the glory of God. Religionconsists in the filial acceptation of the divine will whatever it be, provided we see it distinctly. Well, can we doubt that decay, sickness, death, are in the programme of our existence? Is not destiny theinevitable? And is not destiny the anonymous title of him or of thatwhich the religions call God? To descend without murmuring the stream ofdestiny, to pass without revolt through loss after loss, and diminutionafter diminution, with no other limit than zero before us--this is whatis demanded of us. Involution is as natural as evolution. We sinkgradually back into the darkness, just as we issued gradually from it. The play of faculties and organs, the grandiose apparatus of life, isput back bit by bit into the box. We begin by instinct; at the end comesa clearness of vision which we must learn to bear with and to employwithout murmuring upon our own failure and decay. A musical theme onceexhausted, finds its due refuge and repose in silence. 

February 6, 1877. --I spent the evening with the ----, and we talked ofthe anarchy of ideas, of the general want of culture, of what it iswhich keeps the world going, and of the assured march of science in themidst of universal passion and superstition. 

What is rarest in the world is fair-mindedness, method, the criticalview, the sense of proportion, the capacity for distinguishing. Thecommon state of human thought is one of confusion, incoherence, andpresumption, and the common state of human hearts is a state of passion, in which equity, impartiality, and openness to impressions areunattainable. Men's wills are always in advance of their intelligence, their desires ahead of their will, and accident the source of theirdesires; so that they express merely fortuitous opinions which are notworth the trouble of taking seriously, and which have no other accountto give of themselves than this childish one: I am, because I am. Theart of finding truth is very little practiced; it scarcely exists, because there is no personal humility, nor even any love of truth amongus. We are covetous enough of such knowledge as may furnish weapons toour hand or tongue, as may serve our vanity or gratify our craving forpower; but self-knowledge, the criticism of our own appetites andprejudices, is unwelcome and disagreeable to us. 

Man is a willful and covetous animal, who makes use of his intellect tosatisfy his inclinations, but who cares nothing for truth, who rebelsagainst personal discipline, who hates disinterested thought and theidea of self-education. Wisdom offends him, because it rouses in himdisturbance and confusion, and because he will not see himself as he is. 

The great majority of men are but tangled skeins, imperfect keyboards, so many specimens of restless or stagnant chaos--and what makes theirsituation almost hopeless is the fact that they take pleasure in it. There is no curing a sick man who believes himself in health. 

April 5, 1877. --I have been thinking over the pleasant evening ofyesterday, an experience in which the sweets of friendship, the charm ofmutual understanding, aesthetic pleasure, and a general sense ofcomfort, were happily combined and intermingled. There was not a creasein the rose-leaf. Why? Because "all that is pure, all that is honest, all that is excellent, all that is lovely and of good report, " was theregathered together. "The incorruptibility of a gentle and quiet spirit, "innocent mirth, faithfulness to duty, fine taste and sympatheticimagination, form an attractive and wholesome _milieu_ in which the soulmay rest. 

The party--which celebrated the last day of vacation--gave muchpleasure, and not to me only. Is not making others happy the besthappiness? To illuminate for an instant the depths of a deep soul, tocheer those who bear by sympathy the burdens of so many sorrow-ladenhearts and suffering lives, is to me a blessing and a preciousprivilege. There is a sort of religious joy in helping to renew thestrength and courage of noble minds. We are surprised to find ourselvesthe possessors of a power of which we are not worthy, and we long toexercise it purely and seriously. 

I feel most strongly that man, in all that he does or can do which isbeautiful, great, or good is but the organ and the vehicle of somethingor some one higher than himself. This feeling is religion. The religiousman takes part with a tremor of sacred joy in these phenomena of whichhe is the intermediary but not the source, of which he is the scene, butnot the author, or rather, the poet. He lends them voice, and will, andhelp, but he is respectfully careful to efface himself, that he mayalter as little as possible the higher work of the genius who is makinga momentary use of him. A pure emotion deprives him of personality andannihilates the self in him. Self must perforce disappear when it is theHoly Spirit who speaks, when it is God who acts. This is the mood inwhich the prophet hears the call, the young mother feels the movement ofthe child within, the preacher watches the tears of his audience. Solong as we are conscious of self we are limited, selfish, held inbondage; when we are in harmony with the universal order, when wevibrate in unison with God, self disappears. Thus, in a perfectlyharmonious choir, the individual cannot hear himself unless he makes afalse note. The religious state is one of deep enthusiasm, of movedcontemplation, of tranquil ecstasy. But how rare a state it is for uspoor creatures harassed by duty, by necessity, by the wicked world, bysin, by illness! It is the state which produces inward happiness; butalas! the foundation of existence, the common texture of our days, ismade up of action, effort, struggle, and therefore dissonance. Perpetualconflict, interrupted by short and threatened truces--there is a truepicture of our human condition. 

Let us hail, then, as an echo from heaven, as the foretaste of a moreblessed economy, these brief moments of perfect harmony, these haltsbetween two storms. Peace is not in itself a dream, but we know it onlyas the result of a momentary equilibrium--an accident. "Happy are thepeacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. "

April 26, 1877. --I have been turning over again the "Paris" of VictorHugo (1867). For ten years event after event has given the lie to theprophet, but the confidence of the prophet in his own imaginings is nottherefore a whit diminished. Humility and common sense are only fit forLilliputians. Victor Hugo superbly ignores everything that he has notforeseen. He does not see that pride is a limitation of the mind, andthat a pride without limitations is a littleness of soul. If he couldbut learn to compare himself with other men, and France with othernations, he would see things more truly, and would not fall into thesemad exaggerations, these extravagant judgments. But proportion andfairness will never be among the strings at his command. He is vowed tothe Titanic; his gold is always mixed with lead, his insight withchildishness, his reason with madness. He cannot be simple; the onlylight he has to give blinds you like that of a fire. He astonishes areader and provokes him, he moves him and annoys him. There is alwayssome falsity of note in him, which accounts for the _malaise_ he soconstantly excites in me. The great poet in him cannot shake off thecharlatan. 

A few shafts of Voltairean irony would have shriveled the inflation ofhis genius and made it stronger by making it saner. It is a publicmisfortune that the most powerful poet of a nation should not havebetter understood his role, and that, unlike those Hebrew prophets whoscourged because they loved, he should devote himself proudly andsystematically to the flattery of his countrymen. France is the world;Paris is France; Hugo is Paris; peoples, bow down!

May 2, 1877. --Which nation is best worth belonging to? There is not onein which the good is not counterbalanced by evil. Each is a caricatureof man, a proof that no one among them deserves to crush the others, andthat all have something to learn from all. I am alternately struck withthe qualities and with the defects of each, which is perhaps lucky for acritic. I am conscious of no preference for the defects of north orsouth, of west or east; and I should find a difficulty in stating my ownpredilections. Indeed I myself am wholly indifferent in the matter, forto me the question is not one of liking or of blaming, but ofunderstanding. My point of view is philosophical--that is to say, impartial and impersonal. The only type which pleases me isperfection--_man_, in short, the ideal man. As for the national man, Ibear with and study him, but I have no admiration for him. I can onlyadmire the fine specimens of the race, the great men, the geniuses, thelofty characters and noble souls, and specimens of these are to be foundin all the ethnographical divisions. The "country of my choice" (toquote Madame de Staël) is with the chosen souls. I feel no greaterinclination toward the French, the Germans, the Swiss, the English, thePoles, the Italians, than toward the Brazilians or the Chinese. Theillusions of patriotism, of Chauvinist, family, or professional feeling, do not exist for me. My tendency, on the contrary, is to feel withincreased force the lacunas, deformities, and imperfections of the groupto which I belong. My inclination is to see things as they are, abstracting my own individuality, and suppressing all personal will anddesire; so that I feel antipathy, not toward this or that, but towarderror, prejudice, stupidity, exclusiveness, exaggeration. I love onlyjustice and fairness. Anger and annoyance are with me merelysuperficial; the fundamental tendency is toward impartiality anddetachment. Inward liberty and aspiration toward the true--these arewhat I care for and take pleasure in. 

June 4, 1877. --I have just heard the "Romeo and Juliet" of HectorBerlioz. The work is entitled "Dramatic symphony for orchestra, withchoruses. " The execution was extremely good. The work is interesting, careful, curious, and suggestive, but it leaves one cold. When I come toreason out my impression I explain it in this way. To subordinate man tothings--to annex the human voice, as a mere supplement, to theorchestra--is false in idea. To make simple narrative out of dramaticmaterial, is a derogation, a piece of levity. A Romeo and Juliet inwhich there is no Romeo and no Juliet is an absurdity. To substitute theinferior, the obscure, the vague, for the higher and the clear, is achallenge to common sense. It is a violation of that natural hierarchyof things which is never violated with impunity. The musician has puttogether a series of symphonic pictures, without any inner connection, astring of riddles, to which a prose text alone supplies meaning andunity. The only intelligible voice which is allowed to appear in thework is that of Friar Laurence: his sermon could not be expressed inchords, and is therefore plainly sung. But the moral of a play is notthe play, and the play itself has been elbowed out by recitative. 

The musician of the present day, not being able to give us what isbeautiful, torments himself to give us what is new. False originality, false grandeur, false genius! This labored art is wholly antipathetic tome. Science simulating genius is but a form of quackery. 

Berlioz as a critic is cleverness itself; as a musician he is learned, inventive, and ingenious, but he is trying to achieve the greater whenhe cannot compass the lesser. 

Thirty years ago, at Berlin, the same impression was left upon me by his"Infancy of Christ, " which I heard him conduct himself. His art seems tome neither fruitful nor wholesome; there is no true and solid beauty init. 

I ought to say, however, that the audience, which was a fairly full one, seemed very well satisfied. 

July 17, 1877. --Yesterday I went through my La Fontaine, and noticed theomissions in him. He has neither butterfly nor rose. He utilizes neitherthe crane, nor the quail, nor the dromedary, nor the lizard. There isnot a single echo of chivalry in him. For him, the history of Francedates from Louis XIV. His geography only ranges, in reality, over a fewsquare miles, and touches neither the Rhine nor the Loire, neither themountains nor the sea. He never invents his subjects, but indolentlytakes them ready-made from elsewhere. But with all this what an adorablewriter, what a painter, what an observer, what a humorist, what astory-teller! I am never tired of reading him, though I know half hisfables by heart. In the matter of vocabulary, turns, tones, phrases, idioms, his style is perhaps the richest of the great period, for itcombines, in the most skillful way, archaism and classic finish, theGallic and the French elements. Variety, satire, _finesse_, feeling, movement, terseness, suavity, grace, gayety, at times even nobleness, gravity, grandeur--everything--is to be found in him. And then thehappiness of the epithets, the piquancy of the sayings, the felicity ofhis rapid sketches and unforeseen audacities, and the unforgettablesharpness of phrase! His defects are eclipsed by his immense variety ofdifferent aptitudes. 

One has only to compare his "Woodcutter and Death" with that of Boileauin order to estimate the enormous difference between the artist and thecritic who found fault with his work. La Fontaine gives you a picture ofthe poor peasant under the monarchy; Boileau shows you nothing but a manperspiring under a heavy load. The first is a historical witness, thesecond a mere academic rhymer. From La Fontaine it is possible toreconstruct the whole society of his epoch, and the old Champenois withhis beasts remains the only Homer France has ever possessed. He has asmany portraits of men and women as La Bruyère, and Molière is not morehumorous. 

His weak side is his epicureanism, with its tinge of grossness. This, nodoubt, was what made Lamartine dislike him. The religious note is absentfrom his lyre; there is nothing in him which shows any contact withChristianity, any knowledge of the sublimer tragedies of the soul. Kindnature is his goddess, Horace his prophet, and Montaigne his gospel. Inother words, his horizon is that of the Renaissance. This pagan islandin the full Catholic stream is very curious; the paganism of it is soperfectly sincere and naïve. But indeed, Reblais, Molière, SaintEvremond, are much more pagan than Voltaire. It is as though, for thegenuine Frenchman, Christianity was a mere pose or costume--somethingwhich has nothing to do with the heart, with the real man, or his deepernature. This division of things is common in Italy too. It is thenatural effect of political religions: the priest becomes separated fromthe layman, the believer from the man, worship from sincerity. 

July 18, 1877. --I have just come across a character in a novel with apassion for synonyms, and I said to myself: Take care--that is yourweakness too. In your search for close and delicate expression, you runthrough the whole gamut of synonyms, and your pen works too often inseries of three. Beware! Avoid mannerisms and tricks; they are signs ofweakness. Subject and occasion only must govern the use of words. Procedure by single epithet gives strength; the doubling of a word givesclearness, because it supplies the two extremities of the series; thetrebling of it gives completeness by suggesting at once the beginning, middle, and end of the idea; while a quadruple phrase may enrich byforce of enumeration. 

Indecision being my principal defect, I am fond of a plurality ofphrases which are but so many successive approximations and corrections. I am especially fond of them in this journal, where I write as it comes. In serious composition _two_ is, on the whole, my category. But it wouldbe well to practice one's self in the use of the single word--of theshaft delivered promptly and once for all. I should have indeed to curemyself of hesitation first. I see too many ways of saying things; a moredecided mind hits on the right way at once. Singleness of phrase impliescourage, self-confidence, clear-sightedness. To attain it there must heno doubting, and I am always doubting. And yet--

 "Quiconque est loup agisse en loup; C'est le plus certain de beaucoup. "

I wonder whether I should gain anything by the attempt to assume acharacter which is not mine. My wavering manner, born of doubt andscruple, has at least the advantage of rendering all the differentshades of my thought, and of being sincere. If it were to become terse, affirmative, resolute, would it not be a mere imitation?

A private journal, which is but a vehicle for meditation and reverie, beats about the bush as it pleases without being hound to make for anydefinite end. Conversation with self is a gradual process ofthought-clearing. Hence all these synonyms, these waverings, theserepetitions and returns upon one's self. Affirmation maybe brief;inquiry takes time; and the line which thought follows is necessarily anirregular one. 

I am conscious indeed that at bottom there is but one right expression;[Footnote: Compare La Bruyère:

"Entre toutes les differentes expressions qui peuvent rendre une seulede nos pensées il n'y en a qu'une qui soit la bonne; on ne la rencontrepas toujours en parlant ou en écrivant: il est vray néanmoins qu'elleexiste, que tout ce qui ne l'est point est foible, et ne satisfait pointun homme d'esprit qui veut se faire entendre. "] but in order to find itI wish to make my choice among all that are like it; and my mindinstinctively goes through a series of verbal modulations in search ofthat shade which may most accurately render the idea. Or sometimes it isthe idea itself which has to be turned over and over, that I may know itand apprehend it better. I think, pen in hand; it is like thedisentanglement, the winding-off of a skein. Evidently the correspondingform of style cannot have the qualities which belong to thought which isalready sure of itself, and only seeks to communicate itself to others. The function of the private journal is one of observation, experiment, analysis, contemplation; that of the essay or article is to provokereflection; that of the book is to demonstrate. 

July 21, 1877. --A superb night--a starry sky--Jupiter and Phoebe holdingconverse before my windows. Grandiose effects of light and shade overthe courtyard. A sonata rose from the black gulf of shadow like arepentant prayer wafted from purgatory. The picturesque was lost inpoetry, and admiration in feeling. 

July 30, 1877. -- . . . Makes a very true remark about Renan, _a propos_ ofthe volume of "Les Evangiles. " He brings out the contradiction betweenthe literary taste of the artist, which is delicate, individual, andtrue, and the opinions of the critic, which are borrowed, old-fashionedand wavering. This hesitancy of choice between the beautiful and thetrue, between poetry and prose, between art and learning, is, in fact, characteristic. Renan has a keen love for science, but he has a stillkeener love for good writing, and, if necessary, he will sacrifice theexact phrase to the beautiful phrase. Science is his material ratherthan his object; his object is style. A fine passage is ten times moreprecious in his eyes than the discovery of a fact or the rectificationof a date. And on this point I am very much with him, for a beautifulpiece of writing is beautiful by virtue of a kind of truth which istruer than any mere record of authentic facts. Rousseau also thought thesame. A chronicler may be able to correct Tacitus, but Tacitus survivesall the chroniclers. I know well that the aesthetic temptation is theFrench temptation; I have often bewailed it, and yet, if I desiredanything, it would be to be a writer, a great writer. Te leave amonument behind, _aere perennius_, an imperishable work which might stirthe thoughts, the feelings, the dreams of men, generation aftergeneration--this is the only glory which I could wish for, if I were notweaned even from this wish also. A book would be my ambition, ifambition were not vanity and vanity of vanities. 

August 11, 1877. --The growing triumph of Darwinism--that is to say ofmaterialism, or of force--threatens the conception of justice. Butjustice will have its turn. The higher human law cannot be the offspringof animality. Justice is the right to the maximum of individualindependence compatible with the same liberty for others; in otherwords, it is respect for man, for the immature, the small, the feeble;it is the guarantee of those human collectivities, associations, states, nationalities--those voluntary or involuntary unions--the object ofwhich is to increase the sum of happiness, and to satisfy the aspirationof the individual. That some should make use of others for their ownpurposes is an injury to justice. The right of the stronger is not aright, but a simple fact, which obtains only so long as there is neitherprotest nor resistance. It is like cold, darkness, weight, whichtyrannize over man until he has invented artificial warmth, artificiallight, and machinery. Human industry is throughout an emancipation frombrute nature, and the advances made by justice are in the same way aseries of rebuffs inflicted upon the tyranny of the stronger. As themedical art consists in the conquest of disease, so goodness consists inthe conquest of the blind ferocities and untamed appetites of the humananimal. I see the same law throughout--increasing emancipation of theindividual, a continuous ascent of being toward life, happiness, justice, and wisdom. Greed and gluttony are the starting-point, intelligence and generosity the goal. 

August 21, 1877. (_Baths of Ems_). --In the _salon_ there has been aperformance in chorus of "Lorelei" and other popular airs. What in ourcountry is only done for worship is done also in Germany for poetry andmusic. Voices blend together; art shares the privilege of religion. Itis a trait which is neither French nor English, nor, I think, Italian. The spirit of artistic devotion, of impersonal combination, of common, harmonious, disinterested action, is specially German; it makes awelcome balance to certain clumsy and prosaic elements in the race. 

_Later_. --Perhaps the craving for independence of thought--the tendencyto go back to first principles--is really proper to the Germanic mindonly. The Slavs and the Latins are governed rather by the collectivewisdom of the community, by tradition, usage, prejudice, fashion; or, ifthey break through these, they are like slaves in revolt, without anyreal living apprehension of the law inherent in things--the true law, which is neither written, nor arbitrary, nor imposed. The German wishesto get at nature; the Frenchman, the Spaniard, the Russian, stop atconventions. The root of the problem is in the question of the relationsbetween God and the world. Immanence or transcendence--that, step bystep, decides the meaning of everything else. If the mind is radicallyexternal to things, it is not called upon to conform to them. If themind is destitute of native truth, it must get its truth from outside, by revelations. And so you get thought despising nature, and in bondageto the church--so you have the Latin world!

November 6, 1877. (_Geneva_). --We talk of love many years before we knowanything about it, and we think we know it because we talk of it, orbecause we repeat what other people say of it, or what books tell usabout it. So that there are ignorances of different degrees, and degreesof knowledge which are quite deceptive. One of the worst plagues ofsociety is this thoughtless inexhaustible verbosity, this careless useof words, this pretense of knowing a thing because we talk aboutit--these counterfeits of belief, thought, love, or earnestness, whichall the while are mere babble. The worst of it is, that as self-love isbehind the babble, these ignorances of society are in generalferociously affirmative; chatter mistakes itself for opinion, prejudiceposes as principle. Parrots behave as though they were thinking beings;imitations give themselves out as originals; and politeness demands theacceptance of the convention. It is very wearisome. 

Language is the vehicle of this confusion, the instrument of thisunconscious fraud, and all evils of the kind are enormously increased byuniversal education, by the periodical press, and by all the otherprocesses of vulgarization in use at the present time. Every one dealsin paper money; few have ever handled gold. We live on symbols, and evenon the symbols of symbols; we have never grasped or verified things forourselves; we judge everything, and we know nothing. 

How seldom we meet with originality, individuality, sincerity, nowadays!--with men who are worth the trouble of listening to! The trueself in the majority is lost in the borrowed self. How few are anythingelse than a bundle of inclinations--anything more than animals--whoselanguage and whose gait alone recall to us the highest rank in nature!

The immense majority of our species are candidates for humanity, andnothing more. Virtually we are men; we might be, we ought to be, men;but practically we do not succeed in realizing the type of our race. Semblances and counterfeits of men fill up the habitable earth, peoplethe islands and the continents, the country and the town. If we wish torespect men we must forget what they are, and think of the ideal whichthey carry hidden within them, of the just man and the noble, the man ofintelligence and goodness, inspiration and creative force, who is loyaland true, faithful and trustworthy, of the higher man, in short, andthat divine thing we call a soul. The only men who deserve the name arethe heroes, the geniuses, the saints, the harmonious, puissant, andperfect samples of the race. 

Very few individuals deserve to be listened to, but all deserve that ourcuriosity with regard to them should be a pitiful curiosity--that theinsight we bring to bear on them should be charged with humility. Are wenot all shipwrecked, diseased, condemned to death? Let each work out hisown salvation, and blame no one but himself; so the lot of all will bebettered. Whatever impatience we may feel toward our neighbor, andwhatever indignation our race may rouse in us, we are chained one toanother, and, companions in labor and misfortune, have everything tolose by mutual recrimination and reproach. Let us be silent as to eachother's weakness, helpful, tolerant, nay, tender toward each other! Or, if we cannot feel tenderness, may we at least feel pity! May we put awayfrom us the satire which scourges and the anger which brands; the oiland wine of the good Samaritan are of more avail. We may make the ideala reason for contempt; but it is more beautiful to make it a reason fortenderness. 

December 9, 1877. --The modern haunters of Parnassus [Footnote: Amiel'sexpression is _Les Parnassieus_, an old name revived, which nowadaysdescribes the younger school of French poetry represented by such namesas Théophile Gautier, Leconte de Lisle, Théodore de Bauville, andBaudelaire. The modern use of the word dates from the publication of "LaParnasse Contemporain" (Lemerre, 1866). ] carve urns of agate and ofonyx, but inside the urns what is there?--ashes. Their work lacksfeeling, seriousness, sincerity, and pathos--in a word, soul and morallife. I cannot bring myself to sympathize with such a way ofunderstanding poetry. The talent shown is astonishing, but stuff andmatter are wanting. It is an effort of the imagination to stand alone--asubstitute for everything else. We find metaphors, rhymes, music, color, but not man, not humanity. Poetry of this factitious kind may beguileone at twenty, but what can one make of it at fifty? It reminds me ofPergamos, of Alexandria, of all the epochs of decadence when beauty ofform hid poverty of thought and exhaustion of feeling. I strongly sharethe repugnance which this poetical school arouses in simple people. Itis as though it only cared to please the world-worn, the over-subtle, the corrupted, while it ignores all normal healthy life, virtuoushabits, pure affections, steady labor, honesty, and duty. It is anaffectation, and because it is an affectation the school is struck withsterility. The reader desires in the poet something better than ajuggler in rhyme, or a conjurer in verse; he looks to find in him apainter of life, a being who thinks, loves, and has a conscience, whofeels passion and repentance. 

 * * * * *

Composition is a process of combination, in which thought puts togethercomplementary truths, and talent fuses into harmony the most contraryqualities of style. 

So that there is no composition without effort, without pain even, as inall bringing forth. The reward is the giving birth to somethingliving--something, that is to say, which, by a kind of magic, makes aliving unity out of such opposed attributes as orderliness andspontaneity, thought and imagination, solidity and charm. 

The true critic strives for a clear vision of things as they are--forjustice and fairness; his effort is to get free from himself, so that hemay in no way disfigure that which he wishes to understand or reproduce. His superiority to the common herd lies in this effort, even when itssuccess is only partial. He distrusts his own senses, he sifts his ownimpressions, by returning upon them from different sides and atdifferent times, by comparing, moderating, shading, distinguishing, andso endeavoring to approach more and more nearly to the formula whichrepresents the maximum of truth. 

 * * * * *

Is it not the sad natures who are most tolerant of gayety? They knowthat gayety means impulse and vigor, that generally speaking it isdisguised kindliness, and that if it were a mere affair of temperamentand mood, still it is a blessing. 

 * * * * *

The art which is grand and yet simple is that which presupposes thegreatest elevation both in artist and in public. 

How much folly is compatible with ultimate wisdom and prudence? It isdifficult to say. The cleverest folk are those who discover soonest howto utilize their neighbor's experience, and so get rid in good time oftheir natural presumption. 

We must try to grasp the spirit of things, to see correctly, to speak tothe point, to give practicable advice, to act on the spot, to arrive atthe proper moment, to stop in time. Tact, measure, occasion--all thesedeserve our cultivation and respect. 

 * * * * *

April 22, 1878. --Letter from my cousin Julia. These kind old relationsfind it very difficult to understand a man's life, especially astudent's life. The hermits of reverie are scared by the busy world, andfeel themselves out of place in action. But after all, we do not changeat seventy, and a good, pious old lady, half-blind and living in avillage, can no longer extend her point of view, nor form any idea ofexistences which have no relation with her own. 

What is the link by which these souls, shut in and encompassed as theyare by the details of daily life, lay hold on the ideal? The link ofreligious aspiration. Faith is the plank which saves them. They know themeaning of the higher life; their soul is athirst for heaven. Theiropinions are defective, but their moral experience is great; theirintellect is full of darkness but their souls is full of light. Wescarcely know how to talk to them about the things of earth, but theyare ripe and mature in the things of the heart. If they cannotunderstand us, it is for us to make advances to them, to speak theirlanguage, to enter into their range of ideas, their modes of feeling. Wemust approach them on their noble side, and, that we may show them themore respect, induce them to open to us the casket of their mosttreasured thoughts. There is always some grain of gold at the bottom ofevery honorable old age. Let it be our business to give it anopportunity of showing itself to affectionate eyes. 

May 10, 1878. --I have just come back from a solitary walk. I heardnightingales, saw white lilac and orchard trees in bloom. My heart isfull of impressions showered upon it by the chaffinches, the goldenorioles, the grasshoppers, the hawthorns, and the primroses. A dull, gray, fleecy sky brooded with a certain melancholy over the nuptialsplendors of vegetation. Many painful memories stirred afresh in me; atPré l'Evèque, at Jargonnant, at Villereuse, a score of phantoms--phantoms of youth--rose with sad eyes to greet me. The wallshad changed, and roads which were once shady and dreamy I found nowwaste and treeless. But at the first trills of the nightingale a floodof tender feeling filled my heart. I felt myself soothed, grateful, melted; a mood of serenity and contemplation took possession of me. Acertain little path, a very kingdom of green, with fountain, thickets, gentle ups and downs, and an abundance of singing-birds, delighted me, and did me inexpressible good. Its peaceful remoteness brought back thebloom of feeling. I had need of it. 

May 19, 1878. --Criticism is above all a gift, an intuition, a matter oftact and _flair_; it cannot be taught or demonstrated--it is an art. Critical genius means an aptitude for discerning truth under appearancesor in disguises which conceal it; for discovering it in spite of theerrors of testimony, the frauds of tradition, the dust of time, the lossor alteration of texts. It is the sagacity of the hunter whom nothingdeceives for long, and whom no ruse can throw off the trail. It is thetalent of the _Juge d'Instruction_, who knows how to interrogatecircumstances, and to extract an unknown secret from a thousandfalsehoods. The true critic can understand everything, but he will bethe dupe of nothing, and to no convention will he sacrifice his duty, which is to find out and proclaim truth. Competent learning, generalcultivation, absolute probity, accuracy of general view, human sympathyand technical capacity--how many things are necessary to the critic, without reckoning grace, delicacy, _savoir vivre_, and the gift of happyphrase-making!

July 26, 1878. --Every morning I wake up with the same sense of vainstruggle against a mountain tide which is about to overwhelm me. I shalldie by suffocation, and the suffocation has begun; the progress it hasalready made stimulates it to go on. 

How can one make any plans when every day brings with it some freshmisery? I cannot even decide on a line of action in a situation so fullof confusion and uncertainty in which I look forward to the worst, whileyet all is doubtful. Have I still a few years before me or only a fewmonths? Will death be slow or will it come upon me as a suddencatastrophe? How am I to bear the days as they come? how am I to fillthem? How am I to die with calmness and dignity? I know not. EverythingI do for the first time I do badly; but here everything is new; therecan be no help from experience; the end must be a chance! How mortifyingfor one who has set so great a price upon independence--to depend upon athousand unforeseen contingencies! He knows not how he will act or whathe will become; he would fain speak of these things with a friend ofgood sense and good counsel--but who? He dares not alarm the affectionswhich are most his own, and he is almost sure that any others would tryto distract his attention, and would refuse to see the position as itis. 

And while I wait (wait for what?--certainty?) the weeks flow by likewater, and strength wastes away like a smoking candle. . . . 

Is one free to let one's self drift into death without resistance? Isself-preservation a duty? Do we owe it to those who love us to prolongthis desperate struggle to its utmost limit? I think so, but it is onefetter the more. For we must then feign a hope which we do not feel, andhide the absolute discouragement of which the heart is really full. Well, why not? Those who succumb are bound in generosity not to cool theardor of those who are still battling, still enjoying. 

Two parallel roads lead to the same result; meditation paralyzes me, physiology condemns me. My soul is dying, my body is dying. In everydirection the end is closing upon me. My own melancholy anticipates andendorses the medical judgment which says, "Your journey is done. " Thetwo verdicts point to the same result--that I have no longer a future. And yet there is a side of me which says, "Absurd!" which isincredulous, and inclined to regard it all as a bad dream. In vain thereason asserts it; the mind's inward assent is still refused. Anothercontradiction!

I have not the strength to hope, and I have not the strength to submit. I believe no longer, and I believe still. I feel that I am dying, andyet I cannot realize that I am dying. Is it madness already? No, it ishuman nature taken in the act; it is life itself which is acontradiction, for life means an incessant death and a dailyresurrection; it affirms and it denies, it destroys and constructs, itgathers and scatters, it humbles and exalts at the same time. To live isto die partially--to feel one's self in the heart of a whirlwind ofopposing forces--to be an enigma. 

If the invisible type molded by these two contradictory currents--ifthis form which presides over all my changes of being--has itselfgeneral and original value, what does it matter whether it carries onthe game a few months or years longer, or not? It has done what it hadto do, it has represented a certain unique combination, one particularexpression of the race. These types are shadows--_manes_. Century aftercentury employs itself in fashioning them. Glory--fame--is the proofthat one type has seemed to the other types newer, rarer, and morebeautiful than the rest. The common types are souls too, only they haveno interest except for the Creator, and for a small number ofindividuals. 

To feel one's own fragility is well, but to be indifferent to it isbetter. To take the measure of one's own misery is profitable, but tounderstand its _raison d'être_ is still more profitable. To mourn forone's self is a last sign of vanity; we ought only to regret that whichhas real values, and to regret one's self, is to furnish involuntaryevidence that one had attached importance to one's self. At the sametime it is a proof of ignorance of our true worth and function. It isnot necessary to live, but it is necessary to preserve one's typeunharmed, to remain faithful to one's idea, to protect one's monadagainst alteration and degradation. 

November 7, 1878. --To-day we have been talking of realism in painting, and, in connection with it, of that poetical and artistic illusion whichdoes not aim at being confounded with reality itself. Realism wishes toentrap sensation; the object of true art is only to charm theimagination, not to deceive the eye. When we see a good portrait we say, "It is alive!"--in other words, our imagination lends it life. On theother hand, a wax figure produces a sort of terror in us; its frozenlife-likeness makes a deathlike impression on us, and we say, "It is aghost!" In the one case we see what is lacking, and demand it; in theother we see what is given us, and we give on our side. Art, then, addresses itself to the imagination; everything that appeals tosensation only is below art, almost outside art. A work of art ought toset the poetical faculty in us to work, it ought to stir us to imagine, to complete our perception of a thing. And we can only do this when theartist leads the way. Mere copyist's painting, realistic reproduction, pure imitation, leave us cold because their author is a machine, amirror, an iodized plate, and not a soul. 

Art lives by appearances, but these appearances are spiritual visions, fixed dreams. Poetry represents to us nature become con-substantial withthe soul, because in it nature is only a reminiscence touched withemotion, an image vibrating with our own life, a form without weight--inshort, a mode of the soul. The poetry which is most real and objectiveis the expression of a soul which throws itself into things, and forgetsitself in their presence more readily than others; but still, it is theexpression of the soul, and hence what we call style. Style may be onlycollective, hieratic, national, so long as the artist is still theinterpreter of the community; it tends to become personal in proportionas society makes room for individuality and favors its expansion. 

 * * * * *

There is a way of killing truth by truths. Under the pretense that wewant to study it more in detail we pulverize the statue--it is anabsurdity of which our pedantry is constantly guilty. Those who can onlysee the fragments of a thing are to me _esprits faux_, just as much asthose who disfigure the fragments. The good critic ought to be master ofthe three capacities, the three modes of seeing men and things--heshould be able simultaneously to see them as they are, as they might be, and as they ought to be. 

 * * * * *

Modern culture is a delicate electuary made up of varied savors andsubtle colors, which can be more easily felt than measured or defined. Its very superiority consists in the complexity, the association ofcontraries, the skillful combination it implies. The man of to-day, fashioned by the historical and geographical influences of twentycountries and of thirty centuries, trained and modified by all thesciences and all the arts, the supple recipient of all literatures, isan entirely new product. He finds affinities, relationships, analogieseverywhere, but at the same time he condenses and sums up what iselsewhere scattered. He is like the smile of La Gioconda, which seems toreveal a soul to the spectator only to leave him the more certainlyunder a final impression of mystery, so many different things areexpressed in it at once. 

 * * * * *

To understand things we must have been once in them and then have comeout of them; so that first there must be captivity and then deliverance, illusion followed by disillusion, enthusiasm by disappointment. He whois still under the spell, and he who has never felt the spell, areequally incompetent. We only know well what we have first believed, thenjudged. To understand we must be free, yet not have been always free. The same truth holds, whether it is a question of love, of art, ofreligion, or of patriotism. Sympathy is a first condition of criticism;reason and justice presuppose, at their origin, emotion. 

 * * * * *

What is an intelligent man? A man who enters with ease and completenessinto the spirit of things and the intention of persons, and who arrivesat an end by the shortest route. Lucidity and suppleness of thought, critical delicacy and inventive resource, these are his attributes. 

 * * * * *

Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs andgerminates no more. 

 * * * * *

January 3, 1879. --Letter from----. This kind friend of mine has nopity. . . . I have been trying to quiet his over-delicatesusceptibilities. . . . It is difficult to write perfectly easy letterswhen one finds them studied with a magnifying glass, and treated likemonumental inscriptions, in which each character has been deliberatelyengraved with a view to an eternity of life. Such disproportion betweenthe word and its commentary, between the playfulness of the writer andthe analytical temper of the reader, is not favorable to ease of style. One dares not be one's natural self with these serious folk who attachimportance to everything; it is difficult to write open-heartedly if onemust weigh every phrase and every word. 

_Esprit_ means taking things in the sense which they are meant to have, entering into the tone of other people, being able to place one's selfon the required level; _esprit_ is that just and accurate sense whichdivines, appreciates, and weighs quickly, lightly, and well. The mindmust have its play, the Muse is winged--the Greeks knew it, andSocrates. 

January 13, 1879. --It is impossible for me to remember what letters Iwrote yesterday. A single night digs a gulf between the self ofyesterday and the self of to-day. My life is without unity of action, because my actions themselves are escaping from the control of memory. My mental power, occupied in gaining possession of itself under the formof consciousness, seems to be letting go its hold on all that generallypeoples the understanding, as the glacier throws off the stones andfragments fallen into its crevasses, that it may remain pure crystal. The philosophic mind is both to overweight itself with too many materialfacts or trivial memories. Thought clings only to thought--that is tosay, to itself, to the psychological process. The mind's only ambitionis for an enriched experience. It finds its pleasure in studying theplay of its own facilities, and the study passes easily into an aptitudeand habit. Reflection becomes nothing more than an apparatus for theregistration of the impressions, emotions, and ideas which pass acrossthe mind. The whole moulting process is carried on so energetically thatthe mind is not only unclothed, but stripped of itself, and, so tospeak, _de-substantiated_. The wheel turns so quickly that it meltsaround the mathematical axis, which alone remains cold because it isimpalpable, and has no thickness. All this is natural enough, but verydangerous. 

So long as one is numbered among the living--so long, that is to say, asone is still plunged in the world of men, a sharer of their interests, conflicts, vanities, passions, and duties, one is bound to deny one'sself this subtle state of consciousness; one must consent to be aseparate individual, having one's special name, position, age, andsphere of activity. In spite of all the temptations of impersonality, one must resume the position of a being imprisoned within certain limitsof time and space, an individual with special surroundings, friends, enemies, profession, country, bound to house and feed himself, to makeup his accounts and look after his affairs; in short, one must behavelike all the world. There are days when all these details seem to me adream--when I wonder at the desk under my hand, at my body itself--whenI ask myself if there is a street before my house, and if all thisgeographical and topographical phantasmagoria is indeed real. Time andspace become then mere specks; I become a sharer in a purely spiritualexistence; I see myself _sub specie oeternitatis_. 

Is not mind simply that which enables us to merge finite reality in theinfinite possibility around it? Or, to put it differently, is not mindthe universal virtuality, the universe latent? If so, its zero would bethe germ of the infinite, which is expressed mathematically by thedouble zero (00). 

Deduction: that the mind may experience the infinite in itself; that inthe human individual there arises sometimes the divine spark whichreveals to him the existence of the original, fundamental, principalBeing, within which all is contained like a series within its generatingformula. The universe is but a radiation of mind; and the radiations ofthe Divine mind are for us more than appearances; they have a realityparallel to our own. The radiations of our mind are imperfectreflections from the great show of fireworks set in motion by Brahma, and great art is great only because of its conformities with the Divineorder--with that which is. 

Ideal conceptions are the mind's anticipation of such an order. The mindis capable of them because it is mind, and, as such, perceives theEternal. The real, on the contrary, is fragmentary and passing. Lawalone is eternal. The ideal is then the imperishable hope of somethingbetter--the mind's involuntary protest against the present, the leavenof the future working in it. It is the supernatural in us, or rather thesuper-animal, and the ground of human progress. He who has no idealcontents himself with what is; he has no quarrel with facts, which forhim are identical with the just, the good, and the beautiful. 

But why is the divine radiation imperfect? Because it is still going on. Our planet, for example, is in the mid-course of its experience. Itsflora and fauna are still changing. The evolution of humanity is nearerits origin than its close. The complete spiritualization of the animalelement in nature seems to be singularly difficult, and it is the taskof our species. Its performance is hindered by error, evil, selfishness, and death, without counting telluric catastrophes. The edifice of acommon happiness, a common science of morality and justice, is sketched, but only sketched. A thousand retarding and perturbing causes hinderthis giant's task, in which nations, races, and continents take part. Atthe present moment humanity is not yet constituted as a physical unity, and its general education is not yet begun. All our attempts at order asyet have been local crystallizations. Now, indeed, the differentpossibilities are beginning to combine (union of posts and telegraphs, universal exhibitions, voyages round the globes, internationalcongresses, etc. ). Science and common interest are binding together thegreat fractions of humanity, which religion and language have keptapart. A year in which there has been talk of a network of Africanrailways, running from the coast to the center and bringing theAtlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean into communicationwith each other--such a year is enough to mark a new epoch. Thefantastic has become the conceivable, the possible tends to become thereal; the earth becomes the garden of man. Man's chief problem is how tomake the cohabitation of the individuals of his species possible; how, that is to say, to secure for each successive epoch the law, the order, the equilibrium which befits it. Division of labor allows him to explorein every direction at once; industry, science, art, law, education, morals, religion, politics, and economical relations--all are in processof birth. 

Thus everything may be brought back to zero by the mind, but it is afruitful zero--a zero which contains the universe and, in particular, humanity. The mind has no more difficulty in tracking the real withinthe innumerable than in apprehending infinite possibility. 00 may issuefrom 0, or may return to it. 

January 19, 1879. --Charity--goodness--places a voluntary curb onacuteness of perception; it screens and softens the rays of a too vividinsight; it refuses to see too clearly the ugliness and misery of thegreat intellectual hospital around it. True goodness is loth torecognize any privilege in itself; it prefers to be humble andcharitable; it tries not to see what stares it in the face--that is tosay, the imperfections, infirmities, and errors of humankind; its pityputs on airs of approval and encouragement. It triumphs over its ownrepulsions that it may help and raise. 

It has often been remarked that Vinet praised weak things. If so, it wasnot from any failure in his own critical sense; it was from charity. "Quench not the smoking flax, "--to which I add, "Never give unnecessarypain. " The cricket is not the nightingale; why tell him so? Throwyourself into the mind of the cricket--the process is newer and moreingenious; and it is what charity commands. 

Intellect is aristocratic, charity is democratic. In a democracy thegeneral equality of pretensions, combined with the inequality of merits, creates considerable practical difficulty; some get out of it by makingtheir prudence a muzzle on their frankness; others, by using kindness asa corrective of perspicacity. On the whole, kindness is safer thanreserve; it inflicts no wound, and kills nothing. 

Charity is generous; it runs a risk willingly, and in spite of a hundredsuccessive experiences, it thinks no evil at the hundred-and-first. Wecannot be at the same time kind and wary, nor can we serve twomasters--love and selfishness. We must be knowingly rash, that we maynot be like the clever ones of the world, who never forget their owninterests. We must be able to submit to being deceived; it is thesacrifice which interest and self-love owe to conscience. The claims ofthe soul must be satisfied first if we are to be the children of God. 

Was it not Bossuet who said, "It is only the great souls who know allthe grandeur there is in charity?"

January 21, 1879. --At first religion holds the place of science andphilosophy; afterward she has to learn to confine herself to her owndomain--which is in the inmost depths of conscience, in the secretrecesses of the soul, where life communes with the Divine will and theuniversal order. Piety is the daily renewing of the ideal, the steadyingof our inner being, agitated, troubled, and embittered by the commonaccidents of existence. Prayer is the spiritual balm, the preciouscordial which restores to us peace and courage. It reminds us of pardonand of duty. It says to us, "Thou art loved--love; thou hastreceived--give; thou must die--labor while thou canst; overcome anger bykindness; overcome evil with good. What does the blindness of opinionmatter, or misunderstanding, or ingratitude? Thou art neither bound tofollow the common example nor to succeed. _Fais ce que dois, advienneque pourra_. Thou hast a witness in thy conscience; and thy conscienceis God speaking to thee!"

March 3, 1879. --The sensible politician is governed by considerations ofsocial utility, the public good, the greatest attainable good; thepolitical windbag starts from the idea of the rights of theindividual--abstract rights, of which the extent is affirmed, notdemonstrated, for the political right of the individual is preciselywhat is in question. The revolutionary school always forgets that rightapart from duty is a compass with one leg. The notion of right inflatesthe individual fills him with thoughts of self and of what others owehim, while it ignores the other side of the question, and extinguisheshis capacity for devoting himself to a common cause. The state becomes ashop with self-interest for a principle--or rather an arena, in whichevery combatant fights for his own hand only. In either case self is themotive power. 

Church and state ought to provide two opposite careers for theindividual; in the state he should be called on to give proof ofmerit--that is to say, he should earn his rights by services rendered;in the church his task should be to do good while suppressing his ownmerits, by a voluntary act of humility. 

Extreme individualism dissipates the moral substance of the individual. It leads him to subordinate everything to himself, and to think theworld; society, the state, made for him. I am chilled by its lack ofgratitude, of the spirit of deference, of the instinct of solidarity. Itis an ideal without beauty and without grandeur. 

But, as a consolation, the modern zeal for equality makes a counterpoisefor Darwinism, just as one wolf holds another wolf in check. Neither, indeed, acknowledges the claim of duty. The fanatic for equality affirmshis right not to be eaten by his neighbor; the Darwinian states the factthat the big devour the little, and adds--so much the better. Neitherthe one nor the other has a word to say of love, of eternity, ofkindness, of piety, of voluntary submission, of self-surrender. 

All forces and all principles are brought into action at once in thisworld. The result is, on the whole, good. But the struggle itself ishateful because it dislocates truth and shows us nothing but errorpitted against error, party against party; that is to say, mere halvesand fragments of being--monsters against monsters. A nature in love withbeauty cannot reconcile itself to the sight; it longs for harmony, forsomething else than perpetual dissonance. The common condition of humansociety must indeed be accepted; tumult, hatred, fraud, crime, theferocity of self-interest, the tenacity of prejudice, are perennial; butthe philosopher sighs over it; his heart is not in it; his ambition isto see human history from a height; his ear is set to catch the music ofthe eternal spheres. 

March 15, 1879. --I have been turning over "Les histories de mon Parrain"by Stahl, and a few chapters of "Nos Fils et nos Filles" by Legouvé. These writers press wit, grace, gayety, and charm into the service ofgoodness; their desire is to show that virtue is not so dull nor commonsense so tiresome as people believe. They are persuasive moralists, captivating story-tellers; they rouse the appetite for good. This prettymanner of theirs, however, has its dangers. A moral wrapped up in sugargoes down certainly, but it may be feared that it only goes down becauseof its sugar. The Sybarites of to-day will tolerate a sermon which isdelicate enough to flatter their literary sensuality; but it is theirtaste which is charmed, not their conscience which is awakened; theirprinciple of conduct escapes untouched. 

Amusement, instruction, morals, are distinct _genres_. They may no doubtbe mingled and combined, but if we wish to obtain direct and simpleeffects, we shall do best to keep them apart. The well-disposed child, besides, does not like mixtures which have something of artifice anddeception in them. Duty claims obedience; study requires application;for amusement, nothing is wanted but good temper. To convert obedienceand application into means of amusement is to weaken the will and theintelligence. These efforts to make virtue the fashion are praiseworthyenough, but if they do honor to the writers, on the other hand theyprove the moral anaemia of society. When the digestion is unspoiled, somuch persuading is not necessary to give it a taste for bread. 

May 22, 1879. (Ascension Day). --Wonderful and delicious weather. Soft, caressing sunlight--the air a limpid blue--twitterings of birds; eventhe distant voices of the city have something young and springlike inthem. It is indeed a new birth. The ascension of the Saviour of men issymbolized by this expansion, this heavenward yearning of nature. . . . Ifeel myself born again; all the windows of the soul are clear. Forms, lines, tints, reflections, sounds, contrasts, and harmonies, the generalplay and interchange of things--it is all enchanting! The atmosphere issteeped in joy. May is in full beauty. 

In my courtyard the ivy is green again, the chestnut tree is full ofleaf, the Persian lilac beside the little fountain is flushed with red, and just about to flower; through the wide openings to the right andleft of the old College of Calvin I see the Salève above the trees ofSt. Antoine, the Voiron above the hill of Cologny; while the threeflights of steps which, from landing to landing, lead between two highwalls from the Rue Verdaine to the terrace of the Tranchées, recall toone's imagination some old city of the south, a glimpse of Perugia or ofMalaga. 

All the bells are ringing. It is the hour of worship. A historical andreligious impression mingles with the picturesque, the musical, thepoetical impressions of the scene. All the peoples of Christendom--allthe churches scattered over the globe--are celebrating at this momentthe glory of the Crucified. 

And what are those many nations doing who have other prophets, and honorthe Divinity in other ways?--the Jews, the Mussulmans, the Buddhists, the Vishnuists, the Guebers? They have other sacred days, other rites, other solemnities, other beliefs. But all have some religion, some idealend for life--all aim at raising man above the sorrows and smallnessesof the present, and of the individual existence. All have faith insomething greater than themselves, all pray, all bow, all adore; all seebeyond nature, Spirit, and beyond evil, Good. All bear witness to theInvisible. Here we have the link which binds all peoples together. Allmen are equally creatures of sorrow and desire, of hope and fear. Alllong to recover some lost harmony with the great order of things, and tofeel themselves approved and blessed by the Author of the universe. Allknow what suffering is, and yearn for happiness. All know what sin is, and feel the need of pardon. 

Christianity reduced to its original simplicity is the reconciliation ofthe sinner with God, by means of the certainty that God loves in spiteof everything, and that he chastises because he loves. Christianityfurnished a new motive and a new strength for the achievement of moralperfection. It made holiness attractive by giving to it the air offilial gratitude. 

June 28, 1879. --Last lecture of the term and of the academic year. Ifinished the exposition of modern philosophy, and wound up my coursewith the precision I wished. The circle has returned upon itself. Inorder to do this I have divided my hour into minutes, calculated mymaterial, and counted every stitch and point. This, however, is but avery small part of the professorial science, It is a more difficultmatter to divide one's whole material into a given number of lectures, to determine the right proportions of the different parts, and thenormal speed of delivery to be attained. The ordinary lecturer mayachieve a series of complete _séances_--the unity being the _séance_. But a scientific course ought to aim at something more--at a generalunity of subject and of exposition. 

Has this concise, substantial, closely-reasoned kind of work been usefulto my class? I cannot tell. Have my students liked me this year? I amnot sure, but I hope so. It seems to me they have. Only, if I havepleased them, it cannot have been in any case more than a _succèsd'estime_; I have never aimed at any oratorical success. My only objectis to light up for them a complicated and difficult subject. I respectmyself too much, and I respect my class too much, to attempt rhetoric. My rôle is to help them to understand. Scientific lecturing ought to be, above all things, clear, instructive, well put together, and convincing. A lecturer has nothing to do with paying court to the scholars, or withshowing off the master; his business is one of serious study andimpersonal exposition. To yield anything on this point would seem to mea piece of mean utilitarianism. I hate everything that savors ofcajoling and coaxing. All such ways are mere attempts to throw dust inmen's eyes, mere forms of coquetry and stratagem. A professor is thepriest of his subject; he should do the honors of it gravely and withdignity. 

September 9, 1879. --"Non-being is perfect. Being, imperfect:" thishorrible sophism becomes beautiful only in the Platonic system, becausethere Non-being is replaced by the Idea, which is, and which is divine. 

The ideal, the chimerical, the vacant, should not be allowed to claim sogreat a superiority to the Real, which, on its side, has theincomparable advantage of existing. The Ideal kills enjoyment andcontent by disparaging the present and actual. It is the voice whichsays No, like Mephistopheles. No, you have not succeeded; no, your workis not good; no, you are not happy; no, you shall not find rest--allthat you see and all that you do is insufficient, insignificant, overdone, badly done, imperfect. The thirst for the ideal is like thegoad of Siva, which only quickens life to hasten death. Incurablelonging that it is, it lies at the root both of individual suffering andof the progress of the race. It destroys happiness in the name ofdignity. 

The only positive good is order, the return therefore to order and to astate of equilibrium. Thought without action is an evil, and so isaction without thought. The ideal is a poison unless it be fused withthe real, and the real becomes corrupt without the perfume of the ideal. Nothing is good singly without its complement and its contrary. Self-examination is dangerous if it encroaches upon self-devotion;reverie is hurtful when it stupefies the will; gentleness is an evilwhen it lessens strength; contemplation is fatal when it destroyscharacter. "Too much" and "too little" sin equally against wisdom. Excess is one evil, apathy another. Duty may be defined as energytempered by moderation; happiness, as inclination calmed and tempered byself-control. 

Just as life is only lent us for a few years, but is not inherent in us, so the good which is in us is not our own. It is not difficult to thinkof one's self in this detached spirit. It only needs a littleself-knowledge, a little intuitive preception of the ideal, a littlereligion. There is even much sweetness in this conception that we arenothing of ourselves, and that yet it is granted to us to summon eachother to life, joy, poetry and holiness. 

Another application of the law of irony: Zeno, a fatalist by theory, makes his disciples heroes; Epicurus, the upholder of liberty, makes hisdisciples languid and effeminate. The ideal pursued is the decisivepoint; the stoical ideal is duty, whereas the Epicureans make an idealout of an interest. Two tendencies, two systems of morals, two worlds. In the same way the Jansenists, and before them the great reformers, arefor predestination, the Jesuits for free-will--and yet the first foundedliberty, the second slavery of conscience. What matters then is not thetheoretical principle; it is the secret tendency, the aspiration, theaim, which is the essential thing. 

 * * * * *

At every epoch there lies, beyond the domain of what man knows, thedomain of the unknown, in which faith has its dwelling. Faith has noproofs, but only itself, to offer. It is born spontaneously in certaincommanding souls; it spreads its empire among the rest by imitation andcontagion. A great faith is but a great hope which becomes certitude aswe move farther and farther from the founder of it; time and distancestrengthen it, until at last the passion for knowledge seizes upon it, questions, and examines it. Then all which had once made its strengthbecomes its weakness; the impossibility of verification, exaltation offeeling, distance. 

 * * * * *

At what age is our view clearest, our eye truest? Surely in old age, before the infirmities come which weaken or embitter. The ancients wereright. The old man who is at once sympathetic and disinterested, necessarily develops the spirit of contemplation, and it is given to thespirit of contemplation to see things most truly, because it aloneperceives them in their relative and proportional value. 

January 2, 1880. --A sense of rest, of deep quiet even. Silence withinand without. A quietly-burning fire. A sense of comfort. The portrait ofmy mother seems to smile upon me. I am not dazed or stupid, but onlyhappy in this peaceful morning. Whatever may be the charm of emotion, Ido not know whether it equals the sweetness of those hours of silentmeditation, in which we have a glimpse and foretaste of thecontemplative joys of paradise. Desire and fear, sadness and care, aredone away. Existence is reduced to the simplest form, the most etherealmode of being, that is, to pure self-consciousness. It is a state ofharmony, without tension and without disturbance, the dominical state ofthe soul, perhaps the state which awaits it beyond the grave. It ishappiness as the orientals understand it, the happiness of theanchorite, who neither struggles nor wishes any more, but simply adoresand enjoys. It is difficult to find words in which to express this moralsituation, for our languages can only render the particular andlocalized vibrations of life; they are incapable of expressing thismotionless concentration, this divine quietude, this state of theresting ocean, which reflects the sky, and is master of its ownprofundities. Things are then re-absorbed into their principles;memories are swallowed up in memory; the soul is only soul, and is nolonger conscious of itself in its individuality and separateness. It issomething which feels the universal life, a sensible atom of the Divine, of God. It no longer appropriates anything to itself, it is conscious ofno void. Only the Yogis and Soufis perhaps have known in its profunditythis humble and yet voluptuous state, which combines the joys of beingand of non-being, which is neither reflection nor will, which is aboveboth the moral existence and the intellectual existence, which is thereturn to unity, to the pleroma, the vision of Plotinus and ofProclus--Nirvana in its most attractive form. 

It is clear that the western nations in general, and especially theAmericans, know very little of this state of feeling. For them life isdevouring and incessant activity. They are eager for gold, for power, for dominion; their aim is to crush men and to enslave nature. They showan obstinate interest in means, and have not a thought for the end. Theyconfound being with individual being, and the expansion of the self withhappiness--that is to say, they do not live by the soul; they ignore theunchangeable and the eternal; they live at the periphery of their being, because they are unable to penetrate to its axis. They are excited, ardent, positive, because they are superficial. Why so much effort, noise, struggle, and greed?--it is all a mere stunning and deafening ofthe self. When death comes they recognize that it is so--why not thenadmit it sooner? Activity is only beautiful when it is holy--that is tosay, when it is spent in the service of that which passeth not away. 

February 6, 1880. --A feeling article by Edmond Scherer on the death ofBersot, the director of the "Ecole Normale, " a philosopher who bore likea stoic a terrible disease, and who labored to the last without acomplaint. . . . I have just read the four orations delivered over hisgrave. They have brought the tears to my eyes. In the last days of thisbrave man everything was manly, noble, moral, and spiritual. Each of thespeakers paid homage to the character, the devotion, the constancy, andthe intellectual elevation of the dead. "Let us learn from him how tolive and how to die. " The whole funeral ceremony had an antique dignity. 

February 7, 1880. --Hoar-frost and fog, but the general aspect is brightand fairylike, and has nothing in common with the gloom in Paris andLondon, of which the newspapers tell us. 

This silvery landscape has a dreamy grace, a fanciful charm, which areunknown both to the countries of the sun and to those of coal-smoke. Thetrees seem to belong to another creation, in which white has taken theplace of green. As one gazes at these alleys, these clumps, these grovesand arcades, these lace-like garlands and festoons, one feels no wishfor anything else; their beauty is original and self-sufficing, all themore because the ground powdered with snow, the sky dimmed with mist, and the smooth soft distances, combine to form a general scale of color, and a harmonious whole, which charms the eye. No harshness anywhere--allis velvet. My enchantment beguiled me out both before and after dinner. The impression is that of a _fête_, and the subdued tints are, or seemto be, a mere coquetry of winter which has set itself to paint somethingwithout sunshine, and yet to charm the spectator. 

February 9, 1880, --Life rushes on--so much the worse for the weak andthe stragglers. As soon as a man's _tendo Achillis_ gives way he findshimself trampled under foot by the young, the eager, the voracious. "_Vae victis, vae debilibus!_" yells the crowd, which in its turn isstorming the goods of this world. Every man is always in some otherman's way, since, however small he may make himself, he still occupiessome space, and however little he may envy or possess, he is still sureto be envied and his goods coveted by some one else. Meanworld!--peopled by a mean race! To console ourselves we must think ofthe exceptions--of the noble and generous souls. There are such. What dothe rest matter! The traveler crossing the desert feels himselfsurrounded by creatures thirsting for his blood; by day vultures flyabout his head; by night scorpions creep into his tent, jackals prowlaround his camp-fire, mosquitoes prick and torture him with theirgreedy sting; everywhere menace, enmity, ferocity. But far beyond thehorizon, and the barren sands peopled by these hostile hordes, thewayfarer pictures to himself a few loved faces and kind looks, a fewtrue hearts which follow him in their dreams--and smiles. When all issaid, indeed, we defend ourselves a greater or lesser number of years, but we are always conquered and devoured in the end; there is noescaping the grave and its worm. Destruction is our destiny, andoblivion our portion. . . . 

How near is the great gulf! My skiff is thin as a nutshell, or even morefragile still. Let the leak but widen a little and all is over for thenavigator. A mere nothing separates me from idiocy, from madness, fromdeath. The slightest breach is enough to endanger all this frail, ingenious edifice, which calls itself my being and my life. 

Not even the dragonfly symbol is enough to express its frailty; thesoap-bubble is the best poetical translation of all this illusorymagnificence, this fugitive apparition of the tiny self, which is we, and we it. 

. . . A miserable night enough. Awakened three or four times by mybronchitis. Sadness--restlessness. One of these winter nights, possibly, suffocation will come. I realize that it would be well to keep myselfready, to put everything in order. . . . To begin with, let me wipe out allpersonal grievances and bitternesses; forgive all, judge no one; inenmity and ill-will, see only misunderstanding. "As much as lieth inyou, be at peace with all men. " On the bed of death the soul should haveno eyes but for eternal things. All the littlenesses of life disappear. The fight is over. There should be nothing left now but remembrance ofpast blessings--adoration of the ways of God. Our natural instinct leadsus back to Christian humility and pity. "Father, forgive us ourtrespasses, as we forgive them who trespass against us. "

Prepare thyself as though the coming Easter were thy last, for thy dayshenceforward shall be few and evil. 

February 11, 1880. --Victor de Laprade [Footnote: Victor de Laprade, born1812, first a disciple and imitator of Edgar Quinet, then the friend ofLamartine, Lamennais, George Sand, Victor Hugo; admitted to the Academyin 1857 in succession to Alfred de Musset. He wrote "Parfums deMadeleine, " 1839; "Odes et Poèmes, " 1843; "Poèmes Evangéliques, " 1852;"Idylles Héroiques, " 1858, etc. Etc. ] has elevation, grandeur, nobility, and harmony. What is it, then, that he lacks? Ease, and perhaps humor. Hence the monotonous solemnity, the excess of emphasis, theover-intensity, the inspired air, the statue-like gait, which annoy onein him. His is a muse which never lays aside the _cothurnus_, and aroyalty which never puts off its crown, even in sleep. The total absencein him of playfulness, simplicity, familiarity, is a great defect. DeLaprade is to the ancients as the French tragedy is to that ofEuripides, or as the wig of Louis XIV. To the locks of Apollo. Hismajestic airs are wearisome and factitious. If there is not exactlyaffectation in them, there is at least a kind of theatrical andsacerdotal posing, a sort of professional attitudinizing. Truth is notas fine as this, but it is more living, more pathetic, more varied. Marble images are cold. Was it not Musset who said, "If De Laprade is apoet, then I am not one?"

February 27, 1880. --I have finished translating twelve or fourteenlittle poems by Petöfi. They have a strange kind of savor. There issomething of the Steppe, of the East, of Mazeppa, of madness, in thesesongs, which seem to go to the beat of a riding-whip. What force andpassion, what savage brilliancy, what wild and grandiose images, thereare in them! One feels that the Magyar is a kind of Centaur, and that heis only Christian and European by accident. The Hun in him tends towardthe Arab. 

March 20, 1880. --I have been reading "La Bannière Bleue"--a history ofthe world at the time of Genghis Khan, under the form of memoirs. It isa Turk, Ouïgour, who tells the story. He shows us civilization from thewrong side, or the other side, and the Asiatic nomads appear as thescavengers of its corruptions. 

Genghis proclaimed himself the scourge of God, and he did in factrealize the vastest empire known to history, stretching from the BlueSea to the Baltic, and from the vast plains of Siberia to the banks ofthe sacred Ganges. The most solid empires of the ancient world wereoverthrown by the tramp of his horsemen and the shafts of his archers. From the tumult into which he threw the western continent there issuedcertain vast results: the fall of the Byzantine empire, involving theRenaissance, the voyages of discovery in Asia, undertaken from bothsides of the globe--that is to say, Gama and Columbus; the formation ofthe Turkish empire; and the preparation of the Russian empire. Thistremendous hurricane, starting from the high Asiatic tablelands, felledthe decaying oaks and worm-eaten buildings of the whole ancient world. The descent of the yellow, flat-nosed Mongols upon Europe is ahistorical cyclone which devastated and purified our thirteenth century, and broke, at the two ends of the known world, through two great Chinesewalls--that which protected the ancient empire of the Center, and thatwhich made a barrier of ignorance and superstition round the littleworld of Christendom. Attila, Genghis, Tamerlane, ought to range in thememory of men with Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon. They roused wholepeoples into action, and stirred the depths of human life, theypowerfully affected ethnography, they let loose rivers of blood, andrenewed the face of things. The Quakers will not see that there is a lawof tempests in history as in nature. The revilers of war are like therevilers of thunder, storms, and volcanoes; they know not what they do. Civilization tends to corrupt men, as large towns tend to vitiate theair. 

"Nos patimur longae pacis mala. "

Catastrophes bring about a violent restoration of equilibrium; they putthe world brutally to rights. Evil chastises itself, and the tendency toruin in human things supplies the place of the regulator who has not yetbeen discovered. No civilization can bear more than a certain proportionof abuses, injustice, corruption, shame, and crime. When this proportionhas been reached, the boiler bursts, the palace falls, the scaffoldingbreaks down; institutions, cities, states, empires, sink into ruin. Theevil contained in an organism is a virus which preys upon it, and if itis not eliminated ends by destroying it. And as nothing is perfect, nothing can escape death. 

May 19, 1880. --_Inadaptibility_, due either to mysticism or stiffness, delicacy or disdain, is the misfortune or at all events thecharacteristic of my life. I have not been able to fit myself toanything, to content myself with anything. I have never had the quantumof illusion necessary for risking the irreparable. I have made use ofthe ideal itself to keep me from any kind of bondage. It was thus withmarriage: only perfection would have satisfied me; and, on the otherhand, I was not worthy of perfection. . . . So that, finding nosatisfaction in things, I tried to extirpate desire, by which thingsenslave us. Independence has been my refuge; detachment my stronghold. Ihave lived the impersonal life--in the world, yet not in it, thinkingmuch, desiring nothing. It is a state of mind which corresponds withwhat in women is called a broken heart; and it is in fact like it, sincethe characteristic common to both is despair. When one knows that onewill never possess what one could have loved, and that one can becontent with nothing less, one has, so to speak, left the world, one hascut the golden hair, parted with all that makes human life--that is tosay, illusion--the incessant effort toward an apparently attainable end. May 31, 1880. --Let us not be over-ingenious. There is no help to be gotout of subtleties. Besides, one must live. It is best and simplest notto quarrel with any illusion, and to accept the inevitablegood-temperedly. Plunged as we are in human existence, we must take itas it comes, not too bitterly, nor too tragically, without horror andwithout sarcasm, without misplaced petulance or a too exactingexpectation; cheerfulness, serenity, and patience, these are best--letus aim at these. Our business is to treat life as the grandfather treatshis granddaughter, or the grandmother her grandson; to enter into thepretenses of childhood and the fictions of youth, even when we ourselveshave long passed beyond them. It is probable that God himself lookskindly upon the illusions of the human race, so long as they areinnocent. There is nothing evil but sin--that is, egotism and revolt. And as for error, man changes his errors frequently, but error of somesort is always with him. Travel as one may, one is always somewhere, andone's mind rests on some point of truth, as one's feet rest upon somepoint of the globe. 

Society alone represents a more or less complete unity. The individualmust content himself with being a stone in the building, a wheel in theimmense machine, a word in the poem. He is a part of the family, of thestate, of humanity, of all the special fragments formed by humaninterests, beliefs, aspirations, and labors. The loftiest souls arethose who are conscious of the universal symphony, and who give theirfull and willing collaboration to this vast and complicated concertwhich we call civilization. 

In principle the mind is capable of suppressing all the limits which itdiscovers in itself, limits of language, nationality, religion, race, orepoch. But it must be admitted that the more the mind spiritualizes andgeneralizes itself, the less hold it has on other minds, which no longerunderstand it or know what to do with it. Influence belongs to men ofaction, and for purposes of action nothing is more useful thannarrowness of thought combined with energy of will. 

The forms of dreamland are gigantic, those of action are small anddwarfed. To the minds imprisoned in things, belong success, fame, profit; a great deal no doubt; but they know nothing of the pleasures ofliberty or the joy of penetrating the infinite. However, I do not meanto put one class before another; for every man is happy according to hisnature. History is made by combatants and specialists; only it isperhaps not a bad thing that in the midst of the devouring activities ofthe western world, there should be a few Brahmanizing souls. 

. . . This soliloquy means--what? That reverie turns upon itself as dreamsdo; that impressions added together do not always produce a fairjudgment; that a private journal is like a good king, and permitsrepetitions, outpourings, complaint. . . . These unseen effusions are theconversation of thought with itself the arpeggios involuntary but notunconscious, of that aeolian harp we bear within us. Its vibrationscompose no piece, exhaust no theme, achieve no melody, carry out noprogramme, but they express the innermost life of man. 

June 1, 1880. --Stendhal's "La Chartreuse de Parme. " A remarkable book. It is even typical, the first of a class. Stendhal opens the series ofnaturalist novels, which suppress the intervention of the moral sense, and scoff at the claim of free-will. Individuals are irresponsible; theyare governed by their passions, and the play of human passions is theobserver's joy, the artist's material. Stendhal is a novelist afterTaine's heart, a faithful painter who is neither touched nor angry, andwhom everything amuses--the knave and the adventuress as well as honestmen and women, but who has neither faith, nor preference, nor ideal. Inhim literature is subordinated to natural history, to science. It nolonger forms part of the humanities, it no longer gives man the honor ofa separate rank. It classes him with the ant, the beaver, and themonkey. And this moral indifference to morality leads direct toimmorality. 

The vice of the whole school is cynicism, contempt for man, whom theydegrade to the level of the brute; it is the worship of strength, disregard of the soul, a want of generosity, of reverence, of nobility, which shows itself in spite of all protestations to the contrary; in aword, it is _inhumanity_. No man can be a naturalist with impunity: hewill be coarse even with the most refined culture. A free mind is agreat thing no doubt, but loftiness of heart, belief in goodness, capacity for enthusiasm and devotion, the thirst after perfection andholiness, are greater things still. 

June 7, 1880. --I am reading Madame Necker de Saussure [Footnote: MadameNecker de Saussure was the daughter of the famous geologist, DeSaussure; she married a nephew of Jacques Necker, and was thereforecousin by marriage of Madame de Staël. She is often supposed to be theoriginal of Madame de Cerlebe in "Delphine, " and the _Notice sur leCaractère et les Écrits de Mdme. De Staël_, prefixed to theauthoritative edition of Madame de Staël's collected works, is by her. Philanthropy and education were her two main interests, but she had alsoa very large amount of general literary cultivation, as was proved byher translation of Schlegel's "Lectures on Dramatic Literature. "] again. "L'Education progressive" is an admirable book. What moderation andfairness of view, what reasonableness and dignity of manner! Everythingin it is of high quality--observation, thought, and style. Thereconciliation of science with the ideal, of philosophy with religion, of psychology with morals, which the book attempts, is sound andbeneficent. It is a fine book--a classic--and Geneva may be proud of apiece of work which shows such high cultivation and so much solidwisdom. Here we have the true Genevese literature, the central traditionof the country. 

_Later_. --I have finished the third volume of Madame Necker. Theelevation and delicacy, the sense and seriousness, the beauty andperfection of the whole are astonishing. A few harshnesses orinaccuracies of language do not matter. I feel for the author a respectmingled with emotion. How rare it is to find a book in which everythingis sincere and everything is true!

June 26, 1880. --Democracy exists; it is mere loss of time to dwell uponits absurdities and defects. Every _régime_ has its weaknesses, and this_régime_ is a lesser evil than others. On things its effect isunfavorable, but on the other hand men profit by it, for it develops theindividual by obliging every one to take interest in a multitude ofquestions. It makes bad work, but it produces citizens. This is itsexcuse, and a more than tolerable one; in the eyes of thephilanthropist, indeed, it is a serious title to respect, for, afterall, social institutions are made for man, and not _vice versâ_. 

June 27, 1880. --I paid a visit to my friends--, and we resumed theconversation of yesterday. We talked of the ills which threatendemocracy and which are derived from the legal fiction at the root ofit. Surely the remedy consists in insisting everywhere upon the truthwhich democracy systematically forgets, and which is its propermakeweight--on the inequalities of talent, of virtue, and merit, and onthe respect due to age, to capacity, to services rendered. Juvenilearrogance and jealous ingratitude must be resisted all the morestrenuously because social forms are in their favor; and when theinstitutions of a country lay stress only on the rights of theindividual, it is the business of the citizen to lay all the more stresson duty. There must be a constant effort to correct the prevailingtendency of things. All this, it is true, is nothing but palliative, butin human society one cannot hope for more. 

_Later_. --Alfred de Vigny is a sympathetic writer, with a meditativeturn of thought, a strong and supple talent. He possesses elevation, independence, seriousness, originality, boldness and grace; he hassomething of everything. He paints, describes, and judges well; hethinks, and has the courage of his opinions. His defect lies in anexcess of self-respect, in a British pride and reserve which give him ahorror of familiarity and a terror of letting himself go. This tendencyhas naturally injured his popularity as a writer with a public whom heholds at arm's length as one might a troublesome crowd. The French racehas never cared much about the inviolability of personal conscience; itdoes not like stoics shut up in their own dignity as in a tower, andrecognizing no master but God, duty or faith. Such strictness annoys andirritates it; it is merely piqued and made impatient by anything solemn. It repudiated Protestantism for this very reason, and in all crises ithas crushed those who have not yielded to the passionate current ofopinion. 

July 1, 1880. (_Three o'clock_). --The temperature is oppressive; I oughtto be looking over my notes, and thinking of to-morrow's examinations. Inward distaste--emptiness--discontent. Is it trouble of conscience, orsorrow of heart? or the soul preying upon itself? or merely a sense ofstrength decaying and time running to waste? Is sadness--or regret--orfear--at the root of it? I do not know; but this dull sense of miseryhas danger in it; it leads to rash efforts and mad decisions. Oh, forescape from self, for something to stifle the importunate voice of wantand yearning! Discontent is the father of temptation. How can we gorgethe invisible serpent hidden at the bottom of our well--gorge it so thatit may sleep?

At the heart of all this rage and vain rebellion there lies--what?Aspiration, yearning! We are athirst for the infinite--for love--for Iknow not what. It is the instinct of happiness, which, like some wildanimal, is restless for its prey. It is God calling-God avenginghimself. 

July 4, 1880. (_Sunday, half-past eight in the morning_). --The sun hascome out after heavy rain. May one take it as an omen on this solemnday? The great voice of Clémence has just been sounding in our ears. Thebell's deep vibrations went to my heart. For a quarter of an hour thepathetic appeal went on--"Geneva, Geneva, remember! I am called_Clémence_--I am the voice of church and of country. People of Geneva, serve God and be at peace together. " [Footnote: A law to bring aboutseparation between Church and State, adopted by the Great Council, wason this day submitted to the vote of the Genevese people. It wasrejected by a large majority (9, 306 against 4, 044). --[S. ]]

_Seven o'clock in the evening_. --_Clémence_ has been ringing again, during the last half-hour of the _scrutin_. Now that she has stopped, the silence has a terrible seriousness, like that which weighs upon acrowd when it is waiting for the return of the judge and the delivery ofthe death sentence. The fate of the Genevese church and country is nowin the voting box. 

_Eleven o'clock in the evening_. --Victory along the whole line. The Ayeshave carried little more than two-sevenths of the vote. At my friend----'s house I found them all full of excitement, gratitude, and joy. 

July 5, 1880. --There are some words which have still a magical virtuewith the mass of the people: those of State, Republic, Country, Nation, Flag, and even, I think, Church. Our skeptical and mocking culture knowsnothing of the emotion, the exaltation, the delirium, which these wordsawaken in simple people. The blasés of the world have no idea how thepopular mind vibrates to these appeals, by which they themselves areuntouched. It is their punishment; it is also their infirmity. Theirtemper is satirical and separatist; they live in isolation andsterility. 

I feel again what I felt at the time of the Rousseau centenary; myfeeling and imagination are chilled and repelled by those Pharisaicalpeople who think themselves too good to associate with the crowd. 

At the same time, I suffer from an inward contradiction, from atwo-fold, instinctive repugnance--an aesthetic repugnance towardvulgarity of every kind, a moral repugnance toward barrenness andcoldness of heart. 

So that personally I am only attracted by the individuals of cultivationand eminence, while on the other hand nothing is sweeter to me than tofeel myself vibrating in sympathy with the national spirit, with thefeeling of the masses. I only care for the two extremes, and it is thiswhich separates me from each of them. 

Our everyday life, split up as it is into clashing parties and opposedopinions, and harassed by perpetual disorder and discussion, is painfuland almost hateful to me. A thousand things irritate and provoke me. Butperhaps it would be the same elsewhere. Very likely it is the inevitableway of the world which displeases me--the sight of what succeeds, ofwhat men approve or blame, of what they excuse or accuse. I need toadmire, to feel myself in sympathy and in harmony with my neighbor, withthe march of things, and the tendencies of those around me, and almostalways I have had to give up the hope of it. I take refuge in retreat, to avoid discord. But solitude is only a _pis-aller_. 

July 6, 1880. --Magnificent weather. The college prize-day. [Footnote:The prize-giving at the College of Geneva is made the occasion of anational festival. ] Toward evening I went with our three ladies to theplain of Plainpalais. There was an immense crowd, and I was struck withthe bright look of the faces. The festival wound up with the traditionalfireworks, under a calm and starry sky. Here we have the republicindeed, I thought as I came in. For a whole week this people has beenout-of-doors, camping, like the Athenians on the Agora. Since Wednesdaylectures and public meetings have followed one another withoutintermission; at home there are pamphlets and the newspapers to be read;while speech-making goes on at the clubs. On Sunday, _plebiscite_;Monday, public procession, service at St. Pierre, speeches on theMolard, festival for the adults. Tuesday, the college fête-day. Wednesday, the fête-day of the primary schools. 

Geneva is a caldron always at boiling-point, a furnace of which thefires are never extinguished. Vulcan had more than one forge, and Genevais certainly one of those world-anvils on which the greatest number ofprojects have been hammered out. When one thinks that the martyrs of allcauses have been at work here, the mystery is explained a little; butthe truest explanation is that Geneva--republican, protestant, democratic, learned, and enterprising Geneva--has for centuries dependedon herself alone for the solution of her own difficulties. Since theReformation she has been always on the alert, marching with a lantern inher left hand and a sword in her right. It pleases me to see that shehas not yet become a mere copy of anything, and that she is stillcapable of deciding for herself. Those who say to her, "Do as they do atNew York, at Paris, at Rome, at Berlin, " are still in the minority. The_doctrinaires_ who would split her up and destroy her unity waste theirbreath upon her. She divines the snare laid for her and turns away. Ilike this proof of vitality. Only that which is original has asufficient reason for existence. A country in which the word of commandcomes from elsewhere is nothing more than a province. This is what ourJacobins and our Ultramontanes never will recognize. Neither of themunderstand the meaning of self-government, and neither of them have anyidea of the dignity of a historical state and an independent people. 

Our small nationalities are ruined by the hollow cosmopolitan formulaewhich have an equally disastrous effect upon art and letters. The modern_isms_ are so many acids which dissolve everything living and concrete. No one achieves a masterpiece, nor even a decent piece of work, by thehelp of realism, liberalism, or romanticism. Separatism has even lessvirtue than any of the other _isms_, for it is the abstraction of anegation, the shadow of a shadow. The various _isms_ of the present arenot fruitful principles: they are hardly even explanatory formulae. Theyare rather names of disease, for they express some element in excess, some dangerous and abusive exaggeration. Examples: empiricism, idealism, radicalism. What is best among things and most perfect among beingsslips through these categories. The man who is perfectly well is neithersanguineous--[to use the old medical term]--nor bilious nor nervous. Anormal republic contains opposing parties and points of view, but itcontains them, as it were, in a state of chemical combination. All thecolors are contained in a ray of light, while red alone does not containa sixth part of the perfect ray. 

July 8, 1880. --It is thirty years since I read Waagen's book on"Museums, " which my friend ---- is now reading. It was in 1842 that Iwas wild for pictures; in 1845 that I was studying Krause's philosophy;in 1850 that I became professor of aesthetics. ---- may be the same ageas I am; it is none the less true that when a particular stage hasbecome to me a matter of history, he is just arriving at it. Thisimpression of distance and remoteness is a strange one. I begin torealize that my memory is a great catacomb, and that below my actualstanding-ground there is layer after layer of historical ashes. 

Is the life of mind something like that of great trees of immemorialgrowth? Is the living layer of consciousness super-imposed upon hundredsof dead layers? _Dead?_ No doubt this is too much to say, but still, when memory is slack the past becomes almost as though it had neverbeen. To remember that we did know once is not a sign of possession buta sign of loss; it is like the number of an engraving which is no longeron its nail, the title of a volume no longer to be found on its shelf. My mind is the empty frame of a thousand vanished images. Sharpened byincessant training, it is all culture, but it has retained hardlyanything in its meshes. It is without matter, and is only form. It nolonger has knowledge; it has become method. It is etherealized, algebraicized. Life has treated it as death treats other minds; it hasalready prepared it for a further metamorphosis. Since the age ofsixteen onward I have been able to look at things with the eyes of ablind man recently operated upon--that is to say, I have been able tosuppress in myself the results of the long education of sight, and toabolish distances; and now I find myself regarding existence as thoughfrom beyond the tomb, from another world; all is strange to me; I am, asit were, outside my own body and individuality; I am _depersonalized_, detached, cut adrift. Is this madness? No. Madness means theimpossibility of recovering one's normal balance after the mind has thusplayed truant among alien forms of being, and followed Dante toinvisible worlds. Madness means incapacity for self-judgment andself-control. Whereas it seems to me that my mental transformations arebut philosophical experiences. I am tied to none. I am but makingpsychological investigations. At the same time I do not hide from myselfthat such experiences weaken the hold of common sense, because they actas solvents of all personal interests and prejudices. I can only defendmyself against them by returning to the common life of men, and bybracing and fortifying the will. 

July 14, 1880. --What is the book which, of all Genevese literature, Iwould soonest have written? Perhaps that of Madame Necker de Saussure, or Madame de Staël's "L'Allemagne. " To a Genevese, moral philosophy isstill the most congenial and remunerative of studies. Intellectualseriousness is what suits us least ill. History, politics, economicalscience, education, practical philosophy--these are our subjects. Wehave everything to lose in the attempt to make ourselves mereFrenchified copies of the Parisians: by so doing we are merely carryingwater to the Seine. Independent criticism is perhaps easier at Genevathan at Paris, and Geneva ought to remain faithful to her own specialline, which, as compared with that of France, is one of greater freedomfrom the tyranny of taste and fashion on the one hand, and the tyrannyof ruling opinion on the other--of Catholicism or Jacobinism. Genevashould be to _La Grande Nation_ what Diogenes was to Alexander; her roleis to represent the independent thought and the free speech which is notdazzled by prestige, and does not blink the truth. It is true that therôle is an ungrateful one, that it lends itself to sarcasm andmisrepresentation--but what matter?

July 28, 1880. --This afternoon I have had a walk in the sunshine, andhave just come back rejoicing in a renewed communion with nature. Thewaters of the Rhone and the Arve, the murmur of the river, the austerityof its banks, the brilliancy of the foliage, the play of the leaves, thesplendor of the July sunlight, the rich fertility of the fields, thelucidity of the distant mountains, the whiteness of the glaciers underthe azure serenity of the sky, the sparkle and foam of the minglingrivers, the leafy masses of the La Bâtie woods--all and everythingdelighted me. It seemed to me as though the years of strength had comeback to me. I was overwhelmed with sensations. I was surprised andgrateful. The universal life carried me on its breast; the summer'scaress went to my heart. Once more my eyes beheld the vast horizons, thesoaring peaks, the blue lakes, the winding valleys, and all the freeoutlets of old days. And yet there was no painful sense of longing. Thescene left upon me an indefinable impression, which was neither hope, nor desire, nor regret, but rather a sense of emotion, of passionateimpulse, mingled with admiration and anxiety. I am conscious at once ofjoy and of want; beyond what I possess I see the impossible and theunattainable; I gauge my own wealth and poverty; in a word, I am and Iam not--my inner state is one of contradiction, because it is one oftransition. The ambiguity of it is characteristic of human nature, whichis ambiguous, because it is flesh becoming spirit, space changing intothought, the Finite looking dimly out upon the Infinite, intelligenceworking its way through love and pain. 

Man is the _sensorium commune_ of nature, the point at which all valuesare interchanged. Mind is the plastic medium, the principle, and theresult of all; at once material and laboratory, product and formula, sensation, expression, and law; that which is, that which does, thatwhich knows. All is not mind, but mind is in all, and contains all. Itis the consciousness of being--that is, Being raised to the secondpower. If the universe subsists, it is because the Eternal mind loves toperceive its own content, in all its wealth and expansion--especially inits stages of preparation. Not that God is an egotist. He allows myriadsupon myriads of suns to disport themselves in his shadow; he grants lifeand consciousness to innumerable multitudes of creatures who thusparticipate in being and in nature; and all these animated monadsmultiply, so to speak, his divinity. 

August 4, 1880. --I have read a few numbers of the _Feuille Centrale deZofingen_. [Footnote: The journal of a students' society, drawn from thedifferent cantons of Switzerland, which meets every year in the littletown of Zofingen] It is one of those perpetual new beginnings of youthwhich thinks it is producing something fresh when it is only repeatingthe old. 

Nature is governed by continuity--the continuity of repetition; it islike an oft-told tale, or the recurring burden of a song. The rose-treesare never tired of rose-bearing, the birds of nest-building, younghearts of loving, or young voices of singing the thoughts and feelingswhich have served their predecessors a hundred thousand times before. Profound monotony in universal movement--there is the simplest formulafurnished by the spectacle of the world. All circles are alike, andevery existence tends to trace its circle. 

How, then, is _fastidium_ to be avoided? By shutting our eyes to thegeneral uniformity, by laying stress upon the small differences whichexist, and then by learning to enjoy repetition. What to the intellectis old and worn-out is perennially young and fresh to the heart;curiosity is insatiable, but love is never tired. The naturalpreservative against satiety, too, is work. What we do may weary others, but the personal effort is at least useful to its author. Where everyone works, the general life is sure to possess charm and savor, eventhough it repeat forever the same song, the same aspirations, the sameprejudices, and the same sighs. "To every man his turn, " is the motto ofmortal beings. If what they do is old, they themselves are new; whenthey imitate, they think they are inventing. They have received, andthey transmit. _E sempre bene!_

August 24, 1880. --As years go on I love the beautiful more than thesublime, the smooth more than the rough, the calm nobility of Plato morethan the fierce holiness of the world's Jeremiahs. The vehementbarbarian is to me the inferior of the mild and playful Socrates. Mytaste is for the well-balanced soul and the well-trained heart--for aliberty which is not harsh and insolent, like that of the newlyenfranchised slave, but lovable. The temperament which charms me is thatin which one virtue leads naturally to another. All exclusive andsharply-marked qualities are but so many signs of imperfection. 

August 29, 1880. --To-day I am conscious of improvement. I am takingadvantage of it to go back to my neglected work and my interruptedhabits; but in a week I have grown several months older--that is easy tosee. The affection of those around me makes them pretend not to see it;but the looking-glass tells the truth. The fact does not take away fromthe pleasure of convalescence; but still one hears in it the shuttle ofdestiny, and death seems to be nearing rapidly, in spite of the haltsand truces which are granted one. The most beautiful existence, it seemsto me, would be that of a river which should get through all its rapidsand waterfalls not far from its rising, and should then in its wideningcourse form a succession of rich valleys, and in each of them a lakeequally but diversely beautiful, to end, after the plains of age werepast, in the ocean where all that is weary and heavy-laden comes to seekfor rest. How few there are of these full, fruitful, gentle lives! Whatis the use of wishing for or regretting them? It is Wiser and harder tosee in one's own lot the best one could have had, and to say to one'sself that after all the cleverest tailor cannot make us a coat to fit usmore closely than our skin. 

 "Le vrai nom du bonheur est le contentement. "

. . . The essential thing, for every one is to accept his destiny. Fatehas deceived you; you have sometimes grumbled at your lot; well, no moremutual reproaches; go to sleep in peace. 

August 30, 1880. (_Two o'clock_). --Rumblings of a grave and distantthunder. The sky is gray but rainless; the sharp little cries of thebirds show agitation and fear; one might imagine it the prelude to asymphony or a catastrophe. 

 "Quel éclair te traverse, ô mon coeur soucieux?"

Strange--all the business of the immediate neighborhood is going on;there is even more movement than usual; and yet all these noises are, asit were, held suspended in the silence--in a soft, positive silence, which they cannot disguise--silence akin to that which, in every town, on one day of the week, replaces the vague murmur of the laboring hive. Such silence at such an hour is extraordinary. There is somethingexpectant, contemplative, almost anxious in it. Are there days on which"the little breath" of Job produces more effect than tempest? on which adull rumbling on the distant horizon is enough to suspend the concert ofvoices, like the roaring of a desert lion at the fall of night?

September 9, 1880. --It seems to me that with the decline of my activeforce I am becoming more purely spirit; everything is growingtransparent to me. I see the types, the foundation of beings, the senseof things. 

All personal events, all particular experiences, are to me texts formeditation, facts to be generalized into laws, realities to be reducedto ideas. Life is only a document to be interpreted, matter to bespiritualized. Such is the life of the thinker. Every day he stripshimself more and more of personality. If he consents to act and to feel, it is that he may the better understand; if he wills, it is that he mayknow what will is. Although it is sweet to him to be loved, and he knowsnothing else so sweet, yet there also he seems to himself to be theoccasion of the phenomenon rather than its end. He contemplates thespectacle of love, and love for him remains a spectacle. He does noteven believe his body his own; he feels the vital whirlwind passingthrough him--lent to him, as it were, for a moment, in order that he mayperceive the cosmic vibrations. He is a mere thinking subject; heretains only the form of things; he attributes to himself the materialpossession of nothing whatsoever; he asks nothing from life but wisdom. This temper of mind makes him incomprehensible to all that lovesenjoyment, dominion, possession. He is fluid as a phantom that we seebut cannot grasp; he resembles a man, as the _manes_ of Achilles or theshade of Creusa resembled the living. Without having died, I am a ghost. Other men are dreams to me, and I am a dream to them. 

_Later_--Consciousness in me takes no account of the category of time, and therefore all the partitions which tend to make of life a palacewith a thousand rooms, do not exist in my case; I am still in theprimitive unicellular state. I possess myself only as Monad and as Ego, and I feel my faculties themselves reabsorbed into the substance whichthey have individualized. All the endowment of animality is, so tospeak, repudiated; all the produce of study and of cultivation is in thesame way annulled; the whole crystallization is redissolved into fluid;the whole rainbow is withdrawn within the dewdrop; consequences returnto the principle, effects to the cause, the bird to the egg, theorganism to its germ. 

This psychological reinvolution is an anticipation of death; itrepresents the life beyond the grave, the return to school, the soulfading into the world of ghosts, or descending into the region of _DieMütter_; it implies the simplification of the individual who, allowingall the accidents of personality to evaporate, exists henceforward onlyin the indivisible state, the state of point, of potentiality, ofpregnant nothingness. Is not this the true definition of mind? Is notmind, dissociated from space and time, just this? Its development, pastor future, is contained in it just as a curve is contained in itsalgebraical formula. This nothing is an all. This _punctum_ withoutdimensions is a _punctum saliens_. What is the acorn but the oak whichhas lost its branches, its leaves, its trunk, and its roots--that is tosay, all its apparatus, its forms, its particularities--but which isstill present in concentration, in essence, in a force which containsthe possibility of complete revival?

This impoverishment, then, is only superficially a loss, a reduction. Tobe reduced to those elements in one which are eternal, is indeed to diebut not to be annihilated: it is simply to become virtual again. 

October 9, 1880. (_Clarens_). --A walk. Deep feeling and admiration. Nature was so beautiful, so caressing, so poetical, so maternal. Thesunlight, the leaves, the sky, the bells, all said to me--"Be of goodstrength and courage, poor bruised one. This is nature's kindly season;here is forgetfulness, calm, and rest. Faults and troubles, anxietiesand regrets, cares and wrongs, are but one and the same burden. We makeno distinctions; we comfort all sorrows, we bring peace, and with us isconsolation. Salvation to the weary, salvation to the afflicted, salvation to the sick, to sinners, to all that suffer in heart, inconscience, and in body. We are the fountain of blessing; drink andlive! God maketh his sun to rise upon the just and upon the unjust. There is nothing grudging in his munificence; he does not weigh hisgifts like a moneychanger, or number them like a cashier. Come--there isenough for all!"

October 29, 1880. (_Geneva_). --The ideal which a man professes mayitself be only a matter of appearance--a device for misleading hisneighbor, or deluding himself. The individual is always ready to claimfor himself the merits of the badge under which he fights; whereas, generally speaking, it is the contrary which happens. The nobler thebadge, the less estimable is the wearer of it. Such at least is thepresumption. It is extremely dangerous to pride one's self on any moralor religious specialty whatever. Tell me what you pique yourself upon, and I will tell you what you are not. 

But how are we to know what an individual is? First of all by his acts;but by something else too--something which is only perceived byintuition. Soul judges soul by elective affinity, reaching through andbeyond both words and silence, looks and actions. 

The criterion is subjective, I allow, and liable to error; but in thefirst place there is no safer one, and in the next, the accuracy of thejudgment is in proportion to the moral culture of the judge. Courage isan authority on courage, goodness on goodness, nobleness on nobleness, loyalty on uprightness. We only truly know what we have, or what we havelost and regret, as, for example, childish innocence, virginal purity, or stainless honor. The truest and best judge, then, is InfiniteGoodness, and next to it, the regenerated sinner or the saint, the mantried by experience or the sage. Naturally, the touchstone in us becomesfiner and truer the better we are. 

November 3, 1880. --What impression has the story I have just read madeupon me? A mixed one. The imagination gets no pleasure out of it, although the intellect is amused. Why? Because the author's mood is oneof incessant irony and _persiflage_. The Voltairean tradition has beenhis guide--a great deal of wit and satire, very little feeling, nosimplicity. It is a combination of qualities which serves eminently wellfor satire, for journalism, and for paper warfare of all kinds, butwhich is much less suitable to the novel or short story, for clevernessis not poetry, and the novel is still within the domain of poetry, although on the frontier. The vague discomfort aroused in one by theseepigrammatic productions is due probably to a confusion of kinds. Ambiguity of style keeps one in a perpetual state of tension andself-defense; we ought not to be left in doubt whether the speaker isjesting or serious, mocking or tender. Moreover, banter is not humor, and never will be. I think, indeed, that the professional wit finds adifficulty in being genuinely comic, for want of depth and disinterestedfeeling. To laugh at things and people is not really a joy; it is atbest but a cold pleasure. Buffoonery is wholesomer, because it is alittle more kindly. The reason why continuous sarcasm repels us is thatit lacks two things--humanity and seriousness. Sarcasm implies pride, since it means putting one's self above others--and levity, becauseconscience is allowed no voice in controlling it. In short, we readsatirical books, but we only love and cling to the books in which thereis _heart_. 

November 22, 1880. --How is ill-nature to be met and overcome? First, byhumility: when a man knows his own weaknesses, why should he be angrywith others for pointing them out? No doubt it is not very amiable ofthem to do so, but still, truth is on their side. Secondly, byreflection: after all we are what we are, and if we have been thinkingtoo much of ourselves, it is only an opinion to be modified; theincivility of our neighbor leaves us what we were before. Above all, bypardon: there is only one way of not hating those who do us wrong, andthat is by doing them good; anger is best conquered by kindness. Such avictory over feeling may not indeed affect those who have wronged us, but it is a valuable piece of self-discipline. It is vulgar to be angryon one's own account; we ought only to be angry for great causes. Besides, the poisoned dart can only be extracted from the wound by thebalm of a silent and thoughtful charity. Why do we let human malignityembitter us? why should ingratitude, jealousy--perfidy even--enrage us?There is no end to recriminations, complaints, or reprisals. Thesimplest plan is to blot everything out. Anger, rancor, bitterness, trouble the soul. Every man is a dispenser of justice; but there is onewrong that he is not bound to punish--that of which he himself is thevictim. Such a wrong is to be healed, not avenged. Fire purifies all. 

 "Mon âme est comme un feu qui dévore et parfume Ce qu'on jette pour le ternir. "

December 27, 1880--In an article I have just read, Biedermann reproachesStrauss with being too negative, and with having broken withChristianity. The object to be pursued, according to him, should be thefreeing of religion from the mythological element, and the substitutionof another point of view for the antiquated dualism of orthodoxy--thisother point of view to be the victory over the world, produced by thesense of divine sonship. 

It is true that another question arises: has not a religion which hasseparated itself from special miracle, from local interventions of thesupernatural, and from mystery, lost its savor and its efficacy? For thesake of satisfying a thinking and instructed public, is it wise tosacrifice the influence of religion over the multitude? Answer. A piousfiction is still a fiction. Truth has the highest claim. It is for theworld to accommodate itself to truth, and not _vice versâ_. Copernicusupset the astronomy of the Middle Ages--so much the worse for it! TheEternal Gospel revolutionizes modern churches--what matter! When symbolsbecome transparent, they have no further binding force. We see in them apoem, an allegory, a metaphor; but we believe in them no longer. Yes, but still a certain esotericism is inevitable, since critical, scientific, and philosophical culture is only attainable by a minority. The new faith must have its symbols too. At present the effect itproduces on pious souls is a more or less profane one; it has adisrespectful, incredulous, frivolous look, and it seems to free a manfrom traditional dogma at the cost of seriousness of conscience. How aresensitiveness of feeling, the sense of sin, the desire for pardon, thethirst for holiness, to be preserved among us, when the errors whichhave served them so long for support and food have been eliminated? Isnot illusion indispensable? is it not the divine process of education?

Perhaps the best way is to draw a deep distinction between opinion andbelief, and between belief and science. The mind which discerns thesedifferent degrees may allow itself imagination and faith, and stillremain within the lines of progress. 

December 28, 1880. --There are two modes of classing the people we know:the first is utilitarian--it starts from ourselves, divides our friendsfrom our enemies, and distinguishes those who are antipathetic to us, those who are indifferent, those who can serve or harm us; the second isdisinterested--it classes men according to their intrinsic value, theirown qualities and defects, apart from the feelings which they have forus, or we for them. 

My tendency is to the second kind of classification. I appreciate menless by the special affection which they show to me than by theirpersonal excellence, and I cannot confuse gratitude with esteem. It is ahappy thing for us when the two feelings can be combined; and nothing ismore painful than to owe gratitude where yet we can feel neither respectnor confidence. 

I am not very willing to believe in the permanence of accidental states. The generosity of a miser, the good nature of an egotist, the gentlenessof a passionate temperament, the tenderness of a barren nature, thepiety of a dull heart, the humility of an excitable self-love, interestme as phenomena--nay, even touch me if I am the object of them, but theyinspire me with very little confidence. I foresee the end of them tooclearly. Every exception tends to disappear and to return to the rule. All privilege is temporary, and besides, I am less flattered thananxious when I find myself the object of a privilege. 

A man's primitive character may be covered over by alluvial deposits ofculture and acquisition--none the less is it sure to come to the surfacewhen years have worn away all that is accessory and adventitious. Iadmit indeed the possibility of great moral crises which sometimesrevolutionize the soul, but I dare not reckon on them. It is apossibility--not a probability. In choosing one's friends we must choosethose whose qualities are inborn, and their virtues virtues oftemperament. To lay the foundations of friendship on borrowed or addedvirtues is to build on an artificial soil; we run too many risks by it. 

Exceptions are snares, and we ought above all to distrust them when theycharm our vanity. To catch and fix a fickle heart is a task which temptsall women; and a man finds something intoxicating in the tears oftenderness and joy which he alone has had the power to draw from a proudwoman. But attractions of this kind are deceptive. Affinity of naturefounded on worship of the same ideal, and perfect in proportion toperfectness of soul, is the only affinity which is worth anything. Truelove is that which ennobles the personality, fortifies the heart, andsanctifies the existence. And the being we love must not be mysteriousand sphinx-like, but clear and limpid as a diamond; so that admirationand attachment may grow with knowledge. 

 * * * * *

Jealousy is a terrible thing. It resembles love, only it is preciselylove's contrary. Instead of wishing for the welfare of the object loved, it desires the dependence of that object upon itself, and its owntriumph. Love is the forgetfulness of self; jealousy is the mostpassionate form of egotism, the glorification of a despotic, exacting, and vain _ego_, which can neither forget nor subordinate itself. Thecontrast is perfect. 

 * * * * *

Austerity in women is sometimes the accompaniment of a rare power ofloving. And when it is so their attachment is strong as death; theirfidelity as resisting as the diamond; they are hungry for devotion andathirst for sacrifice. Their love is a piety, their tenderness areligion, and they triple the energy of love by giving to it thesanctity of duty. 

 * * * * *

To the spectator over fifty, the world certainly presents a good dealthat is new, but a great deal more which is only the old furbishedup--mere plagiarism and modification, rather than amelioration. Almosteverything is a copy of a copy, a reflection of a reflection, and theperfect being is as rare now as he ever was. Let us not complain of it;it is the reason why the world lasts. Humanity improves but slowly; thatis why history goes on. 

Is not progress the goad of Siva? It excites the torch to burn itselfaway; it hastens the approach of death. Societies which change rapidlyonly reach their final catastrophe the sooner. Children who are tooprecocious never reach maturity. Progress should be the aroma of life, not its substance. 

 * * * * *

Man is a passion which brings a will into play, which works anintelligence--and thus the organs which seem to be in the service ofintelligence, are in reality only the agents of passion. For all thecommoner sorts of being, determinism is true: inward liberty exists onlyas an exception and as the result of self-conquest. And even he who hastasted liberty is only free intermittently and by moments. True liberty, then, is not a continuous state; it is not an indefeasible andinvariable quality. We are free only so far as we are not dupes ofourselves, our pretexts, our instincts, our temperament. We are freed byenergy and the critical spirit--that is to say, by detachment of soul, by self-government. So that we are enslaved, but susceptible of freedom;we are bound, but capable of shaking off our bonds. The soul is caged, but it has power to flutter within its cage. 

 * * * * *

Material results are but the tardy sign of invisible activities. Thebullet has started long before the noise of the report has reached us. The decisive events of the world take place in the intellect. 

 * * * * *

Sorrow is the most tremendous of all realities in the sensible world, but the transfiguration of sorrow after the manner of Christ is a morebeautiful solution of the problem than the extirpation of sorrow, afterthe method of Çakyamouni. 

 * * * * *

Life should be a giving birth to the soul, the development of a highermode of reality. The animal must be humanized; flesh must be madespirit; physiological activity must be transmuted into intellect andconscience, into reason, justice, and generosity, as the torch istransmuted into life and warmth. The blind, greedy, selfish nature ofman must put on beauty and nobleness. This heavenly alchemy is whatjustifies our presence on the earth: it is our mission and our glory. 

 * * * * *

To renounce happiness and think only of duty, to put conscience in theplace of feeling--this voluntary martyrdom has its nobility. The naturalman in us flinches, but the better self submits. To hope for justice inthe world is a sign of sickly sensibility; we must be able to do withoutit. True manliness consists in such independence. Let the world thinkwhat it will of us, it is its own affair. If it will not give us theplace which is lawfully ours until after our death, or perhaps not atall, it is but acting within its right. It is our business to behave asthough our country were grateful, as though the world were equitable, asthough opinion were clear-sighted, as though life were just, as thoughmen were good. 

 * * * * *

Death itself may become matter of consent, and therefore a moral act. The animal expires; man surrenders his soul to the author of the soul. 

[With the year 1881, beginning with the month of January, we enter uponthe last period of Amiel's illness. Although he continued to attend tohis professional duties, and never spoke of his forebodings, he felthimself mortally ill, as we shall see by the following extracts from theJournal. Amiel wrote up to the end, doing little else, however, towardthe last than record the progress of his disease, and the proofs ofinterest and kindliness which he received. After weeks of suffering andpain a state of extreme weakness gradually gained upon him. His lastlines are dated the 29th of April; it was on the 11th of May that hesuccumbed, without a struggle, to the complicated disease from which hesuffered. --S. ]

January 5, 1881. --I think I fear shame more than death. Tacitus said:_Omnia serviliter pro dominatione_. My tendency is just the contrary. Even when it is voluntary, dependence is a burden to me. I should blushto find myself determined by interest, submitting to constraint, orbecoming the slave of any will whatever. To me vanity is slavery, self-love degrading, and utilitarianism meanness. I detest the ambitionwhich makes you the liege man of something or some-one--I desire to besimply my own master. 

If I had health I should be the freest man I know. Although perhaps alittle hardness of heart would be desirable to make me still moreindependent. 

Let me exaggerate nothing. My liberty is only negative. Nobody has anyhold over me, but many things have become impossible to me, and if Iwere so foolish as to wish for them, the limits of my liberty would soonbecome apparent. Therefore I take care not to wish for them, and not tolet my thoughts dwell on them. I only desire what I am able for, and inthis way I run my head against no wall, I cease even to be conscious ofthe boundaries which enclose me. I take care to wish for rather lessthan is in my power, that I may not even be reminded of the obstacles inmy way. Renunciation is the safeguard of dignity. Let us strip ourselvesif we would not be stripped. He who has freely given up his life maylook death in the face: what more can it take away from him? Do awaywith desire and practice charity--there you have the whole method ofBuddha, the whole secret of the great Deliverance. . . . 

It is snowing, and my chest is troublesome. So that I depend on natureand on God. But I do not depend on human caprice; this is the point tobe insisted on. It is true that my chemist may make a blunder and poisonme, my banker may reduce me to pauperism, just as an earthquake maydestroy my house without hope of redress. Absolute independence, therefore, is a pure chimera. But I do possess relativeindependence--that of the stoic who withdraws into the fortress of hiswill, and shuts the gates behind him. 

 "Jurons, excepté Dieu, de n'avoir point de maître. "

This oath of old Geneva remains my motto still. 

January 10, 1881. --To let one's self be troubled by the ill-will, theingratitude, the indifference, of others, is a weakness to which I amvery much inclined. It is painful to me to be misunderstood, ill-judged. I am wanting in manly hardihood, and the heart in me is more vulnerablethan it ought to be. It seems to me, however, that I have grown tougherin this respect than I used to be. The malignity of the world troublesme less than it did. Is it the result of philosophy, or an effect ofage, or simply caused by the many proofs of respect and attachment thatI have received? These proofs were just what were wanting to inspire mewith some self-respect. Otherwise I should have so easily believed in myown nullity and in the insignificance of all my efforts. Success isnecessary for the timid, praise is a moral stimulus, and admiration astrengthening elixir. We think we know ourselves, but as long as we areignorant of our comparative value, our place in the social assessment, we do not know ourselves well enough. If we are to act with effect, wemust count for something with our fellow-men; we must feel ourselvespossessed of some weight and credit with them, so that our effort may berightly proportioned to the resistance which has to be overcome. As longas we despise opinion we are without a standard by which to measureourselves; we do not know our relative power. I have despised opiniontoo much, while yet I have been too sensitive to injustice. These twofaults have cost me dear. I longed for kindness, sympathy, and equity, but my pride forbade me to ask for them, or to employ any address orcalculation to obtain them. . . . I do not think I have been wrongaltogether, for all through I have been in harmony with my best self, but my want of adaptability has worn me out, to no purpose. Now, indeed, I am at peace within, but my career is over, my strength is running out, and my life is near its end. 

 "Il n'est plus temps pour rien excepté pour mourir. "

This is why I can look at it all historically. 

January 23, 1881. --A tolerable night, but this morning the cough hasbeen frightful. Beautiful weather, the windows ablaze with sunshine. With my feet on the fender I have just finished the newspaper. 

At this moment I feel well, and it seems strange to me that my doomshould be so near. Life has no sense of kinship with death. This is why, no doubt, a sort of mechanical instinctive hope is forever springing upafresh in us, troubling our reason, and casting doubt on the verdict ofscience. All life is tenacious and persistent. It is like the parrot inthe fable, who, at the very moment when its neck is being wrung, stillrepeats with its last breath:

 "Cela, cela, ne sera rien. "

The intellect puts the matter at its worst, but the animal protests. Itwill not believe in the evil till it comes. Ought one to regret it?Probably not. It is nature's will that life should defend itself againstdeath; hope is only the love of life; it is an organic impulse whichreligion has taken under its protection. Who knows? God may save us, maywork a miracle. Besides, are we ever sure that there is no remedy?Uncertainty is the refuge of hope. We reckon the doubtful among thechances in our favor. Mortal frailty clings to every support. How beangry with it for so doing? Even with all possible aids it hardly everescapes desolation and distress. The supreme solution is, and alwayswill be, to see in necessity the fatherly will of God, and so to submitourselves and bear our cross bravely, as an offering to the Arbiter ofhuman destiny. The soldier does not dispute the order given him: heobeys and dies without murmuring. If he waited to understand the use ofhis sacrifice, where would his submission be?

It occurred to me this morning how little we know of each other'sphysical troubles; even those nearest and dearest to us know nothing ofour conversations with the King of Terrors. There are thoughts whichbrook no confidant: there are griefs which cannot be shared. Consideration for others even bids us conceal them. We dream alone, wesuffer alone, we die alone, we inhabit the last resting-place alone. Butthere is nothing to prevent us from opening our solitude to God. And sowhat was an austere monologue becomes dialogue, reluctance becomesdocility, renunciation passes into peace, and the sense of painfuldefeat is lost in the sense of recovered liberty. 

 "Vouloir ce que Dieu veut est la seule science Qui nous met en repos. "

None of us can escape the play of contrary impulse; but as soon as thesoul has once recognized the order of things and submitted itselfthereto, then all is well. 

 "Comme un sage mourant puissions nous dire en paix: J'ai trop longtemps erré, cherché; je me trompais: Tout est bien, mon Dieu m'enveloppe. "

January 28, 1881. --A terrible night. For three or four hours I struggledagainst suffocation and looked death in the face. . . . It is clear thatwhat awaits me is suffocation--asphyxia. I shall die by choking. 

I should not have chosen such a death; but when there is no option, onemust simply resign one's self, and at once. . . . Spinoza expired in thepresence of the doctor whom he had sent for. I must familiarize myselfwith the idea of dying unexpectedly, some fine night, strangled bylaryngitis. The last sigh of a patriarch surrounded by his kneelingfamily is more beautiful: my fate indeed lacks beauty, grandeur, poetry;but stoicism consists in renunciation. _Abstine et sustine_. 

I must remember besides that I have faithful friends; it is better notto torment them. The last journey is only made more painful by scenesand lamentations: one word is worth all others--"Thy will, not mine, bedone!" Leibnitz was accompanied to the grave by his servant only. Theloneliness of the deathbed and the tomb is not an evil. The greatmystery cannot be shared. The dialogue between the soul and the King ofTerrors needs no witnesses. It is the living who cling to the thought oflast greetings. And, after all, no one knows exactly what is reservedfor him. What will be will be. We have but to say, "Amen. "

February 4, 1881. --It is a strange sensation that of laying one's selfdown to rest with the thought that perhaps one will never see themorrow. Yesterday I felt it strongly, and yet here I am. Humility ismade easy by the sense of excessive frailty, but it cuts away allambition. 

 "Quittez le long espoir et les vastes pensées. "

A long piece of work seems absurd--one lives but from day to day. 

When a man can no longer look forward in imagination to five years, ayear, a month, of free activity--when he is reduced to counting thehours, and to seeing in the coming night the threat of an unknownfate--it is plain that he must give up art, science, and politics, andthat he must be content to hold converse with himself, the onepossibility which is his till the end. Inward soliloquy is the onlyresource of the condemned man whose execution is delayed. He withdrawsupon the fastnesses of conscience. His spiritual force no longerradiates outwardly; it is consumed in self-study. Action is cutoff--only contemplation remains. He still writes to those who haveclaims upon him, but he bids farewell to the public, and retreats intohimself. Like the hare, he comes back to die in his form, and this formis his consciousness, his intellect--the journal, too, which has beenthe companion of his inner life. As long as he can hold a pen, as longas he has a moment of solitude, this echo of himself still claims hismeditation, still represents to him his converse with his God. 

In all this, however, there is nothing akin to self-examination: it isnot an act of contrition, or a cry for help. It is simply an Amen ofsubmission--"My child, give me thy heart!"

Renunciation and acquiescence are less difficult to me than to others, for I desire nothing. I could only wish not to suffer, but Jesus onGethesemane allowed himself to make the same prayer; let us add to itthe words that he did: "Nevertheless, not my will, but thine, bedone, "--and wait. 

. . . For many years past the immanent God has been more real to me thanthe transcendent God, and the religion of Jacob has been more alien tome than that of Kant, or even Spinoza. The whole Semitic dramaturgy hascome to seem to me a work of the imagination. The apostolic documentshave changed in value and meaning to my eyes. Belief and truth havebecome distinct to me with a growing distinctness. Religious psychologyhas become a simple phenomenon, and has lost its fixed and absolutevalue. The apologetics of Pascal, of Leibnitz, of Secrétan, are to me nomore convincing than those of the Middle Ages, for they presuppose whatis really in question--a revealed doctrine, a definite and unchangeableChristianity. It seems to me that what remains to me from all my studiesis a new phenomenology of mind, an intuition of universalmetamorphosis. All particular convictions, all definite principles, allclear-cut formulas and fixed ideas, are but prejudices, useful inpractice, but still narrownesses of the mind. The absolute in detail isabsurd and contradictory. All political, religious, aesthetic, orliterary parties are protuberances, misgrowths of thought. Every specialbelief represents a stiffening and thickening of thought; a stiffening, however, which is necessary in its time and place. Our monad, in itsthinking capacity, overleaps the boundaries of time and space and of itsown historical surroundings; but in its individual capacity, and forpurposes of action, it adapts itself to current illusions, and putsbefore itself a definite end. It is lawful to be _man_, but it isneedful also to be _a_ man, to be an individual. Our rôle is thus adouble one. Only, the philosopher is specially authorized to develop thefirst rôle, which the vast majority of humankind neglects. 

February 7, 1881. --Beautiful sunshine to-day. But I have scarcely springenough left in me to notice it. Admiration, joy, presuppose a littlerelief from pain. Whereas my neck is tired with the weight of my head, and my heart is wearied with the weight of life; this is not theaesthetic state. 

I have been thinking over different things which I might have written. But generally speaking we let what is most original and best in us bewasted. We reserve ourselves for a future which never comes. _Omnismortar_. 

February 14, 1881. --Supposing that my weeks are numbered, what dutiesstill remain to me to fulfill, that I may leave all in order? I mustgive every one his due; justice, prudence, kindness must be satisfied;the last memories must be sweet ones. Try to forget nothing useful, noranybody who has a claim upon thee! February 15, 1881. --I have, veryreluctantly, given up my lecture at the university, and sent for mydoctor. On my chimney-piece are the flowers which ---- has sent me. Letters from London, Paris, Lausanne, Neuchatel . . . They seem to me likewreaths thrown into a grave. 

Mentally I say farewell to all the distant friends whom I shall neversee again. 

February 18, 1881. --Misty weather. A fairly good night. Still, theemaciation goes on. That is to say, the vulture allows me some respite, but he still hovers over his prey. The possibility of resuming myofficial work seems like a dream to me. 

Although just now the sense of ghostly remoteness from life which I sooften have is absent, I feel myself a prisoner for good, a hopelessinvalid. This vague intermediate state, which is neither death nor life, has its sweetness, because if it implies renunciation, still it allowsof thought. It is a reverie without pain, peaceful and meditative. Surrounded with affection and with books, I float down the stream oftime, as once I glided over the Dutch canals, smoothly and noiselessly. It is as though I were once more on board the _Treckschute_. Scarcelycan one hear even the soft ripple of the water furrowed by the barge, orthe hoof of the towing horse trotting along the sandy path. A journeyunder these conditions has something fantastic in it. One is not surewhether one still exists, still belongs to earth. It is like the_manes_, the shadows, flitting through the twilight of the _inaniaregna_. Existence has become fluid. From the standpoint of completepersonal renunciation I watch the passage of my impressions, my dreams, thoughts, and memories. . . . It is a mood of fixed contemplation akin tothat which we attribute to the seraphim. It takes no interest in theindividual self, but only in the specimen monad, the sample of thegeneral history of mind. Everything is in everything, and theconsciousness examines what it has before it. Nothing is either great orsmall. The mind adopts all modes, and everything is acceptable to it. Inthis state its relations with the body, with the outer world, and withother individuals, fade out of sight. _Selbst-bewusstsein_ becomes oncemore impersonal _Bewusstsein_, and before personality can be reacquired, pain, duty, and will must be brought into action. 

Are these oscillations between the personal and the impersonal, betweenpantheism and theism, between Spinoza and Leibnitz, to be regretted? No, for it is the one state which makes us conscious of the other. And asman is capable of ranging the two domains, why should he mutilatehimself?

February 22, 1881. --The march of mind finds its typical expression inastronomy--no pause, but no hurry; orbits, cycles, energy, but at thesame time harmony; movement and yet order; everything has its own weightand its relative weight, receives and gives forth light. Cannot thiscosmic and divine become oars? Is the war of all against all, thepreying of man upon man, a higher type of balanced action? I shrink formbelieving it. Some theorists imagine that the phase of selfish brutalityis the last phase of all. They must be wrong. Justice will prevail, andjustice is not selfishness. Independence of intellect, combined withgoodness of heart, will be the agents of a result, which will be thecompromise required. 

March 1, 1881. --I have just been glancing over the affairs of the worldin the newspaper. What a Babel it is! But it is very pleasant to be ableto make the tour of the planet and review the human race in an hour. Itgives one a sense of ubiquity. A newspaper in the twentieth century willbe composed of eight or ten daily bulletins--political, religious, scientific, literary, artistic, commercial, meteorological, military, economical, social, legal, and financial; and will be divided into twoparts only--_Urbs_ and _Orbis_. The need of totalizing, of simplifying, will bring about the general use of such graphic methods as permit ofseries and comparisons. We shall end by feeling the pulse of the raceand the globe as easily as that of a sick man, and we shall count thepalpitations of the universal life, just as we shall hear the grassgrowing, or the sunspots clashing, and catch the first stirrings ofvolcanic disturbances. Activity will become consciousness; the earthwill see herself. Then will be the time for her to blush for herdisorders, her hideousness, her misery, her crime and to throw herselfat last with energy and perseverance into the pursuit of justice. Whenhumanity has cut its wisdom-teeth, then perhaps it will have the graceto reform itself, and the will to attempt a systematic reduction of theshare of the evil in the world. The _Weltgeist_ will pass from the stateof instinct to the moral state. War, hatred, selfishness, fraud, theright of the stronger, will be held to be old-world barbarisms, merediseases of growth. The pretenses of modern civilization will bereplaced by real virtues. Men will be brothers, peoples will be friends, races will sympathize one with another, and mankind will draw from lovea principle of emulation, of invention, and of zeal, as powerful as anyfurnished by the vulgar stimulant of interest. This millennium--will itever be? It is at least an act of piety to believe in it. 

March 14, 1881. --I have finished Mérimée's letters to Panizzi. Mériméedied of the disease which torments me--"_Je tousse, et j'étouffe_. "Bronchitis and asthma, whence defective assimilation, and finallyexhaustion. He, too, tried arsenic, wintering at Cannes, compressed air. All was useless. Suffocation and inanition carried off the author of"Colomba. " _Hic tua res agitur_. The gray, heavy sky is of the samecolor as my thoughts. And yet the irrevocable has its own sweetness andserenity. The fluctuations of illusion, the uncertainties of desire, theleaps and bounds of hope, give place to tranquil resignation. One feelsas though one were already beyond the grave. It is this very week, too, I remember, that my corner of ground in the Oasis is to be bought. Everything draws toward the end. _Festinat ad eventum_. 

March l5, 1881. --The "Journal" is full of details of the horrible affairat Petersburg. How clear it is that such catastrophes as this, in whichthe innocent suffer, are the product of a long accumulation ofiniquities. Historical justice is, generally speaking, tardy--so tardythat it becomes unjust. The Providential theory is really based on humansolidarity. Louis XVI. Pays for Louis XV. , Alexander II. For Nicholas. We expiate the sins of our fathers, and our grandchildren will bepunished for ours. A double injustice! cries the individual. And he isright if the individualist principle is true. But is it true? That isthe point. It seems as though the individual part of each man's destinywere but one section of that destiny. Morally we are responsible forwhat we ourselves have willed, but socially, our happiness andunhappiness depend on causes outside our will. Religion answers--"Mystery, obscurity, submission, faith. Do your duty; leave the rest toGod. "

March 16, 1881. --A wretched night. A melancholy morning. . . . The twostand-bys of the doctor, digitalis and bromide, seem to have lost theirpower over me. Wearily and painfully I watch the tedious progress of myown decay. What efforts to keep one's self from dying! I am worn outwith the struggle. 

Useless and incessant struggle is a humiliation to one's manhood. Thelion finds the gnat the most intolerable of his foes. The natural manfeels the same. But the spiritual man must learn the lesson ofgentleness and long-suffering. The inevitable is the will of God. Wemight have preferred something else, but it is our business to acceptthe lot assigned us. . . . One thing only is necessary--

 "Garde en mon coeur la foi dans ta volonté sainte, Et de moi fais, ô Dieu, tout ce que tu voudras. "

_Later_. --One of my students has just brought me a sympathetic messagefrom my class. My sister sends me a pot of azaleas, rich in flowers andbuds;----sends roses and violets: every one spoils me, which proves thatI am ill. 

March 19, 1881. --Distaste--discouragement. My heart is growing cold. Andyet what affectionate care, what tenderness, surrounds me!. . . Butwithout health, what can one do with all the rest? What is the good ofit all to me? What was the good of Job's trials? They ripened hispatience; they exercised his submission. 

Come, let me forget myself, let me shake off this melancholy, thisweariness. Let me think, not of all that is lost, but of all that Imight still lose. I will reckon up my privileges; I will try to beworthy of my blessings. 

March 21, 1881. --This invalid life is too Epicurean. For five or sixweeks now I have done nothing else but wait, nurse myself, and amusemyself, and how weary one gets of it! What I want is work. It is workwhich gives flavor to life. Mere existence without object and withouteffort is a poor thing. Idleness leads to languor, and languor todisgust. Besides, here is the spring again, the season of vague desires, of dull discomforts, of dim aspirations, of sighs without a cause. Wedream wide-awake. We search darkly for we know not what; invoking thewhile something which has no name, unless it be happiness or death. 

March 28, 1881. --I cannot work; I find it difficult to exist. One may beglad to let one's friends spoil one for a few months; it is anexperience which is good for us all; but afterward? How much better tomake room for the living, the active, the productive. 

 "Tircis, voici le temps de prendre sa retraite. "

Is it that I care so much to go on living? I think not. It is healththat I long for--freedom from suffering. 

And this desire being vain, I can find no savor in anything else. Satiety. Lassitude. Renunciation. Abdication. "In your patience possessye your souls. "

April 10, 1881. (_Sunday_). --Visit to ----. She read over to me lettersof 1844 to 1845--letters of mine. So much promise to end in so meager aresult! What creatures we are! I shall end like the Rhine, lost amongthe sands, and the hour is close by when my thread of water will havedisappeared. 

Afterward I had a little walk in the sunset. There was an effect ofscattered rays and stormy clouds; a green haze envelops all the trees--

 "Et tout renaît, et déjà l'aubépine A vu l'abeille accourir à ses fleurs, "

--but to me it all seems strange already. 

_Later_. --What dupes we are of our own desires!. . . Destiny has two waysof crushing us--by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them. But hewho only wills what God wills escapes both catastrophes. "All thingswork together for his good. "

April 14, 1881. --Frightful night; the fourteenth running, in which Ihave been consumed by sleeplessness. . . . 

April 15, 1881. --To-morrow is Good Friday, the festival of pain. I knowwhat it is to spend days of anguish and nights of agony. Let me bear mycross humbly. . . . I have no more future. My duty is to satisfy the claimsof the present, and to leave everything in order. Let me try to endwell, seeing that to undertake and even to continue, are closed to me. 

April 19, 1881. --A terrible sense of oppression. My flesh and my heartfail me. 

 "Que vivre est difficile, ô mon coeur fatigué!"